Quote from Newton

[Dax]

Hello Dax,

How do you know that the Big Bang actually occurred?

It's background noise can still be picked up in the micro wave range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Dax

[Theophilus]

It's background noise can still be picked up in the micro wave range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

We can measure some noise from space, sure. We can observe a lot of things in the present. A variety of theories about the past could be concocted to fit the data that we observe in the present. How we interpret the data to fit these theories involves a lot of assumption and imagination about the past. Nobody we know was a witness to this alleged Big Bang. It has been imagined and theorized by men. It has to be accepted by faith since nobody can prove it beyond any doubt. Unlike gravity which you can test by walking off the edge of a cliff.

[Cyberdeth]

According to theory in the early parts of the millennium and before, the moon was made of cheese and it had breathable atmosphere. That is until we actually went to the moon and saw that it wasn't made of cheese, and had no breathable atmosphere. What I'm saying is, that most of todays theories are just that, theories. The difference is that science is trying hard to prove those theories correct. In theory we could use worm holes to travel 100's of thousands of light years in a blink of an eye, but we haven't tested the theory yet. Until we do, it would still be a theory. So in your interpretation, I could also say that according to your theory, God created everything. Which is possible, because it's a theory, however, do you have any proof ? And no, just because the bible said so, does not prove it.

[Omzig]

We can measure some noise from space, sure. We can observe a lot of things in the present. A variety of theories about the past could be concocted to fit the data that we observe in the present. How we interpret the data to fit these theories involves a lot of assumption and imagination about the past. Nobody we know was a witness to this alleged Big Bang. It has been imagined and theorized by men. It has to be accepted by faith since nobody can prove it beyond any doubt. Unlike gravity which you can test by walking off the edge of a cliff.

Assumption and imagination about the past? Theorized by men? Accepted by faith? That would be religion.

In science, on the other hand, we do indeed measure and observe - that's the one huge difference.

We can derive the exact time and source location of the Big Bang by looking at the Doppler effect (redshift) of the light from distant galaxies, as first pointed out by Edwin Hubble. It's an exact measurement that gives us a pretty low margin of error. There is other observational evidence as well.

Ironically, what we cannot yet properly explain is gravity. Yeah, we know that we can measure the force of gravity by a simple formula (first formulated by Newton) based on mass and distance. But only now we might be able to catch the particle which may be responsible for giving mass - the predicted but unproven Higgs boson.

Edited August 17, 2009 by Omzig

[Theophilus]

We can travel to the moon in the present and test if it is made of cheese or not. However, we cannot travel back in time and observe this alleged 'Big Bang'. Because it is a theory about the unrepeatable past, it has to be accepted by faith. Just, as you correctly point out, that, by faith, I believe that God created everything as the Bible states. Both are faith positions and thus this discussion is in its proper forum under 'Spiritual Life'.

[Theophilus]

We can derive the exact time and source location of the Big Bang by looking at the Doppler effect (redshift) of the light from distant galaxies, as first pointed out by Edwin Hubble. It's an exact measurement that gives us a pretty low margin of error. There is other observational evidence as well.

Halton Arp would disagree with you about the cause of this 'red shift':

http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm

[Gizmo]

Halton Arp would disagree with you about the cause of this 'red shift':

http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm

Nice try - except, if I recall my Std 8 schooling correctly, weren't these theries of his from the '60's subsequently disproved by the newer stronger telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope (leaving him in a rather embarrasing sitation of looking like a fool?)

[Theophilus]

Nice try - except, if I recall my Std 8 schooling correctly, weren't these theries of his from the '60's subsequently disproved by the newer stronger telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope (leaving him in a rather embarrasing sitation of looking like a fool?)

Nope. Look at the bottom of that page. The latest evidence supports him.

[Cyberdeth]

+1 for science again: Comet Contains One of Life’s Precursors

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/08/glycinecomet/

[Omzig]

Halton Arp would disagree with you about the cause of this 'red shift':

http://www.electric-cosmos.org/arp.htm

Unfortunately, the rest of the scientific community disagrees with Halton Arp, who postulated his theories in the 60's before the Hubble age...

Also, as you have stated in a previous post, this is the spiritual sub-forum. Why not keep it this way? Beliefs are incompatible with the scientific method. So whenever you try to drag science into justifying belief, you will be doing it by using some type of a logical fallacy (e.g. parading falsehoods as truths, red herrings, argumentum ad antiquitatem, ad ignoratiam, ad hominem, etc..). I'm sorry to be blunt about this, but I'm finding it difficult to find the right euphemisms to convey this concept with sufficient clarity.

[Michele R]

This is such an interesting thread!

They are really making amazing scientific discoveries with every passing day.

I read somewhere that micro-organisms that were on meteors which landed on earth could have greatly influenced the types of species that developed.

I also read that we might not know what contains 'alien' dna or not, as we have no idea what it would be. We don't know if living species from other planets even have dna, so we won't know what to look for in our own dna or plants and animals. I just thought that was quite interesting.

[Toitjie]

This is such an interesting thread!

They are really making amazing scientific discoveries with every passing day.

I read somewhere that micro-organisms that were on meteors which landed on earth could have greatly influenced the types of species that developed.

I also read that we might not know what contains 'alien' dna or not, as we have no idea what it would be. We don't know if living species from other planets even have dna, so we won't know what to look for in our own dna or plants and animals. I just thought that was quite interesting.

Hi M

It is, isnt it? Absolutely mindblowing how all these things fit into one another. I read that article that CD posted about amino-acids from outer space. that is probably where we originate from, because the burning question always was - If we all have that one common ancecsor, a living organism, where did THAT come from?

So, we are all aliens.... he he...please dont start throwing stones at me..

[Patty]

A quote from James Conant, scientist and former Harvard president, in "Science and Common Sense":

"The sciences dealing with the past stand before the bar of common sense on a different footing. Therefore, a grotesque account of a period some thousands of years ago is taken seriously though it be built by piling special assumptions on special assumptions, ad hoc hypothesis on ad hoc hypothesis, and tearing apart the fabric of science whenever it appears convenient. The result is a fantasia which is neither history nor science."

[Michele R]

So, we are all aliens.... he he...please dont start throwing stones at me..

I would never dream of throwing stones...I quite like the idea of being an alien...and hubby says it confirms his suspicions about me!

I think as technology develops more and we get better equipment that can do more accurate readings we're going to discover some very interesting things. I get all excited about it when I think about it. Read that the Large Hadron Collider will be starting up again in October, lets hope it works this time, would love to see what they discover.

[Theophilus]

Finding amino acids in space means nothing. You could have a whole ocean full of amino acids and that won't help because you need DNA in the first place to code the amino acids in a meaningful sequence to make useful proteins. Finding amino acids in space is akin to finding rocks on the moon. You would need an intelligent being to build something useful (like a city) out of the rocks. Rocks don't just assemble themselves into cities. Likewise amino acids don't spontaneously assemble themselves into useful proteins.

Have a look at the animated workings of protein synthesis in this video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5585125669588896670

[Cyberdeth]

Aaaaannnnddd my rebuttal : http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/...cSynthesis.html

an excerpt :

Creating Life?

When I headed off to college (in 1949), I wrote an essay speculating on the possibility that some day we would be able to create a living organism from nonliving ingredients. By the time I finished my formal studies in biology — having learned of the incredible complexity of even the simplest organism — I concluded that such a feat could never be accomplished.

Now I'm not so sure.

Several recent advances suggest that we may be getting close to creating life. (But note that these examples represent laboratory manipulations that do not necessarily reflect what may have happened when life first appeared.)

Examples:

The ability to created membrane-enclosed vesicles that can take in small molecules and assemble them into polymers which remain within the "cell" (as described above).

The ability to assemble functional ribosomes — the structures that convert the information encoded in the genome into the proteins that run life — from their components.

Assembling and Swapping Genomes.

In 2008, scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) reported (in Science 29 February 2008) that they had succeeded in synthesizing a complete bacterial chromosome — containing 582,970 base pairs — starting from single deoxynucleotides. The entire sequence of the genome of Mycoplasma genitalium was already known [Link]. Using this information, they synthesized some 10,000 short oligonucleotides (each about 50 bp long) representing the entire genitalium genome and then — step by step — assembled these into longer and longer fragments until finally they had made the entire circular DNA molecule that is the genome.

Could this be placed in the cytoplasm of a living cell and run it?

The same team showed in the previous year (see Science 3 August 2007) that they could insert an entire chromosome from one species of mycoplasma into the cytoplasm of a related species and, in due course, the recipient lost its own chromosome (perhaps destroyed by restriction enzymes encoded by the donor chromosome) and began expressing the phenotype of the donor. In short, they had changed one species into another. But the donor chromosome was made by the donor bacterium, not synthesized in the laboratory. However, there should be no serious obstacle to achieving the same genome transplantation with a chemically-synthesized chromosome and we may hear about this soon.

So stay tuned!

[Omzig]

And today's logical fallacies are:

Finding amino acids in space is akin to finding rocks on the moon. You would need an intelligent being to build something useful (like a city) out of the rocks.

Excluded Middle (i.e. presenting the beginning and end result and forgetting all the intermediate steps) fallacy:

There are MANY intermediate steps in building a city out of rocks. It takes MANY generations and lots of knowledge (time). Most importantly it takes lots of trial and error (evolution). The successful building blocks are remembered and built upon (selection). What we see at the end is a city, NOT the billions of failed combinations.

Rocks don't just assemble themselves into cities. Likewise amino acids don't spontaneously assemble themselves into useful proteins.

Classic correlative total failure of logic (well known from Lewis Carroll children books): There is no correlation between rocks and aminoacids.

Aminoacids don't "spontaneously" assemble. ("Spontaneously" is an example of an insertion of a "poisoning" statement which distorts the opponent's argument) It's a long process full of billions errors taking billions of years. Only the successes remain, but that's what we see.

[ZiGerman]

My question is why is Darwin's theory on evolution taught as fact to our children in schools everywhere when clearly there are so many contradicting thoughts on this?

[Toitjie]

My question is why is Darwin's theory on evolution taught as fact to our children in schools everywhere when clearly there are so many contradicting thoughts on this?

There remains unanswered questions in both science and faith, which are both taugth to our children (seperately). My idea regarding this is that when my children are older, I will explain as best I can all I know about evolution, Christianity, Buddhism etc - the general idea that there is more than one opinion out there, each with its own set of beliefs, value systems, "proof" and so on.

I want to give them the opportunity to understand that not everyone in this world thinks alike, and that there are MANY different belief systems. Ultimately, I want them to know about everything, and make up their own minds. I am not going to force them into anything or to believe anything just because I was brought up like that.

I think the biggest positive about thinking like this is that my children will learn to tolerate other people's belief systems. They will learn to make friends with atheists and christians alike, without judging them. I have seen so many good friendships bite the dust because one could not accept the other's differences of opinion, and not necesseraliy religion. Friendships fail even on things like politics, you moved to a suburb I dont like, one of them became a vegetarian or even emmigration.

So whatever schools teaches them, I will add these and let them decide.

Edited August 24, 2009 by Toitjie

[Cyberdeth]

Oh and who said we can't see molecules ? http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3...of-atomic-bonds One more giant leap for science.