In the case of modern cosmology, to paraphrase Voltaire, if there were no redshift we would need to invent one.

It is proposed by the deep thinkers in astrophysics that we can make a direct, unaltered analogy between the commonly observed Doppler shift of sound waves in air on Earth and the universally observed displacement of spectral lines of light emitted from massive sources sequestered deep in the Universe. Which would be fine, and seems to explain a lot, but keep in mind how utterly strange the Universe must be to maintain this simple analogy between sound and light. We are asked to accept: that up to 96% of the Universe is so “Dark” that we are completely unable to detect it; that quasars must be somehow unable to exist today, or nearby, which is presumably the same thing, and must be of such an energy as to stretch the bounds of physics; that quasars could not form at all somehow for the first billion years, but that galaxies and stars must have, and remain in the same distribution today, even tho they are observed to be constantly mixing and reforming; that the Universe is accelerating; that singularities exist, and the Universe itself was once one of them. Not all of these ideas have had their genesis in the cosmological redshift=distance interpretation, but many have nonetheless been described as “proving” the redshift/distance correlation, when in fact they may have no real corroborative value at all, and perfectly logical alternative explanations. For instance, perhaps the Cosmic Background Radiation looks like such an amazingly good fit for today's Universe because it is a picture of today's Universe, not some primally seeded and invarient mass/density distribution from the first microsecond of Time. Indeed, to believe that the Universe looks today just as it did 13 Billion years ago strains credulity past the breaking point. We are asked to believe that, as in the Quantum world, commonsense notions of causality must be abandoned, but is that necessary for the opposite end of the scale? Given the detailed observational refutations piling up, (see Arp's books), the severe technical limits still set upon of our probative knowledge (as opposed to proposative knowledge, in which we're up to our eyeballs), and the self-evident hubris of our grand speculative epistemologies, (many modern scientists believe we are, in the provocative words of science writer James Horgan, at the “end of science”. Helloooo?? Copernican principle ring a bell? ) why should we be so sure that there is a direct analog between electromagnetic radiation in gravity wells and pressure waves in gas?

At the very least, history teaches us that simplistic analogies for complex systems, (and what is more complex than a universe, after all?) are dangerous ground for the foundations of epistemological empires. A misunderstanding incorporated so deeply in a paradigm is extremely difficult to expose and redress. The process has taken, historically, generations, if not centuries, to work through. It begins, as always, with an unblinking observation of the facts, and the inspired vision and tireless bitching of one or more heretics. God bless the heretics!

I would certainly not be the first to point out the similarities between the Big Bang Model and Biblical creation motif. Indeed the Vatican finds it so comforting that it has officially adopted it (which should be reason enough to pitch the Big Bang!) The 20th century formulation of the Universe in which all galaxies appear to be moving away from each other, expanding "outward" from a single moment of infinite creative energy--itself an image of religious antiquity--is wholly founded on the belief that a large shift in spectrum must and can only be caused by spacetime expansion. This has not and perhaps can not be tested experimentally, and there are other possible self-consistant explanations, such as the variable mass hypothesis of Arp and Narlikar, the "Tired Light" proposal of Hoyle and Wickramasinge, or Joao Magueijo's Variable Light Speed theory, and others that also require "new physics". This need for undiscovered law is frequently used to attack such proposed explanations, but what is Dark Energy and Dark Matter if not proposed "new Physics"? It makes much more sense to me to believe that we don't fully understand what we're looking at, than that what we're looking at is only 4% of the Universe, the rest of which lays outside of our powers of detection and deduction at all!

That so many hold so tenaciously to the creation ex nihilo model may have as much to do with the nature of belief itself as with the evidence. Specifically, the narcissistic desire to see in oneself the reflection of Ultimate Meaning, meaning ultimately that you and your exertions matter somehow. And the history of religious dissolution, which our culture has been undergoing for centuries, is not that the multitudes of newly unfaithful abandon their need to believe in Meaning in the Universe--adopting instead rationalism and Science, a truly radical departure from superstition--but that the need is so strong that it soon resurfaces in some other guise: reformation, mysticism, determinism, spiritualism, nationalism, communism, environmentalism; the list is as long as History, and is little disguised from it. This immortal application of blind faith to unreasoned and unreasonable paradigms is so consistent, so polymorphic, and so universal that one is tempted to believe it must indeed be a hard-wired feature of the human brain.

~ Matthew P. Terry 2003 ~

Threnody for Chip