Universe Race

Imagine a race. The track is huge, hundreds of thousands of lanes wide. There are only four rules:

You must start on the starting line (which is the same for everybody)

You must start when the gun sounds

You must stay within your lane (or run in a strait line, for the course is strait)

You must run at the exact same speed throught the race, which is determined for you

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So, the gun sounds. The moment after that, everybody seems to be in one 'group'. Ten seconds later, you notice that a few people are pulling ahead while others are at the back. A minute later, there would be, say, three distict groups, the 'fast' the 'moderate' and the 'slow' people. There may not be any major distinguishing feature between the two. Ten minutes later (it's a long race; we assume that the racers won't get tired, hungry, or need to use the bathroom... for the sake of the illustration), there'll be a wide differance. You'd instantly be able to tell who'd get first (remember they have to run at a constant speed), second, hundredth, thousands, etc. simply because they can't speed up or slow down to change their place.

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Three billion years later (the racers don't die, either), you'd have a really wide range of people, spread out over hundreds of billions of miles on the track. However, the predictions made on who's first and who'd third are still the same now, only now there's more distance between the racers to show their places.

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You'd not expect the racers to switch places, no matter how many billions of years you give it, right. No racer would pass another racer.

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Now, let's switch it up a bit. Now, instead of a starting line, there's a starting point. All of the track eminate from this point. The gun sounds. Still, after millions of years, no racer will pass another in their distance from the starting point.

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And yet, when we look up at the stars, we see clusters of stars that are moving at vastly differant speeds, but together. Sure, you could argue, the fast stars would catch up with the slow ones and make a cluster-like appearance.

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But all of the stars started at the same point, right? If not, the Big Bang theory is wrong. So, if they started at the same point, the fast stars would quickly get ahead of the slow ones and never have to 'catch up' with anything.

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So, because we can see these clusters, the stars must have been created moving and distanced. Then, and only then, could fast stars catch up with slow ones. However, that proves God exists.

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What do you have to say to this, all of you evolutionists out there?

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Iesous
Christos
H
Theos
H
Uios
Soter

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Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

Your analogy of the Big Bang to a race with constant speed runners fails to include something analogous to the effects of gravity, which is a fairly fatal flaw. Would you like to modify your OP, or would you like this promoted as is?

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

I see your point. But I can't think of a way to include gravity into this analogy. If you could suggest a way, I'd be happy to do so.

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Iesous
Christos
H
Theos
H
Uios
SoterJesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

I couldn't suggest any improvements to your analogy that would allow it to retain the quality of being an argument against the Big Bang. If I promoted it there might be discussions about how gravity might be incorporated into the analogy, but people might also focus on other flaws that I didn't mention, such as that your analogy assumes that such things as a center of the universe and absolute motion exist.I'll just go ahead and promote this, it should provoke some interesting discussion and bring to light some subtle but key concepts related to the Big Bang.

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--	Percy
	EvC Forum Director

Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

The big problem is that stars did NOT begin at the same point.According to actual cosmology the first stars did not form until some time after the Big Bang - and stars have gone on forming to the present day. So the analogy fails badly even there.(Added This article reports an estimate that the first stars formed 100 million years after the Big Bang)Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Hi Ichthus,Just to compond on what has already been said, your analogy is further flawed because the expansion of the Universe is not due to objects simply moving apart - space itself is expanding. The dimensions length, width, and height are actually expanding, taking the matter that exists in space along with them.We know the Universe was smaller as time approaches 0 (we reach a mathematical singularity at 0, so we can't say a whole lot about the state of the Universe for a very tiny fraction of a second after T=0, but after that point we have a pretty accurate model), and that it is currently expanding. We know that the Universe is expanding (and not that the objects are simply moving apart) becasue of the redshift of galaxies and stars. You know that effect you hear when a racecar drives by, and the pitch of the engine changes? That's called the doppler effect, and it's the result of the speed of the car relative to you affecting the frequency of the sound waves. The same thing happens to light - the faster (relative to you) an object is moving away, the more the frequency of light it generates is "stretched out," shifting it farther into the red end of the spectrum.The oddest thing is, the farther away we see an object, the more redshifted it is. In other words, the farther away an object is, the faster it's moving away.The best analogy (but not a perfect one, of course) is to imagine space itself to be a balloon, and all of the matter in the Universe is a bunch of dots painted onto it (it's an old analogy, but that's because it works). As the baloon expands, the dots move apart - and since the "space" is expanding uniformly, and there is more "space" to expand between distant object as opposed to objects closer together, more distant objects will actually appear to be moving away from each other faster than closer objects.Exactly as we see with the redshift of distant stars.Now, gravity and other forces keep galaxies, globular clusters, and other such congregations of matter stuck together, so the expansion of space doesn't affect them (otherwise galaxies would be ripped apart). Perhaps we can imagine that, instead of dots on the balloon, stars are like tiny balls, and ones that are close enough together are tied together on strings. Each cluster or galaxy not bound to another will move apart from the others as space expands, but those not tied by gravity will move apart.So you see, the expansion of the Universe really has nothing to do with objects simply moving apart at any given speed. There isn't really a "center" to the Universe that we've been able to determine, and the evidence doesn't support the model your analogy illustrates.It sounds like you've only heard the "popular science" version of Big Bang cosmology - the version on the science channel and in magazines designed for consumption by the general public, and the tiny bit that is occasionally taught in high school. Unfortunately, these are "dumbed down" versions of the actual model, and they sacrifice accuracy in favor of something more easily understood. It's easy to dismantle the models presented on the Science Channel. It's not so easy to attack the actual model used by scientists - especially if the Science Channel version is all you know.Does my analogy help at all?

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When you know you're going to wake up in three days, dying is not a sacrifice. It's a painful inconvenience.

I got lazy and didn't want to continue repeating 'all of the cosmological gases and matter produced at the Big Bang', and simply summarized it with the word 'stars'.And yes, according to you guys, they all DID originate at the same point.

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Iesous
Christos
H
Theos
H
Uios
SoterJesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

quote:

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I got lazy and didn't want to continue repeating 'all of the cosmological gases and matter produced at the Big Bang', and simply summarized it with the word 'stars'.

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But even that doesn't work because matter itself only appears after the Big Bang. And who says that the thermal energy of the particles of matter (their speed) will take them in the same direction as the general expansion ? I don't see any reason why it would have to.And later stars - practically all the stars we can see (we need very sensitive instruments to see the earliest, "Population III" stars) - incorporate matter thrown out of supernovas. A major part of the velocity of that matter will be due to the supernova (a real explosion), not the Big Bang (not really an explosion).Edited by PaulK, : No reason given.

Ok Ichthus i'll bite...lets say you're right in your analogy, which you fail to include a variety of additional elements but, how then would that 'prove' God exists? Please explain. I'd rather reply to your explanation than to your analogy.

Bill Hicks rules!!!

I'm saying that the stars had to be created moving and far apart.

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Iesous
Christos
H
Theos
H
Uios
SoterJesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.

Isn't it more likely that you are misunderstanding the Big Bang?

IchthusSorry but I fail to see how thats proof for God...if anything, and again I don't agree with your analogy, you are making a case against our equipment for detecting stars and the physics behind it. If thats your case then im sure many on this site would be all ears if you have any mathematical additions to Einstiens field equations and/or Friedmanns(FLRW)equations. If you're going to make the analogy you did then you have to show your work using all the factors found in the universe, one major one being GRAVITY.Also can anyone help me, I don't know how to quote someone.And yes Bill Hicks does rule...

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All great truths begin as blasphemies

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Hope this helps.