QUOTE(jason78 @ Nov 11 2007, 08:13 PM)
It's not a matter of faith, its a matter of evidence, and being able to reproduce experimental results.
How do you reconcile Genesis 1 with what is observed? How do you then reconcilie it with Genesis 2?
I agree with you when you say the universe is bounded. Many theories about the current state of the universe wouldn't work if it weren't. There is a correlation between red shift and distance, what misunderstanding are you refering to? You speak of the slowing down of the speed of light as if it were a fact, when it has been experimentaly proven that the speed of light is a constant. The low temperature of the CMB was expected, and also what you would expect to find left over from a universe completely bathed in radiation.
If you replace 10,000 years with 15 billion years then we are on the same page. The problems that Big Bang Cosmology faces has to do with how things happened between T=0 and T=10^-32 seconds afterwards.
It's not a choice. I wish it were! If I could chose to live in a reality where wishing for something made it true I would. But that isn't the way the world works. String theory is palletable to me because it is predictive when it comes how thing actually work in the universe, not because I like it. I'd love a theory that explains how things work without having to do a load of difficult math. But it would seem that if there is a god behind all this, then he loves numbers.
Again you claim evidence and experimental results that are not there. Here is what an open letter to the Scientific Community from other evolutionists that do not believe in the BB have to say about your evidence (you can find the entire letter at
http://cosmologystatement.org).
Here is a few quotes from the letter:
"The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory."
"Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe."
"Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed."
The quotes state the exact opposite of what you have claimed about observable evidence and this letter was signed by 540 cosmologists and at the top of the list is the foremost astronomer Dr. Halton Arp. Now if the foremost astronomer and 539 other cosmologists say that no observed evidence exist that must mean there is no observed evidence. Yet you say there is. What do you know that they do not know? Also they are saying what creationists have been saying since the BB theory was dreamed up that there is no evidence for it so it did not happen. The experiments you bring up are also said to not be in favor of the BB. Also in an article entitled "The 'Science' of the Big Bang" (found at
http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2006/arc...angscience.htm) states that BB science media is reporting that the BB is confirmed is far from being true and that the BB "has already failed." Dr. Gentry states that the BB believers have no experimental evidence to prove the BB happened ("Collapse of the Big Bang Cosmology and the Emergence of the New Cosmic Center of the Universe"
http://www.halos.com).
I am not sure what you mean by reconcile the Genesis account with what is observed. Please be specific?
If you are a BB believer you must believe that the universe is unbounded for your belief to work. As far as the redshifts are concerned Dr. Arp has discovered galaxies interacting with each other having different redshift values yet are the same distances from earth. He postulates that some "extra-galactic objects had to have redshifts which were not caused by a recession velocity" (Redshifts and the Hubble Law
http://www.heretical.com/science/redshift.html). His work has called a big question mark on the Hubble Law and the use of redshifts to measure distances and recessions. For more information on his work you can go to his website
http://haltonarp.com and read some of his work. Dr. Robert Gentry has been doing work in the redshift area and he is confirming Dr. Arp's work that redshifts do not necessarily mean expansion (Collapse of Big Bang Cosmology and the Emergence of the New Cosmic Center of the Universe found at
http://www.halos.com).
As far as light speed slowing down there are experiments that are proving this and is gaining ground in the scientific community.
In regards to your low CMB temperatures expected by BB believers is not correct look at these quotes from the "Open Letter to the Scientific Community" and 'The "Science" of the Big Bang.'
"Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for the parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation."
"In popular discussion of the Big Bang, the most frequent statement made is that discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) "confirmed" the hypothesis. But this interpretation requires a gross distortion of history."
The distortion mentioned is the fact that BB believers Robert Dick and George Gamow predicted the CMB would be between 45 to 50K respectively. Predictions made by those who did not believe the BB had predictions of the CMB to be 1.9, 2.3, or 3K. When the CMB was discovered it was found to be 2.7K and as you can see the lower CMB was expected by those who did not believe in the BB. Dr. Gentry has written papers that have called attention to the loss of energy in the CMB, that is 3000K to the present reading of 2.7K had not been accounted for by the BB believers. This nonconversation-of-energy loss as Gentry calls it is still unaccounted for so how can you claim this stays within sound physics?
the BB has more problems than just how they happened as you can see by the evidence presented. Yes there is a choice and you have gone with something that could not have happened.
Bob Barclay