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Has Cosmology Been Solved?
An anonymous reader writes "In 1998, Dr. Michael Turner published a famous paper titled 'Cosmology Solved? Quite Possibly!' where he outlined seven major issues cosmologists should address in the following ten years. Nine years later, he revisits the list in an interview with the Slackerpedia Galactica podcast. He summarizes progress on each issue, adds some new goals for the next ten years, and even suggests that cosmology is now more interesting than science fiction."
The universe is unfolding toward self-knowledge.
Put your money where your mouth is.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
But seriously ... when cosmology's solved we'll have a spade that can be used directly to uproot all the religions that make cosmological claims - particularly the genesis-myth-based ones. No smart child will any more join these religions, let alone fight wars for them, or strap bombs to their bodies to enter their paradises.
Come rouse me off my barstool when that happens.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Well, technically, it you believe in creationism then it is no stretch to believe that oil was put in the "propper" place, etc. For example, there are religions that believe that Earth was built modeled after another world. If that was true, you would expect normal geology even if it was built in 7 days.
On the other hand, the true test is:
1) find a black hole 50,000 light years away
2) build a telescope big enough to see Earth at 100,000 light years distance
3) look at the edge of the black hole, using it as a mirror to reflect back the light that left Earth 100,000 years ago
Who says that creationism is untestable? Not me!
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The problem is intelligence. Unrestricted intelligence is difficult for natural selection to control, since it's so malleable. A moth with a hardwired reaction to fly towards a light source doesn't stop and think to itself, "hey, should I really be doing this?" as it flies towards a lit 300W halogen bulb. However, if you gave a moth intelligence, that questioning would suddenly become an option. Intelligent moths might still feel a hardwired compulsion to fly towards light sources, but they'd also be able to question it, and you'd get fewer accidental suicide-by-frying in the moth community. But you'd also get moths starting to wonder about life, the universe, and everything, which can be a big distraction.
If religion enhances a group's survival for the reasons I gave, that would help explain the establishment and continued hold of religion. However, because humans are intelligent, new humans always have the option of questioning and rejecting religion, even if (for the sake of argument) they have some kind of hardwired predilection towards religion. (Theologians would talk about free will here.) Now that our societies can support people who are only very indirectly involved in the group's survival, devoting what would otherwise be valuable "survival time" to pondering such topics becomes viable.
sorry, but that won't do. When 'they' claim that the earth was created some thousands of years ago, they mean that the universe was created some thousand years ago. With the oil in place for us to find, and light bending around a black hole for us to see and marvel at the ingenious of the creator for including the sight of earth as if it existed before creation. Just like all those cute dinosaur bones. That was put there for the unbeliever! /making this up as I go along
As for disproving any of that crap, what works for me is to prove that it is not possible to create a valid scientific hypothesis that includes god. So he doesn't exist. QED.
The entire basis of science is the idea that the universe operates under a finite set of consistent rules. For science to truly be a never-ending inquiry, then either the rules aren't finite, they're not consistent, or they're not fully knowable. And if they're not fully knowable, then we should recognize the point at which we can learn no more and stop wasting our time. We're nowhere near that point, of course. But the idea that there will always be some new rule of the universe we don't know defeats the purpose of science entirely.
Former US House candidate, TN-5
Christians don't have people executed....Truly religious people simply don't act like that, no matter what their religion.
Wow, it truly amazes me that people will talk about things like this without even bothering to open the Bible *or* the Koran.
Both are religions of hatred and murder.
Koran:
We have prepared for disbelievers Fire. Its tent encloseth them. If they ask for showers, they will be showered with water like to molten lead which burneth the faces.--18:29
Among many others..
Deuteronomy 13:6-10
# If thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go and serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou, nor thy fathers;
# Namely, of the gods of the people which are round about you, nigh unto thee, or far off from thee, from the one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth;
# Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor hearken unto him; neither shall thine eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him:
# But thou shalt surely kill him; thine hand shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterwards the hand of all the people.
# And thou shalt stone him with stones, that he die; because he hath sought to thrust thee away from the LORD thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.
So, yes, a true Christian is absolutely *required* to murder any close friend or relative who points out that their god is an idiotic delusion and they should grow up and start dealing with reality.
There are plenty more absolute commands from god ordering his people to torture and murder people in the most disgusting ways for "offenses" a sane person would consider trivial or laughable.
So, it's a damn good thing there aren't many Christians in the world. I just wish the heretics running around claiming, without one shred of conviction, to believe in him would actually read the fucking book and realize that all their talk of being good decent human beings is banned by the very book they claim to venerate as it commands them absolutely with admonishments that this may *not* be taken figuratively.
Not that the Muslims are much different than the Christians except that more of the Muslims do actually believe in their God and obey him. Unlike the Christians who are almost all lying heretics.
Major mistake by most Christians - God is a spirit (John 4:24), without a physical body.
Adam's _spirit_ was created in God's image, not his physical body.
For all we know God could have taken an existing primate and created a spirit in that body.
We're definately splitting into two separate discussions- the first by what I meant as a soft science, the second on cosmology itself. But at least both are still somewhat interesting. I will agree that human social organizations evolve. I'll even grant you that our understandings of them evolve as we refine our conceptual models. That is how all human understanding works - we address a situation where we have incomplete understanding and slowly pick out errors and correct them. How is this a reaction to an infinite universe, and why did you bring up the infinite universe thing? How does the infinite universe relate to these being soft sciences? You suggest they are soft sciences because they employ the concept of randomness as a crutch?
To me, that's the common denominator- hidden causes that come from elsewhere in space and time affecting what happens today. To me, that's the difference between a hard science- which depends on evidence that everybody can agree on as being objective- and a soft science- which incorporates some form of subjective data or hidden causes. The soft science is no less "true science" than the hard science is- we just don't understand all of the causes in a soft science (yet? Another interesting discussion is, by this definition, can a soft science *evolve into* a hard science? Meta levels there- wheels within wheels).
Ah, as so many disagreements show themselves to be, I think we have a mismatch of definitions here. I'm always happy to find this, as it is typically the root of the misunderstanding. If math and high energy physics aren't hard sciences, then what do you consider hard science to be?
Standard Newtonian physics comes close- it's based on evidence everybody can agree is objective, with no subjective beliefs or unknown causes. Another good example is chemistry- we're pretty darn sure how the 92 naturally occuring elements interact with each other now. Geology is a third- nobody can deny with the evidence there. Notice that *both* of these were indeed once soft sciences.
Here's one definition for you: Hard science is a term used to describe certain fields of the natural sciences, usually physics, geology, chemistry, and many fields of biology. The hard sciences rely on experimental, quantifiable data or the scientific method and focus on accuracy and objectivity. The hard sciences are often contrasted with soft sciences, which by contrast have less rigor.
That fits my definition- and I'd argue that Godel's incompleteness theorem in math, and the reliance on unknown causes in high energy physics and quantum physics, means they don't quite fit (yet? Once again- they may fit in the future).
This definition specifically includes physics, which I take as a superset of cosmology. We could debate on math, I suppose, but the point I'm getting at here is about cosmology.
Hmm- that's an interesting idea. Here's why I don't buy physics as a superset of Cosmology- at best they're related fields that intersect on a huge number of points, but both of which have points outside of the circle of the other. Cosmology by definition includes the begining of our universe- including the inflation problem, which happened before Planck Time, which specifically is *before* the constants many of our laws of physics are formed on existed. That's where I see the intersection of cosmology and PHILOSOPHY- before physics existed.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.