So You Say "The Big Bang Never Happened!" Part II

In order to untangle Psarris’ train of thought and the consequent “conclusions” he draws within his presentation, it is necessary that viewers of the vdeo make a distinction between the two concepts that are labeled “science” and “scientism.”  “Science,” can be defined as either a particular field of study within the material, natural world (physics, astronomy, geology, zoology, botany, etc.), or as the systematic study of the natural order (called the “scientific method”).  By contrast, “scientism” is NOT science, but instead, a philosophical belief about the extent and nature of reality as a whole.  Scientism as a philosophy, emphatically holds that material entities (matter and energy) are the only things that exist.  Scientism denies any reality to spiritual existence (Spirit, spirituality, mind, personality, etc.).  It is precisely because this philosophical position believes (hence: the suffix “ism”) that only material things exist (hence: the root word “science”) that it is called “scientism.”

Dr. Psarris completely confuses these two concepts.  Whether this confusion is sourced in personal ignorance, or whether it is deliberate, I cannot tell.  I shudder to imagine him to deliberately set out to deceive non-scientists.  Neither error, however, can it bode well for a lecturer arguing against the Big Bang on the authority of his scientific credentials as a physicist, by means of such confusing logic.    For example, Psarris repeatedly asserts that the Big Bang model is atheistic and explicitly anti-supernatural on the grounds that naturalism is the only allowable explanation for the events it purports to describe.  The logical problem with that objection is simple.  While it must be granted that certain cosmologists indeed allow only naturalistic explanations (thereby embracing the “scientism” described above), it emphatically does NOT logically follow from their philosophical prejudices that the broadly-acknow-ledged scientifically- attained data concerning the history of the universe is false.

The roster of that very data, ascertained by observation, which supports the absolute beginning of the universe out of nothing in the finite past, includes the cosmic pattern that 1) all galaxies are flying apart from one another, 2) that they are measurably farther apart now than they were in the past, 3) and that this expansion has been slowing down, 4) even as the temperature of the universe is cooling off.  5) We can also observe the background radiation from the initial “blast” (which was not chaotic, but highly controlled) at its beginning, 6) which reveals (with increasing visual detail as instruments improve) the disconformity in the radiation at the level that was required in order for stars to form.  Were this unfolding development reversed like rewinding a movie, that same pattern would take all of material existence back to a zero-volume singularity, the Big Bang, which was the absolute beginning of all things.

To be continued...