"But there's no evidence to support the Big Bang Theory!"

How many times have I heard THAT statement from easily-lead Christian friends who believe everything their Sunday evangelist tells them? Sure. Don't bother opening a book or anything. That's be WAY too hard.

Anyhoo... for the benefit of those of you who have friends or family like that, here's the latest in my series of packaged up responses.

When someone says "But there's no evidence to support the Big Bang Theory!", you can say:

"Oh yeah, well you better tell that to the Nobel Prize committee, cuz they just awarded the Noble Prize in physics to the guy who proved it", Astrophysicist George Smoot of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. I love the story about Smoot getting notified:

When a member of the Nobel Prize committee called Smoot a little before 3 a.m. Tuesday morning on his unlisted cell phone number, he assumed it was a hoax.

"How did you get my phone number?" was the first thing he asked.

He later discovered the Nobel Prize committee had awakened a neighbor with a listed number who gave them Smoot's number.

After he hung up with the very serious man with a genuine-sounding Swedish accent, Smoot went online to make sure it was true.

After refreshing the page on the Nobel Prize Web site a couple times, there it was: Smoot and his colleague John Mather of NASA had won the Nobel Prize in physics "for their discovery of the blackbody form and anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation."

Comments

[Phillip Molly Malone]

I have no problem where the big bang, my problem is with those that use the big bang to prove there is no god but can't explain how the big bang came about (or the thing that came about to cause the big bang).

JMTC
Molly

[Shane Williamson]

Bah! Everyone knows it was that God sneezed and snot a Big Bang! ;-p

[Miriam Parkinson]

And we all fear the coming of the great white handkerchief???

:-)

[gnoll110]

Personally, I'm a supporter of the steady gate theory.

[william dutton]

and i just don't care.

[Thomas]

I thought you couldn't proove a theory you could only present evidence. But then...don't care either.

[gnoll110]

Arrr, the "Black Swan Problem".

Hume's Problem of Induction.

How many white swans does one need to observe before inferring that all swans are white and that there are no black swans. Hundred? Thousands?

Note: this is a real C18 observation, pre discovery of Cygnus atratus in Australia.

[zick]

wow.. you think that the big bang theory really happend.?? ok let me ask you this.. who was there when it happend?? is there any proff? the bible is the proff for creationist.. there is no other evidance for evolution even.. no documents about what animals looked like.. they have adaptid like all things do.. not changed from a lizard to a monkey.. do some background work and see what sounds more logical

[Tony]

You mean to tell me that the bible sounds logical...oh please..

[gnoll110]

Arr, I see zick's logic error. It goes like this.

Some Science books are great books, the Bible is a great book, therefore it is a Science book.

What we really have is a classification problem.

Books (of the West)
|
+- Poetry
|
+- Prose
|
+- Fiction books
|
+- Non-Fiction books
|
+- Practical books
|
+- Theoretical books
|
+- Scientific books (Principia Mathematica (Newton))
|
+- Philosophy books (Bible, The City of God (St. Augustine))
|
+- History books

Having said that, some books fall across classifications. Some Novels have a fair amount of Social Science in them, like wise, some Social Science books have a fair amount of Fiction in them ;) Having said that, the Bible is clearly a book of Philosophy.

It should also be noted the Science books date far quicker than Philosophy books. 'Principia Mathematica' is just under 320 years old, but I wouldn't use it any hard science work today. The Bible is 1800 to 3000ish years old, and still a useful read.

Being a firm believer in the scientific method and that it's 'the exception that proves the rule', I invite people to 'break' my classification tree. Then I can build a better one next time! Go for it.

One of the greatest gifts of God is a critical mind. It would be a shame to waste it!

[Grant]

Hi Cam - FWIW - have to agree with Molly. The other thing is that it isn't hard proof of the big bang theory - it is supporting evidence of the big bang theory.

Afaic people can believe what they want one way or the other - it makes for great pub discussions among other things - but the big bang will always be just a theory until we work out how to travel back through time to actually check it out for ourselves ;)

G