Pro-life protestors picket NSW parliament over abortion bill

Christian leaders and human rights advocates have slammed as “deeply troubling” and “barbaric” a bill radically decriminalising abortion in NSW which will be introduced to parliament this week.

Coalition MPs will be given a conscience vote on the bill while NSW Premier Glady Berejiklian said she will support it. If passed, the bill announced on 28 July by Independent MP for Sydney, Alex Greenwich, would be among the world’s most extreme.

It would allow for abortion on request for women up to 22 weeks gestation. After 22 weeks, the opinions of two doctors are required that the abortion should be performed, upon consideration of “all medical circumstances” and “current and future” physical, psychological and social circumstances.

There is no requirement for a cooling-off period or counselling, and health practitioners with a conscientious objection would need to refer the person or transfer their care to someone who will perform the termination. The bill was developed by a working group including the Nationals’ Trevor Khan and Labor’s Penny Sharpe and Jo Haylen, with the support of the state’s health minister Brad Hazzard.

“New attempts to make abortion even more widely available in NSW are deeply troubling,” said Archbishop Anthony Fisher OP.

“The measure of a society is how it protects its most vulnerable, be they unborn children, their mothers who are too often pressured emotionally, financially and even physically to choose against the life of their child, or the sick and frail elderly.”

Rather than pursuing laws that will lead to more abortions, there should be investment in ways to support pregnant women who feel they have no other choice, he said.

Archbishop Fisher urged all Catholics to rally against the proposed law, “and, at the same time, recommit ourselves to reaching out with prayer and practical support for women in crisis”.

He encouraged Catholics to contact their local state MP, given the bill is to be tabled this week, urging them to vote against it.

CEO of NSW Right to Life Dr Rachel Carling said that in Victoria where similar legislation has been in place for about a decade, the ‘safeguard’ of two medical opinions was easily circumvented.

“Sometimes the required sign-off is from two doctors in the same abortion clinic,” she said.

It was concerning that the bill has no mention of a woman’s consent, she added, as women facing an unplanned pregnancy are often vulnerable to coercion from others, from subtle to extreme forms, to abort their child.

“Make no mistake, this is an abortion-to-birth bill and in practice this legislation will be abortion on demand.”

“We don’t believe in criminalising women but this legislation will add to a culture of devaluing motherhood and increases the risk of women being taking advantage of when they are at their most vulnerable,” Dr Carling said.

The NSW branch of the Australian Medical Association has given its support to the bill, saying it believes the proposed law will ensure access to appropriate care.

NSW director of the Australian Christian Lobby Kieran Jackson said that it was unfortunate that safeguards and support options for women such as cooling off periods and counselling are not being considered in the bill.

In allowing abortion up until birth the bill is both “barbaric and extreme” he said in a statement.

“There are significant numbers of doctors and nurses across the state who want nothing to do with abortion because they know what is involved,” he said in a statement.

Crowds expected at rally

The Australian bishops’ spokesperson for life Bishop Richard Umbers said that there is no issue more important in our society today than the sanctity of every human life.

He encouraged Sydneysiders to attend a rally for life outside Parliament House on Thursday 1 August from 9.30am.

“This is a critical moment for our country and I encourage every man and woman to take this opportunity to attend the rally at Parliament House in Sydney this Thursday,” he said.

“These politicians are claiming to advocate for modernising the law, but this proposed legislation is out of step with the science that supports the humanity of the unborn.”

ACL’s spokesperson for women and children, Wendy Francis, said that women experiencing an unexpected or unwanted pregnancy should be treated with “great respect and sensitivity”.

“[They should be] given true choices that promote the best interests of mother and child,” she said.

“Choosing abortion in the absence of other support is not a free choice.”

Steven Buhagiar: Three things we can do to fight the NSW abortion bill right now

• Sydney bishop slams ALP abortion policy

• Pope: Abortion never the answer

Zodiac depicted at Göbekli Tepe?

 

“From the last chapter the reader will recall Michael Rappengluck’s work on the zodiacal constellation of Taurus, depicted at Lascaux some 17,000 years ago as an auroch (ancient species of wild cattle) with the six visible stars of the Pleiades on its shoulder”.

 

Graham Hancock

 

 

 

 

Already I (Damien Mackey) touched upon some of Michael Rappengluck’s archaeoastronomical insights about the Lascaux cave depictions in the first of my multi-part series:

 

So-called Paleolithic man was not dumb. Part One: Long cultural tradition of sky watching

 

https://www.academia.edu/38355575/So-called_Paleolithic_man_was_not_dumb._Part_One_Long_cultural_tradition_of_sky_watching

 

 

The date for Lascaux as given here by Graham Hancock in his book Magicians of the Gods (2015), I personally would consider to be thousands of years too early.

That same book I was reading - and generally enjoying - last night and came upon this section most relevant to my series and to the findings of Michael Rappengluck:

 

Neolithic puzzle

 

[Paul] Burley’s paper is entitled “Göbekli Tepe: Temples Communicating an Ancient Cosmic Geography.” He wrote it originally in June 2011 … in February 2013 he asked me to read his paper, which he said concerned “evidence of a zodiac on one of the pillars at Göbekli Tepe.” I read it, replied that I found it “very persuasive and interesting, with significant implications” ….

 

“Significant implications,” I now realize as I read through the paper again in my hotel room in Şanl_Iurfa, was a huge understatement. But I didn’t make my first visit to Göbekli Tepe until September 2013 and by then, clearly, I’d forgotten the gist of Burley’s argument, which focuses almost exclusively on Enclosure D and on the very pillar, Pillar 43, that I’d been most interested in when I was there.

My interest in it had been sparked by Belmonte’s suggestion that the relief carving of a scorpion near its base (which the reader will recall was hidden by rubble that Schmidt refused to allow me to move) might be a representation of the zodiacal constellation of Scorpio. ….

Here’s where he gets to his point:

 

One of the limestone pillars [in Enclosure D] includes a scene in bas relief on the upper portion of one of its sides. There is a bird with outstretched wings, two smaller birds, a scorpion, a snake, a circle, and a number of wavy lines and cord-like features. At first glance this lithified menagerie appears to be simply a hodgepodge of animals and geometrical designs randomly placed to fill in the broad side of the pillar.

 

The key to unlocking this early Neolithic puzzle is the circle situated at the center of the scene. I am immediately reminded of the cosmic Father—the Sun. The next clues are the scorpion facing up toward the sun, and the large bird seemingly holding the sun upon its outstretched wing. In fact the sun figure appears to be located accurately on the ecliptic with respect to the familiar constellation of Scorpio, although the scorpion on the pillar occupies only the left portion, or head, of our modern conception of that constellation. As such the sun symbol is located as close to the galactic center as it can be on the ecliptic as it crosses the galactic plane.

 

….

 

Burley then presents a graphic that “illustrates the crossing of the galactic plane of the Milky Way near the center of the galaxy, with several familiar constellations nearby.” A second graphic shows the same view with the addition of the ancient constellations represented on the pillar:

 

Note that the outstretched wings, sun, bird legs and snake all appear to be oriented to emphasize the sun’s path along the ecliptic … The similarity of the bas relief to the crossing of the ecliptic and galactic equator at the center of the Milky Way is difficult to reject, supporting the possibility that humans recognized and documented the precession of the equinoxes thousands of years earlier than is generally accepted by scholars … Göbekli Tepe was built as a symbolic sphere communicating a very ancient understanding of world and cosmic geography. Why this knowledge was intentionally buried soon afterward remains a mystery.

 

….

 

As I sit in my hotel room in Şanl_Iurfa in July 2014 spinning the skies on my computer screen, I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that Paul Burley has had a genius insight about the scene on Pillar 43 at Göbekli Tepe. Burley’s language in his paper is careful—almost diffident. As we saw in Chapter Fourteen, he says that “the sun figure appears to be located accurately on the ecliptic with respect to the familiar constellation of Scorpio.” He speaks of other “familiar constellations” nearby.

And he draws our attention to the large bird—the vulture—“seemingly holding the sun upon an outstretched wing.”

He does not say which constellation he believes the vulture represents, but the graphics he includes to reinforce his argument leave no room for doubt that he regards it as an ancient representation of the constellation of Sagittarius. ….

 

We’ve already seen that there is evidence for the identification of constellations going far back into the Ice Age, some of which were portrayed in those remote times in forms that are recognizable to us today.

From the last chapter the reader will recall Michael Rappengluck’s work on the zodiacal constellation of Taurus, depicted at Lascaux some 17,000 years ago as an auroch (ancient species of wild cattle) with the six visible stars of the Pleiades on its shoulder.

 

Acknowledging such surprising continuities in the ways that some constellations are depicted does not mean that all the constellations we are familiar with now have always been depicted in the same way by all cultures at all periods of history. This is very far from being the case. Constellations are subject to sometimes radical change depending on which imaginary figures different cultures choose to project upon the sky. For example, the Mesopotamian constellation of the Bull of Heaven and the modern constellation of Taurus share the Hyades cluster as the head, but in other respects are very different. …. Likewise the Mesopotamian constellation of the Bow and Arrow is built from stars in the constellations that we call Argo and Canis Major, with the star Sirius as the tip of the arrow. The Chinese also have a Bow and Arrow constellation built from pretty much the same stars but the arrow is shorter, with Sirius forming not the tip but the target. ….

 

Even when constellation boundaries remain the same from culture to culture, the ways in which those constellations are seen can be very different.

Thus the Ancient Egyptians knew the constellation that we call the Great Bear, but represented it as the foreleg of a bull. They saw the Little Bear (Ursa Minor) as a jackal. They depicted the zodiacal constellation of Cancer as a scarab beetle. The constellation of Draco, which we see as a dragon, was figured by the Ancient Egyptians as a hippopotamus with a crocodile on its back. ….

 

There can therefore be no objection in principle to the suggestion that the constellation we call Sagittarius, “the Archer”—and depict as a centaur man-horse hybrid holding a bow with arrow drawn—could have been seen by the builders of Göbekli Tepe as a vulture with outstretched wings.

 

I spend hours on Stellarium toggling back and forth between the sky of 9600 _BC and the sky of our own epoch, focusing on the region between Sagittarius and Scorpio—the region Burley believes is depicted on Pillar 43—and looking at the relationship of the sun to these background constellations.

 

The first thing that becomes clear to me is that a vulture with outstretched wings makes a very good figure of Sagittarius; indeed it’s a much better, more intuitive and more obvious way to represent the central part of this constellation than the centaur/archer that we have inherited from the Mesopotamians and the Greeks. This central part of Sagittarius (minus the centaur’s legs and tail) happens to contain its brightest stars and forms an easily recognized asterism often called the “Teapot” by astronomers today—because it does resemble a modern teapot with a handle, a pointed lid and a spout. The handle and spout elements, however, could equally effectively be drawn as the outstretched wings of a vulture, while the pointed “lid” becomes the vulture’s neck and head.

 

It is the outstretched wing in front of the vulture—the spout of the teapot—that Burley sees as “holding the sun,” represented by the prominent disc in the middle of the scene on Pillar 43.

 

…. 

Figure 49: A vulture with outstretched wings makes a much better, more intuitive and more obvious way than an archer to represent the bright, central “Teapot” asterism within the constellation of Sagittarius.

….

  

Figure 50: Sagittarius and neighboring constellations as interpreted on Pillar 43.

 ….

But the vulture and the sun are only two aspects of the complex imagery of the pillar. Below and just a little to the right of the vulture is a scorpion.

Above and to the right of the vulture is a second large bird with a long sickle-shaped beak, and nestled close to this bird is a serpent with a large triangular head and its body coiled into a curve. A third bird, again with a hooked beak, but smaller, with the look of a chick, is placed below these two figures—again to the right of the vulture, indeed immediately to the right of its extended front wing. Below the scorpion is the head and long neck of a fourth bird. Beside the scorpion, rearing up, is another serpent.

 

Part of the reason for my growing confidence in Burley’s conclusion, though he makes little of it in his paper, is that these figures, with only minor adjustments, compare intriguingly with other constellations around the alleged Sagittarius/vulture figure.

 

First and foremost, there is the scorpion below and a little to the right of the vulture, which we’ve seen already has an obvious resemblance to Scorpio, the next constellation along the zodiac from Sagittarius. Its posture and positioning are wrong—we’ll look more closely into the implications of this in a moment—but it’s there and it is overlapped by the tail end of the constellation that we recognize as Scorpio today.

Secondly, there’s the large bird above and to the right of the vulture with the curved body of a serpent nestled close to it. These two figures are in the correct position and the correct relationship to one another to match the constellation we call Ophiuchus, the serpent holder, and the serpent constellation, Serpens, that Ophiuchus holds.

 

Thirdly, immediately to the right of the extended front wing of the vulture there’s that other bird, smaller, like a chick, with a hooked beak. I email Burley about this, and about the different position and orientation of the scorpion on the pillar and the modern constellation of Scorpio, and we arrive, after some back and forth, at a solution. Constellation boundaries, as the reader will recall, are not necessarily drawn in the same place by all cultures at all periods and it’s clear that there’s been a shift over time in the constellation boundaries here. The chick on Pillar 43 appears to have formed a small constellation of its own in the minds of the Göbekli Tepe astronomers—a constellation that utilized some of the important stars today considered to be part of Scorpio. The chick’s hooked beak is correctly positioned, and its body is the correct shape, to match the head and claws of Scorpio. ….

 

Fourthly, beside the scorpion on Pillar 43 is a serpent and beneath the scorpion are the head and long neck of yet another bird, with a headless anthropomorphic figure positioned to its right. The serpent matches the tail of Sagittarius (as we’ve seen, the vulture appears to be composed from the central part of Sagittarius only—the Teapot—so this leaves the remainder of the constellation available to the ancients for other uses). The best contenders for the bird, and for the peculiar little anthropomorphic figure to its right are parts of the constellations we know today as Pavo and Triangulum Australe. The remainder of Pavo may be involved with further figures present on the pillar to the left of the bird.

 

As is the case with Sagittarius, elements of the modern constellation of Scorpio have been redeployed in the ancient constellations depicted on Pillar 43. Only the tail of our Scorpio is in the correct location to match the scorpion on Pillar 43 and its head faces to the right, whereas the head of the scorpion on the pillar faces to the left.

The scorpion on the pillar is also below the vulture, whereas modern Scorpio is a very large constellation lying parallel and to the right of Sagittarius.

I suggest the solution to this problem is that the scorpion on Pillar 43 is conjured from a combination of the tail of the modern constellation of Scorpio (right legs of the Pillar 43 scorpion), an unused part of the “Teapot” asterism of Sagittarius (right claw of the Pillar 43 scorpion) and the constellations that we know as Ara, Telescopium and Corona Australis (respectively the tail, left legs and left claw of the Pillar 43 scorpion). Meanwhile, as noted above, the claws and head of the modern constellation of Scorpio have been co-opted to form the chick with the hooked beak on Pillar 43.

 

This whole issue of the relationship between the modern constellations of Scorpio and Sagittarius and the scorpion and vulture figures depicted on Pillar 43 takes on a new level of significance when we remember that in some ancient astronomical figures Sagittarius is depicted not only as a centaur—a man-horse—but also as a man-horse hybrid with the tail of a scorpion, and sometimes simply as a man-scorpion hybrid. …. On Babylonian Kudurru stones (often referred to as boundary stones, although it is likely that their function has been misunderstood …) a figure of a man-scorpion drawing a bow frequently appears that “is universally identified with the archer Sagittarius.” …. What further cements the identification of Sagittarius with the vulture on Pillar 43 is that these man-scorpion figures from the Babylonian Kudurru stones are very often depicted with the legs and feet of birds. …. Moreover, in some representations a second scorpion appears beneath the body—i.e. beneath the Teapot asterism—of Sagittarius … reminiscent of the position of the scorpion on Pillar 43 (see Figures 50 and 51).

 

Figure 51: Man-scorpion Sagittarius figures from Bablylonian Kudurru stones (left) are frequently depicted with the legs and feet of birds, further strengthening the identification of the vulture figure on Pillar 43 with Sagittarius. In other Mesopotamian representations (right) we see a second scorpion beneath the body of Sagittarius occupying a similar position to the scorpion on Pillar 43.

….

 

When all this is taken together it goes, in my opinion, far beyond anything that can be explained away as mere “coincidence.” The implication is that ideas of how certain constellations should be depicted that were expressed at Göbekli Tepe almost 12,000 years ago [sic], including the notion that there should be a scorpion in this region of the heavens, were passed down, undergoing some changes in the process, but nonetheless surviving in recognizable form for millennia to find related expression in much later Babylonian astronomical iconography. But given the close connections with ancient Mesopotamia, its antediluvian cities, its Seven Sages and its flood survivors washed up in their Ark near Göbekli Tepe, we should perhaps not be too surprised.

Big Bang’ really more of a fizzer?

 

“These "shouldn't exist" – a supermassive black hole, an iron-poor star,

and a dusty galaxy – but they do”.

 Bob Enyart

 

Experience should teach us that explosions, be they big or small, do not create anything orderly. They destroy.
Explosions can destroy whole civilisations (e.g. Thera), can Krak-atoa, wipe out cities (atomic), collapse skyscraper buildings, leave humans dismembered all over battlefields.
‘Explosion’ was at least the beginning of the ‘Big Bang’ theory, though scientists are now at pains to distance themselves from that inconvenient image:
http://www.originsquest.org/expansion-not-a-ldquobig-bangrdquo-explosion.html

Lemaître started the idea that the universe began with an explosion. He was also wrong about that. The universe did not explode. It expanded. Explosions disrupt existing order, but the expansion of the universe was orderly. Astronomers have photographed the universe as it was after a great deal of expansion. Considerable order is still clearly visible, particularly the order of uniformity or homogeneity.

[End of quote]

Bob Enyart has rejected the ‘Big Bang’ theory of the origins of the universe, listing these reasons why: https://kgov.com/evidence-against-the-big-bang
 
* RSR's List of Evidence Against the Big Bang: For descriptions and links to journal references, see below.
- Mature galaxies exist where the BB predicts only infant galaxies (like the 13.4Bly distant GN-z11)
- An entire universe-worth of missing antimatter contradicts most fundamental BB prediction
- Observations show that spiral galaxies are missing millions of years of BB predicted collisions
- Clusters of galaxies exist at great distances where the BB predicts they should not exist
- A trillion stars are missing an unimaginably massive quantity of heavy elements, a total of nine billion years worth
- Galaxy superclusters exist yet the BB predicts that gravity couldn't form them even in the alleged age of the cosmos
- A missing generation of the alleged billions of first stars that the failed search has implied simply never existed
- Missing uniform distribution of earth's radioactivity
- Solar system formation theory wrong too
- It is "philosophy", not science, that makes the big-bang claim that the universe has no center
- Amassing evidence suggests the universe may have a center
- Sun missing nearly 100% of the spin that natural formation would impart
- Supernova theory for the origin of heavy elements now widely rejected
- Missing uniform distribution of solar system isotopes
- Missing billions of years of additional clustering of nearby galaxies
- Surface brightness of the furthest galaxies, against a fundamental BB claim, is identical to that of the nearest galaxies
- Missing shadow of the big bang with the long-predicted "quieter" echo behind nearby galaxy clusters now disproved
- The CMB and other alleged confirmed big bang predictions (Google: big bang predictions. See that we're #1.)
- These "shouldn't exist" – a supermassive black hole, an iron-poor star, and a dusty galaxy – but they do
- Fine tuning and dozens of other MAJOR scientific observations and 1,000+ scientists doubting the big bang.

[End of quote]

Creationist John Hartnett, writing in Creation 37(3):48–51 (July 2015), is of a similar mind:
https://creation.com/big-bang-beliefs-busted

Big bang beliefs: busted

by John Hartnett

The commonly accepted big bang model supposedly determines the history of the universe precisely (see Figure 1). Yet to do so, it is filled with unprovable fudge factors. That may sound like an exaggerated claim, but it seems to be the state of cosmology today.

This situation has come about because the unverifiable starting assumptions are inherently wrong! Some brave physicists have had the temerity to challenge the ruling paradigm—the standard big bang ΛCDM inflation cosmology.¹ One of those is Prof. Richard Lieu, Department Chair, Astrophysics, University of Alabama, who wrote:

“Cosmology is not even astrophysics: all the principal assumptions in this field are unverified (or unverifiable) in the laboratory … .”² [emphasis added]

He goes on to say that this is “because the Universe offers no control experiment, …” He means that the same observations can be interpreted in several different ways. Because there are no other universes to compare ours with, you can’t determine absolutely which is the correct answer. That means, we do not know what a typical universe should look like. As a result cosmologists today are inventing all sorts of stuff that has just the right properties to make their theories work, but it is stuff that has never been observed in the lab. They have become “comfortable with inventing unknowns to explain the unknown”, says Lieu.
Figure 1. Alleged history of the universe.

Dark matter and dark energy

Cosmologists tell us we live in a universe filled with invisible, unobserved stuff—about 74% dark energy and 22% dark matter (see Figure 2). But what is this stuff that we cannot detect yet should be all around us? Only 4% of the matter/energy content of the Universe is supposed to be the ordinary atoms that we are familiar with.

In June 2013, after the release of the first results from the Planck satellite, the fractions of dark energy and dark matter were significantly changed to 68% dark energy and 27% dark matter, leaving 5% normal atomic matter.³

Cosmology is not even astrophysics: all the principal assumptions in this field are unverified (or unverifiable) in the laboratory … .—Richard Lieu, Department Chair, Astrophysics, University of Alabama
Yet we are told that now we are in a period of precision cosmology.⁴ But we see a total disagreement between the determination of these fractions from high redshift supernova measurements and Planck CMB measurements. Even the claimed errors do not help the values to coincide.⁵

For 40 years, one form or another of dark matter has been sought in the laboratory, e.g. the axion (named after a popular US brand of laundry detergent, because they thought its discovery would clean up some problems with particle physics). Recently a claim was made alleging the detection of a dark matter particle in a lab experiment, but that claim requires rigorous verification.⁶
Figure 2. Alleged mass/energy content of universe³
Now we also have dark energy— some sort of anti-gravity that is supposedly driving the universe apart at an even faster pace than in the past. It was reported that,
“It is an irony of nature that the most abundant form of energy in the universe is also the most mysterious. Since the breakthrough discovery that the cosmic expansion is accelerating, a consistent picture has emerged indicating that two-thirds of the cosmos is made of ‘dark energy’—some sort of gravitationally repulsive material.”⁷ [emphasis added]
Supposedly, dark energy is a confirmed fact. But does the evidence confirm that the universal expansion is accelerating? They are right about the irony; even though this energy is allegedly so abundant, it cannot be observed locally in the laboratory. In 2011, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of the accelerating universe, which means dark energy must be real stuff (it would seem that science’s ‘gatekeepers’ can’t ever renege on that now). But it has no correspondence to anything we know in the laboratory today, which hardly makes sense.

As Lieu points out,

“… astronomical observations can never by themselves be used to prove ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ a physical theory. This is because we live in only one Universe—the indispensible ‘control experiment’ is not available.”⁸

There is no way to interact with and get a response from the Universe to test the theory under question, as an experimentalist might do in a laboratory experiment. At most, the cosmologist collects as much data as he can, and uses statistical arguments to try to show that his conclusion is likely. Says Lieu (emphasis added):

“Hence the promise of using the Universe as a laboratory from which new incorruptible physical laws may be established without the support of laboratory experiments is preposterous …”.⁸
 

Unknowns to explain unknowns

Lieu lists five evidences where cos­mologists use ‘unknowns’ to explain ‘unknowns’, and hence he says they are not really doing astrophysics. Yet these evidences are claimed to be all explained (and in the case of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)⁹ radiation even predicted¹⁰) by the ΛCDM inflation model of the big bang. None of them are based on laboratory experiments, and they are unlikely to ever be explained this way. The ‘unknowns’ in the lab (meaning not known to physics today) are listed in italics. They are:

1. The redshift of light from galaxies, explained by expansion of space,¹¹
2. The Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, explained as the afterglow of the Big Bang,
3. The perceived motion of stars and gases in the disks of spiral galaxies,¹² explained by dark matter,
4. Distant supernovae ¹³ being dimmer than they should be, hence an accelerating universe, explained by dark energy,
5. Flatness (space has Euclidean geometry) and isotropy (uniformity in all directions), explained by faster-than-light inflation (see box)

As an experimentalist, I know the standards used in so-called ‘cosmology experiments’ would never pass muster in my lab. Yet it has been said we are now living in the era of ‘precision cosmology’.¹⁴

Cosmologist Max Tegmark said,

“… 30 years ago, cosmology was largely viewed as somewhere out there between philosophy and metaphysics. You could speculate over a bunch of beers about what happened, and then you could go home, because there wasn’t a whole lot else to do.” [But now they are closing in on a] “consistent picture of how the universe evolved from the earliest moment to the present.”⁴

How can that be true if none of Lieu’s five observations listed above can be explained by ‘knowns’? They have been explained by resorting to ‘unknowns’ with a sleight of hand that allows the writer to say, ‘We are closing in on the truth.’

What this leads to

Nobel Laureate Steven Chu said that we now understand nearly all there is to know about the Universe, except for a few small details; like what is dark energy and dark matter which [allegedly] make up 96% of the stuff in the Universe.

I recall Nobel Laureate Steven Chu speaking to a large gathering of high school children on the occasion of the Australian Institute of Physics National Congress at the Australian National University in Canberra in 2005. He said that we now understand nearly all there is to know about the Universe, except for a few small details; like what is dark energy and dark matter which [allegedly] make up 96% of the stuff in the Universe.

Cosmologists may have their objectives—to shore up their faith in a model based on false and unverifiable assumptions—but it is a leaky bucket that cannot hold back the evidence that ultimately will be published against it.
The fact is that the history of the universe cannot be determined from a model which cannot be independently tested. And many fudge factors are needed for the present model to describe the observations. The Big Bang cosmology is verified in the minds of those who already hold to that belief—that the Universe created itself about 14 billion years ago—ex nihilo. To me the biblical big picture is far more believable—we are only left to fill in the details. ….