30 January, 2009

The Big Dud - Refuted

I came across this piece of creationist dribble which brings into question the person's knowledge of the scientific methods and principles used today. Now, I normally skip over this ignorant crap, but I am feeling inspired right now. For reasons involving my banishment from Deviantart and the fact that creationists likes to censor any and all dissent, I am playing it safe and writing this here out of the reach of creationist charlatans who are so fond of abusing power.

So let's start with the opening paragraph.

"What if I told you that everyone alive today, everything in the world, and even the universe as we know it, is the result of a giant explosion in space millions(or billions) of years ago? If you said "that sounds a lot like the Big Bang theory"-you would be correct. This is the stuff that fairy tales are made of;but sadly this tall tale is presented as unquestionable concrete fact. Many many people actually believe that they are only here because at some point in time..an unknown amount of material decided to explode."

Oh dear, not a very good start here. See, the most common misconception about the Big Bang theory is that it was an explosion. It was not an explosion, since there were no constraints of the fabric of space and time in which anything could have exploded. Rather, the Big Bang (A term coined by a Steady-State Universe advocate.) was most likely a rapid expansion of the space and time fabric from a singularity, and all the matter in the universe expanded with it, like the dots on an inflating balloon.

Another set of misconceptions presented here are that theories are presented as concrete fact and that theories are stuff made out fairy tales. This stems from the gross ignorance of what the term "theory" really means in a scientific context. Theories are a model of explanations, backed by reproducable, empirical and falsifiable evidence, that explain a natural phenomena. Although theories are not 100% accurate, (Gravity wasn't properly understood until Einstein came along, but even before then, Newton's theories were accepted. It is very likely that more data could reveal more about gravity in the future that supercedes, in terms of detail and accuracy, Einstein's theory of gravity.) they are the most powerful form of proof in science. In this case, the Big Bang theory is more than the stuff of fairytales ; It does not explain the origin of the universe. What it does is that it describes and explain what was most likely to have happened in the instant since the event itself. (T = 1 planck second and onwards.) It is backed by mountains of evidence, like the cosmic background radiation, the Hubble-type expansions seen in the redshifts of distant objects, or the prediction of homogeny and isotropy, which are made from the theory, being confirmed by stringent tests.

To dismiss such a theory without any significant or valid basis is inexcuseably ignorant.

"And then we have the ones who attempt to add God to the equation. They say the all-mighty Creator of the universe used the Big Bang to sort of get things started-and then naturally evolution took over from there. Right? Uh, no. If God did use a giant explosion to kick start His creation...then why doesn't the Bible just say so? The account of creation is written very straight forward in a step-by-step process. God speaks/something happens. It's impossible to mistake a single day in the Bible for millions of years, unless you intentionally want it to be so."

Unfortunately for you, mixing religious beliefs into scientific theory is breaking the fundamental philosophy of science ; That science cannot and will not make any comment on the supernatural. It also should be mentioned that the universe is extremely hostile to life as we know it. If we were to combine the weight of every living being on this planet, it would just barely be a tiny fraction of the Earth's entire mass, divide that fraction further by a thousand and you get the fraction of mass in our solar system that is living. If we drop a naked man onto any randomly picked place on earth, 90% of the time, he will be dead within minutes due to extreme temperatures, drowning, predation et cetera.

If you really want to argue, as fact, for the literal interpretation of the bible's creation story. You will have to find evidence that the world as we know it, is no more than 4400 years old, as well as find valid refutation for the mountains of evidence that currently show that our planet and the universe is 4.6 and 13.73 ± 0.12 billion years old respectively. Otherwise, your story of creation can be dismissed as fantasy without needing any evidence.

"Both the Big Bang and evolution(as in molecules-to-man) cannot actually be repeated, tested, or observed in action."

You really should acquaint yourself with the observed instances of speciation before you make a bold and ignorant claim like that. Evolution has been observed many times with fruit flies, and even initiated by us humans via farming and domestication. It is well documented, tested, observed and reproduced.

If you are actually talking about the origin of life, you should read up on abiogenesis before you go on. Abiogenesis is a chemical phenomena, not a biological one, and it explains how life might have arisen from non-living organic molecules.

"The Bible says the world was originally created perfect and that violence, disease, and bloodshed came later after the fall of man. The Big Bang puts death, disease, and bloodshed, untold eons before humans ever appeared on this planet."

I have trouble trying to appraise the point you are trying to make with this one. Where exactly are you going with this?

"But both the Big Bang and evolution are fully supported by a lot of Christians.

The fact is, the Big Bang takes away God's power by severely reducing His involvement in creation to nothing more then flipping a switch. Afterwards time and chance take over from there."

That is because science and religion are not mutually exclusive ideas, you can be a christian and a scientist as long as you don't try to mix the two. Again, science says nothing about the existence or nature of a supernatural being such as a god.

"Assuming that God actually did use the Big Bang to create the universe and all life, then instead of And God said... and it was there fully formed and working-we now have to wait around for millions of years while everything somehow "evolves" into being."

No, "we" don't. We are all already here.

"Which brings up the obvious questions like:"

Ahh, the petitio principii fallacy. It is a fallacy because it assumes a set of arguments based on a premise, but I will answer them.

"
:bulletblue:What happened before the Big Bang?"

Nobody knows for sure, however the current leading theory that might give insight into the origins of our universe is M-Theory.

":bulletblue:Where did all that "stuff" which exploded come from anyway?"

The origin of matter is a very hot topic amongst particle physics, mostly because the Higgs Mechanism, which explains why some particles have mass is currently missing the Higgs Boson ; It simply hasn't been discovered yet. That is why the Large Hadron Collider has been built in the first place. If you are talking about how matter formed, matter is formed when the universe cooled down enough so that the energy in our universe could condense into matter. (This takes place after the rapid inflation that occured at T = 10e−37 seconds.) To further back and discover the origin of energy, nobody knows.

":bulletblue:How exactly did this "stuff" floating around in space find other "stuff" that would work in just the right way?"

It's called the fundamental forces. The strong and gravitational forces work together through stellar nucleosynthesis to produce the heavier elements, the stars & planets, while the weak and electromagnetic forces help to create & mutate the elements, molecules and compounds we see today via radioactivity and chemical reactions.

":bulletblue:When does something blowing up create order and intelligence?"

This is a strawman fallacy at its finest as well as a gross oversimplification. Nobody is saying that blowing things up creates order and intelligence. There are thousands of natural procceses that are in place that have progressively worked towards bringing the universe to this point of self-aware order and complexity. You cannot afford to just ignore the intermediary proccesses. That's just sickeningly ignorant and intellectually dishonest.

":bulletblue:If God is all-powerful, then why does He require billions of years of random chance and accidents to create life?"

Those are your own words, nobody else's. Nobody but you are asserting this claim.

"Sorry, but the idea that we're all here as the result of a few trillion accidents all working together perfectly the first time is so ridiculous, that I don't even need a Bible to know it could never happen."

This is an appeal to ridicule fallacy, and the following video explains why this kind of argument is stupid and fallacious.



In conclusion, I would like to say that you are a sickeningly ignorant and intellectually dishonest imbécile who would much rather use your questions to further your questionable agenda to misinform the masses just so they could turn to the same doctrine you follow. You make no efforts to do your own research and answer your questions, even if it may seem to contradict what you were brought up to believe in and you would much rather wallow in your own ignorance. You are the lowest of the low, the weakest link, and your argument is eviscerated. Have a good day.

2 comments:

  1. Kudos, although we both know he would never read through this and reply for fear of his fragile beliefs collapsing.

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  2. Good gods, the last two posts were a fantastic read. I seriously think I've arrived here about a year too late. Blast it all, the TARDIS needs to be recalibrated. Anyways, I realise this is possibly awkward coming from a strange person on the internet, but nonetheless, I was never good with people and I prefer to be straightforward. Will you be my friend? :D

    ReplyDelete