Big Bang...How Did it Happen?

Did the ancients
make predictions based on their creation event and then have those predictions confirmed by observation (ripples in the microwave background radiation)? Did they refine, alter and verify their ideas with respect to observation? Hell, did they base anything at all about their ideas on observation?Myths, just like the biblical one, are just that - myths. The big bang theory is not a myth, it is an empirically derived theory - derived from observation of the universe.Incidently, I've not looked that website you posted but if you quoted it correctly then they are equivocating different ideas. We know there was a big bang because of the evidence that supports it, that's why it's a theory and not a hypothesis. The idea that the Big Bang emerged from vacuum fluctuations on the other hand is just a hypothesis - there is not (yet?) any evidence for it. There are many more hypothesises out there.And this, in and of itself, is another reason why the Big Bang is not a myth, but science. It doesn't have all the answers - there are great many questions left needing answers.Oh, and a comment on something you said earlier: there are most definetly causeless events - Quantum Mechanics makes this very clear and vacuum fluctuations prove it beyond reasonable doubt.

If you actually care to inform yourself I suggest you pick up a copy of the February 2004 issue of Scientific American from your newsagent and have a read. Much of what I'm talking about is discussed there. I've already told you: ripples in the microwave background radiation."In 1968, Joseph Silk predicted that the small-scale acoustic peaks in the CMB should be damped in a specific, calculable way. As a result, the corresponding radiation would gain a small but precisely known polarization... This acousric polarization was measured by the Degree Angular Scale Inferometer and later by WMAP; the value was in beautiful agreement with predictions."- Scientific American, Feb 2004, p.38-39, emphasis mine, some explanatory text omitted. The page you refer to is a 'primer' designed for people like yourself who are scientifically ignorant. As is usual practice in such situations they have omitted most details and much complications from their descriptions. The term echo is used analogously. It is not an accurate description. See the Scientific American mentioned above for an brief explanation.It proves the big bang because its properties match with those predicted by the big bang model.

Assumption. Assumption.

Actually I'll expand on that.Whatever 'happened' at the 'start' of the universe (if there is such a thing) it must have been different from what is happening now, thus we have no reason to assume that what we experience in everyday life (which incidently is a poor basis for any kind of science) applies then.

We know time and space are inextricably linked (Einstein) and there are experiments that demonstrate this - thus scientists talk about 'space-time'. Since the big bang is believed to be the origin of space, it should also be the origin of space-time.The theory behind this idea is pretty solid - however, it is not necessarily true that it happened this way. Quantum Loop Gravity theory (for example) implies that the universe has always been and merely loops between 'crunches' and 'bangs'. In an infinite cycle. The big bang is not so much an event as a process. We know it happened 'cos we can observe the results of it - but we don't (yet?) know how it started.

Calculus is valid and important mathematics. The 2+2=5 stuff is humour - maths is well capable of proving that 2+2=4 (under the usual meanings of 2, 4, + and =).I don't understand we've told you a whole bunch of experiments that prove that Einstein is correct. I can tell you another - radioactive particles accelerated around a ring show a longer half-life than stationary ones. It won't convince you because you've apparently deciced that no experiment is good enough to convince you of something you don't already believe in. I cannot imagine a better shield of invicible ignorance. This is false - Science has never believed the earth was the center of everything. Science didn't exist until long after we'd progressed to heliocentrism. It isn't Science until your basing it on experiment and observation and requiring that your models match it.

Way to misunderstand, Navy.The point is that you, by your own admission, are both ignorant about most of science and don't understand the science you know about. Given that you don't know about it and don't understand it - how can you possibly judge it? Science is hard. Understanding science is hard. It takes years of dedicated study and effort, and yet you think you are equally placed to judge at nineteen with very little knowledge or education?How can you be using your brain to understand, while you're so profoundly ignorant of the facts? How can you use your brain while you refuse to accept anything that contradicts what you already think? What makes you think your going to get closer to the truth by ignoring the hard work, diligance and intelligence of others, working using the world's single, most successful means of acquiring working, useful and reliable knowledge?

That's not an accurate analogy. It's like the weather man predicting it will be 700 degrees last sunday on the tuesday, it actually being 700 degrees last sunday and you still not believing him. No, it doesn't - the two are seperate things with seperate evidence. And, incidently, Einstein's theories are believed to be a tiny bit out anyway (in particular there is a problem reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics).

About Einstein? See posts #78, #79, #80 and #80 as well as my post #92. Clear experimental evidence that Einstein is right.

Well, yes, if you ignore all the posts in which people have told you the evidence. I notice you've not once replied to them.

Really? I had no idea ripples in the microwave background radiation were correctly predicted by the bible in a way that matches observation.Like most Creationists you cling to a tiny, tiny part of the evidence which might with a little twisting be post hoc matched with an obscure Biblical verse while ignoring all the stuff already mentioned that has no match in your book of myths.I also don't think you have any idea what evidence is, or how it works in real science. Post hoc matching is poor evidence for anything, where is the predictive evidence from Creationism?

Navy,If you follow the conversation we've had, you'll see that I've repeatedly pointed out that evidence has been offered to you and you've repeatedly claimed it hasn't, before finally answering one small (and rather weak) part of the evidence for the big bang. No you didn't. You made a claim that an expanding universe was evidence for biblical creation. The problems for you are that the evidence for an expanding universe only works if the universe is, in fact, billions of years old; and that no-one made a prediction from the biblical text that the universe would be found to be expanding.You are incidently continuing to show that you don't understand what evidence is, or how it works.Although, you are actually right if for the wrong reasons. The expanding universe is actually very poor evidence for the big bang, this is because it is the evidence from which the theory was originally extrapolated. That is a fair point. I apologise for my earlier harshness.

Hi Joe,It would be easier to read your posts if you used the quote tags rather than simply enclosing the quote in " marks, as I imagine you will concede: vs."My do you have a gift for understatment. Of course not. That might explain why I've been arguing against the Big Bang over the life of this thread."You can do this by beginning the quote with [ qs ] and ending with [ /qs ] without the spaces after [ and before ].Cheers,Jack.

Actually, Crash, I think you are wrong about this one. While in traditional usage the 'literal' and 'inspired' camps are different -there is no contradiction if you simply take the base meaning of the words.Inspired here simply means that the bible was scribed by humans from god's direction rather than penned by his own fair hand.

No, I said the microwave background radiation is strong evidence for the Big Bang - on its own it does not prove it. I should really have refered to it as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) - the CMB and common or garden background radiation are very different things.The CMB is strong evidence the Big Bang because its existence and structure were predicted from Models of the Big Bang and then confirmed by later observation. It is highly unlikely that a significantly wrong idea could make predictions unrelated to the observations from which that idea was hypothesised and have those predictions be accurate.I really do feel like I'm repeating myself here.