So every peice of data needs a context. What is true in one context may not be true for another. Unfortunately journalists rarely pay attention to such things.

Your opinion. Many fine journalists pay strict attention to such things.

“Ladies and Gentleman, give it up for Richard Wade, he’ll be here all week!”

Now science has proved that the universe (and even time) came into existence 13.7 billion years ago.

Like Richard Wade, I strongly disagree that it has been proven.

Just after Big Bang Theory became the scientific consensus, it was fashionable for people to say that it makes no sense to talk about “before the big bang”. That’d be like talking about “north of the north pole”. But current cosmology is arguably moving beyond this. For instance, we have inflation theory, which may give us hints about how the universe was formed. There are still a lot of speculations of a bigger universe from which ours arose.

The fact of the matter is that current theory cannot know what happened at the “beginning” if there was one. The early universe was extremely hot and dense. These are conditions under which quantum theory and general relativity must be combined. As you may have heard, these theories, as they are currently formulated, are incompatible. There are attempts to combine them (ie string theory and loop quantum gravity), but these are still in the hypothesis stage. Therefore, it is impossible to know much about the early universe until we have further theoretical developments. I would say 13.7 billion years is our best bet for the age of the universe, but it is not proven.

In any case, the problem with the cosmological argument is not really scientific at all, it’s philosophical.

Now science has proved that the universe (and even time) came into existence 13.7 billion years ago.

Rich, with respect I think the phrase “science has proved that…” should be avoided like the phrase, “never go out of style,” or the phrase “the ultimate in…” It doesn’t reflect the spirit of science, which is to keep looking for better explanations than the ones that some folks have claimed are “proven.” There are plenty of “proven” ideas that are now in the dumpster. Scientists usually shy away from saying “proven” because they know that other scientists may get the chance to laugh at them.

I think a better way to express what you are saying would be to say that the universe as we see it now, or space-time as we see it now apparently began expanding from a super dense, super hot point way back then.

I don’t want to sound too spacey, but that does not necessarily rule out some other kind of space-time that contained that event. There may come a time when we will have to give some space for this possibility and to expand our concepts of space and time. They might be called “overtime” or “time-and-a-half,” or “double time.” Rather than just the conventional “outer space” and “inner space” we might also have to work with concepts such as “extra space,” or “crawl space,” or “rented space,” or dare I say it, “parking space.” but getting one of those could take quite some time. Since space seems to be extremely compressible it may not be actually taking up that much space, which is good, since I’m often running out of space and always running out of time. If I run out of space, where have I run to? We all know that time can fly when your’e having a good time or time can drag when you’re not, and depending on who is enjoying the show and who is not, those good times and bad times can be happening in the same space at the same time. You know, time after time I tell myself that I’m so lucky to have the time I do, cause how you gonna make some time if all you got is one thin dime and that won’t even shine your shoes? I have often found that I have time on my hands but I have never found that I have time on my feet, or any other part of my body for that matter. I don’t really understand them, but some cosmologists are spending a lot of time talking about being able to study the “time before time.” They could be spaced out, but I suppose whether or not they are wasting their time, only time will tell.

Well, I don’t want to take up any more space. Thank you for your time.

Huh? Might want to take a look at Bacon’s taxonomic system which was the root of the scientific method long before 100 years ago. It was a litle bit longer than 100 years ago that the Bible lost its credibility as an explanation for cosmology.

Was that just as add for your site? I didn’t visit it.

General Introduction for Non-Believers, Part 3: Why Christianity?

I think what you are noting is what I saw when the various Pew studies came out this year. People jumped on the assumption bandwagon and flooded the blogopshere and papers with just bad assumptions about what the research actually said. Your reading of it is on target with what most articles indicated and to that degree you are mostly correct.

And, most folks are not regular readers of sociology journals. Can’t blame them really can we?

…the assumption that affiliation implies adherence is a sadly common flaw.

I agree, at times affiliation may indicate nothing more than funeral perferences and say nothing about what the adhere to in the everyday. Flaws in data collection can also arise from only giving people one option in surveys. In Japan for instance it is perfectly acceptable for people to claim affiliation to both Shinto and Buddhism simultaneously. And there are plenty of people here in the west who practice split level religion too, affiliating with Christianity for rites of passage stuff while affiliating with spiritualism for crisis stuff like seeking spiritual guidance, protection and empowerment.

There is also the thing that what is true locally may not be true globally. Christianity seems very much on the wane in the west, particularly Europe, England and Australia. But not so globally, it is booming in the southern hemisphere overall. And even in the west the situation is patchy. So every peice of data needs a context. What is true in one context may not be true for another. Unfortunately journalists rarely pay attention to such things.

I think religion poses some challenges here for science in terms of how social scientists actually measure it.

In anticipation that with your references I find your assertions credible, I thank you for disabusing me of an incorrect assumption.

“One bit of “data” I have noticed is that there seems to be a strong positive correlation between what the authors’ roots, background, religious affiliation or sponsoring organization suggest is their bias, and the predictions they make.”

So is this true of journals such as The Scientific Study of Religion, The American Journal of Sociology, The National Study of Religion and Youth, Pew Research, Social Forces, etc.? You are offering a Red Herring rather than significant data. Don’t throw the sociology of religion under a bus because it doing so makes a flawed assertion work or appear to work.

“For instance the assumption that affiliation implies adherence is a sadly common flaw.”

Where? I have read over a dozen studies on attendance which has been validated externally as a significant measure of adherance. Check studies by Roozen, Chaves, Hoge, Hout, etc. Here’s a reference: Hout, M., & Greeley, A. M. (1987). The center doesn’t hold: Church attendance in the united states, 1940-1984. American Sociological Review, 52(June), 325-345. This was later supported in: Hout, M., Greeley, A., & Wilde, M. (2001). The demographic imperative in religious change in the united states. American Journal of Sociology, 107(2), 468-500. See for yourself. Religious involvement is quite steady in the US and this is not an assertion, it has viable statistically significant results to substantiate it.