Pressie writes:
Please note that from your quote he said :I would like to reject it .. What did he say afterwards in that same sentence?
It's fairly hard to find a complete quote with a general search because of the pervasive number of creationist sites that want to make much out of little. Is it really all that important what scientists said about some theory 70 years ago? Do we take Louis Pasteur's detractors all that seriously now?
But perhaps creationists are not completely to blame for the Morrison quote. The half quote apparently appears in this form in Robert Jastrow's book God and the Astronomers, which book actually describes cosmologists coming to accept the big bang theory
despite their initial reluctance.
Apparently, some creationists consider BBT to be bad news for atheists because it suggest that the universe has a beginning. As a result, there is endless discussion of Jastrow's book on creationist web pages.
What is the most likely way a sentence, "I would like to reject it..." might end. You can almost hear the "but" without even seeing the complete quote. Well most of us would anticipate such.
No, I'm not going to do Portillo's homework or steal Pressie's thunder.
Even more amusing is the Eddington quote.
Eddington as quoted in From Philosophy and the Physicists: By L. Susan Stebbing.
quote:
Philosophically the notion of an abrupt beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me, as I think it must be to most; and even those who would welcome a proof of the intervention of a Creator would probably consider that a single winding-up at some remote epoch is not really the kind of relation between God and his world that brings satisfaction to the mind. But I can see no escape from our dilemma.
Yeah, there is that "but" that completely changes the sense of the quote.
Pressie writes:
Portillo writes:
Robert Jastrow said "it was distasteful to the scientific mind."
Oh, did he? Any reference to this? Can’t find it anywhere except in creationist web pages who all refer to each other.
Actually, I can believe that Jastrow did say that. It would be perfectly in keeping with the theme of his book, which was that physicists had an initial emotion based dislike for the idea of a universe with an ultimate beginning. But that initial reaction just isn't the big deal Portillio makes of it. We can find physicists saying similar things about quantum mechanics, and even worse things about special and general relativity back in the early part of twentieth century. So what?