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Evidence for Universe Expansion Found

It's also at space.com

I love the parallel between this and some kind of Genesis event! The ancients may not have been divinely inspired, but they may not have been all that dumb, either... :boxedin:
 
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

http://www.ibs.org/niv/passagesearc...submit=Lookup&display_option=columns&tniv=yes

Ultimately, he argues that there are two events which science does not (and therefore cannot) adequately explain, and which instead are evidence of divine intervention.

The inflationary epoch of the universe, ("by current estimates, from 10-35 to 10-32 seconds after the beginning") before the Big Bang, during which the universe changed in size from "fractions of a micron to the grand size of a grapefruit."

Life appears so rapidly on the young Earth, that it "cannot be attributed to random chemical reactions."
Click to expand...

http://fortboise.org/g.and.bb.html

Anyway, I don't want to ignite an ID debate, but there's little evidence to suggest the universe is timeless... it's just neato is all! :)
 
Life appears so rapidly on the young Earth, that it "cannot be attributed to random chemical reactions."

Define rapidly in this context. I think there's no evidence about how quickly life arose. But as for random chemical reactions, think about it this way. You've got a planet of primordial soup, quadrillions of quadrillions of molecules floating around, and vast vast vast amounts of time for them to combine in.

It only had to happen once (a self replication molecular chain to form) and then it could, in theory, make all the surrounding goo into the same stuff.

Disclaimer : I am not a biologist and may be talking out my arse.
 
I don't think you are. But, I have no idea, either.

Regardless, I don't accept young Earth creationism at all. I'm reading this, and simply blown away by what I'm seeing. I'm hoping Phil Plait can come in and tell us more, because this is fascinating stuff.

I'm regretting not doing better in math and science in school, but I'm also irritated that I had a lot of teachers who were more interested in picking up paychecks, rather than teaching. Frankly, I believe that's why we have kids who are accepting such stupid ideas as Intelligent Design. We have teachers who have no interest in anything more than filling a slot and babysitting a new group of kids for an hour or two.

In any event, I'll be checking out a few more links on this. Hey, better late than never.
 
Roadtoad:

To be fair, most teachers want to teach. However (in the U.S. at least), they've been given almost no ability to do so.

Curriculum is determined by school boards, usually based off the various national tests. Teachers are given a list or subjects that are "required", and often they barely have time to get through this material at an overview level, much less get in-depth into why's and how's, or into critical thinking. The state of discipline is declining, as a teacher can take almost no action without the approval of a principal. Parents complain loudly and often to the school board about everything, from parents who are angry their children got a B, to parents that are angry their children got detention, to parents to are angry because their child actually brings home homework. (True story, a parent of one of the children in my mother's class complained because her child was spending a half hour, yes, a half hour, on homework and needed the parents assistance with some of it).

So while there are teachers as you describe, I think the vast majority just get frustrated to the point where they give up and 'go with the flow'. Often, as a teacher, it seems that you're being boxed in by the parents on one side and the school board on the other, with no room left to do anything that would actually teach the children.
 
hmmm...

I am neither IDer, nor YEC. In fact, I'm not overtly religious at all!

Methinks it is some skeptics who are now interpreting scripture too literally. There is Genesis (capital G) in scripture, and there now appears to be almost conclusive evidence of a genesis (small g) event in nature. Taken allegorically, the bible may in fact say some neat things. In the same way that fables have lessons, religious texts may contain valuable nuggets, regardless of what you believe.

Wackiness!

:cool:
 
Well, honestly, I think Sling is one in a million. She has a passion for teaching, and it shows, even if she has mentors who seem hell-bent on sabotaging her at every turn.

My son, Chris, is going through this right now as a student teacher. His biggest fight has been with students who are thinking that because he's a voc-ed teacher, (someone the Bush Administration wants to eliminate for some warped reason), he's going to be an easy "A" for them. He's not. He expects students to actually work in his classroom. (Funny, bosses tend to be the same way.)

To get back to an earlier point, though, while we can toss around religious analogies about this, the reality remains: we're dealing with something well beyond simplistic explanations from Pastors and their agendae. I'd like to see where this information leads. Unfortunately, Space.com seems to be missing this on their front page.

What's so fascinating to me about this is how they gained the information, and the processes they used to figure this out. I would really like to know more about this, because I'm finding that much of the hardware and math is actually pretty simple stuff once you have a handle on where you're starting from.
 
The book of Genesis was not written by pastors with an agenda (at least, not in the modern context). I'm suggesting there's a lesson here for people who believe that reality cannot be studied through philosophy or though experiments. Philosophy was all the ancients had, yet they came up with remarkable theories (ex. Democritus):

http://periodictable.com/pages/AAE_Democritus.html

Now... I will not claim that philosophy produces data. I also don't feel that society is well served by having a bunch of folks with only undergrad degrees in philosophy running around. I'm suggesting that it may be valuable to have a select few people who simply think.

I think it's remarkable that the ancient idea of the universe having a definite beginning has more legs than the (one-time) scientific idea of a steady-state universe! Selecting nuggets from a pan means leaving behind the religious idea that there is some kind of goal, but it is the nuggets we're looking for. Thought alone won't lead to marvelous new machines, but there is power in ideas...
 
I think I pretty much agree with Jimbo. Skepticism is about weeding out bad ideas to leave the good ones standing. Philosophers sometimes produce ideas worthy of exploration, and if they're good philosophers, they may be able to come up with methods of falsification for science to try.
 
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