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The Vatican Invites World's Leading Scientists To Discuss Cosmology (independent.co.uk)
In 2014, Pope Francis declared that God is not "a magician with a magic wand" and that evolution and the Big Bang theory are real. Now, the Vatican has sent an invitation to the world's leading scientists and cosmologists to try and understand the Big Bang. The Independent reports: Astrophysicists and other experts will attend the Vatican Observatory to discuss black holes, gravitational waves and space-time singularities as it honors the late Jesuit cosmologist considered one of the fathers of the idea that the universe began with a gigantic explosion. The conference honoring Monsignor George Lemaitre is being held at the Vatican Observatory, founded by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 to help correct the notion that the Roman Catholic Church was hostile to science. In 1927, Lemaitre was the first to explain that the receding of distant galaxies was the result of the expansion of the universe, a result he obtained by solving equations of Einstein's theory of general relativity. Lemaitre's theory was known as the "primeval atom," but it is more commonly known today as the big-bang theory. The head of the Vatican Observatory, Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno, says Lemaitre's research proves that you can believe in God and the big-bang theory.
If you're going to be Christian and don't want to be a retard, Catholicism is where it's at.
Because young earthers are generally not Catholic.
. .
Now that the Pope has lured them in, he should put them all on trial for heresy.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Sadly, the US Catholic church is mired in the 15th century.
The "Young Earth" theory of 6,000 years old planet is a relatively recent development, when people impressed by the advances in science and particularly physics and with too much time on their hands started looking for "clues" in the Bible for the Earth's age.
Reality is that Bible is completely unconcerned with "how old the Earth is" because at the time it was written the Earth's age was completely irrelevant to the lives of most people. (That's true today too.) The Bible and the sacred texts in other religions are only concerned with the psychological -- the idea being to guide you through making everyday decisions in your life. (Of course a lot of people pervert this principle -- the Young Earthers being one example -- but that's a different story.) The Bible is a catalog of archetypes and has no interest in knowledge of the objective universe for its own sake.
The originator of the Big Bang theory was in fact a Catholic priest, a Belgian I think, except he gave it a boring name, the British physicist who mocked him called his theory Big Bang, and the name stayed. It's nicely documented in the movie Hawking with Benedict Cumberbatch.
Because young earthers are generally not Catholic.
Indeed. The fundamentalist protestants that believe in the Young Earth, and build replicas of Noah's ark, also believe that the pope is the antichrist. They are two completely different groups.
But to answer the original question: God put the fossils and other evidence for evolution on earth to test our faith. It is a trick to separate the true believers from the doubters that will be consumed in the Lake of Fire when the moment of Rapture arrives.
At least this is why my fundamentalist brother-in-law tells me.
Just give the Universe ID a GUID, Then, how you label the "was_created_by" field can then change at will, without affecting the fact that it IS.
Notice, it is an ID, not necessarily a UniqueID... "This is my universe. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my life."
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Ask Galileo how that worked out. Sounds like desperate actions of cult who's way past expiration date.
Not this again. I'm not Catholic, I disagree with a lot of the politics of the Catholic Church, and obviously most of its religious doctrine is hooey.
But anti-science? Nope. And the "Galileo affair" is a red herring, one of the very few episodes in the Catholic Church's long history where it comes across as anti-science -- although actually, it wasn't so much. Galileo himself was spouting off about stuff that didn't actually make sense according to the science of the time. That doesn't justify shutting him down or placing him under house arrest of course, but that's a free speech issue, not a suppression of SCIENCE issue.
Anyhow, I'm not going to bother describing the Catholic Church's long history of support of science, how a few 19th-century anti-Catholic revisionist historians basically trumped up the idea that the Church was anti-science, and how Galileo's case was a LOT more complicated than some stupid inaccurate portrayal you've heard from Neil deGrasse Tyson or whatever. You want to know more? I've explained it before here. You want to know more about the details of Galileo's theories and the problems? I've explained that here. I could go on, but hopefully that's at least enough to prove Pope Francis's point here: the Catholic Church throughout its history has rarely been hostile to science and in fact for most of the past thousand years has probably been the biggest and most consistent institution to support it over the longest period.
- Saint Augustine of Hippo
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Giordano Bruno was also a Catholic monk, who advanced the "infinite universe" theory, and got burned at the stake by the Vatican for his trouble.
Um, that was in the 16th century. A little bit of history has happened since then - including the fact that Benedict is no longer Pope (current guy is Francis).
Back in the 18th and 19th century many Americans were practising slavery, so perhaps you could let go of a Pope that lived in the 16th century. He, like the early Americans, was a creature of his times. It is time to get over it. We all have skeletons in the historical closet.
I am anarch of all I survey.
They've been doing astronomy for over a century. They're hardly trying to look "hip" or "cool".
Biblical numerology was never intended to be taken literally. You're supposed read the number of years and think, "oh, right. That doesn't really mean X years. That means Y alternate meaning."
e.g. The number 7 means completeness and perfection, and the number 40 means a period of testing.
When numbers are added or multiplied in the bible, you're not supposed to try to use algebra.
X plus Y means "both the meaning of X and the meaning of Y",
X times Y means something similar to addition, but it adds extra emphasis.
Anyone who believes in a literal 6000 year old earth because of the Bible needs to go take a required freshman Bible Studies class at a religious university ASAP. It doesn't matter which one you pick. They'll all tell you you're wrong if you think the Bible says the earth is 6000 years old, and then they'll teach you the context/meaning of all of those numbers.
Tell you what, when you have an alternative explanation for the CMBR (and its neutrino counterpart), nucleosynthesis (ratio of hydrogen, helium and lithium in the observable universe), and the red shift of distant galaxies, you let us know.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The problem with defending the Church's treatment of Galileo as being based on their view of science "at the time" is that science barely existed at the time, and Galileo is seen as one of the founders of modern science. The Ptolemaic model was not science, it was a complex mathematical model built to shoehorn in a whole pack of observations into a much older geocentric view of the universe. It sure the heck wasn't science, which is fine, because science as we know it didn't exist in the 2nd century AD, but by the 17th century and Copernicus's theory and Galileo's observations, there was no excuse at all, other than just an unfortunate episode of the Church not listening to the words of one of its greatest Doctors, Augustine of Hippo, who cautioned against exactly what the Church did.
And the Church has acknowledged its error and unjust way it treated Galileo, so I don't see any need to whitewash the Church's treatment of him.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The best part is that God only created the universe so that He could fake the moon landing.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
So long as you don't use a condom. But touching little boys is ok.
The main reason that there is so much pedophilia in Catholicism is because the Catholic church has created its own traditions which go against the teachings of the Bible. They do not allow priests or the pope to get married, yet Peter, the guy they claim to be the first pope was married. An example of one such passage that is ignored by the church is 1 Corinthians 7:
"Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband."
and
"But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion."
If the Catholic church allowed its priests to follow the teachings of these scriptures there would be far less sexual immorality and abuse in the church.
Penrose's Cycles of Time puts forward a really straightforward mechanism for the big bang. When the last massive particle pops and all the energy in the universe is massless photons, you have no mass, so no gravity and no time. Everything is simple, low entropy, dominated by photons and bingo you have something that looks (and is) identical to the state at start of the big bang.
It hard to see why it isn't true.
He's a smart fellow that Penrose.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
God put the fossils and other evidence for evolution on earth to test our faith.
The majority of young earth creationists do not believe that God put the fossils there to test our faith. The majority of young earth creationists believe at least some of the following:
1) That the majority of fossils exist because many animals were buried in the flood and that the torrential flood caused the different rock layers (rather than millions of years)
2) That fossilization can happen much quicker than previously thought...in a matter of years rather than hundreds of thousands of years.
3) Because fossilization is relatively recent, long-range radiometric dating meant to measure millions of years is not suitable and gives inaccurate results. Much the same way as doing long-range radiometric dating on recent volcanic rocks yields incorrect results.
4) That recently discovered dinosaur DNA either confirms the young earth creationist model or at the very least shows that secular scientists are wrong about how long DNA can really last.
Does a God need it?
You (and the creationist idiots for different reasons) are looking at things the wrong way IMHO. As I see it science and religion are orthogonal unless it's dumbed down Christianity-Lite that sees science as a direct threat to it's very financial business model.
Mendel was quite happy working out a few things about genetics as well as being a monk, they didn't conflict. In geology four out of the five that disproved the "Noah's flood" theory of fossils were ordained. They didn't have so narrow an idea of religion that reality could get in the way.
Giordano Bruno was also a Catholic monk, who advanced the "infinite universe" theory, and got burned at the stake by the Vatican for his trouble.
Correlation is not causation. He was heretical on quite a few issues and if his only heresy would have been his scientific work, my guess would be that he would have lived a lot longer. Case in point — how many did the Church burn because of scientific work? I am not aware of any such definite case.
I take your point, however. The Catholic Church has been pretty good on most science - up and down- but you've got to be careful, because if Science starts to suggest something that makes the Vatican too uncomfortable, they might get slapped down pretty hard. Though Benedict seems a decent sort in that regard.
Well, right now Catholic Church is very uncomfortable with embryonic research. I don't see the hammer falling.
The pope before him would have gladly started burning witches and homosexuals again if he could.
This is a good reason not to ever trust any group of people. If you think well of scientists, look up Tuskegee syphilis experiment. For a wide scale corruption of science, look up Nazi Germany.
I heard a quantum astro physicist speak on this recently. It was interesting that what he said the requirements for the big bang would be just happened to match up to some things outside of physics.
You mentioned:
> It all comes down to relativity: If the universe started as a single dimensionless point, then the gravity would have been so strong that time didn't exist. If time didn't exist
If time didn't exist within that point, if the gravity was so strong nothing could escape, then *nothing* could happen, within a basic understanding of relatively. For anything to happen, for the big bang to happen, you need either something outside pf physics (something meta-physical) or certain laws of quantum physics must be present in a very particular way.
Biblically, when God is asked who he is, the answer is basically "I am what it timeless" or "I am what has always been and always will be" (English doesn't have exactly the right words because we give several meanings to the word "is/am" Spanish comes closer with es vs esta). Also "I am the truth". So God states he is, essentially, timeless truth. Whatever has always been true, that's God.
And the physicists say that *before* the big bang can happen, quantum physics must *already* be true. Quantum physics must be timeless truth in order to get the big bang, or else the big bang has to be caused by something beyond physics, something meta-physical.
Therefore reading the plain words, the laws pf physics are timeless truth that must have existed before the big bang, and that's what God is - timeless truth that existed before the big bang. The founders of the US would then have been correct to call the laws of nature the laws of God, acts of nature are called acts of God. They are one and the same. They are timeless truth.
Except all "discoveries" of dinosaur DNA are generally believed to be caused by contamination. One, for example, turned out to be a human Y chromosome. To date, AFAIK, they haven't been able to extract nontrivial fragments of DNA from any samples that are more than a few hundred thousand years old, if that.
Current models suggest the complete destruction of DNA after about 6.8 million years, which is approximately an order of magnitude shorter than the time that has passed since dinosaurs last walked the earth. So unless the young Earth folks are correct, I suspect that recovering actual dinosaur DNA would take some as-yet undiscovered, spectacularly unlikely chemical reaction that replaces the base pairs uniquely with some other mineral or something. It just doesn't seem very likely to find DNA from anything not warm-blooded, i.e. from any animal that couldn't live far enough north or south to get frozen after its death. It is probably not possible even then, but it isn't entirely impossible, because the half-life of short fragments goes up dramatically as the storage temperature drops.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The Ptolemaic model was not science, it was a complex mathematical model built to shoehorn in a whole pack of observations into a much older geocentric view of the universe. It sure the heck wasn't science
Well, the history of science has been filled with shoehorning.
The "science" that preceded relativity started as a complex mathematical model built to shoehorn in a whole pack of observations into a much older non-relativistic (aether) view of the universe.
The "science" that preceded quantum mechanics started as a complex mathematical model built to shoehorn in a whole pack of observation into a much older non-quantum (deterministic) view of the universe.
It often takes quite a while for views of our universe to change and not everyone goes along quietly. Simply dismissing the stuff that came before as "sure the heck wasn't science" doesn't really honor the scientific method at all. We'd be pretty arrogant to think that 100 years from now, all the "science" we have come up with today won't be looked at with derision and dismissiveness.
Even Einstein (who came up with relativity and won a Nobel prize for the quantum mechanical photo-electric effect) spent years trying to dismiss the currently accepted quantum view of the universe (the probabilistic view, aka god does not play dice) and many think never fully accepted it. I don't think he's the only one either...
As I wrote elsewhere it really came down to politics and calling the Pope an idiot in print. Others had been discussing the Copernican model before Galileo (and Galileo for two decades before his trial), but they did not depict a character that was obviously the Pope and obviously an idiot in their discussions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair
Makes about as much sense.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The Vatican has maintained an astronomy office since 1774: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... .
In 1993 the Vatican Observatory saw first light on one of the world's premier large telescopes on Mt. Graham in Arizona (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vatican_Advanced_Technology_Telescope), a project which was almost killed off by the same Greens who are trying to prevent the Thirty Meter Telescope in Hawaii from being built, on the same excuse of "sacred to my people" that is being used now in Hawaii.
The fuck?
You are aware quantum physics involves actual tests that can - and have been performed . Quantum electro-dynamics produces results that are so accurate they have lead many to call it the most precisely tested theory in the history of science
'Causality' is not ignored, it's just a matter of fact that observable evidence from quantum physics demonstrates that there are in fact acausal events on the quantum scale. Just because you - and most people - don't understand the physics involved using common sense does not mean the theory fails.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
Take a look at their bank accounts and other holdings.
That just means they are talented at scamming the credulous and are huge hypocrites. Take one look at Vatican City if you need proof that of their hypocrisy about "helping the poor". They are only interested in finding new angles to take advantage of people.
The church wanting to "talk" about cosmology is a waste of everyone's time because they have nothing useful to add to the discussion. Their idea of cosmology ends with the writings of primitive men who died thousands of years ago. The only interest the church has here is in hoodwinking idiots into thinking they are interested in something more than growing their flock and keeping their gravy train going. An organization which has based their interpretation of the world around a ridiculous fictional book isn't likely to be interested in a rational and evidence based discussion. They are just trying to figure out where the gaps are to continue their god of the gaps argument.
Big Bang is a "socially accepted theory" just like the geocentric model or spontaneous generation used to be.
Next generation telescopes launched in the next 10 years will determine the Big Bang is false, just another human-friendly creationist theory dressed up in 20th century scifi.
And that will be science doing what it's supposed to do. Coming up with theories of how things work and testing them all the time, trying to disprove them. When something is found not to work, new evidence is used to come up with a better model.
Contrast with religion.
You have a point but not really about the topic at hand. Christianity-lite has a lot to answer for. The topic here is the Vatican so perhaps you should consider it from that perspective and not what the lay preacher on your radio asking for cash is going on about. Science threatens the business model of the latter which is why they have attacked geology, biology and now any science related to climate.
It kind of make sense with a bunch that started off by claiming that the San Francisco earthquake was an act of divine retribution - science got in the way of a good story, but that approach is very much more business than religion IMHO.
Curious how they interpret genesis then. If the big bang theory is accurate, then a god simply cannot have created the universe. It all comes down to relativity: If the universe started as a single dimensionless point, then the gravity would have been so strong that time didn't exist. If time didn't exist, then there was no time for a god to create the universe.
It is unlikely that the big bang presents any sort of theological problem for the church. The theory was put forward by a Catholic priest teaching at a Catholic university after all.
Keep in mind that communications between two parties needs to be a least common denominator sort of thing. An all powerful God has to use concepts that humans can understand. The pre-scientific farmers and shepherds of the bible's day needed something a bit simplified compared to a modern astrophysicist. Perhaps if God were to explain things today we might have a genesis where our universe is created out of a multiverse. That would be closer to what I think the church argues, that God is beyond the universe, outside of it. Not simply in a different geographical part of it. Hence the ability to create space, time and the universe.
What this is, I suspect, is the Catholic leadership realizing that the window of ignorance is just about to close on their fingers, so they're scrambling a bit to retrench a little further outside of their normal run of indoctrination.
Hmm. Your statement makes sense only if considered in super-slo-motion. From the summary (not even TFA), the Vatican Observatory has been around for more than 100 years. Lemaitre was one of the early people working out the connections between GR and cosmology. likely before anyone on slashdot was even born.
Reading over these comments as a whole (many of which are completely over the top, the one I'm replying to is merely inaccurate), I'm sad that Slashdotters are so ready to respond to something by slinging mud rather than considering the topic of discussion: a cool conference on cosmology. Come on people. Grow up. You can not like a religion. Or any religion. But then slamming people on unrelated topics because they don't agree with your own personal dogma..... wait. Isn't that one of the very same complaints many people have against organized religion? At least try to be consistent.