I did something very mean to some big bang theorists

[hyper.real]

There is a substantive issue here:

rcglinsk wrote:
The thing is, if the big bang theory, the idea that once what was small is now big, is not a testable hypothesis, it is not a scientific idea. Rather it is a religion.

We have the opposition of two pairs of ideas: science and religion; what is testable and what is not testable. What the BAUT people want is for these to align and overlap. But that would false as a matter of fact: religions do make statements which are empricically testable (e.g. as to historical persons and events). Equally, as a matter of fact, science includes fundamental propositions which appear to be untestable, i.e. unfalsifiable (e.g. principle of conservation of energy). The alignement would also be false as a matter of logic, since although science includes "testable hypotheses", the definition of science is not that of a testable hypothesis. By logic, I mean tautologically true, so that all and every occurrence of the word "science" could be replaced by "testable hypothesis" with no change of meaning.

Another opposition of ideas that is often used to bolster the above elision is that between belief and faith. Religion, it is held by scientism, cannot be rationally believed. What scientism fails to observe is that science itself relies on faith to proceed - namely faith that empirical observation and reasoning about the facts of observations will advance not just our beliefs about the universe, but our knowledge of it. It is not simply a matter, as the BAUT poster imagined, of launching a rocket every decade for the next ten milennia to measure the constancy of the CMB - ten milennia is just not enough in the time scale of the universe. The general "problem of induction" is not solved by deciding an arbitrary vanishingly small probability - it simply begs the underlying philosophical question.

The elephant in this intellectual room is "metaphysics". BAUT and its fanbois would have that this is exclusively the property of religion. But, as we observe, their tendentiousness makes them look less like scientists and more like the Gatekeepers of the Gravitational faith. Symptomatic of this is the inability to see that many of their justifications are simply circular reasoning. Yet another symptom is the inevitable descent into figurative (poetic) language when asked to explain things in layman's terms: "magnetic ropes", "lumps of old magnetic field", etc, etc.

[rcglinsk]

There is a substantive issue here:

rcglinsk wrote:
The thing is, if the big bang theory, the idea that once what was small is now big, is not a testable hypothesis, it is not a scientific idea. Rather it is a religion.

We have the opposition of two pairs of ideas: science and religion; what is testable and what is not testable. What the BAUT people want is for these to align and overlap. But that would false as a matter of fact: religions do make statements which are empricically testable (e.g. as to historical persons and events). Equally, as a matter of fact, science includes fundamental propositions which appear to be untestable, i.e. unfalsifiable (e.g. principle of conservation of energy). The alignement would also be false as a matter of logic, since although science includes "testable hypotheses", the definition of science is not that of a testable hypothesis. By logic, I mean tautologically true, so that all and every occurrence of the word "science" could be replaced by "testable hypothesis" with no change of meaning.

Another opposition of ideas that is often used to bolster the above elision is that between belief and faith. Religion, it is held by scientism, cannot be rationally believed. What scientism fails to observe is that science itself relies on faith to proceed - namely faith that empirical observation and reasoning about the facts of observations will advance not just our beliefs about the universe, but our knowledge of it. It is not simply a matter, as the BAUT poster imagined, of launching a rocket every decade for the next ten milennia to measure the constancy of the CMB - ten milennia is just not enough in the time scale of the universe. The general "problem of induction" is not solved by deciding an arbitrary vanishingly small probability - it simply begs the underlying philosophical question.

The elephant in this intellectual room is "metaphysics". BAUT and its fanbois would have that this is exclusively the property of religion. But, as we observe, their tendentiousness makes them look less like scientists and more like the Gatekeepers of the Gravitational faith. Symptomatic of this is the inability to see that many of their justifications are simply circular reasoning. Yet another symptom is the inevitable descent into figurative (poetic) language when asked to explain things in layman's terms: "magnetic ropes", "lumps of old magnetic field", etc, etc.

Good points all around. I wish I had better words to use than science and religion. The other part of my problem is my scientific education was all at Chemical Engineering school. So I've got this bias against "pure" scientists because I see them as a stepping stone to actually getting anything done. Chemical Engineers take pure science ideas about kinetics and molecule shapes and gas laws as the starting point to designing a control system for a reaction. From there we figure out how the catalyst will actually work in real life by experimenting on it. Then we fudge the pure science equations with parameters and variations to make the final product reflect reality, that is, make correct predictions. We never get the wrong idea and see our parameters as anything but fudge factors accounting for the flaws in the pure science.

So I'm always wondering "what does your theory do?"

The evolutionary biologist will talk about genetic engineering, diagnosing and treating diseases, or analyzing the type of viruses in abundance 50 million years ago by observing present day DNA that has incorporated the old virus DNA. They'd have a lot to say. Quantum physicists build better transistors and lasers that bring sight to the nearly blind. My own astigmatism is kerotonic and too much for present day Lasic, but I'm hoping someday I can be cured too. Civil Engineers build bridges that don't fall down and buildings that don't blow over.

The big bang theory does nothing. The runaway greenhouse theory does nothing. The Higgs boson theory does nothing.

The "principle of conservation of energy," the philosophical notion that some nebulous quality "energy" is real and the universe is like a giant calculator that carefully tracks and balances the accounts, can't do anything. But the moment I modify it in the slightest, start talking about "The gibbs energy change will equal the enthalpy change minus the temperature times the change in entropy" I get something very useful that does a whole lot.

Well, you know where this is going, The "god did it" theory does nothing. If a theory has no answer to the question "how do I tell if you are wrong?" then, in all circumstances I can imagine, the theory doesn't do anything. And, just as ubiquitously, a theory that does something has an answer to that question.

[altonhare]

I like this discussion, the science vs. religion debate is extremely important. There is a very clear distinction between the two.

In science we define our terms and then use them consistently. We can make a movie of our theory without invoking contradiction. This is the difference between science and religion.

Actual "science" is basically absent from the mainstream.

The "big bang" theory fails this definition of science because the mathematicians cannot even show us the first frame in the movie, the singularity. It is defined as "0 dimensional" which means it has no extent in any direction. We can only call this "nothing". So what will they show in their movie? A blank screen, then something appearing? Something coming from nothing? An immediate contradiction. The big bang falls under the category of "religion".