Oh for sure, beyond that first principle, everything in in the scientific view can be empirically proven or disproven. But nonetheless, most theists are entirely reasonable.

From what I understand "first principals" are not always something people are consciously aware of. Typically they're fundamental assumptions. You can tell when someone is talking about a fundamental assumption when they say something like "it's obvious" or "obviously".

bumpity bump
 

Hands up who remembers our good friend Pastor Ted Haggard of the New Life Church?

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_8179778

not I , was he a business associate of yours?

As the leader of a rich Bible Belt megachurch he features prominently in Dawkins's "The Root of All Evil" documentary on organised religion.

Clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBC5L6cyq2Y

He then got outed for having P-fuelled sex with gay prostitutes.

And that's why we call it science! It's possible to dispute it, and update it.

One might even say it... evolves. ;)

...

I'll get my coat.

Science is very young, its slightly foolish to predict its progress by looking at its past. Its like saying "10 years ago this man was half the size! In another ten years he'll be twice as big as he is now!".

Depends on if he takes up those offers in his SPAM folder...

STN lol.

I have started to read the Divinity Code by Ian Wishart. There are some LOL moments so far. I'm about halfway through and he keeps dealing "fatal blows" to evolution and other religions. I'm yet to find a good argument that’s not LOL. It seems just as much a Christian flag waving book rather than a straight out God v Evolution.

He says that Hinduism, Buddhism and the New Age Movement crumble under scientific attack. He uses the scientific theory that the universe is expanding to out right dismiss these religions. I burst out laughing. Apart from the fact that his argument doesn't make sense it’s laughable that he uses a scientific theory with a much shakier grounding than evolution.

.

Well, what do you expect?
Wishart is a fundy Xian with the scientific miseducation to go with it.

Um, exactly which part of the expanding universe theory do you consider to be "shaky"?

Well that's to the point.

Shaky was a wrong choice of words. To me the theory of evolution is more believable than the expanding universe theory which is much newer than evolution and was a single event in the past. We can look a see evolution happening today in the present. In my lifetime the scientific origins of the universe have changed from steady state, expanding forever, expanding contracting and I don't know what it is suppose to be doing at the moment. In the context of Wishart's argument it is important that the universe began from nothing. I'm not poo pooing the science but sitting next evolution its not as solid a theory.

I would say 'expanding universe' is the poor choice of words. When we look at the light coming from other galaxies, it's all doppler shifted toward the red end of the spectrum, so the expanding universe is a pretty solid experimental fact.

Taking this fact and tracing time backwards to infer that the universe was once contained in a single point is probably 'shakier' but there's also some evidence to support it, the presence of a uniform background radiation at 4 Kelvin for example.

ps
 

Not that this detracts from your main argument at all :)

Yeah, that's what I was getting at. Evolution *is* hard to "point at", but the expanding universe is something that anyone with a telescope and access to a spectrometer can demonstrate.

That the universe is expanding is the only explanation we've yet found for the phenomena we observe. I'm no scientist but I'd say the expanding universe theory is just as solid and provable as evolution.

Science is not an absolute.

The problem when comparing science to religion is that in most cases, religion has never grown to include new knowledge, new historical understanding or updated ability to acquire knowledge.

So when someone says "Science doesn't have all the answers" - quite right, but science has a hell of a lot more answers now than it did 200 years ago and it'll have a hell of a lot more in 200 years because it's constantly changing.

Religion, specifically say Christianity, has had the same basis for thousands of years.

That basis? Government through fear and revenue collection.

Because the furthest objects "we can detect" are moving further away from a point in space, does this mean the universe is "expanding"? or does it mean the objects are just moving further away from a point due to being propelled outward at some point.
I don't understand how they even theorise that space is expanding, surely the universe is infinite and has no furthest point? I can't grasp it being considered a container of sorts (with a boundary). If it is a container which is expanding then this creates another problem; what is the container contained within?

So many questions, surely someone can clone Einstein back to life already??? they have his brain in a jar dont they or some of his body so they have the cells ffs...do it!

We can't have track a specific 'point in space' due to relativity, so we make do with our point of reference.

The 'container' is infinite. An expanding universe means that our clumps of matter are getting further away from the other clumps.

Cloning won't bring back Einstein. Besides, Stephen Hawking isn't smart enough for you?

What has Hawking actually done that has been conclusively proven?

He has shown computers cannot replicate the human voice convincingly

The key point is not that "things are moving away from us" - it's that "everything is moving away from everything else". The distances between every object and every other object are increasing.

An analogy I've often found useful is that of the chocolate-chip muffin in an oven - as it rises, the muffin does not acquire any new mass, but every chocolate chip gets further away from every other chocolate chip.

Muffin = universe
Chocolate chips = planets, stars, galaxies

Great point to make, that we're not using a consistent point to prove that things are expanding - we're taking measurements from each object to prove each object has shifted away from one another, rather than moving away from a central point.

Another one not many religious people tend to appreciate.

not every object, but scientists like to generalise...

eg: the distance between the chocolate muffin and my mouth is decreasing.

and the distance between earth and that comet that's coming towards us is also decreasing.

Um....

Actually, that's a neat little analogy :)

True, but when astronomers talk about objects in the universe moving away from each other then tend to generalise 'down' to the level of galaxies :)

my take on it is not that the galaxies are moving away from each other, but that the space between them is somehow growing.

but i get my science from wikipedia:
space growing ... growing

Haydos
Good to see some intelligent comments. No, I'm not being patronising.

yes you are!

Bitch!

A delicious analogy.