Play Trap the Atheist (The atheist delusion)

by John Kalber, Tuesday, July 04, 2017, 16:54 (2701 days ago) @ David Turell

Crazy Cosmology
At all times, when considering people's behaviour, it pays to be aware of the pervasive influence of superstition on even scientific thinking. Many scientists are, at least, semi-religious so it can account for ideas that seem to have no rational foundation.

I recognise that the inheritance by the Royal Society of Newton’s hotly pursued religiosity during his 24-year reign as President has played an important and ongoing part in subtly influencing official attitudes so that they favour a measure of religious thinking. The appointment of atheist Sir Fred Hoyle as both President and Astronomer Royal was bitterly resented by its leading figures.

Key for fantasist cosmology is that redshift be treated as a measure of the speed of light. Using this theory (i.e. an unproven assumption), some 20th-century astronomers believed redshifted light they saw was direct evidence that distant stars and galaxies were racing out into deep space at what are incredible speeds. This was a reasonable possibility in the absence of actual proof of the nature of distant redshifted light.

In 1935, American astronomer Edwin Hubble, addressing the Royal Society, made the following comment: “ But with regard to relativistic cosmology in its present form, and the observations now available, the conclusion can be stated quite simply. Two pictures of the universe are sharply drawn. Observations, at the moment, seem to favour one picture, but they do not rule out the other. We seem to face, as once before in the days of Copernicus, a choice between a small, finite universe, and a universe indefinitely large plus a new principle of nature.” (My emphasis).

A small, finite Universe is what the Big Bang is about. The other is Hoyle’s infinite 'Steady State' theory (no expansion!). Hubble called for research into these’possibilities’ but, none was undertaken! Poor Hubble. His carefully explained state of uncertainty about redshift was completely ignored by ‘establishment’ astronomers and publicly hailed as an absolute proof that redshift was definitely a measure of speed, analogically much as when sound changes its ‘note’ as it recedes (the Doppler effect).

This exclusive property of redshift was disproved in favour of a new principle of Nature, by Halton Arp, a leading astronomer who was a 20-year employee at the Palomar Telescope and protégé of Edwin Hubble. By showing that redshift was associated not with speed but with the formation of two newer galaxies that are in fairly close mutual proximity, it was a clear contradiction of the official NASA doctrine.

NASA was enraged at his ‘presumption’ and so pressured his employer that he was fired from his prestigious role at the Palomar Telescope. Seeking work, he was blackballed and effectively hounded out of the USA! He was finally engaged by the Planck Institute in Germany. A wretched and disgraceful demagoguery to sustain what is only an idea! The single critical assumption - that spawns many others - is that 'redshift' proves that the Universe is expanding at fantastic speed. This has long been a matter of heated dispute.

In this context, I fully acknowledge that in general, until proof is available, rational assumptions provide the only routes available to researchers, but, rational means that existing physical laws are not altered to accommodate speculative variation. Therefore, any newly suggested law cannot contradict already scientifically proven law, but it may reveal aspects hitherto unsuspected.

It is in flouting this rule that establishment cosmology has erred so significantly. You simply cannot (reasonably) announce that ‘now we know’ that these ‘rules’ exist simply because they seem necessary to support your theory. What you must do – consistently – is make it clear that what you propose is not yet confirmed as fact.

At the outset of the 20th century, it was thought that the Milky Way was the entire Universe. Then in 1925 came Edwin Hubble.

He (officially) delivered the news of a truer reality. Dozens of galaxies millions of light-years away were verified and the Universe proper was discovered. It seemed to many observers that distant stars were seen as receding at colossal speed. This, interpreted as indicative of very high-speed recession, led to the belief that the Universe must originally have been much smaller.

This redshift ‘idea’ has never been proved, simply employed as if it had been.

Hubble (in 1935) had been unable to say quite what redshift indicated and postulated that it either represented very high speeds OR some new principle of cosmological physics. See Halton Arp!

I feel I should here remind you that unspoken Royal Society ideology defends and honours a religious bent in its outlook. This heritage has left a (perhaps unconscious) need to allow for some external influence guiding its 'official' outlook, such as: "There must be some sort of guiding intelligence somewhere in the Universe."

There is and I have found it! See my post on ‘Evolution’.