The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything [Archive] - Page 2 - HungAngels

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my my my!

06-06-2013, 10:08 PM

The use of "Infinity" in scientific theory, is just a convenient way of saying "I don't know" for scientists , and essentially a cop out. They should just flat out say, "here on earth we are trying to find smaller and smaller particles and what makes up our surroundings. But for the cosmos, they have no real clue, about age and extent of the universe. So , what they do say, is all theories, and are just as valid as a "god" theory.

For discussion's sake, I could just as well say GOD invented the universe
and of course someone will ask, "what was god floating in, before he invented the universe". "What is god, is he comprised of quarks, string or what is the physical description?"

fuck If I know. See, I'm honest. "Infinity" is another way of saying "fuck if I know".

trish

06-06-2013, 10:21 PM

For discussion's sake, I could just as well say GOD invented the universe
It wouldn't much of a conversation.

We say a set is infinite if it can be put into one-to-one correspondence with a proper subset of itself. For example, multiplication by two establishes a bijection from the set of integers onto the set of even integers. Hence the set of integers is infinite. Simple stuff really.

my my my!

06-06-2013, 10:31 PM

Trish, simply, they don't know and you don't know either. Infinity is a cop out. that's why they are called theories.

If I were to challenge any scientist , to show me proof (video) of the big bang or what the universe looked like back then, they could not because they simply do not know.

Just like a person that says GOD created the universe says:
When asked: "When did god create the universe in (integers) years?"
answer: god works in mysterious ways, and I don't know if it was 18,876,838,828 years 4 months, 5 days, and 32 seconds ago, or if it was 5,000 years ago.

No one can prove how old the universe is, just as no one can prove that god does or does not exist

trish

06-06-2013, 10:51 PM

You can't show me video of your father's sperm penetrating your mother's egg, but that doesn't mean there's no proof it didn't happen. Hmmmm what would count as reasonable proof?

The cosmic background radiation, it's exact spectrum, the atomic abundances, the expansion and it rate over time are the early examples of the big bang's theory's success. The further we gaze into the cosmos, the deeper we peer into time. The oldest galaxies that we now have pictures of are 13.3 billion years old. We can be confident that the universe itself is around 13.7 billion years old. (You'll have to explain sometime how your pet peeve concerning infinity actually fits into the picture here).

martin48

06-06-2013, 11:02 PM

Well if it is all total crap to you - then fine, but here's an attempt to explain the best estimate that we have for the age of the universe.

We can measure the distance of galaxies, and how galaxies are moving. Galaxies are not staying still in space, nor are they moving randomly. Some galaxies are moving towards their neighbours, attracted by their mutual gravity. But the biggest pattern seen is that galaxies are moving apart from one another. This motion is not all at the same speed; instead it follows a pattern where galaxies that are further apart are moving more quickly.
This pattern indicates the whole universe is expanding. We can see every portion of the universe moving away from us from our view point on Earth. This does not make the centre of the expansion – there would be the same view from anyway in space
We detect a galaxy’s motion by looking at its light spectrum. When a galaxy is moving by the expansion of space, its light waves are stretched out, making it appear redder (the famous red shift). The change in the galaxy’s color is called the red shift, and can be used to calculate its velocity. From the measurements of many galaxies, we can accurately measure the expansion rate of the universe as a whole.
The age of universe can be determined by imagining what the universe looked like in the past, “rewinding” the expansion. In the past the galaxies must have been closer together, and in the very distant past they would have been packed together in a tiny point. If we assume that the expansion rate is constant over time, the age for the universe as a whole is about 10 billion years. However, astronomers have been working over the last 20 years to determine how the expansion rate changes with time. We now know that early in the universe the expansion slowed down, but now it is speeding up. Using careful measurements of this change in expansion rate, the age of the universe is now estimated to be 13.7 ± 0.13 billion years.

Not an infinity in sight.

Trish, simply, they don't know and you don't know either. Infinity is a cop out. that's why they are called theories.

If I were to challenge any scientist , to show me proof (video) of the big bang or what the universe looked like back then, they could not because they simply do not know.

Just like a person that says GOD created the universe says:
When asked: "When did god create the universe in (integers) years?"
answer: god works in mysterious ways, and I don't know if it was 18,876,838,828 years 4 months, 5 days, and 32 seconds ago, or if it was 5,000 years ago.

No one can prove how old the universe is, just as no one can prove that god does or does not exist

my my my!

06-06-2013, 11:30 PM

Well if it is all total crap to you - then fine, but here's an attempt to explain the best estimate that we have for the age of the universe.

We can measure the distance of galaxies, and how galaxies are moving. Galaxies are not staying still in space, nor are they moving randomly. Some galaxies are moving towards their neighbours, attracted by their mutual gravity. But the biggest pattern seen is that galaxies are moving apart from one another. This motion is not all at the same speed; instead it follows a pattern where galaxies that are further apart are moving more quickly.
This pattern indicates the whole universe is expanding. We can see every portion of the universe moving away from us from our view point on Earth. This does not make the centre of the expansion – there would be the same view from anyway in space
We detect a galaxy’s motion by looking at its light spectrum. When a galaxy is moving by the expansion of space, its light waves are stretched out, making it appear redder (the famous red shift). The change in the galaxy’s color is called the red shift, and can be used to calculate its velocity. From the measurements of many galaxies, we can accurately measure the expansion rate of the universe as a whole.
The age of universe can be determined by imagining what the universe looked like in the past, “rewinding” the expansion. In the past the galaxies must have been closer together, and in the very distant past they would have been packed together in a tiny point. If we assume that the expansion rate is constant over time, the age for the universe as a whole is about 10 billion years. However, astronomers have been working over the last 20 years to determine how the expansion rate changes with time. We now know that early in the universe the expansion slowed down, but now it is speeding up. Using careful measurements of this change in expansion rate, the age of the universe is now estimated to be 13.7 ± 0.13 billion years.

Not an infinity in sight.

Well, they're assuming the Universe is only so big, because that's all they can see.

What about the light that has not become visible yet? There could be another 13 billion years worth of light that has not come into their visible or recordable data.

trish

06-06-2013, 11:58 PM

The argument Martin presented makes no presumption about seeing to the beginning. Simply run the expansion backwards and calculate the time of collision. That's the Big Bang. You do know how to divide distance by rate to get time don't you?

No cosmologist at any point said, "I can't see any further back, so that's all there is to see." You're arguing against a straw man. Besides you're the one asking for video proof, not the cosmologists.

Indeed no one can see past the decoupling horizon of which I spoke in prior posts, yet the era of nucleosynthesis took place before the decoupling.

Odelay

06-06-2013, 11:59 PM

What about the light that has not become visible yet? There could be another 13 billion years worth of light that has not come into their visible or recordable data.

I'm no physicist, not even an armchair astronomist, but the little I've read on the topic indicates that they have seen light from galaxies moving away from us at speeds faster than the speed of light, where the light was emitted from a time long ago. So although we can conclude we'll never see light from such galaxies again, we can still calculate how fast these galaxies, now invisible to us, are moving away from us. Again, I only have a degree in engineering from "long ago", so my statistics is rather rusty, but I'm guessing you can take all of such galaxies and use some sort of extrapolation technique to determine what are the galaxies furthest away from us, and from that how big and old the universe is.

EDIT: or, what Trish says above. :)

Stavros

06-07-2013, 12:50 PM

A: The question for Christians like Lemaitre would be, “Why those mysteries and not the ones cherished by other religions?” Why can’t we say, “The Hindu gods exist, timelessly and without extension and are responsible for our existence?” What test can be used to determine who is more likely correct?

B: If we had a test, it wouldn’t remain a mystery.

The example of the Hindu gods is problematic because 'Hinduism' is not really a religion, but beliefs which are grouped together because they share some things in common. The gods in these belief systems identified with natural phenomena such as trees, rivers, animals and the climate serve a similar function as the Greek gods and are regarded by monotheism as primitive and even in a sense, juvenile. The irony is that the superiority complex of monotheism matches that of science as the source of knowledge about the creation of the world and the purpose of human life. Science, as I think you know, has often been claimed to have superseded religion as the primary source of knowledge, and it is beyond question that science in alliance with engineering and commerce has transformed the physical world we live in and given us longer lives and greater powers than existed before -although our ability to destroy our environment has been part of human history since the beginning and cannot be attributed to modernity, even if the capacity for damage is that much greater.

Science has practical, usable benefits that appear to trump religion; and yet, even the conceptual aspects of science can be as soothing to secular man as the comforts of eternal life are to a Christian, or the concept of paradise is to a Muslim. Even when those scientists are faced with problems they cannot solve. Indeed, science without problems is like Christianity without redemption, pointless. It may therefore be wrong for people with religion to consider secular mortals as spiritually arid, but it is probably just as wrong for the secular humans to regard people with faith as deluded. You often find people in both communities who love the music of JS Bach, who dedicated all his music to the glory of God.

Not a satisfactory conclusion, but it's the best I can do.

Jericho

06-07-2013, 02:06 PM

So, I'm confused, does God exist? :hide-1:

trish

06-07-2013, 02:53 PM

trish

06-07-2013, 03:02 PM

It may therefore be wrong for people with religion to consider secular mortals as spiritually arid, but it is probably just as wrong for the secular humans to regard people with faith as deluded. You often find people in both communities who love the music of JS Bach, who dedicated all his music to the glory of God.

Not a satisfactory conclusion, but it's the best I can do.
The best we can do and all we can do.

BTW have I told you recently, that I thoroughly enjoy our discussions. Thanks for being an intelligent man focused on understanding, discovery and their clear communication.

Jericho

06-07-2013, 03:47 PM

martin48

06-07-2013, 05:35 PM

I like a challenge especially one set by Trish. I found such a paper!

Scottish Journal of Theology

Scottish Journal of Theology (http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayJournal?jid=SJT) / Volume 58 / Issue 04 / November 2005, pp 468-484

Does ‘God’ exist?

A. N. Williams
Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, CB2 1RH anw25@cam.ac.uk

Abstract

The essay considers the possible meanings of ‘God’ in Christian discourse, given its assertorial usage and in light of the doctrine of the Trinity. Examination of the grammar of analogous sentences highlights the problems of using ‘God’ as the subject of verbs of agency. In light of the enhypostasization of divine nature within the three persons of the Trinity, and in no other context, ‘God’ cannot designate any one person of the Trinity, nor the Three together, nor divine nature conceived anhypostatically and, given its propensity to mislead, use of ‘God’ in Christian discourse is called into question.

So it's all down to "examination of the grammar of analogous sentences" - so that's another mystery sorted.

There are no peer reviewed papers in any respected journals (that I know of) claiming to demonstrate the non-existence of God. On the other hand, there are no such papers (that I know of published after the nineteenth century) claiming to use the hypothesis that God exists to explain a physical, chemical or biological phenomenon. On the third hand, there are quite a number of ordained reverends, priests, preachers, bishops etc. who professionally endorse the claim of God's existence and even talk to Him. On the fourth hand, many of them (despite the fact they they all talk to God) disagree about what God says, thinks and intends for us to do. If you actually have the four hands required to follow this nonsense, you're probably the god Kali. :Bowdown:

trish

06-07-2013, 05:55 PM

That's what I get for not being specific...I meant "refereed scientific journals." Nevertheless, good find. A refereed paper in a professional journal of theology purporting ... purporting... what the fuck is it purporting?? Damn professional jargon and making words mean what you want them to mean!!

I have a very good friend and colleague who is in fact a theologian and she sometimes invites me to sit in on informal discussions with her colleagues. I give it a valiant effort but usually I have no idea what they're talking about.

buttslinger

06-07-2013, 06:03 PM

[CENTER][SIZE="3"]It's a sad fuckin day when buttslinger is an authority on ANYTHING, but I saw God in the fifth grade. There was a STRAIGHT line heading FORWARD to GOD on the horizon. Below that line was a hazy area known as DESIRE.

So the answer is, God exists for me, but not you....you HEATHENS!!!

Prospero

06-07-2013, 06:06 PM

I've met phyicists and biologists and cosmologists and many other scientists who believe firmly in some sort of creative principle underluing order which can be called God. There are all manner of theories that can be constructed in support of thisf. The anthropic principle is one which many cosmologists seem to favour - that the universe is as it is and we are in it because it was conceived for us. If everything was even just one tiny bit different then life would not be possible. The British scientist John Barrow a cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician and winner of the Templeton prize a few years ago - has written vast volumes on this. I've debated it with senior clerics - Christian and Muslim. In the end all admit that there is and must be a leap of faith. There is and can never ben scientific proof. I cannot make such a leap... though I suppose on occasions I'm tempted by the Pascalian wager.

trish

06-07-2013, 06:45 PM

True enough. There are more believers among physicists than biologists, and they often lay out their reasons in books for laypersons, but very rarely if ever in refereed, scientific journals.

Fine tuning is indeed something that is discussed in professional papers and conferences. If the gravitational constant were a little smaller, matter would not have clumped into stars and galaxies. If the gravitational constant were bigger, the universe would have collapsed before life had time to evolve. The trouble is, all these exercises hold the other constants of nature at their known fixed values while fiddling with the one of interest. It has yet to be determined how large a domain of variation among all the constants together is tolerable to life as we know it (not to mention life as we don't know it). So we don't really know if there is a fine tuning problem. To know if there is or not we would first have to have a definitive calculation of how probable life is in a randomly chosen universe. We would have to specify chosen from what? Do we mean chosen from a prescribe set of models, or a real collection of multiverses? What do we mean by randomly chosen? What values of Planck's constant are possible choices and what distribution function applies? The basic physics is just not there to answers these questions and may never be there. Theoreticians and especially cosmologists do definitely do a lot of speculation in their professional papers...but they are usually honest about it and will warn you up front.

In almost everything people do there's a leap of faith. Scientific truth is not the same as 100% certainty. Indeed it knows better than to aim for certainty. It's content with approximations, refinements, revisions and muddling along.

Mathematicians on the other hand aspire to certainty. You gotta love 'em for the purity of their hearts. But even they make mistakes (oops...forgot to carry the one).

There is a faith that aspires to certainty, and a faith that is provisional and open to revision.

Stavros

06-07-2013, 08:31 PM

So it's all down to "examination of the grammar of analogous sentences" - so that's another mystery sorted.

In a way, Martin, you draw attention to a core issue in communications that has been debated over the years, by Habermas, Rawls, and others: it isn't so much the epistemological question: how do we know what we know? but questions such as: how do we communicate with each other, and why does language not automatically solve differences once the rules of language have been agreed upon? The structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss, which owes a lot to the structural linguistics of Roman Jakobson, seeks a common language among peoples ancient and modern, north and south -because if we all share the same root modes of communicating what we mean by 'mother', 'hungry', 'good' and bad', the opportunity for peaceful co-existence as an intellectual idea seems solid.

What disrupts this congenial party, are modes of discourse which collide, not just in politics but also in religion. One of the issues which I doubt the arcane theologians in your link discuss, is the relationship of Christianity to the politics of democracy, and how western democracy has taken concepts of equality, justice, fairness, and particularly tolerance and obligation from Christianity which may not exist in other religious discourses. In these discourses, the meaning of, identification of, or proof of God is not as relevant as the practical application of what is claimed to be 'God's law' or 'God's will' or 'God's message'.

There was a time when the definition of such things was exclusively the preserve of priests, and for a long time the Catholic Church -indeed, most people, being illiterate had no other source of authority, which is an obvious reason why the Roman church treated literacy and the translation of religious texts from Latin into the vernacular as an heresy. In fact it was not heresy at all, but democratisation.

To cut a long argument short: secular humanists in the west have co-opted Christian ideals into many of their arguments on tolerance, equality and democracy. This doesn't make them closet Christians who should own up and admit their believe in God, but it does offer a more subtle relationship between believers and unbelievers.

fred41

06-08-2013, 01:15 AM

I've met phyicists and biologists and cosmologists and many other scientists who believe firmly in some sort of creative principle underluing order which can be called God.

You sure those aren't just the stoners in the bunch? You have to get close to see if you smell Taco Bell on their breath....or tell-tale orange Cheez Doodle powder under their fingernails....:)

joeninety

06-08-2013, 01:53 AM

Well if it is all total crap to you - then fine, but here's an attempt to explain the best estimate that we have for the age of the universe.

We can measure the distance of galaxies, and how galaxies are moving. Galaxies are not staying still in space, nor are they moving randomly. Some galaxies are moving towards their neighbours, attracted by their mutual gravity. But the biggest pattern seen is that galaxies are moving apart from one another. This motion is not all at the same speed; instead it follows a pattern where galaxies that are further apart are moving more quickly.
This pattern indicates the whole universe is expanding. We can see every portion of the universe moving away from us from our view point on Earth. This does not make the centre of the expansion – there would be the same view from anyway in space
We detect a galaxy’s motion by looking at its light spectrum. When a galaxy is moving by the expansion of space, its light waves are stretched out, making it appear redder (the famous red shift). The change in the galaxy’s color is called the red shift, and can be used to calculate its velocity. From the measurements of many galaxies, we can accurately measure the expansion rate of the universe as a whole.
The age of universe can be determined by imagining what the universe looked like in the past, “rewinding” the expansion. In the past the galaxies must have been closer together, and in the very distant past they would have been packed together in a tiny point. If we assume that the expansion rate is constant over time, the age for the universe as a whole is about 10 billion years. However, astronomers have been working over the last 20 years to determine how the expansion rate changes with time. We now know that early in the universe the expansion slowed down, but now it is speeding up. Using careful measurements of this change in expansion rate, the age of the universe is now estimated to be 13.7 ± 0.13 billion years.

Not an infinity in sight.

Riiiigght so what is beyond the edge of expansion?????

Come to think of it how do you create something from absolutely zilch, correct me if I am wrong is that then magic or is it simply impossible??????

joeninety

06-08-2013, 02:09 AM

. Infinity is a cop out. that's why they are called theories.

No one can prove how old the universe is, just as no one can prove that god does or does not exist

Are we not Gods in our own right to the life we create in laboratories, to the things we build whilst all other life on this planet fails to grasp or comprehend our capabilities.

As this is so, how arrogant it is to not see, that our view of an even bigger picture might be just as obscured

How do you explain the preciseness of this universe then.

How do you create something from absolutely zilch??????

Infinity is logical, the problem is getting your tongue to engage in tasting such a notion.
__________________
Evie this bad boys just for you, and good luck with everything xxx

TSBootyLondon

06-08-2013, 02:28 AM

Oh I don't know! just when I think there is a god someone goes and write a bad bloody review! lol ;-)

sukumvit boy

06-08-2013, 02:50 AM

There are no peer reviewed papers in any respected journals (that I know of) claiming to demonstrate the non-existence of God. On the other hand, there are no such papers (that I know of published after the nineteenth century) claiming to use the hypothesis that God exists to explain a physical, chemical or biological phenomenon. On the third hand, there are quite a number of ordained reverends, priests, preachers, bishops etc. who professionally endorse the claim of God's existence and even talk to Him. On the fourth hand, many of them (despite the fact they they all talk to God) disagree about what God says, thinks and intends for us to do. If you actually have the four hands required to follow this nonsense, you're probably the god Kali. :Bowdown:

Some physicists and mathematicians would quip that one would need four hands for all the "hand-waving" required in purported explanations for the existence of god.
Nicely laid out though ,Trish.
Martin also did a great job of succinctly explaining our current understanding or the history of the universe.
The level of intelligence and erudition found on this forum never ceases to astound me.
I'm an atheist and a Buddhist.
I'm currently watching "The God Delusion Debate" on DVD that a colleague lent me. The debate is between Richard Dawkins ,author of "The God Delusion" and John Lennox , a mathematician and cosmologist (and a Christian). Well done and worth watching.
http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php/video/35-full-length/164-the-dawkins-lennox-debate

joeninety

06-08-2013, 02:52 AM

Oh I don't know! just when I think there is a god someone goes and write a bad bloody review! lol ;-)

Don't lose faith Bella.......That was just the Devil making a brief appearance:hide-1:

joeninety

06-08-2013, 03:04 AM

Some physicists and mathematicians would quip that one would need four hands for all the "hand-waving" required in purported explanations for the existence of god.
Nicely laid out though ,Trish.
Martin also did a great job of succinctly explaining our current understanding or the history of the universe.
The level of intelligence and erudition found on this forum never ceases to astound me.
I'm an atheist and a Buddhist.
I'm currently watching "The God Delusion Debate" on DVD that a colleague lent me. The debate is between Richard Dawkins ,author of "The God Delusion" and John Lennox , a mathematician and cosmologist (and a Christian). Well done and worth watching.
http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php/video/35-full-length/164-the-dawkins-lennox-debate

Dorkins is a plonk his God Delusion book is just that "his delusion" as he raps on about the Christians lack of proof about the existence of god not once does he actually provide evidence to the contrary, even though he claims he will.

Anyone who reveres this little man from no where and regards his twaddle as engrossing is sadly as deluded as he is, about the nature of this reality and our existence.

The religion of Aethism is as ridiculous as the rest of them.........Although I have to say I am partial to a bit of Buddism:pumped:

trish

06-08-2013, 05:36 AM

In a way, Martin, you draw attention to a core issue in communications that has been debated over the years, by Habermas, Rawls, and others: it isn't so much the epistemological question: how do we know what we know? but questions such as: how do we communicate with each other, and why does language not automatically solve differences once the rules of language have been agreed upon?

Somehow it doesn’t seem all that paradoxical that language doesn’t automatically solve differences. Language allows us to clearly describe alternative possibilities and express our disagreements. The fact that differences in knowledge claims flourish even among those who share a language seems at first blush to demonstrate that we weigh evidence differently, that we are not all aware of the same evidence, that we have learned different frameworks and backgrounds for processing and developing ideas etc. These seem to be epistemological issues.

One of the issues which I doubt the arcane theologians in your link discuss, is the relationship of Christianity to the politics of democracy, and how western democracy has taken concepts of equality, justice, fairness, and particularly tolerance and obligation from Christianity which may not exist in other religious discourses. ... To cut a long argument short: secular humanists in the west have co-opted Christian ideals into many of their arguments on tolerance, equality and democracy. This doesn't make them closet Christians who should own up and admit their believe in God, but it does offer a more subtle relationship between believers and unbelievers.

I think this is definitely right. I can testify anecdotally that many of the values I hold dear (compassion, charity, tolerance, caring...to name a few) are values that were earnestly taught to me and all the children who went to the Methodist Sunday School I attended. I’m an atheist today. I’m not saying I never would have never developed the values I have today without my early Sunday school exposure; but the fact of the matter is those experiences were in my case formative. (One thing that I find somewhat disheartening today is the rise of the warrior Christ image, who rides like Gandalf the wizard and wields the sword of righteousness. This image is absolutely foreign to the teachings I remember as a child.)

trish

06-08-2013, 05:42 AM

I'm an atheist and a Buddhist.
I'm currently watching "The God Delusion Debate" on DVD that a colleague lent me. The debate is between Richard Dawkins ,author of "The God Delusion" and John Lennox , a mathematician and cosmologist (and a Christian). Well done and worth watching.
http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php...-lennox-debate (http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php/video/35-full-length/164-the-dawkins-lennox-debate)

Thanks for the recommendation. I can't remember in which thread, but I think I mentioned somewhere here at hungangels that I can sympathize with what I call Unicyclic Buddhism: 1) Instead of many reincarnations, there is only one cycle. 2) At the end we all achieve nothingness; i.e. freedom from existence. 3) Karma is just the tendency to reap the consequences of our past actions for good or ill.

trish

06-08-2013, 06:08 AM

Riiiigght so what is beyond the edge of expansion?????

There is no edge of the expansion. The key concept is non-euclidean geometry. Maybe the toy model I describe in post #149 can help. http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showpost.php?p=1336292&postcount=249

Come to think of it how do you create something from absolutely zilch, correct me if I am wrong is that then magic or is it simply impossible??????

It is a mistake to think of the Big Bang as an explanation of how the universe came to be. It is simply a model of the expansion. The models were an unexpected benefit of Einstein's theory of gravity. After Schwarzchild found a solution to the Einstein equations that describe the gravitational effects around a spherical star (confirming Einstein's cruder calculation of the advance of the perihelion of Mercury and the bending of star light by the Sun), Friedman and Lemaitre discovered solutions that seems to describe expanding or contracting universes. At about the same time Hubble was collecting evidence that on average the galaxies of the universe were racing away from each other at rates that increased somewhat linearly with their distances from one another. This fit exactly with the expanding solutions found by the theorists. As Martin so neatly demonstrated, expansion entails a finite age. The models are mathematically insistent on it. Gamow and his student Alpher used the work of Friedman, Lemaitre, Hubble and others to calculate the rate of production of light elements in the early universe. Their predicted table of abundances was later confirmed. They also predicted the residual cosmic microwave background radiation of a temperature of around three degrees Kelvin. That too was later discovered. The spectrum of the background was found to fit exactly the predictions of Gamow and Alpher. Gamow was something of a practical joker and he thought it would be funny to include Hans Bethe as a co-author of his paper with Alpher. So the paper appeared as authored by Alpher, Betha, Gamow. Back to the point: None of the originators of the big bang theory attempted to explain the origin or the existence or the creation of the universe. What they discovered and described was that the universe had a finite age and was expanding. These results are reasonably definitive.

There are people today who do write theoretical papers which modify the big bang equations and make stabs at explaining the existence of the universe. It is a project so far without a consensus. They will tell you up front that results are tenuous, speculative, fun to think about but not definitive.

martin48

06-08-2013, 10:01 AM

Always thought as an atheist to take a theology degree and just disagree with everything. Should be an easy course as they have just one set text.

That's what I get for not being specific...I meant "refereed scientific journals." Nevertheless, good find. A refereed paper in a professional journal of theology purporting ... purporting... what the fuck is it purporting?? Damn professional jargon and making words mean what you want them to mean!!

I have a very good friend and colleague who is in fact a theologian and she sometimes invites me to sit in on informal discussions with her colleagues. I give it a valiant effort but usually I have no idea what they're talking about.

martin48

06-08-2013, 10:04 AM

He needs a better PR agent. His last attempt 2,000 years ago is wearing off.

Oh I don't know! just when I think there is a god someone goes and write a bad bloody review! lol ;-)

martin48

06-08-2013, 10:16 AM

I have a very good friend and colleague who is in fact a theologian and she sometimes invites me to sit in on informal discussions with her colleagues. I give it a valiant effort but usually I have no idea what they're talking about.

Probably mutual!

Prospero

06-08-2013, 10:20 AM

"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
Oscar Wilde

martin48

06-08-2013, 10:23 AM

There's an interesting point here - it is often claimed by supporters of some divine intervention in creation that if some constant or parameter were slightly different then the universe or some aspect of it would not exist - certainly not in it's current form. What exists is what will exist given the laws of physics and its fundamental constants. That's all. The tendency to see causality is common. A trap that many fall into when discussing evolution.

True enough. There are more believers among physicists than biologists, and they often lay out their reasons in books for laypersons, but very rarely if ever in refereed, scientific journals.

Fine tuning is indeed something that is discussed in professional papers and conferences. If the gravitational constant were a little smaller, matter would not have clumped into stars and galaxies. If the gravitational constant were bigger, the universe would have collapsed before life had time to evolve. The trouble is, all these exercises hold the other constants of nature at their known fixed values while fiddling with the one of interest. It has yet to be determined how large a domain of variation among all the constants together is tolerable to life as we know it (not to mention life as we don't know it). So we don't really know if there is a fine tuning problem. To know if there is or not we would first have to have a definitive calculation of how probable life is in a randomly chosen universe. We would have to specify chosen from what? Do we mean chosen from a prescribe set of models, or a real collection of multiverses? What do we mean by randomly chosen? What values of Planck's constant are possible choices and what distribution function applies? The basic physics is just not there to answers these questions and may never be there. Theoreticians and especially cosmologists do definitely do a lot of speculation in their professional papers...but they are usually honest about it and will warn you up front.

In almost everything people do there's a leap of faith. Scientific truth is not the same as 100% certainty. Indeed it knows better than to aim for certainty. It's content with approximations, refinements, revisions and muddling along.

Mathematicians on the other hand aspire to certainty. You gotta love 'em for the purity of their hearts. But even they make mistakes (oops...forgot to carry the one).

There is a faith that aspires to certainty, and a faith that is provisional and open to revision.

martin48

06-08-2013, 10:25 AM

"I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.”
Oscar Wilde

Skeptic that I was as an adolescent, I had recently come to believe in a Supreme Being after thumbing through a Victoria’s Secret catalogue.
~ Woody Allen

I know, I've brought the level of intellectual argument down to my level

Prospero

06-08-2013, 10:26 AM

causality in evolution ie intelligent design? The eye it is argued is far too complex to have "evolved"

martin48

06-08-2013, 11:34 AM

causality in evolution ie intelligent design? The eye it is argued is far too complex to have "evolved"

Indeed, Charles Darwin himself acknowledged in On the Origin of Species—the 1859 book detailing his theory of evolution by natural selection—that it might seem absurd to think the eye formed by natural selection. He nonetheless firmly believed that the eye did evolve in that way, despite a lack of evidence for intermediate forms at the time. Now we have substantial evidence from three sources – the fossil record (which is patchy as soft tissues rarely fossilise), the taxonomy of living creatures and, more recently, studies of the genetic code across many species.
The simplest “eye” has to achieve three functions.

Light detection
Shading, in the form of dark pigment, for sensing the direction light is coming from
Connection to motor structures, for movement in response to light

In some creatures all three functions are undertaken by a single cell - single-celled euglena, for example. Agreed this is not an eye in that some spatial image of the external world is formed. The most-basic structure that is widely accepted as an eye has just two cells: a photoreceptor that detects light, and a pigment cell that provides shading. The photoreceptor connects to ciliated cells, which engage to move the animal in response to light. The marine ragworm embryo has such a two-celled eye.

An eye with more photoreceptors has more power: it can detect variations in light intensity across its surface. A cup-shaped eye can better sense both the direction light is coming from and the movement of nearby objects. These improvements require only minor changes to the basic eye. Planaria (a non-parasitic flatworm) have such “eyes”.

Invertebrates followed the complex eye – a collection of individual photoreceptors each with their own light gathering structures including lenses. In sense, this was not successful path. Insect predators (eg Dragonflies) have over 30,000 segments in the their eyes – which are large structures. If we were to possess compound eyes of insects but with our existing ability to see fine detail (1 second of arc – a telegraph wire at a km) then the diameter of the eye would be 2 metres!

Vertebrates developed simple eyes with a single lens and a retina. Our abilities are close the physical limits in terms of sensitivity and ability to see fine detail.

Biologists have made significant advances in tracing the origin of the eye—by studying how it forms in developing embryos and by comparing eye structure and genes across species to reconstruct when key traits arose. The results indicate that our kind of eye took shape in less than 100 million years, evolving from a simple light sensor for circadian and seasonal rhythms around 600 million years ago to an optically and neurologically sophisticated organ by 500 million years ago.

Here ended the First Lesson

hippifried

06-08-2013, 03:20 PM

Normally, I would call the claim that atheism or science are religious belief themselves a bunch of bunk, but then I see the scientist refer to the non-scientist as "laity". Guess that's one of those linguistic problems.

The problem I have with so many theories about the universe are the assumption of limits. The "expanding universe", for example, would require that there be non-universe to expand into. I'm not willing to make that assumption. There's more, but it just seems that we're trying to measure what could be infinite with finite tools & assumptions. Same goes for continuum. There's no end in sight, so why assume there's a beginning to look for? Isn't the whole discussion just an effort to get our finite heads around the concept of eternity? Very entertaining. Carry on.

buttslinger

06-08-2013, 04:02 PM

Pre big bang the universe was the size of a softball, finite, yet it had no edges. And Adam and Eve is hard to imagine??????

trish

06-08-2013, 04:16 PM

Normally, I would call the claim that atheism or science are religious belief themselves a bunch of bunk, but then I see the scientist refer to the non-scientist as "laity". Guess that's one of those linguistic problems.
Got me! I never thought of the origin of the word "layman" before and when I stop to figure out just how and why I use the term I'm embarrassed. I think I'll just refrain from using it outside its literal meaning. Thanks.

The problem I have with so many theories about the universe are the assumption of limits. The "expanding universe", for example, would require that there be non-universe to expand into. I'm not willing to make that assumption. The models do not not require space to expand into. Space itself expands. This seems to be a really difficult conceptual point which is why I described the toy universe in post #149. I'll see if I can do better in some future post. So there is no assumption here that the universe is within another. There are assumptions though, assumptions with experimental and observational evidence. Namely the assume the laws of physics currently understood apply, most notably the Einstein field equations.

There's more, but it just seems that we're trying to measure what could be infinite with finite tools & assumptions. Same goes for continuum. There's no end in sight, so why assume there's a beginning to look for? Isn't the whole discussion just an effort to get our finite heads around the concept of eternity? Very entertaining. Carry on.A religious person might say it's presumptive to think we're finite. Whatever our capacities we can only use what we got. But how much of a limitation is finite tools and finite assumptions? In elementary school a child learns her arithmetic tables and a simple algorithm and she becomes a master of division. There are infinitely many pairs of numbers she could potentially choose to divide, infinitely many different story problems she can solve. She hasn't conquered all of arithmetic, but she is a master of an infinite array of a particular kind of problem.

martin48

06-08-2013, 04:57 PM

Laity can mean
1. Laypeople considered as a group.
2. All those persons who are not members of a given profession or other specialized field.
So worry not.

trish

06-08-2013, 05:08 PM

Sorry, that reference was to post #249 (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showpost.php?p=1336292&postcount=249)

Here’s an illustration of that toy universe (not ours). It’s a toy model because it’s just a two dimensional spacetime. There one spatial dimension and one temporal direction. It has the geometry of a sphere. Nothing outside the sphere exists. Think only of the surface of the sphere; i.e. think of what it would be like if that sphere represented all of spacetime. Time in this model runs along the meridians. Space runs along the circles of latitude. At any given moment the spatial universe is a circle (except at the Big Bang and at the Big Crunch when its a degenerate circle; i.e. a point). It’s a pretty boring toy universe since the space you live in is just one dimensional. As you follow the time from the Bang to the Crunch the circle universe expands to a maximum and then contracts back to a point. The circles do not expand into space. There is no space outside the sphere. At any given time, each circle is all the space there is. There is no other space to expand into. When the circle expands, it is all of space that is expanding. When the circle contracts it is all of space that is contracting. Just for fun I drew the worldline of an imaginary god named Tom who is born in the big bang and dies in the big crunch.

fred41

06-08-2013, 06:35 PM

Out of curiosity, are we speaking of just one of these models...or a multitude of these models (either as part of the same "fabric" or different dimensions but overlapping/intersecting)...assuming multiple universes ...or just one?

(love the model BTW)

trish

06-08-2013, 06:50 PM

Here I've just been describing the attempt to select the one model from a class of models (known as the Lemaitre, Friedman, Robertson, Walker models) that best fits the current observations; a universe (not the one pictured by the way...it seems our universe will be spared the future crunch). The class of theoretical possibilities (homogeneous, isotropic solutions to the Einstein field equations) is parametrized my just a handful of constants (value of the cosmological constant, critical densities of radiation and matter). The consensus is that the current fit is fairly good.

There are multiverse scenarios that are invoked in various attempts to address the fine-tuning problem, but these are highly speculative ventures and there is not consensus on their correctness.

fred41

06-08-2013, 08:21 PM

Thank you teacher. I think I can wrap my mind around that...(what's left of it).

trish

06-08-2013, 10:19 PM

Last lesson for a while. Turns out I’m on the road again for a another two weeks. My contributions here will probably be sparse and erratic. Okay, last attempt to clarify a difficult notion:

Most people here took a little bit of Euclidean plane geometry in school. You learned the Euclidean axioms. Things like...

Given a line and a point not on the line, there is a unique second line through the point which is parallel to the given line.

Two distinct points determine a unique line.

The shortest distance between two points lies along the unique line that passes through them.

Etc.

You probably developed the theory triangles, congruence, proportionality and so forth using these axioms; i.e. you proved theorems using logical inferences that were grounded my the axioms of plane geometry. In fact everything one could ever want to know about flat plane geometry is contained in that handful of axioms. You could also learn the axioms of Euclidean solid geometry, but that’s another subject. Euclidean plane geometry doesn’t require those axioms. Euclidean plane geometry can stand alone. You don’t need solid space to contemplate the geometry of a two-dimensional plane. You don’t even have to have a mental picture of a plane. Newton is said to have erased all the pictures from Euclid before working through it to make sure the theorems were proven with logic alone without the crutch of pictorial illusion.

Spherical geometry is the just like that. There are axioms you can learn to do spherical geometry. Things like....

Every pair of distinct lines intersect in exactly two distinct points, called antipodal points.

Any two non-antipodal points determine a unique line.

Given any two point on a line, the shortest distance between any two non-antipodal points lies along one of the arcs of the unique line passing through those points.

Etc.

Just like in plane geometry, one can go on and define spherical triangles and prove theorems about them. In fact one you have all the axioms of spherical geometry (it’s just a handful) you can develop the complete theory of the whole subject. The axioms answer every question you can ask in the language of spherical geometry. Like Newton, you don’t have to draw any pictures, you don’t even have to picture a sphere. The axioms of spherical geometry stand alone. You do not need the axioms of solid three dimensional space to justify them. In fact adding the axioms of solid space would be adding additional assumptions to a subject that is already complete and independent. Spherical geometry does not require three-dimensional solid geometry.

The two-dimensional toy model of the universe I’ve introduced in the last few posts has the geometry of a sphere. That geometry is sufficient for the description of our toy model. We don’t need to picture the sphere (though it’s always nice to have a picture). Picturing it sitting inside a three-dimensional space just brings in extra unnecessary assumptions. If you must picture try picturing it alone. Picture living on the surface of the sphere. Don’t picture living outside it like a three-dimensional god looking at from without. To properly comprehend this toy model of a universe, you must imagine what life is like on the surface of that two-dimensional spacetime. What it’s like to be a one-dimensional creature who lives in a one-dimensional space. What it’s like to discover that if you travel far enough in one direction you eventually return to where you were. What is like to discover the each time the trip around gets longer, until at some moment in time the trips around start get shorter and shorter. There is nothing else in this world but the one-dimensional space in which you live and time. You toy universe has a finite age, yet there is not time before it, no space outside it and no time after.

Bye. See ya all later.

TSBootyLondon

06-09-2013, 01:36 AM

LOL..... Sometimes I feel like his advocate!!! something quite sexy about being naughty, or so I have been told anyway!? xxx

Don't lose faith Bella.......That was just the Devil making a brief appearance:hide-1:

talldudeil

06-09-2013, 07:48 AM

Innumerable factors have fallen into place to allow life on our planet if one of those factors was out, then we would not be here, that is not a fluke, that is precision engineering.
I agree on this point, but if you look at all of the galaxies and universes and if you figure 1% of the suns have planets and 1% of the planets are in the "correct position" and 1% of them happens to get hit with a space born bacteria and 1% of them survived AND 1% developed intelligent life we are still looking at 10 or 100 of thousands of planets with life. So yes we are a fluke.

Lets say now our creator who is probably beyond this universe created this place for us to exist, if we look at the some of the rules and fundamental truths embedded into this universe then it would stand to reason that good and bad things are going to happen.

Why would any creator want to have bad this happen to his creations? That is cruel and therefore not "god worthy"

Also should God intervene or be held accountable (bearing in mind the whole free will thing) for the evil that men do.

If man made bad things happen then surely it is man's fault:confused:

Once again why would a "benevolent" god allow anything not of his or here design to foul up his or her creation. We live because we got lucky as have others in numerous universes, not due to a "god". Show one provable fact, just one, and I might look into it. Hell they don't even have the written record of Mary and Joseph traveling to be counted and thousands of other are recorded. And a Virgin birth, how stupid was Joseph to believe that over his wife's obvious infidelity. If Virgin birth was possible why is there no other cases in the last 2000 years or so. That is why Catholics who use the rhythm method of birth control are called parents.

Prospero

06-09-2013, 08:05 AM

Dorkins is a plonk his God Delusion book is just that "his delusion" as he raps on about the Christians lack of proof about the existence of god not once does he actually provide evidence to the contrary, even though he claims he will.

Anyone who reveres this little man from no where and regards his twaddle as engrossing is sadly as deluded as he is, about the nature of this reality and our existence.

The religion of Aethism is as ridiculous as the rest of them.........Although I have to say I am partial to a bit of Buddism:pumped:

Oh Joe, c'mon now. Dawkins is a wonderful scientist and a magnificent communicator to a non scientific audiences of ideas in his field. I agree that his invective against religion is tiresome but he is hardly a "little man."

Stavros

06-09-2013, 12:02 PM

Always thought as an atheist to take a theology degree and just disagree with everything. Should be an easy course as they have just one set text.

Martin, being an atheist is probably the best criterion for the study of theology -it immediately suggests a lack of bias in a subject which seems, in a manner of speaking, pre-destined to divide opinion depending on affiliations. It also seems to be a useful career pathway: here for example Cambridge shows how useful a degree in Theology and Religious Studies can be:

What can I do with a degree in TRS?

Because of the breadth of the degree in Theology and Religious Studies (TRS), graduates are well equipped to enter a wide range of professions. Recent graduates have gone into Banking, the Civil Service, Law Conversion Course, Teaching, Journalism, Charity Administration, further Academic study and Religious Ministry.

In addition to the work and study skills offered by any degree at this level, students of TRS develop particular abilities in assessing and presenting widely different kinds of evidence, understanding arguments with which they may not agree, and clarifying ideas and approaches to life that are different from their own.
Here are some jobs being done by 2009 graduates:

Event Organiser
Legal Representative/Caseworker (Asylum =Immigration)
Tax collector
Assistant to Musical Director
Secondary school teacher (philosophy and religious studies)
Office Manager
DirectNews Correspondent
Junior Research Fellow
Graduate Assistant / Distance Learning Tutor
Journalist
Producer
Stagiare europeen-European Voluntary Service placement
Corporate Manager

http://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/apply/what-can-i-do-with-a-degree-in-trs

Prospero

06-09-2013, 12:11 PM

I've long loved Salman Rushdie's expression "the god shaped hole" to describe those who have had, but have now lost, their faith. If you've never had faith in religion inculcated at an early age it must be much harder to feel it's lack. Friends who grew up in atheist families - especially those actively hostile to religion - say they simply cannot emotionally or intellectually understand the nature of belief. For those, like me, who were Catholics in early years, a scintilla of doubt remains.

Stavros

06-09-2013, 12:28 PM

Once again why would a "benevolent" god allow anything not of his or here design to foul up his or her creation. We live because we got lucky as have others in numerous universes, not due to a "god". Show one provable fact, just one, and I might look into it. Hell they don't even have the written record of Mary and Joseph traveling to be counted and thousands of other are recorded. And a Virgin birth, how stupid was Joseph to believe that over his wife's obvious infidelity. If Virgin birth was possible why is there no other cases in the last 2000 years or so. That is why Catholics who use the rhythm method of birth control are called parents.

The 'Virgin birth' is critical: not only does it mark the relationship between man and God as direct and in the case of Jesus, unique: it also separates the story of Christianity from Judaism other than the doctrinal differences pronounced by the mature Jesus. The 'Virgin birth' I assume is disputed by Jewish scholars. Thomas Aquinas, unsurprisingly opened and shut the debate when he stated: 'To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible',

The idea of a woman conceiving through a spirit can be found in Ancient Egyptian religion, as well as Australian and possibly other South Pacific aboriginal beliefs where 'spirits' are everyone's origins.

Politically/anthropologically the 'Virgin birth' proves that women are to be the subject of male domination -it is not as if, when the Angel comes to Mary to tell her she is 'blessed' that Mary asks if she can have an abortion as she doesn't want a child at that moment in her life. She has not option but to give birth to that which her god has subjected her to.

My own view, which I am surprised is not more widely discussed, is that a 'virgin birth' is a convenient way of covering up the loss of virginity in societies in which it is highly valued, and where stigma is attached to families whose daughters have 'lost control' -or rather, where fathers have lost control of their daughters.
In royal families virginity was (and in the UK remains) essential to prevent any illegitimate children claiming the crown; but if a society has a stigma against sex before marriage, but it happens anyway, the pregnancy can be claimed to be miraculous and in the process this separates the woman (and her family) from the rest, but does mean that the mother and child are expected to be in some way special. I base this on a different narrative but one that has been dealt with by Michael Gilsenan in his essays Recognizing Islam. In one account, two brothers who had been studying in Beirut returned to their village (in northern Lebanon) where people noticed the elder did not speak to his younger brother or even have eye contact with him. It transpired, although the details were never given, that the younger brother had 'gone wild' in Beirut and as a consequence disgraced the family. The only way the younger brother could be re-admitted to society was for him to adopt an observable, pious way of life: attending mosque every day, wearing traditional clothes, behaving with humility. I suspect that 'Virgin births' are attributed to 'divine intervention' as a means of covering up shame, but that the women and the child are expected to observe a more religious/pious form of behaviour as a result: perhaps many monks of the past were the product of 'shame'. They were committed to a life serving God and the community as penance for the sins of lust. Just a theory.

jake9jake9

06-09-2013, 10:15 PM

Politically/anthropologically the 'Virgin birth' proves that women are to be the subject of male domination -it is not as if, when the Angel comes to Mary to tell her she is 'blessed' that Mary asks if she can have an abortion as she doesn't want a child at that moment in her life. She has not option but to give birth to that which her god has subjected her to.

I disagree;

1. You don't know whether Mary would've said no, given it was a call from the Divine (I'm going by the Islamic narrative here).

2. An All knowing God, would not send a Prophet to be conceived by a woman who initially would say no or have doubts to giving birth to the child.

I suspect that 'Virgin births' are attributed to 'divine intervention' as a means of covering up shame, but that the women and the child are expected to observe a more religious/pious form of behaviour as a result: perhaps many monks of the past were the product of 'shame'. They were committed to a life serving God and the community as penance for the sins of lust. Just a theory.

Thing is, this can be applied to the male as well. If a child is attributed to him outside of marriage, then it's the same "shame", so I wouldn't say this at all proves the virgin story as male domination.

In the Islamic narrative, that's why when the people ask Mary, where did that child come from, baby Jesus is said to have miraculously spoke to defend her mother, as "no one would believe Mary, if she had just told them that an angel visited her", not only did he defend her, but also saved her from corporal punishment (as prescribed in Jewish law).

buttslinger

06-10-2013, 03:11 AM

It was the Fifth Grade. I know it was the Fifth Grade because that's the year we study World History, and there was a plaster of paris bas-relief map of the Mediterranean on a table, ...we'd paint all the different civilizations in different colored tempera paint on it as we studied them: Alexander, Phoenecia, Rome, etc. So I'm standing there by myself looking down on this table when I have a vision of God.

I say vision, I could say trance, there was no noise, everything was black and white and maybe a tad silvery, and time was kind of frozen, a little time-out.

There was a line, not an imaginary line, but an actual fine line super-straight that went super forward toward God. While I wasn't actually seeing it with my eyes, it was like I was seeing it with my eyes, and it was coming out of my chest to a point just below my eye-line. I had been drawing since before first grade, I was the class artist, and to me this wasn't Christianity, this was the future I was drawing toward. At the end of the line was God, and in my vision, He had a little picture in front of Him, or wrapped around Him, and it looked like the pictures you see in books of the ancient city of Rome, a hill with buildings and columns and trees, and it was drawn of like holy light and shadow, and I remember I thought this was funny. Below the line, there was a big mass of cloudy stuff, kind of like looking at the top of a big orb (??) and it had movement, the only movement in the vision, like the way the air looks from a floor freezer when you open the door and it hits room temperature.

Yes, it had an eternal feel, and it was like a memory, but I knew it was fleeting and I remember making two mental notes-
1) The RULE was...stay on the line and nothing would come between me and the future of all mankind. DON'T look down.
2) don't forget, don't forget.

The God in his Heaven met the hype, it was quizzical as well as powerful. And I can't imagine anything that could be better, it really was like a dream come true. But the cloudy mass was life itself, the loves, the fun, all your friends, family.....also all the pain and loss and heartache. So when they say you have to die to go to Heaven, that's one of those little poetic twists of words that confuses everything. Once I saw God I had no doubt, when the Eye of God looks at you, It's not love at first sight, it's first sight.

But this was pre-puberty, I didn't see that coming, and life is crazy, and God wraps Himself in a Dream to keep the Squares out.

To be a Man of God is way too hard for me, my wet dream would be to become a fairly good artist, and I can't even do that. So I know God exists, and that's what I'm saying here, but I'm not giving you my name and address. This pathetic attempt to explain God is a joke, but I'm not lying. If I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't believe it, but I think I would have thought it is more rational that Jesus had made it all the way down the line...than a two thousand year old book was based on a joke that fooled all the great critics all this time. God doesn't have any magic power except salvation, maybe if I can quit wasting my time on HA I'll see God one more time before I kick.

I'm no Authority on God, but I can tell you the Bible is written backwards, and I absolutely agree religion ain't for everybody, and a moron with a Bible is still a moron. So cut me some slack and don't make me regret posting this.

fred41

06-10-2013, 05:30 AM

buttslinger

06-10-2013, 06:00 AM

Thing is...your previous posting history also shows you to be a little nuts.
So there is that.

If I wasn't crazy then my story might come off as bragging.

fred41

06-10-2013, 06:10 AM

If I wasn't crazy then my story might come off as bragging.

If that's how you want to perceive it....:)

Stavros

06-10-2013, 10:51 AM

I disagree;

1. You don't know whether Mary would've said no, given it was a call from the Divine (I'm going by the Islamic narrative here).

2. An All knowing God, would not send a Prophet to be conceived by a woman who initially would say no or have doubts to giving birth to the child.
Thing is, this can be applied to the male as well. If a child is attributed to him outside of marriage, then it's the same "shame", so I wouldn't say this at all proves the virgin story as male domination.

In the Islamic narrative, that's why when the people ask Mary, where did that child come from, baby Jesus is said to have miraculously spoke to defend her mother, as "no one would believe Mary, if she had just told them that an angel visited her", not only did he defend her, but also saved her from corporal punishment (as prescribed in Jewish law).

Jake it is just my theory, it has little hard evidence to back it up, other than the existence of 'spirits' in various world cultures as the source of life. It would not matter so much who the father was in a local setting, as the weight of 'blame' falls on the woman, although I think in some cultures the father takes the rap for not controlling his women. The idea of some behaviour being defined as 'sinful' being compensated for by behaviour that is pious is not unique or unique to Christianity.

As for an all-knowing God, I think science would not actually be worried that the universe and everything in it was made by God if it could be proven. The real problem is the fact that some humans not only claim to know what it is that God intended, and what it is that he wants us to do with our lives, but have also created entire social systems built on these suppositions which have drawn up rules and regulations the violation of which is punishable in extreme ways, including death. That widely different human societies have developed values which are often the same: prohibitions against murder, theft, lying and so on, suggests all humans share some values in common.

But to know what God knows, if God exists, seems to me to be arrogance. Unless he has sent one of his angels to tell you, at which point the arrow points to a door behind which men in white coats are waiting. And yet, Joan of Arc convinced most people that her voices were sincere (although many other young girls at that time heard voices), but her achievements were political rather than spiritual, and it was really for undermining the English crown in France that she went to the stake, the tribunal never could prove that she had not heard voices, and her simple language in which she defended herself reinforced her purity against the scheming of the judges who had tried and sentenced her before the sessions even began. Proof that something may not be true, but if someone believes it to be true, it is impossible to change their minds.

joeninety

06-12-2013, 01:55 AM

Oh Joe, c'mon now. Dawkins is a wonderful scientist and a magnificent communicator to a non scientific audiences of ideas in his field. I agree that his invective against religion is tiresome but he is hardly a "little man."

Well he wound me up making me waste my time reading his God Delusion book.....But I do hear what you say, so I am willing to make a small concession and will now elevate him to medium man status:(

joeninety

06-12-2013, 02:21 AM

joeninety

06-12-2013, 02:37 AM

There is no edge of the expansion. The key concept is non-euclidean geometry. Maybe the toy model I describe in post #149 can help. http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/showpost.php?p=1336292&postcount=249

I have trouble accepting theorems as definitive proof, as you say it is a concept, and ideas regarding certain bigger picture subject matters are forever changing, due to the complexity of such topics, which often throw up previously unforseen curve balls.

joeninety

06-12-2013, 02:55 AM

It is a mistake to think of the Big Bang as an explanation of how the universe came to be. It is simply a model of the expansion. The models were an unexpected benefit of Einstein's theory of gravity. After Schwarzchild found a solution to the Einstein equations that describe the gravitational effects around a spherical star (confirming Einstein's cruder calculation of the advance of the perihelion of Mercury and the bending of star light by the Sun), Friedman and Lemaitre discovered solutions that seems to describe expanding or contracting universes. At about the same time Hubble was collecting evidence that on average the galaxies of the universe were racing away from each other at rates that increased somewhat linearly with their distances from one another. This fit exactly with the expanding solutions found by the theorists. As Martin so neatly demonstrated, expansion entails a finite age. The models are mathematically insistent on it. Gamow and his student Alpher used the work of Friedman, Lemaitre, Hubble and others to calculate the rate of production of light elements in the early universe. Their predicted table of abundances was later confirmed. They also predicted the residual cosmic microwave background radiation of a temperature of around three degrees Kelvin. That too was later discovered. The spectrum of the background was found to fit exactly the predictions of Gamow and Alpher. Gamow was something of a practical joker and he thought it would be funny to include Hans Bethe as a co-author of his paper with Alpher. So the paper appeared as authored by Alpher, Betha, Gamow. Back to the point: None of the originators of the big bang theory attempted to explain the origin or the existence or the creation of the universe. What they discovered and described was that the universe had a finite age and was expanding. These results are reasonably definitive.

There are people today who do write theoretical papers which modify the big bang equations and make stabs at explaining the existence of the universe. It is a project so far without a consensus. They will tell you up front that results are tenuous, speculative, fun to think about but not definitive.

I do not think of the Big bang as the be all and end all, I was using that as general example, I believe in a way bigger picture beyond, and beyond the beyond infinity if you will:lol:

To me it is the only true logic, space creating models are not logical when you look at what we know of the laws governing the inside of this universe, show me a sum of 10 parts and make another 10 parts from nothing, and prove to me beyond doubt that you made them from nothing:confused: and I will believe what you say here.

joeninety

06-12-2013, 03:04 AM

LOL..... Sometimes I feel like his advocate!!! something quite sexy about being naughty, or so I have been told anyway!? xxx

Hmmm have I told you how I have a thing for she-devils xxx

danthepoetman

06-12-2013, 01:20 PM

Hrmm...

trish

06-13-2013, 07:07 PM

I have trouble accepting theorems as definitive proof, ...
So do I. Theorems are only as unassailable as the assumptions upon which they are based. That's why we endeavor to found our assumptions in evidence and observation.

trish

06-14-2013, 03:10 AM

I do not think of the Big bang as the be all and end all, I was using that as general example, I believe in a way bigger picture beyond, and beyond the beyond infinity if you will We agree then (with cosmologists) that the theory of cosmic expansion is not a theory of origins.

To me it is the only true logic, space creating models are not logical when you look at what we know of the laws governing the inside of this universe, show me a sum of 10 parts and make another 10 parts from nothing, and prove to me beyond doubt that you made them from nothing and I will believe what you say here.One way of thinking about the expansion is to imagine the spacetime metric (written in the coordinate frame of the fundamental observers) is simply time dependent. This is akin to thinking of time dilation as a frame dependent phenomenon rather than the metaphysical creation or stretching of time. It may be mind bending, but no rules of logic are in jeopardy.

danthepoetman

06-15-2013, 06:12 PM

I am always very impressed with the level of intelligence and knowledge of this debate. (Trish, in particular, you are so amazingly bright, lady!). I do feel for Jamie Michelle: one really has to be desperate to seek God in such theoretical constructions! To me, Kant has said it all when he showed in the XVIIIth century that all the proofs in God’s existence were based on a confusion between logical levels: you can’t possibly prove something as abstract and detached as a God through the chain of physical causes or by using matter as a base. These are simply realities of two different natures. If God is a creator of this world and look over it as some kind of a gardian, it means that he’s outside of it and therefore of the abstract nature I was talking about. If you integrate it to the world and you think the world as being dominated by laws, you submit God to determinism and therefore he is not “God”, at best only some kind of demiurge or a principle in a mechanical system, and the interest in searching such a “reality” outside of physics and to talk about it in other terms than pure physics is pretty futile. Every time we think about God, whether it’s on the moral level or the physical level, we come up upon such aporia. Camus put it very simply, in his magnificent manner, in such a way that should resolve the whole question from the human standpoint: Either God is all powerful, but then he is responsible for evil, or either he is not responsible for it, but is not all mighty. It should be enough not to believe, knowing the world and history even just a little.
Here’s another one of these memes I love…

fred41

06-15-2013, 07:35 PM

Good points Dan. I guess a person's view would depend on:

When an individual believes in God (in the conventional way), does he believe God created "everything",meaning he (she,it...although if you believe this, then use of a pronoun would be inappropriate) was, is and always will be beyond any natural,or metaphysical laws - truly omnipotent.

or..

God is, like everything else, part of the universe but did create this world...or at least life on this planet.There would still have to be a belief that God created mankind to evolve into something different after death...assuming we followed some type of laws in conduct and thought in order to qualify.

or..

God (perhaps with a small "g") is just a higher being, perhaps a group of higher beings...out there somewhere. Beings that occasionally interact, or have interacted with us in the past. Perhaps even created us on a biological level...but that's where it ends. There would,of course be an argument whether or not such beings, or gods would qualify as God.

or..

well...the list can go on depending on that individual's personal belief..but I think most fundamentalists would argue the first example. Interestingly enough however, when they speak or think of "Him"...they will still anthropomorphize God...giving him human characteristics...which, of course,seems silly on a spiritual level.

anyway...I forgot where I was going with this.

Oh, and you're right about Trish - she's pretty awesome. I learned (and managed to retain...lol) a lot of information and understanding from her. (*whispering now*...but don't mention it too often...wouldn't want her head expanding like the universe...;) :D )

Stavros

06-15-2013, 08:00 PM

Dan, I think I am surprised that you find it hard to believe that people with intellectual abilities believe in God -perhaps the real issue that divides people is not so much a belief in God but the uses to which this belief is put, and comes close to the second part of your quote from Camus. Jamie can certainly answer for herself, but what I have objected to is the way she unites her interest in physics and her belief in God in order to claim (with distorted 'scholarship') that one is the proof of the other, and to argue further than unless one accepts her argument as being based on 'the known laws of physics' which have the status of divine statements, then one is somehow living in an illogical or, as Jamie once put it (in reference to me) illiterate world.

As your quote from Camus postulated, it could be that God created everything but doesn't control it, he might have suggested God created everything then went off to something else forgetting he had made an entire universe. Many people who believe in an all-powerful God use the basis of this claim to influence daily life on earth, and derive their authority from a belief that a few individuals have had a 'special relationship' with God that has resulted in the creation of religious systems, and laws which by definition are 'God given' even though they were written by men. I don't know why God has on a few occasions singled out one individual for a 'special relationship' rather than all of us as the person to talk to- in fact I would suggest it is a relationship formed the other way round, and that a genuine charisma helps if you want to found a new religion and can convince people 'this one person' has special qualities.

Jesus and Buddha are both men who seemed to have had charisma, who attracted followers impressed with the modesty of their life-style, their ability to deal patiently with people who were upset, perhaps above all a gift with words. Muhammad was known for his diplomatic tact and, off the battlefield, of calm and that 'inner peace' which often seems to draw people. By contrast, and notwithstanding the fictional basis of Scientology, 'Lt' Ron Hubbard lacks charisma and credibility. The 'Noble Elijah Muhammad' who took over the Lost-Found Nation of Islam from Walid Far'd, was a businessman without scruples who used a distorted version of one religion to create a popular movement whose practical benefit may have massaged his ego, it certainly gave him a fortune.

I think it gets harder if you encounter people who live in what we would call primitive, or pre-literate cultures. What is the point of telling an Aborigine that there are no spirits, no dreamtime, no creator -or telling an Ancient Egyptian there is no heaven. For people who make no distinction between heaven and earth, past present and future but see all life and all time as one seamless envelope of meaning in which they exist, rational thinking is destructive, and absurd -it poses the alternative view: how can you live and not believe? That is what puzzles them; and science for all its practical benefits, cannot answer this without denying precisely what they believe, even though I am sure you would not want to destroy lives, and even though this has been one devastating consequence of 'civilisation', 'imperialism' and in some specific places, alcohol. In both cases, the act of believing (in something) exists, indeed it is a conscious process without which we cannot live.

danthepoetman

06-15-2013, 09:21 PM

Nice post, Fred! Yes, I think you’re on the money. In the end, either God is viewed as a personal God, which you can pray and interact with, but once again, in such a case, he’s responsible of Evil, and you have to ask yourself if it’s a credible cosmosophy, which I think it isn’t. Or, in the other cases you mentioned, we’re talking about a Being which would either be integrated to his “creation”, a creation we know is ruled by laws, and therefore who would be bound by his own laws, and then irrelevant as God in itself, for us, and only relevant as a law or a principle; or we’re talking about a Being whom having created the world is absent from it anymore, so then why would we care about him (Epicurio is thinking in such a way: if there is gods, it’s obvious by watching the world that they are indifferent to it; so why bother with them?). :)
Stavros, I hope I won’t deform or disfigure what you are saying to me. Don’t over estimate my capacity to understand English. You know it’s not my mother tongue and not my usual language of expression, and I’m not at all on your very educated and eloquent level. If you mean to say that we need to “believe” in general, of course no one can disagree. But we can’t confuse, in my opinion, the common concept of believing with the belief in a supreme being. I think it’s a good example of a concept which has a subtlety of meaning which can create misunderstanding in a conversation. I invoke here the principle of identity, which is always violated in a normal conversation as meanings of the same concepts changes. Banal beliefs, we all have. Belief in a God is something else. Yes, you’re right, the people we call “animists” can not understand that we wouldn’t “believe” in invisible forces. The question here is very complex, but mainly lye on conscience, on the apprehension one has of him/herself. You know that conscience has a history in our culture (and surely others, of course). Conscience is not the same for Homer’s characters, for instance; they believe that “forces” are what animate objects, any objects including they, themselves. What is animated is what has an anima, a force which moves it (inside and out). These forces are independent from their objects. A river, the sky, etc., are so animated. Forces that move us are the same. When Homer refers to love, he sees the immediate action of Aphrodite; when Achilles for instance, at the beginning of the Iliad, has his conflict with Aggamemnon and feel the urge to draw his sword, it’s Athena herself, the voice of reason, who hold his elbow to stop him. And similarly, he doesn’t run fast, it’s his feet that are light, etc. etc. Conscience has since then changed considerably. The internalisation of motives, the sense of a intimacy (self-intimacy) were developed slowly and are at the very foundation of our culture; without them, for instance, no justice as we have is possible, no individual rights, no democracy, no artist as an author, etc. etc. they wouldn’t even make sense –the major turning point for us having been the Renaissance etc. (you know all of that). Now it is always difficult today to evaluate what it has to do with people from other cultures who are still animists. I think for some of them, who share the same sense of self, animism is at a stage of superstition rather than this way of perceiving and sensing the world Achilles had, and therefore no more an absolute “need” for them, no more a way of living.
I do share your idea though, that we are “religious” being. I worked as a research assistant, when I was doing my MA, with a teacher who was working on a philosophical anthropology which was redefining human through religious manifestations and expressions of every kind. It was fascinating. There is no doubt in my mind that religious beliefs are the expression of a phylogenetically acquired mechanism which is useful to the survival of our specie. Of which nature? That would be very difficult to determine, of course. But for us to believe in a God as a supreme being who is watching over us is really silly, it’s really absurd! The very mythology of it, besides the fact that you can easily follow it’s evolution through history, and therefore deconstruct it completely, the very mythology of a father who punishes and reward us, who creates an “us and them” type of world based on the flattering of his ego, and the credibility given to the institutions that are defending such constructs and imposes rites and taboos have to be set aside once and for all before they do more harm that they already have caused, imo.
A type of deist belief could be defended, but here intervenes my Camus quote. On a simple “moral” ground (and I use “moral” in a very broad sense, here), the idea of an interventionist God should render the belief useless. Once again, “either God is all powerful, but then he is responsible for evil, so why give a cult for such a God, or either he is not responsible for it, but is not all mighty, and then why would we even care?
(As I'm rereading myself, I realize once again how poor my expression is. I'm sorry, my friend).

danthepoetman

06-16-2013, 02:12 AM

Stavros, it just occured to me that you might not be atheist or agnostic like I am. I'm really sorry if I offended you, my friend. I am! For some reason, I just assume you were and I responded just as if it was the case and as if I knew it. Put that on long years of Scotch whisky consumption, would you?

Stavros

06-16-2013, 03:50 AM

Stavros, I hope I won’t deform or disfigure what you are saying to me. Don’t over estimate my capacity to understand English. You know it’s not my mother tongue and not my usual language of expression, and I’m not at all on your very educated and eloquent level. If you mean to say that we need to “believe” in general, of course no one can disagree. But we can’t confuse, in my opinion, the common concept of believing with the belief in a supreme being. I think it’s a good example of a concept which has a subtlety of meaning which can create misunderstanding in a conversation. I invoke here the principle of identity, which is always violated in a normal conversation as meanings of the same concepts changes. Banal beliefs, we all have. Belief in a God is something else. Yes, you’re right, the people we call “animists” can not understand that we wouldn’t “believe” in invisible forces. The question here is very complex, but mainly lye on conscience, on the apprehension one has of him/herself. You know that conscience has a history in our culture (and surely others, of course). Conscience is not the same for Homer’s characters, for instance; they believe that “forces” are what animate objects, any objects including they, themselves. What is animated is what has an anima, a force which moves it (inside and out). These forces are independent from their objects. A river, the sky, etc., are so animated. Forces that move us are the same. When Homer refers to love, he sees the immediate action of Aphrodite; when Achilles for instance, at the beginning of the Iliad, has his conflict with Aggamemnon and feel the urge to draw his sword, it’s Athena herself, the voice of reason, who hold his elbow to stop him. And similarly, he doesn’t run fast, it’s his feet that are light, etc. etc. Conscience has since then changed considerably. The internalisation of motives, the sense of a intimacy (self-intimacy) were developed slowly and are at the very foundation of our culture; without them, for instance, no justice as we have is possible, no individual rights, no democracy, no artist as an author, etc. etc. they wouldn’t even make sense –the major turning point for us having been the Renaissance etc. (you know all of that). Now it is always difficult today to evaluate what it has to do with people from other cultures who are still animists. I think for some of them, who share the same sense of self, animism is at a stage of superstition rather than this way of perceiving and sensing the world Achilles had, and therefore no more an absolute “need” for them, no more a way of living.
I do share your idea though, that we are “religious” being. I worked as a research assistant, when I was doing my MA, with a teacher who was working on a philosophical anthropology which was redefining human through religious manifestations and expressions of every kind. It was fascinating. There is no doubt in my mind that religious beliefs are the expression of a phylogenetically acquired mechanism which is useful to the survival of our specie. Of which nature? That would be very difficult to determine, of course. But for us to believe in a God as a supreme being who is watching over us is really silly, it’s really absurd! The very mythology of it, besides the fact that you can easily follow it’s evolution through history, and therefore deconstruct it completely, the very mythology of a father who punishes and reward us, who creates an “us and them” type of world based on the flattering of his ego, and the credibility given to the institutions that are defending such constructs and imposes rites and taboos have to be set aside once and for all before they do more harm that they already have caused, imo.
A type of deist belief could be defended, but here intervenes my Camus quote. On a simple “moral” ground (and I use “moral” in a very broad sense, here), the idea of an interventionist God should render the belief useless. Once again, “either God is all powerful, but then he is responsible for evil, so why give a cult for such a God, or either he is not responsible for it, but is not all mighty, and then why would we even care?
(As I'm rereading myself, I realize once again how poor my expression is. I'm sorry, my friend).

There doesn't seem to be much wrong with your English, Dan, so don't worry about that. I think my point was that the way we think and express ourselves is based on shared meanings or we would just be grunting, but it doesn't follow that religion is essential, that we must believe something. There is a view that science has replaced religion for many people- it is logical, reasonable and has practical benefits for life, and as Trish has admitted, science doesn't know everything and cannot explain everything, whereas some religious people believe they can do just that, even if, as once happened to me when the explanation I was given for 9/11 was just two words: 'God's Will'. But just as science has been used to lie, steal, oppress and murder, so some have used religion for those purposes and mostly in violation of what they claim to believe. I think that is what annoys people as much as the debate on whether or not God exists.

broncofan

06-17-2013, 07:47 PM

I agree that science has been misused to justify all sorts of immoral proposals as well as conclusions that do not follow from the available evidence. It has at times been used to label some individuals as inferior, to swindle some out of money, and to justify greed and selfishness as essential features of human nature. But these are not characteristics that flow directly from the study of the natural world. It is only proof that people will use any vessel available to promote an agenda.

Scientific advancement also brings with it the risk of unintended consequences such as the development of more sophisticated devices to maim and kill, environmental damage, and social alienation. But at least the discipline is based on trying to explain what's going on around us. It can be an honest and rational means of analyzing all available evidence, generating theories about the natural world and testing them.

Religion, on the other hand can be used to pacify people, or variably, to incite the masses. By its essential nature it provides a narrative that is unsupported and unsupportable. If so then it seems to me that its value is not in its ability to explain the world or act as a useful guidepost but to control behavior through manipulation. How can something that is not supported by any evidence be a guide for moral behavior unless someone has decided a priori that a certain set of propositions is correct and that it is acceptable to say things that aren't true to encourage adherence to them?

Stavros

06-17-2013, 09:42 PM

Religion, on the other hand can be used to pacify people, or variably, to incite the masses. By its essential nature it provides a narrative that is unsupported and unsupportable. If so then it seems to me that its value is not in its ability to explain the world or act as a useful guidepost but to control behavior through manipulation. How can something that is not supported by any evidence be a guide for moral behavior unless someone has decided a priori that a certain set of propositions is correct and that it is acceptable to say things that aren't true to encourage adherence to them?

I am surprised at your bias, Broncofan -you admit that science has been used to do wrong and that this is an abuse of knowledge; yet you cannot accept something more positive for religion: that people turn to religion for comfort, perhaps for community? People born into a religious community can find it difficult if not impossible to believe in an alternative narrative, and may indeed modify their behaviour in conformity to the rules and expectations of that religion. And yes, some converts can often be more militant about their faith than people born into it; but I think you should allow for people who maybe had some crisis in their lives, and for whom religion has been soothing, comforting and given them a structure that has changed their lives for the better. Same with people who were born into say, Christianity, Judaism etc, but were never particularly religious and then 'return' to the faith later in life.

danthepoetman

06-17-2013, 11:18 PM

This will probably seem shocking but to me, the main problem lye in the fact that real ethic thinking occupy a minuscule place in our daily life. And unfortunately, I would go as far as to say that it is largely the same with authentic, deep reasonable thinking, as of course, we think with our whole nervous system, with our whole body; our instincts and our passions occupy an enormous place in the life of our minds, much more than we like to believe –much more in fact, than the whole history of ideas has made us to think. Anyone who’s a little bit honest with himself can easily see this by examining his own behaviour and life a little –I would invoke for instance, the ever so vague notion of identity (through time)… We act mostly through acquired automatisms in our private life and especially in our collective life; we adopt the values and the behaviour of our group and it becomes the essential of our lives. We take some habits in our private life and the use of reason is relatively limited. Moreover, our choices are much more motivated by our feelings than we like to think, once again, and reason often seem to be present only to justify our behaviour after the fact.
We know that there is phylogenitically acquired mechanisms in us to reinforce the sense of gregarity and solidarity which evolution developed long before we were what we are, not to say anything of the others, like territoriality, fear, aggression, etc. Religion, values, morals, whatever form they take, are obvious expressions of these biological inner mechanisms, most of the time and for most people. When you manage to deprive people of religion, or even for most individuals who renounce any, there is always some kind of substitution that occurs, which is often even more dangerous, as it ignore itself. Political substitutions have been lethal –I would define “patriotism” (not national pride) as one other expression of these mechanisms, and the absence of religion often have the effect of reinforcing tremendously such feelings. I had a teacher who used to tell us: “When the flag is up, intelligence is half-mast”; the same can be said of religious objects. I’m not of course denying the importance of intimate, spiritual life, or of the life of the mind in general, but we have to wonder what place exactly it takes in the general practice of religion.

(Broncofan! I'm glad to see you're still around! I've been "back" since last month and I was wondering about you. Happy to "see" you!)

Stavros

06-17-2013, 11:37 PM

broncofan

06-17-2013, 11:37 PM

I admit it sounds like bias. People I know and care about are religious. But could you imagine asking someone who is religious to admit that what they believe is valuable only because it provides them comfort? That it is more important that they believe it is true than that it actually is true?

If people turned to religion for community or comfort then I agree that these are positive factors.

But could you imagine going up to a Rabbi or Priest and telling him/her that you don't really think the scriptures contain an ounce of truth but that pretending they do makes you feel better? There are so many devoutly religious people who want people to believe their scriptures are a historical account and not merely a way of living. Why do religions proselytize? Maybe they think that if others remain skeptical then their religion provides less comfort.

If you believe that there is a God and a heaven then why should you be receptive to the possibility that there is neither? A religious person's entire way of living depends on it being true. Maybe in some circumstances it does create community and provide comfort, in which case I like it in that limited context whether the beliefs are true or not.

Stavros

06-17-2013, 11:47 PM

broncofan

06-17-2013, 11:51 PM

I think that it is this unquestioning devotion which make some people think believers are like sheep.
Just a little anecdote. I don't know where this fits in. But I remember my mother admitting to me when I was young that she did not want me to see a movie about the life of Jesus Christ because she was afraid I would be seduced by the tale. She wanted me to continue to be a Jew and she was afraid that the somewhat more positive and magical seeming story of the life of Jesus would sweep me away. Afterall, the old testament story of a jealous God who will smite you for masturbating might seem less attractive.

I understand her concerns and I don't think there's anything too unusual about them. I spoke to a kid in college who was converting to Judaism and his Catholic parents were not happy with it.

I just question the broad value of this religious competition when it so obviously competes with free inquiry and dissent. Religions don't mind dissent as long as it's limited to small issues. When it questions the major articles of faith it sounds a lot more like heresy or blasphemy.

P.S it's nice to see you too Dan!

broncofan

06-17-2013, 11:59 PM

Broncofan I did once have a conversation with a Muslim (an Ahmadi) -I have referred to this before. His position was that if there wasn't a God life would be pointless. He had obviously thought about it, and for him it was not just spiritually comforting, it also made sense intellectually -he is a Mathematician. For people who have had some personal crisis, and are not intellectuals, it is comforting, it provides them with something to believe in, a set of rituals that fill the annual calendar, perhaps a sense of community in a local church. And there are priests who don't believe the literal truth of the Gospels but take them as a 'design for living' -not sure if the last Archbishop of Canterbury took this line, but there was a senior Church of England clergyman (Bishop of Durham) in the 1980s - David Jenkins- who did not believe every aspect of the Christian story told in the Gospels.
It's good to know this. In my personal life I am surrounded by believers and I would never live my life thinking that there is something suspect about them for it. On a personal level I have never seen religion present the problems I speculate about. People seem able to segment the different parts of their lives; religious, social, and intellectual, or reconcile them if need be.

I think I am only talking about the very rare fervent fundamentalist that causes a problem.

Stavros

06-18-2013, 09:45 AM

I think I am only talking about the very rare fervent fundamentalist that causes a problem.

This is to me the key issue, because 'funadamentalists' have a way of forcing themselves into a debate or a situation, catching headlines and becoming the news, and often it is because they are so overwhelmed by the absolute truth of their beliefs they feel impelled to 'do something about it', which sometimes may be illegal. Then the usual suspects step up -not just extreme Muslims, but Scientologists (not known for intense and open debate about their 'religion', you either believe and obey or become a 'squirrel'), and the more extreme Christian groups who think the Churches have betrayed Christianity with its 'liberal' attitudes to divorce, abortion and homosexuality. I think for the most part, most people who believe are pragmatic on most issues, and tend not to make a fuss about the things they don't agree with, as long as it is what the majority wants, which is why there are people in the UK, for example, who think the 'gay marriage' issue is being forced on the country. I think most people couldn't really care less, as civil partnerships are broadly accepted. It isn't going to be the spark that starts a revolution.

martin48

06-24-2013, 06:54 PM

Where's Jamie?

danthepoetman

06-29-2013, 01:42 AM

Dan I think that is why for most people who have been raised in a religion there is no questioning of the faith, and if there were to be such reflexive activity it could create some anxiety in believers, or reinforce the beliefs they had. By contrast, a crisis can open up precisely a difficult set of questions: there were some fascinating articles in the Journal of Holocaust Studies -I think in the 1990s- in which Jews who had either survived the European nightmare or whose relatives had survived -or died- had been interviewed, and given expression to the crisis that occurred in their religious beliefs, because of an 'absent God' or even the belief that God wanted it to happen -whichever it was it caused real anxiety for Jews for whom faith had been hugely important, not just as a cultural part of their community. I think crises like this can shake that comfortable inheritance of belief, and it doesn't happen that often, and I think that it is this unquestioning devotion which make some people think believers are like sheep.

You guys will probably think that I’m taking a common conversation pretty far, but you both made me think a lot, Stavros and Broncofan –not that I’m coming back with some great revelation, though… But I must admit that this argument, Stavros, that some people, especially after a difficult experience, might find great comfort in religious beliefs, is something that I feel without really reasoning it, when I am in the company of believers. I always try my best not to say anything that would shake their potentially candid if not naïve faith. It’s a respect I entertain almost mechanically. And in some cases, indeed, as you both evoked, religion goes beyond beliefs, and maybe even beyond a social or cultural bond; the case of Judaism comes to mind, of course, after the Shoah. But this is something that is so out of any criteria that it is still to this day, very difficult to “think it”.
To me, the proper way to see this world and this life, the only way in fact, is the tragic perspective. I’m not talking of course of the classical form of theatre, but rather of what is the deeper form of a middle term between optimism and pessimism. Life is short. It ends fast. There is no reason for our presence here. Our reality in this infinite universe is, relatively speaking, so insignificant; our whole history is meaningless in the duration of the universe. Strangely, I think that, religious or not, believers or atheists, we all have a feeling of this reality within us. In fact, I think it is the very reason why we do become religious and sometimes, fanatics. It is the only thing, when you stop to think about it, that really gives us a real sense of how precious life is, and how beautiful, and how important. As Blaise Pascal says (I’m sorry for the pedantic reference again), or either Nietzsche, we need to be diverted of ourselves for this very reason, because it’s a truth of such radical meaning for ourselves that it’s hardly bearable. But simulteneously, it is everything.
Yet, and this is where I’m getting at with this, anything that could potentially allow us to understand ourselves better and to create a better world (idealistically or with simple pragmatism) is to face this condition and this tragic truth. Fundamentalism is an epiphenomenon; but the only way to obviate an epiphenomenon that keeps reoccurring over and over is to get rid of the subjacent phenomenon.
Now, we can’t just start shaking people and kicking them for trying to find a comfort we all crave for. But as for anything else, we need to talk, to open eyes, to discuss, to educate.
I guess it’s not much to bring back, as I was saying, after more than a week thinking about an answer… :)

joeninety

07-23-2013, 08:54 PM

We agree then (with cosmologists) that the theory of cosmic expansion is not a theory of origins.

One way of thinking about the expansion is to imagine the spacetime metric (written in the coordinate frame of the fundamental observers) is simply time dependent. This is akin to thinking of time dilation as a frame dependent phenomenon rather than the metaphysical creation or stretching of time. It may be mind bending, but no rules of logic are in jeopardy.

Seems in reality that we are probably more in agreement than not, Tbh my belief in the infinite allows me to believe in the idea of the now seemingly impossible but soon to be not:p

trish

07-23-2013, 09:09 PM

...my belief in the infinite allows me to believe in the idea of the now seemingly impossible but soon to be not:pWhatever :neutral:

joeninety

07-23-2013, 09:15 PM

Whoops see how that might have come across...........I was actually being genuine when I made that remark lol

martin48

08-20-2013, 12:42 PM

Nice recent piece by Brian Schmied
http://www.scienceomega.com/article/1275/will-science-kill-religion?utm_source=MailingList&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ScienceOmega200813
Once, not so long ago, theology was the queen of sciences. The advent of modern scientific thought put a stop to that, and science became something new and separate. Today, you see religious groups trying to appeal to the authority of science, which differs from the past, when science bowed to the authority of scripture. Religion has been taken down a few hundred pegs in this sense.

Within the scientific community, the conflict was settled a good century ago. This does not hold true for wider society – especially in the United States, where science is still in the process of becoming fully accepted. When you examine the wide variety of American religious traditions, we now come across attempts to borrow credibility from this new and increasingly dominant method for accumulating knowledge.
Systems of truth
Religion relies on a system of determining truth called ‘authority’. Authority is an old alternative to science that determines truth as being whatever an agreed-upon source of authority says. This seems silly today, but on closer examination, was quite rational once.

In a time before long-term data storage existed, it was very important to respect the information passed down through tradition. Just as a child must take their parents’ word on things they do not understand, knowledge passed down through generations could not be discarded or mistrusted without risking the loss of knowledge and innovation by smarter people from the past. The bad data was accepted with the good, for the sake of maintaining the authority of the source.

The flaws seem obvious to us today, but our system relies on our ability to store, share, and challenge ideas. Science, the method that says truth is determined when a cause-effect relationship is observed and can be reliably replicated, revolutionised our civilisation just a few centuries ago. Even if someone used a scientific approach in those days, they had to rely on authority to pass their knowledge down.

Even today, most people must determine truth by recognising the authority of scientists whose method they trust. So for most people, even in our age of science, authority is the main system for determining truth. This is why religions have little problem existing, no matter how untestable their claims are, provided they can maintain their authority.
Borrowing authority
Paradoxically, the authority of science is untouchable because it does not rely on authority. Rather, it defines truth as anything we cannot falsify through experiment or observation.

Religions, having bound themselves to scriptures that often contradict observed truth, try to build superficial associations with science. Appealing to the authority of science, even if science does not back up any specific faith, is a great way to sound more credible.

So religions all over are injecting the term into their rhetoric. There is the Church of Scientology, the Church of Divine Science and the First Church of Christ, Scientist, best known as Christian Science. It would be hard to count the number of Christian denominations that rely on a doctrine that has been misleadingly called ‘creation science’, to encourage their children to avoid learning things in school.

The most obvious historical effect of science has been a slow decline in the number of religious people. Low academic achievement in maths and sciences and poverty are both correlated with religiosity. This makes sense when we consider that increased wealth allows for a better education focusing on teaching analytical thought, which has been shown to decrease religious belief.
Religion bowing to scientific authority
Many religious people are becoming less literal in their beliefs. In a recent Gallup poll, 47 per cent of Americans answered that they did not believe in the literal seven day creation of Genesis, even though 92 per cent of Americans answered yes, when asked if they believed in God.

Even the extremely conservative Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI has stated that denying evolution is absurd. There is no better illustration of how science has bent religious doctrine.

It was Catholic Bishop James Ussher who calculated the age of the Earth that is still presented by Young Earth creationists as the true age of the planet. Though the Catholic Church once went after Galileo for claiming that the earth moved, they now accept that the age of the Earth is a matter for astrophysicists and geologists, not theologians.

Churches used to split over debates of whether blessing bread could literally turn bread into human flesh and wine into human blood. Later, churches split over whether Jesus would save them from the apocalypse before, during, or after the divine tribulations that would serve as warning.

These days are over. Fundamentalist holdouts that cling to the unshakeable authority of scripture have been forced to move on to more fundamental matters; tearing families apart over whether or not the Bible is absolute truth and whether direct observation is a reliable way to know what is real.

So, will science kill religion? I doubt it. Religion is adapting. Most people rely on authority, and not everyone has the time, money, or inclination for the years of study needed to understand how each scientific truth has been determined. They will continue to bow to authority for the sake of having knowledge. As long as people submit to authority, they are open to suggestion, which makes them open to religion.

Stavros

08-20-2013, 05:10 PM

Not sure about an article that accepts Scientology as a religion, and I suspect that the rift between religion and science is strong in a lot of countries, but simultaneously contradictory -last night's programme on Nigeria and Polio offered a bewildering, scientifically and socially offensive idea that injections cause Polio, perhaps because people are ashamed that the link between faeces and the disease suggests they are unclean even though their local habitat is in every sense a threat to health -whether they can control it or not. Yet Nigerians accept the science behind mobile phones, oil wells, and hundreds of other daily events.
China has a long and distinguished history in scientific theory and practice, yet many Chinese believe Rhino horns ground into powder will make them virile; and I believe there are Saudi clerics who think the world is flat.
But just as worrying is the corpus of anti-science commentators in the UK and North America who claim a 'rational' basis for climate change 'scepticism', those deniers who are key players in the attempt to demolish science for no other reason than political -in this link the conversation Paul Nurse has with James Delingpole is illuminating -he says the idea that there is a consensus in science is 'despicable' and is basically scientists conniving with each other to agree publicly with each other, even though he freely admits he has not, indeed, cannot read the scientific literature on global warming an the data sets that were at the core of the controversy over the emails from the Climate Research Unit in East Anglia -Nurse does a good job of exposing the rift between science and the public in an age when it seems anyone can have an opinion about something which they actually do not understand...but which doesn't mean the science is wrong.
Ironic perhaps that Jamie has attempted to prove the scientific link between physics and God yet has failed to demonstrate that Tipler's theory is anything but a theory...says he with no knowledge of the science!

enjoy

Science Under Attack (BBC Horizon Documentary) - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvB9EFdJ1d0)

trish

08-20-2013, 06:44 PM

Suppose you want to know the distance across the globe from Lima to London. What do you do? You can look it up on the web. Go to the library and consult an atlas. Call a travel agent. Etc. Or you can survey the route yourself. All but the last are a form of reliance on authority. Even if you opt to measure it out yourself, if you rely on GPS technology, or use tools you didn’t build yourself, then again you’re relying on the skills and knowledge of other human beings; i.e. experts in the art of crafting surveying tools. No one, not even the most critical and skeptical scientists can get around reliance on the judgments of other human beings.

I can test a hypothesis against the raw data that I download from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. I know a little something about the instruments that collect it, but largely I trust the engineers who built those instruments, and monitor and maintain the satellite that houses them. I trust the data hasn’t been corrupted before it’s been made available to me and my colleagues. Etc. We put a lot a faith and trust in each other, as do you when you board a plane, cross a bridge or drive through a tunnel.

I live in the rural MidWest. I’ve heard a lot of testimony. “I prayed to God, and don’t you know he showed me right to where I dropped my keys in the grass next to the car.” “Mary’s X-ray showed a mass in her brain. The whole congregation prayed for her and bless the Lord it’s gone now.” “I was scared seeing my boy off to Afghanistan, but I ask God to protect him and I felt Him right here in this car, as sure as you’re sitting there, assuring me that Luther’ll be alright.” Tim Tebow’s whole career is offered to us as a testimonial.

Isn’t the report of an experiment the same thing as a religious testimonial? “Here’s what I did and this is what I observed. This is what I witnessed.” What are the significant differences (if any) between the kinds of trust to which referred in the first two paragraphs and the kinds of trust people place in religious testimonials?

One difference I can see is the spatial-temporal location of the experiment. In the case of the finding the distance from Lima to London, you can imagine exactly how the survey might be accomplished. You can read about exactly how the Earth is surveyed and how maps are constructed. You can, if you have a mind to do so, do it yourself. If you do, and you publish your work, it will be criticised. If you’ve the integrity of a real cartographer, you’ll answer some criticisms, take others to heart, modify your maps and perhaps even redo the survey. As time goes on your maps will become more detailed and have increased accuracy. But the whole process is there for all to see should they care to do so.

In the case of the lost keys, the experiment goes on in the believer’s head. It is a thought, not an observable procedure (like collecting starlight or leveling a sextant), not even in principle. She’s reaches out with her mind, or her soul in way that cannot be witnessed by anyone else, and communicates with a supernatural being with whom she claims to be intimate. We can’t see the email, nor do we see ink on a page inside an envelop addressed to Heaven. There’s no NSA tape of the exchange. We have no idea how to accomplish such a feat ourselves. Here’s what we know. We know that yesterday she was in a panic because her keys were lost. We know that today she found her keys. We have her testimony that God led her to them. Even if we think she is honest in her belief, do we find her testimony at all credible? I don’t I’m curious to know what others think.

(Disclaimer: Of course, it would be biased to claim the whole case for the supernatural depends on testimonials such as the ones alluded to above. There are also the works of theologians, the testimony of holy books etc. etc.)

martin48

08-20-2013, 09:36 PM

Yes, as a scientist I have to accept the authority of others; but I know that I could test their views and their claimed evidence. I would not thought to be a heretic. In fact science depends on its views being tested. I could "falsify" the distance between Lima and London (or even if Lima existed at all). I could present my own evidence that could be tested. For religious beliefs there is no way to falsify - maybe just accept (unthinkingly) some other belief - I have a soft spot for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Suppose you want to know the distance across the globe from Lima to London. What do you do? You can look it up on the web. Go to the library and consult an atlas. Call a travel agent. Etc. Or you can survey the route yourself. All but the last are a form of reliance on authority. Even if you opt to measure it out yourself, if you rely on GPS technology, or use tools you didn’t build yourself, then again you’re relying on the skills and knowledge of other human beings; i.e. experts in the art of crafting surveying tools. No one, not even the most critical and skeptical scientists can get around reliance on the judgments of other human beings.

I can test a hypothesis against the raw data that I download from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe. I know a little something about the instruments that collect it, but largely I trust the engineers who built those instruments, and monitor and maintain the satellite that houses them. I trust the data hasn’t been corrupted before it’s been made available to me and my colleagues. Etc. We put a lot a faith and trust in each other, as do you when you board a plane, cross a bridge or drive through a tunnel.

I live in the rural MidWest. I’ve heard a lot of testimony. “I prayed to God, and don’t you know he showed me right to where I dropped my keys in the grass next to the car.” “Mary’s X-ray showed a mass in her brain. The whole congregation prayed for her and bless the Lord it’s gone now.” “I was scared seeing my boy off to Afghanistan, but I ask God to protect him and I felt Him right here in this car, as sure as you’re sitting there, assuring me that Luther’ll be alright.” Tim Tebow’s whole career is offered to us as a testimonial.

Isn’t the report of an experiment the same thing as a religious testimonial? “Here’s what I did and this is what I observed. This is what I witnessed.” What are the significant differences (if any) between the kinds of trust to which referred in the first two paragraphs and the kinds of trust people place in religious testimonials?

One difference I can see is the spatial-temporal location of the experiment. In the case of the finding the distance from Lima to London, you can imagine exactly how the survey might be accomplished. You can read about exactly how the Earth is surveyed and how maps are constructed. You can, if you have a mind to do so, do it yourself. If you do, and you publish your work, it will be criticised. If you’ve the integrity of a real cartographer, you’ll answer some criticisms, take others to heart, modify your maps and perhaps even redo the survey. As time goes on your maps will become more detailed and have increased accuracy. But the whole process is there for all to see should they care to do so.

In the case of the lost keys, the experiment goes on in the believer’s head. It is a thought, not an observable procedure (like collecting starlight or leveling a sextant), not even in principle. She’s reaches out with her mind, or her soul in way that cannot be witnessed by anyone else, and communicates with a supernatural being with whom she claims to be intimate. We can’t see the email, nor do we see ink on a page inside an envelop addressed to Heaven. There’s no NSA tape of the exchange. We have no idea how to accomplish such a feat ourselves. Here’s what we know. We know that yesterday she was in a panic because her keys were lost. We know that today she found her keys. We have her testimony that God led her to them. Even if we think she is honest in her belief, do we find her testimony at all credible? I don’t I’m curious to know what others think.

(Disclaimer: Of course, it would be biased to claim the whole case for the supernatural depends on testimonials such as the ones alluded to above. There are also the works of theologians, the testimony of holy books etc. etc.)

trish

08-21-2013, 02:19 AM

...but I know that I could test their views and their claimed evidence.and you also know (in most cases) those tests have been carried out repeatedly by scores of independent observers each time confirming the claims and often obtaining another significant digit of accuracy.

trish

08-22-2013, 05:24 PM

Science Under Attack (BBC Horizon Documentary) - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvB9EFdJ1d0)

Very nicely done. Thanks for the link, Stavros.

I have always regarded it an intellectual duty to prove every theorem I quote and use in my own work. Of course that’s a relatively easy thing to do in the theoretical realm. One cannot perform every measurement and do every experiment upon which one wishes to build (though we should ~imo~ understand and critically scrutinize those measurements and experiments).

But what is our intellectual responsibility in ordinary life in domains not pertaining to our professional work? What is a non-expert to make of claims of global warming, the teaching of evolution or the claimed risks of vaccinations against horrible childhood diseases?

The problem of determining which “authorities” deserve your trust become even more acute in this age when misleading the public is now a multi-billion dollar industry. With governance comes responsibilities, and in a democracy it is the citizens and their representatives that ultimately shoulder that responsibility. One of those responsibilites is to base your vote and support (whether it’s for a candidate or a policy) on the most accurate and reliable information currently available.

trish

08-23-2013, 04:30 AM

http://nyti.ms/19KagUT

martin48

08-23-2013, 09:58 AM

http://nyti.ms/19KagUT

There is scant evidence that rationalism will survive.

Jamie Michelle

01-12-2014, 02:46 AM

So, I'm confused, does God exist? :hide-1:

There are no peer reviewed papers in any respected journals (that I know of) claiming to demonstrate the non-existence of God. On the other hand, there are no such papers (that I know of published after the nineteenth century) claiming to use the hypothesis that God exists to explain a physical, chemical or biological phenomenon. On the third hand, there are quite a number of ordained reverends, priests, preachers, bishops etc. who professionally endorse the claim of God's existence and even talk to Him. On the fourth hand, many of them (despite the fact they they all talk to God) disagree about what God says, thinks and intends for us to do. If you actually have the four hands required to follow this nonsense, you're probably the god Kali. :Bowdown:

In answer to Jericho's question: according to the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), God's existence is mathematically unavoidable.

The Omega Point cosmology, which is a proof of God's existence, is now a mathematical theorem per the aforesaid known laws of physics, of which have been confirmed by every experiment conducted to date. Hence, the only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to reject empirical science. As Prof. Stephen Hawking wrote, "one cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem." (From p. 67 of Stephen Hawking, The Illustrated A Brief History of Time [New York, NY: Bantam Books, 1996; 1st ed., 1988].)

The Omega Point cosmology has been published and extensively peer-reviewed in leading physics journals.

Additionally, we now have the quantum gravity Theory of Everything (TOE) required by the known laws of physics and that correctly describes and unifies all the forces in physics: of which inherently produces the Omega Point cosmology. So here we have an additional high degree of assurance that the Omega Point cosmology is correct.

Regarding the conformance and unique attributes of the Omega Point cosmology with Christianity:

The Omega Point is omniscient, having an infinite amount of information and knowing all that is logically possible to be known; it is omnipotent, having an infinite amount of energy and power; and it is omnipresent, consisting of all that exists. These three properties are the traditional quidditative definitions (i.e., haecceities) of God held by almost all of the world's leading religions. Hence, by definition, the Omega Point is God.

The Omega Point final singularity is a different aspect of the Big Bang initial singularity, i.e., the first cause, a definition of God held by all the Abrahamic religions.

As well, as Stephen Hawking proved, the singularity is not in spacetime, but rather is the boundary of space and time (see S. W. Hawking and G. F. R. Ellis, The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973], pp. 217-221).

The Schmidt b-boundary has been shown to yield a topology in which the cosmological singularity is not Hausdorff separated from the points in spacetime, meaning that it is not possible to put an open set of points between the cosmological singularity and *any* point in spacetime proper. That is, the cosmological singularity has infinite nearness to every point in spacetime.

So the Omega Point is transcendent to, yet immanent in, space and time. Because the cosmological singularity exists outside of space and time, it is eternal, as time has no application to it.

Quite literally, the cosmological singularity is supernatural, in the sense that no form of physics can apply to it, since physical values are at infinity at the singularity, and so it is not possible to perform arithmetical operations on them; and in the sense that the singularity is beyond creation, as it is not a part of spacetime, but rather is the boundary of space and time.

And given an infinite amount of computational resources, per the Bekenstein Bound, recreating the exact quantum state of our present universe is trivial, requiring at most a mere 10^123 bits (the number which Roger Penrose calculated), or at most a mere 2^10^123 bits for every different quantum configuration of the universe logically possible (i.e., the powerset, of which the multiverse in its entirety at this point in universal history is a subset of this powerset). So the Omega Point will be able to resurrect us using merely an infinitesimally small amount of total computational resources: indeed, the multiversal resurrection will occur between 10^-10^10 and 10^-10^123 seconds before the Omega Point is reached, as the computational capacity of the universe at that stage will be great enough that doing so will require only a trivial amount of total computational resources.

Miracles are allowed by the known laws of physics using baryon annihilation, and its inverse, by way of electroweak quantum tunneling (which is allowed in the Standard Model of particle physics, as baryon number minus lepton number, B - L, is conserved) caused via the Principle of Least Action by the physical requirement that the Omega Point final cosmological singularity exists. If the miracles of Jesus Christ were necessary in order for the universe to evolve into the Omega Point, and if the known laws of physics are correct, then the probability of those miracles occurring is certain.

Additionally, the cosmological singularity consists of a three-aspect structure: the final singularity (i.e., the Omega Point), the all-presents singularity (which exists at the boundary of the multiverse), and the initial singularity (i.e., the beginning of the Big Bang). These three distinct aspects which perform different physical functions in bringing about and sustaining existence are actually one singularity which connects the entirety of the multiverse.

Christian theology is therefore preferentially selected by the known laws of physics due to the fundamentally triune structure of the cosmological singularity (which, again, has all the haecceities claimed for God in the major religions), which is deselective of all other major religions.

For much more on the above, and for many more details on how the Omega Point cosmology precisely matches the cosmology described in the New Testament, see my following article (published under my legal name):

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708; PDF, 1741424 bytes, MD5: 8f7b21ee1e236fc2fbb22b4ee4bbd4cb. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEveryth ing , http://theophysics.host56.com/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , http://alphaomegapoint.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/redford-physics-of-god.pdf , http://sites.google.com/site/physicotheism/home/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf

Furthermore, in the below resource are six sections which contain very informative videos of physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler explaining the Omega Point cosmology, which is a proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) of God's existence per the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE), which is also required by the known laws of physics. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of Tipler.

A number of these videos are not otherwise online. I also provide some helpful notes and commentary for some of these videos.

James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?", alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: jghev8tcbv02b6vn3uiq8jmelp7jijluqk@4ax.com , 30 Jul 2013 00:51:55 -0400. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sci.astro/KQWt4KcpMVo , http://archive.is/a04w9 , http://webcitation.org/6IUTAMEyS The plain text of this post is available at: TXT, 42423 bytes, MD5: b199e867e42d54b2b8bf6adcb4127761. http://mirrorcreator.com/files/JCFTZSS8/ , http://ziddu.com/download/22782349/ , http://ge.tt/3lOTVbp

broncofan

01-12-2014, 03:17 AM

In answer to Jericho's question: according to the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), God's existence is mathematically unavoidable.

I've been able to avoid it mathematically.

martin48

01-13-2014, 01:14 PM

May I be so bold as to point the interested reader to this

Prospero

01-13-2014, 01:18 PM

Thanks Martin. Excellent.

God does exist however in many people's minds. That is undeniable.

Stavros

01-13-2014, 03:40 PM

martin48

01-13-2014, 05:24 PM

Thanks Martin. Excellent.

God does exist however in many people's minds. That is undeniable.

So does Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy

martin48

01-13-2014, 05:35 PM

A concise demolition of Tipler's silly views, but if anything I think it demonstrates the trend among some scientists who use mathematics to suggest they can explain everything. As Martin and Trish have pointed out in various threads science cannot explain everything, which suggests Tipler is deluded in believing not only that he can explain everything but that he has the intellectual means to do so. I suppose the question is this: how limited is mathematics as a tool of explanation? Most of the surveillance technology that is used by google or the NSA or GCHQ is based on algorithms that are the compression of data into numbers, but doesn't recognise poetic licence: so to say in an email 'we bombed in New Haven' is not to say we -assuming 'we' to be a terrorist cell- dropped a bomb in Connecticut but that there was a play of that name performed there -but algorithms searching for that sequence of letters that makes 'bomb' would not know this.

The short answer is "no". Math can not explain everything. Trish and I will go on about Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, which basically states that there are some things which can never be proven in a strict mathematical sense. You can not write a computer program that will be able to tell is any other computer program will terminate or run in a loop for ever. This may seem rather abstract but it tells you you can never locate every computer virus in a system.

On a practical level - the NSA algorithms are somewhat incomplete in another sense - they may fail to take into account the nuances and context of human language but that's not because they are outside the capabilities of math. It's our fault for believing the output of computers!

Stavros

01-14-2014, 04:16 AM

The short answer is "no". Math can not explain everything. Trish and I will go on about Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, which basically states that there are some things which can never be proven in a strict mathematical sense. You can not write a computer program that will be able to tell is any other computer program will terminate or run in a loop for ever. This may seem rather abstract but it tells you you can never locate every computer virus in a system.

On a practical level - the NSA algorithms are somewhat incomplete in another sense - they may fail to take into account the nuances and context of human language but that's not because they are outside the capabilities of math. It's our fault for believing the output of computers!

And according to Jamie we are destined to evolve into supercomputers which will take advantage of the 'singularity' and the collapsing universe to reign over all time. Curious how nothing ever goes wrong in the future and there is an unlimited supply of energy to keep the lights on...

martin48

01-14-2014, 01:55 PM

And according to Jamie we are destined to evolve into supercomputers which will take advantage of the 'singularity' and the collapsing universe to reign over all time. Curious how nothing ever goes wrong in the future and there is an unlimited supply of energy to keep the lights on...

Keep voting Republican and the future will be full of energy and freedom :geek:

buttslinger

02-06-2014, 08:53 PM

All the people I know who excel in the sciences are atheists, most all of the regular people I know have no opinion on the subject.

While Darwin and modern science really takes off about two hundred years ago, I think for the scientific mind, DNA=GOD.

Everything that is alive is alive because of DNA, DNA has been silently screaming to live for millions of years, DNA is why we have lungs instead of leaves, hands instead of flippers. DNA is the seed of life.

And the exciting part is that through DNA engineering, we can maybe do what Jesus couldn't do- wipe out many diseases and give your great grandchildren 20-10 vision.

Of course many a sci-fi movie warns us what happens when Man plays GOD.

trish

02-06-2014, 10:37 PM

DNA is an anagram of AND. This is perhaps appropriate since AND is a logic gate and DNA is a long molecule that codes for the logic and assembly of nearly all forms of terrestrial life.

I wouldn't say, however, that DNA=GOD, especially not for scientific minds. Explanations that invoke God are almost always teleological. I would think, to a scientific mind, this would have to be a feature of any god-equivalent explanation.

Arguments that invoke the random mutation of DNA and the relative reproductive fitness of the corresponding phenotypes are ultimately never teleological. It is not the goal of DNA to propagate mutant copies of itself into the future, rather that it does so is a consequence of contingencies and terrestrial chemistry.

There is nothing in modern science that can replace God. So if science removes Him, won't it leave a hole? Actually it's more like removing the crinkle when you steam a blouse.

buttslinger

02-07-2014, 01:31 AM

.....DNA is a long molecule that codes for the logic and assembly of nearly all forms of terrestrial life......

NEARLY all or all?

trish

02-07-2014, 02:12 AM

NEARLY all or all?
Depends on what you call life and what terrestrial life forms remain undiscovered. (E.g. the infectious agent in madcow disease appears to be a "misfolded" protein called a prion. Like Vonegut's Ice 9, when it's present among other proteins of like kind it causes them to misfold and so the anomaly appears to grow. It can even be transmitted from organism to organism by ingestion. Is it life? I say no, but some disagree.)

Jamie Michelle

02-20-2014, 07:40 PM

May I be so bold as to point the interested reader to this

http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/attachment.php?attachmentid=673861&stc=1&d=1389611599

Hi, Martin48. For my reply to physicist Prof. Lawrence M. Krauss's above review of physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler's book The Physics of Christianity (New York: Doubleday, 2007), see Sec. 4: "Criticisms of the Omega Point Cosmology", pp. 26 ff. of my following article:

James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708; PDF, 1741424 bytes, MD5: 8f7b21ee1e236fc2fbb22b4ee4bbd4cb. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEveryth ing , http://theophysics.host56.com/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , http://alphaomegapoint.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/redford-physics-of-god.pdf , http://sites.google.com/site/physicotheism/home/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf

Additionally, in the below resource are six sections which contain very informative videos of physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler explaining the Omega Point cosmology, which is a proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) of God's existence per the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE), which is also required by the known laws of physics. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of Tipler.

A number of these videos are not otherwise online. I also provide some helpful notes and commentary for some of these videos.

James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?", alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: jghev8tcbv02b6vn3uiq8jmelp7jijluqk@4ax.com , 30 Jul 2013 00:51:55 -0400. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sci.astro/KQWt4KcpMVo , http://archive.is/a04w9 , http://webcitation.org/6IUTAMEyS The plain text of this post is available at: TXT, 42423 bytes, MD5: b199e867e42d54b2b8bf6adcb4127761. http://mirrorcreator.com/files/JCFTZSS8/ , http://ge.tt/3lOTVbp

trish

02-20-2014, 08:28 PM

Can Physics Prove God and Christianity? Frank Tipler vs Lawrence Krauss - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTdUODzAW6o)

Jamie Michelle

02-20-2014, 08:45 PM

.....DNA is a long molecule that codes for the logic and assembly of nearly all forms of terrestrial life......

NEARLY all or all?

Depends on what you call life and what terrestrial life forms remain undiscovered. (E.g. the infectious agent in madcow disease appears to be a "misfolded" protein called a prion. Like Vonegut's Ice 9, when it's present among other proteins of like kind it causes them to misfold and so the anomaly appears to grow. It can even be transmitted from organism to organism by ingestion. Is it life? I say no, but some disagree.)

All known forms of life (i.e., things that are commonly thought of as being alive) consist of nanoassemblers. That is, all such lifeforms manipulate individual molecules in order to reproduce and to maintain their functioning. Human babies, for example, are constructed molecule-by-molecule through cell division, as the cells intake molecules and chemically process them in order to grow and divide. Through biochemical processes, even individual atoms are manipulated in this manner. For instance, iron atoms are biochemically manipulated as part of the process in making hemoglobin.

Based upon this common view of what life is, prions are a form of life, since they are protein structures which reproduce themselves on the molecular level (in this case, by changing the chiral structure of their structural isomers, especially enantiomers).

But there are also RNA forms of life, such as RNA viruses.

Physicists Profs. John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler devised the definition of life as a process which uses natural selection to preserve its information in their book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1986), with the "Foreword" by John A. Wheeler.

Profs. Barrow and Tipler's definition of life comes the closest to hitting upon that aspect which makes the difference between being alive or dead. Yet this definition of theirs produces what most people would consider weird results. For example, under this definition of life, an automobile car is alive, since it is a pattern that is being reproduced via natural selection, i.e., the natural selection of what patterns of cars humans choose to assemble and to maintain. Tipler freely admits that cars are alive under this definition.

Howbeit, even arrowheads are alive according to this definition.

Yet this strikes people's minds as odd that such could be the case. But in actuality, one runs into even more problems with other attempts at defining what life is, since Profs. Barrow and Tipler's definition of life just reduces life to the fundaments of essential evolutionary biology.

The reason why all attempt to define what life is, as contrasted with things that are not alive, run into situations that seem obviously either ill-defined or absurd is because no distinction can veridically be made. The reason why no such distinction can in truth be made, and hence why all such attempts at making such a distinction must run into problem-cases that are either undefined or ridiculous, is because everything is alive. If literally everything is alive, then of course one is embarked upon a fool's errand to attempt to find the difference between what is alive or not.

In the Omega Point cosmology, all matter eventually becomes superintelligent computing machinery. So also, in the Omega Point cosmology, all event horizons must eventually be eliminated. In other words, not one tiny speck of matter can be left behind. What this means is that even if a blind piece of matter doesn't seem alive right now, it is just the supporting-structure for the lifeform that will eventually grow. Like the inorganic minerals which make up the bones in humans. Or the keratin which make up our toenails and fingernails.

Jamie Michelle

02-20-2014, 09:00 PM

Can Physics Prove God and Christianity? Frank Tipler vs Lawrence Krauss - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTdUODzAW6o)

Hi, Trish. I thank you for embedding the video that I had originally made available online. The video which you embed is a copy of the video I had originally encoded and uploaded. It did not exist in the datasphere before, but instead was at most languishing on people's shelves as DVDs.

It's nice to see when my efforts are appreciated by others.

The above is my favorite video that I've so far seen of Prof. Tipler. The following is bibliographic data on it:

Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss, Michael Shermer (Producer), A Great Debate: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity? (prod. co.: Skeptics Society [Altadena, Cal.]), run time: 2:13 h:min. Video of a debate held at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech; Pasadena, Cal.) on June 3, 2007.

What follows below are my notes and commentary on this video.

####################

Michael Shermer (founder of the Skeptics Society) is the moderator of the debate. Bill Nye (of Bill Nye the Science Guy) is among the audience members.

Prof. Tipler starts his presentation at 15:57 min:sec. Tipler points out that we have had a Theory of Everything (TOE) in physics for some 30 years with the arrival of the Standard Model of particle physics, since the Standard Model describes all forces in nature except for gravity. The Standard Model is a quantum field theory, i.e., it involves Quantum Mechanics combined with special-relativistic particle physics. And gravity is described by General Relativity. The problem has been to make General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics consistent with each other, which Tipler points out is done with the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg theory of quantum gravity when the appropriate boundary conditions on the universe are used, which includes the initial Big Bang, and the final Omega Point, cosmological singularities.

Tipler shows a presentation slide listing General Relativity as having the general linear group of GL(4, R) symmetry group; and the Standard Model of particle physics as having the Lie group of 3 Lie symmetry group.

19:33 min:sec ff.: In the 1960s Richard Feynman at Caltech quantized a spin-2 field using his path integral method. Quantizing a spin-2 field requires it to be a spacetime metric and imposes the full GL(4, R) symmetry group.

At 19:54 min:sec ff., Tipler points out that the Feynman quantum gravity theory is unique, i.e., it is the only quantum gravity theory possible if General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are correct (cf. 32:11 min:sec ff.), since General Relativity requires gravity to be a spin-2 field, and the Hulse and Taylor pulsar confirmation of Einstein's quadrupole formula verified that gravity is a spin-2 field. General Relativity also states that gravity is a phenomenon of the curvature of the spacetime metric with observer independence, i.e., physics cannot depend locally on the observer, which gives the GL(4, R) symmetry group of General Relativity.

20:44 min:sec ff.: Steven Weinberg later showed that the Feynman theory of quantum gravity is renormalizable, which means that the term-by-term infinities in the Feynman diagrams can be absorbed into constants, so it is no worse than other quantum field theories. However, there are actually two sources of infinity in quantum field theory: the ones that are renormalized away, as previously mentioned; and the ones that generate the divergence of the power series of the S-matrix (i.e., scattering matrix).

21:21 min:sec ff.: It has been known for 50 years what the cause of this series divergence is: it's a bad choice of the vacuum state, which Freeman Dyson showed in a paper in Physical Review in 1952 (see F. J. Dyson, "Divergence of Perturbation Theory in Quantum Electrodynamics", Physical Review, Vol. 85, No. 4 [Feb. 1952], pp. 631-632). David Geroch showed that perturbation theory in String Theory also has a series divergence for essentially the same reason.

22:18 min:sec ff.: Tipler mentions Liouville's Theorem in complex analysis. One way of stating said Theorem is that all analytic functions (i.e., holomorphic functions) other than constants have singularities either a finite distance from the origin of coordinates or at infinity, which is analogous to what occurs with the universe: the only way to avoid infinities in spacetime (consequently causing the instantaneous collapse of the entire universe) is for the universe to begin and end at singularities. Moreover, it doesn't matter what form of physics one resorts to, as any physically-realistic cosmology (e.g., one capable of incorporating Quantum Mechanics, since the complex number field is intrinsic to the mathematical formulations of Quantum Mechanics) must begin at an initial singularity and end at a final singularity. (As Barrow and Tipler wrote, "Initial and final cosmological curvature singularities are required to avoid a universal action singularity." See John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, "Action principles in nature", Nature, Vol. 331, No. 6151 [Jan. 7, 1988], pp. 31-34; see also Frank J. Tipler, "The Structure of the Classical Cosmological Singularity", in Origin and Early History of the Universe: Proceedings of the 26th Liège International Astrophyscial Colloquium, July 1-4, 1986 [Cointe-Ougree, Belgium: Universite de Liege, Institut d'Astrophysique, 1987], pp. 339-359; "Discussion", pp. 360-361.)

23:23 min:sec ff.: Feynman quantum gravity makes a singularity even more inevitable than the Penrose-Hawking-Geroch Singularity Theorems, since the Singularity Theorems assume attractive gravity, whereas with Feynman quantum gravity the sum-over-histories (i.e., sum-over-paths; path integral formulation) get arbitrarily close to infinite curvature. In other words, the multiverse has its own singularity.

24:04 min:sec ff.: Imposing unitarity avoids the spacetime infinities of quantum field theory, since if there were not a cut-off to the energies of quantum field theory then miniature black holes would be created and quickly evaporate, thereby violating unitarity. 25:12 min:sec ff.: This energy cut-off mechanism also means that some misnomered "constants" increase with cosmic time. 26:21 min:sec ff.: This mechanism to stabilize quantum field theory only works if there is an initial singularity and a final singularity and if there are no event horizons, which also solves the black hole information problem. 26:55 min:sec ff.: The absence of event horizons is only possible if the universe is spatially close, and in particular has the spatial topology of a three-sphere (i.e., 3-sphere; S^3); also, only if the final singularity is a single point in the Penrose c-boundary construction, called the Omega Point.

27:18 min:sec ff.: This picks out a global vacuum state which must define a classical universe now; this means that the wave function of the universe must have initially been a Dirac delta function, which explains the observed flatness of the universe without resorting to nonempirical new physics such as Inflation Theory (requiring the unobserved inflation field, i.e., inflaton particles), but rather is simply quantum kinematics: a result of wave-packet spreading (as an analogy, Tipler gives a version of wave-packet spreading as sound waves heard around the corner of a building, which is an example of wave diffraction).

28:05 min:sec ff.: In such a universe, quantum field theory in the form of the Bekenstein Bound forces the initial state of the universe to be homogeneous and isotropic; and it also picks out a unique field of the Standard Model, the SU(2)_L field which gives the observed excess of matter over antimatter, whereas the usual boundary condition used by physicists--which is inconsistent with quantum field theory--gives a baryon-generating mechanism that produces far too many photons to baryons. Also, the perturbation spectrum is necessarily scale-invariant since the universe is necessarily flat (as was basically shown by Edward Robert Harrison long before Inflation Theory was even though of).

29 min ff.: What the above all means is that reality consists of a multiverse, with each universe in the multiverse starting at an initial singularity and eventually collapsing into a final singularity. Said Big Bang initial singularity and Omega Point final singularity are actually connected by a third singularity: the All-Presents singularity, which exists at each time for each universe in the multiverse. That is, there exists three connected hypostases to existence: the First Cause, the Sustaining Cause, and the Final Cause, which are not in spacetime but instead are the boundary of space and time, and which are not themselves subject to any possible form of physics, i.e., they are quite literally supernatural.

32:11 min:sec ff.: Feynman-Weinberg quantum gravity is the unique quantization of General Relativity, i.e., it's the only way to quantize General Relativity, since gravity in General Relativity is a spin-2 field, and General Relativity is a spacetime metric and possesses the full GL(4, R) symmetry group. (Herein "unique" means the only one mathematically possible within the context of parsimony, as one can always add arbitrary yet small terms which change the output so insignificantly that no current instruments can measure the difference, and hence it would presently still conform to experiment, but such arbitrary terms would not then be parsimonious, since they are not justified by mathematical necessity [i.e., in order to obtain a mathematically-consistent theory] nor are they experimentally justified.) General Relativity is the unique specialization (i.e., subset; special case) of Newtonian mechanics with the specification imposed that Newtonian mechanics be consistent with Maxwell's Equations, i.e., that the speed of light is the same for all observers. Elie Cartan showed that in Newtonian mechanics, gravity is curvature of time only; whereas in General Relativity, gravity is curvature of space and time, i.e., spacetime (cf. Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity [New York: Doubleday, 2007], p. 33; and pp. 79-80 of Frank J. Tipler, "Albert Einstein: A Scientific Reactionary", pp. 73-83, in John Brockman [Ed.], My Einstein [New York: Vintage Books, 2007; orig. pub. 2006]). 33 min ff.: Similarly, Quantum Mechanics is the unique specialization of Newtonian mechanics in its most powerful formulation, the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation, with the specification imposed that determinism is maintained: since the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation is indeterministic, because when particle trajectories cross paths a singularity is produced (i.e., the values in the equations become infinite) and so it is not possible to predict (even in principle) what happens after that (cf. id., The Physics of Christianity, pp. 48-49; and 7:17 min:sec ff. of Casey Luskin, interview of Frank Tipler, "Part 1: Einstein Vs. Darwin", Intelligent Design the Future, Feb. 13, 2013, audio run time: 17:25 min:sec).

33:17 min:sec ff.: For these reasons--the fact that the history of physics since Newton has been a series of specializations, rather than generalizations, of fundamental physics--we can be confident that we have the correct Theory of Everything (TOE) in physics and that there is not going to be any new physics that comes along to displace the current known laws of physics. That is, since after Newton's physics, there has been no "revolution" in physics (e.g., such as with General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, etc.), but instead an evolution of physics: the fundamental physics of today are simply more specific subsets of Newtonian mechanics, i.e., Newtonian mechanics with specific constrains put on it in order to make it consistent with observations and to make its resulting subsets mutually mathematically consistent with each other. So in over 300 years we have never left the realm of Newton's physics. And all the forces in physics are now described and made mutually consistent with the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity theory and the Standard Model of particle physics.

Prof. Tipler then goes on to show how, using only the known laws of physics, the miracles of Jesus Christ are physically possible. This process uses baryon annihilation (which is allowed in the Standard Model, as baryon number minus lepton number, B - L, is conserved), and its inverse, by way of electroweak quantum tunneling caused via the Principle of Least Action by the physical requirement that the Omega Point final cosmological singularity exists. Tipler also proposes that the virgin birth of Jesus by Mary could be possible via Jesus being a special type of XX male who obtained all of his genetic material from Mary (i.e., an instance of parthenogenesis). Tipler concludes that the Star of Bethlehem was either a Type Ic hypernova located in the Andromeda Galaxy, or a Type Ia supernova located in a globular cluster of our own Milky Way Galaxy.

If the Incarnation of Jesus Christ and the miracles attributed to him in the New Testament were necessary in order to lead to the formation of the Omega Point--and if the known laws of physics are correct--then the probability of these events occurring is certain. Furthermore, Tipler proposes tests on particular relics associated with Jesus which, if the relics are genuine, could verify whether in fact said miracles took place via the aforementioned mechanisms.

Physicist Prof. Lawrence M. Krauss starts his presentation at 49:36 min:sec. 52:54 min:sec ff.: Krauss begins by engaging in the logical fallacy of bare assertion. Krauss asserts that (1) the Standard Model of particle physics isn't complete; (2) we don't have a consistent theory of quantum gravity; (3) the universe doesn't have to collapse; (4) we don't understand the nature of dark energy; and (5) we don't know why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe.

In answer to Krauss: (1) The Standard Model describes all forces in nature except for gravity. And gravity is described by General Relativity. (2) The problem has been to make General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics consistent with each other, which is done with the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity theory. (3) The universe must collapse in finite proper time or otherwise unitarity will be violated (see p. 925 [cf. pp. 904-905] of F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers", Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 [Apr. 2005], pp. 897-964). (4) The dark energy is the positive cosmological constant. As required by the Standard Model of particle physics, the net baryon number was created in the early universe by baryogenesis via electroweak quantum tunneling. This necessarily forces the Higgs field to be in a vacuum state that is not its absolute vacuum, which is the cause of the observed cosmological constant. (5) The universe's initial SU(2)_L field of the Standard Model--which is required by quantum field theory--gives the observed excess of matter over antimatter. See op. cit. for details on the foregoing matters.

Prof. Krauss attempts to rebut Prof. Tipler's proposed mechanism for the miracles of Jesus Christ by relating how statistically improbable such events are, yet this doesn't actually address Tipler's arguments since Tipler's point is that such seemingly improbable events would be forced to occur by the known laws of physics via the Principle of Least Action if said events are required in order for the universe to evolve into the Omega Point final singularity. Krauss himself in his review of Tipler's book The Physics of Christianity admits that this mechanism which Tipler proposes for Jesus Christ's miracles is physically sound if said miracles were necessary in order to lead to the formation of the Omega Point and if the Omega Point is required in order for existence to exist (see Lawrence Krauss, "More dangerous than nonsense", New Scientist, Vol. 194, No. 2603 [May 12, 2007], p. 53).

1:00:52 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss provides a quote from Gerardus 't Hooft, but as with Krauss's discussion of probabilities, 't Hooft's remarks are irrelevant to Tipler's actual argument, since 't Hooft is assuming boundary conditions on the universe which are inconsistent with quantum field theory rather than the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE boundary conditions which make all the laws of physics mutually mathematically consistent with each other.

1:02:01 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss provides a quote from Steven Weinberg, of which again is irrelevant to Tipler's actual argument, since as with 't Hooft, Weinberg is assuming inconsistent boundary conditions.

Krauss, 't Hooft, and Weinberg are all particle physicists. Whereas Tipler is not only an expert in quantum field theory (i.e., Quantum Mechanics combined with special-relativistic particle physics) but also an expert in Global General Relativity and computer theory. Furthermore, neither Krauss, 't Hooft, nor Weinberg display any awareness of Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper which presents the technical details of the Omega Point TOE.

1:03:15 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss claims that all the evidence in nature indicates that the universe will expand forever. Ironically, Krauss has actually published a paper that greatly helped to strengthen Tipler's Omega Point cosmology. Some have suggested that the current acceleration of the universe's expansion due to the positive cosmological constant would appear to obviate the Omega Point. However, Profs. Krauss and Turner point out that "there is no set of cosmological observations we can perform that will unambiguously allow us to determine what the ultimate destiny of the Universe will be." (See Lawrence M. Krauss and Michael S. Turner, "Geometry and Destiny", General Relativity and Gravitation, Vol. 31, No. 10 [Oct. 1999], pp. 1453-1459.) While cosmological observations cannot tell us what the ultimate fate of the universe will be, the known laws of physics themselves can, as the universe is forced to end in finite proper time in order for unitarity to remain unviolated (again, see p. 925 [cf. pp. 904-905] of id., "The structure of the world from pure numbers", op. cit.).

1:23:06 h:min:sec ff.: Tipler starts his response to Krauss, wherein Tipler addresses Krauss's claims.

1:29:22 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss starts his second response to Tipler.

1:30:34 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss claims that the laws of physics prevent sapient life from harnessing baryon annihilation. However, the laws of physics allow baryon annihilation using electroweak quantum tunneling via quantum coherence. As Tipler writes, "Atoms have energy levels that differ by a few electron volts. Quantum coherence among a trillion atoms would allow the atoms to concentrate the energy differences of the levels on a single atom, and this would be 10 TeV, the amount of energy needed for the baryon-annihilation process to go forward." (See Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Christianity [New York: Doubleday, 2007], p. 73.)

1:31:09 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss talks about "the energy of empty space", by which he means the dark energy. See my above response to Krauss's previous comments on the dark energy.

1:32:29 h:min:sec ff.: Tipler and Krauss take questions from the audience.

1:35:57 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss claims that we don't understand physics well enough to know whether unitarity is violated if an astrophysical black hole were to evaporate.

Regarding proposed solutions to the black hole information issue, all except for Tipler's Omega Point cosmology share the common feature of using proposed new laws of physics that have never been experimentally confirmed--and indeed which violate the known laws of physics--such as with Prof. Stephen Hawking's paper on the black hole information issue which is dependent on the conjectured String Theory-based anti-de Sitter space/conformal field theory correspondence (AdS/CFT correspondence). (See S. W. Hawking, "Information loss in black holes", Physical Review D, Vol. 72, No. 8 [Oct. 15, 2005], Art. No. 084013, 4 pp.) Hence, the end of the universe in finite proper time via collapse before a black hole completely evaporates is required if unitarity is to remain unviolated, i.e., if General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics--which are what the proofs of Hawking radiation derive from--are true statements of how the world works.

1:42:13 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss invokes the Christ myth theory, including incorrectly claiming that nearly every religion has had virgin births.

Regarding the Christ myth theory, virtually all the items which the Christ myth theorists claim as facts which show the parallels of Christianity with earlier pagan religions are completely fabricated modern claims that can't be found in the historical record. For an excellent discussion on this, see the following video:

"Shattering The Christ Myth (JP Holding)", exposedatheists, Dec. 21, 2010. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxbYhy76GLQ , http://blip.tv/apologetics/jp-holding-on-the-christ-myth-1613139 , https://myspace.com/philosophyandtheology/video/shattering-the-christ-myth/57136163 , http://bethelchristianfellowship.info/flash_media/jp3ChristMythCopyCat.m4v

The above video is an interview of James Patrick Holding (editor of Shattering the Christ Myth: Did Jesus Not Exist? [Maitland, Fla.: Xulon Press, 2008] http://amazon.com/dp/1606472712 ) by Dr. Craig Johnson on the topic of the Christ myth theory. See also the below resources regarding the Christ myth theory on J. P. Holding's website:

"Were Bible stories and characters stolen from pagan myths?", Tekton Education and Apologetics Ministry. http://www.tektonics.org/copycathub.html

"Did Jesus exist?", op. cit. http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexisthub.html

1:47:06 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss agrees that the only hope for eternal life is in a collapsing universe.

1:48:06 h:min:sec ff.: An audience member asks Tipler about Matthew 10:23, Mark 9:1 and John 5:25 as being examples of where Jesus Christ incorrectly thought that the End Time was imminent, i.e., within Jesus's own generation.

Matthew 10:23, New King James Version (NKJV) states, "When they persecute you in this city, flee to another. For assuredly, I say to you, you will not have gone through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes." And indeed they did not go through all the cities of Israel before they died, and hence before Christ's Second Coming.

Mark 9:1, NKJV (cf. Matthew 16:28; Luke 9:27) states, "And He said to them, 'Assuredly, I say to you that there are some standing here who will not taste death till they see the kingdom of God present with power.'" And then the very next passages concern Christ's Transfiguration, whereby Heaven was also shown.

John 5:25, NKJV states, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God; and those who hear will live." But the next passages, John 5:26-29, go on to state, "For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment also, because He is the Son of Man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming in which all who are in the graves will hear His voice and come forth--those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of condemnation." These passages relate to Jesus's statement that "I am the resurrection and the life." (John 11:25, NKJV. Cf. John 8:12 [cf. 1 John 1:5]; 14:6.) In other words, those raised from death are already existing within Jesus Christ in His transcendent Second Person aspect, since the Father and the Son are One (see Isaiah 9:6; John 10:30; 14:6-13). So when Jesus said this, it was a different way of saying that the Resurrection and the Life stood there before them right then in His human aspect.

So in each of these scripture passages which this audience member gave as examples of Christ getting some things wrong are all examples of Him being correct.

Sometimes people also give Matthew 24:32-35 as being an example of Christ making an incorrect prophecy. However, "this generation" referred to in Matthew 24:34 concerns the generation which witnesses the signs of the End Time which Jesus discusses.

2:02:13 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss talks about Newtonian mechanics being replaced by General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and hence that we shouldn't be surprised that the current known laws of physics might also be replaced. However, as Tipler pointed out in his presentation, the fundamental physics of today are simply more specific subsets of Newtonian mechanics, i.e., Newtonian mechanics with specific constrains put on it in order to make it consistent with observations and to make its resulting subsets mutually mathematically consistent with each other. Hence, we have never left the realm of Newton's physics. And all the forces in physics are now described and made mutually consistent with the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model TOE. (See above for more on that.) 2:03:26 h:min:sec ff.: Krauss states that the Standard Model of particle physics produces nonsense answers when pushed to high enough energies, as does Quantum Electrodynamics (QED). However, as Tipler previously pointed out in his presentation, imposing unitarity avoids the spacetime infinities of quantum field theory, since if there were not a cut-off to the energies of quantum field theory then miniature black holes would be created and quickly evaporate, thereby violating unitarity. Krauss also gives the infinities of quantum field theory as a reason for thinking that new forms of physics will be required at higher energy scales. However, this mechanism to the energy cut-off also allows the energies to gradually scale to infinity during the collapse phase of the universe (the energies only become actually infinite at the cosmological singularity), which means that there is no need for new physics at higher energy scales.

-----

Since the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) is mathematically required by the known laws of physics, of which said physical laws have been confirmed by every experiment to date, the only way Krauss could have actually argued against Tipler is to argue that the known laws of physics might be wrong. But because those physical laws have been confirmed by every experiment to date, there exists no rational reason to think that they are wrong. Hence, Krauss's irrelevant arguments (or bare assertions, as Krauss also engaged in) against Tipler were unavoidable, since Krauss set himself a logically-impossible task.

For details on the Omega Point TOE, see the following paper by Prof. Tipler:

* F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers", Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Apr. 2005), pp. 897-964, doi:10.1088/0034-4885/68/4/R04, bibcode: 2005RPPh...68..897T. http://www.math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as Frank J. Tipler, "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything", arXiv:0704.3276, Apr. 24, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3276

The following is the first article on the Omega Point TOE:

* Frank J. Tipler, "Genesis: How the Universe Began According to Standard Model Particle Physics", arXiv:astro-ph/0111520, Nov. 28, 2001. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0111520 For images that go with the article, see "Frank J. Tipler, Diagrams", Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist. http://theophysics.ifastnet.com/tipler-diagrams.html

For the details regarding the point Prof. Tipler made in his presentation about how modern physics (i.e., General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and the Standard Model of particle physics) are simply special cases of classical mechanics (i.e., Newtonian mechanics, particularly in its most powerful formulation of the Hamilton-Jacobi Equation), see the following articles:

* Frank J. Tipler, "The Obama-Tribe 'Curvature of Constitutional Space' Paper is Crackpot Physics", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Oct. 26, 2008, 45 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1271310. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1271310

* Maurice J. Dupré and Frank J. Tipler, "General Relativity as an Æther Theory", International Journal of Modern Physics D, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Feb. 2012), Art. No. 1250011, 16 pp., doi:10.1142/S0218271812500113, bibcode: 2012IJMPD..2150011D. http://worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0218271812500113 Also at arXiv:1007.4572, July 26, 2010. http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.4572

* Frank J. Tipler, "Hamilton-Jacobi Many-Worlds Theory and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle", arXiv:1007.4566, July 26, 2010. http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.4566

The foregoing articles, in addition to many other papers by Prof. Tipler on the Omega Point cosmology, are also available in the below archive:

Frank-J-Tipler-Omega-Point-Papers.zip , 26712158 bytes, MD5: 6e5d29b994bc2f9aa4210d72ef37ab68. https://mega.co.nz/#!JkVQWLZT!GNIDgVWPCCb72G6LLijSinf_6u9zc0a20gXBfAV E4MA , https://amazon.com/clouddrive/share?s=bTI58F1dSAIjSrxJ26R7d8 , https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7k4r80YepnxNjNOX2x0XzBOV00/edit , http://ubuntuone.com/0VMqN7rnJzXVsJCUXkj6lY

sukumvit boy

04-17-2014, 01:49 AM

Biologists confirm that God evolved from a chimp -like Deity,
Satire from "The Onion"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/biologists-confirm-god-evolved-from-chimpanzee-dei,35755/?utm_source=The+Onion&utm_campaign=a55e55abcf-The_Onion_Weekly_Newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6a8b5ad20e-a55e55abcf-16930673