Blessed are the Cynical

Remove all ads!

NOG, I was not trying to contradict the article itself. As I said, it's a very interesting piece (though I admit I disagree with a huge part of it). My comment was specifically about Gnarfflinger referring to the article as a "scientific source" and asking for a citation that contradicts it on a scientific basis. Which, as far as I am concerned, is not needed, because the article itself is not science, something you seem to agree with ("the very attempt to reconcile science and religion, just like the concerted attempt to drive them apart, is not a scientific process")

 

Ah, but while the article and topic are not science, the author is a scientist (Ph.D. in Physics from MIT) and the article is based heavily (if not entirely) on science. Unless you are treating science as an unpollutable holy grail (ad thus the new religion), the article not being pure science is in no way a criticism. Therefore, if you take issue with the article, take issue with it on topics that matter. You may attack the theology, the science, even the author, but saying it isn't science isn't really an attack.

 

The article takes a rational approach, and the author may be a scientist, but that doesn't necessarily make it a scientific article. Also, half of the article is science, the other theology, as you may recall.

However, the dictionary says (I always feel we should define what we are talking about, a personal twitch):
sci·en·tif·ic
1. of or pertaining to science or the sciences: scientific studies.

It is debatable whether or not this article pertains to science, or merely uses a scientific background to expand on another study.
For the sake of argument, let's say this is in fact a scientific article.

Alrighty.

The author assumes a certain position of the observer right after the beginning of the universe which dilates time (or rather, curves the time-space continuum to a specific amount) so that in the time that one second passes there, 10^12 seconds pass in our time.

He assumes this number, and explaines that this was when stable matter had formed, without expanding on the question why this particular moment in the formation of the universe was more preferable to any other moment in time. This seems like a rather arbitrary decision. Why not choose a time a little closer to the big bang? Why not a little later?

With an infinite number of choices to place his observer, he places the observer in such a position that his numbers match up with the bible's. That reeks of calculating towards the answer you knew beforehand.

Although I do have to admire the man for bending science to the bible, rather than the other way around, as people usually tend to do nowadays.

 

Mostly agree with what henkie said, but that was not my point. NOG, please re-read what Gnarff said and my answer to him (and to you previously). I did not attack the article on the basis of anything. I attacked Gnarff's claim that the article is an "unpollutable holy grail" because it is science (his argument was to this effect. I never made such a claim, nor hinted at it). I responded with, this article is not science, and therefore cannot be proven/debunked/argued/whatever on scientific basis, but on other bases such as theology, metaphysics, or philosophy. I never claimed that made the article inferior, it's simply a different field entirely. As for the nature of the article, being written by a scientist and discussing science does not make it a scientific article. Metaphysics and science are not the same.

 

Ziad:
Looking through the earlier posts, it seems we both may have suffered from miscommunications. Gnarff refers to a 'scientific source' (could be the article or the author) and asks for proof contradicting it instead of people just ignoring it. You claim (seemingly in respose) that the article is not scientific, but rather theological and ontological. Like billiard balls on a pool table, things spin off from there.

To address the original concern, the author is definitively a scientific source, and the article is as much scientific as theological. Gnarff never refered to it, or even hinted that it may be, anything like an 'unpollutable holy grail' (my poor response to your posts, btw, for which I apologize), but rather suggests that a secular attack on the article should come from a scientific perspective, criticizing the scientific portion of the basis.

To return to the topic of the article itself:
Henkie:
The author does not assume this number, but rather states that it is an established conclusion of relativity and that "Any one of a dozen physics text books all bring the same number." This number in question refers to the dialation of time from the formation of matter to now, thus his chosen reference point. But wait, there's more. In his full book, he explains that there's a problem with getting any closer to the Big Bang than this: you encounter a singularity. Neither mathmatics nor physics can receed further than this in real time. In imaginary time, math can go further back under a whole slew of assumptions, approximations, and distortions (knowlingly made in order to allow us to go further back), but physics still runs into this problem. At this point in 'time', the universe is infinitely small, infinitely dense, and infinitely hot, and both time and space themselves are, as of yet, undefined terms. All the references to time and space during and immediately after the big bang are made using an imaginary extension of our space-time reference into that situation, because real space-time doesn't extend thus.

In other words, neither the use of that position, nor that number were arbitrary, but rather chosen as the closest points to the point of interest (the Big Bang) achievable and the results at that point. Furthermore, these were not chosen by the author, but rather his predecesors in relativistic physics. Basically, the position and the value of dialation are tied to each other. In reference to their relation to the biblical Six Days, what better point for God to start referencing things than the beginning of real time?

EDIT: Despite my disection of your post, Henkie, I do appreciate that you approached the article from a scientific basis, asking questions about the validity of the scientific calculations. I hope my resposes have not been aggregious.