[watsisname]

The flaw, my dear sir, is in us - our comprehension of the matter. Just ask an astronomer or cosmologist who was around in 1959-1965. We make mistakes.

Conveniently, I actually study astronomy and cosmology.  Why don't you just ask me?

The theoretical framework to describe the evolution of the universe was worked out (by Einstein, Friedmann, Robertson, etc) as early as the 20s, and cosmologists recognized that an expanding universe was consistent with these models.  Einstein himself saw that the field equations showed that a static universe would be unstable -- the universe operating under these equations should either be expanding or contracting.  Without having observational evidence at the time to suggest one way or another, most people, including Einstein, held the philosophical view that the universe was static.  Einstein introduced the cosmological constant to force the static solution out of the equations.

He later retracted that fudge factor when Hubble's observations of galactic redshift (1929) showed that the universe was indeed expanding.  Many cosmologists adopted the expanding universe model around this time.  The detection and characterization of the CMB in the 60s finally converted most of the rest.  But yes, you are right, we did not always have the currently accepted model of cosmology, just like we didn't always have the currently accepted model of the atom.

Addendum, because it's too interesting to leave out:  Einstein's cosmological constant turns out to be very useful in modelling the accelerating expansion of the universe.  The joke is that apparently he was such a genius that even his mistakes end up being right. 

If we take time dilation into account, we end up with the 6 days of Genesis being equivalent to 7.1, 3.6, 1.8, 0.89, 0.45, and 0.23 billion years in length (respectively) - which adds up to 14.07 billion years as measured from our coordinates in space-time.

This is a very interesting claim; I've never heard it before.  I would have supposed a claim like that should have come with something to support it... a link to the calculations, perhaps?  I prefer rigor with my science.

So I did some google-fu, and stumbled across this and subsequently read it.

Allow me to be extremely sincere with you:  This guy is spewing bull****.  Yes, I could go line by line and explain to you why the things that he is writing there are wrong.  I won't, because I have far better things to do, but to show that I'm not kidding here's one good example:

"The rate of doubling, that is the fractional rate of change, is very rapid at the beginning and decreases with time simply because as the universe gets larger and larger, even though the actual expansion rate is approximately constant, it takes longer and longer for the overall size to double. Because of this, the earliest of the six days have most of the 15 billion years sequestered with them."

This statement is wrong, because
(a) the expansion rate is not nearly constant; it depends (and to varying orders of magnitude!) on the relative contributions of the mass density, radiation pressure, and dark energy, which themselves are functions of the scale of the universe.  (Hence the terms 'matter dominated', 'radiation dominated', and 'Λ-dominated' eras).
(b) The 'rate of doubling' literally means the time for the scale factor of the universe to double.  This is the time it takes for the distance between comoving points to double, which is directly proportional to the expansion velocity (the latter is the time derivative of the former).  So no, it does not take longer and longer for the universe to double in size, nor does his explanation for it make any physical sense.

That's all I feel like saying as someone who studies cosmology for right now.  If anyone else wants to dive into this kind of silliness then this site looks like it has some good funnies.  But I just want to say that I honestly don't care what theological beliefs anybody holds; indeed I respect them.  Just please don't expect me to take you seriously if you try to use scientific principles to support them unless you really do understand the science in question.

[Bobboau]

If we take time dilation into account, we end up with the 6 days of Genesis being equivalent to 7.1, 3.6, 1.8, 0.89, 0.45, and 0.23 billion years in length (respectively) - which adds up to 14.07 billion years as measured from our coordinates in space-time.

This is a very interesting claim; I've never heard it before.  I would have supposed a claim like that should have come with something to support it... a link to the calculations, perhaps?  I prefer rigor with my science.

my guess (and it is only a guess) is that the guy uses a real physical formula, and real physical numbers except for one where he goes "this is reasonable" that number happens to be a number that most people reading don't understand and therefore cannot judge it's reasonableness but everything else seems to check out so they go along with it, the number picked just happens to be the exact value needed for his calculation to work out the way he want's it to. all it works out to is this formula is not evidence against the idea, because there is at least one possible set of numbers that is consistent with it, which is hardly evidence for the idea.

I'm too lazy and time constrained at the moment to actually validate the guess.

[watsisname]

Yes, I'm sure he is using a formula, but the problem is that his description of the expansion of the universe is wrong, and so his conclusions about the time dilation are also wrong.  He making the common mistake of thinking of it as a sphere with constantly expanding radius, and labeling the scale factor as the ratio of radii at different times.  If that were the case, then  dR/dt = v = a constant, and R(t) = R₀ + vt.  The 'doubling time', then, is the time required for vt to equal R(t), so you get t_double = (R₀ + vt)/v = R/v + t.  As you can see, the doubling time is proportional to the age, which is consistent with his description.

But this is not how the real universe works.  The universe's expansion is a Metric Expansion, which means that the rate at which two points move away from one another is directly proportional to the distance between them.  (From this comes Hubble's Law).  If that rate is constant, then the scale factor, being the distance between two points now divided by the distance at some prior time, increases at a constant rate as well.  Therefore his assertion that most of the 6 days gets compressed to the earlier times in the 15 (14!) billion year history does not work.

[Phantom Hoover]

hmm, so the actual distance between two points increases exponentially with time? didn't know that

[watsisname]

Yes, though it is a little more complicated than that since the expansion rate depends on the density of matter, radiation, and all that good stuff.  To get the scale factor as a function of time you have to solve the Friedmann Equations for a(t), and generally you get solutions that look like a ∝ t^(some power).

For a dark-energy dominated universe (which is what ours will be in the future) you get a(t) ∝ e^(Kt), which is truly exponential.

[Sandwich]

You'll forgive me if I don't. If he can't be bothered to explain his math in a simple article about said math, or submit his hypothesis to peer review in a real journal, then I can't be bothered to take him seriously as a scientist.

Good point. I don't know why he doesn't have links to published stuff, or why he doesn't provide formulas (I would guess it's because he wanted to leave the website articles accessible to the layman). Why don't you ask him yourself? His email is published at the bottom of the About page: [email protected]

Not entirely.

You see, here's the way I'm coming at this:

1. Your hypothesis is that the Bible contains an encoded version of real history, based on your observation that scientific evidence seems to kinda-sorta link up to biblical accounts.
2. If we take this hypothesis as true, then we should be able to make inferences about future discoveries by studying the bible, or find historical evidence for events mentioned there.

But what happens if we do try that? Suddenly, the bible doesn't actually seem to hold just the truths, but a collection of truths and allegories and metaphors in a wild jumble, without a clear and universally accepted guide on what is what.

Let's take the story of Noah and the Ark as an example. If it was true, if all of that really happened, we would need to see several things reflected in the historical and archaeological record. We would need to see signs of worldwide flooding. We would need to see signs of a massive die-off of animals and humans around the same time. We would also need to see a sudden burst in speciation shortly afterwards. We would also have to see a clear pattern of migration lines from the Ark's last resting place to the rest of the world.

However, none of these things can be found. So, what does that mean? Clearly, you would say, this means that this story is allegorical, but how would you know this from the text? And what is it an allegory for?

Couple of points here, in brief.

Regarding the inferences of future discoveries, place yourself 100 years ago, make that statement, and then live through finding out there was a beginning to the universe. Or, if you prefer, there's a series of fiction novels by one Joel Rosenberg that he has written over the last 15ish years or so. He based the fictional events depicted in his books on his understanding of Biblical prophecy. He made national headlines when real-world events occurred that were uncannily similar to the events depicted in his books.

Regarding Noah and the Ark... from what I understand, all or nearly all ancient cultures have an account of a great flood. Whether it was truly world-wide (the entire planet), "merely" known-world-wide, or regional (think something like the Mediterranean basin before the ocean broke through the Straits of Gibraltar) is hard to determine considering the Hebrew word used for describing the flood's AOE is ארץ (eretz), which can be translated as earth, land, country, etc (here's one of many articles about this - didn't read it thoroughly though).

Personally I suspect it was a regional flood, not planet-wide, if for no other reason than the numbers of animals brought onto the ark would have been insufficient to repopulate the planet - 2 males & 2 females of the unclean animals, 7 males and 7 females of the clean ones.

You might want to reread that.

It's kinda hard for "the morning stars to sing together" when they didn't exist yet according to Genesis, hence the contradiction. But hey, let's ignore Job then and consider that Genesis, the supposed reference on creation, tells us that the Earth was created before the stars...

We covered this before. The Genesis 1 account is that light was created before the earth. Unless you presume - as some really weird Christians do - that the light in question came from God Himself, that light had to have come from stars, including Sol. The day it attributes to the placing of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens was when the atmospheric haze thinned enough for said bodies to become visible.

Ah... so when the Bible is wrong, it's our comprehension that is lacking and somehow it is correct in a cryptic way, and when it's close enough for people to say "Well, if you squint your eyes enough it kinda looks close" it's correct.

If you take out the mocking and inherent sarcasm in that statement, then yes, that's my belief.

I know, but given that Sandwich was making the claim that scientists should make allowances for the fact that the entire methodology of science is wrong, I was wondering if he'd agree that religion should also make the same allowance or if he'd simply hide behind the whole "The bible is true, we might be reading it wrong though" argument.

Not the methodology - the interpretation of the results. The allowance that perhaps the instruments used to obtain those results were flawed. Scientists understand that this is a possibility, which is why things are checked and verified repeatedly.

Now whether you believe the Bible is truth or not, it is what it is. Opening the book at a different angle isn't going to give you different text. What is written (in the original languages) is written and unchangeable. So the earliest possible place to account for a "flawed instrument" in the process is in our understanding of what was written.

Perhaps I'm not being clear somehow, but in my mind I'm trying to get across the point that I'm applying to the Bible what I see scientists applying to the universe - the acknowledgement that we might be introducing an error somewhere.

Conveniently, I actually study astronomy and cosmology.  Why don't you just ask me?

Ah, good!

He later retracted that fudge factor when Hubble's observations of galactic redshift (1929) showed that the universe was indeed expanding.  Many cosmologists adopted the expanding universe model around this time.  The detection and characterization of the CMB in the 60s finally converted most of the rest.  But yes, you are right, we did not always have the currently accepted model of cosmology, just like we didn't always have the currently accepted model of the atom.

Thought you meant the Hubble space telescope for a while here and had done a major typo...

This is a very interesting claim; I've never heard it before.  I would have supposed a claim like that should have come with something to support it... a link to the calculations, perhaps?  I prefer rigor with my science.

His articles state multiple times that the details are in his books.

(b) The 'rate of doubling' literally means the time for the scale factor of the universe to double.  This is the time it takes for the distance between comoving points to double, which is directly proportional to the expansion velocity (the latter is the time derivative of the former).  So no, it does not take longer and longer for the universe to double in size, nor does his explanation for it make any physical sense.

If the rate of expansion (how fast the outer boundaries are travelling outwards from the center) is, say, 100mph, then it would take 1 hour for a 200 mile diameter sphere to double in size to 400 miles. It would then take 2 hours to double in size again, to 800 miles. Next doubling in size would take 4 hours, etc. That's the size increase I thought he was talking about.. is there something wrong with that?

That's all I feel like saying as someone who studies cosmology for right now.  If anyone else wants to dive into this kind of silliness then this site looks like it has some good funnies.  But I just want to say that I honestly don't care what theological beliefs anybody holds; indeed I respect them.  Just please don't expect me to take you seriously if you try to use scientific principles to support them unless you really do understand the science in question.

At some point we all have to stand on the shoulders of those who came before us, presuming that what they discovered was accurate. If not, we'd be reinventing the wheel with each generation.

Anyway, the TalkReason.org article argues against Schroeder's theories based on the presumption that because we can't (yet) measure something to be true or not, it can't exist:

"Therefore, what lasted six days 15 billions years ago, lasts exactly six days now. If there were available some other observable universe, which could be utilized as an independent frame of reference, then it could be possible to find out if one day in our century is different from one day 15 billion years ago. As it is, the length of a day in our century is to all intents and purposes exactly the same as it was 15 billion years ago."

Uhm... I kinda sorta disagree. Perhaps we can't (yet) base scientific calculations based on something we can't (yet)measure, but that does not equate to that something not existing. Wasn't one of our own solar system's planets (Pluto?)discovered by observing the orbits of nearby planets and figuring out that they didn't make sense unless there was something else out there gravitationally affecting it? How about all those galaxies revealed by the Hubble Deep Field? Did they not exist before we observed them? If Newton followed the above logic, he would never have figured out gravity... postulating that something we can't directly measure might exist? Heck, to the best of my knowledge, we still can't measure gravity itself, can we? We measure the effects it has on objects, but have we been able to observe "gravitons" or whatever the "gravity particle/field/wave/whatever" is called?

Yes, I'm sure he is using a formula, but the problem is that his description of the expansion of the universe is wrong, and so his conclusions about the time dilation are also wrong.  He making the common mistake of thinking of it as a sphere with constantly expanding radius, and labeling the scale factor as the ratio of radii at different times.  If that were the case, then  dR/dt = v = a constant, and R(t) = R₀ + vt.  The 'doubling time', then, is the time required for vt to equal R(t), so you get t_double = (R₀ + vt)/v = R/v + t.  As you can see, the doubling time is proportional to the age, which is consistent with his description.

But this is not how the real universe works.  The universe's expansion is a Metric Expansion, which means that the rate at which two points move away from one another is directly proportional to the distance between them.  (From this comes Hubble's Law).  If that rate is constant, then the scale factor, being the distance between two points now divided by the distance at some prior time, increases at a constant rate as well.  Therefore his assertion that most of the 6 days gets compressed to the earlier times in the 15 (14!) billion year history does not work.

Sorry, but most of that is above my head. I read the Wikipedia article's intro, and understood it from the 3rd paragraph onwards. I'm a very visual learner, so examples I can envision help.

Anyway, why don't you write him to ask how he takes what you're saying into account? [email protected]

[Ghostavo]

You might want to reread that.

It's kinda hard for "the morning stars to sing together" when they didn't exist yet according to Genesis, hence the contradiction. But hey, let's ignore Job then and consider that Genesis, the supposed reference on creation, tells us that the Earth was created before the stars...

We covered this before. The Genesis 1 account is that light was created before the earth. Unless you presume - as some really weird Christians do - that the light in question came from God Himself, that light had to have come from stars, including Sol. The day it attributes to the placing of the sun, moon, and stars in the heavens was when the atmospheric haze thinned enough for said bodies to become visible.

You are specifically trying to interpret Genesis in a way to make it similar to your understanding of reality. However, that is not what Genesis says.

Genesis 1:16

And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.

It specifically says made, not became visible or whatever.

Ah... so when the Bible is wrong, it's our comprehension that is lacking and somehow it is correct in a cryptic way, and when it's close enough for people to say "Well, if you squint your eyes enough it kinda looks close" it's correct.

If you take out the mocking and inherent sarcasm in that statement, then yes, that's my belief.

Which is one of the problems. You don't look at the Bible's account of creation and say "Well, it says this thing and that's how it is regardless of what is our modern understanding." You look at modern understanding and try to interpret the Bible in a way to make it similar to it as we see above.

[Luis Dias]

I think that's a pretty fair thing to do when you really believe the Bible is the Absolute Truth that came from God himself.

[Turambar]

I think that's a pretty fair thing to do when you really believe the Bible is the Absolute Truth that came from God himself.

That's a pretty silly position to take though, considering all the parts that don't jive with reality, like pi and the shape of the earth and the origins of life and whatnot.

[Scotty]

Almost as silly as making it one's goal to stamp out another's belief when it affects you in exactly zero ways except as a snippet of text you can easily choose not to read.

It's fine to disagree.  Sandwich hasn't said anything yet, but simply from reading the topic, it sounds like this is less friendly debate and more trying to stamp out something one perceives as wrong on the internet.

Again, it hasn't crossed lines yet, but in the past couple pages the tone has noticeably changed in a negative direction.

[Bobboau]

it is a better position to take than one who simply says "that is what the bible said so thats what happened." at least there is some recognition of and attempt at reconciliation with reality.

[watsisname]

I’d just like to reiterate that when people talk about Genesis or if they believe it's a real depiction of events, then that’s cool, it doesn't bother me at all.  What bothers me is the misuse of scientific principles to try to validate it.

Thought you meant the Hubble space telescope for a while here and had done a major typo...

There's a reason the Hubble telescope is named after Edwin Hubble.  One of the primary objectives of the telescope was to gather new and improved data on the expansion of the universe, which Edwin is credited with discovering.

His articles state multiple times that the details are in his books.

Yes, I was just saying I thought a source would have been nice when you referred to it.  But that's okay, it wasn't difficult to find.

If the rate of expansion (how fast the outer boundaries are travelling outwards from the center) is, say, 100mph, then it would take 1 hour for a 200 mile diameter sphere to double in size to 400 miles. It would then take 2 hours to double in size again, to 800 miles. Next doubling in size would take 4 hours, etc. That's the size increase I thought he was talking about.. is there something wrong with that?

Nope, those conclusions are sound, as I described earlier, but it is not the correct way to model the time dilation from universal expansion (the correct way is to examine the FLRW equations).  I also imagine you meant to say 2 hours for the first doubling and 4 hours for the second doubling, and so forth.  Right?  If the initial radius is 200 miles, then to double the radius to 400 miles a time t=d/v = 200miles/100mph = 2 hours is required.  You can check by plugging those values into the formula I derived.

It occurs to me there may be an easier way, without getting overly involved in the math, to explain why I don’t find his suggestion to be particularly compelling.  The factor by which events appear time dilated is equal to the redshift z+1.  I.e. if an event has a redshift z=2, then it appears slowed down by a factor of 3.  We can test this through observations of distant supernovae explosions and GRB’s, though it is very difficult in practice (even moderate values of z correspond to extremely large distances).  The redshift z goes to infinity as the lookback time goes to the age of the universe.  For typical cosmologies you can model it as

which grows very rapidly with z.  (Note this is normalized so that y=0 represents now and y=1 represents the age of the universe.)  Look at it another way, z grows very slowly with lookback time, until you get very far out where it then grows extremely rapidly.  Consider the CMB (cosmic microwave background), emitted ~300,000 years after the Big Bang, which has z~1000.  The CNB (cosmic neutrino background) was produced only ~2 seconds after the Big Bang and its redshift is many orders of magnitude larger.  What you can conclude from this is that it is possible to find any value of z that you want, and therefore any time dilation factor that you want, at some moment in the universe’s history.  And because of this relation of z and lookback time, it’s a completely uninteresting result that a factor of 10^12 (the dilation required to expand a 6 day signal to 14 billion years) occurs very shortly after the Big Bang.  You could make the exact same argument if the biblical story was said to have unfolded in 5 days, or 100 years, or 2 seconds.  And since a lot of very interesting stuff happened very early on in the universe, you could attach that moment to something which sounds meaningful.

"Therefore, what lasted six days 15 billions years ago, lasts exactly six days now. If there were available some other observable universe, which could be utilized as an independent frame of reference, then it could be possible to find out if one day in our century is different from one day 15 billion years ago. As it is, the length of a day in our century is to all intents and purposes exactly the same as it was 15 billion years ago."

Uhm... I kinda sorta disagree.

I'm not fond of that person's argumentation, but his assertion is absolutely correct.  6 days then = 6 days now.  The reason is because they are co-moving reference frames.  The time dilation effect is only a result of the signal from then being redshifted by the expansion of space during its transit.

Perhaps we can't (yet) base scientific calculations based on something we can't (yet)measure, but that does not equate to that something not existing. Wasn't one of our own solar system's planets (Pluto?)discovered by observing the orbits of nearby planets and figuring out that they didn't make sense unless there was something else out there gravitationally affecting it?

Pluto was discovered purely by coincidence.  Neptune was discovered because its gravity perturbs Uranus' orbit, which led people to figuring out where Neptune must be.  A similar thing was then put forward when Neptune's orbit was said to be perturbed by something else (Planet X!) farther out, but that was in error.  Pluto just happened to be in the search area when they were looking, along with all those other Kuiper Belt Objects, but it is way too small to be having the required effect on Neptune. (This is how I understand the history, anyway, I might not be remembering it correctly).  At any rate this has nothing to do with time dilation or reference frames...

How about all those galaxies revealed by the Hubble Deep Field? Did they not exist before we observed them? If Newton followed the above logic, he would never have figured out gravity... postulating that something we can't directly measure might exist? Heck, to the best of my knowledge, we still can't measure gravity itself, can we? We measure the effects it has on objects, but have we been able to observe "gravitons" or whatever the "gravity particle/field/wave/whatever" is called?

You're talking about several totally different things here and I honestly don't understand what any of it has to do with what we were talking about earlier.  But to answer your questions:

-Of course those galaxies existed before we observed them; they existed at least the amount of time it took for their photons to reach us.  Put another way, we see them exactly the way they were when that light was emitted.

-Gravity is detectable because it causes objects to accelerate in a predictable way, with the force causing the acceleration being proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating them.  That's Newton's view, anyway.  Einstein's view is that gravity is the curvature of spacetime caused by the presence of mass.  This curvature causes objects to accelerate in a predictable way, but is slightly different than what you predict from Newton's view, particularly for very large masses (very large curvature).

-Gravitons, the theorized particles that carry the gravitational force, or gravity waves (basically the same thing from another perspective -- these are literally ripples in spacetime caused by the motion of mass), have not been detected yet.  The reason is because they are very weak, and the effects they have upon the matter they pass through are at or below the limits of current detection capability.

However, we have extremely powerful indirect evidence for the existence of gravity waves.  If you consider two very massive objects, like neutron stars orbiting each other, then general relativity predicts they should gradually spiral inward due to the emission of gravitational waves, which carry away some of their orbital energy.  So their orbits should change in a predictable way, and this has been observed and seen to be perfectly consistent with the predictions.

If two neutron stars (or better yet, two supermassive black holes!) merge together, the gravitational wave produced then should be strong enough to detect on Earth, but these of course would be very rare events.  Hopefully we'll catch one!

edit:  Sorry, had to fix some things.

[karajorma]

I’d just like to reiterate that when people talk about Genesis or if they believe it's a real depiction of events, then that’s cool, it doesn't bother me at all.  What bothers me is the misuse of scientific principles to try to validate it.

Yep, this is what I have to say to Scotty. I don't give a damn what Sandwich believes in. But when he misrepresents the scientific view of the universe in order to make it fit his beliefs, then yes, it needs to be stomped on from a great height. Same as anyone claiming there is a scientific basis for homoeopathy, healing crystals or any other psuedo-scientific bull**** trying to pass itself off as real science. Not stamping that bull**** out allows it to propagate.

To put the argument the other way, how many religious people would stand by meekly if I were to claim that the bible flat out states that Jesus didn't exist and was actually made up by the Disciples in order to make some point? I wouldn't blame anyone for coming down hard on me for stating that cause it's flat out wrong.

[Bobboau]

BTW I would like to point out that it is well within the realm of possibility that we may yet discover that the universe did NOT have a beginning after all, we may come across some sort of evidence that forces us to conclude that in fact the big bang was just part of a cycle that the universe goes through and that time is cyclical with no beginning or no end. the big bang is not set in stone, it is just what the preponderance of evidence leads us to believe at the moment. should we find such evidence that changes the view of science, will we then have to change our interpretation of the bible? maybe when it said beginning it meant of this iteration? if that is the case, then does that mean we can contort our understanding of the bible to mean anything? if so then what is the point of doing so?

[karajorma]

That's a good point. I quite like the theory that this universe can seed other ones via black holes. No idea how likely it is but it has the nice property of beating the anthropomorphic principle. The universe isn't suited for life simply because if it wasn't, we wouldn't be here to ponder it. Instead universes which are suited to life are more likely to have "children" which follow their rules.

If that theory is correct, then the universe may have had a start, but there were other universes before it.

[watsisname]

That is very true, Bobboau. 

An all too common misrepresentation of the Big Bang theory is that 'it all came from nothing', or 'first there was nothing, and then it exploded', which is just so much BS (even some scientists who should really know better say this, and it drives me nuts).  The Big Bang theory, or the standard model of cosmology as is sometimes preferred, doesn't say anything regarding what if anything happened before that event.  It doesn't even deal with the first instant of expansion.  Rather, the singularity at t=0 is just an extrapolation of the standard model to the moment that radius goes to zero; so it's an artifact of the physics that we have applied to conditions that it is not meant for, just like singularities inside black holes.  We know we understand the universe pretty well from the present all the way back to within tiny fractions of a second after the Big Bang, but anything before that is still pretty much a mystery.

There are many theories (or should we really say hypotheses?) that try to deal with this.  Some involve string theory, cyclic universes, multiverses, and there's even that crazy but strangely alluring example of 'universes out of black holes' that was posted here some time ago.  Maybe someday one of them will find itself being validated by observational evidence, and if so that will be quite something.

[AdmiralRalwood]

BTW I would like to point out that it is well within the realm of possibility that we may yet discover that the universe did NOT have a beginning after all, we may come across some sort of evidence that forces us to conclude that in fact the big bang was just part of a cycle that the universe goes through and that time is cyclical with no beginning or no end. the big bang is not set in stone, it is just what the preponderance of evidence leads us to believe at the moment.

Like this, you might say.

[Scotty]

Not stamping that bull**** out allows it to propagate.

This is what I disagree with.  In the case of things that are actively harmful to other people, like those faith healing incidents with that kid, there's a reasonable justification to "stamping that bull**** out."  That's perfectly alright.

Where I personally draw the line is where anyone else takes it upon him or herself to decide what another person is allowed to believe, and that's where it looks like this thread is going.

[Grizzly]

Not stamping that bull**** out allows it to propagate.

This is what I disagree with.  In the case of things that are actively harmful to other people, like those faith healing incidents with that kid, there's a reasonable justification to "stamping that bull**** out."  That's perfectly alright.

Where I personally draw the line is where anyone else takes it upon him or herself to decide what another person is allowed to believe, and that's where it looks like this thread is going.

Hmm. I think the crux here is that sandwich beliefs are based party on a misunderstanding of certain scientific theories. Sandwhich is free to have his beliefs if they are partly based on a correct understanding of certain scientific theories. It's just that misunderstandings of scientific theories is an eyesore for everyone who works in any scientistic field.

[karajorma]

This is what I disagree with.  In the case of things that are actively harmful to other people, like those faith healing incidents with that kid, there's a reasonable justification to "stamping that bull**** out."  That's perfectly alright.

The undermining of science is actively harmful. But more importantly, as I keep saying, Sandwich can believe whatever he wants. What he can't do is misrepresent what other people "believe" and then say it agrees with him. If you feel it is wrong to try to tell Sandwich what he should believe (and I agree it's wrong) isn't it also wrong for him to claim other people believe what he does when they don't?