Is Cosmic Expansion the Best Fit Model?

Understood… Nor was I. I really was curious as to where you were on the topic given the evidence. Thanks Neil.

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Just my two-cents:

First, Big Bang is not equivalent to the expanding Universe. One can have an expanding Universe that is not Big-Banging.

Further, the cosmological redshift is not the only evidence for expansion. For example, there are evidence based on the relative abundances of elements in the Universe, or the existence and properties of the cosmic microwave background. All of these evidence fit very nicely with the expanding universe picture. There could be theories where the Universe is not expanding that also explain all of the evidence; I don’t know of any, but I am not well read in alternative cosmology models.

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Fortunately Neil isn’t a YEC.:slight_smile:

Jason Lyle has his “One-Way Speed of Light” theory. IIRC it hits on some of the same definitions that Neil mentioned. Lyle claims that since we can only measure the 2-way speed of light (there and back), then there is no way to prove the speed of light is the same going both ways. (I’m told that) Lyle is technically correct, but in the words of Douglas Adams, “This argument isn’t worth a pair of fetid dingo’s kidneys.”

All the physical measurements we make are consistent with the “two-way” speed of light being constant. For instance, if the Universe is less than 10,000 years old, then very distant galaxies should be the same age as our own. That’s not what we see though; distant galaxies are younger, from an earlier time in the universe. If Lyle were correct then distant galaxies should appear to be the same age as our own.

Maybe not. I was speculating on assumptions and consequences.

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As I see it, science is mostly driven by measurement.

To say that the cosmos is expanding is to say that distances between objects are increasing. But we are not measuring that. Our ability to measure the distance to astronomical objects is too imprecise for us to be able to detect the kind of change that expansion claims. Instead, we are making indirect inference based on other data (such as red shifts). These indirect inferences depend on assumptions which we cannot experimentally test.

So I’m currently hesitant to make those assumptions.

Yeah, I’m familiar with Lisle’s Anisotropic Synchrony Convention. I think gravitational lensing debunks it, and several other things do as well. (And you need intelligent photons that know what direction they are traveling to decide how fast to go. :roll_eyes:)

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At least YECs recognize that they have a distant starlight problem.

Or, rather, it is to say that objects are moving apart (velocity vector pointed away), which we are measuring.

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Aren’t we doing that using parallax with ‘nearby’ objects, so redshift is not used?

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Red shift is a way of measuring velocity, especially when it is tied to the peaks associated with atomic or molecular spectra.

If the universe was known to have had a beginning(that isn’t known, and I suspect you’re equivocating on that word), that would certainly be consistent with some conceptions of God.

But in order to be evidence for the existence of God, you’d need to show that this evidence is more likely on the hypothesis that God exists than on any competing hypothesis.

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And we have to use it on objects that are too distant for parallax measurements.

Evidence is evidence and doesn’t vary in likelihood, it just needs to be recognized or denied. Conclusions or inferences drawn, however, will vary with one’s philosophical bias (and not all biases are wrong).

(And why is it me that is equivocating about a ‘beginning’? :slightly_smiling_face:)

Appeals to imagined forces and phenomena have been the basis for all the cosmological models proposed to avoid the big bang implications about God. The disproof of these models and the ongoing appeal by nontheists to more and more bizarre unknowns and unknowables seem to reflect the growing strength of the case for theism.

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That just reveals you don’t know what evidence actually is. Yes, evidence can vary in likelihood depending on the hypothesis. Evidence is data that is more or less likely to be produced, depending on whether some hypothesis is true or not.

To give a simple example, consider the two hypotheses:
A) This coin is extremely biased and lands heads up 99% of the time and tails 1% of the time.
B) This coin is fair and only lands heads up 50% of the time on average.

On which hypothesis it is more likely to obtain the following evidence (a sequence of coinflips)?
HTTHTHTTTTHTTTHHHHHTHTHHTHT

It should be intuitively obvious that you’re more likely to get that sequence of conflips, which is evidence, on the hypothesis that the coin is fair. As we can also see, the evidence has a probability, a likelihood of being obtained, that depends on which hypothesis is true. If A had been true, that sequence would have been much less likely as we’d pretty much have expected a sequence of only heads in those 27 coinflips(since it would take, on average, 100 flips to get a single tails).

That also means the sequence of coinflips is evidence FOR hypothesis B over hypothesis A, and actually evidence AGAINST hypothesis A.

So now that you too understand how evidence works, you can proceed to show that this putative evidence that the universe had “a beginning”(whatever you mean by that) is more likely on the hypothesis that God exists than on any competing hypothesis.

Depends on what you mean by beginning. I don’t know what you mean by it, though I have my suspicions from over a decade of hearing theistic apologetics about Big Bang cosmology.

What do you mean by the universe having a beginning?

Point taken. I was in error and equating evidence and data.

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This might help:

Velocity is distance per unit time. We are not measuring that. We are measuring red shift.

While its possible the universe is expanding from creation week. it seems this is unlikely and just another wrong human idea. the big problem as always is they use light to make calcuations.
Yet the bible is clear light does not have a source except as the fabric/ether of the universe.
So there is no speed of light. indeed , maybe, the idea of one way speed being different from two way is relevant. I read lisle in the creatuon magazine.
it does seem funny to me now to think ITS said there is a speed of light. I understand from youtube videos they do now say there is no speed of light. indeed they say gravity waves goes that fast suggesting its just a common vacume.
i The first verses in genesis was about light. i think the light problem needs to be spolved before more errors.