Dinesh D’Souza: Here I respond to a question from my audience about whether the Big Bang theory about the origin of the universe confirms or contradicts the biblical account of creation given in the first book of Genesis. Buckle your seatbelt!
Big Bang
At Evolution News: Is the universe “causally closed”?
Egnor explains why not and goes on to cite the Big Bang, singularities in black holes, and the field equations of curved space-time, quantum entanglement, and — of course — the immaterial mind.
Kirk Durston takes on Larry Krauss on whether the universe could come from nothing
Did “nothing” create the universe? Could it?
At Mind Matters News: Round 3: Egnor vs Papineau: The Big Bang has no natural beginning
David Papineau: I am not claiming that every physical event has a physical cause, because I think the Big Bang doesn’t have a cause. I think there’s some physical events that don’t have physical causes.
At Big Think: What happened before the Big Bang?
What happened before anything happened? It’s a meaningless question within itself unless one posits a First Cause or God. Science, like an afghan, tends to fray at the edges.
Ethan Siegel asks why so few challenge the Big Bang
The Big Bang has been very unpopular. It reeks of purpose and is an incitement to theism. And Siegel tells us that it survives only because the evidence rules out all alternatives.
Physicist Rob Sheldon checks out astrophysicist Ethan Siegel for ridiculing Nobelist Roger Penrose
Sheldon: The politicization of science evidently started before Ethan’s graduate schooling, as Hoyle and his post-doc Chandra Wickramasinghe tell in their biographical writings.
Roger Penrose thinks black holes are left over from a previous universe
It all sounds so much like religion, actually, but maybe that’s the direction in which High Science is heading.
From Ethan Siegel: What if the Big Bang isn’t the beginning of the universe?
Make no mistake, the Big Bang is unpopular in many quarters and an exterminator has long been sought. Here’s the problem: The explanation for an event may be outside the event. In that case, one can’t derive an explanation from within the event.
Claim: Physics erases the beginning of the universe
We don’t doubt that 2 + 2 = 4 can be dissolved in like manner, as long as the needed incentive is present. And it’s no secret that a great many cosmologists hate the Big Bang for philosophical reasons.
Rob Sheldon on the recent reduction in the age of the universe
Sheldon: I have long advocated a rewrite of the Big Bang model that converts the cosmic microwave numbers into a Hubble constant. But strangely, like Darwin’s model in biology, we see few cosmologists willing to kill the sacred cow. They would rather change the laws of physics (“new physics”) than change their model.
What is it about the Big Bang these days that is making people nervous?
Sheldon: More and more independent measurements of the Hubble constant (H0), reveal that it is very close to 73.9 km/s/Mpc, which is 6 or so sigma (deviations) from the Planck determination of 67.4 km/s/Mpc using the cosmic ray background radiation (CMBR) and the standard Big Bang (BB) Model.
Missing matter of the universe FOUND? Rob Sheldon says, hold on a minute…
Sheldon:Well, like most astronomy press releases in the past decade, it is 3/4 hype, and 1/4 data, and it has nothing to do with dark matter. Since many people never read beyond the headline, the title is written to be as provocative as possible without outright lying.
At Astronomy Mag: Is the Big Bang in Crisis? Rob Sheldon responds
Sheldon: It is becoming clear to everyone that: (a) cosmology behaves as a degenerative research programme; and (b) the problem lies in the BB model first put together in the 50’s and 60’s.
L& FP41: Dawkins, Krauss and trying to pull a world out of “no-thing”
As Cardinal Pell has been recently cleared, perhaps some may be willing to learn from this telling vid: No, Virginia, you do not get a world from no-thing. END