sundialsvcs I know you've expressed many times how much you disdain the use of "billions and billions" but billions and billions is a valid expression. It is not mythological since there are trillions of galaxies just in the Visible Universe. Closer to home there are trillions of particles of sand on all the beaches of Earth and trillions of cells in the average human body, 30 trillion or 30,000,000,000,000 cells to get a tighter estimate. I understand that is a truly staggering concept but we can only ignore the reality of such numbers at the risk of remaining ignorant.

Some studies have shown that there is no value in, for example, taking a Flat Earther up into orbit to see the globe. Most will swear you buggered the lens or the ports, anything no matter how absurd, just to protect their ego. From my POV their is no shame in being ignorant of some things since nobody can know it all, nor mistaken since we all make mistakes and in fact mistakes are valuable. To know "A" it is also useful to be able to define "Not A". Together they define each other by delineating the borders. The shame is staying ignorant or mistaken when solid evidence is right in front of you. Is anyone's ego more valuable than their knowledge? Conversely, isn't it an extremely dangerous precedent, affecting every little thing in ones life and mind to insist the coin landed on Tails when anyone and everyone who looks, takes a photo, makes a movie of the toss, sees Heads?

Well, you started it!

I am referring to "billions and billions" as Dr. Sagan liked to use the term – a "hand-waving" reference to "vast amounts of time" as though that was supposed to make a difference. You put an egg into your hat, wave the "billions and billions" magic wand over it, and out pops a rabbit.

To me, this is "mythology" masquerading as "real science." Once again we are confronting things that we cannot "know" by means of observation, so we are inventing an explanation for it. This explanation does not involve gods, but it is "mythology" nonetheless. Just as surely as asserting that the entire Universe appeared, fully formed and in all its glory, in the world's biggest and most magical explosion: the "Big Bang." That is no more "scientific" than "and the LORD said, Let There Be ..." But it still pretends to be and is sold as "science."

Well sundialsvcs, now I have to ask. Have you ever watched the entire original "Cosmos" series?... how 'bout just this part, "The Cosmic Calendar"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln8UwPd1z20

This is not Mythology. Sure Carl Sagan was off by a substantial percentage (~10%) in the age of the Universe, but that's as accurate as our methods and instruments were back then, a half century ago. Given the 50 years of the greatest increase in human knowledge in all of human history, it's absolutely stunning that 90+% of the original is still so accurate. I'm actually sorry to have to tell you but you are mistaken saying we have no observation support and absolutely disgusting to call Big Bang a "magical explosion". WE HAVE PHOTOS! (see any of the CMBR photos) and we have duplicated the conditions in the lab. The photos and the lab recreations go back 98+% of the way to Big Bang. If you are 50 years old, it's like having a photo of you under 1 year of age. JWST could produce photos that may cut that increment in half. This IS real science with over 100 years of the best brains and instruments on Earth fighting hard to disprove it. All have failed, and that is how Science actually works by FALSIFICATION. Every hypothesis is always met with sever skepticism followed by millions of dollars and man/hours trying to "poke holes in it".

Just FTR if you watched the discovery of The Higgs Boson at CERN, you would see a scientist, an MIT graduate iirc, see the results and crestfallen note that the main endeavors of the last 25 years of his career just added up to ZERO. Think of it. He didn't say "Oh that's obviously false. My hypothesis has to be right" He was THERE! He knew the stakes and the risks and the diligence of the evidence gathering. He accepted he was wrong before casting doubt on the integrity of the scientific community. Are you in that league?... or just a "Doubting Thomas"?

Actually, according to the Myth, at least Thomas admitted his mistake when confronted with hard evidence. He didn't refuse to check for the wound declaring it would have been some kind of a trick, a conspiratorial trick. Thomas at least had the integrity to check, and the character to admit his mistake and be open to not stubbornly staying mistaken.

I figure the the flood myth describes the black sea becoming into existence.

My stand on myths is if enough people agree across the world about the same myth.
It bears looking into.

Tons of physical evidence litters the earth with not a clue on what purpose they served or who and how the heck did they learn to design that. Let alone build and erect stuff we would even struggle with today. With machine tolerances.


Hard to find myths to even cover that. Thanks to conquering or disasters. History is hard to prove.

@enorbet, I know that you love physics. But the simplest of physics will tell you that any "bang!" is by definition a chaotic event. However, we are supposed to believe that this "bang!" was somehow very different. An entire, fully-formed Universe streamed from it.

And the only reason why we suggest it is because certain mathematical equations seem to begin with a singularity.

Also – our interpretation of "evidence" is necessarily hard-limited by our point of view, and also by "the one thing which, when discovered, will change everything." This is one of the unfortunate side-effects of being a human being with a ~70-year total lifespan, and firmly confined to a single insignificant-except-to-us planet in an unremarkable-except-to-us solar system in what appears to be an out-of-the-way corner of everything. Our "knowledge" is not absolute, and our perspective is extremely limited. Yet we are stubbornly doing the very best we can.

Heya sundialsvcs (hope you and yours are well. I got a bit of a scare today when my roommate announced she'd tested positive for Covid, asymptomatic. However, I tested negative at least for now.) Anyway, I hope you don't mind that I reorder the quotes. It seems easier to comment that way in this case.

That might apply if Big Bang was actually a "bang" as in an explosion of something in a specific environment. For example and explosion in air. water, below ground, or the relative vacuum of space are all quite different. The term Big Bang was literally designed by it's author, Fred Hoyle, to denigrate the theory. He ruined his rather illustrious career by insisting on Steady State and denying expansion (or Cosmic Egg, the original term coined by it's main author, Georges LeMaitre) up until the day he died decades after every bit of new evidence by new technology and old only bolstered the theory and totally disproved any possibility for Steady State.

Oddly enough, his stubbornness was apparently mainly caused by his worry Big Bang as he called it smacked of The Beginning and therefore might be interpreted as proof of a Creator... not at all scientific as a true scientist confronted with hard evidence should be happy to concede.

There was a confirmed evolution to our Universe. It did not start out fully formed. I say "start out" only loosely applying that term as we don't know what or if anything preceded the expansion. However all Big Bang says is as far back as we can see, at one point slightly less than 4 billion years ago, our Universe was roughly the size of a present day atom, consisting of incredibly hot, dense energy. Atoms had yet to form and the 4 Fundamental Forces we know today were all combined into 1. Roughly 370,000 years after the initial burst, the expansion allowed for enough cooling that protons could coalesce and soon after neutrons and electrons and at some fortuitous time, they were able to form the first Hydrogen atoms.

It could have stopped right there but Gravity finally settled out from the other forces and atoms began to cluster, at some point igniting into the first stars. This produced "a forge" of nucleosynthesis (one of Mr Hoyle's discoveries) and the first heavier element, Helium formed. I won't belabor the subject and outline how all the other 100+ heavier elements came into being, but even the calcium in our bones and the iron in our blood was brewed up in stars and star explosions. We are born from star dust. The Universe is built in a way that simplicity divides and recombines into complexity. It did not start out fully formed.

It is absolutely and incontrovertibly true that we are indeed limited by our human point of view, but it isn't a deal breaker... just a "forest for the trees" situation. It isn't as if we don't see anything and it isn't as if we haven't amassed a huge inventory of hard won facts and ruled out many unlikelies and utter impossibilities. I mean maybe somewhere in the Universe a 3-headed snakelike creature exists but it isn't very likely, and impossible here on Earth. Nature tends to be efficient and 3 heads is a waste of resources for little gain.

The 70 year or so limitation was once a huge limitation, until language was invented. With language knowledge could be passed from individual to individual even for many generations so each generation wasn't stuck repeatedly re-inventing the wheel. That has both negative and positive repercussions but hopefully that our mental faculties have left many of our animal instincts far behind, yet the instincts still have massive power over us, won't be our epitaph. In some ways it is like handing a child a loaded gun, with nary a trainer in sight.

There is little likelihood that Humanity will see any sort of tumultuous upset in knowledge "that changes everything" now that we have so much of the fundamentals under our belts. It is far more likely now that things will progress in mostly small steps like Newton to Einstein... refinements, not utter destruction.

This isn't how actual Science works. It IS how educated speculation works. There can be little doubt that Mathematics has modeled as well as predicted what observation evidence has later confirmed. We are still in 2022 making observations confirming the Mathematical assertions that Einstein calculated ~100 years ago. Until the evidence is in, it is just a low probability with some math backing. In the case of Big Bang, the extreme confidence level is from evidence, not from just Math. LeMaitre met with Einstein and Albert was introduced to the carefully precise observations of Edwin Hubble, and THAT's what changed Einstein's position.

As the years rolled on more and more evidence all supported expansion (Big Bang) and none disproved it. The crowning jewel took place completely by accident in 1964 when for the first time the CMBR, the expanding radiation from Big Bang was detected. Soon after, we had photos. Ever more high resolutions have occurred and now, in 2022, we can use such Hi Res photos to understand much of what was mystery before. It's like your baby photos. Even simple computers can project a decent approximation of how you look now as a grown man.

I'm aware there are scientists who let their imaginations run away with their thoughts and draw dubious conclusions based on their proclivities. Scientists, individually are only human after all. But Science, as an Institution and Discipline, over time adjusts just like Error Correcting RAM. It is likely JWST will shakeup quite a few, but it is highly doubtful that it will destroy Big Bang, only refine it.

This is the massive difference between Science and Myth. The Myth of Sisyphus, for example is almost exactly as it has been for thousands of years. How fire works, how the Sun works, etc is just a few hundred years old and updated regularly.

@enorbet: You have nothing to fear from COVID, and you never actually did.

Meanwhile – back to the "bang" or whatever you wish to call it. To me, that is a "scientific creation myth," and it should be regarded as such. Or, if you prefer, "philosophy of science." We formulate various conjectures and then look for things which are – so far as we can determine – consistent with those conjectures. But they are still conjectures. Yes, they are the best we have.

But other people, faced with many of the same questions, latched on to: "And the LORD said, 'Let There Be.'" And, lo and behold, there are those who claim that there is "'scientific' proof" for that.

In both cases, and although you disagree, "I call that 'myth.'" And I really don't think that this is an insult to the ideas.

To me, "science" in its purest form should be able to objectively show you things that you had no idea existed, yet it should be a fairly short path. To me, it is a very experiential mode of inquiry that should not involve flights of fancy. For the rest of it, we have philosophy ... and myth. It should surprise no one here that my answer to my OP question for this thread is: "yes, definitely."

I've never seen a photo backing up any creation myth. I've never seen a recreation of an environment described in any scripture. I've never seen a flat planet, nor crystal spheres, nor angels on the head of a pin but I have seen roughly spherical planets (3 of them anyway plus the moon with my own eyes aided by a telescope) and since people with more means than I have seen evidence for the Big Bang and nobody has beat it, I do have a lot more confidence in the Science than a handful of "say so-s".

Regarding Covid, aside from the distance to more than 6,000,000 dead globally, I have the direct experience of it taking the life of my 8 year younger ex wife. My Son was by her side as she died. As for me, I'm old, diabetic and a smoker so I'm vulnerable. Luckily I'm also a tough old bird and I'm not afraid of Death... it's just that it lasts SO long!

@enorbet: I, too, have seen "roughly spherical planets," and so on. But, here is where we differ: you see it as "evidence(!) for the Big Bang." You gather around you people who you say agree with you – there is, after all, "comfort in numbers." But ... "how different is this, actually, from any other 'say so-s?'" Of course you do not count yourself as a "say-so," but neither did they.

And perhaps this is why I started this thread with the philosophical question of whether myth matters anymore – and why I asserted that it does. I frankly think that "myth" has been "given the short shrift" by a bunch of people who just don't want to admit what a very important – and legitimate – social role myth actually provides.

Now, let me interject another tangent: What do we do with the "scientist" of some past generation whose "science" has since been "proven" (sic?) to be "wrong?" Was he still 'a scientist?' Or is he, "now and forever," some brand of lesser scientist? If he said that "the world was flat" when – so far as he then knew – every observation that he had made seemed to support that "conclusion," exactly how are we to judge him now? Do we now use the term, "myth?" And if we do, is the term now pejorative? Derogatory? And if so, why?

To me, "myths" are the entirely-natural consequences – usually, "then politically exploited" – of human societies who are confronted by things which concern them but which cannot (then ...) be intellectually explained. I assert that we indulge in them far more often than we care to admit. But, I do not find such things to be false.

Are you trying to put words in my mouth? I don't see that every heavenly body we view is spherical as evidence of Big Bang, I see it as evidence for "Not Flat Earth". In fact, if that was the only evidence that would be quite weak and call for a large amount of rigorous research to raise the odds. Thankfully, those certainly exist and afaik the only "evidence" for Flat Earth are some ancient scriptures written by non-scientists in a superstitious age who had very little understanding of the natural world.

You are mistaken assuming I "gather around me people who agree with me". I am friends with a very wide range of people and when I was invited to MENSA, after attending a Mensa party, I declined because I found a high percentage of arrogance and elitism. Many of those also carried a sense of entitlement and I despise that characteristic and see it as a major character flaw. While I understand that in large part those attributes are a reaction against bullying, it is my opinion that allowing others to shape you by reaction rather than response is the flaw. However I admit that was somewhat easier for me because I was not small, fat nor skinny and was athletic enough to do well in Lacrosse, so I was never bullied by "the cool guys". I just felt like I never completely fit anywhere.

My first post in this thread and iirc a few times since I have agreed that myth is still important. It's only when myth, or believers, try to compete with Science in testable areas of the Natural World, they overstep their bounds and flirt with fantasy and delusion.

I already mentioned here Fred Hoyle who was actually brilliant in his field of Astronomy due to a solid background in nuclear chemistry and a potent imagination that caused him to wonder about novae and stars as slow nuclear explosions. From this he worked out a theory of nucleosynthesis, the combing of lighter, simpler elements under extreme heat and pressure to form heavier elements. Hoyle also made some important breakthroughs in radar technology during WWII. He sullied his track record with his stubborn denial against Cosmic Egg which he dubbed "Big Bang" and frankly initially that was not a major problem since even Einstein had confidence in Steady State as well. The difference between an Einstein and a Hoyle is that Einstein reversed his conclusions when presented with solid evidence by 1925. Fred still insisted on Steady State despite vast, ever mounting evidence for and none against even up until his death in 2001.

Hoyle was mistaken for certain but he was also a scientist. Unfortunately he lacked humility and couldn't see the forest for his ego. That he succumbed to a falsified hypothesis merely shows he was a flawed scientist as most are since we are all human. We don't trust in people. We trust in the scientific method and try our level best to live up to it's rigors.

I see Myth as a type of "social/cultural glue" much like how the gladiatorial contests were meant to play act the Roman version of history, heavily skewed like morality plays to revere and promote Roman values while denigrating weakness and "otherness" as with "bar-bar-ians". In large due to the heavy skew it was false but it was also highly valuable and in many ways. It was a large part of why the culture of Rome rose so high, spread so far, and lasted so long. That's not trivial. We certainly could use some consolidation in the US right now and it is unfortunate the myth of George Washington and the cherry tree is not enough.

@enorbet: In your most-recent response, I would caution you to remember that "we have never met," and that therefore there is "nothing personal." And, if you (justifiably?) think that I was "putting words in your mouth," then kindly let me now step forward to officially apologize. Maybe I did. I didn't mean to. And I want to "go on-record" with that.

Meanwhile:

So: "'myth' as political," and "known to be false," and "perpetrated for purely-political ends, to entertain or to deceive the Plebeians or both."

To me: "'myth' is not false." Instead, it is natural. "Mythologizing" is something that we humans indulge in far more often than we care to realize.

Since sundialsvcs and many other Science Deniers consider Big Bang a myth, I thought it would be a good idea to post a fairly short video outlining exactly what is actually known and the border of speculation surrounding Big Bang. For those who don't understand Scientific Notation it really is quite simple and based on exponents. IOW a number times itself for some number of times. 2 x 2 = 4 can be written more simply as 2^2 and .04 can be written as 2^-2. Scientific notation is commonly used in powers of 10. 10^2 = 10x10=100 and 10^-2 = .01 so in this video when he says something like 10^-1 seconds he is saying one tenth of a second, so for example 10^-13 is a 1 preceded by 13 zeros to the decimal point, obviously an unimaginably short length of time.

Here ya go - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dr6nNvw55C4

@enorbet, I don't consider myself to be a "science denier." Maybe I call myself a "science realist." Or maybe, a "science skeptic." And I do not consider this approach to be "a bad thing," let alone "ignorant."

It is entirely natural in every field of human exploration to surround yourself with those who agree with you. But these can quickly become "sycophants." There's always room in the court for the Court Jester, who often was a most-trusted advisor to the King.

To me, "the Big Bang™" is a creation myth. "Same guy, just wearing a different suit of clothes and maybe a mortarboard." People who ascribe to this interpretation look for, select, and therefore 'find' the "scientific evidence" that supports their chosen position. While so-called "creation scientists" do exactly the same.

I freely reject this notion, even though I have nothing to replace it with. While I do not agree with these "Big Kahuna answers," I do not have one of my own! I'm staring up at the stars in the sky and I have no explanation for the wonders that I see. But, here's the difference: "that doesn't bother me."

sundialsvcs, IMHO in order to be a "foo realist" or a "foo skeptic" one must first have a solid understanding of "foo", in this case, Science. One does not need understanding to be the common garden-variety "denier" since it is a sort of blanket defense, something similar to what the myth of Ostrich Defense mechanisms are but actually more common to young children who cover their eyes and imagine you can't see them because they can't see you.

I find you an interesting, intelligent, and affable person so I truly don't mean to be condescending but I am betting you didn't watch that video let alone study and research it's claims and evidence for them, so what other conclusion is more likely? It appears you dismiss Big Bang as Myth yet have no grasp of the mountains of evidence For, and almost zero, Opposed. Given that the "Opposed" are simply areas we don't fully understand yet but we are working towards that end the Science continues to evolve. Scientists, including me, don't care if Big Bang some day is proven mistaken. If some other mountain of evidence explains a different scenario while explaining how and why the existing evidence is better answered, no problem..., but it must "cover all the bases".

That would not at all bear any similarity for example to a person converting from one religion or creation myth to another exactly because myth is not subject to Reason and Evidence. It's like asserting 1 + 1 = 3 having left out the last step or altering the sum. Incomplete. It's like Constantine adopting Christianity because he concluded his appeal to win a battle was answered.... classic non sequitur... no Logic involved... just hedging one's bets and superstition.

I do get it that you do (and from my POV, must) consider yourself merely "skeptical" but there is no logic in it because you apparently refuse to even examine the evidence in order to stay comfortable with an unchanging, un-shakeable position. Personally, though I salute your friendly manner, I find such a position insular and intellectually lazy. It is merely comfortable, a "done deal" and I don't think that is how Life and Living works. Our greatest strength is our adaptability. Rigid, is like rocks, unliving.