OK, I understand your points. Sometimes it's difficult to tell who the villains are in your comments; but in fairness, you are doing battle with multiple adversaries and it's easy to get sidetracked.
I'm also doing most of the posting between tech calls at work. Sometimes I can be extremely sloppy and proofreading is minimal.
So, is it not true that inflation and dark energy both explain astronomical observations and are consistent with GR, which you accept.
I accept GR as taught by Einstein. I didn't include 'Dark energy" or "inflation", both of which were "made up" after his death. I'll be happy to let them associate these things with GR the moment they can demonstrate they exist and have some affect on objects. If they can't do that much, I have no confidence they exist or belong in any GR formulas. Gravity is essentially an "attractive" curvature. They've got it attracting at measurable distances and they have it doing repulsive tricks at distances I can never reach. That's quite a claim. How does gravity attract and repulse at the same time at different distances?
So, for the time being, those appear to be the best explanations we have --
Who determines what is the "best" explanation? Did they actually "explain" what "dark energy" is, where it comes from, etc? Did they demonstrate these things even exist in nature before *claiming* that they affect distant objects?
even though "real" (laboratory) evidence is not currently available.
Well, some lab evidence is available. In other words I will be happy to accept some form of "spacetime" expansion, where objects in motion stay in motion. That would in fact create redshift, but it would not explain *all* of the redshift. Even light from the sun gets redshifted by various mechanisms. I'll be happy to allow them to use *any* type of physical process that can be demonstrated and can be linked to a redshifting process. The "space" expansion concept however is out of the question unless they can demonstrate this actually occurs in nature.
Steady state models (as much as I prefer them -- when I was quite young -- in the 1950s -- I was actually a big fan of Fred Hoyle -- don't laugh.) suffer from contradictions (Olbers' paradox)
I've heard that before, but it typically it was done as a handwave rather than a real argument. Perhaps you could explain the Oblers paradox issue in your own words?
and unexplained phenomena (time dilation of supernovae decay) and seem to violate laws of Physics (thermodynamics). You have refuted some of these statements but not in a manner that I have yet found convincing -- but I could be missing something (or a lot). I will "stay tuned"!
I haven't personally invested a whole lot of time on the supernova data, although Ari has definitely done some work on it. I'm not sure what you figure violates the laws of thermodynamics, but if you can explain what you mean, I'll do my best to respond to it.
I've found from debating creationists over the years that "convincing" anyone is beyond my personal abilities. One has to be willing to change their mind, or choose a direction on their own. I can't really do that for anyone. I'm not really "convinced" of inflation or DE either anymore, so the doubt thing seems to work both ways depending on which side you pick.
I guess the best way I can explain my position is to suggest that I am willing to put some limited "faith" in a variety of ideas and concept that *can* be empirically demonstrated, even if some or all of them turn out to be wrong or are falsified over time. At least I know for sure that it *might* physically work that way based on the known laws of physics.
Theories however that begin with blind faith in something that evidently can *never* be demonstrated on Earth, seems extremely unappealing to me. When it then gets combined with yet several more of these mythical things, and only 4% of it is based on real physics, I'm really not interested anymore. It's nothing personal, I just prefer *real* physics with *real* things that show up in *real* experiments. Is that really a serious limitation?
Birkeland had a "theory" about how aurora worked. He did not just whip up a wee bit of math and claim "I solved the mystery". What he did was "by the book" empirical science. He built real "experiments" with actual "control mechanisms". He also took in-situ measurements from some of the harshest environments on the planet to compare with his lab results. Nothing was left to chance. He changed the parameters of his experiments by reversing the polarity of the sphere, changing the texture of the sphere, playing with magnetic field strengths, etc.
In this way he was able to "explain" not only aurora, but coronal loops, solar jets, solar wind acceleration, planetary rings, and many other things. Empirical physics isn't limiting in the least if one is creative and diligent. The only thing it actually limits is "woo". Lambda-CDM theory is 96 percent woo, and only 4% actual physics. That's just not acceptable to me. It can never be "better" than any other theory in my book because it's more than 90 percent "fudge factor". It only serves to demonstrate to me that their theory is flawed to the point of absurdity.
Now admittedly, EU/PC theory isn't as "adept" at explaining some of these long distance observations, but then which of these observations is most critical, and what exactly constitutes an "explanation"? Is DE actually "explained" in Lambda-Gumby theory? Of course not. It's just a name stuffed into a math formula.
I wish I could be young and naive again and just believe what they told me like I did when I was younger. It was so much easier, but then they weren't peddling nearly as much faith based dogma back then either.
It was a bit like loosing my religion all over again to see the flaws in Lambda theory. The first time that happened to me was somewhat painful at first, but once I got used to it, it served me very well over the years. It's been an interesting last few years learning about Birkeland's work and Alfven's work and Bruce's work and Peratt's work and I've learned a lot. I can't go back to Lambda-Gumby theory ever again I suppose, but that seems to be the price that one pays for questioning their "faith" in the "unseen" and for looking for new ways of viewing the universe. I'm used to it by now and I'm comfortable doing it.
The only difference between religion and Lambda-CMD theory is that Lambda-CMD theory is dressed up with fictitious mathematical formulas. To call it "better" however seems highly subjective. 10 years ago I may have agreed with you. Today however, I could not disagree more strongly.
For better or worse, MHD theory works in a lab, as does GR. Combining them and looking for answers in the universe can and does explain many things that still perplex and confuse the mainstream today, starting with solar wind acceleration. I'm far more interested in explaining event *inside* of our solar system than long distance observations. Maybe that is why I tend to be less impressed with long distance observations that they *claim* they can *explain* with a theory that is 96% "made up".
Like I said, it was easy to be a "believer", but once one starts to "lack belief" in their dogma, it's not like one can just stop lacking belief without some viable evidence. Science isn't supposed to be like religion. In a science class I shouldn't have to just have "faith" in something I can never hope to demonstrate in the physical world. Perhaps there is a time and a place for "faith", but it should not be in the science classroom IMO. That should be the sole realm of real and demonstrated physics.
