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Theory-Affirming Evidence About the Universe
Bill Kendrick writes "Astronomers using a radio telescope at the South Pole have recorded a flicker of light from nearly 14 billion years ago that verifies most modern theory about the cosmos. Way back then, light and matter were only just beginning to separate from each other."
Everyone knows the Universe is only 4000 years old :)
Rich
> thats one of the many reasons i am an athiest
Had the result been different, would that have given you cause to doubt your atheism, or is your faith in atheism stronger than that ?
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
"If a person read only the Bible, they would be one of the most ignorant on Earth as far as reality is concerned."
The Bible is about salvation. There is of course some history and science included but that is not the point. You liberals attack the Bible for your perceived historial and scientific faults as if it should be a divine source for both subjects. This idea of yours and your ilk is the real idiocy.
Christianity has changed right along with humanity since day 1, except it always wants to be 75 years behind.
Incorrect.
If you wanna be spiritual, that's cool, but don't expect to find any useful information in there.
The most important information ever known is in The Bible. It's all about salvation---something you fail to see.
PS Hey Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, et al: ---- -- ----! Stop ripping off the elderly with your gaudy, fake, materialistic --------!
What example are YOU providing to the world, then? Are you going without? I assume you used a computer to type your message. Maybe all the liberals should give up all their goods and clothe themselves in rags so they can claim they're better than others. They can live off of their intellect alone! Yeah! Why not try that? Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the liberals love material things---to the point of worshipping them.
When's the last time anyone saw Jesus wearing a Rolex?!
It probably wouldn't matter what they wore, you'd probably still find some reason to attack them for preaching.
Way back then, light and matter were only just beginning to separate from each other
14 billion years ago, matter and light were inseperable. They went everywhere together. Friends cheerfully complemented them on their strong attachment to each other, but whispered behind their backs about 'co-dependency'.
Then, something happened. No one apart from a few math-sodden physics profs are quite sure what is was. Some say matter was too indecisive, today forming simple hydrogen isotopes, tomorrow churning out all sorts of unstable heavy metals. Others blame light for being too inflexible, not wanting to 'move too fast'.
Whatever the cause was, matter and light decided to separate. Matter moved on, churning out everything from noble gases to metals that explode in water, satisfying every creative urge. Light, the brighter of the two, contented to be always aglow, yet unafraid to reveal shadows when the opportunity arose.
The tragic part of the tale involves the unfortunate castoff children of the great breakup, as divorces are never easy on offspring. Cosmic ray wreaks havoc anywhere and everywhere. Cynical X-Ray prefers to reveal everything hidden, as if compensating for repressed emotion. Young microwave is communicative, but very hot under the collar, and don't even ask about Gamma ray. Maybe someday the children of the great breakup will work out their issues.
Much of the science that is used to theorize about the cosmos is verifiable right here on earth. (Fusion, fission, properties of light relativity, force, gravity) The question is does what (LITTLE) we know here properly extrapolate ad infinitum.
I am relatively convinced that there are people smart enough to understand that which can only be verified as a single point observer. The verification of a system of this scale is exceedingly difficult - but should be just be defeatist and mire ourselves in religious texts and ignore the existence of the cosmos and remaining in a comfort zone?
There are those who watch, say Star Trek (in reality there are quite a few people inspire by this show who do interesting things), and want this to be true, even in the face of near impossibly using the same physics that helped to verify the "flicker of light" in article above. They will spend a lifetime seek what now seems foolish. Then there are those who are defeatist and simply what to fulfill Maslow's triangle and live this life out.
If you would have asked about getting to the moon 200 years ago you would have been told its impossible.
Same situation today; the question we ask is faster than light travel? Are there transcendental methods of travel? Do the fundamental laws of physics change as the universal timeline progresses, . as some recent studies have suggested?
One of the more intriguing things about intelligent people I meet is this; they all know that intelligence aptitude may be innate, this can be leveraged with conditioning, but the ultimate test of intellect is to realize that the more you find out the more you realize how much less of the whole you seek you know. The universe, physics, even material science regarding CPUs, signaling in hard drives (what does the signal really look like that is a 1 or 0? You would be surprised. )is inexorably complex.
I think accepting the work of those who are doing what some day may be the salvation of human existence. Being a scientist these days isn't easy. But they must have fun. It pays bad, the aprecation by your peers is fleeting, religious zealots are all to quick to ignore something as basic as carbon dating and take a work of man as a literal and corporate swine, such as Carly Fiorina, expect results or you're fired (never mind the meritorious nature of your research, or the good it may produce for humanity, as were the ideals of Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard [as is reflected by the huge charitable foundations left in their wake], who made equipment because it was needed by science, such as liquid chromatography machines, oscilloscopes, etc. It wasn't about the money, it was about passion for science and engineering.)
Ask yourself to have an open mind, imagine the possibilities, maybe even help to seed a super genius.
I always enjoyed physics. I enjoy using the by product of applied physics every day, TVs, planes, computers, energy, electricity, you name it, the predictability of complex systems that use the fundaments of physics and other sciences is quite impressive, and the amount of work that gets done in a planful way rather than an empirical way is also impressive. Things are build, rarely are they haphazardly conjured.
Who would I aspire to be? Carly Fiorina/Gill Bates or the next Einstein? I have a strong feeling that even the king and queen of gluttony will fade into footnotes while the real pioneers and innovated remain time honored potentially for millennia, maybe even forever...
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
I always hear about "new telescopes which will be able to see back to the beginning of the universe". How can that possibly work? With the matter in the universe expanding slowly, (relative to the speed of light) the light from the big bang should be long past us by now -- streaking out into some void way beyond Earth... What did I miss when I wasn't paying attention in physics class?
yet another dumb old martian forgot to turn the light off before going on holidays!
irma trattino
eat.me at http://irmetta.free.fr
First off, firmament is a bullshit word. The hebrew is ra-key-ya(not sure I transliterated that right, no text in front of me) which is the word for bowl. Specifically a pounded out bowl, usually of a metal.
And the earth doesn't sit upon it in the story. The rakeya seperates the waters from above from the waters below. Remember the earth is flat, with four corners, and sitting upon 4 pillars. When people viewed the horizon of the seas, they thought it was the edge literally. The sun and moon are on tracks in the sky as well.
The world was preceived as being under a great dome. Kinda like the movie "The Truman Show". And the stars are pinholes in the rakeya. When it rains, it is because the windows in the rakeya are opened and the waters it was seperating fall down. BTW, this makes the idea of heaven being up, also possibly mean heaven is underwater. However, it is likely that early on (around 960BCE) they didn't have a real concept like heaven or hell. After all much of the Pentanuch are stories taken from the Canaanite Goddess(referred to in other religions as Isis, Ishtar, Anat) religion. The first five books repeatly deal with it.
Unless you count Sheol, which isn't hell but actually just like underworld of greek mythology. The idea of hell developes extremely late in the game.
All of this may seem incrediably silly in the space age, but think of the times. If you lived back then what would you think if you looked up into the night sky? What would you think if you stood North, East, South, and West, seeing nothing but edges meeting the sky? You think they knew anything about how we get rain? Heck if the earth is flat, and I have no reason to doubt it, why would I not think the sun and moon are on tracks?
Anyhow I agreed with most of post. Christianity changes and that isn't a bad thing. Religion has never been about logic or truth(truth is a plural anyhow). It has always been a practical tool for people. And when the tool no longer is found useful to people, they either change it or it quitely goes away. At one point many, many cultures believed in a great sky god who was associated with the wind -- where is he? He had influence on the creation of further gods, but slowly went away himself because he was too remote. Or so is the theory.
Anyhow, don't get too upset about religion, if only because life is too short. Also religion carries a lot of beauty to it in its culture and philosophy. The story telling is also second to none.
Jerry Farwell and Pat Robertson? I'm going to ignore that in general.
Shalom
A jet flies in front of thier telescope and now they know how old the universe is. I think scientists just make up this crap to keep thier jobs. I wish my job was like that, then i could say "yeah i saw a flicker of light on the way to work, which confirms my thoery that i get 10 weeks of paid vacation".
The Christian religion was invented by the Romans as a way to perpetuate their empire once political and military might were no longer sufficient to hold it together.
Ah, I see, and this is why Romans torturtured and killed every Christian they could find that wouldn't bow down and worship the emporer? This went on for MANY years until Constantine made it a legal religion.
Later on it was made into the _official_ religion, and when the non-christians joined the church because it was the "socially correct" thing to do, bringing many of their pagan beliefs into the church, thus polluting it and giving birth to the beast known as the Roman Catholic Church.
Your post is one of the most ignorant things i've ever written.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
Your post is one of the most ignorant things i've ever written.
oops.
hehe
Your post is one of the most ignorant things i've ever seen.
This is not the greatest sig in the world, no. This is just a tribute.
The New Testament has a lot to do with salvation. The Hebrew Bible does not. The idea of salvation would have been wierd because they didn't have much of a concept of sin in the christain sense of the word. They had periods of being unclean, at which point they would have to become clean in order to re-enter the group. Jews didn't need to be saved because they were god's choosen people and you can't get much more saved than that.
Maybe you don't believe that because of your Christain translation. But there is plenty of evidence to prove my point. First being the things that are never mentioned in the story of Adam and Eve. Sin is simply never mentioned. Falling from grace is never mentioned. The word for spirit probably means wind at that point in history. They were not banished from the garden. They "went out" (in hebrew holek) from the garden. Banishment is an interruptive move. As are so many of the words in your english translation.
In short the stories take drastically different views in the original language. And if you study the actual history of what is going on around 960BCE between the early Jews and the Canaanites(which make up 95% of the population) then the questions of "Why a snake in a tree?", and "Why is Eve called the 'Mother of All Life' as they leave the garden?", etc. Become extremely clear. The story has nothing to do with original sin or man's falling, etc. It has everything to do with a story lifted out of history and put into a narritive.
When astronomers look at really old objects and say "ah, these are 13 billion light years away, therefore we are looking 13 billion years into the past"... how does that work?
If the universe used to be really tiny and it's been expanding, is it expanding faster than the speed of light? Because if it isn't, why didn't that light from 13 billion years ago pass us a long time ago.
What am I missing here?
Here for example, NASA scientists say they discovered a galaxy that they think is 13 billion light years away.
If the universe is 14 billion years old, that would imply that it expanded faster than the speed of light in a very short time, leaving us 14 billion light years from these galaxies, so that the light would take 14 billion years to get to us. Maybe another possibility is that the rate or expansion is just under the speed of light, so that we (or our point in space) used to be fairly close to those galaxies, but the expansion was going on during the entire 14 billion years at such a high speed that the light from those galaxies is only now catching up to us.
On the other hand, if the speed of light always appears to be a constant, that last idea wouldn't work... or would it, since the entire universe would be expanding?
I never heard any of this discussed... what do the physicists say?
It started out Chaos (light and matter all jumbled together) but ended up as Order (light and matter divided just as the Bible litterally says it happened, with both entities taking on incomprehensible levels of order and complexity).
Without God, this outcome is fundamentally impossible according to the Entropy (the 2nd law of Thermodynamics).
You are telling me that Deut., Exodus, and Levit only contain 10 commandments? Try 316 when arbituarily counted by Rabbis. Where Christains get 10, I don't know. But they sure are selective.
"The Bible is about salvation."
And rules for buying and owning slaves. If the bible were true every banker would drop dead according to Ezekiel 18:13.
"There is of course some history and science included"
Which is wrong most of the time - which is why us "liberals" don't think the Bible is trustworthy.
"You liberals attack the Bible for your perceived historial and scientific faults as if it should be a divine source for both subjects."
No, but when it claims to foretell the future, it should be accurate. So when are the Jews going to get around to slaying the Assyrians? And where is the descendent of David who has been ruling Israel for these couple thousand years?
"This idea of yours and your ilk is the real idiocy."
Ok, pot. Me kettle.
"Incorrect."
Really? Name one way which Christianity has stayed the same.
"What example are YOU providing to the world, then?"
Think for yourself. Don't rip people off.
"Are you going without? I assume you used a computer to type your message. Maybe all the liberals should give up all their goods and clothe themselves in rags so they can claim they're better than others."
Nah, we just get what we need and try to avoid ripping people off for a living. I guess I'm a liberal!
"Correct me if I'm wrong, but most of the liberals love material things---to the point of worshipping them."
Like little Gold statues, crosses, rosaries, icons, and sculpture, right? You're so good at stereotyping! Been taking lessons from YHVH or GW?
"It probably wouldn't matter what they wore, you'd probably still find some reason to attack them for preaching."
They're not preaching. They get on TV, say "Praise God! Send me $20!" and that's about it. If they acted anything like Jesus, I wouldn't have a problem with them. The real trouble with Christians is they're fanatical about being ignorant of the Bible.
-Dean
Well said, reminds me of this quote -
:-)
All science is either physics or stamp collecting." -- E. Rutherford
err - Christians really only get 2. Really!
How ironic that a creationist would use a scientific principle to try and prove the existence of God. If you want to use the 2nd law of thermodynamics in an argument, then go and get a physics degree. In the mean time, check out this page and call me in the morning.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Of course, the question about why there is a universe at all has to be answered. But according to Bill Ockham's Remington, entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem. God + universe = two entities, universe = 1 entity, therefore, as Laplace put it, je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothese.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
You poor misguided soul. "He's YOUR god. They're YOUR rules. YOU go to hell." He is my God. They are HIS rules. And if you don't get right with my God, You are going to hell. There is only one way to heaven and that is through Jesus Christ. Christianity is not a way of dealing with death. It is a promise. Why would you want to go one believing in a dead guy stuck in the ground? I prefer to serve a living God thank you very much. And on the money issue. Buddy, if you read the Bible you will quickly see that everytime God commands you give money, He always says you will get something in return. Everytime! And as for George Carlin, well he better get the Truth too.
-- Only a developer would see the 'Go to' part of "Go to Hell" as the problem.
The thing about these smart people is that they know that everything is one big guess that happens to fit the available evidence. (OK. It is actually a bunch of little guesses mixed with facts and combined into one big guess. and facts are just guesses that most of us agree on.)
Having an open mind means being open to both the idea that everything you know is right and that everything you know is wrong.
Occam's Razor (the theory of takest the simplest explanation over the more complex one) allows science to move forward and ignore some evidence that it doesn't have an explanation for because explaining that evidence involves a more complex theory.
This is a good thing. It allows science to move forward without being mired in minutiae. However it also leaves room for doubt and future breakthroughs. Don't assume the experts are right if you don't think they make any sense.
Take, for example, a blind man mapping a field with a stone elephant in the middle of it. His map will show 4 posts in the field. He could spend a lot of time examining the posts and perhaps discover their true nature as part of the stone elephant but that detracts from his goal of mapping the field. His resulting map is correct and allows him to move on to the next step, whatever that is, but it also leaves room for a future mapper to do more research and show that the 4 posts on his map actually represent a stone elephant.
Coding Blog
Don't knock alchemy, given what little people
knew a the time alchemy was the beginning of
a real science. It begat chemistry after all.
And yes turning lead into gold is now possible
(although stupidly expensive and wasteful), and
a exile of youth is no longer unscientific,
merely hard to do, look up applications of
stem cells, or drug candiates like ALT-711, if
you don't believe me.
God + universe = two entities, universe = 1 entity
So you're saying the universe is God? As in, the universe itself makes all decisions about life, death, toast dropping butter side down or butter side up?
Apparently Occam never had a shot at 2 women. That may be unnecessary multiplication but there's still millions of guys who would go for it.
Occam's razer does not indicate which theory is correct. It only means that for 2 equally likely theories stick with the simpler one. The more complex one may be more correct but if you can't prove it then the fact that one theory is simpler is reason enough to stick with that idea for now.
Coding Blog
Not that I believe, but it's the only logical conclusion. :P), the desk, the windows.
For God to be omnipotent, he would have to be everything/everywhere.
The chair you're sitting on (God got a boner!
We all know the bible is the 'difinitive work' of god, written by humans.. (and the church isn't exactly full of 'Holy' men..) Who's to say god and 'Nature' are different beings, or even have a conciousness?
"god's will" is about equivalent to 'it just happens' or 'that's the way the world works'. There's only the assumption of a conciousness behind the outcome.
At least now you know that 1 'day' = 2 million 'years'. ;)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Its the same god all of us single god beleavers worthship as you say you self there is only one god.
.. is 42. But to understand that you'll have to project that flash of light to a surface, then you'll clearly see a fourty-two appearing.
[don't mod me if you haven't read the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy]...
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
If anyone actually read the real article they would be appaled at the sensationalism applied to this story by the slashdot editors and the submitting person. The ONLY thing it solidifies is the polarization aspects and NOTHING ELSE.
It is getting quite disgusting as how Slashdot's editors are allowing this site to become the new "weekly world news". what's next stories about a two headed alien worm baby and a phycic moose found in northern canada?
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Since you've mentioned both intelligence and science-fiction wish-fulfillment...
I recently read a short story called Swarm, by Bruce Sterling. SPOILER FOLLOWS
The story is about contact between warring factions in our solar system and a hive entity called the Swarm. One of our factions is hoping to pick up advanced biological techniques from the apparently unintelligent Swarm to use in its war with the other faction. The other faction has already failed fatally in its similar efforts.
By the end of the story, the protagonists encounter a previously unknown type of larva being gestated by the Swarm. It is "Intelligence," and goes on to discuss the Swarm's position with the remaining protagonist.
It turns out that (drum roll, please) in the Swarm's long experience, intelligence is not a survival trait. Nearly all of the time, the Swarm is just plain better off without Intelligence, and has adapted to exist that way. Every now and then, such as the particular time the story occurs, the Swarm determines that it needs some Intelligence, and gestates an appropriate larva. The larva lives a few thousand years, long enough to handle the crisis, and then dies, leaving the Swarm to go its merry way.
Intelligence has proven a survival trait for the human species, at least for the past 30,000 years or so. But from Nature's perspective, that's only the short run.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
I work at UChicago (Carlstrom, the professor here, is my advisor). For more information about CMB polarisation, I reccomend Wayne Hu's (a theorists) webpages at http://background.uchicago.edu.
He provides an excellent lay (and more complicated,
if you're interested) introduction to what's going on here.
Essentially, it boils down to the fact that people
have been looking for this phenomenon for 20 years, and if someone finally said conclusively, "It's not there" that means the last few decades of cosmology would literally have been back to the drawing board.
This really is an exciting timne in cosmology.
I'm amazed and how good this radio telescope must be to pick up waves from the visible light spectrum...
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
Thanks for the best laugh I've had in days.
I have been to Kidderminster, and believe me, the Big Bang has never taken place there. Perhaps a very small bang on a Friday night, but that's it.
Nowhere in the Bible does it mention the Earth's age. Sure some Jews/Christians believe it was only 6000 years, but there are plenty of others (like myself) who believe in the Bible and still believe the earth is quite a bit older.
Anyway when I read this:
"when matter and light were only just beginning to separate from one another."
I thought of this:
Genesis 1:3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness.
I believe Genesis was inspired by God, but written though a person. I think the author of Genesis did a pretty good job trying to find words and descriptions for what they were shown.
Saved By Grace,
Brian Ellenberger
what the hell is up with your sig?
Liberty.
Scientists have frequently reproduced the experiment in which if you put the chemicals that were undoubtedly present in "Pre-Life" earth in a glass jar and then apply a jolt of electricity...say...from a lightning bolt...that within a relatively short (I believe it was hours, but I do not have my copy of Cosmos or my 10th grade science textbooks handy to check) period of time, the chemical combinations that form DNA and the like started to form.
Chick would have known this...had he ever bothered to go to 10th grade. Of course...this is the guy who thinks that rolling pieces of plastic around on a tabletop leads to murder...
No, I'm not posting this anonymously, I'll risk my unimportant karma to show you you're wrong...willing to make the same bet, anonymous coward? Or is the label really correct in this case?
is we can spot a 14 billion year old flicker of light, but no one can prove definitively who killed John F. Kennedy in 1963 or who sent anthrax through the mail just last year.
Scientists: the only time they figure anything out is when it doesn't matter anymore.
Any theory which states "we do not exist" is flawed terminally. Incidently, this paticular study is the single most used piece of "evidence" used to support the idea that god, not science rules the world.
Of course, sitting here, at my computer, in this climate controlled building, surrounded by phones, laptops with 802.11b network cards, the very epitomy of our modern technology, I'm extremely cynical about any attempt to say that there is no science, only god.
Occams razor(misspelled, most likely...) comes up a lot in these discussions, but from the wrong side. Which is simpler; that there's an all knowing, all seeing, all powerful, completely benevolent being, backed up by a chorus of angels, or that the universe was formed by a big bang caused by a single, infinitely dense piece of material exploded, and that because we exist, any arguement saying we shouldn't is flawed.
Because I exist, I cannot question whether or not I exist. If I did not exist, I wouldn't be able to question whether or not I exist.
It's been a long time.
The rules that say "don't wear your cotton/wool blend shirt", "It's okay to enslave your neighbor", and "If your sister's husband dies, it's your duty to impregnate her"?
Remember, "Jesus" said that he wasn't changing the rules, just fulfilling them...so those old rules are still in effect.
Guess we're all condemmed.
OR, alternatively, consider this: God is ominipotent, right? So he can do whatever he wants, right? But you're saying the only way he has chosen to honor his creation is by this one thin path as represented in this book that they can't even agree on the contents of?
Or is it possible that an omnipotent God has the power to provide multiple roads to happiness, the heavily proscriptive "Thou must do this and not that" road for those too simpleminded to contemplate making their own decisions, and the "Do as thou will, so long as it hurt no others" for those who have the intelligence and ability to live their life their own way?
You have to admit it's possible, or else God isn't omnipotent. Pick one.
There is no faith in atheism, just as there is no colour in white. It represents a vacuum.
If the hand of god came down, and the sky thundered "The day of judgement is neigh, only true believers shall be spared from my wraith", you can be sure as hell that every atheist would convert to whatever religion the hand told us to.
It's been a long time.
I think the "slow progression" theory of evolution has been replaced by a more "rapid spurts" idea of evolution.
And there are fossil records of our ancestors: homo erectus, homo habilis, australopithecus afaranus and so on.
I have just as little patience for naturalists who screw up their facts as I do for creationists who mess up theirs. The experiment you referenced never made any strands of DNA or RNA or anything resembling the two. What it did make were some fragments of amino acid chains. If you took the time to read a decent text on organic chemistry, you'll find that DNA and RNA and their pre-cursor chemicals are unstable outside of a living cell or virus protein sheath. Most have a half-life of only a few minutes.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
And really, science doesn't need to disprove the existence of god. As the skeptics always say, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". Seeing as the religious people are the ones claiming something that defies all we actually know about the universe, the burden of proof is on them.
Gee, which religion has the most suffering?
This religion will surely bring the most rewards!
Anything else is just hippy-flower-sniffing!
Screw quality of life - it's quality of death that concerns us!
The Jews are telling me YOU're going to hell for worshipping false prophets. The Muslims tell me your religion ignores the 5 pillars which were handed down by God (They call him Allah -- potayto, potahto) so they pretty much think you're gonna burn too. The Mormons' say you're ignoring the 3rd Testament of Jesus which I'm sure is gonna at least get you a few million years in Purgatory.
Decisions, decisions. Maybe Shinto; that sounds nice.
m00.
That was just the signal light of the Vogon destruction fleet getting ready to demolish the earth to make way for a hyper-space on-ramp.
Don't panic...
Jesterr
7 days to create the universe? 7 days may not mean 7 mankind days.
[Insert Whistle Soundclip] You! Out of the Gene Pool!
I didn't say that DNA or RNA were created, I said the chemical combinations that form DNA and RNA, which is precisely what you admit formed.
Read first, then post...you'll discover it works better.
It also works well when you try it out on the Bible...a fine work of fiction with some good life lessons to be gotten from it. I do find the ending smacks a little of deus-ex-machina, but that's not but so much of a problem.
There is a better book to look at:
http://home.planet.nl/~gkorthof/kortho36.htm
None of this proves in existence of god of course. However, those who believe that science has come anywhere close to explaining life are as deluded as those who take the bible literally.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Say you've got two points, 2ly apart. Also say that the universe is expanding at pretty close to the speed of light, but still less than light speed. Call it 99% of c.
.99*c, it takes light something like 102 years to make it to point B, at which time point A is 102 light years away from point B. When the light started it was only 2 ly away, but it got slowed down in it's journey because of the expansion of the universe, and yet it was travelling at c the whole time.
Okay, now a beam of light travelling from point A to point B takes 1 year to travel 1 ly. But in that same amount of time, the universe has expanded 99% of 1 ly and stretched our two points apart by that much (the universe being our two points here). So the total distance from A to B is now just under 3 ly, and our light has only gone 1. It didn't really cover a lot of ground, did it?
Work the rest out yourself. If the universe is expanding at
And this scales up or down in terms of time. Whether I used years or seconds or milliseconds makes no difference, the expansion of the universe means that things move apart at some speed, thus increasing the travel time of light without slowing it down.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Dude... learn some physics. White is the combination of all colors (a mixture of light emitted throughout the visible spectrum). Black is the absence of color (no light emitted in the visible spectrum).
Don't confuse this with, say, paint, which emits no light... it only reflects light incident upon its surface.
Eric
My bad, in that example it takes light something like 200 years to traverse the distance, not 102. Sorry.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You cannot use logic or science when discussing religeon.
Religeon says BELIEVE, don't doubt, don't apply logic or reasoning. Stay dumb and send me the money.
Science says DOUBT, because doubt brings questioning, reason, logic, and finally the answer.
atheism isnt a faith, idiot, it's the lack of blind faith.
it's DOUBT and QUESTIONING and LOGIC and REASONING
Come back when you've got another argument, and I'll see if I can knock that one down too. But first I'd advise you to at least skim the book I linked to. It just might prove interesting.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are not necessarily my own, as I've not yet had my medication today.
Jenny Horn was burned at the stake for witchcraft in either 1722 or 1727 depending on your source. Outside of England, there were still occasional witch executions going on in Europe until 1792. This is pretty close to 200 years ago, so I think the original poster's comment was at least reasonably close, if not precisely accurate. In fact, it's well above average for accuracy on Slashdot.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
D'oh. I knew it was one of the two, but the coffee I drank wasn't nearly strong enough this morning. Same idea. Different colour.
It's been a long time.
Despite your line breaks
You are no e. e. cummings.
And it's "you're", not "your".
m00.
In principle, all that science wouldn't work at all. But the devil carefully watches everything man "discovers" and cares to make it appear as if those discoveries were real, to make people believe in science instead of god. That is, all your technical equipment is in truth directly driven from hell, and will stop working the moment the devil does want it to stop working.
As you see, immunizing this theory is plain simple. Now you might say that an immunized theory isn't worth the paper it's written on (or the space it occupies on the hard disk). But a True Believer (TM) will surely tell you that this in itself is nonsense brought to you by the devil, to hinder you to accept the One Truth (one of the many One Truths all contradicting each other, of course)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
How did they record a flicker of LIGHT with a RADIO telescope?
Well, it's faith into doubt, questioning, logic and reasoning.
;-)
Now if you say "faith into doubt" is self-contradictory, you just show your faith into logic
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
This is really off-topic, but...
Yes, you're correct about Piltdown Man; he was a fraud perpetrated by a rather small group of British researchers (including, of all people, Arthur Conan Doyle.) He is mentioned in many scientific and literary works of the early 20th Century, including the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. It was a wildly successful piece of scientific trickery and deceit, perhaps the most successful hoax in history.
But here's the thing: it wasn't anti-evolution activists or Baptist ministers who exposed Piltdown as the fraud it was. The truth came out of a process that started at an international congress of paleontologists in 1953. That's right; the same scientific establishment that you are accusing of widespread fraud and corruption is responsible for learning the truth about Piltdown Man. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find a biology textbook written any time after 1958 that mentions Piltdown Man in any context other than that he was a fraud. Find me a modern biology textbook that references Piltdown Man as evidence for evolutionary common descent.
Good luck.
Compare and contrast this with the creation science community. Many (but not all) of these folks consistently refer to theories and pieces of physical evidence that have long been debunked or shown to be fraudulent. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is references to the Paluxy River tracks, which some claim show human tracks next to dinosaur tracks, suggesting that man and dinos were contemporaries. This "evidence" was debunked a long time ago, and even the Institute for Creation Research, an organization not known for its strong committment to the scientific method, has suggested that "honest creation scientists" not use the Paluxy River tracks as evidence for a young Earth.
That's just one example of creationists providing false and/or debunked evidence for their particular brand of creationism. The list goes on and on; we've got ridiculous claims that evolution violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics, we've got the false stories about moon dust and about how NASA was afraid that Apollo 11 would get mired in it, we've got the urban legend about NASA computers "finding" the missing day from Joshua's siege on Jericho, etc. etc.
The point is this: Before you accuse scientists en masse of widespread fraud, lies, and deception, you might want to consider getting your own house in order first. The Piltdown Man debacle demonstrates that scientists are ever skeptical and are willing to admit when they are wrong and have been misled. Are you and yours capable of the same honesty?
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
I'm a very religious person, believe in God, and enjoy reading the Bible. So I take offense at this kind of attitude because it seems so unchristian to me. You talk about Jesus, but at the same time are being judgemental, and are being publicly "noisy" about how righteous you are, and so much more favored than the rest of us. I believe that the salvation Jesus Christ gives us isn't about the afterlife, but about here and now, obeying his teachings, following his example.
I wanted to post this because I didn't want others to think that rigid indoctrination is what religion is about. I don't believe the universe is only a few thousand years old, or that there needs to be any conflict between religion and science. I consider myself to be Christian mostly because I see great value in the Bible and Jesus' teachings. I think, for example, Matthew 5-7 encapsulates all of what Christianity is about. This is a fantastic moral discourse, and would bring world peace and prosperity if obeyed. But it's difficult and uncommon advice -- shockingly different from "worldly" (popular) philosophy.
Finally, I don't think it's a conflict to believe the Bible and also the Big Bang theory. I think the accounts of creation in the Bible are technically just ancient Hebrew folklore, but they belong in the Bible because they contain rich moral lessons, and describe the true nature God and the Universe. The Bible isn't a history book. It's not written that way. It's a religious work, and should be treated as such.
Sorry to rant. I'm done now.
Nope, not 316. 613.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
but i don't see how a flicker of light can hope to confirm such a theory... it seems like poor science...
how can you make the claim that a flicker of light from a particular region of deep space
='s
light from an occurance of matter and light breaking up from early time...
???
everybody's favorite man in a gorilla suit,
m.
http://www.pataphysics-lab.com
The problem with this assertion is that, if you believe what the Bible says...when "the hand of God" comes down it will be too late for all of you atheists to convert. That's the danger, if I'm right and there's no God..oh well. I spent my life living according to what I believed and in the end nothing happened...who cares? If I'm right, you lived your life however you wanted to now and spend eternity in torment. Hmmmm...sounds like a no-brainer to me.
"Herbivores eat well cause their food never, ever runs."
1. "It's impossible, because it hasn't been done yet"
2. "It's a darned good start that hasn't been followed through completely because the ethical implications of creating life are somewhat significant"
Given what we know about single-cell life, we know that the patterns that constitute living things are remarkably adaptable (numerous experiments where 95% of a population are killed by a chemical, and the remaining 5% reproduce so that the entire initial population is restored, and now 99% of them are resistant to the chemical in question), and tend to spread over ever-increasing areas through various methods (witness the West Nile Virus), it doesn't take much of a leap of logic to believe that if just a handful of appropriate chemical combinations were created through some natural process, that they would manage to hang on, reproduce, and go on from there.
Just because it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean it can't be done. Edison tried thousands of lightbulbs, and some of those lit for a moment, but weren't the complete answer, before he came up with the one that lasted for years. Similarly, life scientists (which isn't a very heavily funded field, so doesn't attract the best and brightest, and operates on a relative shoestring) haven't tripped across the correct sequence of events.
That doesn't prove there's a God. That proves that science isn't yet complete. And even if it does prove that there is a God, the sequence of events we can demonstrate lends more evidence to the "Divine Clockbuilder" school of religion than the "Omnipotent and very active, but with one and only one preferred path of activity" school of religion that the "Big Three" religions rely on.
Further, relying on Chick books for your background isn't exactly relying on strong sources. The man, quite simply, is an extremist loon. He may have some legitimate points, but they are unfortunately buried under thousands of pounds of 4-color crapola. For every potentially legitimate point about amino acid behavior and such, there are hundreds of homophobic, cathlophobic, RPGophobic and other phobics.
If God is omnipotent, why can't he cope with the possibility of Good people doing Good works, but not worshipping his "One True" path. My theory is, he can, and does, and we'll never know until the end.
Oh boy another wonderful /. creationist-vs-evolutionist debate!
The experiment produced only about half the amino acids that are necessary for life.
But, there is no reason to doubt that the other amio acids can be similarly produced by non-miraculous means.
Non-organic reactions always produce left-handed and right-handed molecules in (roughly) equal amounts. However, only left-handed amino acids can be used in living cells.
Actually, as far as we can tell, life could exist using all right-handed amino acids also. It's quite possible that both types of life existed for a brief time, but one out-competed the other very early in earth's history.
The experiment succeeded in producing amino acids, but scientists have never been able to produce any more complex organic molecules in the lab. No DNA (not even fragments), no RNA, and certainly no proteins.
Current scientific thinking on the origin of life tends toward the idea that the earliest self-replicating molecules were simple peptides, chains of perhaps a couple dozen amino acids. Given that a lab experiment can form a bunch of amino acids in a few weeks, it's not that farfetched to imagine a chain of 30 or so to be spontaneously generated throughout the oceans of earth in a number of years.
Organic molecules tend to break down over time. This process is accelarated by water (didn't life supposedly form in the ocean?) and heat.
Last I heard, RNA is thought to have first been formed on catalytic clay substrates. But why would creation "scientists" bother to check the current theories when attacking straw men is so much easier?
No matter how many creationists point out their supposed "holes" in the mainstream scientific theories on the origins of life, they always fail to produce the one thing that would end the debate forever: ONE IOTA of SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that GOD EXISTS and that HE CREATED LIFE.
Until such time as this first piece of evidence is seen, why should the scientific community be expected to constantly defend the whole of mainstream geology, astronomy, and biology against attacks by creationists who have NO evidence supporting their own "theories", which are all based on a creation story the ancient Hebrews borrowed from the Sumerians and some unverifiable genealogies?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Sorry, wrong again. Color is something your brain makes up from the light coming to your eyes. If you count black and white (and gray) to the colors is just pure convention.
Light has no color. Especially although no light would certainly be interpreted as black by the brain, the opposite is not true. The light you get from a black surface on a bright day is much more than what you get from a white surface at night. Nevertheless you see the first one as black, the second one as white.
Also, the eye makes a very sophisticated white balance, so even "true" colors (with non-vanishing saturation) depend not only on the spectrum of the light the color is to be determined, but also on the color of the light coming from different directions.
Now there are some invariants in this "color mapping". This allows one to speak of "red light", because certain light frequencies, when seen in isolation, would - assuming a minimal intensity (below which we cannot see "true" colors at all) - always be considered red, though the exact tone of red would depend on the exact circumstances (and probably also on the person seeing it). However, the light itself isn't red; our recognition of this light gives the color red.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
What if you're both wrong and only the followers of the Church of Sub-Genius go to Heaven? Then at least the Atheist did whatever he wanted in life, but you wasted a bunch of time obeying the "rules", and now you're both suffering for the rest of eternity.
Or what if the Atheist ends up in Heaven because he worked hard to make the world better, and you fry in Hell for spending too much time reading the Bible and not enough time being like Christ? Note - I'm using "you" in the generic sense, not specifically you, netphilter.
My point is that, none of us can really know what awaits us on the other side of death, and given the infinite number of possibilities, no religion should claim that its path is a "no-brainer".
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
So they see a flicker of light. How do they know that this flicker is the "beginning" flicker of light and matter separation. For all we know it could be a few extraterrestrial teenaliens flickering their headlights at us...
Hey Xorg, bet this will really confuse people 10 billion years from now - phorm
If you assume that a "day" really means "day" in the Bible for the first 7 days (and why wouldn't you?) and then add up all the ages of the people listed from generation to generation, you get a fairly conclusive age for the universe according to the Bible. (I don't know if off the top of my head, but I know it's there) Now, you could argue that a the first 7 days in the Bible are actually billions of years long. But then if you start saying that words in the Bible mean different things than what we normally attribute words for, then you're allowing yourself to make up whatever you want to believe in and interpret the Bible however you want.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Speaking of misguided, it's not terribly wise to open a message describing your beliefs with an insult if you expect anything good to come out of it. I agree with everything you said, (except maybe the "something in return" part.. that's deceiving because the "something" may not show up in this world but rather the one to come) but I don't agree with your tone.
Ben
You're 'explaining' one mystery (creation of the universe) with another (God). You are doing this on no evidence that I can see.
If God created the universe, what created God? And what created the creator of God? If God wasn't created, you're admitting some things don't need creation, and either sprang into being by themselves, or always were. In which case you are making it too complex... the simpler explaination is that the universe sprang into being by itself, or always was.
As for your interpretation of meaning of life for athiests, it is quite wrong for most athiests. Athiests give themselves meaning, not needing to be handed meaning from some imaginary being. Athiests are, in general, pretty happy and well.
$0.02: There is also not one iota of evidence of any kind that God does not exist. Or rather, there is evidence that God might exist and there is evidence that he might not. There is no proof of either theory. In my opinion, neither theory can be proved. Whether God exists or not must be taken on faith. My father is a devout atheist. I listened to him prove God's non-existence for many years. I tried to believe him for many years. But I've never seen anything that effectively proves that God doesn't exist. And so now I go with my heart on this topic.
I believe in science. I believe in God. I believe the two are compatible and complimentary.
---Bruce
There was this frog once, taught me everything I knew. I've learned this since: never listen to frogs that speak.
The experiment succeeded in producing amino acids, but scientists have never been able to produce any more complex organic molecules in the lab. No DNA (not even fragments), no RNA, and certainly no proteins. (Do you have any idea how incredibly complex proteins are? They're made up of lots and lots and lots of left-handed amino acids all chained together in exactly the right order. And once a protein is formed, it must be folded in exactly the right way (out of millions of possible foldings) in order to function correctly.)
This is true, and it proves that some of the reactions necessary to form life are too unlikely to occur repeadiately in a table-top experiment. But if the test tube at hand is all the oceans on earth and the experiment lasts for billions of years, then the unlikely turns likely turns certain.
Even if a protein managed to form, it would have broken down while it was waiting for another one to form. Organic molecules tend to break down over time. This process is accelarated by water (didn't life supposedly form in the ocean?) and heat.
Well, if the protein was self-replicating then all it takes is one, right? Simple organisms (bacteria or even more primitive) do not need partners...
Tor
Light is a form of energy. Furthermore, it really is about the seperation between light and matter.
Any theories on what existed 14 Billion Years and one day ago? -Just curious
I don't believe in sigs.
(* Were they on the rubber sheet when it blew up or just in the room? *)
The "Rubber Room" analogy seems to answer more questions than the "Rubber Sheet" analogy. Who ever said a diety had to be sane?
For example, why would a "stable" diety need to hear hymns about him/her/it-self over and over again? To me, that would suggest an ego problem.
Table-ized A.I.
One of the differences between science and religion is that science is typically open to accepting that it is wrong and modifies accordingly. Religion, on the other hand, has to be conked over the head a few times, and even then it lags behind science in accepting certain things, sometimes by centuries.
The point you seem to be missing is that Science is a process and Creationism is a part of a faith.
Science at one time did believe the world was flat. Science questioned itself and eventually rejected an absurd notion. Faith doesn't do this.
It doesn't matter to reality one whit what people believe. The world was always round, regardless of our perception of it. All science is, is humankind's effort to gain a more correct perception. And it's an ongoing effort, which is why things like cosmology matter.
Science isn't a myth, it's a process. A process that produces results, by the way. So, the next time you turn on a light or flush a toilet, thank a scientist.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
(* Apparently Occam never had a shot at 2 women. *)
Lately it seems to be coming to light that most great thinking comes from pondering dating issues.
Table-ized A.I.
Or maybe it is just God's plan for you to annoy the fuck out of independent thinking folk.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Finally, a religous person who is still open minded. Thank you very much for posting.
I wish Aesops Fables had as big a following as the Bible, their teachings are just as good and more relevant to daily life.
An unlawful system uses the same amount of energy as a lawful system. A Lemur's biochemistry is just as complex as a chimps. A thousand "a"s use just as much energy to transmit as a thousand letters of "Brief History of Time" (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/hawking/strange/html/bigb ang.html)
The limit Entropy puts on Life doesn't limit the _intelligence_ of the system, just the total amount of energy available to do work. The work can be intelligent or stupid, Entropy doesn't care.
where does any religion say that?
and who are you to say that I cannot use logic or science when discussing religion?
last time I checked, I had a free will to doubt (or to believe) if a god exists or not, to logically weigh whether various issues are right, or even to reason.
I'm not advocating religious explanations here, only saying that the general hubris of much of the scientific community is laughable. Around the 1900's we thought our study of physics was complete, then relativity turned physics on it's hear... still people thought now we have the answer -- until quantum theory came along.
What makes you think the our "new correct" explanations are any more permanent. Our understanding of the universe is in its infancy.
Soon after the big bang, the universe was expanding at near the speed of light. The part of the universe that will become earth is travelling almost of the speed of light away from some other part of the universe (the part emitting the radiation that was detected.)
Say we were/are travelling (assuming for the sake of simplicity that we didn't accelerate) 34999/35000 of the speed of light away from the source of the radiation. So that even though we were only about 400000 light years away from the source when the light was emitted, the light took 35000 times that long to catch up to us (14 billion years) as we sped away from it. (This is in the 'reference frame', to use a physics term, of the object emitting the radiation)
This explanation ignores some things, and the velocity number is made up, but I hope it makes the general concept plausable.
As a footnote, of course theories are all they are- if you require someone to tell you things with absolute conviction, you'll have to look to religion. Science is too honest to claim it's perfect.
Really? Than the origin of the Universe?
I'd also point out that _Scientists_ aren't in charge of figuring out who did those things, LE is (or has been). An entirely different group you should be mocking for their failures.
Meanwhile, scientists have figured out a few things long before they "mattered" (such as how to build a transistor).
In fact, seems to me that many real problems happen because folks refuse to listen to scientists until too late, (such as the folks warning the Govt. for years that the US mail was in danger of being used in a biochemical attack).
I'd say that if "scientists" were a team in the ball game of figuring out stuff that matters, they'd be pretty much taking the pennant every year...
roger waters figured this out a long time ago.
the universe starts where it ends.
all the best floyd albums do the same
Today is Octembruary 40th ?
Ah yes, that is it. Thanks.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Actually both, the Torah (Bible), and the theory of evolution are both true.
According to the Kabbalah and the teachings of Chassidut
the theory of Evolution (Earth's age is Billions of years)
and
Bible / World was created 6000 years ago
are true.
G-d created the world 6000 years ago (actually 5,753 years to be exact, see a Hebrew Calendar) and made it appear as if it existed 16+billion years ago.
Simple explanation: Creation is such a supernatural phenomenon, to create something from nothing (as opposed to humans who can only create something from something, like create a table from wood, a fire from existing brimstone, a computer from existing metal and silicon parts, etc)- it is not beyond the creator to create something with a past, to create the world 5,753 years ago and make it appear to (or really) have existed 16+billion years ago. So when G-d created the world 5,753 years ago, G-d created the world, and science, to (appear to have) existed billions of years ago.
Further explanation: Lets suppose today is the first week of creation. You are Adam, the first man, and you look around at the beautiful world. You walk to a nearby field and pick up a rock, and examine it.
You ask yourself "Has this rock existed for only 6 days?"
According to the Bible, the world was created only 6 days ago, so yes, it only existed for 6 days.
But then ask the rock, how long have you existed?
And the rock would conteplate for a moment, and then say "well, i've been here today, i've been here yesterday, and the day before, and the week before, and last year" ad infinitum.
And the truth is, the rock is right, as well as Adam is right.
According to Adam (and the Torah [= bible]), the world was created 6 days before.
According to the rock's best knowledge, he was always here, at least thats what the rock feels.
Because there is no _Scientific_ reason why the rock would not have existed billions of years before.
That is because G-d, with creation, created everything including the laws of science, and according to science, there is no reason why that rock would not have existed the day before, and the day before that too ad infinitum.
However, one must always realize and remember that science is also a creation from G-d, and when the Torah states (and is often repeated in Kabballah:) "God looked in the Torah and created the World, one must remember that Torah is the reality, and science is only as real as the Torah has set forth for it.
You can and should rightfully believe that the world existed 16+billion years ago, because in a way it is true, G-d made it so that one would draw a scientific conclusion that the world existed 16+billion years ago.
But when speaking of such a wonderous thing such as creation, the act of creating something from nothing, one cannot suppose that with our limited intelligence we can grasp the concept of creation from nothing and decide that it must have been 16+billion years ago in order to appear to actually have been created billions of years ago.
According to Judaism, Torah dictates reality.
But the Torah states that according to non-jews, science dictates their reality, therefore it is not wrong for non-jews to believe that the world began to exist 16+billion years.
-Ari Feinstein
I always think people get a bit self centered when they talk about the translated version of Genesis in the Bible. Both the Hebrew of the original version and the Arabic of the Quran have the six "days" but you will find that the Quran also explicitly states in two places that you can't translate the times between our existence and God's existence. It gives a time translation like the joke above. I think as time passes and we get more accustomed with time not being "rigid" like the time contraction of the GPS satellites (yes they go fast enough that the atomic clocks have to be adjusted constantly) there be fewer and fewer "fundamentalists" that so horribly underestimate the supreme complexity God created in this reality as a pointer to God's power. After all the Catholic Church didn't admit that Galileo was correct about the earth being round and orbiting the sun like the rest of the planets until the 1970's. I only hope future generations will accept Galileo's assertion that "reality" is God's first revelation and all the rest of the revelations are essentially commentary to get people back on track when they start accepting their own screwed up ideas over God's.
Light is simply the vibration of super strings. So why can't these folks say that in their theories? Polarization of light? You mean a polarized vibration of strings in the 4th dimension? So what if they find "Light from 14 billion years ago". These so-called "News Stories" are only perpetuating an Einstien mindset of light being "Particles" or "Waves" where in fact the only 'particles' are the certain vibrations of super strings in different dimensions. Give us all a break and help us understand the universe as it is understood today, rather than that of theories 50 years ago.
Namaste
Would it make it better if he/she had of stated "a higher power", "a divine being", or "the cosmic power"? What if instead of saying "my god", they said "Lisa Simpson's god". And who is to say that the parent post wasn't referencing god in the form of "something more than we". You anti religious zealots are just as annoying at the ones who try to force their religion on you. You say that you can't believe in god because you can't put your hands on it, and that you just don't buy the whole story. Yet you are so emphatic about believing a story on a web site that may or may not have the facts correct about some science that may or may not have happened, and that your will NEVER be able to put your hands on? Why? Your argument is canceled by your own actions. I agree that you shouldn't have to be preached to, no one should try to force you to believe in god. If there is a god, then he/she/it/anti-it, wouldn't want you to believe under the guise of force anyway. If a god wanted you to be force to believe, then it would force you to do it in a more 1st person way. However, don't tear anyone else a new one because you can't deal with the truth that they hold on to... your beliefs are very suspect too. As swipe!
and don't forget about the Government grants of 'money'
Id venture to say our knowledge of our own planet is in its infancy. Let alone the universe. A couple thousand years of human life is nothing if the universe is indeed 14 billion years old.
But see your argument relies on an assumption that everything is within time. The only way for us to measure change is via a ruler called time. "The universe was created" (a spot in time where on one side there was nothing (or something else), and on the other side the universe existed. So if we can assume that everything exists inside of time, then the "logical" or "scientific" way to go about this is to "doubt" that assumption. Now of course we can't (yet) prove their is a state where time doesn't exist, or maybe outside of time, but if we try to get into a state of mind where time wouldn't exist, then there would be no need for a creator of god. nor for a lineage of gods. Of course this would mean that god isn't a finite entity. Maybe god, or whatever, is matter. Matter can neither be created nor destroyed. Maybe it's just not explainable. But, what ever the case, I don't think the rules that man has set up to try and bind us into doing "good", would be the little petty things that God would be trying to enforce. What would a god care if I made it to a certain building on time, one day a week?
Please reply to this... I would love to hear the rebuttal.
Thanks
agree. except I wouldn't say "is laughable", so much as I would say "will be laughable".
This is the "watchmaker" argument, made about 200 years ago (replace "car" with "watch"), one version of the "argument from design." Fairly persuasive in its day, because people didn't know (before Darwin) how it was possible for complexity to arise out of simplicity.
Read The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins. He eloquently answers the argument from design. It is, IMO, one of the best books on evolution (since Darwin). Also has lots of neat computer analogies, and some simulation software.
I say that you are not allowed to use logic and science when discussing our religion...
-God / -Voice in your head
If you assume that a "day" really means "day" in the Bible for the first 7 days (and why wouldn't you?) and then add up all the ages of the people listed from generation to generation, you get a fairly conclusive age for the universe according to the Bible.
That is your interpretation that the Bible's creation story represents the creation of the Universe.
"In the beginning" it starts. But the beginning of what? To say it is the universe is probably not accurate, considering the scripture that points to events "before the beginning".
"...God created the heaven and earth"
Heaven is somewhat ambigous also, and probably better translated as "firmament" which is closer to sky or atmosphere then universe in my book. But it can be used to mean everything in the universe that isn't matter. But later when it discusses seperating the waters from the waters suggests "atmosphere" to me more then "universe".
Verse 14 sheds an interesting cast on this debate also...
"And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years"
However, the direct context of day is established earlier when the seperating of light and dark made for the "morning and the evening of the first day." So we see clearly that the 24 hour day as we know it from the periodic solar occulting of the earth wasn't established until the fourth day. And for the next few days, you I see nothing to give the impression that God adapted the earth's time table as he mentions creating seasons and generations of animals.
But then if you start saying that words in the Bible mean different things than what we normally attribute words for, then you're allowing yourself to make up whatever you want to believe in and interpret the Bible however you want.
I remember Larry Wall's assertion to an atheist on Slashdot recently where he mentioned that the atheist was "actively disbelieving" where Larry was "actively believing" in a God.
To illustrate how this happens, lets take your quote which describes someone who is actively believing in God, and see how it works the other way also.
"But then if you start saying that words in the Bible mean different things than what we normally attribute words for in their context, then you're allowing yourself to make up whatever you want to disbelieve in and interpret the Bible however you want."
I'll add in the name of "Science" warning that to impose your every-day definitions of terms created in the context of your own situation on words used in a situation completely different, is a bad practice.
Well, Muslims agree. It says more like "7 time frames" in the Koran. It's not "days" After all, Judgement Day will take about 50,000 years, since 100,000,000 people have lived and died so far, there will be a long line.
> Oh boy another wonderful /. creationist-vs-evolutionist debate!
This isn't an evolutionist/creationist debate. It's a debate about whether science has explained life adequately.
> No matter how many creationists point out their supposed "holes" in the mainstream scientific theories on the origins of life, they always fail to produce the one thing that would end the debate forever: ONE IOTA of SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that GOD EXISTS and that HE CREATED LIFE.
I can't even imagine what kind of evidence you would be talking about. The main evidence pointed at by the pro-god lobby is life itself. That evidence doesnt end the argument, it provides something for scientists to find an alternative explanation for.
Life exists, it didnt appear overnight, it evolved. The question is, how did it evolve. Was it brought about by random chance, did the necessary molecules combine by chance and then once a self replicating molecule existed, did it grow in complexity until we ended up with what we have by scientifically explained [or even explainable] mechanisms. Now, I guess you would consider the notion that evolution was guided by something as a creationist argument. It's not obvious that believing that it all came about by random processes [and yes thanks, I do understand natural selection, mutation, crossover etc] is less extraordinary a hypothesis than the notion of a form of guided evolution.
It's not as clear cut as you might think. I recommend you read "Not by chance" by Dr. Lee Spetner. He is not some wooly thinking bible bashing hick, he has a Phd in physics from MIT and has worked in biophysics for decades.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
You know, that's a very original argument. I've never heard that one before. (/sarcasm)
What if in reality, you're wrong, and you are wasting the only life you have worshipping emptiness. That's fine if that's what you want -- it is your life, after all -- but pretty silly if it isn't.
If God is so loving, why would he torture ANY of us forever? What would you think of a parent who put a disobediant son into a bathtub of molten lava?
Oh no, you found THE CAPS LOCK KEY!
Actually, I used the Shift key. And, I closed my <i> tag.
Hundreds of years ago, prior to the discovery of viruses and other invisible realities, I'm sure there were those who believed in things that were invisible that were causing these diseases in their communities, but they could not prove it. They didn't have the means. I'm sure many of these people were laughed at. Today we respect them.
We respect them not because they believed in invisible things that happened to be real, but because they sought out and eventually obtained evidence that those things existed. In the process, they created "miracles" of science like vaccines and antibiotics. Had they simply wasted their lives telling everyone "Believe in my tiny invisible germs or you'll die - no, I don't have proof, but they must exist, otherwise how would we get sick?" we would not have respect for them, despite the fact that they turned out to be right.
It has taken man long enough to discover some of the invisible realities, and just think, these are only created things. How much more complex our Creator must be! Praise God, and God Bless America.
I'm guessing you think you're replying to an atheist, I hope it doesn't disappoint you that I agree that our Creator is mighty complex. I believe that He and His creation are far too complex to have been properly described by the nomadic hunter-gatherers of dozens of centuries ago. They are also too complex to be fully comprehended by the scientists of the 21st century, but every discovery gives us a slightly clearer picture.
Advances in the scientific understanding of nature should give believers a greater appreciation of His wisdom, rather than scaring them witless because it happens to disagree with what the Sumerians believed about creation centuries before the Bible was written down.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Not quite. What you are asking for is negative proof. Instead what you should ask is, 'do we observe anything that isn't bound by time or anything which has behavior that can't be explained if it did exist within time?'. So long as that answer is no, we don't have to look into it. It's the same thing as 'do we observe invisible intangable fairies going around and putting small knots in hair'. We don't observe that... we have no evidence of it. These 'elf knots' can get into hair in rather mundane ways.
We can invent any number of fanciful scenarios, none of which can really be disproven. This lack of disproof doesn't make them true, or even worth looking into. We need positive evidence.
An extraordinary claim, such as something existing outside of time, requires extraordinary proof.
No, you were right the first time. There's no evidence that any kind of god exists, and no evidence that gods don't exist. There's also no evidence that the Invisible Pink Unicorn exists, and no evidence that it doesn't. Should a claim that the universe was created by the IPU be treated with anything other than ridicule by scientists, unless I can come up with positive evidence of the existence of the IPU? The point was that there are mountains of evidence supporting the modern theories of cosmology, abiogenesis, and biological evolution, compared to the zero evidence supporting biblical creationism, or the existence of the Christian god. Despite this fact, creationists still insist on being treated seriously. What SY (and the rest of us) are asking for is for creation "scientists" to take 5 minutes off from demonstrating their ignorance of scientific principles, and come up with some evidence that their god actually exists. Let's see the evidence, kids.
That's what it comes down to, and this is my question to all creationists. Until we see evidence that your god exists, why should we take you seriously?
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
How low was the initial entropy? In The Emperor's New Mind , Roger Penrose makes a back of the envelope calculation, and comes up with 1/2^10^80. Now one explanation of where this highly selected early universe came from is that "it just happened". Another explanation is that "God did it". Both views have about equal explanatory power from a scientific viewpoint. Roger Penrose's comment was, "Even God couldn't be that precise!"
This isn't an evolutionist/creationist debate.
;) Actually, I don't have a bit of a problem with the idea that evolution was guided, in fact my beliefs lean that direction. I just don't believe that whatever guidance occured took the form of miracles or violations of the laws of nature (by that I mean the real laws of nature, not our current understanding of them which is admittedly imcomplete).
Oh, but it must be! It's Friday, this is always the day the editors save to post the article that will spark the debate. I missed Thursday, which is the day we forget how much we hate the MPAA/RIAA and drool over the latest piece of electronic wizardry from Sony.
It's a debate about whether science has explained life adequately.
Well, that's no debate. Any scientist worthy of the name will tell you the answer is no. Scientific theories are like underwear. They're used until they smell bad, then they're exchanged for a new pair. Wait, wrong analogy. Anyway, no scientific theory is every considered to be IT, the end of science. There is always a possibility that new evidence will disagree with it - at which point a new theory must be formulated, that not only explains the new evidence, but also explains why the old theory worked as well as it did.
All theories in science have been refined, modified, or replaced at some point, and our current theories of origins of life will be modified and refined to fit new evidence as well. If the creationists want mainstream science to take their views seriously, all they have to do is provide evidence that shows the earth to be 6000 years young, or proves that the elapsed time from the first ray of light in the universe to the first human walking the earth was five days.
I can't even imagine what kind of evidence you would be talking about.
Neither can I, but that doesn't exuse creation scientists from the burden of proof. They are the ones whose theories disagree with the whole of mainstream science. Ok, asking for proof of God might be a bit unfair, but if they want Creationism taught as science, some real evidence of things like the Flood or a 6,000-year old Earth should be forthcoming.
Now, I guess you would consider the notion that evolution was guided by something as a creationist argument. It's not obvious that believing that it all came about by random processes [and yes thanks, I do understand natural selection, mutation, crossover etc] is less extraordinary a hypothesis than the notion of a form of guided evolution.
(Jedi mind trick) I am not the evolutionist you are looking for.
Obviously, if I'm right, there'd be no way to prove that God did it - there would be a scientific explanation of every event in evolutionary history. But I think He wants it that way. Just look at the lecture He gave Thomas the Apostle about seeing and believing.
I recommend you read "Not by chance" by Dr. Lee Spetner. He is not some wooly thinking bible bashing hick, he has a Phd in physics from MIT and has worked in biophysics for decades.
Thanks, I will check it out. It sounds like a big improvement over the Chick garbage someone linked to earlier!
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Fnord. All hail Discordia!
Or were you joking?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Fine... I'm sorry for not including the disclaimer that I was speaking as a human with normally functioning eyes (if somewhat myopic) and a nerve center in the brain which interprets wavelengths between ~400-700 nm as a 'particular color'.
White is the perception of this strange stimulus we call color composed of electromagnetic radiation of many distinct wavelengths covering the spectral range 400-700 nm.
How's that?
Eric
I long ago lost any links talking about this. If you find any, post them.
Maybe she's a goaltender on a women's hockey team?
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Religeon says BELIEVE, don't doubt, don't apply logic or reasoning. Stay dumb and send me the money.
Science says DOUBT, because doubt brings questioning, reason, logic, and finally the answer.
This is a massive oversimplification. My experience with religion has been that it says "Exercise faith in things which are true which are beyond pre-verification (or verification at all under certain epistemologies)." This is not all that different from certain observations about axiomatic systems made by Kurt Godel.
Not only that, but it's actually very easy to see religion as a personal spiritual experiment. If a religion teaches you a principle, and you apply it, you've had a chance to perform an experiment and see if you gain the same results. It will never be clinical double-blind, but that's not what matters. What matters is whether or not there's fruit in your life. (And remember, clinical double-blind studies have their weakenesses. Phen-phen was supposedly tested in this way. Too bad a friend of mine destroyed her heart with it).
Most people in a religious community don't talk about it so much, but doubt serves a role. I sometimes see it as a bit like gravity in the flight process: you don't want it to be the ruling force, but its presence makes conventional air travel possible by providing an anchor for the fluid that airfoils use to provide lift. Doubt provides tension that pulls you toward confronting a question and answering it with a decision.
Of course, that only works if your religion is about real human and divine transformation. Doesn't work in a "hold a dogma/cosmology at all costs" kind of religion, which you may be assuming all religions are. Common mistake, by both "believers" on "non-believers".
Libertarianism is rich wolves and poor sheep playing gambler's ruin for dinner.
Something caused the universe to begin. Whatever that something is, He is God.
:)
....and there is a problem with this worldview? I know is doesn't give the religous a nice warm, cuddly feeling to think that humanity is not the sole reason why the cosmos exists, but even the most megalomaniacal among us would have to admit that the universe as a whole would no more mourn or indeed even NOTICE our extinction than you would notice a sand flea dying in the Sahara.
Use some logic.
Something caused God to begin. Whatever that something is...... uh, oh..... damn causality loops!
Nothing matters, nothing ever mattered, nothing ever will matter, and your entire existance is completely meaningless.
You're right. I can not prove that there is no God. Additionally, I can't prove any negative. The catch to the situation is that while you're busy looking for things that might exist solely on the premise that no one can say they don't, science is busy cataloging those things that can be proven to exist. One of these activities leads someone, and the other... well...
You'll have to pardon me, I'm going out to look for all those invisible unicorns every keeps telling me don't exist...
Hinduism can embrace hedonism, likewise with Buddhism. Both can be seen as 'self worship' rather than Christianity or Judaism which seeks to deny self and give that self to the higher power = GOD.
You don't know much about Hinduism, do you? The goal of the Hindu is to become one with Brahman (the Ultimate Reality / God) and escape the cycle of rebirth. This is done by (surprise) denying the self, forsaking materialism, practicing dharma (righteousness).
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Ya know, I sure as hell hope God isn't the chair I'm sitting on. If it is, I'm going to hell for sure, since I had beans for lunch...
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
I mean, did they C14 date it :) ??
Speculation is the mother of all science (except math)
The Raven
The Raven
Those LE people in charge of figuring out criminal things are forensic *scientists*. So it's okay to mock them. I checked.
ROTFLMAO!!! It always amazes me to hear BigBangers reason this way. Just ask a physicist the analogous question: "If the big bang created the universe, what what created the big bang?" It's amusing to hear the varied replies (which invariably sound just like the religionist's answers) usually along the lines of "That's unknowable/undefined because time didn't exist, blah, blah blah...".
In my experience, the Big Bang theory is a religon of it's own, with all that comes with religons in general... zealots, those who will defend their 'beliefs' in the face of a mountain of conflicting evidence, and entirely ignore anything that doesn't fit into their narrow paradigm (ie. the verified quantization of red-shift, extra-galactic superscale structures, etc, etc, etc...), but then they come up with just as fanciful and unprovable inventions to try to reconcile their beloved BB Theory with the ever increasing mountain of conflicting observation (ie. Cosmic strings, numerous unobserved/unobservable theoretical particles, dk matter, etc, etc, etc...)
Please note that I'm not advocating religon over science or science over religon, but just pointing out that the similarities between religons and certain dogmatic 'scientific' theories are compellingly similar.
You miss his point entirely... that the amino acids used arent't MIXED left and right handed. The question is that if life arose by chance, then selecting amino acids all of one handedness would exponentiate the improbabilty by an astronomical factor. Your idea of additional 'right-handed' organisms would square that astronomical improbability, and just shows that you don't understand the logic behind the statement at all.
If the Universe is an ever expanding "sphere", then what is making it infinite? A sphere has an outer surface and so would the Universe in such case. If this is so, then what astronomical / mathematical / theological phenomenon is preventing matter or energy from passing through that border?
IIRC there are observations or theories that the universe is slowing it's expansion due to the fact that matter attracts matter. If the mass in the universe is enough to sufficiently slow down the expansion, stop it or even reverse it, light would in such case be able to travel faster than the universe is expanding. This would seemingly lead to light actually being able to at least reach the outer surface of the theoretical sphere of the universe and possibly pass it unless God or some other phenomenon stops it.
Anyway, the above could be hogwash, or it might not. If anyone has a simple layman explanation (read not more complex than absolutely needed) to why the universe wouldn't have an outer surface I'd be interested to know of it.
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
Forensic scientists can only work with the evidence they have & the evidence is generally gathered by non-scientists (to put it mildly).
IOW, we'd be alot further from discovering the origins of the universe if we had to rely on the Detective Fubars (Furhman) of the world to gather the evidence.
Then of course the _findings_ of the FS's are not always made enterely public in cases with political ramifications...
This post isn't intended to be offensive, but given the thread that has developed about Biblical creation stories, it seemed somewhat appropriate, if also a bit offtopic. Let's go!
If you're going to make such strong claims please at least back them up [...]I'm curious how one would come to the conclusion that the creation story of the Old Testament was inspired by the Judeo-Christian God. I am interested in having these strong claims backed up, if possible. The writer of the first post in this thread remarks that:
I believe Genesis was inspired by God, but written though a person.However, I am not aware of any reason for holding such a belief vs. not holding such a belief. Perhaps there are two options, let's call them (A) and (B).
First, (A) someone might come up with a rational proof for the existance of the Judeo Christian God and the fact that He influenced the text of the Bible. Unfortunately, no such proof has ever been successful. The "Proof By Design", "Ontological Argument", "Cosmological Argument" and such have all been shown to be flawed. (For example, there seems to be an exhaustive list available. I know the source may be seen as biased, but the same information can be gleamed from any decent introductory book on this history of philosophy.)
The real problem behind the problem is the nature of God Himself. If you make the conception of God specific and complex, for example by claiming that He is benevolent or tripartite, rational undisputable proof becomes extremely difficult (impossible?). I'd wager that to justify the idea of a complex God, one would have to use (B) the justification by faith. None of the traditional proofs of God, such as those outlined by Aquinas get us closer to specific attributes; they only argue for raw existance. This other extreme, the claim that God is simple, takes such forms as: God is everything, God is love, etc. This won't do either, because then God just becomes synomonous with "Universe" (in the first case) and won't be able to be used to defend any particular creation story or moral teaching, at least as far as I am aware of.
Second, (B) someone might hold that God wrote the Bible on the basis of a justification by faith. The idea behind the justification by faith seems to be that somehow this knowledge is 'extra-rational', so one just has to have faith in the fact that it is true. If justification by faith is itself justified, what should we have faith in? There are three possible answers.
Take it as an assumption that justification by faith is correct.
1) Have faith in everything. This will lead us to have faith in the Christian conception of God, the Judaic conception of God, the Islamic conception of God and Greek Pantheon, etc. We will have to believe that the Quran is absolutely true, the Bible absolutely true, and Greek mythology is absolutely true. I don't think many people will want this. In the ethical sphere of religious teachings, it would necessarily lead to complete ethical relativism: i.e. anything anyone justified by faith would be justified (human sacrifice, murder, etc.). Furthermore-- and more importantly-- since we are admitting the general correctness of the justification by faith methodology, we will be unable to criticize others as having incorrect morality. For example if a murderer has faith that murder is what God wants, we are forced to accept his justification by faith (just as our own must be accepted) and cannot say that the murder is then wrong.
2) Have faith in nothing. This would lead to extreme skepticism, so we don't have to deal with it.
3) Have faith in some things but not others. This looks like it would have to be the method if we want to support belief in God without leading to complete ethical subjectivism like (1) did. Unfortunately, (3) is not a solution to the problem at all. If we are to have faith in some things and not others, what critera should we use to decide what to have faith in? If the answer is reason, then we have to deal with (A) again-- trying to determine rational proofs for the existance of the Judeo-Christian God and of His having influenced the writing of the Bible. But there are no good rational proofs. If the answer is faith itself, then we must go back to (B) and start over, which is clearly nonsensical.
Therefore, as (2) and (3) will not allow us to coherently achieve a justification by faith, (1) is the only option left. So when we start out assuming that a justification by faith is valid, we find that it necessarily requires us to be complete moral subjectivists. Since that kind of subjectivism undermines the project of the ethical teachings of the major monotheistic world religions (including Christianity), the justification by faith cannot be used to justifiy Christianity.
Imagine a person who'd been raised without the idea of religion at all, who has been presented with all the world's religions (past and present) and asked to choose. What choice should he make? Let's assume that all of them claim to be the true religion, and that we cannot hold all of them because many of them have conflicting teachings. Justification by faith appears inable to provide a method for correct choice in this situation. Unfortunately, reason seems also unable to help us without a valid argument.
-- "--," ?
Am I making an ad hominem attack? Maybe, but it's not something Heinze is above, himself. Speak to your audience, after all...
-J
Hmm, your explanation of "beginning" seems self-contradictory since events before "time" can't happen if time a requisite parameter of an event. It may be true in a "God can do anything" kind of way, but even then it doesn't make sense scripturaly. I think it means something much more plain and simple, and people are just getting way to "cosmic" about it.
I read a site once "How to talk creation to a Jehovah's Witness" that was pointed to from the AiG people. They brought up a good point, that if the day was 1000 years then why did God create plants and then wait a thousand years before creating the insects to polinate them?
But that doesn't matter much to me since I personally think that the 1000 years time thing sufferes from the same problem as the 24hour thing (i.e. the sun hadn't been made yet). So I never subscribed to that view anyway.
I just take the Bible for face value.
I don't think plants being around on the third day discredits it either, since light existed on the first day, before the sun came around. And since light was present from the first day, there is no reason that you can't have plants.
People just think its the sun, becuase it is such a common light to us here on earth, but not becuase they read Genisis very well. Don't worry, not until a few years ago did I realize the "light" in the first verse wasn't the sun either. The sun is just way to prevelant in our lives for us not to think it is.
But I motice that God points out clearly in those verses that his first light and day was something different then what we are used to.
Here's the verses again...
14 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
15 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
18 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
It seems pretty clear to me that the "sun" is the greatest light during the day and he made it the fourth day. He also says that "days" didn't happen in some sence or other until the fourth day, along with seasons and years. Its all just straight forward and plain to me.
If AiG realized that, I think they'd realize it corresponds with AiG's other positions a lot better also, like starting with a small select group of "types" of animals becoming the many species we have seen since the Fall rather then populating the earth him/herself. God did things in stages, you need water, light and earth before vegetation and begetation before animals...etc. I think it started out small in the garden and things were told to "multiply and replenish the earth."
Actually I digress. I actually came to a simular conclusion as them on many respects independantly before I read them, which is why I liked their site so much. And when they tied it all together with the Fall it made a lot of sense with what I already believed.
If i instead read several verses that say the same thing, then I can be sure of it. This is where JW's and Mormons etc. have their problems.
Actually, the JW's and Mormons would probably argue that you are only taking verses that sound the same, and ignoring the ones that may not point where you want it to.
One of them being God's reproval of Job where he says...
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof; When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
Honestly, I think Job was an anti-deluvian work. probably the only one book except the Book of Enoch that survived the flood. But that is just my theory. Either way, I think that laying the foundation of the earth was either before the "beginning" or during the first two days, yet we already have "all the sons of God" or all the players to go on to the stage. To me "Beginning" or "The beginning" means the start of some particular stage in God's plan, specifically relating to us. It could be the start of the whole universe or "time" but I don't find anything beyond it being the start of a stage in God's plan.
Also, since the "days" weren't created until the fourth day (in God's time) that makes the "Ancient of Days" Adam rather then God (which makes sence since God's throne doesn't have wheels which show God giving power to move). I don't agree with the JW's or anyone else who thinks Adam was a bad guy, since Christ is called the "second Adam" and "last Adam" at different times. Christ wouldn't be considered an "adam" if "Adam" wasn't a good guy.
Speaking of crazy beliefs, I've been perplexed how Christians say "you can't be saved by your works" and then tell people "you will be saved if you do this..." which is usually a very specific and prescribed "work" they have to do (like praying, acknowledging, etc...) That sure sounds an awful lot like they are being saved because of something they are doing.
That's just not true. Atheists believe that there is no God. Atheists generally believe that the Scientific Method is the only way to prove something. Many atheists ignore that Science can't prove anything, it can only suggest what seems true at the moment. I certainly haven't seen any scientific proof of the lack of existence of God. I haven't even heard of an experiment that could be performed to verify or deny the existence of a supreme being and that could be demonstrated effectively to a group of living beings.
What requires a lack of faith is agnosticism. Well, a form of agnosticism. Proper agnosticism is "We cannot know if there is a God." Tone that down a little, or ratchet it up, depending on your perspective, and you have "I do not know if there is a God or not." This is not atheism.
Incidentally, this is Offtopic and should be moderated as such. Then again, so should the parent post.
=Brian
There is nothing so good that someone, somewhere, will not hate it.
Good point. I know Dante also referred to a spherical earth in the Divine Comedy.
I believe the common man may have believed that the earth was flat well into the middle ages. Maps from that time seem to indicate a belief in the edge of the earth. "Beyond Here There Be Dragons" and all that.
But for what it's worth, you've changed my mind on the flat earth perspective. I've examined something I believed, and after reviewing evidence changed my mind. That's how Science works. Isn't it wonderful? =)
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
he said "in a higher dimension" or somesuch -- as in, fifth dimension that you can't directly observe. think about the fact that standing on the surface of the earth, you'd have trouble telling, just from that, that it's not flat ... so on the scale of the universe, the next dimension may not be apparent, etc. (no, it's not a bullet-proof analogy.)
> The Bible is about salvation. There is of course
> some history and science included but that is not
> the point. You liberals attack the Bible for your
> perceived historial and scientific faults as if
> it should be a divine source for both subjects.
The Bible isn't about salvation; the Bible is a collection of documents claiming to be 1) an accurate historical record; 2) an allegorical instruction on the preferred way to live our lives; 3) prophecy which is, by the way; 4) either directly or indirectly created by the hand of an omnipotent, omniscient being.
It fails to fulfill #1, sometimes quite spectacularly; especially as it sometimes contradicts itself, not to mention the fact there's exceedingly little reliable corroboration of most of its content.
Secondly and dealing with issue #2, most atheists recognise that humanist morals tend to be ethically superior to Christian commandments.
Issue #3 is pretty unacceptable given the failure of the first two points and -
Issue #4 is pretty well blown out of the water by the embarrassingly poor performance of the first three points.
> The most important information ever known is in
> The Bible. It's all about salvation---something
> you fail to see.
As addressed above, that's not so. Furthermore, it's a GOOD thing that it's false, bearing in mind the despicable events and modes of prescribed behaviour. Perhaps the atheists are not the only people who might be recommended to check their own perceptions.
> What example are YOU providing to the world,
> then? Are you going without? I assume you used
> a computer to type your message. Maybe all the
> liberals should give up all their goods and
> clothe themselves in rags so they can claim
> they're better than others.
Uh huh. After you.
. . . Bronze Age minds. The only true surprise is how many are still around, not just Creationists , but flat earthers, Marxists, Democrats, Republicans, . . .
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
Yeah, it's also good to pay attention to spelling. That last word is spelled `g-r-a-m-m-a-r'.
Furry cows moo and decompress.
I'll try to explain.
If the Universe is an ever expanding "sphere", then what is making it infinite?
Nothing. It's not infinite, it's finite.
You are correct that the universe has an outer sphere, however, this is not a physical boundary, it's determined by the speed of light and the age of the universe. According to Einstein nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. So, if the universe is 16 billion years old, then the universe has a radius of 16 billion light years. So, nothing can pass through the border, since the border is defined by the fastest traveling thing (i.e. light).
IIRC there are observations or theories that the universe is slowing it's expansion due to the fact that matter attracts matter.
Actually, the lastest observations indicate that the expansion is speeding up rather than slowing down.
Besides that, it is clear that the matter in the universe is not expanding at the speed of light (gravity slows it down, and matter can't travel at light speed in the first place), so photons have overtaken the farthest matter already anyway.
Again, the border of the universe is not determined by matter, but by photons.
Hope that didn't confuse matters too much...
MSN 8: Now Microsoft even has bugs in their ad campaigns.
as Laplace put it, je n'ai pas besoin de cette hypothese
For the non-french speaking, I believe this translates to:
"Sire, I have no need for that hypothesis"
This was in reply to Napoleons rebuttal of his theory on Celestial Mechanics for failing to mention God in his calculations.
However, I strongly suspect Monseur Laplace wishes to retract that statement now.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Still wrong. You don't need more than three wavelengths to generate the imression of "white" (if it is dark enough, even a single frequency at low intensity suffices). In general, for almost every color there are infinitely many spectra which give the same color.
And yes, I was speaking about a human with normally functioning eyes as well (and a normally functioning brain, of course).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Thanks, I liked that explanation. :)
/. describing that information has been moved faster than light (think it was something about fiddeling with photons or some thingy about matter), ie. instantaneous data transfer. What is probably keeping the result of that discovery from creating a loop-hole in the logic that light is the absolute maximum speed at which matter can never exceed, is the fact that matter of light were components in this data transfer. Thus this finding would not allow anything to travel past the border of the universe.
For now, perhaps I should add, as new discoveries might bring forth new theories
Anyway, your description of the width- and consequently the border of the universe being the distance light has traveled since the big blast, is something I find as a simple end elegant explanation to this problem, which can easily be conveyed to others.
Not too long ago (IIRC) there was a story on
For the sake of modern science I hope "Star-Trek Warp" stuff thingies won't be realizable as that would make rather a few assumpions of the universe go straight out the window.
In a society that believes in nothing, fear becomes the only agenda ~ Bill Durodié
Actually, if you read up on the creationist's theory (vs the evolutionary theory), as far as I am concerned, the creationist theory does hold some water
The creationists don't *have* a theory. A theory has to have evidence, and it has to be refutable. Saying "God did it!" fails on both counts.
Also note that people don't interpret light the same. Take one of those color wheels and have people outline the blue, red, green sections. Then note how different the outlined sections look.
especially about the origin of the universe or about evolution, do throngs of religious nuts come out of the woodwork to give their crackpot, factless reasons why it can't be so?
Are religious people so insecure in their beliefs that they must attack every scientific fact that in any way refutes what they believe and call it B.S.? I suppose they feel compelled to do this to keep the delusion going.
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
What a freak you are. Posting anonymously at that. I cant believe you are telling me that Jesus is gay. Hope you like enternity in hell.
And Im sure the people that live at the addresses that you posted above appreciate all the phone calls and letters, because I have moved since then. Sorry. BTW, what college did I attend?
-- Only a developer would see the 'Go to' part of "Go to Hell" as the problem.
Hi, I used to read about Astronomy and Physics some 5 years ago.. but becuase of some unavoidable circumstances i had to shift my field to Software... but now i want to again go back to my origins... so reqd desperate help... can anyone guide about the latest theory about Origin of Universe... I have already gone through some articles and books but all those were some 3-4 years old or more... and i want some latest stuff.. can you help by sending some links or otherwise... here or my mail deepak_ahu@yahoo.com Thanks ad Regards, Deepak