1.) Plagurism.
My opponent has lifted five quotes from a Ken Ham book[1]
This is disingenuous of my opponent to pass someone else’s argument off as his own. As well as largely disrespectful as my opponent expends almost no effort into making an argument.
2.) Dropped arguments
Before I address the specific claims, I will point out that pro drops my argument that Creationism isn’t an explanation, and doesn’t offer any testable predictions or increases our knowledge. As such it is a useless non-explanation.
Pro also drops the key arguments and observational evidence that supports the conclusion that the Big Bang occurred
3.) Pros standard of evidence
Voters should note that pros argument does not extol the accuracy of creationism. Nor does he explain the knowledge that creationism has added via its explanation of mechanisms. Pro doesn’t vehemently justify how creationist mechanisms explain the observational data with causal process orientated examples.
Instead, Pros argument consists of him simply trying to list all the things wrong with the Big Bang theory, and strongly imply that if the Big Bang theory has areas that are as yet unknown or unvalidated - we must throw the whole theory away.
This strategy has two issues.
Firstly, even if everything pro said was true (and it isn’t), it still doesn’t add one grain of validity to Creationism.
The second problem, is that if he holds his own theory of Creationism to this same standard - his own position fails catastrophically.
Creationism doesn’t explain why the universe is expanding, what Quasars are, why there are Galaxies, why some stars are low metalicty - why some have high levels of metal.
It can’t explain the predicted observations of the CMWB radiation, inflation, black holes, observation of star and galaxy metallicity, and many others match that expected if the Big Bang was an accurate explanation. (These will be covered later)
It can’t explain why the universe appears to be 13.2bn years old. It can’t explain the proportion of primordial elements or why the universe appears to be flat, or what the apparent gravitational lensing of galaxies is caused by.
It proposes no mechanism or method, or testable narrative that conforms with reality. Finally neither God, nor anything being created from nothing has been directly or indirectly observed in any measurable way.
If pro is asking voters to judge the Big Bang theory on aspects it cannot explain, then Creationism should be judged on the same grounds - a standard it spectacularly fails to meet.
4.) Incompleteness of the Big Bang theory.
In the case of the Big Bang, the universe is expanding - this is observed. We know the universe was increasingly hot and dense at a point far in the past, and the theories predicted both the cosmic microwave background radiation based on this, and the abundance of primordial elements. (Covered in my opening round)
From this point, the evolution of stars, and galaxies and ultimately the formation of our sun and our solar system is just a matter of nuclear physics combined with general relativity. Both of which have been validated, including most recently by the existence of gravitational waves.[2][3]
Our understanding of the universe, and the theories that express it have been themselves evolving with observational evidence, and confirmed via predictions.
For this reason, we know the Big Bang occurred, and know much about the proceeding evolution of the cosmos. There are many areas of the Big Bang that are tentative, hypothetical and have not yet been validated - or are plain unknown.
However - that such unknowns exists does not invalidate the entire theory - especially as our understanding of the broad nature of the Big Bang itself is based on the solid evidence already presented.
The standard model - up to a few years ago had a big gap in understanding with the Higgs Boson - which now is shown to exist. Relativity can’t account for the very small. Quantum theory can’t account for the very massive.
The underlying parts of those theories are still entirely accurate - even though these holes exist.
Over time these theories will be updated, replaced, and modified to account for new information and data.
Importantly, right now the Big Bang theory constitutes our best explanation of the origins of the universe we can come up with - and this explanation is demonstrably more accurate and more valid than creationism.
5.) Pros uncited source:
Let’s move on to the specific issues pro raises.
5.A.) Magnetic Monopoles
The monopole problem is less an issue with the Big Bang, and much more of an issue with the mass associated with the particle theories on which it is based.[4] this could simply be akin to something like relativity not being able to match well in the quantum world.[5]
While monopoles may or may not exist (we may discover them tommorow, or in 10 years - like some of the examples below), we could simply find a mathematical improvement to the particle or field theory that eliminates the need for monopoles. Neither case appear to invalidate the Big Bang.
5.B) Flat universe.
This is an observation that is not explained by creationism either. By what mechanism or necessity should the universe be flat? Why is it not static?
In reality, the flatness of the universe is actually a boon for the Big Bang. If the universe has a total of 0 overall energy - the universe would be flat - this seems to imply a something-from-nothing paradigm.[6]
5.C) Inflation.
This highlights pros issues with relying on lack of evidence for scientific theories -
There is now observational evidence inflationary theory is true[7][8].
This wasn’t the case when the original book pro quoted was written.
Given pros argument is that if this theory were true, we’d have evidence: the fact we now have evidence clearly lends credibility to the theory.
5.D) Matter/Antimatter baryon numbers.
This problem is interesting. When matted was created it should have been created in equal amounts matter and antimatter.
This is in part because of what is called Charge Parity Symmetry. This is basically that the laws of physics operate the same for both matter and antimatter accounting for the differences in charge.
The 1980 nobel prize in physics was awarded to Cronin and Fitch for discovering CP violations - basically violations of the symmetric nature of particles and their anti particles.[9]
While we don’t know exactly what is happening in the Big Bang, the existence of CP violations is a major indication that the laws of physics allow such disparity.
5.E) Population III stars
Pros source tacitly acknowledges that the progression of population I and II star types is well understood and matches the model of the origins and evolution of the universe.
Pro appears to be arguing that the very first stars created at the very beginning of the universe, that according to theory would have burnt out very quickly, should still exist 13bn years later
Importantly, pro neglects galaxy examples such as Galaxy Cosmos redshift 7 - which is a recently discovered galaxy and contains strong evidence of containing population III stars.[10]
Again - pro makes two major predictions that have failed, and the Big Bang theory has passed. This clearly indicates the weakness of his position, and strength of the Big Bang theory.
Summary:
Pro copied his arguments from another source, and failed to attribute it to the source.
This source makes multiple key errors in, including relying on there not being observations that have subsequently been made.
Worse. Pros own standard clearly obliterates his own position when applied fairly. Thus showing the Big Bang theory is clearly a superior explanation on the origin of the universe.
Sources:
1hr left
Sorry about that. I am a teacher and I had a busy last few days grading.
No it isnt. The “beginning of the evolutionary process” was the point at which there was some proto organic object which was able to imperfectly self replicate.
Maybe not, but it is the beginning of the evolutionary process.
Yep - though evolution has absolutely nothing to do with the origin of the universe.
I hope you are for Evolution
Creation
And which side are you on?