Creationists (and poes), it doesn’t help the conversation at all when you pretend to believe something you do not — your complete lack of understanding of the others’ positions makes your sham obvious from the very onset.
For example, I got this request from an “atheist” to help spread a rational understanding of the universe…like this.
We as atheists are sick and tired of having religious people laugh at us. We’re sick and tired of defending the most ridiculous theory in the world . . .
The truly delusional Big-Bang theory.
The universe did not originate out of “nothingness” via some stupidly insane Big-Bang theory ! For pity sake, even a moron knows that “nothingness” cannot experience a bang. And so what’s reality ? What’s the alternative ? Well look closely and please think deeply. Pure Logic is the alternative, it’s very very simple;
The universe has “always existed” . . . Period.
The evolution of TIME is what deceives us
into thinking the universe must need a beginning.
That’s from a site called Big Bang No No No, and I think you can tell it’s not really an atheist web page — it’s a feeble attempt to repudiate physics. Oh, and also to bilk money out of strangers.
We are in a new era of atheism and need to unite this world. We can’t be presenting ourselves as buffoons to the religious world. We’re asking you for a puny $ 5 to assist us in spreading this HISTORIC awakening. 3 months from now you certainly won’t be hurting that you gave 5 dollars, so why hesitate ? Or ?
Please don’t allow the ” I’m losing something ” illusion to keep you from helping us educate the world. Atheists are not lone warriors. We’re in this together. We’re in a war against false religions. Please think logically and hit this Donate button. The Big-Bang is as juvenile as the easter bunny. We need help to educate Atheists.
Riiiiight. That’s about as honest as the Center for Medical Progress
…which, by the way, Amanda Marcotte will be tearing apart on Atheist Talk Radio tomorrow morning.
I think these people do such a poor job of faking science and atheism because they really don’t understand them at all. And if they did, they’d be atheists and would promote science.
That makes an impressive list of mis-used terms:
etc.
and what’s up with religions?
Asking for Money????? Prima facie evidence of a scam….
I was stopped right here. I’m pretty sure that the universe doesn’t experience anything. Unconscious anthropomorphizing is one heck of a giveaway.
Why is it that all the fundy troll sites got their formatting from Geocities?
Thank god the blink tag is dead, otherwise every viewer would suffer from seizures
Ummm…
Um… okay.
I’m happy to see that they have a ready answer to the old question : “where does stupidity come from ?”
On the other hand, it’s a rather depressing answer.
@4 – http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13955163/imitating-a-blink-tag-with-css3-animations
It just shows these people don’t have the dedication to be truly awful website designers.
You know, to be technical, these aren’t mutually exclusive things. You can have space, time, and energy always existing for forever into the past and future and still have a beginning cosmic inflation event for the local pocket of visible universe you inhabit.
But yeah. That was… terribly bad.
Doing science: slobbing around! Also seriously bad word usage.
Yep, we atheists are totally fighting on the side of the true religion. :)
I think he’s getting at time doesn’t exist and everything and every moment “always” exists. And therefore theories about and involving effects over time aren’t necessary. This, of course, begs the question entirely.
His “of course not” is a bit … surprising. Even if we decided all material and measurable space existed for eternity, we still need scientific hypotheses as to how everything works.
That five bucks better get me one mind-blowing explanation of red-shifted galaxies and cosmic background radiation.
Hm. I am using that argument quite a lot though. Is there anything wrong with it?
@yubal As far as I can tell, “the universe has always existed” is fine. Always may be a problematic term. It seems, in my opinion, that time’s arrow is simply ontological baggage. Time does not move or “flow”, but rather we seem to experience it doing so. The Big Bang isn’t an explanation of how the universe started to exist, but rather a description of how the current state of the universe (for want of a better term) began.
Maybe I’m way off, though.
Quotations which are “used for emphasis” — check.
Usage of paragraphs and capitals
to make you read the grown-up words
more SLOWLY
— check.
@ #13 yubal
From my own limited understanding: There was a start to the universe existing in its current form, with the Big Bang. So one could say that it didn’t exist before. But since time and space didn’t exist, the phrase “before the Big Bang” probably doesn’t make much sense to begin with. Depending on what the Big Bang came out of, though, it’s possible that the singularity or anomaly or whatever it was could have always existed. Or if the multiverse idea is true, then the multiverse could always have existed, even if our own universe didn’t but started to exist. I think. But this stuff gets both confusing and purely hypothetical fast, so personally I try to avoid it. It doesn’t really matter whether the universe started to exist or always existed in some form or another, including one before the expansion of space and time.
The mildly deranged penguin denies all involvement in the second sinking of Atlantis, and in both the first and fourth Big Bangs. However, she does have photographs of what she says in the second Big Bang, which are a bit blurry and seem to show someone with three breasts…
yubal @13:
Any statement about stuff before the end of inflation should at least have a big fat “maybe” in front of it.
Is this some half-baked attempt to resurrect the Steady State theory?
Their atheist strawman uses the “we don’t need to explain where it came from, because it has always existed” argument? I wonder, do they consider it just as ridiculous when their fellow Cretinists use it to dismiss the “Where did God come from?” question.
Well then this moron should have you know actually looked at the etymology of the phrase and have discovered that it was used/create by the people arguing against the current model of cosmology as a way to deride it.
Shows that the person behind this site hasn’t really done his/her/its(?) homework on the subject.
For those who want an interesting way to learn a little something about multiple universe hypotheses, time, philosophy, etc, check out Anathem by Neal Stephenson. Cracking good story, too.
As I have said before, the universe is still pretty much nothing. By any earthly standard, it is empty – like, atoms per cubic meter. And an atom, inside, is empty, too – like, marbles in a parking garage. It’s silly to ask where everything came from, when there is so much nothing everywhere.