Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Big Bang and the Bible
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Old 09-22-2014, 07:07 AM
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blueash blueash is offline
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Is a red flower prettier than a yellow one? Does your spouse love you? Answers to this sort of question would begin with I Believe that... They are questions of feelings or beliefs. They are not science questions and while a scientist might examine your neurochemical response to a photograph of your spouse that would only explain that you respond to your own belief. And we all know that the answer to "does your spouse love you" can be very different next week or next year" Faith or belief is not science. Why do people conflate them? 2 + 2 is 4 You don't ask if I believe it. The sun appears to rise in the east because the globe rotates from west to east. You don't ask if I believe that. Science is based on a foundation entirely different from religion. Science is testable and mutable. Religion is untestable and immutable. The great strength of the scientific method is its opportunity for evidence to completely reconstruct knowledge. Religion offers no mechanism for change other than reinterpretation, or "we didn't really mean that" Is the earth flat, Is the earth the center of the universe and the sun goes around it? Is slavery sanctioned by your god? Is a woman here to be dominated by her husband? Will eating a lobster send me to hell? Does the FSM touch me with his noodly appendages? When will the world end?

For those of faith, whatever their faith you believe you have answers to these things and point to one book for your evidence. Is your book a Bible, a Koran, a loose cannon, a tipitaka? You can argue all you like that your book or your religion is the right one but your certainty is not science it is faith. And faith is a wonderful thing. It gives solace and creates a community for support. And faith is a terrible thing. It creates fanatics who are more than happy to die for their god, and citizens who are certain that their faith's rules should govern everyone.

So no scientific theory needs to concern itself with whether or not it is congruent with a holy book. And please don't get all confused on the use of the word theory. Theory does not mean a stab in the dark with no evidence. Do you understand the theory of gravity? Do you understand the germ theory of disease? A scientific theory establishes a structure for understanding observable natural phenomena. A good theory not only explains what we observe but makes predictions which can be tested which would disprove its accuracy and subject it to modification. Newton's theories were terrific but on the edges, wrong and have been replaced with Einstein's relativity theories. And these are subject to testing and certainly in the future will be shown to be wrong as well. The fact that science asks to be proven wrong and thus improved is its greatest strength. So the question is the Big Bang consistent with the Bible is meaningless to a scientist and only of importance to a person who feels the need to make their religion be not wrong if one accepts the science. It becomes either find support for the Big Bang in the limited words of your holy book, or attack the science because it does not explain everything (which is of course the whole point of science in that there are always unanswered questions)