Cosmology

Ancient cosmology

• Cosmological views of the Ancient Near East cultures
• Greeks believed the universe was comprised of the Earth in the center of giant spheres
• Jewish cosmology
• Firmament
• Raqia is better translated as expanse rather than firmament
• In the beginning
• Metaphor
• Phenomenological language
• Flat earth myth
• Snow dome myth
• How would you prove heliocentrism is true?
• Scientists reluctant to accept there was a beginning to the universe

Counter arguments

• Long list of natural phenomena that were once attributed to the gods
• The Church believed the Bible described the Earth as a flat disk for centuries
• Why would a single author include two versions of the creation story?
• Shouldn’t Genesis be scientifically accurate?
• Religious culture is littered with creation stories

Modern cosmology

• Evidence exist to support we are not at the center of universe?
• Uniform cosmic microwave background radiation
• Argument we are near center of the universe
• More on the uniformity of the CMBR
• Cosmic inflation
• Ad hoc explanations
• Inflation theory is not scientific
• Flatness problem
• General and special revelation
• More evidence of fine-tuning
• Fine-structure constant
• Penrose number
• Scientists have resorted to extranatural explanations
• Pale blue dot
• Rare earth
• Fermi paradox
• Universe cannot be cyclical or eternal
• Entropy
• Second law of thermodynamics
• Heat death
• Big Bang started as a black hole
• Galaxies moving faster than the speed of light
• Space time fabric
• Implications of space time expansion
• Summary of arguments why space-time fabric is not expanding
• Space-time as a single entity is not accepted by all physicists
• Dark energy similar to theological explanations
• Gravitational redshifting
• White hole
• Isotropic, but not homogeneous
• Gravitational time dilation
• Cosmology summary

Oldness/Flatness problem

• Start debating Oldness/Flatness problem
• Universe is flat
• Critical density

Extraterrestrial life

• How likely are we to find extraterrestrial life?
• Empirical evidence for any extraterrestrial life
• Rare Earth
• Aliens must exist
• Unidentified Aerial Phenomena