Big Bang followup

I’ve been running this blog for nearly 5 months now and, until recently, it’s never garnered much attention. Apparently, my post on Big Bang misconceptions drew far more than I suspected thanks to Phil Plat at Bad Astronomy, Pharyngula, digg.com, and Stupid Evil Bastard linking to it among nearly 60 other blogs, now according to Technocrati.

I hadn’t intended for it to be so widely publicized. After all, these points shouldn’t be all that astounding and I’m not the first to address these points.

So I’m not really sure why it became so popular. But regardless of my expectations, it did. And I’m pleased so many people found it helpful. That single post has generated more comments than the rest of this blog combined I think (I haven’t counted but it sure seems that way). So to everyone that stopped by thanks and I appreciate the comments. I try to respond to as many as I can. Nearly all of the comments I received and saw elsewhere were positive. Even Panda’s Thumb’s (is that the correct possessive form?) local creationist stopped by but couldn’t find anything to say except that “it’s not cutting edge science.”

He’s right, and I never claimed it to be. It’s just the general science that people should have picked up in school, but from my experience, they haven’t. Even those that seem to really enjoy science and accept the theories often fall prey to these misconceptions and don’t have the complete picture. It seems to be such a pervasive problem that I can hardly fault the individuals, but instead would have to consider the schools at fault.

Well, kind of. Astronomy is a rather esoteric science that doesn’t have much direct application to every day life. Thus, it’s not stressed in schools, and is generally only very lightly touched upon. Very few high schools even offer a basic class dedicated to astronomy. So, I suppose we can’t blame the schools for not getting the point across when there’s so much more that’s important, and therefore leaving people to get their understanding from common knowledge which generally isn’t reliable.

But for all the kind comments I received, there were the inevitable loony ones from fundamentalists or people who have just read a bit too much sci-fi.

One of my favorites came from digg:

Misconception #5 --> "The Big Bang Actually Happened!" Of course it didn't and there is no proof that it ever did, but this is the misconception that most people seemed to be buying into the most.

I’m supposing the guy that wrote this didn’t actually bother to read what I’d posted as I did offer several independent threads of reasoning that all pointed to the Big Bang.

Also on digg, tdellaringa started on the typical rant that my post was meant to head off

No, the "big expansion" is not compatible with scripture. 6 days does not a big expansion make. No, days were not some unspecified amount of time.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i1/days.asp

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Accept it or reject it, just don't try to walk around it.

Such arrogance! “My interpretation of the Bible is the only one that’s possibly right!”

There were also a fair number of ad hominems scattered around:

who cares what a 22 year old astronomy student has to say on the big bang? typical college kid-who-thinks-he-knows-everything BS. This article just restated what most people already know if they've read anything about the big bang.

Have I ever claimed to know everything? I certainly can’t recall ever doing so. In fact, there’s been more than one occasion in this blog I’ve made an error that was caught by a reader and I cheerfully admitted my mistake and corrected it noting that such discrepancies were caught by others. But either way, what does my age have to do with anything?

Furthermore, not everyone who’s done reading about the Big Bang has gotten this as experience has clearly demonstrated. Over.And.Over.

But to all those people who enjoyed my post and left comments, I thank you and hope you continue reading.