Big Bang?

[jbor at bigpond.com]

>> Playing devil's advocate here, obviously, but there's a leap of faith 
>> required to accept the "cosmic microwave background" (?) and "the 
>> abundance of elements" as evidence for the universe from nothing 
>> hypothesis (or the Divine Creation hypothesis, for that matter), is 
>> my point. It's "evidence" of the same order as the Miracle at 
>> Lourdes.

On 27/09/2005 kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> Big Bang is presented as a hypothesis -- one of many developed by the 
> Western scientific method, which has a reasonable track record of 
> providing workable hypotheses. Such hypotheses are based not on faith 
> or anything approaching proof, but on reasonable probability.  By 
> working with such hypotheses, scientists have been able to annihilate 
> smallpox and nearly annihilate the human race.  Whether the result has 
> been good or bad, the scientific method has been a reasonable approach 
> toward understanding and shaping the natural world.  That's why it is 
> the subject matter of science classes.  Divine creation is an 
> assertion of faith, not a hypothesis developed by the scientific 
> method.  Ergo it does not belong in a science curriculum.

Religions can and have and do also provide a workable basis for human 
social interaction and organisation (as well as more than their fair 
share of annihilations). I'm not sure how well the track records might 
compare, or whether a binary opposition of the one to the other really 
ever does exist in practical, historical terms, but I'd say it'd be 
neck and neck.

Leaving to one side malignd et al's resort to ethnic stereotyping, the 
point was that both arguments (Big Bang and Divine Creation) take the 
form of a non sequitur, inferring the existence of a cause from the 
manifestation of an effect or effects.

best