Category Archives: Big Bang

The standard (materialistic) scientific explanation of the origin of the universe.

UnMasking Mistakes in Memes of Evolution – Part 1

Posted on by

If you spend any amount of time on social media you will inevitably come across memes. The concept of the meme has been around for some time, but has been rediscovered and adapted for use on the internet. In it’s current incarnation, a meme, as defined by Google is:

“a humorous image, video, piece of text, etc., that is copied (often with slight variations) and spread rapidly by Internet users.”[1]

Memes are perfectly suited for the internet and social media, where attention spans are short and tolerance for reading an entire article (like this one) on a topic is even shorter.  Memes tend to be very visual, and therefore  memorable, perhaps leaving a lasting impression. But when the meme expresses a false idea, you now have the problem of a falsehood being re-enforced by a false, but perhaps memorable meme.

Another problem is that since memes are short, the idea they express is almost never backed by sources you can consult to affirm or deny what is being expressed in the meme. And being short, as a rule they leave out critical detail and context and thus are prone to the fallacy of suppressed evidence –  failing to give all the information needed to come to the correct conclusion. All these problems are particularly true of memes that are propagated in support of evolution.

So given that: Continue Reading

The Expanding Big Bang Fairy tale

Posted on by

Back in August of 2015, I predicted the Big Bang magicians  (those who promote the big bang and go by various titles such as cosmologist, scientist, theoretical physicist etc.) would eventually propose a new fairy tale to explain yet another unexplained fact recently discovered about the wonderfully designed universe that we live in. That fact is the existence of  rings of galaxies, in concentric circles, spanning the mind boggling distance of 5 billion light years.  The Big Bang theory requires that the universe is homogeneous and isotropic – the same everywhere[1] so you should not see in it structures organized in a geometric pattern like concentric circles. Thus this discovery must somehow be explained and made to fit into the Big Bang theory somehow.

I discussed the discovery of this super structure and the problem it poses in an article titled  The coming Big Bang fairy tale where I also made both the above referenced prediction, and guaranteed we’d see a new fairy tale:

To close, let me borrow from the former president of the men’s warehouse:
Another big bang fairy tale is coming. I guarantee it.[2]

Continue Reading

Lessons from Pluto

Posted on by
New Horizons approaches Pluto

New Horizons approaches Pluto

On January 19, 2006 the “fastest spacecraft ever launched”[1] – the New Horizons space probe –  lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida on a mission to Pluto.  In February of 2007  it collected data from Jupiter as it flew by for a gravity assist catapult as it continued on to Pluto. On July 14th, 2015, New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto. Scientists have now had an opportunity to review the initial data and pictures from New Horizons about the dwarf planet[2] Pluto, and many have been forced into a stunning but unavoidable admission:  they’ve been wrong about Pluto for a long time.

What they found on Pluto was not at all what they were expecting to find. Scientists were expecting to find it heavily cratered,  “a flat, dead world similar to our moon.”[3]  Instead, what they actually found was:

  • Icy Volcanoes
  • The  heart shaped area (right side partially faded) visible in the picture above named sputnik planum, of which scientists note “…this Texas sized basin of ice appears to be boiling.” [4] Planetary scientist Jani Radebaugh likens it to “a lava lake in slow motion”[5] made of nearly frozen Nitrogen cooled until the texture is that of tooth paste.
  • Other areas feature a young looking surface, with no record of crater bombardment as expected. “These features are very, very young…Pluto is active today. That’s the headline.”[6] says Planetary scientist Dan Durda.
  • An active geology driven by heat
  • and “there’s pretty good circumstantial evidence that Pluto has a massive ocean in its interior”[7] says New Horizons mission principle investigator Alan Stern.

Secular Blindness

While scientists are willing to fess up to being wrong when confronted with objective data like that supplied to them from their own instruments aboard the New Horizons space probe, it is unlikely that they are willing to acknowledge error with regard to the below lessons, save the first, which they cannot deny without being accused of being science deniers. Continue Reading

Pulling Back the Veil – What Cosmologists are Hiding

Posted on by
The Hand of God (nebula) behind the Veil of Science

The Hand of God (nebula) behind the Veil of Science

(Or: Big Bang Magic Part 3:
Pulling Back the Veil on the five biggest questions about the universe)

Contrary to what you may have been led to believe, cosmology these days is not an objective science, devoted  strictly to the scientific explanation of the origin of the universe. There is an agenda that rules cosmology. An agenda that has nothing to do with science as confessed by Richard Lewontin: Continue Reading

More Big Bang Magic Tricks – Shadows and Waves

Posted on by

What casts no shadows besides vampires? Apparently, the big bang.

In theory, scientists are objective seekers of the truth, handling the data that is discovered with honesty and integrity.  Unfortunately particularly in sciences that have worldview implications, that is not the case. One of those sciences is cosmology – the science that attempts to determine the origin and development of the universe. With the possible exception of Darwinian evolution,  there are no sciences  that have larger worldview implications that cosmology.   Even without knowing how the origin of the universe came about, the psalmist is correct in his declaration “the heavens declare the glory of God.” (Ps 19.1)  Atheist cosmologists know that and have tried to mute that testimony by attempting to come up with a story of the creation of the universe that doesn’t involve God.  Because even if you haven’t formally studied apologetics or cosmology, everyone implicitly understands the Kalam Cosmological argument for the existence of God: Everything that begins to exist has a creator. The universe began to exist, therefore the universe has a creator. The only one powerful enough to create the universe is of course God, therefore God created the universe.

Such a simple, intuitive, easy to understand proof of the existence of God is anathema to atheist cosmologists because their own preferred theory of origins – the Big Bang theory – though incorrect nevertheless points to the fact that the universe had a beginning. Continue Reading

Intelligent Design’s Blind Side

Posted on by

Intelligent Design’s Blind Side

William Dembski is a leader in the Intelligent Design (ID) community, so I read with initial interest a recent interview he did with Sean McDowell titled How is the Intelligent Design Movement Doing? Interview with William Dembski.  which is posted on McDowell’s blog. That initial interest turned to dismay as the adversarial attitude Dembski has toward revealed truth in general and Young Earth Creationism (YEC) in particular was made apparent. When asked how he assesses the reception of ID within the church, Dembski states:

“I would say that the church broadly and even the evangelical community has — on balance — been somewhere between useless and downright counterproductive to the success of ID.”

A most unfortunate assessment given the potential ID has to impact a culture that has largely fallen under the sway of the junk science put forth to support the materialist religion known as Darwinian Evolution. Even more unfortunate is Dembski’s  apparent blindness to how he (and other ID advocates with similar positions) has caused such a reaction from the God fearing, Bible believing faithful they’d like to gain support from. To unravel this mystery for them, let’s start with what both ID advocates and YEC advocates are trying to achieve. Continue Reading

Should Christians believe in a multiverse? 7 Reasons Against

Posted on by

The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
2 Cor 4.2

Non-believers will likely consider the above scripture irrelevant and unpersuasive and will ponder the wisdom of starting an article on the multiverse with a verse of scripture. In so doing they will have confirmed the scripture (blind to spiritual truths) while setting up my two points: First – this is not merely a discussion of physics – but of metaphysics. (Metaphysics being those things that lie beyond the realm of observable physical reality and so strictly speaking, are beyond the realm of the questions that physics can answer.) Second, not only is the multiverse “pure metaphysics”[1] as Christian apologist William Lane Craig puts it, but many scientists seem blind to the fact that they are engaging in metaphysics – not physics – when proposing the multiverse as a “scientific” answer to a number of the problems their theories have. They have fallen into the same error that  philosopher of science and apologist John Lennox chides theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking for: engaging in metaphysics while failing to recognize he is doing so.[2]

Truth in advertising

Having identified multiverse theories as claims that deal with the metaphysical, we can make the following observations: Continue Reading

Dark Matter: The Big Bang’s Missing Link

Posted on by

Black holes – once again a candidate for dark matter. (Above: simulation of merging black holes. Click for animation)

 

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”[1]
Sherlock Holmes

Holmes, the famed fictional detective created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle popularized that statement of logic, and highlighted the power of deductive reasoning for solving problems.  As fans of Sherlock Holmes know this adage is a key tool in the forensic tool kit for catching criminals.  Applied to science, it is also very helpful, but it cannot always be as conclusive with scientific theory as it is when narrowing the field of suspects in a crime. That is because of two ambiguous terms that science has a hard time precisely defining. Those are:

  1. Eliminate the Impossible
     This is a doubly difficult task for science, because it assumes you first have the knowledge to identify all possibilities, then secondly, have the ability to identify (via testing if it’s to be scientific) that which is  not possible. Only then can you know that you’ve eliminated the impossible. But when it comes to cosmology as physicist and creationist John Hartnett quips:

    “To make such a claim, you would have to know that you have ruled out all other possibilities. In such a case—remember this is not a laboratory experiment—you would have to be an all-knowing god.” [2]
    John Hartnett
     

  2. Whatever remains
     We tend to think that “whatever remains” is a single identifiable cause, but in fact, there could be multiple causes that make up “whatever remains”

So before coming out with any definitive statements,  scientists must be sure that they have carefully accounted for each of these two often difficult to identify variables. Unfortunately, that has  not been the case when it comes to  scientific speculation on Dark Matter. In that regard there are a lot of scientists jumping to the conclusion that dark matter exists, and is out there, waiting to be verified (in a lab) by scientists. Why is that? Let’s take a look at why scientists are so intent on proving that Dark Matter exists, and why it’s prudent to be skeptical about their whole approach to the existence of dark matter.

The Problem: The Universe is not behaving as (we think) it should

Scientists have identified peculiar behavior in the outer reaches of the universe. Not all galaxies are moving as they should. To visualize the problem, consider: Continue Reading

If evolution is true, Humanity is doomed

Posted on by

Model of the head of Sonny the AI robot from I, Robot

 

 Evolution predicts humans will eventually go the way of the Dodo.

I came across an interesting headline in my newsreader the other day:

“The beginning of the end: Google’s AI has beaten a top human player at the complex game of Go”[1]

Here is their one sentence summary of what happened:

“Earlier today, AlphaGo, an artificially intelligent  algorithm developed by Google’s DeepMind subsidiary, categorically beat Lee Sedol, one of the best players of the Chinese board game Go”

I remember a similar epic match up back in the day (twenty years ago to be precise) in Philadelphia between IBM’s supercomputer “Deep Blue” and the then reigning world champion chess master Gary Kasparov (mentioned in the article above in passing).  In the first match up, Deep Blue won only 1 of the 6 game series. Not satisfied, IBM wanted to win an entire match, so the engineers went off and made improvements for a rematch.

The rematch came the following year in New York City. As the above article notes, Deep Blue used a “brute force” approach to playing chess, evaluating the strength of various possible chess plays. Brute force is a bit of an under statement: “Deep Blue could calculate over 200 million chess positions per second”[2] according to Smithsonian historian David Allison. Kasparov and Deep Blue split the first two games – winning one each, and tied the next three. Kasparov lost the final game to Deep Blue, giving Deep Blue the match. Kasparov, perhaps like many, couldn’t believe he could lose to a machine and IBM’s refusal to requests for computer logs and a rematch seemed to highlight previous charges he had made earlier in the match accusing the IBM team of cheating – having a human (grand master) help guide the machine.

The difference between Deep Blue’s win and  AlphaGo’s win is that: Continue Reading

Refining the Questions for Question Evolution Day

Posted on by

Above: Redirecting the questions answered by Phil Plait		 Refining the questions to evolutionists for Question Evolution Day

Evolutionists claim that evolution is not a religion. That becomes increasingly difficult to believe as they act more and more like devout followers of a faith based religion. In addition to having doctrine, discipline for those who disagree with the faith, preachers and teachers, they now also have a holy day. Perhaps you’ve heard of it: Darwin Day, a celebration held on the anniversary of Darwin’s birthday, February 12. If the practice of evolution wasn’t looking like a religion before, it certainly is now. I wouldn’t even be surprised if they begin to exchange gifts on Darwin’s day.

For the Darwin’s day just past, astronomer Phil Plait who appears on science programs such as How the Universe Works, tweeted a link to an article he wrote in response to questions from Creationists pointing out problems with evolutionary theory. (The questions are appropriate for Question Evolution Day, which is held on the same day as Darwin Day,  but were in fact asked at the Bill Nye/Ken Ham debate.) In his article “Answers for Creationists” Phil addresses the questions from the secular consensus view – that is to say from the “evolution is true/fact” perspective.

He sets it up like this:

On BuzzFeed, there is a clever listicle that is a collection of 22 photos showing creationists holding up questions they have for people who “believe” in evolution. These questions are fairly typically asked when evolution is questioned by creationists. Some are philosophical, and fun to think about, while others show a profound misunderstanding of how science works, and specifically what evolution is.

He goes about answering the 22 questions from creationists. Given his answers (when he has them – for some he doesn’t and never will), I’d like to look at how we as creationists can better formulate the questions to minimize wiggle room. The problem is many of the questions are imprecise, or mix theories, thus giving him (and all evolutionists) plenty of wiggle room through which they drive a truckload of nonsense. The result being, evolutionists continue in the belief that creationists are wrong about origins and don’t understand science; while evolutionists are correct and properly understand science.

So while I’ll comment on Phil’s answers, it’s primary to lay the foundation for better questions. The goal being to refine them so what we creationists ask the evolutionists leaves as little wriggle room as possible (none at all preferably) to squirm out and thus avoid the serious problems with Darwinian theory. So what follows are the original questions, part or all of Phil’s answer, followed by my remarks, and if appropriate a refined or redirected question.  So here we go: (the question is in bold, Phil’s answer in italics.) Continue Reading