This is my third response to Don’s initial post on cosmology and, like the second, can be read independently of the other two. This uses rather more technical terms than the others – if anyone doesn’t understand something please let me know.

In his post of 21 May 2005 05:38:32 -0700 Don responded to my request

Maybe Don has some source material where some scientists working in the area have denied the existence of God. If so I would be pleased to be enlightened about the books or articles where I can read these statements for myself.

with the words

Don:

I think I have supplied ample above, from some of the biggest names in cosmology.

K:

No, Don, you haven’t.

I don’t have the time to read through a whole lot of articles on the Answers in Genesis website which claim, according to you, to provide evidence that, to quote my words above, “scientists working in the area have denied the existence of God.”

I am not interested in any deductions *anyone*, including creationists, might make about the absence of any mention of God.

Can you provide me with references to the *original sources* – half a dozen will do – where scientists working in cosmology have actually written that they deny the existence of God?

This is a crucial point.

Repeatedly I have been told that unless I bring God into my scientific work I am denying his existence.

And just as often I have got hold of a piece of paper, written down on it the Navier-Stokes equations of fluid mechanics, showed it to the person and asked “Which part of what I have written denies the existence of God? And just how do you suggest that I should modify these equations to affirm the existence of God?” The only result – apart from further abuse – has been a look of bafflement, presumably because they haven’t the vaguest idea, until I explained it to them, that the equations in front of them were what determined the motion of the atmosphere and next week’s weather. As well as motions in the earth’s outer core, the interior of the Sun and other stars, blood in their veins, and a vast number of other things.

That is the preamble to the rest of this post.

As I read through the post I was struck by the number of times Don wrote about philosophy and linked this to religion. He seems to almost equate philosophical ideas with religious ideas.

I have extracted from Don’s post all the paragraphs, either mine which Don quoted or Don’s responses, in which the words “religion” or “philosophy” or any related words (religious, philosophical, …) occur. These are below, with > > indicating my words and a single > indicating Don’s responses. My comments, and some possible quotations, are on lines which do not start with >

I have also included some (and, in some cases, a lot) of the preceding paragraphs to provide the context. This will make this post very long (nearly as long as Don’s post, in fact), but in the context of this discussion context is important.

Incidentally, some mail/newsgroup software inserts a gratuitous > at the beginning of any line where the first five characters are “From “, under the mistaken impression that these characters indicate a mailing address. I think I have managed to avoid lines like this.

The post started

Ken Smith wrote: This is the second part of my third major posting in response to Don’s initial post. I may well make further major postings about cosmology, depending on the responses to this one.

D:

I only mentioned cosmology in passing in my post of May 2, but since you have in interest in it and you seem to be keen to avoid engaging the major biblical issues, I can understand why you are keen to get off the Bible and onto cosmology. There are many important biblical issues in my original post that you have not even touched upon.

K:

There have been a number of responses complaining that the discussion had concentrated on religion, and that very little about scientific issues had appeared.

D:

Well, the topic is “How are we meant to understand Genesis?” I am involved with a Christian ministry called Answers in Genesis; not ‘answers in science’. No one should be here under the false pretence that I am here to ‘prove the Bible using science’. I see the Bible as the authority when it comes to history, not science. I explained this in my first post.

K:

Since the BB is, at present, the only cosmological theory (that is, theory about the development of the universe) which has survived the rigorous scrutiny of generations of scientists – might I start with a plug for a conference on cosmology. [snip]

[deletions]

Let me start with a quotation which might seem to give some support for Don’s words. On page 70 of Simon Singh’s recent (2004) book “Big Bang: The Most Important Scientific Discovery of All Time and Why You Need to Know All About it” (Fourth Estate, 2004) one sentence reads: Scientists were particularly proud that they had developed a theory of the universe that no longer relied on invoking God. Now I am well aware that in quoting this I am providing creationists with ammunition, given their propensity for quoting the writings of scientists out of context.

D:

‘Civility’ again, Ken? Once again we have the fallacy of argumentum ad hominem.

K:

Let me immediately try to ensure that this doesn’t happen in this case, by quoting the whole paragraph in which it appears. Singh has been talking about developments, mainly in geology, in the 19th century, and how all the measurements and calculations, including those by Kelvin, who is frequently cited as a “creationist”, had resulted in ages in the millions and hundreds of millions of years.

D:

Kelvin actually argued *against* the hundreds of millions of years. He put an *upper limit* on the age of the earth, based on its supposed cooling from a hot blob (the prevailing idea). Kelvin’s calculations did not contribute to the acceptance of deep time at all; he opposed the billion-year timescale being floated at the time. And Darwin called him an ‘odious spectre’, and Darwin’s ‘bulldog’ Huxley likewise hated Kelvin but could not refute his arguments. But they kept the faith in evolution. Yet evolutionists demand that creationists surrender at the slightest difficulty.

K:

Kelvin didn’t write just one paper on the age of the earth and the sun, he wrote several. He came up, allowing for some uncertainties, with various estimates which ranged from a minimum of 20 million years to a maximum of 100 million years. And all these were well before Becquerel discovered radioactivity, which, as people very soon realised, threw all Kelvin’s calculations into the dustbin of history.

D:

It was not until the discovery of radioactivity that Kelvin’s constraint on the age of the earth was lifted (see Burchfield, J. D. 1975. ‘Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth’, Science History Publications, New York). However, modern measurements and estimates of the heat from radioactive decay do not actually account for Kelvin’s objection. See Lord Kelvin revisited on the young age of the earth (http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v13/i1/kelvin.asp#f1 ). Kelvin believed in an older earth than I would accept based on biblical evidence, but he opposed the long ages wanted by evolutionists. AiG lists Kelvin as a scientist who believed in the Creator, but accurately states his position on the age of the earth, contrary to Ken’s insinuation. See http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/default.asp

K:

I’m not sure just which “insinuation” you are referring to. As I’ve said before, I don’t have time to read things on the Answers in Genesis website. And Don should be aware by now that scientists simply don’t believe *anything* written by creationists, whether it is on science or on religion. If Don wants evidence of some of the extremely peculiar things creationists have written about religion I’ll dig out some of the quotations I collected before I gave up reading creationist material.

And incidentally, Kelvin was a good evolutionist. Has Don read what Kelvin said about the origin of life on Earth and evolution in his Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science? I put this in a file and I’ll be pleased to post it in this thread if anyone wants to read it.

He then writes: The growing uniformitarian movement came to the consensus that the earth is more than a billion years old, and that the universe must therefore be even older, perhaps even infinitely old. An eternal universe seemed to strike a chord with the scientific community, because the theory had a certain elegance, simplicity and completeness. If the universe had existed for eternity, then there was no need to explain how it was created, when it was created, why it was created or Who created it. Scientists were particularly proud that they had developed a theory of the universe that no longer relied on invoking God. This assumption (that the universe was eternal) was so pervasive that Einstein, in his first paper on cosmology (see below for details) modified the field equations of general relativity by adding the famous “cosmological constant”. This was perfectly reasonable at the time. In 1917 there was no solid evidence that the universe extended beyond the Milky Way. The various nebulae which astronomers had observed were only shown to consist of vast numbers of individual stars, and to be separate galaxies in their own right, after results had been obtained in the early 1920s from the 100 inch telescope at Mount Wilson, and the expansion of the universe was only discovered in the late 1920s – in Einstein’s paper he refers to “the small velocities of the stars” several times. These, and much other historical material, can be found in Singh’s book. After some further comments about uniformitarian ideas Singh writes, in two paragraphs on pages 79 and 80: So, by the start of the twentieth century, scientists were content to live in an eternal universe. This theory, however, was based on quite flimsy evidence. Although there was dating evidence that pointed towards a truly ancient universe, at least billions of years old, the idea that the universe was eternal was largely based on a leap of faith. There was simply no scientific justification for extrapolating from an earthly age of at least billions of years to a universe that was eternal. Sure enough, an infinitely old universe constituted a coherent and consistent cosmological view, but this was nothing more than wishful thinking unless somebody could find some scientific evidence to back it up. In fact, the eternal universe model was built upon such fragile foundations that it probably deserved the title of myth rather than scientific theory. The eternal universe model of 1900 was almost as flimsy as the explanation that it was the giant blue god Wulbari who separated the sky from the land. Eventually, cosmologists would confront this embarrassing state of affairs. Indeed, they would spend the rest of the twentieth century struggling to replace the last great myth with a respectable and rigorous scientific explanation. They strove to ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ develop a detailed theory and sought the concrete evidence to back ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ it up, so that they could confidently address the ultimate question: is the universe eternal or was it created? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

D:

Which all goes to show that nothing much has changed: cosmology is driven by philosophy, not the data (but see verification of this below).

K:

Did you read the words I’ve marked carefully, Don? The activities here were, in fact, highly critical of the previously assumed infinite age of the universe, and people were looking for both theoretical and experimental evidence one way or another. In particular, look at the last few words Singh wrote.

This was the point. Until the 100 inch telescope at Mount Wilson became operational there was, in fact, no observational evidence that there was anything outside the Milky Way – see any reasonable book on the history of astronomy for this. And this was at the beginning of the 1920s.

Einstein, working under the then almost universal assumption of a static, eternal universe, added his “cosmological constant” to the field equations of general relativity, and produced a theoretical explanation for such a universe.

Then Alexandr Friedmann, and later Lemaitre, in the 1920s came up with time-dependent solutions of the field equations, showing the possibility that the universe was expanding. And Hubble in the late 1920s then came up with observational evidence which showed, using only standard interpretations of the observations, that the universe was expanding.

So, contrary to Don’s claims, cosmology is driven by both theory and experiment, and not by any particular philosophy.

The BB is one of the predictions of general relativity. Stephen Hawking and George Ellis write in the Preface of their book “The Large Scale Structure of Space-time” (Cambridge University Press, 1973): This theory leads to two remarkable predictions about the universe: first, that the final state of massive stars is to collapse behind an event horizon to form a `black hole’ which will contain a singularity; and secondly, that there is a singularity in our past which constitutes, in some sense, a beginning to the universe. Thus before talking about the BB we need to give some preliminary consideration to general relativity and the remarkable success it has enjoyed. Simon Singh’s book mentioned above is 534 pages long, but he writes on page 509 “This book has tried to explain a big subject in a relatively small amount of space”, and on page 471 “Each subsection of each chapter of this book would need to be expanded into its own dedicated volume to do justice to everyone who has contributed to the development of the Big Bang model.” He continues at the bottom of this page and on the next page: In addition to the limitations of space, this account of the Big Bang model has also been constrained by an effort to minimise the number of mathematical equations. Mathematics is the language of science, and in many cases a full and accurate explanation of a scientific concept is possible only by presenting a detailed mathematical exposition. The limitations of posting using only the 95 printable ASCII characters preclude even an outline of general relativity and its cosmological implications. However there are a number of popular books which manage to make a reasonable fist of presenting enough information about relativity and the BB so that the intelligent layperson can gain at least some inkling of what it is all about. An invaluable resource book, for those prepared to learn the relevant mathematics, is “The Principle of Relativity” by H.A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, H. Minkowski and H. Weyl, with notes by A. Sommerfeld. This is a collection of translations of some of the most important original papers on relativity. For general relativity and cosmology, the papers “The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity” on pages 111-164, and “Cosmological Considerations on the General Theory of Relativity” on pages 177-188, both by Einstein, are the significant ones. It is worth pointing out that in the “Foundations” paper 27 pages of the 54 (that is, half the paper) are devoted to the algebra and calculus of tensor fields, the mathematical tools required, since at the time these were not part of the mathematical education of physicists or astronomers. If anyone wants a full mathematical treatment of general relativity I suggest that the nearest university library would be a good starting place, both for books and papers in periodicals. Since a number of Christians may be interested in learning something about the relationship between cosmology and Christianity, here are two books. David Wilkinson is a Methodist minister who obtained a PhD in astrophysics before training for the ministry, and Craig and Smith are professional philosophers. Wilkinson, David: “God, Time and Stephen Hawking”, Monarch Books, 2001. Contains a number of illustrations to assist with explanations of various points. Craig, William Lane and Smith, Quentin, “Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology”, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1993 A somewhat heavy book by two philosophers: Craig argues for theism and Lane for atheism, with separate articles criticising the other’s arguments.

D:

Actually, last time I heard from William Lane Craig, he was still 100% Christian; he was not half atheist. Quentin Smith is the atheist. 🙂

K:

Did I ever suggest or even hint otherwise? Maybe in future, to avoid any possibility of misunderstanding, I’ll have to become a lot more prolix and extract information from my large bibliographical database of books and articles on science and religion, and write something like

A somewhat heavy book by two philosophers. Craig is a theist and Smith is an atheist (in philosophical writings the word “theist” is usually used in discussions with atheists). The authors point out in their Preface that “there has been very little technical philosophical discussion of the theistic implications of Big Bang cosmology”, and the book is an attempt to fill the gap, by supplying a “scientifically informed treatment of the cosmological theories with rigorously developed philosophical arguments …” It consists of a number of essays, usually one by Craig arguing for theism followed by a response by Smith criticising Craig’s arguments, and one by Smith arguing for atheism followed by one by Craig criticising Smith’s arguments.

There are plenty of philosophical works around arguing both for and against atheism, but these usually use the word “theism” and only rarely mention Christianity specifically.

For those without the necessary mathematical background, but who are prepared to read carefully and think over what they have read, some useful and interesting modern books written from a scientific perspective are (in chronological order by date of publication), with brief comments:

[deletions since Don didn’t comment directly on any of the books]

Thus anyone who wishes to challenge the BB needs first to find some way of explaining how the universe behaves, without using general relativity, and then show that their ideas agree more closely with the experimental data than relativity does. Since the predictions of relativity agree with experimental data to the limit of accuracy of measurement it is clear that such people face an uphill battle.

D:

I deal with this incredible confusion over GR and BB; GR does not equal BB (see later) — Ken needs to revise the elementary distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions..

K:

I don’t know what “incredible confusion” Don is referring to here. Neither I nor any of the authors of the books I cited have ever said or written that “general relativity is equal to the big bang”, which is what Don complains about in his words “GR does not equal BB”. What I (and most people discussing cosmology since Hawking, Penrose and others proved a series of theorems about singularities) have said is that the BB is a *prediction* of general relativity. More on this a bit lower down.

I have only read two attempts by creationists to use general relativity. Both of these were attempts to use it in support of their own peculiar ideas, and both made so many elementary errors that even mentioning them here would be a waste of time.

D:

Here we have the informal fallacy known as ‘hurling elephants’. ‘There is so much evidence … I don’t have space to present it.’ Perhaps the evidence is not presented because it could be shot down? And if you only know of two attempts, it once again shows that you are not as well read in creationist stuff as you claim to be. But the fact that creationists use GR in their own cosmological models shows that you have just wasted everyone’s time with all this waffle about GR, because we accept GR. GR is established by good operational science; experimental physics. The BB, being a model of history, is not open to the same experimental verification.

K:

The two attempts I was referring to are the writings of Barry Setterfield, which I now gather are no longer supported by Answers in Genesis, and a book by an author whose name I can’t recall (Russell Humphreys comes to mind, but I won’t swear that is correct), who put forward the suggestion that the universe started off as a sphere of water a couple of light years in diameter which God then turned into a “white hole” – Don can probably supply the author’s name and title of the book. If Don wants criticisms of these I’ll be glad to supply them.

However I don’t think Don appreciates the consequences of his statement “. . . because we accept GR. GR is established by good operational science; experimental physics.” Once you have accepted a particular theory as valid, you are assumed to accept everything which follows from the theory. This would mean the acceptance of the advance of the perihelion of Mercury as a consequence of general relativity, and not due to some postulate about the non-spherically symmetric distribution of mass in the Sun, as I have seen argued. And the acceptance of gravitational radiation as the cause of the observed variation of the orbit of the binary pulsar.

And, for purposes of this discussion, the acceptance of the BB as yet another prediction prediction of general relativity which has been experimentally verified.

All this, and more, follows if you accept general relativity.

You have one possible way out: you can say that you accept that the field equations of general relativity are valid now, but not in the past. In that case, you are the one who will have to produce whatever theory you accept for the past, which merges into general relativity in the present. Virtually all Christians who are working in science are firmly convinced that what are commonly called “the laws of nature” have been set up by God, and that he does not arbitrarily change these. In other words, that in our scientific work we can rely on God not to behave in some fickle manner, like the various gods of mythology, but to be reliable and consistent.

Don writes in the paragraphs I quoted earlier, and repeat here for convenience

D: There are elements of the sciences of astronomy, geology and biology that have been developed based on and in turn used to bolster the claims of naturalism: big bang cosmology, historical geology and biological evolution …

K: Don is probably not aware that my honours thesis in mathematics at the University of Sydney in 1953 was entitled “Relativity and Cosmology”. Answers in Genesis claims that Tas Walker is an expert in geology on the basis of his first class honours degree in geology with a thesis on isotopic dating. So presumably Don will be willing to accept that I am an expert in general relativity and cosmology on the basis of my first class honours degree in mathematics.

D:

A 50-year-old textbook from a leading cosmologist would have little ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ relevance today, let alone an honours thesis that old. But Dr Walker ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ worked on the latest radiometric dating techniques and found that so-called isochron plots (which are often claimed to be an infallible dating method) could be generated from non-radioactive nuclides, so they had nothing to do with age. Frankly, I don’t care what qualifications someone has or does not have. What I am interested in is the quality of their arguments, and in the case of public figures who claim to follow Christ, how consistent their beliefs are with the Bible. Just because someone has even a PhD, or even a DSc, does not give their pronouncements infallibility.

K:

I don’t think that Don is aware that a book written in the 21st century about cosmology would use exactly the same field equations that Einstein put forward in his 1917 paper on cosmology. That’s 88 years ago. And nearly all papers on general relativity written now use these same equations. In fact, this year there are various meetings being held all over the world celebrating the centenary of the publication of Einstein’s first paper on special relativity.

And the book “Relativity, Thermodynamics and Cosmology” by Richard Tolman was published in 1934, 71 years ago, and is still referred to as a useful compendium on both relativity and cosmology.

However rather than pursue that line I will just content myself with commenting on Don’s claim that the BB “[has] been been developed based on and in turn used to bolster the claims of naturalism”. I’m not sure where Don got the information about the alleged basis of the BB. Digging my honours thesis out of the family archives and looking through it, I cited 19 books and 31 papers. Since then I have read over a hundred books and numerous papers on various aspects of relativity and cosmology, and have listened to many scientific lectures. Mention of God, or even allusions to religion, are quite rare.

D:

That’s the point – the big bang presupposes naturalism (nature is all there is; there is no need for God).

K:

Here Don follows a number of other Christians in making an unwarranted deduction, as well as one which does not logically follow. Just because some book does not mention God, you cannot assume that the author, or any ideas he might have, assume that “nature is all there is; there is no need for God”, which mutates in some people’s minds into “there is no God” or, even more misleading, “science has proved that there is no God”.

I cannot emphasise this enough: it seems to lie at the bottom of much of creationist objections to almost all of modern science. I could equally well say that Answers in Genesis, in producing their literature, presuppose naturalism. After all, none of the computer operating systems which are in use today make any mention of God in the instruction manuals. So Answers in Genesis, like the rest of us, are using atheistic devices to communicate with each other.

If Don wishes to argue that “the big bang presupposes naturalism”, in his sense indicating that God does not exist, he will have to produce very much more convincing evidence than this.

Now if he were to say “the big bang presupposes methodological naturalism” I would have no disagreement with him, since the whole of science makes this assumption. But methodological naturalism says nothing whatever about God, and for this reason is anathema to Phillip Johnson and his followers.

I have not come across any mention of religion in any of the technical works I have read.

D:

Well, perhaps I can quote from George Ellis, since you seem to respect him:

“People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations,” Ellis argues. “For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations.” Ellis has published a paper on this. “You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds. In my view there is absolutely nothing wrong in that. What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.” (Gibbs, W. Wayt, 1995. Profile: George F. R. Ellis; Thinking Globally, Acting Universally, Scientific American 273(4):28,29).

It seems that Ken Smith, widely-read in the BB, is not aware of this: ‘…we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models.’

K:

Don has made two errors in quoting the above in response to my remarks.

Firstly, I referred to “technical works”: the Scientific American is not such a work. By “technical” works I mean books such as that by Tolman I cited above; “The Mathematical Theory of Relativity” by Eddington; “Relativity in Celestial Mechanics and Astrometry” (International Astronomical Union Symposium 114), edited by J. Kovalevsky and V.A. Brumberg; “General Relativity: An Einstein Centenary Survey”, edited by S.W. Hawking and W. Israel, to name the nearest on my bookshelves.

Secondly, a point I’ll take up in more detail below, I said I had not found “[m]ention of God . . . or allusions to religion . . .”, but Don talks about philosophy. Now I don’t know about other people, but to me philosophy and religion are quite different areas of study.

D:

I guess it would be even better to quote the book by Hawking and Ellis that Ken quoted above, because he seems to have missed this bit:

‘However we are not able to make cosmological models without some admixture of ideology. In the earliest cosmologies, man placed himself in a commanding position at the centre of the universe. Since the time of Copernicus we have been steadily demoted to a medium sized planet going round a medium sized star on the outer edge of a fairly average galaxy, which is itself simply one of a local group of galaxies. Indeed we are now so democratic that we would not claim that our position in space is specially distinguished in any way. We shall, following Bondi (1960), call this assumption the Copernican principle.’ (Hawking, S.W. and Ellis, G.F.R., The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p. 134, 1973. Their reference is 1960).

K:

Don omits the context of this quotation. It is in the chapter on “Exact Solutions” of Einstien’s field equations, and in the section dealing with the Robertson-Walker metric. The deduction of the form of this metric assumes that the universe is, on a sufficiently large scale, homogeneous.

From our viewpoint we can only say that it is isotropic, but to prove homogeneity all that is required is that the universe be isotropic from two distinct points (this I proved early in my lecture courses on continuum mechanics). This I’ll take up further down as well.

D:

Geoffrey Burbidge (Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego) put it this way:

‘Big bang cosmology is probably as widely believed as has been any theory of the universe in the history of Western civilization. It rests, however, on many untested, and [in] many cases, untestable assumptions. Indeed, big bang cosmology has become a bandwagon of thought that reflects faith as much as objective truth.’ (Scientific American, p. 96, February 1992.)

Hubble himself admitted the philosophical (i.e., religious) assumptions ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ behind the BB. Hubble had discovered a relationship between distance and redshift for a number of galaxies he had observed. This suggested that they were all moving away from a centre near the earth (Ockham’s razor). However, see what Hubble says:

“Such a condition would imply that we occupy a unique position in the universe . . . . The hypothesis cannot be disproved, but it is unwelcome, . . . But the unwelcome supposition of a favored location must be avoided at all costs” (pp. 50-51). Later he added, “Such a favored position . . . is intolerable; moreover, it represents a discrepancy with the theory because the theory postulates homogeneity” (p.58-59). (E. P. Hubble, The Observational Approach to Cosmology, The Clarendon Press, 1937).

What ‘theory’ is he talking about? The Cosmological Principle, that earth has no particular favoured place in the Universe. This has ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ also been called the Copernican Principle. Of course, reading my Bible, I would say earth certainly has a favoured place, central to the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Creator’s purposes, and I would not expect that earth would look like a cosmic accident with no special place in God’s creation.

K:

Confusion between philosophy and religion again. I think Don is here using “place” in two distinct senses (or, possibly, confusing them). Hubble (and others) use the phrase “no particular favoured place in the Universe”, or some equivalent phrase, with reference to “a particular portion of space”. Don’s words “a favoured place” or “no special place in God’s creation” would seem to refer more to “position or standing in the social scale,or in any order of merit, estimation, etc.” Here I have quoted definitions 1 and 14 under “place” in The Macquarie Dictionary.

If Don really does mean that the Earth must have some special location in space then I would like him to expound on this for us. It could also bear on the existence or non-existence of intelligent beings in the universe, other than on this particular planet.

D:

Hubble admitted that the Cosmological Principle is:

“. . . a sheer assumption. It seems plausible and it appeals strongly to our sense of proportion. Nevertheless, it leads to a rather remarkable consequence, for it demands that, if we see the nebulae all receding from our position in space, then every other observer, no matter where he may be located, will see the nebulae all receding from his position. However, the assumption is adopted. There must be no favoured location in the universe, no centre, no boundary; all must see the universe alike.” (p.54)

Why must all ‘see the universe alike’? Because an earth-centric universe is not acceptable for religious reasons. No materialist can stomach a universe where the earth has a special position near its centre. Anathema! How could we be near the centre by accident in such a vast universe?! The probability of such a thing would be so small as to demand intelligent design. Anathema!

K:

I’m beginning to suspect that Don supports geocentrism, rather than heliocentrism. Now it is true that under general relativity one could use a coordinate system which described the positions of everything in the universe using the distance from the centre of the Earth, and the latitude and longitude of the point on the Earth’s surface through which a line from the centre of the Earth passed. But this would lead to such horrible complications in manipulating the resulting equations that the simpler coordinate system is used.

D:

Hawking put it this way: “. . . it might seem that if we observe all other galaxies to be moving away from us, then we must be at the center of the universe. There is, however, an alternate explanation: the universe might look the same in every direction as seen from any other galaxy, too. This, as we have seen, was Friedmann’s second assumption. We have no scientific evidence for, or against this assumption. We believe it only on ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ grounds of modesty: it would be most remarkable if the universe looked the same in every direction around us, but not around other points in the universe . . . .” (S. W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, New York, 1988, p. 42).

K:

Exactly! Like other scientists, I prefer to make a modest, rather than an arrogant, assumption about the location of this planet in the cosmos.

I’ll only make brief comments on the following paragraphs because making an adequate response would come close to doubling the size of this already bloated post

D:

Now this ‘model’ universe based on the Cosmological Principle has no centre and is bounded (has not edge). Our universe is imagined to ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ be a three-dimensional surface which is expanding in an unseen fourth ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ physical dimension. Putting it in a layman’s way, if I travelled in ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ a ‘straight’ line from the earth, I would never reach the ‘edge’ of this universe, because no edge exists; I would end up ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ back where I started! There are different ways of putting this; ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ positively curved space is a more technical term. No one can conceive ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ of such a thing physically; it is quite contrary to our normal ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ three-dimensional experience. And as the cosmologists admit, there is ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ no evidence for it. But it is a necessary assumption to avoid the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ implications of the observations that suggest that we are at the centre ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ of things and also to get the BB to work. Many laymen have wondered ^^^^^^^^^ why, if the universe started with so much stuff in such a tiny space, why it was not a black hole and so how could it ‘explode’, since black holes suck everything in? Hubble’s assumption is essential to avoid the black hole problem (and other problems). It also makes the maths simpler. But the reason for it is philosophical / religious. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

K:

(a) “unseen fourth physical dimension” No, Don. You need to go away and learn a fair amount about Riemannian geometry. (b) Only if the universe has a positive curvature. The most recent observations are all against this. (c) I’m uncertain about physically, but then cosmology is, of necessity, mathematical, and conceiving of it mathematically is a trivial exercise. (d) Cosmologists admit no such thing! (e) Geocentrism raises its head again. (f) Not true.

D:

In other words, the BB does not just pop out of GR, like bubbles up your nose when you open a can of fizzy drink. No, it depends on some fundamental philosophical (religious) assumptions. And the Cosmological Principle is a decidedly anti-biblical philosophical ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ assumption. From all this I can only conclude that Ken is not as well ^^^^^^^^^^ read in cosmology as he pretends to be, or he had blinkers (blinders) on while reading it. Another possibility might be that Ken has so absorbed and accommodated the anti-Christian mindset into his own thinking that he does not even see it when he encounters it.

K:

No evidence has been produced to show this. The Bible is intended for people living on just this planet, and has no relevance for intelligent entities, assuming they exist, elsewhere in the universe. Or, in fact, for the structure of the universe, which is what cosmology is all about.

I suspect that there is also some confusion here between cosmology and cosmography. But that should be left for another post if anyone wants to follow that line.

D:

Interestingly, much of the secular opposition to the BB also arises because of philosophical considerations – because the BB has a beginning. Hoyle, Bondi and Gold dreamed up a steady state model to ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ get away from a beginning. There is only one thing that an atheist / ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ materialist dislikes more than an earth-centred universe and that is one that has a beginning. Science works on the principle of causation: all things that have a beginning have a cause. The BB had a beginning, so what caused it? Davies’ ‘quantum fluctuation’ is mere sleight of hand (if there is nothing there, there are no quanta to fluctuate!).

K:

This reveals Don’s lack of historical knowledge. The first papers on the steady-state theory were published in 1948, but the work had been done several years earlier. At that time there was a major problem. From Hubble’s, observations it could be deduced that the universe was about two billion years old (see the first edition of Hoyle’s “The Nature of the Universe”, page 93). However the age of the earth was known (from a range of radioactive dating methods) to be at least four billion years. Clearly the earth cannot be older than the universe. This could, by appropriate choice of the curvature of space and Einstein’s cosmological constant, be fitted within general relativity. But many scientists thought that this was a contrived solution, and far from satisfactory. The steady-state theory solved that problem, at least for a time. Getting away from a beginning was only a side effect.

But by the second edition of “The Nature of the Universe”, in 1960, the two distinct classes of Cepheid variables had been discovered, and the age of the universe was now stated as ten billion years (Penguin edition, page 105). This removed the need for any special choice of the cosmological constant or the curvature of space, and the steady-state theory, which had already come under attack for other reasons, was well and truly in decline. The discovery of the cosmic background radiation in 1965 was just the final nail in its coffin.

D:

Many Christians have taken comfort in the BB because it has a beginning. Some apologists have used it for that purpose, without necessarily agreeing with the details (such as the time-scale or ancillary hypotheses re the formation of the earth, etc). However, the BB rests on the religious assumption that the earth is nothing ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ special, contrary to Genesis and the whole sweep of the Bible. ^^^^^^^ K:

More confusion over the meaning of the word “place”.

D:

Interestingly, observations showing quantization of redshifts, by ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ William Tifft, seem to refute the Cosmological Principle and are consistent with a universe that has a centre and is unbounded (that is, there is an edge, like common sense would suggest. And the universe is approximately earth-centric. See Our galaxy is the centre of the universe, ‘quantized’ red shifts show. http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v16/i2/galaxy.asp This paper also shows further how the BB is based on atheistic presuppositions that fly in the face of observations.

K:

Further observations have shown that this suggestion of “quantization” was prompted by the small number which had then been observed. With the massive data collected since, especially from the Hubble telescope, quantization can no longer be upheld.

D:

Burbidge recently co-authored a paper with Halton Arp detailing a devastating observation that contradicts a fundamental assumption behind the BB (red-shift is a measure of distance traveled since the hypothetical BB). See Quasar with enormous redshift found embedded in nearby spiral galaxy with far lower redshift: unsolvable riddle for big bang astronomy (http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2005/0112quasar.asp#r8 ). Oh, yes the original paper is referenced, Ken, so that you can check for any misquotations.

K:

This is based on probability arguments. Experts in probability are not impressed by the claims, or by other claims by Arp, which also rely on probability arguments.

Maybe Don has some source material where some scientists working in the area have denied the existence of God. If so I would be pleased to be enlightened about the books or articles where I can read these statements for myself.

D:

I think I have supplied ample above, from some of the biggest names in cosmology.

K:

No, Don, you haven’t. In not one of the writings from scientists actually quoted is there a single statement which denies the existence of God. See the beginning of this post for additional comments.

[deletions]

I listed some popular books on astronomy and cosmology which mentioned God, and Don responded:

D:

All of these mentions of ‘God’ have nothing to do with the ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ creator-God who reveals himself in the Bible. Careful study underlines ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ the non- or anti-Christian philosophies of these cosmologists / physicists. Hawking uses ‘God’ as a metaphor for ultimate knowledge (a theory of everything; TOE). Davies could be some sort of deist, but not a Christian. He abandoned Christian beliefs as a teenager when the local vicar could not answer his questions about creation and the universe (The Australian, March 9, 1995, p. 1). Einstein explicitly shared the pantheism of Spinoza, of whose views ‘The Hutchinson Softback Encyclopedia’, 1996, says: ‘Mind and matter are two modes of an infinite substance that [Spinoza] called God or Nature, good and evil being relative.’ Like New Age and Eastern thought, this is a ‘monistic’ belief, which explicitly denies a Creator in the normal meaning of the word, i.e. one who pre-existed (and is thus independent of, or ‘outside’) that which was created. (see http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i1/einstein.asp ). So Einstein’s religion ‘sighted’ by science is pantheism. This web article finishes with: ‘Christians who inappropriately invoke Einstein in their preaching, writing or witnessing do so to the detriment of their cause.’ See also my article on ‘Physicists’ God Talk’: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v17/i3/god_talk.asp which also mentions that a lot of the ‘God’ talk of physicists is in fact blasphemous – such as calling the Higgs boson the ‘God Particle’ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ (Lederman). It is ridiculously naive to think that any of this has ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ any relevance to supporting biblical Christianity. I have to say that ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Ken’s use of these quotes from Einstein and co. in this way amounts to serious quoting out of context.

K:

(a) I never claimed they did.

(b) I was tempted to ask if Don could give us an exposition on the Higgs boson, but managed to say “Get thee behind me, Satan”.

(c) I never thought that anything from the field of cosmology was ever intended to either support or oppose biblical Christianity. Unless, of course, Don’s idea is that the only form of Christianity which can be termed “biblical” is that which insists on creation in six days of twenty-four hours each.

In connection with this, let me recount a bit of personal history from 1953, the year I wrote my honours thesis. I was a member and deacon of a Baptist church in Sydney. I can remember only two sermons from that year, and they were both by visiting speakers. Fred Hoyle’s radio lectures “The Nature of the Universe” had been recently re-broadcast on ABC Radio (for the younger people reading this TV didn’t start in Australia until 1956). Both speakers had listened to the lectures, which were about the steady-state theory. And they both took their sermons from the first two verses of Genesis 1, and both used the RSV, which had appeared the previous year.

One said that Hoyle was obviously wrong, since Genesis started “In the beginning God created . . .”, and this was clearly incompatible with continuous creation.

The other used the rendering in the margin, and after reading “When God began to create . . .” said that science had now shown that God was continually pouring vast amounts of energy into the universe.

Those two sermons have stuck in my mind, and it was those, reinforced by much later study, that convinced me that, as Augustine wrote at the beginning of the fifth century, it is a dangerous thing to make deductions about “the way the world is” from our interpretation of the Bible.

Salaam Ken Smith

— Dr Ken Smith – Christian, husband, unpaid mathematician, skeptic, … `When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.’ The First Law of Arthur C.Clarke