You’ve heard, I hope, about NASA climate scientist James Hansen, who the Bush administration tried to silence when he called for reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases. Cosmology, as it turns out, is not exempt from the radical anti-science agenda. The New York Times, via Atrios:
In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.
…
The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose résumé says he was an intern in the “war room” of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A 2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer who sought more control over Dr. Hansen’s public statements.
In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The message said the word “theory” needed to be added after every mention of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is “not proven fact; it is opinion,” Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding, “It is not NASA’s place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a creator.”
It continued: “This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very people who rely on us for factual information the most.”
Emphasis added. Draw your own conclusions, I’m feeling a bit of outrage fatigue at the moment.
Update: Phil Plait has extensive comments at Bad Astronomy Blog. Also Pharyngula, Balloon Juice, Stranger Fruit, Gary Farber, Mark Kleiman, World O’ Crap, and Hullabaloo.
Update again, for our new visitors: Folks, of course the Big Bang model is a theory, and of course it is also correct. It has been tested beyond reasonable doubt: our current universe expanded from a hot, dense, smooth state about 14 billion years ago. The evidence is overwhelming, and we have hard data (from primordial nucleosynthesis) that the model was correct as early as one minute after the initial singularity.
Of course the initial singularity (the “Bang†itself) is not understood, and there are plenty of other loose ends. But the basic framework — expanding from an early hot, dense, smooth state — is beyond reasonable dispute.
It’s too bad that scientific education in this country is so poor that many people don’t understand what is meant by “theory†or “model.†It doesn’t mean “just someone’s opinion.†Theories can be completely speculative, absolutely well-established, or just plain wrong; the Big Bang model is absolutely well-established.
Maybe it’s all just a last ditch battle; maybe they know that reason has won the war, and only in desperation do they lash out like this. Of course, like in any battle, one still has to fight, and it is wearisome.
Need another reason for outrage?
IDers claim they are ideological heirs to Galileo
Yes, that Galileo. Galileo Galilei. Guy with the telescope and the heliocentrism. Punished by the Vatican.
*sigh*
So they might recant?
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html
35. # 40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.
Nothing new under the sun.
I sometimes wish the Bush administrations was “just a theory”
Sean, the link to the nytimes story is dead. The correct link is this one.
Poor Superman
So, the Bush administration is going to try and be pro-science. Here we go. In October 2005, Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school…
damtp_dweller, thanks; should be fixed now. (I link to the RSS feed, which doesn’t eventually go behind a firewall like the regular stories; see the NYT Link Generator.)
To be honest, I’m kind of astonished this is the first official statement about the Big Bang. The target of the theocrats is always Origins, be it of humanity, life, biological complexity, whatever. What more profound materialistic account of Origins is there than the very successful description of the creation of the Universe itself? Really, how coult it not be a bone of contention among creationists?
Maybe that spike in physics funding is supposed to be hush money?
As indicated in the NYT article, and emphasized by Phil Plait in his blog, there is a real possibility that this guy simply overstepped the mark. He is, after all, fresh out of college and presumably inexperienced, so this may not be a case of the ID crowd infiltrating NASA.
On the other hand, that begs the question of how somebody so obviously clueless could have gotten a relatively powerful job.
dampt_dweller said:
Can you say “Michael Brown, former head of FEMA”?
Touché.
That should of course have been ‘Touché’.
Ugh… It got even worse when I checked out the top google result for a search for “NASA Big Bang”.
Choice quote:
“Although the Big Bang Theory is widely accepted, it probably will never be proved; consequentially, leaving a number of tough, unanswered questions. ”
…and what the heck is that giant “Bang!” doing in the diagram? NASA?!
Can you say “Douglas Feith, Director of the Office of Special Projects and the dumbest f****** guy on the planet“? Hell, can you say “President Bush”?
I’m sure that George Deutsch overstepped his mandate; I doubt that the “Big Bang is just a theory” line was a cabinet-level decision. The point is that it’s not an isolated incident; people like that absolutely permeate the government. The consequences are manifest and horrifying in Iraq and New Orleans; everywhere else they’re more subtle but equally damaging.
Do not take this lightly. Many people do not understand what theory means and the religous right is using that to attack naturalism and all science. It has been the biologists and the philosophers fighting for all acience, now it’s time for physics to weigh in.
It also about more than just the scientific evidence, it has to be presented well. It’s time for another great popularizer of science to arise. Ken Miller is a model of waht can be done on the biologiy side, Dawkins is too harsh for Americans to listen too. We need another Sagan or Attenborough to show the wonders of what we do and don’t know and why we know it. Maybe Simon Singh? Brian Greene?
“more than a science issue”. I guess there you have it.
“and on the 6th day he created the cosmic microwave background radiation so several generations of scientists would be completely misled into thinking that at some point the universe was small and then became large….”
Elliot
Where is the sound science behind the theory of the big bang? Where’s the sound science behind global warming? Face it — both theories are part of the liberal program to take God out of science and blame all the world’s problems on George Bush.
Leonidas: You might like to start by going here, paying particular attention to astro-ph and gr-qc. Of course, the clincher is here but you sound as though you’ll dismiss the Big Bang model regardless of any amount of evidence in its favour.
Nice post, Elliot.
It’s pretty scary when a religious issue is more important than a science issue.
Anyway, it’s ridiculous that any deity would change the universe in all the right places so as to make scientists reach the wrong conclusions. Things fall essentially the same way in many different situations, and they all are approximately the same as the most ideal laboratory free-fall setting. Ripples move over the surface of water in essentially the same way inside or outside the laboratory. Despite the lack of strict controls in everyday life, the everyday universe acts essentially the same as the laboratory setting. Anyone who has taken a laboratory science course should have direct experience with this. Why should it be any different with fossils or a cosmic microwave background? The only real difference is one of human preconception, not that the universe changes whenever someone with a PhD bothers to take a disciplined look.
An update on George Deutsch: Apparently, Deutsch was also involved in the recent kerfuffle over James Hansen, the climate scientist who claimed that the Bush administration tried to silence him. As if that wasn’t enough, Deutsch has apparently admitted in the past that his job at NASA was to reject requests from liberal media to interview Hansen and also “to make the president look good”
Strange that, given that his job was as a public affairs at NASA and not at the White House…
I’m a little more worried about the slipping in of ID than the theory labeling. IANAAstrophysicist, but the Big Bang isn’t something I normally think of as rock solid. Are we not still making predictions and adjusting parameters?
I was at a talk by Stephen Hawking (again, I have no appreciation for his work, just his poignant ruminations on life, science, and the future) and was impressed by his conjecture that maybe the Big Bang was a collision of two spaces–a violent striking in higher dimensions that resonated ours into existence. This is how I think of the Big Bank and our origins, but I don’t tend to think it as elevated to a Law or Fact yet.
Sorry, I don’t mean to spoil the party. Let me repeat: Are we not still making (occasionally wrong) predictions and adjusting parameters?
#1 (Kea)
Your post reminded me of a quote in Seed Magazine that at one time gave me great hope.
But then I realized that I misread that quote. I though he said invulnerable instead of vulnerable. Then depression set in… the science superhero met his bane/kryptonite. That’s why I drink instead of being a physicist.
hugechavz:
I would say that the issue is that “the Big Bang” is not necessarily clearly defined. What is conclusively established is that the universe used to be much smaller and hotter and that it has gradually expanded and cooled. At some point it was extremely uniform and radiation-dominated, and over time some small non-uniformities became galaxies, and currently matter and dark energy make up most of the energy density and radiation only a small fraction. This is what a physicist typically has in mind when talking about how the Big Bang is well-established.
On the other hand, general relativity leads one to expect that the initial condition for all of this was singular, and I think this has become the popular conception of the Big Bang: that there was some singular point which expanded to become the whole universe. This isn’t something that’s understood; we tend to think quantum gravity will smooth out the singularity, and the initial condition is not at all clear. One attempt at explaining it is the Hartle-Hawking wavefunction. One might expect the early universe to not have a geometric description at all. It’s all very murky, and extremely difficult to probe. (Part of the early and not well-understood part of the story is inflation, which we are gradually getting better hints about from experiment, but even that won’t really tell us about the real initial condition.)
So the upshot is that, properly understood, the “Big Bang” really is firmly established by experiment. There is absolutely no doubt that the universe has expanded from a hot dense state. On the other hand the very early history is still unclear, and will probably remain so for quite some time. Inflation tends to wipe out information about what happened before, so it’s possible that we’ll never truly experimentally probe the earlier stuff. In that case we could just see what the theory we construct from everything we can probe has to tell us about such things. And at this point, that’s a big mystery.
RE: # 27
This link reminded me of your post. I have never seen such a vivid visualization of the gigantic baplow until this one.
(via metafilter)
Having just waded through 100+ graduate admissions folders, I was faced with an unfortunate side effect of ID and christian fundamentalism. We had an incredibly talented applicant from a small christian college. Not one with
a historical but now largely dormant link to religion like Notre Dame, but one where christianity was tightly coupled to the core philosophy of the college. The college was not fundamentalist (i.e. not Bob Jones University), but one where religion clearly shaped the students’ and faculty’s values. We admitted the student after very carefully vetting his applications for signs that he was not deeply troubled by the Big Bang, and did not believe the Earth was a few thousand years old. I can’t help but fear, though, that we are five or six years away from credentialling a shill for the Discovery Institute.
While not religious myself, I lack Sean’s entrenched skepticism of religion, and see it as a very positive force in many people’s lives. Thus, I hate that I am now in a point where I am forced to be distrustful of someone who is (most likely) simply devout. Fundamentalist groups that rail against anti-christian bias are helping to create it, setting up obstacles for those who have a more complex relationship between their faith and the physical world.
They are aware that the theory was proposed by a Catholic priest, right?
Lubos, where art thou?
To All: please note that the Republicans have encouraged the ‘footsoldier’ to answer and challenge on blogs like this. Its all part of the challenge the science program. They challenge studies by focusing on the variable statistic in them. Another way they challenge is by attacking the individual. They have no scientific evidence to supprt their positions but that makes no difference. They try and cause confusion. Please read ‘The Republican War on Science’ by Chris Mooney. It pretty much tells you what is going on in the Bush administration. Dont think this is an isolated incident.
druidbros,
Any supporting references? Hyperlinks are everyones best friends.
Also for Leonidas, just go to his blog and leave a comment for him. He has a post about Global Warming. What a riot!
Matt B, I will look for it. I had it at one time b4 my hard drive crashed.
I have one! One day Her/His Noodly Appendage sneezed and out come the cosmos. S/He didn’t know what to do with it so S/He decided to perhaps make some inhabitable planets. The pirates needed to live somewhere.
I agree Burrow. I believe in FSM.
Matt B, I dont remember which Republican website I found it on but I will give you just an example.
http://www.ohiogop.org/News/details.aspx?ID=4
This is just an example. Each state has their own talking point website as well as many county and local GOP websites. Go and look at your local and state websites.
Then you will be able to predict exactly what the ‘reality challenged’ will say. Amaze your friends!
You will remember they attacked NPR and PBS. It was a ratfucking campaign.
See…http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratfucking
They talked about Bill Moyers on PBS even though he had retired 8 months earlier!
I have a vague recollection of a humanities graduate, with hands on experience in politics and journalism, dictating the course of hep-th for twenty years or more. He, of course, is a Democrat, a nice chap and a genius. Whether he has been more of a threat to the well being of physical sicence, by blurring its edges with math and related casuistries, than are those that strompo about in the muddy waters of the science/religion interface, remains to be seen
Burrow and Matt B.,
This interesting article:
http://public.lanl.gov/alp/plasma/people/alfven.html
mentions the following under “Alfven versus THE BIG BANG”:
‘ To Alfvén, the Big Bang was a myth - a myth devised to explain creation. “I was there when Abbe Georges Lemaitre first proposed this theory,” he recalled. Lemaitre was, at the time, both a member of the Catholic hierarchy and an accomplished scientist. He said in private that this theory was a way to reconcile science with St. Thomas Aquinas’ theological dictum of creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing. ‘
Anyway, it is typical of pseudoscientists to attack what they see as the “establishment,” regardless of what the “establishment” actually says or of the history of various ideas which the “establishment” accepts. That is,
Scientists say so -> It is wrong.
Of course, this simplifies many problems.
Sorry, I misread Matt B.’s post to refer to Burrow’s post. My mistake.
I think like anyone, a finger is being held to the pulse of the conversation in governemental agendas to make sure that it is up todate? Qui Non!
My ignornance is excuseable
but the fact remains that the theory of gravitational waves is still hotly considered as such, yet there is so much mounting evidence to say that waves do spread throughout.
But to some who have a high standards, might say all the while thinking, that science would send forth it’s highest regard for experimental validity, that to see this in a solid form, you have to have direct evdience?
While learning, I had seen the differences, where poltical agenda would send out its scientist to uphold climate perspective and its posturing. For the reasons and the actions it had decided to do, so we have reputable sicentists who speak on climate that call it bogus. Supports the current status and agenda of the science that it would like to see held as a model for consideration amongst the world population, while it continues to disregard and not sign Kyoto.
Even within sciences own backyard, these idealization of experimental validation is a signators mark of acceptance, while theoretical valuations amongst the stringy views, support for, is held to a negative connatation whilst the push to move through these theoretical spaces continue to develope, it is on the grounds that it is not acceptable?
So while I may have my own politcal views and having read that same article on the day Sean did, I am confused as to what message should be sent?
I am working the encapsualted geometrical background while venturing through this topic, so already, I am marked the fool.
The one thing I wish people could understand is that they get the Big Bang and, say, modern technology together. If the Big Bang (by which I mean, what a scientist thinks the Big Bang is) is *just a theory* so are a lot of other things we rely on everyday. Ultimately, the ideas used in any one field of physics permeate all the other ones. I have trouble imagining reasonable scenarios where we might have screwed up understanding the signatures of a hot, dense universe in the past and still understand how all of our technology works now.
I think the gulf between how scientific types think and how nonscientific types think is become much greater than I ever thought possible. Even if, in the end, this antiscience trend doesn’t take hold, apparently a great number of people in the world think in ways that are entirely alien to me. It makes me think that scientific thinking may not be as natural as I thought it was growing up. I suspect this goes beyond science vs. religion.
The condensed matter theorist’s observation that there is a chasmic gulf between scientific and other thought modes, and this has little to do with religion, illiberality or anything else along those lines, is only too true. Perhaps this is no more evident than in the wider interpretation of the word ‘theory’: something not applicable to the real world - ‘just’ a theory, in other words. (This may be a view derived from literary, social and other ’soft’ forms of theory). I recall the hoots of laughter that greeted the news that I would be attending a theoretical barbeque (i.e. with theoretician colleagues) drew from non-scientist friends - surely I realised that, being theoretical, the BBQ could not take place. As is mentioned in an arlier comment, by reinforcing of this use of the word theory creationists etc are using science’s language to subvert the subject itself. To a scientist, a theory is a body of related concepts, derived from and testable by experiment, that has the power to both systematise and predict; to the rest of the world ‘theoretical’ is synonymous with ‘unsubstantiated bollocks’
Sean, a theory used to be a concise statement of facts. Nowadays for some reason “theory” is taken to mean speculation or nonsense. (I won’t mention “str*ng” theory as a possible cause for this problem.)
Spacetime says distance is light speed multiplied by the time in the past that the event occurred. So the recession of galaxies is varying with time, in the framework of spacetime that we can actually see and experience with measurements. A speed varying linearly with time is acceleration Hc = 10^-10 ms^-2, hence outward force of big bang is mass of universe. By the 3rd law of motion, you then get an inward force, the gauge boson exchange force, which causes the general relativity contraction and also gravity.
Should not be dismissed as a personal pet theory, just because it is widely overlooked? You have to face facts: the big bang as widely accepted ignores spacetime and quantum gravity implications.
The ironic thing, as I say here, is that conventional Big Bang is more consistent with a creator than Steady State theory or than speculative extensions of BB such as eternal inflation. This shows that Deutsch is a biblical literalist, and his use of the words “intelligent design” as the alternative should therefore be an embarassment to the ID proponents that trie to negate its creationist roots.
Facts have never influenced zealots like that Leonidas that posted earlier.
Even if you show them the facts, they simply refuse to believe them. Just a simple 1+1=2, they will not believe and that is it. No matter what you put in front of them, they will ignore it. Besides, the way they ‘believe’ makes it so much easier to accept the world. That way they don’t have to ‘know’ anything. ‘Thinking’ will be done for them.
It continues to amaze me that ID is being proposed as a science without having to live up to the standards of science. Ask an ID proponent if they followed the scientific process in coming to their conclusions and they will say it is simply self evident. By simply considering the idea that ID is the “opposing viewpoint” to evolution and Big Bang is to undermine science itself, which is exactly what they want!
A theory? A THEORY? I wish Mr. Bush would be just that, a theory.. Ack, Call it whatever you want, but everything started out somewhere, why would the universe be in constant expension then?
Kiltak
[Geeks Are Sexy]Tech. News
OK, for one… all religions must die and be wiped off this earth. There is no point to them. They were created to settle doubts about things we didn’t understand 2000 years ago, but now we do, so god and all his little disciples can go walk off a cliff and die. There comes a time when religion and the belief in a supernatural being becomes an issue that shoudl be erradicated. This is a fine example, when some religious asshat decides to make the one place, where science is respected over everything else, equal to the religious fruitbags. Religious belief in such a sense is a mental disease. This guy should be sent to prison for even THINKING we shoudl teach intelligent design in equal parts with the truth. Well, we’ll see how ****ed up Kansas will be in a few years, and them maybe people will learn something about their immaginary friend, god and jesus. If you read it in a book, written thousands of years after so and so walked the earth, you can ebt it’s fiction. How about this for an idea, clerics and nutjobs… how about we bury “Good Night Moon” for a thousand years, have someone in the future read it, and have that become the new gospil? Sound stupid and idiotic? THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT THE RELIGIONS ARE DOING TODAY!!!! ****ing it up for the rest of us, the sane part of the population. We should crate these fanatics up and ship them to the moon. At least then they can be closer to “god”
Perhaps the word theory needs some exposition- the evidence we have for the bing bang’s truth is all circumstancial. Admittedly it’s all but impossible to have court-admissable evidence for something that happened before time existed, but nonetheless no hard evidence exists. I have no better theory for why the universe seems to be so obviously expanding, but note the key word in this sentance. The best explanation, even if it is the only reasonable explanation, is not by default hard fact. Theory becomes accepted scientific fact when it is used as an assumption of truth in further theories and contributes to expected conclusions.
lol, admittedly, Mr Bush is not very intelligent (unsupported theory is that his IQ is 91, half of Clinton’s 182), but the fact that an idiot speaks a fact doesn’t make the fact false.
If you want to look to the leaders of science of the past 100 years for the stautus of intelligent design (stretching 100 years), look at some of the writings of Darwin and Hawkings. I wish I had quotes, so essentially it’s up to you to believe me, but I beleive the most quoted line of Darwin by Christians is paraphrased something like ‘to say that something as complicated as the eye developed by chance and selection is idiocy’ (I’m sure someone with a better memory can quote the bumper sticker). Hawkings, a strong proponent of the big bang theory, promotes the idea that several factors, including the exact expansion rate of the universe, the balance between strong and weak forces, the very existance of forces such as gravity, is so exact and specific that to say they came about by chance is nonsense.
It seems to me that this guy had intentions to discount the Big Bang Theory (as I often see it cased) to promote his Intelligent Design ideas; good points, but with bad intentions. There are no points, in my mind, where these two theories conflict. Intelligent Design simply tries to point out that the complexity of life, the tendancy of systems to break down and not build up, and other almost universally accepted principles point to the likelihood of an intelligence behind the universe, not that any creator directly did this or that. Even if you’d like to associate Intelligent Design with Christianity, a careful reading of Genesis points to God having a passive but direct control over the events; the explosion of the universe, the slow exact expansion of the universe, the buildup of biological systems, etc. all contribute to what the Bible says happened, not detract from it.
This doesn’t say much that Science and Cynic didn’t say a few posts back, and I’m sure that it isn’t gramatically perfect, so please roast what I said, and not how I said it.
athiest- don’t let ANYBODY tell you what to think, make sure that you’re right. Do your own research, and go with the ideas that fit what you observe best, not the theory that TV tells you is correct.
I agree with Deutsch, it IS JUST A THEORY! And as for the college admissions fellow who was flustered because someone who applied had a Christian background, that’s plain discrimination. It would be no different if he were to refuse admission because someone is black, to refuse admission because someone is a Christian. I am suprised so few people who agree with Deutsch have written in response to this nonesense, but I suppose they are busy working hard so that the rest of you “Thinkers” don’t have to do so. There is a reason Bush won both elections and maintained a higher popular vote total than Bill Clinton in each election. Kooks like you are in the minority and day of Liberal hippies running the country are long gone. That’s precisely why Republicans control both houses of Congress, the Presidency and the Supreme Court. Face it, the country has spoken and you are and your crazy beliefs are in the minority.
That atheist fellow is a moron. He/she believes we should imprison someone because of their beliefs-
“This guy should be sent to prison for even THINKING we shoudl teach intelligent design in equal parts with the truth.”
What an idiot. I didn’t bother to read the rest of the post, because he/she proved themselves to be not-so-intelligent.
Andy said:
“lol, admittedly, Mr Bush is not very intelligent (unsupported theory is that his IQ is 91, half of Clinton’s 182), but the fact that an idiot speaks a fact doesn’t make the fact false.”
Can we please not resort to such obvious and verifiable nonsense, even in jest?
And by the way, it’s “Hawking,” not “Hawkins.” You’ve just earned yourself five points on the crackpot scale.
While I understand the reaction people are having to this whole thing, the fact remains that the Big Bang is, in fact, a theory. It has not been proven, nor can it be proven. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not correct, just that we can’t prove whether it’s true or false unless somebody invents a time machine. All the extrapolation in the world can’t establish the initial conditions of the universe. Furthermore, any attempt to prove the Big Bang that I’ve ever seen was reliant on uniformitarian philosophy. To me, the idea that the only processes that have ever existed in the history of time are the ones that we can still observe today is absurd. On what basis do we assume that we can accurately extrapolate anything beyond recorded history, beyond what we can actually measure? That’s voodoo science, in my opinion.
Take plate tectonics, for example. We know the Earth’s plates move today at particular speeds, but the uniformitarian philosophy that governs current plate tectonics assumes that they have always moved at those speeds. They can’t have ever moved at different speeds because we don’t observe any processes today that could suggest a variable speed. My question is, how are we to prove that they have always moved at those speeds, and not faster or slower than we observe today, without having actually been there. Could they have moved at some catastrophic speed 5,000 years ago to create a global flood as some Creationists would suggest? I don’t pretend to have the answer to that question, but I do know that we can’t prove it one way or the other because we can’t make direct observations. We can only extrapolate based on data we can actually measure, and like it or not, extrapolation is flawed because it necessitates assumptions of initial conditions and constant processes.
I wonder about the idea that simply because the Republicans run the federal government that suddenly science must be given over in favor of some mystical hoodoo. Science isn’t about elections; it’s about observation, speculation, and experimentation.
It is precisely the blind faith in a divine protector that creates the serious misgivings I have about putting Christians anywhere that might have some kind of scientific involvement. I mean, do I really want the guy installing the lightning rod on my new skyscraper to worry more about how he’s going to keep Jesus from striking it down than the precepts of electrical engineering? Do I want a doctor that would rather invoke the sacred name than give me the round of antibiotics for that infection?
But really - let’s split the difference. Christians, I give you everything that happened before the universe began. Hell, I don’t even *pretend* to know what happened then. Just give us science-types everything after the Big Bang; we understand it well enough to make Coc-Cola, light up Las Vegas, and give the world the very internet you’re looking at today. Mana from heaven, indeed.
dearest Ben-
let’s see.. which of your idiotic remarks would i like to most kick in the nuts..
heres one.
” It would be no different if he were to refuse admission because someone is black, to refuse admission because someone is a Christian ”
well actually there is a difference.. just because a person is black does not mean he or she:
1) has an IQ less than your age
2) is completely and utterly challenged in terms of reality
3) has a sheep mentality
4) cant count beyond 2006 when it comes to history.
all of the above are qualities i find in the christian right.
i could go on, but suffice it to say that being a fundy christian makes you unqualified to breath, much less enter a graduate program in the sciences. you cannot assume that about a black person.
if they had only killed Constantine when he was a child, we would have none of this crap.
arf
coyote
Ben, ben, ben…*sigh*
Let’s see…The difference between being born a minority and choosing to be a “Christian”? Hmmm.. Could it be that one of them is immutible and genetic and one of them is flexible to the point of being meaningless and based on current social mores?
It’s really obvious that you need to learn to think…Oh wait, that would be against the tenents of your “faith”.
Listen, little boy…Stay away from the adult commentary. It only makes you look foolish and irritates people who actually have critical thinking skills. We’re already irritated to the point of distraction by your intellectual peers in the White House.
It’s far more nuanced than that. And it is likewise far more nuanced than Coyote’s defense.
The point I was attempting to make was that 10 years ago, I would not have thought twice about admitting this person. However, the pervasiveness of christian-fundamentalist movements that seek to discredit, undermine, and explain away overwhelming scientific evidence increases my awareness that this student might be completely unwilling (or unable) to come to terms with multiple lines of evidence that point to the Universe being more than 10 billion years old. I don’t care at all if he thinks the Universe was created by intersecting branes, by the FSM, by God or by Yaweh. I do care that he can reason like a scientist, even when the evidence contradicts a strictly literal reading of his particular theology. I have no obligation to admit him if he can’t, in the same way that a biology program is not obligated to admit someone who rejects basic conclusions of genetics due to a religous text.
IF ID or Creationism is the truth then why doesn’t the bible mention dinosaurs? Fossils prove they existed. Soooo if all the life forms were created at once then why doesn’t the bible, koran or whatever mention them? You would think something the size of a brontasauraus would get at least some text eh? Of course that could explain why they all went extinct….. Noah didn’t build the Ark big enough. He only took the wee creatures. hehehehe But seriously I think religion plays an important part in many peoples lives. But that is where it should stay. In their personal life. It should not be forced into the sciences or into the lives of people who believe differently and especially NOT into a government that was founded on the precepts of freedom of religion. Too bad the Bushites were soo terrible in their History lessons they did not learn about Article 11 in the Treaty of Tripoli. That pretty much says it all.
Hmm. By Ben’s logic — that someone who chooses to be Christian should not be discriminated against, much like someone who is born black — he’s just invalidated the right wing Christian argument that someone who’s gay should be discriminated against.
I think that any argument that throws logic and reason out the window –whether it be discrimination against a certain person or persons; or the damning of fact-based science in favor of faith and belief–is automatically suspect.
I’m not wholly convinced about the big bang theory either and I’m as far from being Christian as you can be. A scientific model may fit all of the evidence and still be wrong you know.
That does not justify attaching the word ‘theory’ only to the elements of the scientific orthodoxy that most deviate from the scriptures. That’s just silly.
But perhaps it’s better not to fight on this battlefield just in case…..
Hey, you guys got FARKed (www.fark.com). I got bogged down from links as well, digg.com slammed me. Looks like there is a LOT of interest in this story. I’ll be very curious in deed to see what NASA does in the next few days; the budget is to be announced tomorrow.
Yeah - the traffic is quite amazing Phil. Welcome to all our new visitors. We hope you’ll come back again for some of our other science/science policy/science and the media/science and politics/fluff posts.
So, science types can be just as strident as religious people??? Who knew?
Schmucks.
I think “intelligent design” and the big bang theory could complement each other very well if people were more reasonable. The big bang is all but proven, but what made it happen?? IDers are not fighting the right battle. Fall back and defend the defensable.
I’m with you Rich. I’ve known plenty of scientists who had faith, and were able to reconcile the two with no problem by putting God outside of science. Science cannot, at this point, explain what caused the Big Bang, just that it happened. Those of faith can put God as that cause without contradicting science.
The problem is that science can’t explain the BB’s cause yet, but may be able to do so eventually. I think this is what scares the religious people, and makes them fight against science. Science has been pushing religion further and further out, and the religious fear that eventually science will be able to explain away God. (If science can ever do it, it’ll probably be well after we’re all dead, so don’t worry so much people.)
More of the same on the ‘theory’ confusion, though the extension to one of the fundamental tenets of 20th century cosmology is disturbing.
The various idiotic comments, here and elsewhere, attempting to draw a distinction between ‘theories’ and ‘facts’ are more in need of correction from philosophers than from from scientists.
Here’s a brainteaser for you: what precisely is the difference between a ‘theory’ like evolution or inflationary cosmology and a ‘fact’ like, say, that I just finished drinking a beer. After all, neither can be ‘proven’ (important side-note: ONLY mathematical and logical propositions can be ‘proven’)-I could, after all, be dreaming. In fact, as Bertrand Russell argued, I have, in fact, precisely no reason at all to believe that the world was not created exactly five minutes ago, along with my memories and all other traces of the ‘past’ (how would I tell the difference?).
No one (or hardly anyone) actually believes these skeptical hypotheses, of course. What these cases bring out is that purportedly obvious and unquestionable facts (about ‘medium-sized dry goods’ like chairs and beer bottles) are often more like ‘theories’ than one might think- both require various assumptions, of varying degrees of credibility, in order to be justified. I have evidence that I drank a beer ten minutes ago. I have evidence that a big bang occured many years ago. There is no difference in kind betwen the two cases. Both are either true are false, and, fortunately, in both cases I have every reason to believe they are true.
What this suggests is not a problem with either ‘theories’ or ‘facts’, but rather only the observation that these are not really sharply defined categories at all. Thus, to claim that ‘the big bang theory is not a fact’ is to make a distinction without a difference. Both ‘theories’ and purported ‘facts’ (as that term is ordinarily used) can be true or false, strong or weak, justified or unjustified. But to say ‘X is a (strong) theory’ need impugn X no more than to say that ‘X is a (well-established) fact’.
I stand by my original comments, though I do thoroughly appreciate and understand the intelligent rebuttal of the poster about post-graduate admissions. The coyote fellow is, however, a fool. I assure you, my IQ is quite a bit higher than you alluded to and my arguements are accurate. You have simply not thought your own arguements through to the point that you can have an intelligent discussion without resorting to liberal party propaganda and biased comments against Christians. To the poster who made the comment about the ultra-conservative issues with the gay lifestyle and gay marriage, I would tend to agree with you, believe it or not. Unfortunately, we are in the vast minority in that regard, based on the last election. In ever single state that had a ballot question about legalizing gay marriage, the voters overwhelmingly rejected it. I personally, don’t much care about a person’s sexual orientation or physical inclinations, but again, I am in the minority. As far as the current discussion, I again point out that the “big bang theory” is just that, a theory. Nobody was around to document it and there is no indesputable proof that it ever happened. Because some scientists say they believe it is the truth doesn’t mean I will follow their findings blindly. To me, it will always be a theory and I choose to follow my own beliefs in the creation of the universe.
In some ways I am becoming quite saddened by how any science post becomes a fight between ’scientists’ and ‘creationists’ and then small sides with people who want to stand in one camp but listen to the other.
This one is a bit of an exception because it started as a fight between them but in the end it became a name calling fiest as ‘Ben’ and others started.
I personally would like to see all of humanity move to the point where we no longer need an all knowing all powerful father figure to send us to our rooms for the rest of creation if we don’t do the right thing. The church used to be the Law, the News and the political system all wrapped into one package. You lived, learned and often died within the same package. Much of the churches actions and behaviours fit within the MEME’s theory of social evolution (sorry I don’t have a link for that). Today the very thing that caused the religous groups to survive and spread are whats causing them to clash with each other.
As information became more and more available to people we started to question the need for it. We also saw the corruption of religion spread. The two events are not linked directly, but as people became more and more able to share information, the one event reported the other. It also caused the church to try to unify it’s own teachings, to make them better able to be spread and shared. All religions of the world have had voilence between it’s own followers because the others didn’t believe the right thing. If it wasn’t for the spread of the information neither side would have known.
That is why I will personally never follow a specific church, I can look up the history of it and see all the ways that it went against it’s own faithful, how it changed becaused on politcial needs.
Good science is different in that it teaches us to always question what it shows, to try to find out the little bits of false in what it presents as true. To pry down to the next level. To Think. It is always changing, and if you read almost any one scientist they will have had aspects of their theorys changed later, or at least yet unanswered questions about some of their statements asked.
If we could simply get the people who have closed their ears to read the science and then ask the questions that scientists haven’t seen yet, it would be a victory of sorts.
The problem right now is that we have a poltical will existing to use science as a tool to fight, and science isn’t a good tool for war. The old joke goes that you should never have scientists on your juryboard, any new fact and they go and change their mind. So any time a scientist is put forward to defend something they will give up a soundbite that can be spin to work against them. This has caused scientists to be afriad to speak to the public. I know I wouldn’t want to be the voice heard trying to explain the big bang may be a theory but unlike the ID theory we have attempted to prove that it may be true and have many reasons to believe that even if it isn’t 100% correct it is close enough that we can use it for now to ask more questions.
One last thought before I’m done here, people are always saying that the public doesn’t understand ‘this’ or ‘that’ and something should be done. No one, as far as I know, as ever come up with a good plan to explain anything to the public. I know that I don’t want to ‘dumb down’ the theories I learned in junior high so that a public that watches tv will be interested for the 30 second soundbit we give them, but can we see any other way to start giving the public the education that almost everyone agrees they need?
(Of course the question is why don’t they learn that in their own schools could be asked, but I fear that most of the supporters of ID and other religous believes came from seperate school systems and have at least their high school if not college degrees.)
This has got to be the funniest story today. A Bush appointee ensures that Big Bang, the theory, is referred to as… a theory… and liberals get upset.
Does being anti-Bush really blind you to the fact that the Big Bang is “just a theory”? A theory can nonetheless be quite true, but as any scientist would still assess, it is still a theory.
Deutsch might have wanted to have it called a theory for all the wrong reasons, but he was still right.
Even funnier is that the NASA website .
Read the link if you seek to be informed, and not pushed along on the latest anti-Bush knee-jerk exodus of the day.
Ah damn, where did the link go?
The NASA website has said that the Big Bang is a theory for a long time, ever since the Clinton administration.
Read all about it.
What does that have to do with anything?
Big Bang cosmology is a “theory,” just like Plate Tectonics is a theory and Quantum Electrodynamics is a theory and (yes) Evolution is a theory.
I don’t give a rat’s ass whether you choose to believe in Quantum Electrodynamics or not. And feel free to believe that færies blow the continents around, like soap bubbles in the bath, if you find that more theologically-congenial.
Just don’t presume to tell scientists that these are the subject of controversy, and that they must, therefore, listen respectfully when you bring up the Færie Theory of continental drift.
For the record, Christianity is not about an all powerful father figure condemning us for eternity for not doing the right thing. We do all stand condemned for our sins, but the good news of Christianity is that this all powerful father has sent his son to pay the penalty for us so that we will not have to suffer for eternity. To those who will accept this undeserved gift, Christ will stand by them on the day of judgement, and Christ’s righteousness will be credited to them who believe. That is the grace of God, and the message of Christianity.
Re: Ben : I agree with Deutsch, it IS JUST A THEORY!
Obviously, you would have no problem with the appropriate labelling being used everywhere, right? If you feel it’s necessary to label every theory as such so as to remind yourself to dismiss it, then we should be equally dilligent with the terms “Intelligent Design Fiction“, “Creationist Fiction“, etc.
You may choose to believe in them for your own personal reasons, but that’s all they are and all they ever will be, unless of course some thinking Christian were to put them to even the tiniest measure of scientific scrutiny, at which point they would cease to exist.
The sad truth that so many religious zealots exist within this country and around the world is something that you should be ashamed of. Too bad you seem to be one of them or you wouldn’t waste that IQ you claim to have by defending them. A person of strong faith need not attack others to prove it.
I saw this discussion linked off of fark and I agree that everything beyond observable data must be termed “theory” and should be viewed as cirmumstantial evedince.
The reason for this reply is that I am interested in what the people who may have read about the scientist who recently published his data of a sattelite they sent out i believe in the 50’s or 60’s. That has reached the outter rim of the galaxy and left it for dead. Yet, they have been still recieving basic information such as speed.
Anyway this scientist has found out that it has been slowing down at a rate inconclusive to the rate that physics would predetermine.
So for the past 20 odd years he has tried to find something wrong with the data, like a glitch, yet has found nothing. He says if the data is accurate it will change everything from black matter to the physics of gravity.
I am just an “average joe” and so I am sure I screwed up alot of the facts. this is just the gist of what I read about a couple years back.
But if what he says is true wouldn’t it change the big bang theory also?
Just wanted to deter for a minute, while holding Jacques protest in mind.
condensedmattertheoristUltimately, the ideas used in any one field of physics permeate all the other ones. I have trouble imagining reasonable scenarios where we might have screwed up understanding the signatures of a hot, dense universe in the past and still understand how all of our technology works now.
For instance, what one can hope for in what arises from situation in Gold ion collisions, sets the stage for, how we can now look at “two sides of coin?”
Yet, such states created from such action would have been more telling to you as the “emergent properties,” then what every other science person might have recognized. They didn’t know the value of models that would help lead them too?
Laughlin, still entrances me with what ever you like to choose, from “drunk sargeant majors or to bricks.” Where did this materialize from?
So the theory then, would be the hope of condense matter theorist raised along logical/consistant thinking, from a certain time?
oops I meant “dark matter” where it counts.
I think what everyone is missing is that it doesn’t really matter that the Big Bang is “just” a theory. The fact is that it is the prevailing theory among scientists. NASA, a scientific organization last time I checked, has no business debating ID vs. evolution. They operate under currently accepted scientific practices and principles until such a time as those principles are proven wrong or a “better” theory is accepted by the scientific community. Religious belief used to be that the earth was the center of the universe. Clearly science has done all right with its “theories” over the last 500 years. Perhaps religion should butt out.
pigwood, you’re thinking of the Pioneer anomaly — purportedly anomalous acceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft as they drift away from the Solar System. It’s very likely to simply be some unknown systematic effect that nobody has yet found, although there is some chance that it is a sign of some interesting gravitational effect. It is certainly not evidence against the Big Bang model. Again, some things in science really have been tested beyond the point where they are worth doubting any more, and the Big Bang is one of them — we’ll continue to fill in the details, but we’re not going to find any evidence against the general framework.
Ben:
It’s sad that the applicant referenced by “anonymous” had to be subjected to additional checks because of his background. It’s sadder still that it was necessary because of the death-grip the lunatic fringe of the Christian Church has on this country socially and politically.
And another thing: just because Bush and Company managed to convince the majority that they were in the right doesn’t necessarily make it so. No one has a monopoly on the truth, and the more certain you are that you have absolute truth, the more likely you are to be horribly, violently wrong.
PS: Quit borrowing talking points from Sean Hannity.
This Salon link investigates previous writings by Deutsch and how he endeared himself to the Christian Right and the Bush admin.
One thing I think is getting lost in this whole kerfluffle (hear and at other blogs, such as Mr. Plait’s excellent site) is what the guy really said. He said the Big Bang theory is “opinion, not fact”. It is “just a theory”, but a theory is more than just an “opinion”. That’s wrong. Also, he’s the one that injected religion into the discussion where it had absolutely no place. It is not NASA’s job to provide people with any sort of religious thought or education whatsoever. That’s why we have churches on every street corner. Given the recent hoo-hah about the administration’s leaning on the climatologist inre: global warming, I also thought the young man’s note had something of a threatening tone to it, but I honestly don’t think it was done with the intent of “destroying science in the name of GAWD!!!”
I just think it’s another example of a woefully underqualified political apointee overreaching his boundaries (and learning) and looking rock-stupid in the process. And, no, having problems with a 24-year-old journalism grad who’s only qualifications are, apparently, working on the Bush re-election team put into such a heavy position is not a “knee-jerk anti-Bush” reaction. Making such an excuse, however, might could be construed as a knee-jerk defend-Bush-at-all-costs reaction, but that is debatable.
Great blog. I’m fascinated by modern physics; I just wish I could understand most of it.
Ah two questions…where did the stuff that “big banged” come from? And would those that want the nonemclature of theory attached to the “big bang” also embrace that any mention of God be referred to as a theory?
[...] Der Eingentlich Grund, warum ich all das schreibe, ist, dass es jetzt auch die “Theorie” vom Big Bang, also der Entstehung des Universums getroffen hat. Ein übereifriger Funktionär der Bush-Regierung will der NASA verbieten, den Big Bang als eine Tatsache darzustellen. Wenn es nicht so traurig wäre, könnte man sich darüber totlachen. [...]
[...] 在美国，å‘生ç€ä¸€äº›äº‹æƒ…，问题很严é‡ï¼Œç§‘å¦å®¶ä»¬å¾ˆæ„¤æ€’。下é¢ä¸€æ®µæ¥è‡ª The New York Times，via：Cosmic Variance In October, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add the word “theory†after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times. [...]
I think scientitsts should explain Karl Popper’s paper on what makes a theory scientific and well estabilshed, to journalists and public. The big bang is a theory but it passes with flying colours. ID theorys fail (Because they are not falsifiable) This kid is correct in saying that Big bang is a theory but it is a widely accepted theory. NASA should tell people about the big bang its has no remit to give the ‘other side of the story’ and therefore should not be gagged
Sagger:
It seems to be, again, that the people who need to explain the demarcation problem (i.e., what’s science and what isn’t) are the people who think seriously about that problem- nameley, philosophers of science. Scientists know what good science is, but they know this tacitly, as reflected in their practices. Philosophers, on the otherhand, have been dicussing falsification and demarcation much more explicitly for decades, and, BTW, are rather pessimistic that Popper’s criterion can serve. Contra ID/anti-big-bangers, the ‘debates’ around these issues are largely philosophical rather than scientific- scientists would be best served (and have been best served) expressing their judgments about what is an is not good science rather than wading into the murky waters of what constitutes science at all.
Sean, Mark, or someone…
You might have already done this, but maybe it would be worthwhile to write a post explaining precisely the current evidence for big bang cosmology, perhaps pausing carefully to explain a couple of points:
1. Big bang cosmology is about evolution of the universe and its contents from a hot dense state to the present
2. An initial singularity is not really part of the theory - we know we need new physics to describe the universe at sufficiently early times.
3. Numerical predictions: abundence of light elements, cosmic redshift, CMB, etc. Some of the posts above suggested a lack of awareness that big bang cosmology makes quantitative predictions about nucleosynthesis for example that agree well with observations.
I don’t know enough of the details to do this justice myself.
Hey guys! I’m a devout Christian, but also highly interested in science. I don’t see how there is even an issue here.
As you know, the Bible is the premier Christian manuscript. However, Genesis 1:2 says,
“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness [was] upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”
…”and the earth was without form…”
That means that the earth was there. Before the creation story.
It is my interpretation that the Big Bang theory is in fact a truth. However, I believe that the process was set off by a higher power. Then the creation story proceeded from there. Please post any agreement/disagreement you may have on this issue, as I am very interested to find your opinion.
Bush is such an idiot. Apparently his interns are too.
I’m glad Tim came along and wrote that. The reality is most Americans are like him; they may be pro-religion, but that doesn’t mean they’re anti-science. Science and Religion don’t conflict, it’s when they try to be things they aren’t that they do. ID/Creationism/whatever isn’t science, but it could be taught in some philosophy class. And just because things like evolution are sound theory does not mean there is no god. Science is about facts and verifiability, religion is about faith in things that cannot be proven one way or the other. Scientists, if you want to get out of the doghouse with the American public, drop the ’science trumps religion’ mumbo-jumbo. When you say that you’re claiming to have all the answers, and you’re no better than the fundies. You’re smarter than that…stop it.
As for Ben…no. Clinton got a lower percentage of the vote because of a guy, you might have heard of him, Ross Perot? He got about 10% in 96, and like 20% in 92…for the record, 3rd party candidates got like 3% in 2000, and only 1% in 2004…if you really want to compare popularity, why don’t you check out approval ratings for the two, I’m pretty sure Bush’s is lousy right now.
IMHO, the reason Bush won is because the Democrats are retarded, and are so completely disorganized and messed up that they can’t figure out anything, and the American public realized this. This is why the Republicans were able to effectively focus on the ‘morals’ argument, because they have the upper hand, and they’re better organized and can more effectively swing the debate their way. Basically, the Dems need to unf**k themselves, and soon.
[...] Administration official: %u201CBig Bang%u201D is just a theory | Cosmic Variance [...]
You know, as someone who believes in both God and science, I get distressed when people in authority reveal worldviews that seem uncomfortably shortsighted. I’m a big fan of Stephen Jay Gould’s notion of “non-overlapping magisteriaâ€. Belief in the Almighty is for me a matter of faith. If a divine and omnipotent power did indeed create the universe, it may indeed be flawless and free standing according to rational laws. Therefore scientific discoveries would be equally valid with or without the element of spiritual belief. I also find attempts to label creationism as science offensive to both science and religion; there is something very 14th century about the whole idea of saying “Well, we can’t possibly understand why this happened, so God must have gone ‘poof’.†I don’t see much difference in this line of thinking from the days when man didn’t know where flies came from or how water becomes ice, and thus applied purely theological explanations to natural phenomena. I have to conclude that there are likely provable explanations for the development of the human eye and other “holes†in current theory. Inasmuch as I respect it as a neat contemporary interpretation of the traditional creation story, from a scientific perspective, Intelligent Design seems remarkably lazy. The more I know of science, the more I am aware of its intricacy and innate harmony, the more I stand in awe and wonder of this world and the Almighty. So, while I find attempts to incorporate ID into hard science misguided, as religion, it seems downright insulting. Just what are they getting at by pushing creationism past the bounds of theology into science? The universe is God’s creation, so you’re hoping to find where he signed his name? Do you need something solid to wave at unbelievers? Jesus refused to perform miracles in order to prove his divinity to Herod, so if you’re looking for proof of the divine under a microscope or in a canyon wall, it seems to me you’re barking up the wrong tree.
Simon (88) check out Evidence for the Big Bang at talkorigins.org, which I added as a link to the post in the last update. It’s only flaw is that it gives so much evidence that one might get the false impression that there is some controvery to be addressed, otherwise why bother? The truth is, there isn’t any scientific controversy, just as there is none about natural selection.
Tim (89) — a short time after the Big Bang (or whatever was the actual beginning of our observable universe, we don’t pretend to know), the temperature was so incredibly high that atomic nuclei themselves couldn’t exist, much less atoms and planets. So no scientist believes that the Earth was there before the creation, in any ordinary sense.
This is why I don’t agree with Gould as quoted by Rhymes With Silver (93). Science and religion do overlap sometimes; they both make claims about how the universe works. And I will definitely choose the ones suggested by science, as they seem to have a much firmer foundation.
It is nice to see that not everyone who is faithful and devoted to a specific religion (in this case, Christianity) isn’t a qack-job. Tim and Rymes With Silver, bravo. You have shown that there ARE brains among the truyl faithful.
I find it immensely offensive that the administration would pull a move like this, for pretty much the same reasons that RymeswithSilver stated. I am not religious, however. But I do respect the fact that a person has a right to believe whatever they want, especially when it comes to spiritual aspects. The theocratic lean of the bush administration has be worried for many reasons.
While I do not live in america, I do live right next door. As a result, the policies and decisions made by said administration directly affect me in numerous ways. Trade, military, law and countless other areas are highly impacted.
Intelligent Design is, simply put, flawed at its very root. It is a not-so-cleverly disguised ruse, a more than obvious ploy to enforce a christian dogma on everyone in the nation, even those who do not have any interest in christianity (Muslims, Hindus, Jews, Taoists, Bhuddists, Atheists, Agnostics and Deists, and all the rest). Every time one of its supporters open their mouths it becomes a trying task to not laugh out loud.
However, so far, they have been utterly unsuccesful in their rather ridiculous attempts to force their blatantly idiotic concepts into the educational and scientific communities. We can only hope they keep it up.
This is proof that science needs a public face, much like a president of its own. someone liek Brian Greene perhaps? Anyone that can appeal to the masses and at least get people to understand that science:
a)does NOT ever state that there can BE no god.
b)has absolutely nothing to do with the bible, save for whatever flimsy ties there may be at the very basic level
c)is more than “ideas” and “unsubstantiated thoughts”
Apples to Oranges, and yet the fundamentalist idiots do everything in their power to push their stupidity on the masses, who, for the most part, arent listening.
I see it, simply put, as a post sept. 11th bout of insanity. One that has spread like a plague among the idiotic and is little more than propaganda designed to enforce christian beliefs on those who are the “enemies of america”
And so far, it seems to be working. Except for one tiny little flaw. Forgive the snideness of this message in general. Im just a bit …overwhelmed by the degree of idiocy im seeing lately….
Dramatization:
“lets go to war in Iraq. They have oil we need. However, we will use terrorism as a mask despite the fact that we will find no evidence whatsoever to support this claim after we illegaly invade and obliterate teh country”
“good idea, lets do it. THEN well force them to change their entire government structre to be more ilke america!”
“GOOD idea!”
and then the vote happens. And oh my GOODNESS. They happen to vote in an anti-america bunch (Hamas) in the process. Didnt see THAT coming a mile away. You carpet bombed their country for fREEDOM! How DARE they not elect a pro-america group!
“what should we do about this, guys?”
“why, lets threaten to screw them in the rectal cavity and other fun stuff!!!!”
“GREAT IDEA!”
*huff*
anyhow. Nuff of that. You get the idea. I am rather dissapointed in north america in general the last while. My own countries recent election of the Conservative party only strengthens this feeling. The party itself is atempting to go ass-backwards on the Kyoto protocols..somethign that should NEVER happen. Misssile defense is also part of their agenda. Which is totally pointless and a waste of cash. The list goes on and on.
We soon will not jsut be JOKED about being “americas retaerded cousin”…..we will be the United States of Canada.
hope to god that never happens. Or I am moving to iceland.
gah, typos. oops. My apologies.
This is my first post on a topic like this, so bear with me. I am not a religious person and i know there are serious holes in the scince behind the BB, but people need to realize is that all religions have such large holes that they become unrational, unlogical, contrived and assinine. ALL RELIGIONS try to get us to believe something or act some way, and every religion has believers that seem to think theirs is the best and only true faith, the incas and the mayans worshipped animals and the sun, the native americans had an all powerful nature-god, the greeks and romans had an entire pantheon of gods with human-like motives/agendas/bodies, than not coincidentally we as humans got a bit smarter and we started monotheism, which is what most religions and a majority of people belive today-ONE GOD-ALL POWERFUL-LOOKING DOWN ON US-ETC ETC, THROUGHOUT TIME WE HAVE BELIEVED WITH ALL OUR FAITH THAT “OUR” RELIGION WAS THE RIGHT/CORRECT/TRUE AND THE OTHERS WERE WRONG/ILLOGICAL/EVIL. Now if intelligence and organization pushed us on our path towards one god, what will further intelligence/advancements lead us to?! IF ANYONE HAS ANY PROOF OF ANY GOD OR DEMIGOD OR CREATOR- NOW IS THE TIME TO BRING IT FORTH. The Bible is a good moral tool/guide-but not filled with literal truths. When the corrupt and moneyhungry church edited the BIBLE so that it fit their money machine, they left us a shell of what would have been a wonderful text to teach us how to live morally. Instead we got a book filled with gaps, errors, and contadictions.
The job of science is to observe, describe, and then predict, or guess. You can not observe what happened during the Big Bang. The fellow who drank the beer was a first-hand observer of the event, and, indeed, was a party to the action. Nobody alive, nor anyone in recorded history, was either a party to the Big Bang or an observer.
Why would we need new physics to describe what happened before and around the Big Bang time? Would that indicate that current laws of physics don’t properly describe what would need to happen for a Big Bang to occur?