(Bear in mind, I am specifically curious about the arguments from this conservative group of people. I am aware that there are progressive christians that believe the bible might not have been totally accurate, or that for various reasons (such as the influence of time and culture), they hold that the bible is not necessarily be taken as a literal guideline by which we should live our lives today–hence providing an explanation for the bible’s hard passages–I wanted to find an argument other than this one)

I finally found this page:

http://www.angelfire.com/journal/bibleissues/israel/canaan.htm

I myself am not entirely convinced. But I wanted to post it up here since it seemed quite relevant. I would like to know what people think of this argument.

Y’know Rick, I don’t want a fight – I just want the truth, I couldn’t give a shit about my beliefs or yours.

And Rick, you should be very careful -because if you start applying reason and logic, like, saying that condemming homosexuals is wrong, then in the end you’ll end up with a leaflet not a Bible.

“it has not been completely proven as as scientific “fact”…”

Like Xan, I’m not aware of any serious controversy around the Big Bang model. AFAIK, the vast majority of cosmologists working today accept it as FACT as a model while they continue to work out further details. If you have evidence that it isn’t supported as fact, then please share it.

“and while the BBT is a fine theory, and i assume it will be held true as time moves on, it does not prove or disprove anything regarding religion…”

Really? Here’s a couple of reasons why I disagree.

1. BBT totally contradicts the first chapter of Genesis. If the Bible is wrong about that, it’s lost it’s credibility about everything else.

2. BBT shows that the universe operates by natural laws. In the femto-seconds after the BB, the laws of physics which govern our universe were created. And there is no room for an interfering god in the laws of physics.

So BBT is actually a terrific tool for dismissing the god delusion.

“and while the BBT is a fine theory, and i assume it will be held true as time moves on, it does not prove or disprove anything regarding religion…”

This is pretty much meaningless, as there is absolutely nothing one could come up that would prove or disprove the existence of (the) God(s), or any of the endless propositions one can make about the Universe that are not verifiable in any way.

the “fact” is, we cannot see galaxies far enough away to gather sufficient data about ancient levels of material (such as deuterium)… the red-shift becomes too great for earth-based receivers and telescopes to accurately measure (due to infra-red interference)… space-based telescopes are far too few and over-taxed to gather the required data… so, for the time-being, it is on the nether edges of “theory”… not fact…

and while the BBT is a fine theory, and i assume it will be held true as time moves on, it does not prove or disprove anything regarding religion…

by the way… cameron, good luck on the Brian Greene interview… i’ve read his Elegant Universe… a facinating look at how things work… i honestly can’t say i grasped it all, but there’s a lot to get a hold on… i’ll wait for String Theory For Dummies…

the rest of my comment contains points which any anthropologist knows… and they support the eradication of that particular dogma from christianity…

as for the rest of your comment, you appear to be the same kind of knee-jerk person as cameron… wanting a fight when there is room for accord… what you call verbal vomit was a historic fact historians and anthropologists agree on, and it supports the need to rid christianity of these out-dated ideas… homosexuality is as monogamous currently as heterosexuality (perhaps more-so), and it does not spread disease through contact with multiple partners as the practice did in the BCE…

so before you jump off the handle, please consider what was written… it was in support of your point that christians have unreasonable and untenable possitions when it comes to homosexuality…

‘And if a man lie with mankind, as with womankind, both of them have committed abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” Leviticus 20:13

Christians will always distort to defend the horrific ideas expressed within the bible.

“hold-over from a time in history which was scared to death of disease”
A hold over time from which period exactly? Can you supply evidence for this idea?

“homosexuality was (historically) linked with certain diseases (mainly because it occured at the time outside of monogamy)…” this statement is religious induced verbal vomit.

I was watching http://www.thegodmovie.com/ yesterday again, and just watching the desperation Christians feel when confronted with tuff questions. Everyone should watch this movie.

Looking forward to it anyway, I love his books.

In any case, I’ve read a few (introductory!) books about string theory myself, find it fascinating, and it really seems to explain so many things so well that it’s hard to believe that it or something very much like it is not real. I’m just exposing one common criticism it receives, though I agree with you that since they are actually trying to come up with ways to verify their theories they are 100% honest scientists to me.

A scientific “theory” that is supported by experimental and observational data is considered to be “fact” by scientists but, as our knowledge always expands, these “facts” can change.

This is the opposite of religious ‘facts’ that are completely unsupported by any evidence or observation and are, therefore, simply mythology.

And, as Xan correctly states, scientists are still trying to reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics, so you’re way off base there. The Big Bang model is based on Hubble’s Law, which demonstrated that galaxies are moving away from each other.

Xan, I have to argue with you about string theory not being “science” though. String theory is absolutely science – it’s only young science though. We’ve got theories, we’re still just trying to gather experimental and observational data to support one of them or refute the others.

Experimental sciences are not mathematics (or religion), so you’ll never get definitive and absolute answers for anything. For all we know tomorrow gravity could be reversed and became a repulsive force, it’s just that we deem this to be highly unlikely. That being said they are the best way we have to understand reality, have been proven time and again to be effective, and certainly beat books written thousands of years ago by staggeringly ignorant people by today’s standards.

Also, and as far as I know, quantum theory is in no way based in relativity. In fact many scientists say that *the* open problem in modern physics is to create a theory that succesfuly merges both fields. String theory is one such attempt.

i agree that the bias against homosexuals is horrific…

did you miss the last line of your supposed proof? :

“Our proposal is based on unproven ideas in string theory and is brand new.”

I have been a little slack in joining LOTU – I’ll sign up tomorrow : )

What’s it like for you Christians? Is it like being really old and talking to family members that aren’t really visiting you?

I’m one of those that Jesus clearly wants dead – I’m a homosexual. In the Bible it clearly states that Christians seek genocide against homosexuals (their blood shall be shed). This is in essence, a declaration of genocide against homosexuals – homosexuality is a natural aspect of life that predates all religions all beliefs. That’s like trying to rid the world of tears or atoms.

If a book came out declaring genocide against heterosexuals – does anyone think that there’d still be Bibles in every hotel and motel around this planet?

Do you know what it’s like to grow up in a world where the majority of the people on this planet want you dead?

You Christians (and add most major religions – Frankly I can’t think of any religion that has not adopted this tired old childish fear – it seems to be yet another religious trick – another form of control and repression which probably leads Christians to have more of a need to believe in ‘some other happy place’ ) have created a nightmare world for kids to come into.

And on you all go defending your sadistic beliefs without a care for it’s very real effects.

1. Hubble’s Law – galaxies appear to be moving away from each other at speeds proportional to their distance.

2. Evidence of Cosmic Microwave Background radiation throughout the universe is successfully predicted by the BB model and, by the way, Smoot and Mather won the 2006 Nobel physics prize for measuring it.

3. The BB model successfully predicts the observed quantities of helium-4, helium-3, deuterium and lithium-7 versus hydrogen.

4. Galaxy distribution and evolution – we have evidence for old galaxies, new galaxies and star formations which support predictions from the big bang model.

BTW, the ekpyrotic model doesn’t conflict with the big bang model. This is from Princeton’s site:

“Our model does nothing to contradict this story (the Big Bang). … Instead of beginning with nearly infinite temperature and density, the universe began in a very different state – cold and nearly vacuous. The hot expanding universe we know came as a result of collision that brought the universe up to a large but finite temperature and density.”

(Source: http://wwwphy.princeton.edu/~steinh/npr/)

So… when you said there is “no proof” of the big bang, were you ignorant of these or do you have evidence that the cosmology community doesn’t know about?