Pope says god was behind Big Bang, world awaits proof.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Again I agree, it is god of the gaps, but moving god to the cause of the cause is much better than denying the effect in the real world. Two scientists could work together and agree on their findings and one of them attribute the findings to his god and the other to pixies. I dont mind that so long as their method is sound I dont care what they attribute it to. Like Ken Miller for example. Its not ideal but so long as they are honest in their science I dont care what they attribute it to.

But attributing it to something that can by no means even remotely be proven isn't honest science. We may not (at this time) be able to show exactly how some particular belief is wrong (eg life on earth came from aliens putting it here), but if they cant show, even in general, how their particular belief could be right (no evidence of said aliens, no evidence that life couldn't have arosen naturally on life), then their particular belief is scientifically useless (and being a stopgap for their ignorance doesn't count). This is doubly true in the case of god, who is scientifically untestable.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

My point could be boiled down to this, its much better to have people examine the real world and look honestly for the hows, rather than stand in the way of actual progress. If they all behaved like that there could be the creation Myth, and the Fact of evolution taught side by side in religion books. Instead of just the myth taught as fact

But attributing these things when there is no evidence is standing in the way of actual progress. Why bother checking how the big bang arose, if we can just say it was god? If we have no scientific reason to say god did it, then bother saying god it at all? What purpose does it serve. God is untestable, in scientific terms, so can we scientifically hold to the assertion that god did something? You end up with a lot of contradictions, the only way to avoid them is to not make baseless assumptions and hold to them as if they any weight.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

In answer to your last question I agree with the statement but my point is thatim talking about people you could work together with all week genuinely trying to figure things out and do different things sunday morning. Which im ok with.

I see what you are saying, and I do agree that one isn't necessarily as bad as the other, but they are both from the same fallacy, the fallacy that "insert thing I like the sound of" has to be true because I like it.

If you think about it, though, in some ways the people who go for the gap of the gaps argument are more disingenous than those who dont. Those who do, do so because they recognise that you cant ignore strong evidence to suit your own beliefs, (a distinctly scientific outlook, objective evidence>personal experience), but they will then look for places with no strong evidence for anything and start making baseless untestable assumptions, something which scientifically you cant do. They accept science only when it suits them and that is unscientific and to hold to that way of thinking would ultimately retard scientific progress.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Ah yes I think I see the misunderstanding here. Im not talking about using god to explain anything or mention god in journals. At the point where I, and most of the posters here, 'would say x seems to be a natural law', the religious person too could say 'x seems to be a natural law' and when they go home they can be satisfied that they have figured out the natural law their god uses. I am not ok with using god to explain anything without evidence, or in spite of evidence.
Just saying it is an improvement. Not the ideal

But they are, in that case, using god to explain something. They are assuming that natural laws have some intelligence behind them, something not supported by scientific reasoining. These people are still, essentially, attributing lightning to thor, just with a bit of a better understanding of the workings of the lightning itself.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

yes they are both forms of the same fallicy. One is very obstructionist the other Could be completely unobstructionist (if thats a real word) if its done in line with scientific method. I think ken miller is a good example of what im talking about.

If you hold completely to the scientific method, you simply wont do it. And of course its obstructionist, what happens when we get more understanding of the universe and start challenging these unscientifically arrived at beliefs? Do you think people will just drop them in favour of a difficult reality? History would say otherwise.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Just for contrast I mean finding real world effects and finding real world causes for them. I am not talking about the cause being god and trying to find evidence for an effect, like in the case of 'creation science' Christ I hate using that phrase.
If a guy is doing good science I dont care if he figures out how something actually works and says “so thats how god does it”.
So long as they are not inserting god as an explanation for the effect.

But by saying "so thats how god does it" you are inserting god as an explanation for why it happens. You figure out how something happens and then you attribute the why to god, its fallacious logic and not in any way scienctific.

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

There is a massive difference between saying gravity works because god just makes it work, and saying gravity = ((m1xm2)/D squared) because thats the natural law god uses. You dont have to be religious to use it.

What? they are the same thing: god makes it work by making gravity = ((m1xm2)/D squared).

El_Duderino 09 wrote: »

Just so you know I dont like the idea of religious attribution of causes. I am however saying that im glad they are saying god did the big bang because thats what the evidence suggests rather than god did 6 day creation. Im sure we are in agreement on that.

!!WHAT!! The evidence suggests nothing of the sort. What evidence do you think suggest such nonsense?

Soulja boy wrote: »

No, you obviously wouldn't have that power.

Prove that i dont have the power :P

CDfm wrote: »

There is no reason for anyone to suggest that the Catholic Church has ever had a problem with the Big Bang, its originator, George LaMaitre , a Catholic Friar was honoured by the Catholic Church. A Monsignor is like a Bishop without a diosese.

So I presume, there is a reason for it, are their some Laws of Natural Science that the Catholic Church rejects.

It was actually Alexander Friedmann who came up with it, after finding out that it was a consequence of General Relativity. LaMaitre argued for it, but it didn't originate with him.

Mark Hamill wrote: »

But they are, in that case, using god to explain something. They are assuming that natural laws have some intelligence behind them, something not supported by scientific reasoining. These people are still, essentially, attributing lightning to thor, just with a bit of a better understanding of the workings of the lightning itself.


If you hold completely to the scientific method, you simply wont do it. And of course its obstructionist, what happens when we get more understanding of the universe and start challenging these unscientifically arrived at beliefs? Do you think people will just drop them in favour of a difficult reality? History would say otherwise.


But by saying "so thats how god does it" you are inserting god as an explanation for why it happens. You figure out how something happens and then you attribute the why to god, its fallacious logic and not in any way scienctific.


What? they are the same thing: god makes it work by making gravity = ((m1xm2)/D squared).


!!WHAT!! The evidence suggests nothing of the sort. What evidence do you think suggest such nonsense?

Yeah I am assuming that the theist believes 2 things and uses them as underlying assumptions
1 god exists
2 god is responsible for the universe and everything in it.

I dont like those beliefs and I dont think they are backed by evidence but im not a theist. I suggest you argue those points with a theist.
So when evidence suggests a big bang the theist will assume god did it by that means. I am saying that the theist who is interested in the how questions is someone who can use scientific method even if he believes his god is ultimately responsible for what he finds.

I agree that its not even nearly ideal and to be honest I dont see where we disagree.

You can work more easily with the theist who uses the formula for gravity than the theist who is not interested in the how and just asserts angels pull things towards the earth with random force. I really dont think im saying anything controversial here

Enkidu wrote: »

It was actually Alexander Friedmann who came up with it, after finding out that it was a consequence of General Relativity. LaMaitre argued for it, but it didn't originate with him.

robindch wrote: »

No, Friedmann (Фридман) was a Russian physicist of jewish extraction who came up with the idea of an expanding universe five years before Lemaître did (something that seems to be forgotten regularly by people who hold catholic religious beliefs).That's the spirit

The Big Bang theory developed from observations of the structure of the
Universe and from theoretical considerations. In 1912 Vesto Slipher
measured the first Doppler shift of a "spiral nebula" (spiral nebula is the
obsolete term for spiral galaxies), and soon discovered that almost all
such nebulae were receding from Earth. He did not grasp the cosmological
implications of this fact, and indeed at the time it was highly controversial
whether or not these nebulae were "island universes" outside our Milky
Way. Ten years later, Alexander Friedmann, a Russian cosmologist
and mathematician, derived the Friedmann equations from Albert Einstein's
equations of general relativity, showing that the Universe might be
expanding in contrast to the static Universe model advocated by Einstein
at that time. In 1924, Edwin Hubble's measurement of the great
distance to the nearest spiral nebulae showed that these systems were
indeed other galaxies. Independently deriving Friedmann's equations in
1927, Georges Lemaître, a Belgian physicist and Roman Catholic priest,
proposed that the inferred recession of the nebulae was due to the
expansion of the Universe.

In 1931 Lemaître went further and suggested that the evident expansion in
forward time required that the Universe contracted backwards in time, and
would continue to do so until it could contract no further, bringing all the
mass of the Universe into a single point, a "primeval atom" where and
when the fabric of time and space comes into existence.

Starting in 1924, Hubble painstakingly developed a series of distance
indicators, the forerunner of the cosmic distance ladder, using the
100-inch (2,500 mm) Hooker telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory.
This allowed him to estimate distances to galaxies whose redshifts had
already been measured, mostly by Slipher. In 1929, Hubble discovered a
correlation between distance and recession velocity—now known as
Hubble's law. Lemaître had already shown that this was expected,
given the Cosmological Principle.
link

---

I never understood why it mattered that LaMaitre was religious, the fact
that he didn't fudge his work or imply some religious connection when there
was none is just what any honest person would do & apparently that's
what LaMaitre did, it's irrelevant to know he was a priest. The fact that
he put forward the big bang idea based off equations that implied it
means what exactly?