51% of Americans don't accept the Big Bang theory

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by Yminale, Apr 22, 2014.

  1. YellowSubmarine

    YellowSubmarine Vice Admiral Admiral

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    String theory is a lot of things, but comparing it with intelligent design is unfair. It is an unscientific math-fu that you can't call a scientific theory, but it is a mathematical theory. You can't explain anything in the universe with it, but you can create a model that resembles it, and tweak the parameters to look into an imaginary sister universe. What you can do with intelligent design? You can't even imagine intelligently designed world with it, something that science fiction does well.
     
  2. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I prefer the Modified G-String Theory. THAT is an intelligently designed theory.
     
  3. Dryson

    Dryson Commodore Commodore

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    Taking God out of the equation is no different than taking your parents out of life. Humans have to let go of the hand of God and use what they have learned and discovered so far to spread the seed of humanity otherwise humanity will be like the 40 year old still living in their parents basement because they would rather party and drug and booze their life away....this isn't reality....you wanted adventure.....go on go on.....all my hopes Starfleet.
     
  4. JanewayRulz!

    JanewayRulz! Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re:

    Maybe next season Sheldon and his mom can discuss this study. ;)
     
  5. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re:

    It's cancelled in China already. ;)
     
  6. PurpleBuddha

    PurpleBuddha Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    This is wrong. The people who disbelieve in evolution and the big bang in general not only distrust science but are actively against it (I am not referring to all of them, just most). As a result of enough people leading their life this way, while America remains one of the top nations for people who self identify as religious, it is falling dramatically in the sciences particularly after a decade of it being attacked by the religious right.

    What a person believes absolutely can and usually does influence what they do.
     
  7. JanewayRulz!

    JanewayRulz! Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Re:

    China would only cancel it, if TBBT did a time travel episode. :p


    http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/china-bans-time-travel-films-177801
     
  8. JarodRussell

    JarodRussell Vice Admiral Admiral

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  9. urbandefault

    urbandefault Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I like to think that 51% of Americans get a chuckle out of pissing off the other 49%. ;)
     
  10. scotthm

    scotthm Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I must live a sheltered life. I don't know anyone who is "actively against" science.

    ---------------
     
  11. gturner

    gturner Admiral

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    Nobody does, but some people need to believe in sasquatch or tilt at windmills or they're just not happy. When was the last time you heard some aerospace engineer complain that his field was being held back because ten or fifteen percent of Americans didn't know that aluminum had much better grain refinement when alloyed with scandium and perhaps yttrium? You never have, because real science doesn't depend on a plurality of believers, a majority of believers, or a consensus of believers. Those are only required for religions.
     
  12. JanewayRulz!

    JanewayRulz! Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Oh good golly! :alienblush:

    What are they objecting to? :confused:

    This is SHELDON we are talking about! :rolleyes:

    It MUST be Wolowitz's fault. :evil:
     
  13. Hober Mallow

    Hober Mallow Commodore Commodore

    Meet these fine people active in their community.
    Or these folks from Kentucky.
    These people in Tennessee have been quite active, too.
     
  14. scotthm

    scotthm Vice Admiral Admiral

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  15. HIjol

    HIjol Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Hmmm...been following this very interesting thread with it's important topic...some well laid out arguments and talking points, to be sure...never actually seen the show, but that is for another thread...I have been looking back at the actual survey questions Yellow provided us with, and I can't quite make it work...has it occurred to anyone, that, with all due respect to the respondents, they did not understand what "the Big Bang" meant in the context of the survey, and neither did they understand what "Natural Selection" meant...?

    ...and, finally, I do not understand asking them about their confidence in Science in the context of the question about a Supreme Being guiding the Universe's creation...???

    ...help me clarify?
     
  16. HIjol

    HIjol Vice Admiral Admiral

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    ...wait...so if there is no Big Bang...and the people riot because...the...sci..sigh...Scientists take away...the science...then...

    SHE'S A WITCH!!!!!!!...burn her...burn her!!.... :guffaw:
     
  17. JanewayRulz!

    JanewayRulz! Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Or, maybe they were not confident in the actual numbers being tossed around. Instead of a specific number for age of the Earth and Universe, they simply said "billions of years" old?

    I know when I read the questions, I wondered just how old the scientists were estimating the universe at this juncture.

    Was I confident the Universe was "wicked old?"

    Yup.

    Was I confident it was 13 or 17 or 23 billion years?

    Nope.

    So I might have answered only "somewhat confident" despite the fact that I believe in TBBT (The theory, not the show) ;)
     
  18. HIjol

    HIjol Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Good words from the The House of Janeway...
     
  19. RoJoHen

    RoJoHen Awesome Admiral

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    That was my reaction to the poll as well.
     
  20. MacLeod

    MacLeod Admiral Admiral

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    Well this is what NASA says on the age of the universe

    http://wmap.gsfc.nasa.gov/universe/uni_age.html

    Until recently, astronomers estimated that the Big Bang occurred between 12 and 14 billion years ago. To put this in perspective, the Solar System is thought to be 4.5 billion years old and humans have existed as a genus for only a few million years. Astronomers estimate the age of the universe in two ways: 1) by looking for the oldest stars; and 2) by measuring the rate of expansion of the universe and extrapolating back to the Big Bang; just as crime detectives can trace the origin of a bullet from the holes in a wall.

    And looking at the wiki article

    In physical cosmology, the age of the universe is the time elapsed since the Big Bang. The best measurement of the age of the universe is 13.798±0.037 billion years ((13.798±0.037)×109 years or (4.354±0.012)×1017 seconds) within the Lambda-CDM concordance model


    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_universe

    Yes we might not know the exact age of the universe but using the NASA link but everything I've heard or read about the universe said a big bang and I've heard various ages between 12-15bn years. But it's not like i look up that inofrmation every month to see if it's change. So x years ago I might have heard it was 12bn years old, it's not unreasnable to think during the period since I last heard the figure and today that number has been revised. So if the 13.8bn years old is current figure it's not unreasanble for a survey to use that. If the survey was done in a decades time the figure might be 13.6bn years old.