Posted: Jan 28, 2020 3:14 pm
Destroyer wrote:Spearthrower wrote:Hawking's position is an attempt to appear 'novel' within the context of the Big Bang theory due to the politics involved.
The politics involved.
HA!
Not the evidence, the scientific discourse, the years of research... no, it's political - but only because you want to politicize it so you can pretend it's not scientific.
I think that you are doing Scott Mayers a disservice here, Spearthrower. What he is saying is precisely as science stands to today: observation tells us that the universe is expanding i.e., from a very specific point in time. This is the inflation model of the universe based upon observation, the big bang model. However, the maths in quantum physics leads to an infinite universe i.e., the steady state model. Both are based upon observation, but they do not agree.
But surely Big Bang theory is compatible with an infinite universe, at least in some models? For instance in one Sean Carroll book (I think it was The Arrow of Time) he said the universe may have always been infinite, but also in an incredibly dense, low entropy state, before some catalyst set it rapidly off toward a less dense, higher entropy state, which is still in motion. So the universe was always there, if true, just in a different state.
Other models include things like a multiverse.
I really don't see a need for any deistic god with the Big Bang theory, I don't know where the leap to this assertion comes from. And I don't think the Steady State theory, as it was in its day, is plausible given it required extra matter from no where to keep forming new galaxies in the gaps between galaxies as they spread apart, nor do I think it's a necessary fit for an infinite universe. Maybe some other version of Steady State can be rescued in a multiverse theory, but certainly not the one of Hoyle.