Challenge to Creationists: Ichneumon Wasp

[nPeace]

Thank-you for your polite reply. I have read your link Big bang birthed from Cosmic Egg, but I do not find it satisfactory. Specifically, it gives a mere two paragraphs (at the beginning of the section 'Hubble received Lemaître's accolades') to the theoretical and observational evidence for Lemaître's cosmology, and does not give any scientific reasons for rejecting this evidence. Instead it explains how Lemaître was cheated out of the credit for the discovery of the expanding universe, which is interesting, but not relevant to the question of the validity of his cosmological theory, throws a few vague accusations at the Jesuits and the Church of Rome, and then plunges into six paragraphs of mythological thinking about 'cosmic eggs', which, in my opinion, have no more in common with Lemaître's 'primeval atom' and big bang cosmology than the 'atoms' of Leucippus and Democritus have in common with modern quantum theory.


I don't want to keep harping on this trifling point, but when I was learning about astronomy in the 1960s, the books that I read referred to Lemaître's cosmology in terms of a 'primeval atom', not of a 'cosmic egg'. Of course, this was 50 or 60 years ago, and I can't say that the phrase 'cosmic egg' was never used, but most of my books definitely referred to a 'primeval atom'. Also, the reference in Wikipedia for this statement - A Science Odyssey: People and Discoveries: Big bang theory is introduced - doesn't use the phrase 'cosmic egg'.





No, I don't agree. As your own link - Big bang birthed from Cosmic Egg - explains, Lemaître's theory of an expanding universe was based on his solutions of Einstein's field equations and on observations of the recession of the galaxies, not on creation myths. Your link is confusing words with things; it is trying to make out that Lemaître's use of the phrase 'cosmic egg' implies that his theory was based on mythological ideas or that the theory of the expanding universe is essentially the same as the myth of the origin of the universe from some sort of egg.



This is true, but scientific explanations can be tested by requiring them to make predictions, whereas myths cannot. The more facts a scientific theory explains, and the more valid predictions it makes, the more likely it is that is near to the truth.

My pleasure.
Thank you for your courteous reply.
I'm sorry if it seems like I am trying to imply that Lemaître did not make observations. I'm not.

It's right there though.

he called his "hypothesis of the primeval atom" or the "Cosmic Egg"

It may not have said Cosmic Egg in your book, but that's what the primeval atom is. It's not an atom, but a single point, referred to as an egg that gave birth to the cosmos.

Bear in mind, and I hope I can explain that you understand my point of view, that we are talking men here - not about lifeforms of supernatural being. Men form ideas from the limited mind/brain that we posses. Those ideas can only come from what we have stored up there.
There is no outer automatic transmitter of thoughts... or maybe there is, but that's a different story.
So okay, man has an idea. He tests his ideas. He believes his ideas have been confirmed. But have they.

What recording can we replay that will confirm that things happened just as we believe they have.
We are looking into the past... without a time machine.
Perhaps some persons do hear a whisper in their ear, but you don't believe that stuff, do you? Most people don't.

It's all well and good if one wants to create a story, and call it reality, but at the end of the day, it's still a story.
Myth
noun
1. a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

2. a widely held but false belief or idea.

I see the story as a myth. It not only looks like one, and sounds like one, but it bears all the markings as one.
If you or anyone else can show me that for sure, this is how it all happened, then it just might escape the myth category.

You know, on these forums, person identify the Biblical accounts as myths, on the bases that, you know, 'Well we never saw no one raised from the dead. We never saw no miracles. The flood could not happen. It's impossible. There is no evidence for it...' On and on they go.
Yet. They willingly hold on to - I call them modern day mythology. Why?
"Oh, we have evidence that this happened, and that happened."
Many people are still asking, "What evidence?"

We have a story.

[/QUOTE]

 

[Subduction Zone]

@nPeace your quotes are messed up a bit in your last post.

Your complaints about the sciences are very strange. You do not seem to understand that in the sciences answering one question quite often opens up a new one or even more. That is not a flaw, that is an advantage. It lets us know what we do not currently know. You on the other hand prefer to follow a book of myths that has been shown to be wrong that leads to nowhere except for perhaps harm to the human race as a whole. Where is the logic in that?

 

[ecco]

That's your first mistake.

Your second mistake is your extensive cutting and pasting. It does nothing to convince anyone that you really know what you are talking about. It only proves that you can cut and paste. We already knew that.

Your third mistake is making poorly conceived analogies.

Your fourth mistake is trying to support a scientific argument by using a Creationist, David Berlinsky, as your source.

And that's just from your first post. I may have missed some other errors because I got tired of wading through all the male bovine excrement.

You post five pages of mostly cut and pasted stuff. You want to call that a contribution.

I respond by pointing out errors in your arguments. That's what happens in a debate. It wouldn't be much of a debate if I agreed with everything you posted. At least I took the time to actually read and understand some of the things you posted. That's more than you did. You saw an article written by a Creationist and cut and pasted from it without understanding what the author was actually saying.

Since it is true that you
then it shouldn't be difficult for you to point out where you did that, right?
Show me one.

I showed you two. I hope that's OK. I know you asked for just one, but I was feeling generous.

 

[nPeace]

It appears that only the willfully ignorant oppose the theory. And "missing links" is a creationist idea. It is a misnomer for "transitional fossils" and there are countless transitional fossils. Creationists hate her and lie about her all of the time, but for human evolution Lucy stands out. But since you like videos so much:

You call these missing links.
Well they are actually... missing links. In other words, they are missing the links.

 

[nPeace]

I showed you two. I hope that's OK. I know you asked for just one, but I was feeling generous.

You posted this

I pointed out several instances where you made extensive cut and paste posts. Some without attribution. Some of which did not support your argument. This shows that you did not read or could not understand what was written.

Correct?
I am not asking you where you pointed out that you pointed out what you called errors.
I am asking you to show me where you pointed out the red bit. That's what you claimed.

 

[Subduction Zone]

You call these missing links.
Well they are actually... missing links.

Nope, now that we have found them they are transitional fossils. The first clear one was even found in Darwin's lifetime. When he was alive paleontology was in its infancy so of course there were plenty of holes in the record. But while he was alive the first clear "link" between birds and other dinosaurs was found. Do you know what it was? I am sure that you can see it in the video that I linked.

All you have right now is denial of the obvious. That is not a way to win a debate.

 

[nPeace]

Nope, now that we have found them they are transitional fossils. The first clear one was even found in Darwin's lifetime. When he was alive paleontology was in its infancy so of course there were plenty of holes in the record. But while he was alive the first clear "link" between birds and other dinosaurs was found. Do you know what it was? I am sure that you can see it in the video that I linked.

All you have right now is denial of the obvious. That is not a way to win a debate.

You mean the bird they thought was dinobird?

 

[Jose Fly]

They still haven't found those "missing links" the earth was supposed to be saturated with

Well that takes us right back to where you and I left off the last time.....what does the term "transitional fossil" mean to you?

Care to answer this time?

 

[Subduction Zone]

You mean the bird they thought was dinobird?

Wow! Once again you demonstrate your ignorance. Do you not understand what Archaeopteryx is? It is an almost perfect example of a "missing link". As is Lucy. Creationists have no answer so they have to lie. Perhaps you should learn what a transitional form is so that you do not keep embarrassing yourself.

 

[Astrophile]

My pleasure.
Thank you for your courteous reply.
I'm sorry if it seems like I am trying to imply that Lemaître did not make observations. I'm not.

It's right there though.
It may not have said Cosmic Egg in your book, but that's what the primeval atom is. It's not an atom, but a single point, referred to as an egg that gave birth to the cosmos.

If you mean that Lemaître used the metaphor of a Cosmic Egg as a graphic symbol to help people to understand his conception of the beginning of the universe, then it may pass. If you mean that he obtained the ideas of an expanding universe and a primeval atom from mythological sources and that he thought of the primeval atom as identical with the mythological Cosmic Egg then you are wrong.

Bear in mind, and I hope I can explain that you understand my point of view, that we are talking men here - not about lifeforms of supernatural being. Men form ideas from the limited mind/brain that we posses. Those ideas can only come from what we have stored up there.
There is no outer automatic transmitter of thoughts... or maybe there is, but that's a different story.
So okay, man has an idea. He tests his ideas. He believes his ideas have been confirmed. But have they.

What recording can we replay that will confirm that things happened just as we believe they have.
We are looking into the past... without a time machine.
Perhaps some persons do hear a whisper in their ear, but you don't believe that stuff, do you? Most people don't.

It's all well and good if one wants to create a story, and call it reality, but at the end of the day, it's still a story.
Myth
noun
1. a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.

2. a widely held but false belief or idea.

I see the story as a myth. It not only looks like one, and sounds like one, but it bears all the markings as one.
If you or anyone else can show me that for sure, this is how it all happened, then it just might escape the myth category.

I don't see how anybody can regard Big Bang cosmology (or any other cosmological theory) as a 'myth' in either sense. It is not a traditional story, it does not concern the early history of a people, and it does not involve supernatural beings or events. Scientific theories (even when they are wrong) and myths are completely different. As I have said before, scientific theories can be tested by experiments and observation, and can be disproved by observations that are contrary to their predictions. I don't know about myths. Did anybody ever think that myths were literally true? For example, did people really think that the Milky Way was the goddess Hera's milk splashed across the sky after an unsuccessful attempt to breast-feed the infant Hercules, or that there had once been one-eyed man-eating giants called Cyclopses?

To get back to the point, you ought to consider the grounds on which Lemaître based his theory of the expanding universe. You should read his original paper Un Univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant rendant compte de la vitesse radiale des nébuleuses extra-galactiques. You can download it by clicking on reference 15 in Big Bang - Wikipedia. What reasons have you got for thinking that this paper is incorrect, i.e. that Lemaître's solutions of Einstein's equations do not imply an expanding universe? What other explanation, besides an expanding universe, can you think of for the observed redshifts of the 'extragalactic nebulae'? How do you explain the cosmic microwave background and the abundances of deuterium, helium-3 and helium-4, and lithium-7? Some cosmologists are looking for naturalistic answers to these questions that do not require a 'big bang', but in the simplest terms it seems to me that there are only two explanations for these observed facts: that Big Bang cosmology is broadly correct, or that God created the universe to look as if it had come into existence from an initial high-density high-temperature state (i.e. a 'Big Bang').

You know, on these forums, person identify the Biblical accounts as myths, on the bases that, you know, 'Well we never saw no one raised from the dead. We never saw no miracles. The flood could not happen. It's impossible. There is no evidence for it...' On and on they go.
Yet. They willingly hold on to - I call them modern day mythology. Why?
"Oh, we have evidence that this happened, and that happened."
Many people are still asking, "What evidence?"

You appear to be using a double standard here. You are willing to accept Biblical accounts of Noah's Flood, of miracles and of the resurrection of Jesus, etc. as literally true simply because they are in the Bible, without physical evidence that these things happened, and yet when it comes to scientific theories you not only demand physical evidence but reject it when it is given to you. Look at my previous paragraph. Read Lemaître's paper. Read some books about cosmology, such as Big Bang by Simon Singh, The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose, chapters 15-19 of Calculating the Cosmos by Ian Stewart, The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow, and Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark. These should at least give you some idea of the sort of evidence that scientists are working with.

 

[Bear Wild]

Yes, many people are fascinated with his ideas.
Many people don't agree though, that everything confirms his ideas.
They still haven't found those "missing links" the earth was supposed to be saturated with, and they discovered that living things are more complex than Darwin hoped, or visioned.

Given the level of knowledge at the time his insight is one of the great discoveries of all time. There is still much to learn but everything since his theory was presented as supported his concept. Missing links are present only because it takes very special conditions to preserve enough of a life form and it has to be found which takes time. Yes living things are more complex than Darwin was aware but you cannot say the information was more than he hoped for or envisioned. That is an opinion and actually in my I think he would be very pleased how much our advances agree with his ideas. Do you think that Newton would feel the same way?

There have been new species that have developed over time and it is interesting that Darwin was concerned how people would react to this idea because if evolution was not the cause then god would have to visit the earth and create them whether mammal, bird bacteria, insect, fungus or other life. I wander if god is visits to make new species why does he not fix other problems, why create new species at this time and why not protect God's creation from destruction. Just some ideas

 

[ecco]

You call these missing links.
Well they are actually... missing links. In other words, they are missing the links.

Missing links will always be missing - to Creos.
Find a link between 1 and 2 and call it 1.5
The Creo will say - OK, but's where's the link between 1.5 and 2?

Find a link between 1.5 and 2 and call it 1.75
The Creo will say - OK, but's where's the link between 1.75 and 2?

Find a link between 1.75 and 2 and call it 1.875
The Creo will say - OK, but's where's the link between 1.875 and 2?

Find a link between 1.875 and 2 and call it ...

 

[ecco]

RE:

ecco:

I pointed out several instances where you made extensive cut and paste posts. Some without attribution. Some of which did not support your argument. This shows that you did not read or could not understand what was written.​

You posted this #350 with no attribution.

The basic rationale behind the conclusion that human evolution has stopped is that once the human lineage had achieved a sufficiently large brain and had developed a sufficiently sophisticated culture (sometime around 40,000–50,000 years ago according to Gould, but more commonly placed at 10,000 years ago with the development of agriculture), cultural evolution supplanted biological evolution. However, many evolutionary biologists have not accepted this argument, and indeed some have come to exactly the opposite conclusion.

Is this your own original thinking and writing? No. It was published, word for word, in The Princeton Guide to Evolution. Copyright 2017 Princeton University Press.
That's called plagiarizing.

Did you read to book? Do you understand the context of the quote? Do you realize that the quote and the book actually refute your Creationist views?

 

[nPeace]

If you mean that Lemaître used the metaphor of a Cosmic Egg as a graphic symbol to help people to understand his conception of the beginning of the universe, then it may pass. If you mean that he obtained the ideas of an expanding universe and a primeval atom from mythological sources and that he thought of the primeval atom as identical with the mythological Cosmic Egg then you are wrong.



I don't see how anybody can regard Big Bang cosmology (or any other cosmological theory) as a 'myth' in either sense. It is not a traditional story, it does not concern the early history of a people, and it does not involve supernatural beings or events. Scientific theories (even when they are wrong) and myths are completely different. As I have said before, scientific theories can be tested by experiments and observation, and can be disproved by observations that are contrary to their predictions. I don't know about myths. Did anybody ever think that myths were literally true? For example, did people really think that the Milky Way was the goddess Hera's milk splashed across the sky after an unsuccessful attempt to breast-feed the infant Hercules, or that there had once been one-eyed man-eating giants called Cyclopses?

To get back to the point, you ought to consider the grounds on which Lemaître based his theory of the expanding universe. You should read his original paper Un Univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant rendant compte de la vitesse radiale des nébuleuses extra-galactiques. You can download it by clicking on reference 15 in Big Bang - Wikipedia. What reasons have you got for thinking that this paper is incorrect, i.e. that Lemaître's solutions of Einstein's equations do not imply an expanding universe? What other explanation, besides an expanding universe, can you think of for the observed redshifts of the 'extragalactic nebulae'? How do you explain the cosmic microwave background and the abundances of deuterium, helium-3 and helium-4, and lithium-7? Some cosmologists are looking for naturalistic answers to these questions that do not require a 'big bang', but in the simplest terms it seems to me that there are only two explanations for these observed facts: that Big Bang cosmology is broadly correct, or that God created the universe to look as if it had come into existence from an initial high-density high-temperature state (i.e. a 'Big Bang').



You appear to be using a double standard here. You are willing to accept Biblical accounts of Noah's Flood, of miracles and of the resurrection of Jesus, etc. as literally true simply because they are in the Bible, without physical evidence that these things happened, and yet when it comes to scientific theories you not only demand physical evidence but reject it when it is given to you. Look at my previous paragraph. Read Lemaître's paper. Read some books about cosmology, such as Big Bang by Simon Singh, The Road to Reality by Roger Penrose, chapters 15-19 of Calculating the Cosmos by Ian Stewart, The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow, and Our Mathematical Universe by Max Tegmark. These should at least give you some idea of the sort of evidence that scientists are working with.

You don't seem to be understand me.
I am not saying that there is no evidence for the universe expanding.
I am only saying a story was created as to how it all (from the big bang onward) happened.
There are many ideas to explain the various phenomenon.
A story was created to explain all of it.
First there was nothing, Then...

Or am I getting it wrong?
I think you might be missing the whole point I am making. I thought I was making it simple, but maybe not.

 

[nPeace]

RE:

ecco:

I pointed out several instances where you made extensive cut and paste posts. Some without attribution. Some of which did not support your argument. This shows that you did not read or could not understand what was written.​

You posted this #350 with no attribution.


Is this your own original thinking and writing? No. It was published, word for word, in The Princeton Guide to Evolution. Copyright 2017 Princeton University Press.
That's called plagiarizing.

Did you read to book? Do you understand the context of the quote? Do you realize that the quote and the book actually refute your Creationist views?

Ah. So it is only now - Today - post #401, that you are pointing it out.

So tell me, what point was I making, and how does the quote and the book actually refute my... What? ...and please tell me what Creationist views those would be?

 

[Subduction Zone]

You don't seem to be understand me.
I am not saying that there is no evidence for the universe expanding.
I am only saying a story was created as to how it all (from the big bang onward) happened.
There are many ideas to explain the various phenomenon.
A story was created to explain all of it.
First there was nothing, Then...

Or am I getting it wrong?
I think you might be missing the whole point I am making. I thought I was making it simple, but maybe not.

Calling it a "story" is at best inaccurate. It is rather ignorant and appears to be dishonest. A model was created. That model makes specific predictions and whether the model is correct or not can be tested by seeing if those predictions come true. In other words when it was first made several aspects of the universe had not been made yet, but were predicted by the theory. The most well known one was the prediction of a cosmic background radiation. None had been observed when the theory was first made. Guess what has been observed and endlessly studied and earned the people that first discovered it a Nobel Prize in Physics was?

You believe simplistic myths and seem to think that everyone else has the same flaw that you do. Science does not just make up stories. Scientists think of solutions and then test them with concepts that would refute the theory if it was wrong.

 

[ecco]

Ah. So it is only now - Today - post #401, that you are pointing it out.

Do you really want to continue embarrassing yourself? OK...
Post #357

Your second mistake is your extensive cutting and pasting. It does nothing to convince anyone that you really know what you are talking about. It only proves that you can cut and paste. We already knew that.

Post # 357

And that's just from your first post. I may have missed some other errors because I got tired of wading through all the male bovine excrement.

Post #358

• Extensive cutting and pasting is frowned on in all forums.

• Extensive cutting and pasting without proper attribution is plagiarism.

• Extensive cutting and pasting is evidence that the poster is incapable of forming his own cohesive arguments.

#368

You post five pages of mostly cut and pasted stuff. You want to call that a contribution.

 

[ecco]

So tell me, what point was I making...

The question is: what point you were trying to make.

By taking a well written paragraph from a book and writing as your own thoughts, you were trying to impress with your erudition.

However, as soon as I read it, I mentally compared it to your other writings. I realized it probably didn't come from you. I copied a part of it, put it into quotes and pasted it into a Google search. Google quickly showed the book from which you plagiarized the whole paragraph.

Just a reminder, others have also noticed your tendency to do this and have called you out on on it.

 

[Astrophile]

You don't seem to be understand me.

Agreed.

I am not saying that there is no evidence for the universe expanding.
I am only saying a story was created as to how it all (from the big bang onward) happened.
There are many ideas to explain the various phenomenon.
A story was created to explain all of it.
First there was nothing, Then...

Subduction Zone has answered this part of your post in post 404. There is nothing that I need to add to his answer.

Calling it a "story" is at best inaccurate. It is rather ignorant and appears to be dishonest. A model was created. That model makes specific predictions and whether the model is correct or not can be tested by seeing if those predictions come true. In other words when it was first made several aspects of the universe had not been made yet, but were predicted by the theory. The most well known one was the prediction of a cosmic background radiation. None had been observed when the theory was first made. Guess what has been observed and endlessly studied and earned the people that first discovered it a Nobel Prize in Physics was?

You believe simplistic myths and seem to think that everyone else has the same flaw that you do. Science does not just make up stories. Scientists think of solutions and then test them with concepts that would refute the theory if it was wrong.

 

[Polymath257]

You don't seem to be understand me.
I am not saying that there is no evidence for the universe expanding.
I am only saying a story was created as to how it all (from the big bang onward) happened.
There are many ideas to explain the various phenomenon.
A story was created to explain all of it.
First there was nothing, Then...

Or am I getting it wrong?
I think you might be missing the whole point I am making. I thought I was making it simple, but maybe not.

First of all, this was *not* how things happened. Einstein had proposed his new theory of gravity, called general relativity. He attempted to apply this new theory to the universe as a whole. When he did so, he discovered his equations predicted a universe that was either expanding or contracting, not static. Since he didn't believe in a changing universe, he added a term, called the cosmological constant, to his equation that allowed for a static universe.

Later, Hoyle found evidence for an expanding universe in the red shifts of galaxies. this lead Einstein to call his cosmological constant his biggest mistake.

Much later, Gamow and others added the equations of thermodynamics to those of general relativity and thereby predicted the early universe to be hot and dense, leading to the formation of a cosmic background radiation. The leading competitor to the Big Bang model was called the Steady State model and did not allow for a background radiation.

Later still, the background radiation was found accidentally. It has since been studied extensively because it gives a lot of information about the early universe.

Later still, it was found that the expansion rate of the universe is increasing, which brought back the cosmological constant (although with a different value), renamed as dark energy.

The upshot: the theory was NOT created to 'explain it all'. If anything the theory was created to explain gravity and *discovered* to apply to the universe as a whole. Also, specific predictions were made, many times decades before the actual discoveries of the phenomena predicted.

This is how science works.