*Sign*
Another one of those idiots...
Theories concerning the mechanistic origin of the Universe come and go.
And that's what is so great about it. Science changes as our knowledge expands. Religions do not adapt until they are forced to. Remember the geocentric view of the universe? Flat earth? People found plenty of scriptural truth for these too. The fact is that scriptural truth doesn't exist. Someone can find anything in the scriptures that they like, and call the rest metaphorical.
One writer expresses it this way: “Astonishingly, scientists now calculate that everything in this vast universe grew out of a region many billions of times smaller than a single proton, one of the atom’s basic particles”
This writer is deeply, deeply mistaken. The proton is not fundamental. It is made up of quarks. Which may well be made up of Something Else.
But this idea is refuted by our knowledge of physics (e.g., the Second Law of Thermodynamics).
Interesting that the article misses a step - God is also refuted by our knowledge of physics. But the fundamental mistake is that our knowledge of physics in incomplete, and that in cases describing the situation before th universe and it's laws they almost certainly do not apply in the way we know them. They may not even exist entirely. While the author is perfectly happy with this idea when using god, he seems to forget this when talking about the big bang.
One is required to lay aside his “common sense” in order to accept the foregoing incomprehensible speculation.
One would be shocked at the number of things one must lay aside their common sense to accept. Like F=ma for example. Or the idea that oxygen exists. Or the lack of existence of ether. The concept of common sense is the most abused one in history. And guess what? The article abuses it again. Common sense can only be a beginning. You don't find any decent answers there.
Some scientists should take a hint from the Scottish skeptic David Hume: “I have never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause”
Scotland was never at the forefront of QM research, was it? One of the key conculsions of probabilistic QM theory, which has been tested to incredible accuracies is that
causality does not apply at quantum scales. There is no reason why a particular atom should decay at a particular time - you can take a statistic about how likely it is to, but there is no cause. And the god idea involves the theorem that God, or atleast causality arises without a cause.
Never in the history of human experience has a chaotic explosion been observed producing an intricate order that operates purposefully.
The author then shoehorns the idea of "purpose" into the mess he has created. Big bang does not say there is a purpose. Rather, the concept arises because he has gotten into his head that the universe was created for a purpose, and can't get out of it. Purpose, as has been discussed is something that we impose on awareness. A car is just any old matter until a human finds it useful. In the same way, the ruins of an explosion can be "purposeful" for light and warmth.
And talk order. Is the universe ordered? Hell no. The universe is in the state it is in because that is igetting towards it's equilibrium state. The universe is a mess, but being born in this mess, we consider this to be orderly compared to everything else.
# If the Universe started with an explosion, one would expect that all matter/energy should have been propelled radially from the explosion center – consistent with the principle of angular momentum.
This is stupidity. The explosion analogy is a very misunderstood one. The big bang is a not a conventional explosion, but an effect of inflation - the actual fabric of space being drawn apart, and the objects on this fabric being carried with it. With this, there is no reason for orbital systems not to be formed at local dents in the distribution.
For years scientists have been attempting to measure the microwave radiation that is coming in from all parts of the Universe. It is conjectured that this radiation is the left-over heat from the original Big Bang.
When is this article dated? A recent satellite survey of cosmic radiation has been surveyed, and it is clumpy and exactly as big bang predicts. It is most definitely not evidence against big bang. In fact, it's the best evidence for it. The article ignores more recent data from more accurate surveys.
Also notice ZERO evidence giving for alleged alternative.
Conclusion: Author is blinded by personal beliefs and need to justify own irrationality, willfully ignorant of contrary evidence and lacks even the most arbitary knowledge of what he is supposed to be addressing. He misunderstand the philosophy of science in that research is on going, and concludes prematurely. This article is not a valid account of the reality of the situation.
EDIT: If you want some idea of recent Big Bang efforts, type WMAP into a search engine.
If there not sure they probably won't take the poll. Technically there isn't really such a thing as Agnostic anyway.
