That was a joke! I like this thread, so post away..

Good to see you back, rcglinskIt seems that, despite the efforts of several BAUT members, you have either not read some of the excellent material they provided links to, on LCDM cosmological models, or did not understand them.

I will be starting a new thread, designed specifically, and only, to examine these three points. It is my hope that you actively participate in that thread and, in a month or so's time, get a much better appreciation than that I am quoting.

ETA: DONE ("What are the "axioms" of the Big Bang theory?")
In post #73 in this thread, Ken G tried to address a persistent mistake in your writing, concerning a misunderstanding of the nature of modern science.

In an earlier post in this thread, you introduced a term for one kind of logical fallacy; may I ask if there is a legal term for another kind of logical fallacy, popularly known as "the strawman argument"?
To repeat, you have a faulty notion of science ("science can be falsified by experimentation" and ""science" knows the universe is expanding after a big bang") ... if the premises are wrong, the conclusion is {insert answer here}.

Or not.

Perhaps you intended to use the word "only", as in "science can ONLY be falsified by experimentation" or perhaps "science can be falsified ONLY by experimentation"?

In any case, it seems we haven't moved forward from my post #19 (extract):I'm interested in exploring your evident misunderstanding of the nature of science a bit, and leaving for a separate thread an attempt to bring you up to speed on just what contemporary cosmological models are really about.

I think others have addressed this already, but anyway ...

The terms "theory" and "hypothesis" have particular meanings in modern science, and these meanings are somewhat different than those found in everyday usage (especially for "theory"); also, the two words are not synonyms.

Part of the difficulty I'm having in responding to your posts is that you seem to not be aware of these distinctions; you conflate 'theory' and 'hypothesis', for example.

Here's the OP again:So here's yet another, highly simplified (possibly over-simplified) take:
- = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = -
Assume General Relativity (GR).

Derive, from GR, solutions for a universe comprised of mass-energy.

Realise that the only two stable solutions are expansion and contraction.

Incorporate standard particle physics into GR-based models of an expanding universe.

Realise that there is a 'surface of last scattering' which would resemble an isotropic sea of photons whose energy distribution would be an almost perfect blackbody.

Give this 'sea of photons' the name 'CMB'.

From these GR-based models of an expanding universe incorporating standard particle physics, derive predictions of what we, here on Earth, should 'see', if the universe we live in were 'like' such a universe where GR rules.

From these predictions, formulate specific, testable hypotheses (for astronomers to sink their teeth into).
- = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = -

... and that brings us to my set of four possible tests; note that I was very clear that there were only examples (the list was not intended to be either particularly precise or complete).

Despite many, many posts on this, it seems you cannot let go of the "proof" strawman!

Assume a set of hypotheses concerning the CMB's polarisation were soundly formed and properly tested; assume the result of the test is something like "the CMB is not polarised like that!".

From your legal background, and from the logic of my extremely simplified outline, you should be able to see the impact ... just go back up the chain, as far as necessary, and stop where this particular test makes no difference; in your paradigm, the test would then have "disproven" cosmological theory just below (further down the chain) there.

Do you follow all that? If not, I'll be happy to go through it more slowly.

So what?

First, note that there are many tests, not just one.

Second, note that "basically" doesn't cut it ... hypotheses are not so lightly messed with ("Where were you at the time of the murder?" "I don't know, what was the time of the murder?" "The murder was sometime between 1990 and 2008").

Third, if you do a back-of-the-envelope estimate of a "Moore's law for CMB detectors", you might find that you could reasonably expect to get a clear signal from a "WMAP Mark 20", within three decades, bringing this second test within the lifetimes of a (possibly large) majority of readers of this post today.

(There are "fourth" and "fifth" and ... of course, but you get the idea, right?)
Um ... er ... are you familiar with the word "gobsmacked"?

rcglinsk, that's what hypotheses are all about!

I don't understand this; would you mind clarifying?

Start with "two values for ratios of isotopes of lithium seven" - what ratio(s)? And isn't "lithium seven" an isotope?
Whatever opinions on "separation of church and state" I might have I shall be keeping entirely to myself, on this forum anyway.

However, if you are interested in discussing the nature of modern science, and the extent to which cosmology is science, I'll gladly join in.

Since you have returned, it is a moot point.

I am however, aware of many things I can not speak of.

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smile, and the Universe smiles with you

Are you aware of the Lemon test, and how it works? If not, than studying it, and something like the court decision in a case like Kitzmiller vs. Dover might be helpful. And that's about as far as I'm willing to discuss this issue here

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"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" -- Charles Darwin
"Your right to hold an opinion is not being contested. Your expectation that it be taken seriously is." -- Jason Thompson
Meet the OOONG TOE.

That is most certainly not the key issue rcglinsk-- have you paid no attention to the explanations given to you about how science works? Once again: your problems with the Big Bang theory stem not from that theory (it would be hard to imagine a theory more powerful and effective at organizing and unifying all the cosmological observations than that one, truly it would be), but rather from a fundamental misunderstanding about what science does and what it is for. What scientific theories do not do is hand us a belief system that we can prove or disprove (it wouldn't be a belief if we could prove it). Beliefs are always up to us-- we may structure our beliefs any way that make sense to us, and we may choose science or something else, or a combination-- whatever serves our purpose for having a belief system.

What science can do, and is built to do from the ground up, is to provide a testable theoretical framework that organizes, unifies, explains, and predicts, the observational data at our disposal, and guides future observations within reach of our technology. That it can be tested just means the framework can be challenged to explain new data-- it is not necessary that any single bit of new data must be capable of overturning the entire framework (a framework so inflexible would be useless), that's a misconception we owe to Popper. You still seem to think science should be doing something else and are dissatisfied with it, but your dissatisfaction has nothing to do with the Big Bang theory, it could equally be leveled at any theory.

Given that this is what scientific theories do, the Big Bang does a spectacular job of it. Its only bugbears are the need for dark matter and dark energy, which may seem like whoppers, but if those are real aspects of our universe then we should not fault the theory for pointing them out to us, we should thank it for the "heads up". And if they are not real and represent misinterpretations of some kind, then we aren't even remotely close to a theory that doesn't need them but has all the same unifying and explanatory power of the Big Bang theory. And it certainly isn't for lack of trying-- that's just a blatantly false myth. Ergo, we take the Big Bang as not only our "best" theory, but also a "great" theory, of the history of the universe. That this does not necessarily prove it is "what actually happened" is by no means the fault of the theory-- it is our place in the grand scheme that dictates that limitation, and always will.

To "look back", all we need assume is that light travels at c, which is pretty well established actually. Why do you think we need to assume the Big Bang happened to look back?
You are mistaking the meaning of the word "inconsistency", as it is used in science, for the popular meaning used when, say, editing a newspaper article. On the surface, yes it is an inconsistency, but science reserves that term for self-contradictions, not for minor problems that merely point to some missing piece of the picture, or some error in interpreting data. A self-contradiction is incurable, it is a logical flaw that can never go away.

The Big Bang suffers from only one of those-- the singularity problem. But we know the theory has this problem, and again there is no reason to see it as a bug in the theory. Rather, it is a feature, because it points out in starkly clear terms what we should already have known-- science is good at evolution and chains of causation, but lousy at true origins. Either we will someday find evidence to connect what we call our universe with something else that gave rise to it, or we will always have to think of the origin as a mystery, but neither of those compromise in any way the Big Bang theory as a theory of evolution of the universe once it was originated (which is what that theory has always been, contrary to popular misconception).

As for the Lithium 7 composition, science has endured vastly more significant problems than that, without always needing to scrap any of its current understanding. As one random example, in 1900 astronomers had not the least idea why their understanding of the Sun said that the Sun needed an unknown energy source to stay the same for more than about a million years, yet the Earth's ecosphere had apparently not changed much for a billion years. Now there's a humdinger of a problem-- was our understanding of the structure of the Sun so wrong? But they didn't call it an "inconsistency", that said, "our understanding is not that wrong, we merely need to look for some unknown source of energy in the Sun." Another victory for physics theory-- the Sun does have such a source, hydrogen fusion. That story is almost identical in structure to the current thinking about dark energy and dark matter.

I am constantly amazed by the observation of a rather curious behavior pattern among humans that ignorance and arrogance are so strongly correlated......that those who are the most sure of their thinking and most unwilling to critically evaluate available evidence and their own thinking are those who are the most ignorant.

In many cases the arrogance (or unfounded confidence) in their thinking is so strong that they become incapable of changing their state of ignorance. Arrogant in their knowledge of the answer, they don't even understand the question -- they know not what they are criticizing, having neither the faintest grasp of what or how science has come to understand about a particular phenomenon, nor even a reasonable understanding of what the model (aka scientific theory) says.

While scientists are often confident, they are rarely arrogant in what they know. Their confidence lies in the existence of vast amounts of data as well as in their models of nature that successfully explain and predict its behavior with the fewest assumptions and which organize and unify wide ranging observed phenomena. They are also keenly aware of the limitations of their models and understanding of the world, given its vastness and complexity in the face of finite data and human intellect. Science's open-inquiry with nature allows scientists to remain aware of nature's subtleties and surprises, which confront our models and tentative understanding against the "real world".

Nevertheless, we are constantly amazed by the fact that nature behaves in a manner consistent with a small set a simple laws.

All true. And I agree there is an irony whenever those who raise the loudest call against closedmindedness in science are themselves the most closed-minded voice in the discussion. Often, the more you know, the more you know you don't know, so the more you are willing to learn-- and the inverse holds too.

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