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04/25/2010 10:13:00 PM · #76 |
Originally posted by David Ey:
I still don't get it. Is the universe expanding? Expanding into where nothing exists and now there is something? Or at least there was something billions and billions of light years ago but now may not be there at all today. If we can look back billions of light years, why can't we look back, say, 82 earth years and see me being born?......or you? That would be cool wouldn't it? Man, this high level thought makes my head hurt. |
If you could instantly transport yourself 82 light-years away and had a powerful enough telescope you could indeed watch yourself being born. It's that "instantly" part where we run into really practical difficulties, usually dealt with in the fictional realm by the creation of some currently unknown or non-existant "hyperspace" or some form of "faster-than-light" propulsion ("warp speed" anyone?).
Not only is the universe expanding, as far as we can tell it is expanding at an accelerating rate. I believe the new Webb space telescope is supposed to shed new light (heat, actually -- it "sees primarily in the infra-red spectrum) on this area of cosmology. |
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04/25/2010 10:42:47 PM · #77 |
| Man, my reply made it 7 hours on the thread! That's a record I think... :) |
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04/25/2010 10:47:06 PM · #78 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Man, my reply made it 7 hours on the thread! That's a record I think... :) |
This one won't. ;-) |
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04/25/2010 10:48:06 PM · #79 |
Originally posted by GeneralE:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Man, my reply made it 7 hours on the thread! That's a record I think... :) |
This one won't. ;-) |
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Dang! |
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04/25/2010 10:52:20 PM · #80 |
Originally posted by David Ey:
I still don't get it. Is the universe expanding? Expanding into where nothing exists and now there is something? |
That's a bit of a trick question. It's not expanding INTO anything because then that empty space would be part of the universe too, nor is it expanding from a particular location (you couldn't point to some spot in the sky and say everything expanded from there). It's like a 3-dimensional version of the surface of a balloon: as you blow up the balloon, the distance between any two points on the surface increases, yet you can travel in any direction without finding an edge or center. It's very difficult to visualize, but can be described mathematically. |
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04/26/2010 10:09:27 AM · #81 |
| So, you are saying there is nothing outside the balloon as it is expanding? Maybe you don't know what is outside because you are captured inside and are not intelligent enough with your math to see beyond the constraints of the inner surface? |
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04/26/2010 10:11:36 AM · #82 |
Originally posted by David Ey:
So, you are saying there is nothing outside the balloon as it is expanding? |
Correct. Unlike the surface of a balloon, it's three dimensional, so there's no inside or outside edge either. |
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04/26/2010 12:05:09 PM · #83 |
It seems you are limiting yourself to thinking inside the balloon. Suppose there is much more to math than what you understand. People have thought your way for ever.
Imagine textbooks a thousand years from now saying "with the new math recently discovered there is undisputed evidence there is a supreme being. More to be discovered and written about later." Imagine, a new bit of math. Wow, were we ever stupid back then. We thought we knew so much but were just infants. |
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04/26/2010 12:55:28 PM · #84 |
Originally posted by David Ey:
Imagine textbooks a thousand years from now saying "with the new math recently discovered there is undisputed evidence there is a supreme being. More to be discovered and written about later." |
Oh, you really don't want to go there... Imagine 2000 years ago a book saying a magical entity created plants and waters on earth long before there were stars, including the sun. The author wouldn't have known that you must first have stars to generate the heavy elements that make up planets, rocks and plants. He wouldn't have a clue that grass and fruiting trees cannot exist without the sun or that seas would be frozen solid (he would observe there's no sun at night or during eclipses, yet both persist without apparent harm). It seemed perfectly reasonable that snakes could talk (the physiological impossibility was unknown) or that humans could live for hundreds of years (lives were cut short by inexplicable sickness or injuries that could be treated today). It made total sense that a human could have named all the animals, because it was unknown that huge numbers of species arose and went extinct before mammals, let alone humans, ever existed. A single pair of humans could logically populate the earth because there was no knowledge of the serious effects of inbreeding. Yet this same book, narrated from a time before there were any observers to record the events, is the sole account of original sin, and from that the necessity for a God to impregnate a woman (without prior consent?) for the purpose of allowing that offspring and all his close followers to die torturous deaths before he could forgive humans for a crime of entrapment committed by their ancestors. As proof that this person was special, the reader is given a litany of miracles with no contemporary accounts, and the body disappears from the tomb because it was raised from the dead (yet there is no modern expectation that bodies will vanish from the coffins of the devout). From this same book, we have dragons, witches, sorcerors and giants to be avoided, houses that contract human diseases, rabbits chewing their cud, instructions for selling your daughters, and claims that animal (or even human) sacrifices please the almighty. None of this stuff adds up today because we DO have a "new math," and similar stories offered by outside religions are regarded as fanciful myths. I have absolutely no doubt that these texts will be viewed the same way if people are still around 1000 years from now. |
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04/26/2010 01:43:28 PM · #85 |
Originally posted by scalvert:
Oh, you really don't want to go there... Imagine 2000 years ago a book saying a magical entity created plants and waters on earth long before there were stars, including the sun. The author wouldn't have known that you must first have stars to generate the heavy elements that make up planets, rocks and plants. He wouldn't have a clue that grass and fruiting trees cannot exist without the sun or that seas would be frozen solid (he would observe there's no sun at night or during eclipses, yet both persist without apparent harm). It seemed perfectly reasonable that snakes could talk (the physiological impossibility was unknown) or that humans could live for hundreds of years (lives were cut short by inexplicable sickness or injuries that could be treated today). It made total sense that a human could have named all the animals, because it was unknown that huge numbers of species arose and went extinct before mammals, let alone humans, ever existed. A single pair of humans could logically populate the earth because there was no knowledge of the serious effects of inbreeding. Yet this same book, narrated from a time before there were any observers to record the events, is the sole account of original sin, and from that the necessity for a God to impregnate a woman (without prior consent?) for the purpose of allowing that offspring and all his close followers to die torturous deaths before he could forgive humans for a crime of entrapment committed by their ancestors. As proof that this person was special, the reader is given a litany of miracles with no contemporary accounts, and the body disappears from the tomb because it was raised from the dead (yet there is no modern expectation that bodies will vanish from the coffins of the devout). From this same book, we have dragons, witches, sorcerors and giants to be avoided, houses that contract human diseases, rabbits chewing their cud, instructions for selling your daughters, and claims that animal (or even human) sacrifices please the almighty. None of this stuff adds up today because we DO have a "new math," and similar stories offered by outside religions are regarded as fanciful myths. I have absolutely no doubt that these texts will be viewed the same way if people are still around 1000 years from now. |
I love how you sum all this up, very succinct. It always amuses me that folks will swallow the Christian Bible without question, but the stories that ancient Romans and Greeks used to explain their Gods are discarded immediately as fantasy. :P At least in a poly-theistic scenario, you can explain away conflicting information by allowing each God to make rules and decisions that might intersect with another God. |
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04/26/2010 01:53:39 PM · #86 |
| Sure, I'll go there. You go ahead and stay in your ever-expanding balloon with your head in the sands of dis-belief. You have no more proof of your stand than I. I have no more desire to spar with someone with so closed a mind. |
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04/26/2010 01:58:04 PM · #87 |
Originally posted by David Ey:
Sure, I'll go there. You go ahead and stay in your ever-expanding balloon with your head in the sands of dis-belief. You have no more proof of your stand than I. I have no more desire to spar with someone with so closed a mind. |
So......you're saying that his slightly sarcastic description of the "Good Book" isn't somewhat accurate?
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04/26/2010 02:22:35 PM · #88 |
Originally posted by NikonJeb:
Originally posted by David Ey:
Sure, I'll go there. You go ahead and stay in your ever-expanding balloon with your head in the sands of dis-belief. You have no more proof of your stand than I. I have no more desire to spar with someone with so closed a mind. |
So......you're saying that his slightly sarcastic description of the "Good Book" isn't somewhat accurate? |
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I didn't bother to read Shannon's diatribe, but I can guess. If the way to paint Christianity in the most negative light is to interpret a passage literally, then it is done. If the way to paint Christianity in the most negative light is to interpret a passage figuratively, then it is done. Shannon basically does exactly what he accuses the brainwashed masses of, but in reverse.
David asked whether it was interesting to think that in the future we may have a completely different way of thinking about things. Is this such a crazy questions? This comes right on the heels of the basic admission that the first and second laws of thermodynamics, the bedrocks of physics, are not necessarily all reaching when we consider Cosmology. That we currently have huge "does not compute" sections of our understanding of the universe. Would you like another? We have decent evidence to say that quantum fluctuations are truly random. So how does a law of nature dictate a random result? It's paradoxical and not logically consistent. So what is more likely is we just have no idea what is happening on that level of the universe. The basic level. The fundamental level. The bottom floor.
David's question is plenty reasonable to ask. |
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04/26/2010 02:36:58 PM · #89 |
| Had you read what he'd written, you would have seen that it's perfectly reasonable to criticize the content of the bible based on the context of its origin, and that no criticism of current scientific endeavour is justifiable when that criticism nakedly arises from biblical doctrine, the clearest example of the dark infancy of humanity that still permeates us. |
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04/26/2010 02:45:35 PM · #90 |
Originally posted by David Ey:
You have no more proof of your stand than I. |
Actually, there's orders of magnitude more proof. We can readily demonstrate the effects of no sun on plants or waters, we can biologically prove that reptiles are incapable of human speech, we can trace the evolution of the earliest mammals and that a diverse multitude of species preceded them, the effects of inbreeding are readily demonstrable (and the source of genetic problems like King Tut's), we can open the coffin of any given saint or priest and see that the body did not disappear as promised, rabbits cannot possibly chew their cud because they're not ruminants, and we can prove that houses cannot contract leprosy to be cured with bird blood and incantations. As for the opposing view, predictions relating to curved spacetime, gravity, creating elements through fusion etc. have been very well supported in countless experiments.
Originally posted by David Ey:
I have no more desire to spar with someone with so closed a mind. |
Pardon me while I feign shock. [/i] Close-mindedness: Adj. An unwillingness to accept or discuss new ideas.
Message edited by author 2010-04-26 14:47:56. |
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04/26/2010 03:01:36 PM · #91 |
Originally posted by Louis:
Had you read what he'd written, you would have seen that it's perfectly reasonable to criticize the content of the bible based on the context of its origin, and that no criticism of current scientific endeavour is justifiable when that criticism nakedly arises from biblical doctrine, the clearest example of the dark infancy of humanity that still permeates us. |
It's critical to ask what if we have a completely different view in two thousand years? And how was David's question "biblical"? It seems like it could have come from any religious viewpoint. Certainly it did not "nakedly arise" from the Bible.
His question is even more reasonable when we understand that the Big Bang is much more friendly to a Supreme Being than any previous "scientific" view of Cosmology. In fact it was initially rejected on exactly those grounds. The Cosmologists were uncomfortable with the idea that they were "letting God into the discussion". So what if a new theory goes even further? Such questioning is every bit as healthy as the skeptical questioning on the other side.
William Bonner, a Brit physicist and atheist in the 1950s, for example, said "The underlying motive is, of course, to bring in God as creator. It seems like the opportunity Christian theology has been waiting for ever since science began to depose religion from the minds of rational men in the seventeenth century."
The Russian communist establishment did not allow physicists to work on a Big Bang model for the same reason. Soviet authorities claimed that it was unscientific and against the spirit of dialectical materialism. The theory was, as the astronomer V.E Llov stated in 1953 a "cancerous tumor that corrodes modern astronomical theory and is the main ideological enemy of the materialist science."
Message edited by author 2010-04-26 15:07:47. |
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04/26/2010 03:28:37 PM · #92 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
It's critical to ask what if we have a completely different view in two thousand years? And how was David's question "biblical"? It seems like it could have come from any religious viewpoint. Certainly it did not "nakedly arise" from the Bible. |
It is not justifiable to divorce David's motives from his question.
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
His question is even more reasonable when we understand that the Big Bang is much more friendly to a Supreme Being than any previous "scientific" view of Cosmology. In fact it was initially rejected on exactly those grounds. |
I dispute the "friendliness" of big bang to the existence of creator-gods, but even so, those rejections were not scientific ones, but ideological ones. Big bang is not about god; it is about physics and mathematics, and, as your first quote hints, wherever there is ideology, there is a desire to superimpose its tenets unjustifiably on science. Your second quote is a good example of this. Stalinist Communism (like Nazism) was not so much a political ideology as it was a religion, and any threat from without was a heresy against it, including the threat of a resurgent theism backed, even unjustifiably, but a new theory of universal origins. This has nothing whatever to do with science, physics, or maths. |
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04/26/2010 04:25:12 PM · #93 |
Originally posted by Louis:
[ was ] not so much a political ideology as [ it was ] a religion, and any threat from without [ was ] a heresy against it |
This your state of the nation address?
Message edited by author 2010-04-26 16:25:52. |
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04/26/2010 04:35:21 PM · #94 |
Originally posted by Louis:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
It's critical to ask what if we have a completely different view in two thousand years? And how was David's question "biblical"? It seems like it could have come from any religious viewpoint. Certainly it did not "nakedly arise" from the Bible. |
It is not justifiable to divorce David's motives from his question.
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
His question is even more reasonable when we understand that the Big Bang is much more friendly to a Supreme Being than any previous "scientific" view of Cosmology. In fact it was initially rejected on exactly those grounds. |
I dispute the "friendliness" of big bang to the existence of creator-gods, but even so, those rejections were not scientific ones, but ideological ones. Big bang is not about god; it is about physics and mathematics, and, as your first quote hints, wherever there is ideology, there is a desire to superimpose its tenets unjustifiably on science. Your second quote is a good example of this. Stalinist Communism (like Nazism) was not so much a political ideology as it was a religion, and any threat from without was a heresy against it, including the threat of a resurgent theism backed, even unjustifiably, but a new theory of universal origins. This has nothing whatever to do with science, physics, or maths. |
I think my point was David wondered about some future mathematical discovery that proved a Supreme Being. I am pointing out that something along those lines has already been had (although the Big Bang model obviously does not "prove" God exists). Materialism, as a stand-in for the general western atheist's creed (is creedo a word?), took a body blow with the Big Bang. Nothing fatal, of course, but truthfully it has caused problems. Materialism is, by far, at its strongest in a universe that is eternal with the same laws governing it throughout. Our universe, as we understand, has a beginning (a point where t=0 (t is time)) and is likely to have an end (at least a heat death). The laws that govern it do not seem to hold for all time. Take the inflationary period or whatever is "before" the Big Bang. It appears different laws govern these periods and the question becomes why? What laws govern the laws?
Message edited by author 2010-04-26 16:36:12.
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04/26/2010 04:42:51 PM · #95 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Materialism, as a stand-in for the general western atheist's creed (is creedo a word?), took a body blow with the Big Bang. |
Wow, and right after what I wrote. You seem to have just gone out to lunch. ;-) |
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04/26/2010 05:15:19 PM · #96 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
David wondered about some future mathematical discovery that proved a Supreme Being. I am pointing out that something along those lines has already been had (although the Big Bang model obviously does not "prove" God exists). |
Prove? It doesn't even suggest such a thing. Inserting a god as the creator of the universe does nothing to resolve the question of where everything came from. It only moves the goalposts back a step.
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Take the inflationary period or whatever is "before" the Big Bang. It appears different laws govern these periods and the question becomes why? |
Because spacetime originates at the Big Bang, it makes no more sense to ask what came before than to ask what's north of the North Pole. It would be perfectly reasonable for the laws governing such an extreme state to be consistent with rational physics, even if they're completely foreign from what we normally experience. You could just as easily ask why different laws apply at the quantum level vs. classical physics, but the explanation (different forces become important at these scales) doesn't involve magic or superstition. Extremes of speed, size, density, temperature, etc. always result in unusual properties, and the Big Bang represents an extreme of all of these extremes.
Message edited by author 2010-04-26 17:35:14. |
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04/26/2010 05:41:43 PM · #97 |
Originally posted by Louis:
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Materialism, as a stand-in for the general western atheist's creed (is creedo a word?), took a body blow with the Big Bang. |
Wow, and right after what I wrote. You seem to have just gone out to lunch. ;-) |
I'm not sure where I'm leaving you behind? Materialism is a philosophical position, not a scientific one. The philosophy of materialism took a blow with the science of the Big Bang. What's wrong with this?
Shannon, did you not just read the quotes I posted? I could post a half dozen more if you want. The Big Bang definitely "suggested" God to the physicists and astronomers and this made them uncomfortable. Don't think I'm saying more that I am. Not proof. Nothing of the sort. But the door is open and is more open than was previously assumed. I'll give you more quotes if you'd like to say other people understood this (even if they did not conclude a God did exist).
Message edited by author 2010-04-26 17:42:37.
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04/26/2010 07:04:06 PM · #98 |
Originally posted by DrAchoo:
Shannon, did you not just read the quotes I posted? |
The ones from a decade before evidence of the Cosmic Background Radiation even confirmed the Big Bang theory? Sure, and I'll bet you can find quotes declaring the absurdity of a spherical earth, germ theory, heliocentricity, or any other scientific breakthrough. We've moved beyond mere speculation since then, and by the 1970's nearly all cosmologists agreed with the hot big bang model. With multiple, independent lines of evidence, there is now overwhelming consensus regarding the theory. Got any quotes from THIS century? |
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04/26/2010 07:16:20 PM · #99 |
Originally posted by scalvert:
Close-mindedness: Adj. An unwillingness to accept or discuss new ideas. |
How about this one by you and about you? |
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04/26/2010 07:31:28 PM · #100 |
Originally posted by David Ey:
Originally posted by scalvert:
Close-mindedness: Adj. An unwillingness to accept or discuss new ideas. |
How about this one by you and about you? |
By me, but hardly about me. I've never had a problem with discussing new ideas, and I'll switch in an instant if evidence proves a new model to be superior to an old one. |
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