Feslin

All that I got from that page was 'Space is expanding'

I believe that, and always have...

If you have someone on ignore because you don't like their opinions, do us all a favor and just leave, moron.

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Technocrat

Well, that's incorrect. American education is poor, especially in science.. You would be suprised how many errors are probably in your highschool and elementary level textbooks. You don't get out of that problem untill you hit the AP or college level courses.

A scientific hypothesis and a theory are not one and the same. In some respects, they have similar aspects, but they are different entities. For more on this distinction, I would recomend this audio recording. It's short and to the point.

NPR : Theory vs. Hypothesis in Science

Theories certainly utilize many hypotheses in them, and they generate more of them as time goes on. A theory, though, is not a hypothesis--that is, a tentative explaination.

Feslin

In science, a theory is a proposed description, explanation, or model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation. It follows from this that for scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theory which explains why the apple behaves so is the current theory of gravitation.

So tell me, how do you plan on experimenting the big bang?

If you have someone on ignore because you don't like their opinions, do us all a favor and just leave, moron.

Technocrat

I know all that. I never said that a theory was not that. I also never said that theory and fact are mututally exclusive. The problem is, with the Big Bang theory, we do use observations and data collection to form hypothesis about what should happen in X situation. Will X prediction lead to Y result? etc.

Why exactly are there blue links in your post? Are they supposed to go somwhere? I ask because it seems to be doing that to me too, but I am not making a hyperlink.

Edit: Back on topic, though, we can "test" the big bang by looking taking observing and analysing the results of hypotheses extending from the model. Are they true? If so, good. If not, bad. Again, I return to the concept of red shift and how it is used as a piece of evidence for evolution and to form hypotheses.

If the big bang were true, then X, Y, and Z predictions will be true. It can clearly be falsified if the predictions it makes are shown to be false over and over. Currently, we haven't that situation at hand. Take time to look at the source I gave you. Tomorrow, I will post some things from it and explain as best I can, but it's getting late. Peruse beforehnd to familarize yourself with it if you want. It goes into tremendous detail.

Feslin

Perphaps, and indeed, the Big Bang in itself does not disprove theism.

Thus, I see no reason to outlaw it in public schools.

However, while it's scientifically the 'best shot' it really isn't all that sound.

If you have someone on ignore because you don't like their opinions, do us all a favor and just leave, moron.

Technocrat

1. I don't see why someone would think it disproves theism anyway. Even if it's not true, it doesn't mean theism is true, though, as well.

2. I don't see how you can say it's not sound, when you have little knowledge and training in the field. What leads you to this conclusion? How well-studied are you in cosmology? What degree of expertise do you have to claim all the vast scientific support is misleading?

I cannot agree with you here. It's far from unsound. I don't see how you can support theism, though. God is relatively unparsimonious as an explaination. I simply shave him away with the Occam's Razor.

Feslin

It's not sound because it doesn't explain the existance of matter, nor the existance of energy, nor the existance of existance.

And about God, it is scientifically possible for God to exist. An 11th dimensional being for whom time and inifinity have no meaning...

If you have someone on ignore because you don't like their opinions, do us all a favor and just leave, moron.

Technocrat

You haven't researched it enough; I can tell. It does, in fact, deal with matter and energy, as well as existence.


Sure, it's scientifically possible for a God to exist. Not all types of Gods, though. Some are logically self-contradicting, like the God of the Bible. The Universe is all there is. It encompasses everything. God is part of the universe, therefore he couldn't create it. There isn't anything "outside" the universe.

The notion that God could be sitting outside space and time is rather absurd, since if he were, he couldn't do anything. If he's outside of time, outside of logical constraints, his existence is meaningless to discuss.

Freedom for All

Oh, I don't know. Maybe somone will say..."Gee, General Relativity says the universe cannot be static, so does Newton's Law of Gravity, is there any observational evidence to support this?" And lo and behold, Edwin Hubble found just that.

Later on, George Gamow figures out that is the universe is expanding, then at some time in the past is had to be contained in a smaller vloume. And if one travelled far enough in the past, the Universe would resemble an extremely hot, ionized gas. What sort of observational evidence would support this? Well, using basic physics, Gamow figured out that if the universe was a black body, it's radiative peak would fade in time from the gamma range down to the microwave range. He figured that the universe's temperature would be about 10 deg K by now.

Wow, some experimenters found a cosmic background radiation that was eventually determined to be 2.73 deg K.

Why is the universe so homogenous, yet just imperfectly enough to have matter clumping into galaxies? There's some ideas, and recent measurements of the cosmic background radiation have shown that it was indeed possible for quantum fluctuations at the smallest units of length to introduce the in-homogenieities that shape today's universe.

You question, you think up possibilities, you detemine how those possibilities can be elminated, or supported, and then you see if observed evidence, from either earth-bound labs or any form of telescope looking at the universe can provide evidence to either side of the hypothesis.

That's why cosmology is a science, not a religion.

And I think we should be fair to Sandy and move this discussion to a thread already started on cosmology.

Feslin

Well, it's obvious that it's a different universe where the laws of science and physics are completely different.

You know all about the 10 (although I prefer to call it 11) dimensions right?

Our universe started as dimensionally zero (although I call it one).

Some would also theorize that God IS the universe.

I mean c'mon, space does some wierd things...

If you have someone on ignore because you don't like their opinions, do us all a favor and just leave, moron.