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How the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation falsified atheism

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Christianity and the progress of science
Christianity and the progress of science

Prior to certain scientific discoveries, most people thought that the universe had always been here, and no need to ask who or what may have caused it. But today, that’s all changed. Today, the standard model of the origin of the universe is that all the matter and energy in the universe came into being in an event scientists call “The Big Bang”. At the creation event, space and time themselves began to exist, and there is no material reality that preceded them.

So a couple of quotes to show that.

An initial cosmological singularity… forms a past temporal extremity to the universe. We cannot continue physical reasoning, or even the concept of spacetime, through such an extremity… On this view the big bang represents the creation event; the creation not only of all the matter and energy in the universe, but also of spacetime itself.

Source: P. C. W. Davies, “Spacetime Singularities in Cosmology,” in The Study of Time III, ed. J. T. Fraser (Berlin: Springer Verlag ).

And another quote:

[A]lmost everyone now believes that the universe, and time itself, had a beginning at the big bang.

Source: Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, The Isaac Newton Institute Series of Lectures (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 20.

So, there are several scientific discoveries that led scientists to accept the creation event, and one of the most interesting and famous is the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation.

Here’s the history of how that discovery happened, from the American Physical Society web site:

Bell Labs radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson were using a large horn antenna in 1964 and 1965 to map signals from the Milky Way, when they serendipitously discovered the CMB. As written in the citation, “This unexpected discovery, offering strong evidence that the universe began with the Big Bang, ushered in experimental cosmology.” Penzias and Wilson shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 in honor of their findings.

The CMB is “noise” leftover from the creation of the Universe. The microwave radiation is only 3 degrees above Absolute Zero or -270 degrees C,1 and is uniformly perceptible from all directions. Its presence demonstrates that that our universe began in an extremely hot and violent explosion, called the Big Bang, 13.7 billion years ago.

In 1960, Bell Labs built a 20-foot horn-shaped antenna in Holmdel, NJ to be used with an early satellite system called Echo. The intention was to collect and amplify radio signals to send them across long distances, but within a few years, another satellite was launched and Echo became obsolete.2

With the antenna no longer tied to commercial applications, it was now free for research. Penzias and Wilson jumped at the chance to use it to analyze radio signals from the spaces between galaxies.3 But when they began to employ it, they encountered a persistent “noise” of microwaves that came from every direction. If they were to conduct experiments with the antenna, they would have to find a way to remove the static.

Penzias and Wilson tested everything they could think of to rule out the source of the radiation racket. They knew it wasn’t radiation from the Milky Way or extraterrestrial radio sources. They pointed the antenna towards New York City to rule out “urban interference”, and did analysis to dismiss possible military testing from their list.4

Then they found droppings of pigeons nesting in the antenna. They cleaned out the mess and tried removing the birds and discouraging them from roosting, but they kept flying back. “To get rid of them, we finally found the most humane thing was to get a shot gun…and at very close range [we] just killed them instantly. It’s not something I’m happy about, but that seemed like the only way out of our dilemma,” said Penzias.5 “And so the pigeons left with a smaller bang, but the noise remained, coming from every direction.”6

At the same time, the two astronomers learned that Princeton University physicist Robert Dicke had predicted that if the Big Bang had occurred, there would be low level radiation found throughout the universe. Dicke was about to design an experiment to test this hypothesis when he was contacted by Penzias. Upon hearing of Penzias’ and Wilson’s discovery, Dicke turned to his laboratory colleagues and said “well boys, we’ve been scooped.”7

Although both groups published their results in Astrophysical Journal Letters, only Penzias and Wilson received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the CMB.

The horn antenna was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990. Its significance in fostering a new appreciation for the field of cosmology and a better understanding of our origins can be summed up by the following: “Scientists have labeled the discovery [of the CMB] the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century.”8

It’s the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century.

In the New York Times, Arno Penzias commented on his discovery – the greatest discovery of the 20th century – so:

The best data we have [concerning the Big Bang] are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the bible as a whole.

Just one problem with the greatest scientific discovery of the 20th century: atheists don’t accept it. Why not?

Here’s a statement from the Secular Humanist Manifesto, which explains what atheists believe about the universe:

Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.

For a couple of examples of how atheistic scientists respond to the evidence for a cosmic beginning, you can check out this post, where we get responses from cosmologist Lawrence Krauss, and physical chemist Peter Atkins.

You cannot have the creation of the universe be true AND a self-existing, eternal universe ALSO be true. Someone has to be wrong. Either the science is wrong, or the atheist manifesto is wrong. I know where I stand.

Positive arguments for Christian theism

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New study: regular churchgoers and married people most satisfied with their love life

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Marriage and family
Marriage and family

One of the curious things about me is that I love to read studies in order to understand what to do in order to reach a goal. My goal is to find the “best practices” that are likely to achieve good outcomes for things I am trying to do. One of the things that we should all be concerned about is having a good love life. Well, believe it or not, there are studies about that!

Consider this article from Science Daily.

Excerpt:

Regular churchgoers, married people or those who enjoy harmonious social ties are most satisfied with their love life. This also goes for people who are currently in love or who experience the commitment and sexual desire of their partners, says Félix Neto and Maria da Conceição Pinto of the Universidade do Porto in Portugal. Their findings, published in an article in Springer’s journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, look at the influences on love life satisfaction throughout one’s adult life.

The researchers associate love with the desire to enter into, maintain, or expand a close, connected, and ongoing relationship with another person. In turn, love life satisfaction is a purely subjective, overall measurement of someone’s actual enjoyment of love. To investigate the factors that influence this across various age groups, 1,284 adult Portuguese women and men ranging between 18 and 90 years old were asked to evaluate and weigh specific facets of their own love lives by using the Satisfaction With Love Life Scale.

[…]While education does not impact a person’s love life satisfaction, religious involvement does. The finding that believers and regular churchgoers are positive about their love lives is in line with previous studies that associate religious involvement with better mental health and greater satisfaction with life and sexual relationships in general.

Previously, I blogged about a study reported in USA Today, which showed that people who attend church have lower divorce rates than those who don’t attend church.

Excerpt:

It’s been proclaimed from pulpits and blogs for years — Christians divorce as much as everyone else in America.

But some scholars and family activists are questioning the oft-cited statistics, saying Christians who attend church regularly are more likely to remain wed.

[…]The various findings on religion and divorce hinge on what kind of Christians are being discussed.

Wright combed through the General Social Survey, a vast demographic study conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, and found that Christians, like adherents of other religions, have a divorce rate of about 42%. The rate among religiously unaffiliated Americans is 50%.

When Wright examined the statistics on evangelicals, he found worship attendance has a big influence on the numbers. Six in 10 evangelicals who never attend had been divorced or separated, compared to just 38% of weekly attendees.

[…]Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, agrees there’s been some confusion.

“You do hear, both in Christian and non-Christian circles, that Christians are no different from anyone else when it comes to divorce and that is not true if you are focusing on Christians who are regular church attendees,” he said.

Wilcox’s analysis of the National Survey of Families and Households has found that Americans who attend religious services several times a month were about 35% less likely to divorce than those with no religious affiliation.

Nominal conservative Protestants, on the other hand, were 20% more likely to divorce than the religiously unaffiliated.

“There’s something about being a nominal ‘Christian’ that is linked to a lot of negative outcomes when it comes to family life,” Wilcox said.

Whenever I talk to atheists about marital satisfaction and marital stability, they always tell me these myths about how atheists divorce less, have more and better sex, and are happier in their marriages than religious people. But when I ask them for studies, they don’t have any. It’s like they believe things without any evidence at all.

In addition, atheists have lower marriage rates than religious people. That’s not surprising, since marriage only works if both people are willing to give up on pleasure in the moment in order to build something together, over the long term.

Now clearly, there are going to be atheists with great marriages that never break up. But individual cases do not overturn peer-reviewed research studies. The fact is that marriage is an institution that is soaked through with moral values and moral obligations. If you think that morality is just arbitrary customs and conventions that vary by time and place, as is logically consistent with atheism, then the odds are that you won’t be able to stay married for long – if you even get married at all.

News

Voting rights for terrorists and rapists, death penalty for unborn babies up to 9 months

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Boston Marathon terrorist about to place bomb behind 8-year-old child

Wow. It seems to me that the Democrats had a pretty good chance of competing against Trump in the 2020 election, with their presumed nominee, Bernie Sanders. He’s wildly popular with young people. He’s raising tons of money from rich progressives. All Bernie has to do is just not say anything crazy, and he’ll be competitive. Unfortunately, he can’t control himself.

Here’s a report from the radically-leftist Boston Herald:

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders says the right to vote should extend to those in jail — even the Boston Marathon bomber.

“If somebody commits a serious crime — sexual assault, murder — they’re going to be punished,” Sanders said in his CNN town hall talk Monday night. But, “I think the right to vote is inherent to our democracy. Yes, even for terrible people.”

The majority of convicted criminals would vote Democrat if they could, because Democrats are less strict on crime than Republicans. Democrats are always looking to allow more people who will vote Democrat to vote. They want to lower the voting age, because young people who don’t pay taxes naturally vote for free stuff. And they also want to import low-skilled immigrants and put them on a path to citizenship. Low-skilled immigrants pay less into the system than they use in education, health care, etc. They also vote Democrat.

Medicare for All

Bernie also has a long list of big spending programs, because he thinks that $22 trillion in debt and trillion dollar deficits is no big deal. But the truth is, we’re already out of money for the big social welfare programs that Democrats already passed. We certainly don’t have money for any new ones.

Far-left CBS News explains:

Social Security is on a path to become insolvent in 2035, with only enough money cover about 80 percent of its obligations.

Medicare would become insolvent even sooner, by 2026, if no changes are made to payroll taxes or how health providers are paid.

[…][M]any Democratic presidential candidates are calling for expanding Medicare benefits — even proposing “Medicare for All” — rather than addressing the program’s worsening finances.

How will Democrats pay for MORE spending when we can’t pay for the spending we already have? Tax increases won’t be enough, so they’ll have to nationalize private 401K retirement plans like other socialist nations have.

And what about Medicare for All? Well, they can just seize the money that’s being used to buy private health insurance now, and put everyone into a government-run single payer system. That’s what happens in Canada right now. People who pay taxes pay for the all the costs, but they still have to get in line behind those who don’t pay anything in taxes. The average cost (to middle-class taxpayers) is about $11,000 per year. That’s a lot more than people pay for private health insurance which delivers higher quality care. But the costs are higher for less quality, because the people who pay into the system are covering the people who don’t pay.

And remember, abortion through all nine months of pregnancy is taxpayer-funded in Canada’s single payer system. Pro-life taxpayers subsidize abortions. If you don’t like it, you can leave the country.

Infanticide

All of the Democrat presidential candidates support infanticide, according to this article from The Stream:

 On February 25, 44 Democrat senators, including all 6 declared presidential candidates, voted against the Born Alive Protection Act. Put another way, they voted for infanticide.

New candidate Pete Buttigieg is also in favor of infanticide: abortion through all nine months of pregnancy.

If you’re voting for a Democrat in 2020, then you’re going to get infanticide if they win. No use complaining later that you’re pro-life if you support the killing of viable unborn children who survive botched abortions.

Raising the minimum wage

Another policy supported by many Democrats is raising federal minimum wage rates.

Let’s take a look at a study reported  in the Daily Caller:

California’s minimum wage increase has cost the state thousands of jobs worth of growth in the state’s booming restaurant industry, according to a recent study by the University of California Riverside.

California passed a bill in 2016 to bring the state’s minimum wage up to $15 an hour. For businesses with more than 25 employees, the state’s minimum wage rose to $12 in January and will hit $15 in January of 2022. Other businesses have until 2023 before the full $15-an-hour minimum takes effect.

[…]Researchers also found that the minimum wage slowed growth more in low-income areas.

[…]Researchers estimate that the minimum wage increases will cost the state roughly 30,000 jobs from 2017 to 2022.

If you force businesses to pay workers more, them employers are left with no choice but to lay off workers, or cut hours.

Minimum wage jobs are entry level jobs. They’re not meant to allow people to buy a house, have children, or travel the world on private jets. People get them in order to get something on their resumes so that they can move up to more challenging jobs that pay more. If a person doesn’t want to move up to a more challenging job that pays more, then they shouldn’t be complaining that they can’t make the same life choices as software engineers, nurses and electricians. Jobs don’t all pay the same, because some are harder than others.

If voters chose candidates based on whether their policies would actually work to prevent poverty, they would never vote for Democrats. But so many people in America don’t vote based on what results policies will achieve. They vote in order to feel something about themselves. Transferring wealth from “rich” employers to “poor” minimum wage workers feels good. So they vote for it. And when those workers are laid off, they don’t care because they’ve already stopped paying attention.