• Quick note - the problem with Youtube videos not embedding on the forum appears to have been fixed, thanks to ZiprHead. If you do still see problems let me know.

Do Most Atheists Know that science..... Part 2

DOC said:
I noticed that book was written in 1930 over 10 years after his eclipse experiment. Maybe it was his study of Science that made him a believer in God -- notice the title.
Click to expand...

Or perhaps it was just the way he was brought up. Why not stick to the facts that we know about, and acknowledge some of those presented in this thread, rather than attempting (yet another) feeble appeal to authority?
 
DOC said:
I noticed that book was written in 1930 over 10 years after his eclipse experiment. Maybe it was his study of Science that made him a believer in God -- notice the title.
Click to expand...

Is this your only response to my posts?
No admission that your source is wrong. No defence of your source, either.

Are you still looking into it?
 
FireGarden said:
Some of us are trying, Doc.
See my post above. Your source is definitely wrong to link Eddington's experiment in with proving the cosmological constant was a fudge or mistake of any kind. Hubble's observations, leading to his law, gets that honour.
Click to expand...

Norman Geisler, just doesn't talk about Eddington. He then goes on to talk about Hubble, and the discoverers of the afterglow, Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias. He even gives a quote of Wilson about Genesis, which I'll try to bring in later. He also talks of someone named George Smoot who I will have to look up.
 
Last edited:
DOC said:
Norman Geisler, just doesn't talk about Eddington. He then goes on to talk about Hubble, and the discoverers of the afterglow, Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias. He even gives a quote of Wilson about Genesis, which I'll try to bring in later. He also talks of someone named George Smoot who I will have to look up.
Click to expand...

Geisler has misinterpreted the results of Eddington's experiment. That makes him wrong. That he talks about other things doesn't help sweep anything under the carpet.
 
Let me guess the Wilson quote, and save Doc a bit of typing:

http://www.veritas-ucsb.org/library/origins/quotes/universe.html

“Certainly there was something that set it all off. Certainly, if you are religious, I can’t think of a better theory of the origin of the universe to match with Genesis.”
Click to expand...

You'll find many more like that on the linked site.

According to this blog:
http://sublimewill.blogspot.com/2005/07/part-2-bird-droppings-on-my-telescope.html

Wilson was responding to a direct question about a creator.
 
Worm said:
DOC, that page is possibly one of the worst sources you have quoted.

The fact that the guy is apparently a PhD is irrelevant (and is probably totally pointless - it depends what his PhD is in..)

There is simply so much wrong with a lot of what he says that using it to support your viewpoint is simply hurting you rather than helping you.
Click to expand...
The guy published his PhD in 1978 (two years after his website claims it was awarded) and wrote one peer reviewed paper after that, both PhD and paper being in the field of ice mantles and interstellar grain size. About as far removed from cosmology as you can get! Before his PhD he appears to have been an engineer for NASA. His claims to have devised a new version of physics with a variable light speed are not borne out by a search through the journals, which have no record of any papers by him on any such subject. Or any subject, as a matter of fact.

DOC said:
Like Einstein, Eddington wasn't happy with the implications. He later wrote, "Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of nature is repugnant to me... I should like to find a genuine loophole."
Click to expand...
And the entire reason for posting this is rendered completely moot by the first word in the phrase - "Philosophically". It's a very important word in hard science. He didn't like it philosophically. He didn't deny it scientifically, he just didn't like it much philosophically. And that's fine. You don't have to like something philosophically to accept it as fact.
 
DOC said:
Norman Geisler, just doesn't talk about Eddington. He then goes on to talk about Hubble, and the discoverers of the afterglow, Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias. He even gives a quote of Wilson about Genesis, which I'll try to bring in later. He also talks of someone named George Smoot who I will have to look up.
Click to expand...

Are you opperating on the principle that it doesn't matter if Geisler makes makes factual errors as long as he agrees with your views?
 
DOC said:
Posted by Ryan O'Dine
DOC, getting all your science info from religious apologists with an agenda to grind isn’t going to cut it.


Posted by DOC
Making a false statement like this, can make one think you're the one with an agenda.
Click to expand...

FireGarden said:
btw,
The title of one of Eddington's books:
"Why I Believe in God: Science and Religion, as a Scientist Sees It"
Click to expand...

So Eddington fails the test of religious neutrality. Your non-religious sources are dropping like flies, DOC. My statement becomes truer by the hour. (Thank you, FireGarden!)

Which leaves me to continue wondering...
Ryan O’Dine said:
Have you read the entirety of any non-biased books on cosmology? Journal articles? Physics Today, Scientific American, anything?
Click to expand...
 
DOC said:
My agenda is facts, if those facts lead to more evidence for Christianity than for atheism, then so be it.
Click to expand...

This still intrigues me.

If your faith is dependent on the ever-shifting winds of science, then it could be undermined at any newly discovered fact, revolution, or paradigm shift. Worse, if it’s dependent on faulty or misunderstood science, then you’ve got much bigger problems, obviously.

And if it can’t be undermined by new discoveries -- if your faith transcends science and isn’t dependent on such facts at all -- then why are you arguing cosmology with us?
 
Ryan O'Dine said:
So what else you got? Who was the second non-Christian physicist, if you don’t mind? Have you read the entirety of any non-biased books on cosmology?
Click to expand...

I'm guessing that part of the problem is that from DOC's point of view, any non-Christian scientist is by (his) definition biased.
 
No one is stopping the people who have read the book to come in here explain those answers.
Click to expand...

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH READING THE BOOKS AND FIGURING "THOSE ANSWERS" OUT FOR YOURSELF?

Are you afraid you won't understand them and will have to admit that?

Are you afraid you will understand them and see your beliefs undermined?

Or are you just a troll with no interest in really discussing anything?
 
Elizabeth I said:
WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH READING THE BOOKS AND FIGURING "THOSE ANSWERS" OUT FOR YOURSELF?

Are you afraid you won't understand them and will have to admit that?

Are you afraid you will understand them and see your beliefs undermined?

Or are you just a troll with no interest in really discussing anything?
Click to expand...

Well, we know that Doc can't admit that he doesn't understand something, or is wrong, so the only possibility left is for him to simply ignore any new information, kind of like what he does here. For all we know, Doc may have seen an actual science book
 
To help the discussion, let me see if I can summarize where we are at. Please feel free to correct it, if I am wrong.


1.) DOC claimed most atheists do not know the concept of the big bang.
To this point, the consensus has been that this may or may not be true, but is rather unimportant. In fact, if it is untrue, it demonstrates a failing of the education system.

2.) The unstated implication (which was confirmed by DOC) is that if atheists knew this then maybe they would question their "atheism".
This again was found to be erroneous as BBT as BBT does not presume a creator. Indeed, the existence of multiple non-creator based, self-consistant theories which explain BBT cosmology demonstrate that a god is not needed for our universe to be. This obviously does not suggest that any one theory is correct, merely that the assumption that god is required for the universe to be is false.



Now there are multiple side points that are being debated (e.g., quotes mining is not intellectually honest, appeals to authority do not supercede logical argument, First cause argument is not answered by a god...), but I decided to exclude these from the central points of the thread.
 
Ryan O'Dine said:
This still intrigues me.

If your faith is dependent on the ever-shifting winds of science, then it could be undermined at any newly discovered fact, revolution, or paradigm shift. Worse, if it’s dependent on faulty or misunderstood science, then you’ve got much bigger problems, obviously.

And if it can’t be undermined by new discoveries -- if your faith transcends science and isn’t dependent on such facts at all -- then why are you arguing cosmology with us?
Click to expand...

I would say that it was a desperate attempt to appear impartial.

That horse bolted many moons ago Doc. Let it go.
 
wollery said:
The guy published his PhD in 1978 (two years after his website claims it was awarded) and wrote one peer reviewed paper after that, both PhD and paper being in the field of ice mantles and interstellar grain size. About as far removed from cosmology as you can get! Before his PhD he appears to have been an engineer for NASA. His claims to have devised a new version of physics with a variable light speed are not borne out by a search through the journals, which have no record of any papers by him on any such subject. Or any subject, as a matter of fact.

And the entire reason for posting this is rendered completely moot by the first word in the phrase - "Philosophically"...
Click to expand...

All this talk about this PhD. is much ado about nothing. The only reason I even cited the website is that someone complained about me saying the Universe will eventually burn out. They complained about me using the words burned out. I did a quick search of google and found 377,000 entries for the words (universe burn out). I chose the second site I came to because of his words "the universe will burn out" and I saw he was a PhD. I didn't even know he was a Christian until I went back to the site yesterday. Someone mentioned he was a Christian earlier but it was such a minor point I didn't even bother do verify it until yesterday. Much ado about nothing.

There are literally hundreds of sites that use the words the universe and/or stars will burn out. I could of used any of those sites to show that the phrase "burned out" regarding cosmology is very common.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom