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From: aamp@oro.net (eyelessgame)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.uncle-davey
Subject: Re: New Light on the first verses of Genesis?
Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 07:53:02 +0000 (UTC)
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psgj@groundlink.net wrote in message news:<psgj-164EFA.20302019122003@news06.east.earthlink.net>...
> In article <bs028p$6p2$1@atlantis.news.tpi.pl>,
> "Uncle Davey" <noway@jose.com> wrote:
>
> > http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1110212,00.html?79%3A+Int
> > ernational+news+%2D+guardian
> >
> > Science breakthrough of the year: proof of our exploding universe
> >
> > Tim Radford, science editor
> > Friday December 19, 2003
> > The Guardian
> >
>
> <snip>
>
> > This bizarre force seems to be pushing the universe apart at an
> > accelerating rate, when gravitational pull should be making it slow down or
> > contract.
I will note that gravitational force is behaving normally. The fabric
of the universe itself is expanding (and, we now know, at an
accelerating rate); within that fabric, gravity operates as we always
thought it did. The acceleration is surprising, certainly, and has
implications for how the universe will *end*, but it changes only
certain details about the mainstream model of how it began.
> >
>
> <snip>
>
> I'm confused now. I thought evolution claims that the rate of expansion
> is slowing and eventually will collapse in on itself. This throws into
> question all of the supposed "facts" that evolution has supposedly
> proven.
>
> Pat Jacobs
My word, but that's a lot of misconception all strewn into a single
paragraph.
1. "Evolution" is a biological science. What you're looking for is
'cosmology'. Biology and cosmology are separate disciplines, like (for
example) medicine and plumbing. (That's not to say there's zero
overlap. Doctors can advise on how to make plumbing hygenic, and warn
us to avoid lead pipes. Cosmology can inform biology by making some
predictions about the elemental makeup of the primordial Earth, and
can give some hints about possible extraterrestrial events that could
have caused various extinction events.)
2. Cosmology's working hypothesis regarding the rate of expansion was
that it was slowing. This was a natural hypothesis based on what we
knew at the time. It turned out it wasn't true. When it was
discovered it *wasn't* slowing, this required that we go look for
*why* it wasn't slowing. Changing the accepted explanations to fit
the facts is what science does. Every statement of science should be
considered "as far as we know at the time"; "proof" is for
mathematicians and other drunkards.
3. The expansion rate of the universe has butt-all to do with anything
"evolution" demonstrates. Further, it doesn't call into question
anything about the mainstream cosmological, geological, and biological
models that discomfit young-earth creationists. The universe is still
13.7 billion years old. The earth is still 4.55 billion years old.
Life is still descended from a common ancestor. None of this depends
even a tiny bit on whether the rate of expansion of the fabric of
spacetime is accelerating or decelerating.
4. The underlying assumption seems to be that "if one thing is wrong,
everything must be wrong". I find this particular "brittleness of
truth" notion to be characteristic of certain sorts of conservative
faiths; it is foreign to science and observation. (It's found, for
example, in the fundamentalist claim that if a single contradiction is
found in the Bible, or a single biblical story can be found to be
false, then faith must crumble; hence the vehement and absurd
insistence that every single thing in the bible must be literally true
-- hence YECism.) If new data shows that a given model of a given
phemonenon is wrong, we replace that one model with something that
fits the new data. Phenomena that aren't related to that data don't
have to be revised.
To compare to the medicine/plumbing analogy: when we discover some
unexpected detail about a new disease, it may lead to a new or revised
understanding of the human immune system -- but it doesn't call into
question whether water still flows downhill. And it would be a very
odd thing indeed to claim it as vindication for those who believe in
finding water with divining rods.
eyelessgame
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