Universe not expanding

Max, your claims to being "scientific" are seriously undermined by "questions' like these. The most "unscientific" attitude is on display. Your insinuation is that Lorentizian relativity is "kooky" and that only some fundy could ever think otherwise.

I have repeatedly demonstrated to you, on this very forum, that (informed) physicists understand that special relativity has no empirical advantages over lorenizian relativity, which is itself a completely viable theory of relative motion. But you can never remember this, due to your strongly anti-scientific tendencies.

Notwithstanding your chiding of Oris, it is YOU who treats "science" akin to religious dogma. For you, anyone who doesn't accept the "word" of your God (Einstein) MUST be wrong. You cannot even objectively examine alternative theories on their merits because your faith tells you they CAN'T be right. Not even when their viability has been repeatedly demonstrated to you.

Of course we've been through all this before. I'm sure you would disagree, but I don't think you have a good conceptual understanding of either SR or LR. And I think that several factors play a prominent role it that:

1. You think the math is the science,
2. You think you already know everything you need to know, so, therefore
3. Any idea which seems inconsistent with what you already "know" is dismissed, a priori. You seem quite satisfied with dogmatism.

Layman,

First of all, you didn't answer the question. If the Universe is ruled by a God who operates outside of any rules, then science is moot.

Second of all, I have repeatedly explained to you where your world view falls down, including the actual experiments on time dilation and other experimental confirmation of special relativity. You keep ignoring any evidence that doesn't support your world view.

Thirdly, I have no problem saying that Science is math. That is a bit more simplistic than I acutally believe... but science is the process of making a model, and then testing it. In science you accept the results of experiment whether or not it matches with your intuition. The rejection of intuition is a key part of science... and it is the core of my disagreements with you.

Now back to the first point. Science doesn't "know" anything. Science is simply a process that creates models of the Universe.

I have never said that Science is truth.. I don't know whether this helps you or not, but science is one way of looking at the reality of the Universe we live in. There are other ways that are equally valid, the real advantage science has is that it can make predictions and can be used to make cool technology.

You can argue about the nature of reality and I can't prove you wrong. But Science has a well defined process that involves making models and testing them... and this process is centered around mathematics. Science is what scientists do (and that includes general relativity and an inflationary Universe).

Anything else is is not science.

Typical Arp examples of high and low redshift objects which are clearly part and parcel of the same things, clearly joined together. Anybody claiming to have debunked this or that this is somehow ¨old¨ and therefore invalid, is full of ****.

Heh, me ignore evidence? For about the 5th time now, Max:

1. Do you think SR has been proven?
2. Do you think that LR (absolute simultaneity) has been disproven?
3. Do you think that there has EVER been an experiment which "confirms" SR while "disconfirming" LR?

Yes or No?

I'll simply repeat what I said: You don't understand the concepts, and you completely disregard (no, the better word is deny) the experimental evidence. By these standards, you qualify as a bona fide "crank."

Research it. Again.

1. General Relativity is the theoretical framework that is accepted by modern Physics. It is taught in Universities and is at the core of the work being done by serious physicists.

2. It isn't meaningful to say Lorentzian Relativity has been "disproven". It is a fact that experiments have verified many of the predictions of General Relativity (and Special Relativity) including the fact that clocks experience different times in different reference frames.

3. I don't know why you care if Lorentzian Relativity has been "disproven" . I don't know what this would mean, or why it would be important.

Let's talk about what is really happening in these discussions.

- The scientific establishment which consists of people who have taken 12 or 20 or more years of their lives studying math, reading and writing papers, developing and confirming theories with peer review, has accepted General Relativity. This has been a transparent process- the thinking is published and well known.

- You have developed your own theory of Physics based on your own intuition. You have done this without a knowledge of mathematics or experience with peer review or experiment. You are then Googling for articles taken out of context that you think support your intuition.

But the main point you are making is that your intuition is more reliable than mathematics.

I am in agreement with the scientific community on Physics. After my Physics degree I chose another path, but I understand the scientific process and I trust the scientific community.

You seem to be making the argument that the scientific community is full of cranks. The fact that you are using the internet (based on modern Physics) to make this argument is rather funny.

Now could you answer my question?

If you believe that the Judeo-Christian God can do whatever He wants with the Universe (including changing clocks and making galaxies glow reddish)... then why does arguing about science matter?

It's not "my" theory. It has been propounded by, among many others, Lorentz, and it is the theory from which Einstein took his math (the Lorentz Transformations) to begin with. The math is the same in each theory, which also disproves the absurd claim you repeatedly make, i.e., that the math IS the physics.

Your long-winded appeal to authority is cute, but leaves out one thing. Physicists (including Einstein) have ALWAYS agreed that SR cannot be empirically distinguished from LR.

You repeatedly deny this. Every time you are proven wrong, then concede it, you immediately forget your concession. Then you go right back to claiming that SR has been "confirmed" and LR disproven.

Do some research.

If you want to appeal to authorities, then you should at least know what the authorities you appeal to actually say.

.

No, of course I am not doing that. I am simply saying that YOU are acting like a crank because YOU deny what every competent physicist affirms.

Can you answer my question about the role of the Judeo-Christian God?

That is what this is really about, right?

These attacks on mainstream Physics generally seem to come from a religious perspective.

I don't think I have denied your claim. I am stating that it is meaningless. If there are two theories that can not be empirically distiguished from each other, then they are identical theories. They will make the same predictions in every case.

General Relativity has been accepted by the scientific community. As you point out, Lorentizian mathematics can be shown to be equivalent in many cases (if not all). They can both be true. Of course, the fact that clocks in different reference frames have been shown by experiment to experience different amounts of time is still true... no matter which mathematical framework you use to explain it.

You're a damn fool, Max. You are completely wrong about at least two things:

1. Your assumptions about my theological beliefs, and more importantly...
2. That your question has even the least bit of relevance to the validity of the science we are discussing.

No Layman, I am stating this as a hypthesis (not a fact). I was asking for you to confirm my hypothesis.

It is my hypothesis that most of the challenges to mainstream physics stem from a belief in a Judeo-Christian God who is responsible for the creation. I know that this is true about the OP.

I was hoping that you would kindly provide a datapoint.

Right. And suppose there were 20 theories that make the same prediction? Which one would be confirmed, or proven?

Suppose there were a virtually infinite number, as is the case with string theory? What's that tell you about what string theory tells you?

You might also want to research the concept of "underdetermination" as it relates to scientific theory.

I said "right" at the beginning, but that was not intended as an agreement with everything you said. They are NOT the "same theory" just because they make the same predictions.

As I said earlier, your confusion about such an elementary matter is a direct consequence of your absurd claim that the physics IS the math.

Ok. That's not the theory I thought it was. I believe there is a newer theory out there which I've been hearing about, but this isn't it.

The challenges I usually see to this one look like this one: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-problems-with-the-alternate-explanation-for-dark-energy-from-Prof-Edward-Kipreos

Basically it doesn't fit the data as well as the Standard Model does. Same basic problem I described in my general answer to the OP.

Yeah, there are other theories out there which are said to reproduce the gravitational predictions of GR, but which are also reconcilable with QM. They also eliminate any need to posit dark matter and dark energy.

In a somewhat similar fashion, they eliminate the "time dimension," I think, and resort to the Newtonian 3 + 1 (as opposed to four-dimensional) model of space and time.

Recently a large number of scientific papers have been published which strongly challenge the Einsteinian notion of relative simultaneity.

John Stuart Bell said decades ago that the simplest way to resolve the GM/QM incompatibility would be to revert to Lorentzian relativity and dump SR.

Why would the validity of any scientific theory depend in any way on the motivations underlying it?

Is it your contention that all of what you call "mainstream physics" "stems from" atheism, and would be invalid if one did not first take such a theological stance?

Of course the validity of a scientific theory doesn't depend in any way on the motivations underlying it. And it is not my contention that mainstream physics stems from atheism (if you look at the history of the development of science this is not the case).

But I do find the reasons that people reject mainstream physics (i.e. the understanding of the scientific establishment) interesting.

You can base your understanding of science on mathematics, or you can base it on intuition and faith. The advantage of mathematics is that it leads to an well-defined model that can then be tested.

Ever occur to you that new theories opposing "mainstream physics" are generally based upon rational thought, empirical evidence, and a need to eliminate inconsistencies and/or shortcomings in "mainstream science?"

Do you have any specific examples that don't also come with their own set of conflicts with observed data?

I'm just not aware of any other theories that have a better broad range track record of matching the observed data.

Relativity is a bunch of BS just like evolution.

Relativity assumes the failure of the MM experiment and amounts to an attempt to adapt the rest of physics to the supposed imperviousness of light speed. One problem is that Dayton Miller, one of the best physicists of the era immediately after Michelson and Morley, re-ran the experiment with better equipment and at higher altitude (to attenuate the effect of gravitational drag from the Earth itself) and, apparently, the experiment did not fail:

http://www.orgonelab.org/miller.htm

The book I'd normally recommend to somebody wishing a basic grasp of relativity would be Lewis Carroll Epstein's Relativity Visualized:

http://www.amazon.com/Relativity-Visualized-Lewis-Carroll-Epstein/dp/093521805X

Epstein uses the following analogy for what Einstein did or tried to do: Imagine that you have a house in which all windows and every door other than for one worked and opened and shut easily but that the one door was binding. Normally you'd simply plane material from the one door until it worked properly. But you COULD go to your local Walmart and buy a couple of hundred jacks and jack the foundation of the house until the one door worked, and then re-adjust every other door and window in the house and/or plane THEM or do whatever it took to ensure that they all worked again.... In the analogy of course, the house is modern physics, the one bad door is light, and the other doors and windows are all of the other things in the house of physics, time, distance, inertia, velocity... Epstein claims that relativity is the one case you would ever encounter in which this second approach was the right one but it seems sufficiently obvious to me that this is a gross violation of Occam's basic principle and that there could never be such a case.

There is the problem that even if you accept the proposition of light speed does not vary, there may be other explanations for that and, apparently, nobody investigated any of those other explanations. One version of such an explanation involves the sub-electron particles which Ralph Sansbury describes:

http://www.amazon.com/Faster-Than-Light-Relativity-Reconsidered/dp/1477584587

Sansbury describes light as an instantaneous force; there is another possible explanation for light and involving sub-electron particles, which would involve an analogy with rifle fire.

There is another problem in that Ron Hatch, the man who holds most of the basic patents for GPS as I read it, claims that relativity is not compatible with the actual research involved in GPS

https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=ron+hatch++relativity+gps&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

There is an obvious problem with gravity (which propagates instantaneously) and any sort of a claim that information cannot be transmitted faster than C.

And there is a gigantic problem with claiming that gravity amounts to some sort of a 4-dimensional differential geometry thing. You cannot start with that and believe that gravity could have recently undergone any sort of a large change near the surface of our own planet, nonetheless it is an easy demonstration that it has, and that a large dinosaur would be crushed by his own weight in our present world.