Supermassive Black Hole At the Centre of Galaxy May Be Wormhole In Disguise

KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "There is growing evidence that the center of the Milky Way contains a mysterious object some 4 million times more massive than the Sun. Many astronomers believe that this object, called Sagittarius A*, is a supermassive black hole that was crucial in the galaxy's birth and formation. The thinking is that about 100 million years after the Big Bang, this supermassive object attracted the gas and dust that eventually became the Milky Way. But there is a problem with this theory--100 million years is not long enough for a black hole to grow so big. The alternative explanation is that Sagittarius A* is a wormhole that connects the Milky Way to another region of the universe or even a another multiverse. Cosmologists have long known that wormholes could have formed in the instants after the Big Bang and that these objects would have been preserved during inflation to appear today as supermassive objects hidden behind an event horizon, like black holes. It's easy to imagine that it would be impossible to tell these objects apart. But astronomers have now worked out that wormholes are smaller than black holes and so bend light from an object orbiting close to them, such as a plasma cloud, in a unique way that reveals their presence. They've even simulated what such a wormhole will look like. No telescope is yet capable of resolving images like these but that is set to change too. An infrared instrument called GRAVITY is currently being prepared for the Very Large Telescope Interferometer in Chile and should be in a position to spot the signature of a wormhole, if it is there, in the next few years."

Comments

Re:It is God.

[pushing-robot]

I just wish he'd stop asking me for starships.

Lies.

[AdamColley]

Lies.

Everyone knows you can only keep a wormhole open for 38 minutes.

Re:Lies.

[93 Escort Wagon]

Even in Stargate mythology, there are ways to keep wormholes open for more than 38 minutes...

1) Yes - for a wormhole to stay open longer than 38 minutes, a crucial plot point must require it.

2) No, you're thinking of the opening scene from Stargate Universe - it only seemed to drag on for days.

Re:Lies.

[WhiteZook]

Can't you just reconfigure the main antenna to emit a reverse tachyon beam ?

Re:Lies.

[SuricouRaven]

The limitation in stargate was due to that energy: It accumulated. Pumping energy into the wormhole, it can't go anywhere, so the wormhole structure just gets more high-energy and harder to contain. Beyond 38 minutes the gate can't maintain stability, and even it if were possible the eventually closing of the wormhole would release all the energy accumulated within in a rather large explosion. One of the times the 38 minute rule was broken was through the use of a superweapon designed to do exactly that.

Another wasn't really in violation: The source was in orbit around a black hole. Close orbit. The time dilation just drew it out - while it seemed like more than 38 minutes at the recieving end, it was still far less at the opening end, from where the wormhole is created and stabilised.

Re:Lies.

[RivenAleem]

Except it's an important plot point that wormholes cannot stay open for more than 38 minutes, coincidentally the average show length. What happens when 2 conflicting plot points collide? Do plot and anti-plot annihilate each other?

Re:It is God.

[cyberchondriac]

But.. what would God need with a Starship?

Re:It is God.

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

Everybody who's seen Star Trek V knows this. We also know Spock kills God with a phaser, in accordance with the prophecies of the ancients. Then, Kirk will explain to a Romulan and a Klingon how maybe God wasn't out there anywhere at all, maybe he's right here (beats his own chest), "In the Human heart." And the Romulan and Klingon nod, like Kirk has said something wise. Hard to believe NASA gave Shatner a medal.

Re:It is God.

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

I see you propose destruction for those who disagree with your view.

Re:event horizon?

[Xaedalus]

Because at some point, you enter the tube. When you do, the light you reflect gets sucked in with you rather than released out.

Re:event horizon?

[ceoyoyo]

Wormholes involve extreme curvature of space-time. That means a large amount of energy. Energy is equivalent to mass, via E=mc^2, so a wormhole will have a large effective mass. That much mass in a small volume means an event horizon.

Or, if you prefer the geometric argument, extreme space-time curvature IS extremely strong gravity.

I don't really understand why a wormhole would have a smaller event horizon though. Perhaps something to do with the mass distribution. In a wormhole the mass would all be at the centre. In a black hole that grew through accretion it would be distributed throughout the volume.

Why it matters

[JoshuaZ]

Given the intense environment around Sag A*, even if it turns out to be a wormhole it will be utterly non-traversable. However, there are hypotheses that wormholes to be stabilized require using negative matter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_mass. At least, that's the most plausible mechanism suggested- so this would be inadvertent evidence that negative matter exists, which would be a really big deal. There's also speculation that a cosmic string could do something similar- note that a cosmic string is topological defect in space time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_string- these are not the strings from string theory although many forms of string theory would predict that such objects would exist. And of course, if wormholes exist in nature there's some small chance we can either make our own o find much smaller ones and put them to use. Unfortunately, there's a lot of dust and other debris between where we are and Sag A*, so even GRAVITY may have trouble getting enough resolution to figure this out.

Re:Why it matters

[ByteSlicer]

However, there are hypotheses that wormholes to be stabilized require using negative matter

If Sag A* is a wormhole, and required stabilizing, then it would have destabilized long long time ago, since it has been constantly gobbling up regular matter (albeit infrequently lately).

I doubt anything could pass through a wormhole, since that would probably break causality or the laws of thermodynamics. Also, we should have detected stuff coming out of the other side (maybe not of this one, but there should be "exits" all over the universe).

If wormholes exist, my guess is they will be more like a pair of entangled black holes. They would look like normal black holes, until you did a careful statistical analysis of Hawking radiation of both.

Re:Why it matters

[Pausanias]

In general relativity, wormholes *do* require negative mass (or energy density), for sure. Outside the context of the Casimir effect, negative mass in wormholes and warp drives can yield causality violations. Causality is the last thing you'll pry from a physicist's cold, dead hands. Therefore, while it may be fun to speculate about such things, they lie squarely within the realm of science fiction for now.

To post on a news site that the galactic black hole "may be a wormhole" is like posting a headline saying that extraterrestrial aliens "may currently be among us." Both ideas are exciting. Both ideas are remotely within the realm of possibility. And both are so unlikely that they would readily be dismissed by all except those who are credulous or who like to drum up sensationalism for its own sake.

It's sensationalism for nerds.

Re:Why it matters

[amicusNYCL]

there should be "exits" all over the universe

Why should there be exits? What if they go to another universe? Or alternately, who says there aren't exits all over the universe?

we should have detected stuff coming out of the other side

Why? Is there one nearby that we can observe with our extremely primitive and limited technology? Would we know it if we saw it?

Re:Why it matters

[Immerman]

Why do you assume the environment is extreme? From TFA Sagitarius A* is estimated to have an effective mass of 4 million times larger than the sun, in a volume not much larger than the solar system. Which is a bit vague, but if we call it the radius of Neptune's orbit that makes for 4e9 solar masses within 34e9 solar volumes. Since stars are estimated at ~1.4g.cm^3 that whole space could be filled with pseudo-matter only 16% as dense as water. We assume it's actually much denser, with the associated far more extreme gravitational gradients, simply because if it were normal matter it would collapse under its own mass. If it were instead a superdense(relatively speaking) cloud of dark matter it might have no such limits - you can't crush something that can pass through itself - like an ideal pendulum each particle would go racing down the gravitational gradient and then up the other side, oscillating forever without electromagnetic, etc forces robbing it of kinetic energy so that it can collapse further.

And if it's a wormhole - well without attempting the math I would think that larger might be better when it comes to traversing it with structured matter such as ourselves. After all, it's not the gravity that kills you, it's the gradient - experiencing a million Gs in freefall is a non-issue, provided your feet aren't experiencing *two* million Gs. If the mouth of the wormhole were large enough the gradients might be survivable. And this could potentially be a wormhole mouth a bit larger than the solar system.

Re:Why it matters

[fermion]

It is interesting that so many call this 'pseudo science.' Black holes fell out equations, and we really don't know if black holes exist or are at the center of galaxies. All we know is that if we assume black holes exists and are described as the math predicts, many things do fall into place consistent with these predictions.

But black holes have issues and have caused many more questions than answered. Some observations are consistent with the mathematics, but the math leads to some confusing conclusions. Other things come out of the math, and the only reason we dismiss them is that data is not consistent with the predictions. If there is data consistent with predictions, then such things at least deserve the consideration that black holes have received.

Re:Why it matters

[wierd_w]

One possible solution is that our wormholes (if they exist) are actually "pre big bang events" for a whole new universe inside the wormhole, and that they actually contain an infinite volume. "White hole" stage happens at the big bang inside, and any subsequent mass energy that falls in from our side just becomes dark energy on their side, distributed everywhere.

It would be interesting to try to plot out how causality works over the bridge.

the way I envision it though (which is almost certainly wrong), is that time is more confined (slower) near the bridge, but becomes less confined (faster) as the space on the other side expands in volume. (Speed is measured as 'planc seconds against unit of spacetime traversed by photon in vacuum' EG, near the bridge, photons appear to travel more slowly, where away from the bridge, they appear to travel more quickly. The actual energy of the photon has not changed, but the ratio between space and time has changed. There is more 'time' near the bridge than there is space, and vise versa further away.)
Any particular "moment" can be seen as a topological point on the 'surface' of the wormhole.

(See for instance this image of the standard inflation model of our universe.)

http://scitechdaily.com/images...

If you cross your eyes when you look at it, the model resembles a white hole, where the "hole" is the big bang, the energy was delivered "all at once", and what we percieve as time is just a manifestation of the energy delivered. (it would explain why time runs only in one direciton, and a number of other interesting things. it could theoretically explain dark energy, etc.)

Another interesting tidbit: Supermassive objects like sagitarius A have a hard time "feeding". This may account for the inflationary curvature of our own universe if you, again, cross your eyes when you look at it.

EG, early in the universe, mass energy from the higher up one was spilling into ours. (their "hole" was feeding), but as it grew in intensity, the curvature on their end made such feeding more difficult, and the rate of influx slowed sharply-- ending the rapid expansion period.

If that's the case, then some corollary math should add up against observational metrics against black hole feeding on our side, and may give some interesting insights.

http://phys.org/news140370694....

Can any of the more physics-head types see if there is a correlation between the estimated energy of the universe at the end of the hyper-expansionary epoch, and the event horizon size of these super massive black holes that can no longer feed?

Re:Why it matters

[jfengel]

Thanks for confirming that. I had a feeling this was gibberish and had to scroll down a long, long way to find a post that wasn't either a joke or sci-fi blithering.

Re:Why it matters

[Immerman]

Well, radiation is easy to deal with - nothing approaching at high speed behind a few miles of lead shielding won't solve. Gravitational gradients though... those could present a real problem.

I agree my pseudo-mass is wildly speculative, but a wormhole mouth that size would have a very similar effect - once you get past the mouth the gravitational gradient (potentially) disappears. And taking Neptune's orbital parameters as a reference (gravitational acceleration by the sun = 0.0000065 m/s^2), then if the central effective mass were 4,000,000x greater that would still be only 26.2 m/s^2, or about 2.6Gs, and the tidal forces even over a kilometer would be about 4 parts in ten billion. Even if the mouth were only the size of the sun so that we're talking an acceleration of 27million Gs, the tidal differences over a distance of 10 meters (plenty large for a small craft) would be only about 4Gs - well within the realm of mechanical engineering. And assuming passengers were curled up within little 1 meter balls they would be subjected to only one-tenth that - less than they'd experience in psuedo-tidal forces if splayed out on a children's merry-go-round.

0.0000065 m/s^2 * 4,000,000 * rNep^2 / rSun^2 = 274MGs
274MGs * (1 - rSun^2 / [rSun+10m])^2 = 3.9G
274MGs * (1 - rSun^2 / [rSun+1m])^2 = 0.39G

Of course that does assume that the source of the radiation is something other than atoms being ripped apart by tidal forces.

Re:Why it matters

[Anonymous Coward]

(Speed is measured as 'planc seconds against unit of spacetime traversed by photon in vacuum' EG, near the bridge, photons appear to travel more slowly, where away from the bridge, they appear to travel more quickly. The actual energy of the photon has not changed, but the ratio between space and time has changed. There is more 'time' near the bridge than there is space, and vise versa further away.)

In GR, the photon would not change speed, but would change energy and wavelength due to any observed time dilation effects.

The Point is Proof

[gpronger]

The point here is that the concept of a worm-hole has been theoretical and the domain of Sci-Fi. It is a huge event if we are able to verify. My guess is that the verification will have ramifications in the theoretical physics, simply because so much has been strictly theory.

Re:The Point is Proof

[Charliemopps]

I think this is more pie in the sky theory than anything. Based on what we do know already, worm holes likely do exist but they're sub-atomic and exists very very briefly. A wormhole the size of Sagittarius A* would require an entirely new form of physics to exist. Everything we think is true would have to be wrong. Which isn't impossible, just pretty unlikely. Blackholes that size do, however, fit within our models.

Re:The Point is Proof

[Immerman]

Actually, if you read TFA the theory is that this started out as one of those quantum wormholes that was caught in the inflationary period, which I suppose could cause it to scale radically though they don't mention any details as to how that would stabilize things. As a "shot in the dark" speculation - if inflationary energy had gotten inside the wormhole then the "tunnel" would likely inflate radically as well, with the resulting flood of space and energy within it preventing its collapse, and stretching it to something like its present size within moments. I don't really understand the theory around wormholes, but it seems plausible that if it reached sufficient size it might become self-stabilizing, much black holes, which are conjectured to be extremely short-lived at an atomic scale, but reasonably stable on geologic timescales (if not stellar) once they get large enough.

Hmm, as a further extrapolation of that hypothesis: if inflationary energy is busy spewing out space and energy within the wormhole, and some of that energy eventually gets ejected, then you might expect the region around the mouth of such wormholes to exhibit a much higher density of mass-energy than in the rest of the universe...

Or alternately/in addition - rather than a "tunnel" between the mouths, the inflationary energy within space might have created a sort of "pocket universe", presumably still bound by the same physics as ours since it's causally connected via the mouths. Not quite sure what the implications might be, but it seems like that universe might be quite large - potentially effectively infinite and still expanding at far faster than lightspeed just as our existing universe is speculated to be doing, out beyond the little bubble we can observe. How do you collapse a wormhole when the "tunnel" is expanding at FTL speeds? Of course that might mean that even if you got inside, the other end of the wormhole would be effectively unreachable.

Re:It is God.

[JoshuaZ]

I'm pretty sure that the anonymous coward was referencing Star Trek V http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_V:_The_Final_Frontier where it turns out to be very much not God despite a certain fanatic's belief. This is where the famous line "What does God need with a starship?" comes from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYW_lPlekiQ.

oh boy

[iggymanz]

of course, we don't even know that black holes exist, quantum gravity might preclude it, or dense enough matter instead forms quark stars, q stars, preon star, etc. instead of black hole. Care should be taken to see if one of these alternatives to black holes can be detected by GRAVITY findings

we don't know wormholes exist, certain solutions to General Relativity have them but again we don't know if physically possible to form.

Re:oh boy

[drinkypoo]

Care should be taken to see if one of these alternatives to black holes can be detected by GRAVITY findings

Sigh. Naming this thing GRAVITY is going to cause confusion for people trying to search for research for decades if not centuries to come.

Re:oh boy

[mark-t]

of course, we don't even know that black holes exist,

Yes, actually we do. We know that supermassive objects exist... we know that they can bend light, and we know that space can be bent to such a degree by such objects that any light which travels too close to it travels a curved path that never leaves a bounded region of space near the object that we refer to as an event horizon, creating a region in space that is basically just "black" as it appears from outside of that region, It obviously obscures anything behind it, while its gravity still bends light in visible ways beyond its event horizon, allowing us to identify it's mass, position, and event horizon size.

Re:It is God.

[i kan reed]

Which is why many species evolved collaboration. Evolution doesn't always mean killing competitors. Some species(particularly humans) do extremely well by turning competitors into collaborators and developing mutually beneficial relationships.

This naive approach to evolution is pathetic.

Event Horizon Telescope?

[mbone]

I am surprised they don't mention the Event Horizon Telescope, which could resolve this.

There are too many pseudo-science stories

[Bryan Ischo]

There are too many pseudo-science stories on Slashdot these days. Are you listening, editors? It's like reading Scientific American (which was almost as bad as Omni last time I read it).

Here we have a whole huge paragraph full of fantasized bullshit whose only supporting documents are a speculative paper submitted to arXiv, and a brief regurgitation thereof on some arXiv blog.

Please stop wasting my time. I want to read NEWS for Nerds (where "news" means "as factually verifiable as possible") and stuff that MATTERS (and pseudo science speculation does not matter to me).

Thank you.

Re:There are too many pseudo-science stories

[Jeremy Erwin]

But it's testable fantasized bullshit-- which means that it's scientifically interesting.

Re:There are too many pseudo-science stories

[radtea]

There are too many pseudo-science stories on Slashdot these days

While I largely agree with the sentiment, this story is not one of them.

There are peculiar solutions to the field equations of GR, including wormholes and black holes. Whether any of these solutions can be physically realized has been one of the most interesting questions in both observational and theoretical cosmology for decades. The possibility of detecting the difference between a supermassive black hole and a wormhole at the centre of the galaxy is definitely nerd-worthy, although I agree the hype is, uh, over-hyped.

Furthermore, these stories give lay-people a bit of insight into how science--which is the discipline of publicly testing ideas by systematic observation, controlled experiment and Bayesian inference--actually works.

Remember when the existence of black holes was still hotly debated, back in the '70's? Observations on an very small object with a mass of more than 1.4 solar masses (the theoretical upper limit for neutron stars) resulted in a general acceptance that it was a black hole, which likely therefore exist. But that conclusion was contingent on a lack of other plausible alternatives, and so is subject to modification as other alternatives become more plausible...

This is part of that ongoing story.

Re:There are too many pseudo-science stories

[starless]

Remember when the existence of black holes was still hotly debated, back in the '70's? Observations on an very small object with a mass of more than 1.4 solar masses (the theoretical upper limit for neutron stars) resulted in a general acceptance that it was a black hole,

1.4 Msun is the maximum mass of a white dwarf not a neutron star.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
It's therefore basically the _minimum_ mass of a neutron star.

To show that something is a black hole you have to show that it's more than
the theoretical maximum mass of a neutron star which is higher. That's not very well determined but is something like 3 Msun.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/d...

Re:It is God.

[Anonymous Coward]

I see you propose destruction for those who disagree with your view.

Why, yes.

If your stupidity and belief system requires you to attempt to destroy my way of life, then you are a threat to me.

The Christians who want to teach intelligent design, the Muslims who advocate Jihad, and the morons who fight against vaccination based on a discredited report, and those who think tax cuts for the rich and trickle down economics is real and effective ... these people are all dangerous idiots who think their belief system trumps facts, that some how god is on their side, and that we should all adhere to the bullshit rules they believe in.

They are advocating for my destruction, so it's really only rational to advocate for theirs.

Many many Christians are no better than the Taliban in their desire to force the rest of us to follow their rules.

So, yeah, fuck the whole lot of them. Putting ignorance and stupidity on a podium is a sign of lunacy.

Re:Is wormhole a prediction or a writers dream?

[Rob Riggs]

Is there any real evidence that a wormhole would actually pass anything to a remote location, or is that just a writers fantasy? Usually travel does not include being disassembled to your constituent parts midway. OK. Call me a doubter!

Evidence? Umm... there is no evidence that wormholes exist at all. But, by definition, if they exist, they would move matter/energy from one point in the universe to another. Otherwise the phenomenon being observed is not a wormhole. The matter that makes up your body is universally fungible as energy. The universe does not care which form you take.

Or we just got the dark ages wrong

[mbone]

This is really a problem of the "dark ages" - roughly, red shifts between 1400 and 14 (i.e., the period between just after the cosmic microwave background up to the earliest quasars and galaxies). At one end, there are no black holes, at the other, there are supermassive ones, what happens in between, we don't really know. My own personal guess is that this is a consequence of dark matter, and thus wouldn't require worm-holes but, if we can test the wormhole hypothesis, we should. We know so little about the dark ages that IMHO no possibility should be ignored.

Re:It is God.

[RockClimbingFool]

Dammit Slashdot!! Where are my mod points!!!

Let's go!

[mjperson]

Finally a stable wormhole for our FTL travel needs. Now, since Sagitarius A is 26,000 lightyears away, all we need to do is build some sort of wormhole network to get us there, and then FTL travel will be ours!

Re:It is God.

[jeffmflanagan]

Why do you think that having an absurd childish belief is simply disagreeing with his view, rather than seeing it as the deep ignorance that it is?
Religious idiocy wouldn't be a problem, but malicious people are able to use it to get rubes to vote for insane anti-social right-wing loonies.

I recommend...

[msobkow]

I recommend that we gather up all the world's warrior mentality politicians who are always dragging people into wars and bullshit, put them in uniforms, and send them on a mission through the event horizon to determine if there's another world on the other side of the wormhole, or if they just get squished like bugs.

Somebody has to do it: solve the Schroedinger question. Is it a wormhole or a black hole? Or is it a quantum object that changes between the two randomly as you observe it?

The politicians have a need to know. Send them soon. :P

Re:It is God.

[SternisheFan]

How do you propose they jump into a wormhole located tens of thousands lightyears away?

Very precisely.

Re:It is God.

[operagost]

In the Celestial Temple?

Re:It is God.

[operagost]

Nice straw man you've built there.

Nonsense

[PhuCknuT]

"The thinking is that about 100 million years after the Big Bang, this supermassive object attracted the gas and dust that eventually became the Milky Way. But there is a problem with this theory--100 million years is not long enough for a black hole to grow so big. The alternative explanation is that Sagittarius A* is a wormhole..."

No, the widely accepted alternative (aka, the actual mainstream consensus) is that the supermassive black hole and the galaxy grew together, not that the black hole came first and was supermassive before the galaxy existed. This wormhole theory is an answer to a question no one is asking.

Re:Is wormhole a prediction or a writers dream?

[SuricouRaven]

Both ends are still behind an event horizon. Whatever goes in does come out - eventually, as Hawking radiation.

Re:It is God.

[darkshadow]

Wouldn't that have been with disruptor cannons?

Re:Haha, sorry but I can't help laughing!

[SuricouRaven]

Wormholes are one of the great disapointments of exotic physics, because they can't actually be used for anything.

Yay, a FTL portal to the distant universe! That... no object can traverse. Including light. Oh.

Much like entanglement, which promises instantainous action over any distance and thus FTL communication - but, on closer examination, can't be used to send classical information.

Re:It is God.

[sideslash]

So apparently simply disagreeing with you is threatening to destroy your way of life?

I think somebody really needs an ice cream cone, a hug, time with a puppy, etc. It's not that bad, buddy. Even the Jihadists are really not likely ever to personally cause you harm. A little perspective here?

Re:It is God.

[Nethead]

Let's burn it!

Re:IT IS THE DEVILIN DIGUISE: WITH A BLUE DRESS ON

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

"Cosmologists have long known that wormholes could have formed in the instants after the Big Bang"

There's a statement of oblivious credulity! I prefer the version which runs thusly:

Gilgamesh had two such dreams, first of a shooting star ("a lump of Anu") which fell on him -- so heavy he could not lift nor move it. The land of Uruk encompassed it. The people thronged about it, and Gilgamesh embraced it like a wife. In the second dream Gilgamesh saw an axe fall over the assembly of Uruk, and he hugged it as if it were his wife, too. Puzzled as to their meaning, he went to his mother, the wise goddess Ninsun, who "untied the dreams." She told him that both the star of heaven and the axe were his companion who was coming. "This companion is powerful, has awesome strength, and is able to save a friend."

Re:It is God.

[shaitand]

"Even the Jihadists are really not likely ever to personally cause you harm."

The day before 9/11 you likely would have said the same to everyone personally harmed in 9/11 or through the loss of someone in 9/11.

"So apparently simply disagreeing with you is threatening to destroy your way of life?"

I think he is pointing out that those who disagree on these particular topics (which for the most part are factually established and not really legitimately open to debate) are as a group taking action to impose their views on others or tangibly impede education and/or progress in our society. In some cases even reverse it.

Re:It is God.

[RabidReindeer]

Correct. Life is a battle, and it's survival of the fittest. You kill or be killed. This is not new; it's been going on for billions of years on this planet alone.

Obviously evolution doesn't work the way you think it does, or you wouldn't have been allowed to live, because "naive" doesn't even begin to describe your anonymously cowardly existence.

The word "survival" in evolution is A) referring to the species, not the individual, and B) is accomplished in many, many more ways than simple "kill or be killed". If that was not so, every butterfly would be a threat to your life.

Re:It is God.

[phorm]

Starships are filled with RedShirts. RedShirts are tasty to the noodly one.

Re:It is God.

[cyberchondriac]

So that's where spaghetti sauce comes from !

Re:It is God.

[shaitand]

If nothing else, I do believe we've found common ground on the ice cream front. In fact, I think we could all stand to take a break from whatever we are doing and get some ice cream.

Anyone who disagrees, obviously needs to die.

Re: It is God.

[cyber-vandal]

People would be killing each other over which flavours were the true flavours before you could say death to the infidel.

Re:It is God.

[nephilimsd]

I have compared the weight of the argument against the weight of a lump of coal that I found. Since I know that straw men burn, and I know that coal burns, I estimate that if the weights of the two are equal, then we are in fact dealing with a straw-man.

Re:It is God.

[shaitand]

" The photographer who didn't want to work for a gay wedding, the baker who didn't want to make a cake for a gay wedding reception, the companies who don't want to pay for abortifacients; all examples of theists being made to break their own rules."

No, no they are not. They are cases of theists imposing their rules on others or punishing them for not following the theists rules. There is no religion I am aware of which forbids photographing or feeding gay people. There is also no religion which forbids providing healthcare. Following your own rules means deciding whether YOU are okay with yourself being gay, not your clients, not your children, not your hairdresser, you and you alone. The same with whether or not you are going to get an abortion or use contraception or take advantage of any other medical procedure.

Refusing services to others simply because their rules are different than yours and thus they are gay or opt for an abortion is imposing your rules on them. It's your place to support the idea that everyone gets to pick their own rules. It's not your place to provide or withdraw support based on which rules someone else follows. It's simply none of your business.

Re:It is God.

[Kabonos]

What if powerful free-est of markets capitalism provably left, for every one person with a successful Einstein level of intellect, five equivalently smart who had to put aside their insights and education to focus on simply staying alive? How many years of progress would that waste?

Re: It is God.

[david_thornley]

Hey, no skin off my nose if you have the poor taste to actually like Rocky Road.

Re:It is God.

[l0ungeb0y]

Putting ignorance and stupidity on a podium is a sign of lunacy.

All well and good, but rather than being violent about it and destroying them, why not just send them back home to the moon?

Re:It is God.

[devent]

On a recent poll about 1/3 in the USA believe in a young earth (10,000 years or less) and do not believe in natural evolution[1]. About half of the Christian believe that Jesus will come back in the next 40 years[2]. This is pure asinine to any reasonable long term policy and if not tamed could very well doom us all, especially because those believes comes from a first world country, that is military and economically superior. In addition, you have millions of delusional Christians that think WWIII will speed up the second coming of Jesus[3][4].

Moreover, if being religious is deeply ignorant, you should be able to provide strong evidence against the existence of a God. Not just point to a lack of evidence you like, but evidence against it.

First, that proves for me your ignorance of logic. You demand to prove a negative, which is a logical fallacy. Second, absence of evidence is evidence for absence. For example, if I make the claim that I have a cat in my house and you come over and look everywhere for my cat and you don't find anything, that is strong evidence that I lied and that I have no cats. The same is for God or for gods.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article...
[2] http://www.alternet.org/survey...
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/ame...
[4] http://www.washingtonsblog.com...

Re:It is God.

[dryeo]

The USSR went from barely out of feudal to space faring in under 50 years while defeating the Nazis at huge cost, putting up with a mad man at the helm and having to compete with a country that successfully stole most of a rich continent and came through 2 world wars with all its industry intact. China has also done quite well in advancing from feudalism.
Most of the more pure capitalist countries in the Americas are also brutal regimes with extremes such as Haiti which makes Cuba look like a paradise.
The most successful countries, by most measures such as life expectancy, freedom and happiness seem to be hybrids between capitalistic and socialist with thriving markets that are regulated enough that business does not totally rule and elections to keep the government in check.

Re: It is God.

[shaitand]

You can certainly believe in A god (or many) and not deny science but if you believe in God and believe in science you've deluded yourself on one front or the other. There is quite a bit in your holy book that contradicts science. For that matter, the two creation accounts in the first book directly contradict each other on many points and both contradict very well established science and are incompatible with the existence of fossils you can see with your own eyes.

Where theists get confused is they see this as science attacking their thing. Not at all. Their thing never enters into science, the scientific method begins with observing reality, speculating on causes for why that reality is how it is, then seeing if your guess as to how it works can successfully be used to predict behavior you haven't observed yet. Theism, Intelligent Design, etc can never be part of that framework because they get the order wrong and break a critical rule. They start with a speculated cause based on fancy and then observe reality instead of starting with reality and fantasizing causes based on it that can subsequently be determined are incorrect. That's the critical rule, the speculative part, the part you are just pulling out of your mind, it has to be possible to test it against the reality and fail if it is inconsistent. You can't prove there is no god and when you equate the rules of reality to a god's will it not only can't be dis-proven but becomes irrelevant from the point of science. It doesn't matter if conservation of energy and matter exists because it is reality or because that's how a god made it, it still works the same way and the math that follows is useful for exactly the same things.