Astronomy, Cosmology, and the Big Bang.

"sincere" - free from pretence or deceit; proceeding from genuine feelings

A person can be mistaken about something and be sincere at the same time but the beauty of the scientific method is that the testing of hypotheses demonstrates whether or not they accord with the facts being observed.

The earth-centred model of the heavens finally had to be abandoned because more and more accurate observations showed it didn't work. Instead, the sun-centred model was adopted in the teeth of considerable opposition because the theory explained the observational data somuch better.

That's all that scientists are trying to do, reconcile observations with their models of how natural systems work. Why are we not sitting here arguing over whether the earth really is at the centre of the heavens? According to you it's perfectly reasonable that they might have got this wrong.

As I said our attitudes about a topic and the sincerity we approach it is does not matter. If you are looking at people as some measure of how the arguments should be weighted, that is not sincerity as you describe it. You highlighting creationist as something less than shows your lack of it instead of comparing science to science, you compare people to people.

The practice of science is arguably the noblest enterprise of humanity: Seeking to understand how natural systems work and testing hypotheses to destruction in order to establish the fact of the matter.

If one research team makes an error, another one on another continent can highlight the mistake and gain credit for this. Ultimately it's about nailing down the truth, nothing less is of any use to scientists because it will soon be shown to be inadequate.

This is how science is conducted across the world despite any skepticism you may have.

The shame is you don’t narrow how to keep the disagreements limited within science by limiting them to the practice of science, where just the data and conclusions are what matters and how the conclusions are reached.

You don’t see me bad mouthing science but you maintain that charge. I may disagree on conclusions that is not disagreeing with science, but what people think about the data.

"The shame is you don’t narrow how to keep the disagreements limited within science by limiting them to the practice of science, where just the data and conclusions are what matters and how the conclusions are reached"

I have no idea what that means - please rephrase it?

Spending time on people and worldviews is not addressing the science.

No idea what that means either in the context of calculating the age of the Universe.

The science involved in that calculation is sound and the result, within limits of error, is reliable. If people don't like that conclusion it's too bad.

You have NOTHING that you know without a doubt shows the age of the earth. This would be a good time to show what you are calling factual, which shows you the age, instead of talking about people's worldviews.

I thought you were challenging the age of the Universe? Anyway, let's start with that...

https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/questions/age.html

"Astronomers estimate that the Big Bang occurred between 10 and 20 billion years ago. They estimate the age of the Universe in two ways: (a) by looking for the oldest stars; and (b) by measuring the rate of expansion of the Universe and extrapolating back to the Big Bang"

I will watch the whole thing later, but you did notice all of the assumptions made early on? You can have spot on math, but that does not mean it’s based on reality.

I want to add that if the world is exactly like you think it is with all of your assumptions, of course, all of your assumptions will prove that, and if that doesn’t pan out, you simply come up with something else. This should make trusting all of that be taken with a grain of salt, as what is a sure thing today, may not be tomorrow.

Reasonable assumptions are very different from guesswork and it's largely irrelevant what you or I think because we don't know enough about the detail of the subject to be able to frame well informed objections.

You can rail against scientists making well reasoned assumptions all you like but it doesn't amount to much if you don't understand the underlying principles of the subject.

No, a reasonable assumption is guesswork. Facts are facts, and they will be confirmed, while all of our assumptions, when tested, will either be proven true or false. Many have an issue with this: they think their assumptions are factual and deny they are acting on faith, trusting in what is not proven as true because they have turned the word faith into something less than and dirty. So they make faith associated with religion just to put a FALSE barrier between what they believe and what others believe to be true.

I use the term guesswork to mean little more than tossing a coin. But a reasonable assumption is based on all current knowledge, for example that gravity behaves in other parts of the Cosmos as it does here on Earth. We can't be certain of that but it's a perfectly reasonable assumption.

Contrast that with 'faith', for example the faith-based belief that Muhammad ascended into heaven on the back of a 'winged horse'! Would you say, given what we know of horses and the ability of any flying creature to carry an adult man, it was a reasonable assumption?

You are proving my point, fidelity is something we can

"fidelity is something we can".... we can what exactly? You're losing me again.

It post a line out of two paragraphs and as I waited to repost the complete thought it hung.

Out of time now at work will write the rest later, I am sorry!

The word "faith” originates from the Latin "fidēs." It is all about trust, confidence, belief, and faithfulness. Of late, it has been pinned to be viewed as an exclusively religious term, but we use it all the time in many areas. We can call someone faithful, trustworthy, and so on. When I say you are putting faith in assumptions and the conclusions people reach by putting faith in those assumptions, that is exactly what you are doing, and having you defend yourself by stating why it’s worthy of your trust doesn’t change what it is you are doing. It isn’t an insult; it is simply an acknowledgement that this is basically how we live our lives, trusting what we believe is worthy of our trust, and if we must act on something we believe in, we have put our faith in it.

The notion that there is a distinction between our putting our faith in what we think is true should be eliminated. There is a difference between science and religion; the standards are different, no doubt about that, but the fact that we must trust in things we cannot prove is true of both, not just one.