[Vision2020] [Bulk] Re: Dennis Avery & S. Fred Singer: Climate Science Frauds

[g. crabtree]

This hardly seems to be a false dilemma at all. One side insists that out of nothing, an explosion occurred for no apparent reason at all and the universe was created. The other side professes that God said "bang" and the universe was created. The "certain observations" after the fact could/would remain the same.  

The big bang requires the suspension of disbelief adequate to buy into the notion of from nothing, everything.

Creation requires the faith to believe in an all powerful deity that wanted the universe to exist for a reason.

They both require a single belief for which there is no evidence.

I know which way I'm betting.

g
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Nick Gier 
  To: Paul Rumelhart 
  Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2008 6:09 PM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] [Bulk] Re: Dennis Avery & S. Fred Singer: Climate Science Frauds


  Hi Paul,

  Great answer to Kai's false dilemma.

  Nick

  At 06:01 PM 6/26/2008, you wrote:

    Kai Eiselein, Editor wrote:
    > Actually both sides of this debate require suspension of belief.
    >   

    Not really.  The Big Bang theory doesn't try to answer the question of 
    what happened before the singularity or what caused it to explode.  It's 
    just there to explain certain observations, such as why the farther away 
    something is the greater it's redshift is, which it appears to do really 
    well.  For example, the theory predicts certain ratios for the abundance 
    of certain elements as a by-product of the known state of the universe 
    within the first twenty minutes of it's starting point, which seems to 
    fit really closely with what we've observed.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang_nucleosynthesis

    So there's little suspension of disbelief required.  You just follow the 
    evidence, and don't worry about those kinds of questions (what happened 
    before the Big Bang?) until you have some kind of framework you can use 
    to address them.

    A deity, on the other hand, requires a whole bunch of different beliefs 
    for which there is no evidence, nor is it predictive in any way.  
    Fortunately, belief in that system requires belief with a complete lack 
    of evidence (faith) and the assumption that no meaningful predictions 
    can occur (God works in mysterious ways), so it all works out in the end.

    Paul


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  "Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to human affairs."
  --Ralph Waldo Emerson

  "Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."
   --Mohandas Gandhi

  "Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the sum of its various parts." --Max Planck

  Nicholas F. Gier
  Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
  1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
  http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/home.htm
  208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950
  President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
  http://www.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/ift.htm





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