Semantics, Logic and Anti-Christian Bigotry

by Cowboy Bob Sorensen

A "meme" that I used on a post ¹ provoked some amazingly obstreperous and arrogant comments from anti-creationists. They misused logic and presented some remarks that were saturated with hate. These were predicated on what they considered a misuse of "science", the current definition of the Big Bang. My introductory remarks in the post said that the Big Bang was an explosion, and the article that I linked in the post had did not discuss the Big Bang, it was about other explosions. But they apparently didn't bother to read that one, they wanted to rip the "anti science" of calling the Big Bang an "explosion".

Well, was the Big Bang an explosion? Or, more importantly for this article, is it justified to make such a remark? Yes, definitely. First, the Big Bang is called an explosion (or inferred by words like "cataclysmic") in dictionaries ^{2, 3, 4, 5, 6}, but some must have received the memo that the "explosion" was upgraded to "rapid expansion" ⁷. Second, science-related sites including NASA, the American Museum of Natural History, National Geographic, PBS, BBC and others refer to it as an explosion ^{8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13}.

Redefining words when the original meanings become inconvenient is becoming more frequent, it seems:

• "Atheism" is changed from the established meaning of "denial of the existence of God" ¹⁴ into the vacuous "lack of belief".
• "Vestigial organs" moves from meaning leftovers from our evolutionary past that we do not need anymore ¹⁵ (false!) into Coyne's "no longer performs the purpose for which it evolved" ¹⁶ (begging the question as well as conveniently redefining the word).
• Although everything came from "nothing", the word "nothing" now seems to mean "almost nothing, but we have to debate what nothing really means now" ¹⁷ .
• The Big Bang is now a "rapid expansion" ¹⁸, even though the thing isn't really understood in the first place and gets constantly revised ¹⁹, and we have a great deal of evidence that it did not happen ²⁰.

So, the Big Bang is not an explosion, it is a rapid expansion that moved faster than the speed of light ²¹ and pretty much looked like an explosion, it had previously been defined as an explosion, it really isn't, and if you call the Big Bang an explosion, you'll get slapped down by haughty pseudo-intellectuals who want to play with words. Pretty intolerant of them to be that way when people use completely understandable references to the Big Bang as an explosion.

Hey! Like many other people, and with good reasons, I said the Big Bang is an explosion!

Sorry to keep you, but there were some things that troubled me when I found groups in which this "meme" was "shared" (reposted on Facebook). People were using the redefinition to get uppity and attack Christians and creationists. This "meme" asked, "If someone believes that order can come from an explosion, do I want him repairing my computer?" (Come on, people, things like that are brief, using humor and often making a point.) I concluded that those tinhorns were pretending to use "reason" and "logic" (very badly) as excuses for expressing hatred:

This last one is full-blown atheopathy:

In an article I wrote about how Christian persecution is increasing, I quoted Matt Slick as saying that people act in a manner consistent with their beliefs ²². Indeed, people are expressing irrational opinions. Sometimes they act on them. Bigotry begins with words, and persecution comes from that. It will only get worse. But we were told to expect that (Matthew 5.11, John 15.18-22).

ADDENDUM: Nate has lied about me in the past, and helped prove my point with a worthless comment and loaded terminology. "Damage control"? An article that took about 3-1/2 hours to write and has over 20 supporting links is proving a point. Damage control? Not hardly!