I've read a lot of postings on here that say if all scientists believe one way, it must be true.?

Question

When I went to school, 45 years ago, we were taught that the universe had no beginning. That's what all the scientists believed. That is what was stated in the text books. That is what passed all the scientific peer review boards.

When I went to Church, I was told that the scientific community was wrong. I was shown in the Bible where it said the Earth did have a beginning. Scientist ridiculed Genesis as being a fairy tale because they had scientific proof the Earth had no beginning

Then in 1965, at Bell Labs, scientist came up with evidence that the Earth did have a beginning, confirming what the Bible was saying for thousands of years.

I'm wondering, is there any atheists out there who would admit, at least on this one point, that prior to 1965, the scientific community was wrong, and the Bible was right?

It took a few thousand years, and much research, by science finally confirmed the Bible account: Yes, there was a beginning.

One thing that people here have to realize, there's a difference between what the Catholic Church says and does, and what the Bible says. The Bible says In the beginnig.............

I need to make a correction. Where I wrote Earth, I should have said universe. My mistake. It was the Universe that was taught as being etrnal.

Answer 1

Your premise is incorrect. Please point me to what scientifically peer-reviewed journals, in the 1940s, said the universe had no beginning.

It was widely speculated that it probably had no beginning -- and that's still a defensible position, given the various multiverse hypotheses.

Also, the Big Bang hypothesis (early 30s) was by Georges Lemaitre, a Catholic Priest, not by a telecommunications company. (He did the math on the Theory of Relativity and came up with the big bang...) Why would AT&T care when the universe began?

Answer 2

I believe you truly mean the Universe, versus the Earth, as you put it. Even so, there are details that still cloud the issue. Even if the Big Bang really happened, that in and of itself neither proves nor disproves the possibility that something was around prior to the Big Bang --- so the Universe and whatever else is out there may still NOT have a concrete beginning (at least from a scientific standpoint). For instance, perhaps we're in the middle of a never-ending chain of Big Bangs and "Big Crunches", and we'll only ever be able to look back to most recent Big Bang. I suppose that's a beginning in some sense, though.

So, sure, the Bible said the Universe had a beginning, and even if the details of the "beginning" differ greatly, science has sort of "caught up" with the Bible (I suppose you could look at it that way). But to conclude that the Creation account is 100% accurate (e.g., woman created from man's rib) and that science agrees is a stretch, at least in the scientific community.

The Bell Labs incident (in 1965) you are talking about involves the discovery of uniform microwave background radiation, the existence of which had been predicted as early as 1948. It supports the Big Bang theory. See source list below.

A good part of science is being wrong. That's what allows us to improve our understanding of the world. If we never adjusted our outlooks when we found evidence that conflicted with what we thought, we'd still be living in caves and expiring at the ripe old age of 26. Science corrects itself and moves on, even if it means discarding long-held beliefs.

Answer 3

You keep trying to think of science in terms of dogma. Science does NOT claim absolutes. That's what religion does (and rather smugly at times).

Science looks at what data have and makes observations with the technology and whatever else is available, and forms the best conclusion it can based on what has been found. We are getting new data all the time. The beauty of science is that it's self-correcting. And in your example, note that the correction comes from the experiments and evidence proposed by other scientists, NOT dogma, nor people like you who act as armchair theologians.

Religion, on the other hand, starts off with premises like "The Bible must be true, under any circumstances. If something comes along that contradicts that, then it must be wrong." I'll admit that the Bible was "correct" on this account (again, in the sense that the idea of the universe having a beginning is what matches current research, whereas before - and it was much, much more than 45 years ago - the jury was still out as far as cosmology was concerned on the topic) if you'll admit to the thousands of other cases where the Bible is clearly wrong (plants being created before the sun, 2 of every living species being put on a boat, etc.)

How long did it take the church to apologize for Galileo and admit that the earth revolved around the sun? 300 years?

Answer 4

I think you have a need for a complete and never-changing description of the universe, something which religion provides you with.

Science doesn't work that way; it is ever-improving. That means it's occasionally wrong about things, and when this happens, science will and must adjust to this new knowledge. Religion doesn't do this; either new knowledge is shunned (like Evolution still is, by some), or it is slowly embraced and claimed as a prediction (like the round Earth). In either case, it didn't help us reach new knowledge.

Using what we know about the universe, we can then tell what ideas about it are in fact wrong. Since we now know the Earth to be round and in orbit around the Sun, we can now dismiss the ancient idea of an Earth-centric universe. The Bible hasn't helped us here; the fact many Christians feel the Bible has said the earth is spheric all along doesn't mean much since they've only said so since science proved it.

Answer 5

The church once believed that everything revolved around the earth and Galileo was excommunicated for proving otherwise. They went on denying that the Earth "that god created" was not the center of all life. So if in fact what you say was true, than lets tally up how often the church has been wrong and was Proven so by the scientific community. Besides the bible isn't the only thing with a creation story, there are older and more interesting stories than that.

Answer 6

"When I went to school, 45 years ago, we were taught that the universe had no beginning. That's what all the scientists believed. That is what was stated in the text books. That is what passed all the scientific peer review boards".

"Scientist ridiculed Genesis as being a fairy tale because they had scientific proof the Earth had no beginning".

No, you're just making that up. Essentially no scientists 45 years ago believed that "the Earth had no beginning". That's just silly, and you're pulling that straight out of your ***.

Doesn't the fact that you have to lie so much to defend your beliefs tell you something about the quality of those beliefs? It should.
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"My mistake. It was the Universe that was taught as being etrnal."

That's still a lie.

Come on - can't you be honest even once? Don't you have any conscience at all? No sense of shame?

Answer 7

I don't think there's a single scientist anywhere on the planet who would say that if all scientists believe one way, it must be true.

History is full of scientific discoveries that have completely changed how we view the universe, based on scientific evidence. That's an important part of the scientific method, is the ability to change your worldview when you realize it was wrong. Unfortunately, religions do not have this ability.

The fact that frikkin' "Candle in the Wind" by Elton John is the highest selling song of all time shows that just because something is popular, doesn't mean it's right.

Answer 8

The wisdom of man is foolishness to the Lord. It's interesting that in the book of Job written some 3500 years ago that it states that the earth is suspended in space and hangs on nothing. (Job 26:6) Only the Lord Himself could have possible known that way back then. As hard as the scientific world try to disprove the existence of God, they can't make it to first base. The Lord has declared them to be without excuse as everywhere they are surrounded by a great cloud of witness as the very creation itself testifies of the existence of the Lord. The problem is man and not God. Man continues to place limits on the Lord's capability because man himself has limited ability therefore he considers that the Lord must have limitations also. The scientific world still cant get it all together as it should have occurred to them by now that with the millions of planets which are in orbit, why doesn't anything ever collide? Everything is in perfect harmony and only a super being could have set it all in motion.
I like your question and comments, God bless.

Answer 9

If you were ever taught that the Earth had no beginning, your teacher was seriously messed up. Geology knew that the Earth was only billions of years old prior to the in the 1700s.

The origins of the Big Bang go all the way back to Isac Newton when he described the large scale of the motion in the universe and noted that it was expanding. The cyclic motion was first proposed by Erasmus Darwin (no relation) in 1791. There were some big things in the very early 20th century that confirmed that the Universe was indeed expanding.

So IF you were taught that in the 1960's your teacher needed to have been fired.

Answer 10

Theo, you just don't understand how science works. Yes, in the past, science was wrong about many things. However, scientist in the lab and in the field did research and made new discoveries that changed old beliefs. The new discoveries are tested. When scientist learn new information, they modify and change the theories. That is how science is supposed to work.

People don't believe the scientist, they believe the evidence the scientist find.

You choose to look at the history of science and believe that new discoveries prove that science is flawed. However, that is how science works. Scientist test and re-test and make new discoveries. You seem to think that science should be static, once a discovery is made, they can't change it. That is counter to the idea of science.