The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything

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

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Originally Posted by LondonLadyboys

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

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Originally Posted by trish

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.

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Probably mutual!

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

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.

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Originally Posted by trish

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.

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Originally Posted by Prospero

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

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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

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

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Originally Posted by Prospero

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

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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

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.

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??????

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Originally Posted by hippifried

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

Sorry, that reference was to post #249 (http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...&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.

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)

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.

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

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.

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

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Originally Posted by joeninety

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

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Originally Posted by joeninety

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:

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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.

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Originally Posted by joeninety

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:

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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."

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Originally Posted by martin48

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.

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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/...-degree-in-trs

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.

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Originally Posted by talldudeil

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by Stavros

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.

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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).

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.

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

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.

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Thank you for sharing that.
I get it...some of us have those moments. I did.... - a spiritual epiphany.
I mean, I've definitely had some times in my life when it seemed like God had to exist: a quiet snowfall in solitude, watching the mist rise from an early morning forest floor,...getting a bird in the wilderness to eat seed out of your hand....
I get it.
Thing is...your previous posting history also shows you to be a little nuts.
So there is that.






J/K...lol.

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Originally Posted by fred41

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

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

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Originally Posted by buttslinger

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

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

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Originally Posted by jake9jake9

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).

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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.

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Originally Posted by Prospero

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."

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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:(

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Originally Posted by talldudeil

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.

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What has been fouled up, things look fine from my narrow view.

Virgin births not possible??? What about cloning, What about asexual reproduction (no Jesus and her would look alike, What about genetic engineering (a bit before the time but who knows), if the good book is to be believed literally (although it may have been written as a metaphorical text) who is to say what Mary was or wasn't. She may have been an anomaly or a step in the evolutionary chain

Who is to say the creator is really benevolent, I follow no book, but I see the higher order, as could you if you pondered and let go. I say this with no disrespect but your problem is lack of ability or want, to think outside the box and because of that fact your view is even narrower than my narrow view of things.:whistle:

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Originally Posted by trish

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/sho...&postcount=249

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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.

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Originally Posted by trish

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.

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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.

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Originally Posted by LondonLadyboys

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

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

Hrmm...

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Originally Posted by joeninety

I have trouble accepting theorems as definitive proof, ...

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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.

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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

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

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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.

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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.

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…

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 )

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.

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).