Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Darwinism has hardened into a dogma

Yale Uni. professor

Doctor David Gelernter

renounces Darwinism

Part Two:

Darwinism has hardened into a dogma

“David Gelernter laments, from his own knowledge of American academia,

that there is “nothing approaching free speech” when it comes to Darwinism”.

David Klinghoffer

One reads at: https://evolutionnews.org/2019/07/abandoning-darwinism-gelernter-talks-with-meyer-berlinski/

Abandoning Darwinism: Gelernter Talks with Meyer, Berlinski

David Klinghoffer | @d_klinghoffer

July 22, 2019, 2:15 PM

How much would you pay to listen in on a conversation among computer scientist David Gelernter, philosopher of science Stephen Meyer, and mathematician David Berlinski, hosted by Peter Robinson from Stanford’s Hoover Institution? As it happens, and I didn’t see this coming, the four were together in Florence and they took the opportunity to have a fascinating exchange about the recent essay in which Gelernter, the Yale polymath, explained his reasons for rejecting Darwinian theory. See the whole thing here:

Gelernter’s intellectual confession, “Giving Up Darwin,” was published in The Claremont Review of Books. As you can imagine, it caused a stir. Dr. Gelernter attributed his departure from evolutionary orthodoxy to having read books by Meyer (Darwin’s Doubt) and Berlinski (The Deniable Darwin), as well as one that I edited (Debating Darwini’s Doubt).

I had thought that Berlinski’s conversation with Robinson alone, noted here, was about the most interesting thing you could ask to watch. But this beats it. That is because of the remarkable diversity of views on display, from three thinkers who are all Darwin skeptics of one stripe or another.

A Beautiful Theory — But True?

They ask about whether Darwin’s theory is beautiful, about challenges to Darwin from mathematics and biology, whether there is any real difference between saying Darwin’s theory is “unlikely or impossible” in accounting for spectacular biological innovations, whether intelligent design is a sufficient substitute, and much else not strictly on topic.

For example, has Sigmund Freud, like Marx and Darwin, been “taken down” as a pillar of Western thinking? Berlinski and Gelernter emphatically think not.

David Gelernter laments, from his own knowledge of American academia, that there is “nothing approaching free speech” when it comes to Darwinism. This wonderful conversation gives you a sense of what a really free exchange of views would be like, the beauty and interest of it, were such a thing permitted on university campuses. Thank you very much to the indispensable Peter Robinson and his program, Uncommon Knowledge, for making it possible!

[End of article]

Chuck Colson likewise has written of:

http://www.breakpoint.org/1999/09/the-dogma-of-darwinism/

The Dogma of Darwinism

IT’S A RELIGION

by: Chuck Colson
Category: , Christian Worldview

September 14, 1999

Where did religion come from? According to Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson, religion is a product of evolution. In his new book Consilience, Wilson says belief in God must have given early humans an edge in the struggle for survival. But today, he says, traditional religions are being replaced by a new morality, a new unifying myth, based squarely on evolutionary biology.

Darwinism itself is becoming a new religion.

Wilson may sound radical, but he’s right. Darwinism is about much more than science: It provides the scientific support for an entire naturalistic worldview or religion. Broadly speaking, a religion is anything that functions as a person’s ultimate belief or worldview- anything that answers the basic questions of life: Where did we come from? What are we here for? How do we know what’s right and wrong?

For many people today, Darwinian evolution answers those fundamental questions. Where did we come from? From chance collisions of atoms, Darwinism says. Why are we here? There is no purpose to life, Darwinism says-no reason for existence. We are cosmic accidents. How do we know right and wrong? We DON’T know any objective moral law: Morality is merely an idea that appears in the human mind when it has evolved to a certain stage. Hence people make up their own ideas of right and wrong.

Cornell biologist William Provine sums up the implications Of Darwinism in simple bullet points: It means “No life after death; no ultimate foundation for ethics; no ultimate meaning for life; no free will.”

This is why the issue of Darwinism versus cosmic design Has become such a fierce battleground in America today. The debate is not just about fossils or genetic mutations. Our theory of origins determines our identity, our values, our sense of meaning.

This is why, in today’s world, the Christian message must begin with creation. We cannot simply start off with John 3:16 and the gospel message.

That’s like starting to read a book in the middle of the story–you don’t know the characters and you can’t make sense of the plot. We need to start with creation, where the main character of the “story” is introduced as the Creator of all, and the “plot” of human history begins to unfold.

Creation tells us who we are and why we are here. It tells us our lives DO have ultimate meaning. It gives the basis for morality, because if God created us for a purpose, then morality is the guidebook telling us how we fulfill that purpose. And when we live outside the bounds of the purpose for which we were created, that is sin. Suddenly theological terms make sense.

Creation is the basis for the entire Christian worldview.

A century ago, the great Dutch statesman Abraham Kuyper wrote that if we are going to stand against the powerful forces of unbelief today, we must understand that we face a clash of worldviews-and we must frame Christianity as an equally comprehensive worldview. That means beginning with the God who created “the heavens and the earth, and everything in it.”

For “everything in it” finds its meaning in Him.

Thursday, August 15, 2019

Assumption feast invites people to look to heaven with hope, pope says

In Catholic News Service, Vatican

Carol Glatz
Aug 15, 2019
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE

Mary’s assumption into heaven calls people to put aside all those insignificant, mundane and petty concerns competing for their attention and instead be drawn to God and his greatness, Pope Francis said.

ROME - Mary’s assumption into heaven calls people to put aside all those insignificant, mundane and petty concerns competing for their attention and instead be drawn to God and his greatness, Pope Francis said.

After reciting the Angelus prayer on the feast of the Assumption Aug. 15, Francis also blessed thousands of rosaries that will be given to Catholics in Syria “as a sign of my closeness, especially for families who have lost someone because of the war.”
“Prayers made with faith are powerful. Let us keep praying for peace in the Middle East and the whole world,” said the pope, who explained that Aid to the Church in Need spearheaded the initiative to send some 6,000 rosaries to Catholic communities in Syria.

He also expressed his concern and prayers for those affected by monsoons in South Asia.

A week of heavy rains triggered deadly landslides and flooding in India, where, according to government officials, nearly 300 people died and more than 1.2 million people were forced from their homes. Officials in Myanmar reported more than 50 people have died there.
“May the Lord give strength to those (affected) and those who help them,” the pope said.
With the assumption of Mary, body and soul, into heaven, she is “like a mother who waits for her children to come back home.” Knowing that she is there with God in heaven “gives us comfort and hope during our pilgrimage” on earth, he said.
The feast of the Assumption of Mary is an invitation to everyone, “especially for those who are afflicted by doubt and sadness, and live gazing downward,” he said.
“Let us look on high,” he said, where Mary awaits. “She loves us, she smiles at us and she comes to our aid with haste.”
Just as every mother wants what is best for her children, “she tells us, ‘You are precious in God’s eyes; you were not made for measly worldly gratifications, but for the great joys of heaven,’” the pope said.
In life, it is important to seek what is truly great, “otherwise we get lost” chasing after so many trivial things, he said.
“Mary shows us that if we want our life to be happy, God goes first because only he is great,” he said.

“Instead, how often we live chasing after things that don’t matter: Prejudices, grudges, rivalries, jealousies, illusions, superfluous material goods. How much pettiness in life!”
But today, “Mary invites us to lift our gaze up to the great things that the Lord has done for her” and reminds people that the Lord also does great things in them.
“Let us be attracted by true beauty, let us not be swallowed up by the petty things of life, but let us choose the greatness of heaven,” he said.

https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2019/08/15/assumption-feast-invites-people-to-look-to-heaven-with-hope-pope-says/

Sunday, August 11, 2019

Yale Uni. professor Doctor David Gelernter renounces Darwinism

"My argument is with people who dismiss intelligent design without considering, it seems to me — it's widely dismissed in my world of academia as some sort of theological put up job — it's an absolutely serious scientific argument…. In fact it's the first and most obvious and intuitive one that comes to mind. It's got to be dealt with intellectually".

Dr. David Gelernter

One reads at: https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/famed-yale-professor-quits-darwin

Renowned Yale Professor

Quits Darwin

by Stephen Wynne • ChurchMilitant.com • August 8, 2019

Dr. David Gelernter: Darwinism can't explain origin of species

"Darwinian evolution is a brilliant and beautiful scientific theory," he wrote. "Once it was a daring guess. Today it is basic to the credo that defines the modern worldview."

"Accepting the theory as settled truth ... certifies that you are devoutly orthodox in your scientific views; which in turn is an essential first step towards being taken seriously in any part of modern intellectual life," he added. "But what if Darwin was wrong?"In his seminal work The Origin of Species (1859), Darwin proposed that all life forms have descended from a common ancestor, suggesting that over time, random variation coupled with natural selection gives rise to entirely new species.

But, Gelernter wrote, "The origin of species is exactly what Darwin cannot explain."

"Darwin successfully explained the small adjustments by which an organism adapts to local circumstances: changes to fur density or wing style or beak shape," he noted. "Yet there are many reasons to doubt whether he can answer the hard questions and explain the big picture — not the fine-tuning of existing species but the emergence of new ones."

Dr. Stephen Meyer A key problem for Darwinism, Gelernter said, is the Cambrian explosion. The fossil record reveals that "a striking variety of new organisms — including the first-ever animals — pop up suddenly in the fossil record over a mere 70-odd million years," which contradicts Darwin's assumption that "new life forms evolve gradually from old ones in a constantly branching, spreading tree of life."

Chief among the flaws undermining Darwinism, he wrote, is molecular biology, which in recent decades has demonstrated that random mutation plus natural selection cannot give rise to new, more complex species.

Gelernter credited three books for his shift in understanding: Dr. Stephen Meyer's Darwin's Doubt (2013), Dr. David Berlinski's The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays (2009) and David Klinghoffer's Debating Darwin's Doubt (2015).

"These three form a fateful battle group that most people would rather ignore," he wrote.
Gelernter singled out Meyer's work as especially praiseworthy: "Meyer ... disassembles the theory of evolution piece by piece. Darwin's Doubt is one of the most important books in a generation. Few open-minded people will finish it with their faith in Darwin intact."

Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one. ….

Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at Seattle-based think tank the Discovery Institute, is an advocate of a replacement theory, intelligent design (ID).

Biological life, ID proponents argue, is not the result of blind, undirected evolutionary processes, but the product of design by an intelligent entity.

Many adherents are religious. But, as Gelernter observed, "Intelligent design as Meyer explains it never uses religious arguments, draws religious conclusions, or refers to religion in any way."

Still, as ID has grown as a theoretical alternative to Darwinism, it has been savaged as a pseudo-scientific appeal to religion by committed Darwinists within the scientific establishment. This, Gelernter pointed out, is because Darwinism serves as their de facto faith:

The religion is all on the other side. Meyer and other proponents of I.D. are the dispassionate intellectuals making orderly scientific arguments. Some I.D.-haters have shown themselves willing to use any argument — fair or not, true or not, ad hominem or not — to keep this dangerous idea locked in a box forever. They remind us of the extent to which Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one.

Critics have long argued that Darwinism is atheistic philosophy disguised as science. Since Darwin's day, they note, it has been used to reject Christian orthodoxy and advance materialism, the view that human beings are merely the accidental results of unguided natural processes (as opposed to being purposefully created by God), and that the human mind is the only — and therefore, the supreme — consciousness that exists.

I am attacking their religion and I don't blame them for being all head up, it is a big issue for them. ….

In a 1997 article for The New York Review of Books, leading evolutionist and atheist Dr. Richard C. Lewontin testified to the fact that materialists are committed to Darwinism, in spite of its myriad inconsistencies and flaws, because they are committed to the denial of God.

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori [pre-existing] adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

"My argument is with people who dismiss intelligent design without considering, it seems to me — it's widely dismissed in my world of academia as some sort of theological put up job — it's an absolutely serious scientific argument," he said. "In fact it's the first and most obvious and intuitive one that comes to mind. It's got to be dealt with intellectually." ….

Gemma Tognini: Law needs to recognise that a dead child is not ‘just a foetus’

I’ve got a question, two actually, and I’m happy to be judged on their merits because I think the issue is important.

Who gets to decide when an unborn baby matters? Furthermore, who gets to say what worth is placed on the life of an unborn child when that life is ended either intentionally or recklessly by a criminal act?

Because they were not born, their lives aren’t acknowledged as more than a biological extension of their mother. The law in NSW does not look at what happened to Katherine and see three lives lost.

No, the law in NSW — and in WA — sees the death of an unborn child as one of the mother’s injuries. The law says a baby must show independent life outside a mother’s body to be deemed a living person, and therefore a victim of crime.

The law, as they say, is an ass.

Who got to decide this, and when? Why is there such resistance to reforming this part of the Criminal Code?

Those unborn twin boys were mourned in their own right. Relatives told media “these babies were already part of the family”. They were mourned to some degree by each one of us who read the story and wept a little on the inside.

Like most of us, I know couples who’ve gone through the trauma of late-term miscarriage or stillbirth. Maybe you’re one of them.

You can’t tell me the babies you lost were nothing more than a bunch of cells attached to a life source. They were your children.

Disagree? OK, let’s have some real talk, some adult talk if you’re up for it.

How many of you have ever been invited to a foetus shower? Didn’t think so. We hold baby showers to celebrate the pending arrival of a unique life, brimming with promise. An expecting couple doesn’t get asked, what sex is your foetus or, have you chosen a name for your foetus? I could go on, but best I don’t.

Try telling parents who’ve lost a baby, or a woman who has delivered a stillborn child, that that baby is ‘just a foetus’ and doesn’t deserve to be recognised.

We call them babies when they’re born and foetus when we try to justify everything else. The language we use sanitises truth for the sake of our comfort, softens the blow when the blow is worthy of being felt.

A spokesman for Attorney-General John Quigley said the State Government had no plans to review WA’s legislation.

I want to know why not.

In NSW, the reform agenda is known as Zoe’s law. In 2009, Zoe Donegan was stillborn at 32 weeks after her mother’s car was hit by a mini-van. Behind the wheel, a drug-addled driver. You should google the story. It will break your heart. Zoe’s law seeks to amend NSW law to make it a crime to harm or destroy a child in utero. The Bill is yet to be passed and remains in limbo.

A lot of the pushback on this kind of legislative change has come from pro-choice campaigners who fret that adjusting the law could affect legislation around late-term abortion.

To me, the two issues are separate.

To conflate them is at best mischievous, at worst a terrible insult to the women who chose to keep their babies, but were robbed of their choice and their children by a crime.

What we’re talking about here is an appropriate penalty for criminal acts, and about recognising that life is precious, at every stage. If the law is drafted correctly, not reactively or in haste, there’s no need for concern.

Murdoch University lecturer Lorraine Finlay is a former State prosecutor, a former associate to Justice Dyson Heydon in the High Court (among many other things) and has written extensively on the topic.

She says while the concerns of pro-choice campaigners are important, the issues are not automatically interlinked. She wrote recently that the law can be drafted so that it has no broader implication for either abortion or the legal rights of pregnant women.

As a society, we acknowledge that life, at every stage, matters.

If it didn’t, we wouldn’t have such stringent, well-debated and carefully drafted abortion laws in Australia.

The taking of life, either medically or via a reckless or intentional criminal act, is a monumental thing and as a society we recognise that.

We don’t need to have further conversations around existing abortion laws. It’s about looking at current holes in the Criminal Code and plugging them. It’s about recognising that most of the difficult and complex social issues we face are worth the subsequent awkward and uncomfortable conversations.

Try telling parents who’ve lost a baby, or a woman who has delivered a stillborn child, that that baby is “just a foetus” and doesn’t deserve to be recognised. You just wouldn’t.

I mean, at the very least, stop and ask yourself, how would I feel if it were me, would current laws be enough?

This conversation is about as fun as walking barefoot through a paddock full of doublegees.

But here’s the thing — two ideas can and should be able to coexist in tension. This is no different — probably more emotive, but at the heart of it, no different.

Zoe’s life counted. The lives of Katherine Hoang’s unborn twin sons, counted. The law needs to reflect that.

Gemma Tognini is managing director of GT Media

https://thewest.com.au/opinion/gemma-tognini/law-is-wrong-when-unborn-lives-are-lost-ng-b88999761z

Friday, August 9, 2019

Renowned Yale Professor Quits Darwin

by Stephen Wynne • ChurchMilitant.com • August 8, 2019

Dr. David Gelernter: Darwinism can't explain origin of species

NEW HAVEN, Conn. (ChurchMilitant.com) - Famed Yale University computer science professor Dr. David Gelernter has renounced Darwinism.
In a column for the spring edition of the Claremont Review of Books, Gelernter announced that he is no longer a disciple of Darwin, saying the English naturalist's theory has been disproven.
"Darwinian evolution is a brilliant and beautiful scientific theory," he wrote. "Once it was a daring guess. Today it is basic to the credo that defines the modern worldview."
"Accepting the theory as settled truth ... certifies that you are devoutly orthodox in your scientific views; which in turn is an essential first step towards being taken seriously in any part of modern intellectual life," he added. "But what if Darwin was wrong?"In his seminal work The Origin of Species (1859), Darwin proposed that all life forms have descended from a common ancestor, suggesting that over time, random variation coupled with natural selection gives rise to entirely new species.
But, Gelernter wrote, "The origin of species is exactly what Darwin cannot explain."
"Darwin successfully explained the small adjustments by which an organism adapts to local circumstances: changes to fur density or wing style or beak shape," he noted. "Yet there are many reasons to doubt whether he can answer the hard questions and explain the big picture — not the fine-tuning of existing species but the emergence of new ones."

A key problem for Darwinism, Gelernter said, is the Cambrian explosion. The fossil record reveals that "a striking variety of new organisms — including the first-ever animals — pop up suddenly in the fossil record over a mere 70-odd million years," which contradicts Darwin's assumption that "new life forms evolve gradually from old ones in a constantly branching, spreading tree of life."
Chief among the flaws undermining Darwinism, he wrote, is molecular biology, which in recent decades has demonstrated that random mutation plus natural selection cannot give rise to new, more complex species.
Gelernter credited three books for his shift in understanding: Dr. Stephen Meyer's Darwin's Doubt (2013), Dr. David Berlinski's The Deniable Darwin and Other Essays (2009) and David Klinghoffer's Debating Darwin's Doubt (2015).
"These three form a fateful battle group that most people would rather ignore," he wrote.
Gelernter singled out Meyer's work as especially praiseworthy: "Meyer ... disassembles the theory of evolution piece by piece. Darwin's Doubt is one of the most important books in a generation. Few open-minded people will finish it with their faith in Darwin intact."

Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one.Tweet

Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at Seattle-based think tank the Discovery Institute, is an advocate of a replacement theory, intelligent design (ID).
Biological life, ID proponents argue, is not the result of blind, undirected evolutionary processes, but the product of design by an intelligent entity.
Many adherents are religious. But, as Gelernter observed, "Intelligent design as Meyer explains it never uses religious arguments, draws religious conclusions, or refers to religion in any way."
Still, as ID has grown as a theoretical alternative to Darwinism, it has been savaged as a pseudo-scientific appeal to religion by committed Darwinists within the scientific establishment. This, Gelernter pointed out, is because Darwinism serves as their de facto faith:

The religion is all on the other side. Meyer and other proponents of I.D. are the dispassionate intellectuals making orderly scientific arguments. Some I.D.-haters have shown themselves willing to use any argument — fair or not, true or not, ad hominem or not — to keep this dangerous idea locked in a box forever. They remind us of the extent to which Darwinism is no longer just a scientific theory but the basis of a worldview, and an emergency replacement religion for the many troubled souls who need one.

I am attacking their religion and I don't blame them for being all head up, it is a big issue for them.Tweet

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori [pre-existing] adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Gelernter worries that materialists' philosophical/religious commitment to Darwinism is precluding genuine scientific inquiry. In an interview with Stanford University's Hoover Institution last month, he expounded on this concern.
"My argument is with people who dismiss intelligent design without considering, it seems to me — it's widely dismissed in my world of academia as some sort of theological put up job — it's an absolutely serious scientific argument," he said. "In fact it's the first and most obvious and intuitive one that comes to mind. It's got to be dealt with intellectually."

Gelernter said he's troubled by the conduct of many of his Yale colleagues, noting that "their intellectual behavior, what they have published — and much more importantly what they tell their students," doesn't reveal a commitment to scientific truth.
"[W]hat I have seen in their behavior intellectually and at colleges across the West is nothing approaching free speech on this topic," he lamented. "It's a bitter, fundamental, angry, outraged rejection [of intelligent design], which comes nowhere near scientific or intellectual discussion. I've seen that happen again and again."
"Darwinism has indeed passed beyond a scientific argument as far as they are concerned," he noted. "You take your life in your hands to challenge it intellectually. They will destroy you if you challenge it."
Gelernter's observation echoes the testimony of multiple scientists who have been blacklisted for scientific "heresy," some of whom were profiled in Ben Stein's 2007 documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
Repeating his earlier assertion, Gelernter explained that those who question materialism's fundamental tenet are targeted because for materialists, Darwinism is faith: "I am attacking their religion and I don't blame them for being all head up, it is a big issue for them," he said.

The students in my class, they're all Darwinsts. I am not hopeful.Tweet

Critics of the theory point out that in the classroom, Darwinism is almost universally presented uncritically — that its weaknesses go unexamined. The result, they say, is that by college, untold numbers of students have been severed from religious belief, convinced by materialist teachers, professors and textbooks that theology is incompatible with science.
In 2016, Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) published a study of why so many Catholic young people are leaving the Church. Summarizing the findings, Our Sunday Visitor contributor Mark M. Gray noted:

The reasons young people leave are complex and varied. However, there is an emerging profile of one of the most common ways this happens. Many historians and Catholic theologians will say the Catholic Church has no place in a "war" between religion and science today. Yet the Church does appear to be losing a related battle nonetheless. Some young Catholics have told CARA that they are leaving the Faith for science, believing that Catholicism is incompatible with what they are learning in high school or at the university level.

When asked "What are the reasons that explain why you are no longer Catholic?" the largest percentage of young ex-Catholics — 1 in 5 — said they abandoned the Faith because they no longer believed in God. Typical reasons given included:

"Because I grew up and realized it was a story like Santa or the Easter Bunny."
"As I learn more about the world around me and understand things that I once did not, I find that the thought of an all-powerful being to be less and less believable."
"I realized that religion is in complete contradiction with the rational and scientific world, and to continue to subscribe to a religion would be hypocritical."
"Need proof of something."
"It no longer fits into what I understand of the universe."

Gelernter affirmed Darwinists' commitment to proselytizing.
"Religion is imparted, more than anything else, by the parents to the children," he said. "And young people are brought up as little Darwinists. Kids I see running around New Haven are all Darwinists. … The students in my class, they're all Darwinists. I am not hopeful."

https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/famed-yale-professor-quits-darwin

Monday, July 8, 2019

‘Big Bang’ really more of a fizzer?

“These "shouldn't exist" – a supermassive black hole, an iron-poor star,

and a dusty galaxy – but they do”.

Bob Enyart

Experience should teach us that explosions, be they big or small, do not create anything orderly. They destroy.

Explosions can destroy whole civilisations (e.g. Thera), can Krak-atoa, wipe out cities (atomic), collapse skyscraper buildings, leave humans dismembered all over battlefields.

‘Explosion’ was at least the beginning of the ‘Big Bang’ theory, though scientists are now at pains to distance themselves from that inconvenient image:

http://www.originsquest.org/expansion-not-a-ldquobig-bangrdquo-explosion.html

Lemaître started the idea that the universe began with an explosion. He was also wrong about that. The universe did not explode. It expanded. Explosions disrupt existing order, but the expansion of the universe was orderly. Astronomers have photographed the universe as it was after a great deal of expansion. Considerable order is still clearly visible, particularly the order of uniformity or homogeneity.

[End of quote]

Bob Enyart has rejected the ‘Big Bang’ theory of the origins of the universe, listing these reasons why: https://kgov.com/evidence-against-the-big-bang

* RSR's List of Evidence Against the Big Bang: For descriptions and links to journal references, see below.

- Mature galaxies exist where the BB predicts only infant galaxies (like the 13.4Bly distant GN-z11)

- An entire universe-worth of missing antimatter contradicts most fundamental BB prediction

- Observations show that spiral galaxies are missing millions of years of BB predicted collisions

- Clusters of galaxies exist at great distances where the BB predicts they should not exist

- A trillion stars are missing an unimaginably massive quantity of heavy elements, a total of nine billion years worth

- Galaxy superclusters exist yet the BB predicts that gravity couldn't form them even in the alleged age of the cosmos

- A missing generation of the alleged billions of first stars that the failed search has implied simply never existed

- Missing uniform distribution of earth's radioactivity

- Solar system formation theory wrong too

- It is "philosophy", not science, that makes the big-bang claim that the universe has no center

- Amassing evidence suggests the universe may have a center

- Sun missing nearly 100% of the spin that natural formation would impart

- Supernova theory for the origin of heavy elements now widely rejected

- Missing uniform distribution of solar system isotopes

- Missing billions of years of additional clustering of nearby galaxies

- Surface brightness of the furthest galaxies, against a fundamental BB claim, is identical to that of the nearest galaxies

- Missing shadow of the big bang with the long-predicted "quieter" echo behind nearby galaxy clusters now disproved

- The CMB and other alleged confirmed big bang predictions (Google: big bang predictions. See that we're #1.)

- These "shouldn't exist" – a supermassive black hole, an iron-poor star, and a dusty galaxy – but they do

- Fine tuning and dozens of other MAJOR scientific observations and 1,000+ scientists doubting the big bang.

[End of quote]

Creationist John Hartnett, writing in Creation 37(3):48–51 (July 2015), is of a similar mind:

https://creation.com/big-bang-beliefs-busted

Big bang beliefs: busted

by John Hartnett

The commonly accepted big bang model supposedly determines the history of the universe precisely (see Figure 1). Yet to do so, it is filled with unprovable fudge factors. That may sound like an exaggerated claim, but it seems to be the state of cosmology today.

This situation has come about because the unverifiable starting assumptions are inherently wrong! Some brave physicists have had the temerity to challenge the ruling paradigm—the standard big bang ΛCDM inflation cosmology.¹ One of those is Prof. Richard Lieu, Department Chair, Astrophysics, University of Alabama, who wrote:

“Cosmology is not even astrophysics: all the principal assumptions in this field are unverified (or unverifiable) in the laboratory … .”² [emphasis added]

He goes on to say that this is “because the Universe offers no control experiment, …” He means that the same observations can be interpreted in several different ways. Because there are no other universes to compare ours with, you can’t determine absolutely which is the correct answer. That means, we do not know what a typical universe should look like. As a result cosmologists today are inventing all sorts of stuff that has just the right properties to make their theories work, but it is stuff that has never been observed in the lab. They have become “comfortable with inventing unknowns to explain the unknown”, says Lieu.

Figure 1. Alleged history of the universe.

Dark matter and dark energy

Cosmologists tell us we live in a universe filled with invisible, unobserved stuff—about 74% dark energy and 22% dark matter (see Figure 2). But what is this stuff that we cannot detect yet should be all around us? Only 4% of the matter/energy content of the Universe is supposed to be the ordinary atoms that we are familiar with.

In June 2013, after the release of the first results from the Planck satellite, the fractions of dark energy and dark matter were significantly changed to 68% dark energy and 27% dark matter, leaving 5% normal atomic matter.³

Yet we are told that now we are in a period of precision cosmology.⁴ But we see a total disagreement between the determination of these fractions from high redshift supernova measurements and Planck CMB measurements. Even the claimed errors do not help the values to coincide.⁵

For 40 years, one form or another of dark matter has been sought in the laboratory, e.g. the axion (named after a popular US brand of laundry detergent, because they thought its discovery would clean up some problems with particle physics). Recently a claim was made alleging the detection of a dark matter particle in a lab experiment, but that claim requires rigorous verification.⁶

Figure 2. Alleged mass/energy content of universe³

Now we also have dark energy— some sort of anti-gravity that is supposedly driving the universe apart at an even faster pace than in the past. It was reported that,

“It is an irony of nature that the most abundant form of energy in the universe is also the most mysterious. Since the breakthrough discovery that the cosmic expansion is accelerating, a consistent picture has emerged indicating that two-thirds of the cosmos is made of ‘dark energy’—some sort of gravitationally repulsive material.”⁷ [emphasis added]

Supposedly, dark energy is a confirmed fact. But does the evidence confirm that the universal expansion is accelerating? They are right about the irony; even though this energy is allegedly so abundant, it cannot be observed locally in the laboratory. In 2011, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of the accelerating universe, which means dark energy must be real stuff (it would seem that science’s ‘gatekeepers’ can’t ever renege on that now). But it has no correspondence to anything we know in the laboratory today, which hardly makes sense.

As Lieu points out,

“… astronomical observations can never by themselves be used to prove ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ a physical theory. This is because we live in only one Universe—the indispensible ‘control experiment’ is not available.”⁸

There is no way to interact with and get a response from the Universe to test the theory under question, as an experimentalist might do in a laboratory experiment. At most, the cosmologist collects as much data as he can, and uses statistical arguments to try to show that his conclusion is likely. Says Lieu (emphasis added):

“Hence the promise of using the Universe as a laboratory from which new incorruptible physical laws may be established without the support of laboratory experiments is preposterous …”.⁸

Unknowns to explain unknowns

Lieu lists five evidences where cosmologists use ‘unknowns’ to explain ‘unknowns’, and hence he says they are not really doing astrophysics. Yet these evidences are claimed to be all explained (and in the case of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)⁹ radiation even predicted¹⁰) by the ΛCDM inflation model of the big bang. None of them are based on laboratory experiments, and they are unlikely to ever be explained this way. The ‘unknowns’ in the lab (meaning not known to physics today) are listed in italics. They are:

1. The redshift of light from galaxies, explained by expansion of space,¹¹

2. The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, explained as the afterglow of the Big Bang,

3. The perceived motion of stars and gases in the disks of spiral galaxies,¹² explained by dark matter,

4. Distant supernovae ¹³ being dimmer than they should be, hence an accelerating universe, explained by dark energy,

5. Flatness (space has Euclidean geometry) and isotropy (uniformity in all directions), explained by faster-than-light inflation (see box)

As an experimentalist, I know the standards used in so-called ‘cosmology experiments’ would never pass muster in my lab. Yet it has been said we are now living in the era of ‘precision cosmology’.¹⁴

Cosmologist Max Tegmark said,

“… 30 years ago, cosmology was largely viewed as somewhere out there between philosophy and metaphysics. You could speculate over a bunch of beers about what happened, and then you could go home, because there wasn’t a whole lot else to do.” [But now they are closing in on a] “consistent picture of how the universe evolved from the earliest moment to the present.”⁴

How can that be true if none of Lieu’s five observations listed above can be explained by ‘knowns’? They have been explained by resorting to ‘unknowns’ with a sleight of hand that allows the writer to say, ‘We are closing in on the truth.’

What this leads to

I recall Nobel Laureate Steven Chu speaking to a large gathering of high school children on the occasion of the Australian Institute of Physics National Congress at the Australian National University in Canberra in 2005. He said that we now understand nearly all there is to know about the Universe, except for a few small details; like what is dark energy and dark matter which [allegedly] make up 96% of the stuff in the Universe.

Cosmologists may have their objectives—to shore up their faith in a model based on false and unverifiable assumptions—but it is a leaky bucket that cannot hold back the evidence that ultimately will be published against it.

The fact is that the history of the universe cannot be determined from a model which cannot be independently tested. And many fudge factors are needed for the present model to describe the observations. The Big Bang cosmology is verified in the minds of those who already hold to that belief—that the Universe created itself about 14 billion years ago—ex nihilo. To me the biblical big picture is far more believable—we are only left to fill in the details. ….