I understand that you’d like to separate them, but how does Big Bang sufficiently explain the evidence without it? If inflation was somehow shown to be unworkable (you’d first have 33 scientists rushing to decry the blasphemy), seems you’d then have a lot more scientists questioning other parts of the Big Bang model. Seems you have to be “intellectually honest” to say the Big Bang would be much harder to support if inflation is shown to be wrong.
@swamidass perhaps we can change the title of this thread to “Are Scientists Skeptical about Fundamental Aspects of the Big Bang?” =)
While “Do Scientists Dispute the Big Bang?” may be a more controversial headline for the thread (and the answer is still ‘yes’ IMO, ha), my proposed title is closer to my original statement/question: “Seems there are some respectable scientists who either seriously question or reject some or all aspects of Big Bang theory…”
I stand by that question/statement and @pevaquark was kind enough to post the Scientific American article in support of my statement (though I guess it was intended to go against it). =)
I’m not a scientist, and would love to hear more on this, but I don’t see how Big Bang holds up without inflation, dark matter, dark energy, etc.? They seem “fundamental” to an amateur like me.
Seems there are many credentialed scientists, some who have studied this for decades, who are outspokenly critical of each of these aspects of Big Bang theory – Steinhardt being one of the more prominent examples.
So to me, seems to be splitting hairs a bit to try to distance from inflation and say that it’s a different thing. Can we dispute the resurrection, but at the same time be uncritical of the Trinity?
Also found this article, which has a nice summary of the potential for bias when launching into “conventionalist stratagems” that may be used in support of a conventional “mainstream” scientific view:
Certainly seems to be some value in Popper, but also in convergence, concordance, etc.
But with the number of “problems” with Big Bang and the current (and growing?) number of non-falsifiable proposed solutions (inflation being the most problematic, it seems), wouldn’t skepticism over the weaker aspects of Big Bang be welcomed and expected?
And we could start similar threads for evolutionary theory, quantum gravity theory, etc.
To me, it’s discouraging when I see things like the response to the Scientific American article, even though I agree that evidence for the Big Bang seems strong. Guess I’m not alone:
Lots of parallels to this in Christian debates, unfortunately.
Sure, as a personal attack, you might call either case (scientific or theological) of supporting the mainstream theory in light of serious challenges “intellectual dishonesty” if you thought either was acting out of something other than defending what that person thought to be true (pride, theological implications, etc.). But the bar that we set might be slightly different based on how we, from a Christian perspective, evaluate each case.
Going back to criticism of WLC in the other post, I guess I personally am more sympathetic to a very patient, diligent and cautious approach to going against the established theological grain than I am treating something like evolutionary theory or the Big Bang being as so sacred that serious skepticism of fundamental aspects is attacked.
In the second case, if you get it wrong, you might get 33 scientists writing an angry letter to you. In the first case, you could be going against God. And yet I doubt WLC would resort to rallying 33 Christian philosophers to write a letter to his detractors.
So, I am comfortable allowing otherwise trusted, credentialed Christian theologians and philosophers the space to engage in these things diligently, thoughtfully and in prayer and yes, in an intellectually honest way. Sometimes, as Dr. Rana admitted in my recent interview with him, we still get it wrong despite best efforts.
Our collective and individual intelligence is definitely not perfect and often fails us. God never fails us and should be the bedrock for Christians in all things.
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Good point.
I don’t dispute the Big Bang. And I don’t reject it, either. But I also don’t accept it. It is still tentative for me.
I have a nagging doubt. Maybe the cosmological red shift is not due to motion (expansion). Maybe it is cosmological. That is to say, maybe it is something about the cosmos that we are waiting to discover.
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There are some confusion here in the terminology that render this question unanswerable:
First, there are two ways the term big bang is used.
- The explosive expansion at time=0 that blows up the singularity of the FLRW metric. In words: as we see the Universe expanding, we can extrapolate that if we run time backwards sometime in the past it would have been infinitesimally small. At the beginning of time, presumably this infinitesimally small singularity expands outwards in a moment called the Big Bang.
- At the end of inflation, the Universe as we know it emerges and expands out of the inflationary muck. This is sometimes (but not always!) referred to as the Hot Big Bang.
Now:
- No one since decades ago believe that Big Bang 1) actually happened. What happens is that at some point in the past our equations (general relativity) breaks down and this singularity at time=0 never actually exists. What exists at time=0 (and even the existence of the beginning of time itself is contentious) is just some quantum muck, but no singularity to have a Big Bang from.
- The Big Bang in 2) clearly cannot happen without inflation, as it is defined to be the moment when inflation ends.
There is a third possibility:
Perhaps you mean whether the Big Bang can happen sans inflation in the sense that the Universe can expand from the quantum muck at the (contentiously-existing) beginning of time without inflation?
If so the answer is yes. Indeed, this is close to the original formulation of the Big Bang Theory (perhaps without the quantum muck part). However, it was found that this model has some issues, and inflation was proposed to patch these issues.
Crucially, inflation is not the only solution to patch these issues and some of the issues turn out to be barely issues at all in the first place! Further, recently it was argued that inflation does not actually solve some of these issues!
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Some aspects that are part of the big bang theory (especially the first two)-
Nucleosynthesis, the cosmic microwave background and its anisotropies, the large scale structure of the universe, the redshift of space, etc. These are not disputed by cosmologists. Some make alternative models, but even bouncing cosmologies still have the same steps and physical processes behind these phenomenon. That’s what modern cosmology agrees upon.
As for ‘inflation’ itself, what the two models are actually debating is the mechanism behind ‘inflation.’ Both models agree that there was a period of rapid expansion in the universe but disagree on the mechanism. One of the pieces of evidence of this rapid expansion that is direct observational evidence are the CMB ansitotropies. A logical question in early cosmology was ‘where do galaxies come from?’ And it turns out that there are tiny fluctuations imprinted on the CMB (~400k years after the universe ‘began’) that should not be there! The universe should be entirely isotropic and homogeneous and this is a problem that even Isaac Newton realized in the 1600s. However, Newton didn’t know about Quantum Mechanics that can cause density perturbations, only for them to vanish into thin air as quickly as they appear. But both of these cosmological models predict a rapid expansion (either through the collision of two branes that start a new cycle of the cyclical universe or through inflation) which would then freeze the quantum fluctuations in space- creating tiny anisotropies in the early universe- such would lead to future galaxies.
Everything that began happening 1s after the universe ‘began’ is not in trouble. In fact, this paper shows that modern cosmology doesn’t even need any dark energy at all!
Is inflation non-falsifiable? Is it testable?
How about the cyclical cosmology make some unique predictions as well. As all they’ve been able to do is come in and explain everything the inflationary model does (and the two are virtually identical from after the early rapid expansion to several trillion years into the future- then they start to differ again).
Are you still talking about cosmology or are you talking about trying to re-evaluate whether the Bible teaches the special creation of Adam? I got a little confused.
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Listen to this inspirational treatment on Light from the Big Bang while you keep studying!
For lovers of the Lion King film … this is a sterling treatment … treating the Surface of Light … rather than the Circle of Life !
More inspiration to be had at this thread!