Posted: Jan 21, 2015 8:03 pm
carl wrote:Calilasseia wrote:carl wrote:Calilasseia wrote:Studied any actual cosmology, have you? Only some of us have spent time poring over the peer reviewed papers, and know that your above caricature is precisely that.
If you are claiming there are studies which somehow confirm the origin of the universe - without ANY SPECULATION involved - please let us know about this. That would be news to all of us.
Nice selective cherry-picking of my post there carl. Oh wait, what did I say immediately after the part you selectively quoted? Let me remind you (with relevant part highlighted in blue):What has actually happened in the world of cosmological physics, as anyone who has actually studied the subject properly will tell you, is that the theorists have been able to make advances that for the moment, take several of their ideas beyond the reach of the experimenters. But, those same theorists have started to search for ways and means of making their theories empirically testable, because they know that at bottom, this is the only means by which their theories stand a chance of being properly refuted or validated. Indeed, I've presented two papers by Steinhardt & Turok, in which they present an empirical test allowing their own ideas to be validated at some point in the future, and a considerable amount of diligent labour is being expended toward making that empirical test a reality.
And guess what, carl? Work is underway to conduct those very same empirical tests I covered in the blue highlighted part of my post above, the part you duplicitously snipped in order to peddle yet another strawman canard
Plus, as anyone who paid attention in science classes will tell you, speculation is an essential part of science. It's the means by which new ideas are formulated. But of course, there's the second essential part of science, namely finding ways of testing the products of said speculation, and performing the requisite tests, to determine if the data supports the requisite ideas. Which is where science differs from religion. Religion erects unsupported assertions, demands that said assertions be treated as fact, and treats any proper inquiry into the likely truth-value of those assertions as some sort of heinous offence. Science generates hypotheses, then tests those hypotheses to destruction, and the survivors of said test become the evidentially supported foundations of scientific theories.
Let's see how much of my above post you quote mine next time, shall we carl?
BTW, will those studies actually claiming to confirm the origin of the universe (as if !) contain the words: "possibly", "maybe", "we propose", "it seems likely", "could", "should", "might", "in all likelihood", "theorize", etc.. ?
We need to discern what is speculative and what is confirmative.
Oh it's this tiresome and dishonest tactic that we've all seen before, namely pointing to the language style, and suggesting that this, and the word choices contained therein, somehow invalidates the actual science. Yawn.
Here's a clue for you, Carl. The style is known in the relevant circles as 'the scientific subjunctive'. It was devised because the whole purpose of a scientific paper, is to present evidence for perusal, and seek agreement that said evidence supports the requisite hypothesis, and the tentative language of the scientific subjunctive is in accord with this process. Peer review fills in the gap, and a successful peer reviewed paper, one that has persuaded the relevant reviewers that it has made its case, is the one that ends up being published. Whereupon, those reading the published paper can then determine for themselves if the peer reviewers were correct, and the paper does indeed make that case. Papers that stand the test of time become the foundations of our knowledge.
You see, unlike supernaturalist apologetics, which consists of "here's some assertions, treat them as fact", the business of science consists of "here's the empirical data, here's the hypothesis, we contend that the data supports they hypothesis, do you agree?" The published papers are the ones where the peer reviewers agreed.
But it's entirely typical to see you dodge the substantive questions with such duplicitous rhetorical elisions, Carl, we see this all the time from supertnaturalists.
Now, the fun part, Carl, is that with respect to the cosmological papers I have been discussing, as I have repeatedly stated, work is underway to provide the very empirical tests that will either refute or reinforce the requisite hypotheses. As I said in my previous post, if those tests come back with a negative result, it's back to the drawing board, whilst a positive result means that the authors pick up a Nobel Prize. This is how it's done, Carl, not by making shit up and pretending that one's made up shit dictates to reality, which is all too frequently the process involved in religion.
Of course, the only reason you're peddling the mendacious apologetic fabrications you are peddling here, Carl, is because your mythology has nothing of the same standard to offer. All it has to offer is a collection of blind assertions peddled as purportedly constituting fact, several of which are untestable and hence worthless, and many of which are plain, flat, wrong. Your desperate attempt to hide this deficiency behind an apologetic smokescreen isn't working. As I've said repeatedly here, the piss-stained Middle Eastern nomads who scribbled your mythology and its contents, and in doing so provided much that makes many here think it was written with crayon, were incapable of even fantasising about entities and phenomena that scientists have not only alighted upon, but placed within precise, usefully predictive quantitative frameworks that are in accord with observational reality to 15 decimal places. Something that your mythology is completely incapable of providing. All of which renders your desperate clutching at apologetic straws, such as the above, woefully inadequate.