quote:And this is what I consider a ridiculous and humiliating crawling before false idols, and beneath the contempt of any civilised person.
This doesn't even make sense, KoM. Why should we be able to understand the very forces that created us? If the universe is an entirely natural process, why would it be such that we could understand it all? And if it's not, if it was created by a supernatural act, why would we be able to understand it completely? It's an unfounded assumption either way.
posted
To make a universe too complicated for humans to grasp is one thing, as long as it could in principle be grasped (without prior knowledge) by some sufficiently superior intelligence. I'm not convinced this is actually possible - I have a high opinion of human intelligence - but it wouldn't be dishonest. But to make a universe that is actually deceptive, impossible even in principle to figure out from the inside, that's dishonest. And, from a god who then goes on to say "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free", hypocritical as well.
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posted
Actually, a Universe with discontinuities seems perfectly plausible to me. By discontinuities, I mean places where mulitple sets of prior conditions, known by someone inside to any level of detail, could lead to current conditions.
If such discontinuities exist, then we couldn't know the past with any certainty.
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posted
I'm not arguing plausibility, but dishonesty. And, if such a thing came about from the operation of non-miraculous physics, you would still be able to infer a lot about the general course of history. Certainly you would be able to distinguish fourteen billion from six thousand!
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But it's not dishonest unless there's a particular reason you should be able to tell. And there isn't.
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And I say again : "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." If truth is inherently unknowable, how is this honest?
And in a universe containing the christian god, knowing the truth is curst important, since he seems inclined to punish you for all eternity if you make a mistake!
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And you're stuck in your religious paradigm which says that emotion is a substitute for knowledge.
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"All religions are true, for a given value of truth." If you insist on sticking to an ancient lie told for the comfort of children and the justification of warfare and rape, I can't stop you. But I don't see where I have to take you seriously.
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quote:To make a universe too complicated for humans to grasp is one thing, as long as it could in principle be grasped (without prior knowledge) by some sufficiently superior intelligence.
I hadn't thought of the possibility that God created the universe. I always thought that God was part of the universe, just as we are. If there was a big bang, then God had a beginning as a member of that universe. If there wasn't a big bang, then the universe always existed, and God always existed.
If there was a big bang, then there could have been an infinite number of big bangs and an infinite number of universes preceding this one.
If any of those infinite number of universes gave rise to intelligent beings capable of understanding any of the laws of that universe, there is a chance that among those intelligent beings in all those trial universes there was one which was able to grasp all the laws or truth that could be comprehended in that particular universe. That universe would then by definition have a god.
Maybe there have been universes without intelligent beings, and maybe there have been universes without gods, but given an infinite amount of time and an infinite number of big bangs and big crunches, sooner or later there's going to be a universe that has something close to a god.
Personally I don't believe in the big bang. I believe that the universe and everything in it always existed and that nothing exists outside of this universe. I believe that the universe continues infinitely in all directions and that it contains an infinite amount of matter.
We already know that our universe contains intelligent beings. Somewhere in the infinite expanse of the universe, we would expect to find a being with a lot of intelligence...enough intelligence to figure out how to organize matter and how to organize other intelligent beings.
We begin at that most-intelligent being's point of origin and start organizing matter and beings. As we exhaust the available materials we move outward as an organizational wave front into the unorganized universe with an infinite amount of unorganized matter and unorganized beings spread out ahead of us. As we look back we see that all other organized matter in the universe is red-shifted and is moving away from us. That's a good thing!
But maybe, as you say, God created the universe and is somehow outside or above or beyond the universe. I can't comprehend such a god.
Or maybe there is no god. Maybe nobody in the entire universe has yet figured out enough laws and truth to set his program in motion.
Or maybe there is a god somewhere out there, and we are not (yet) caught up in his organizational wave front.
Call it god's play. But what else is a supremely intelligent being going to do with all that time and with all that matter?
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posted
Well, skillery, I was with you right up to the point where you said "I think I'm smarter than the world's best scientists." Pseudo-philosophical speculation is a fine thing, but not when it conflicts with actual ecvidence.
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posted
There are a couple of little tidbits of doctrine in my faith which I'm not likely to give up just because they are currently out of favor in the scientific community:
"Matter as well as spirit (intelligence) is eternal, uncreated, self-existing. However infinite the variety of its changes, forms and shapes; however vast and varying the parts it has to act in the great theater of the universe; whatever sphere its several parts may be destined to fill in the boundless organization of infinite wisdom, yet it is there, durable as the throne of Jehovah. And eternity is inscribed in indelible characters on every particle."
"Hence we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos - chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time He had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning and can have no end."
"The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end...There never was a time when there were not spirits (intelligences); for they are co-eternal with our Father in heaven."
"God himself, finding he was in the midst of spirits and glory, because he was more intelligent, saw proper to institute laws whereby the rest could have a privilege to advance like himself."
There is no room in these statements for belief in any big bang theories. I am confident that the scientific community will eventually be able to back these statements up.
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posted
So remind me again, when was the last time religious doctrine found itself backed up by evidence? The track record of churches is zero in this matter.
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The Berkeley Site (they're the experts on cosmic microwave background):
quote:The big bang theory states that at some time in the distant past there was nothing. A process known as vacuum fluctuation created what astrophysicists call a singularity. From that singularity, which was about the size of a dime, our Universe was born.
Physical laws as we know them did not exist due to the presence of incredibly large amounts of energy, in the form of photons. Some of the photons became quarks, and then the quarks formed neutrons and protons. Eventually huge numbers of Hydrogen, Helium and Lithium nuclei formed. The process of forming all these nuclei is called big bang nucleosynthesis.
Well, if photons can be considered particles, then maybe we can agree that matter always existed.
Edit: But the big bang theory also suggests that there is a finite amount of matter in the universe, which I don't buy.
posted
It seems to me that ultimately all the arguments here still come down to which authority are you going to trust.
Science trusts observations over almost everything else, since it is believed that we cannot influence what the universe does (except for a bit in quantum mechanics, of course, but there's always an exception ). If a verified observation does not agree with a theory, then the theory must be changed to agree with the observation.
Faith trusts something else--a book, a feeling, an unprovable philosophy--over almost everything else. If a verified observation does not agree with the faith, then the observation (or the theory that explains it) must be wrong.
The problem with faith is that there is no universal means of testing it. Each individual must decide if they agree with it or not, and each individual's opinion is as good as the next persons. The problem with science is that it is limited to what is observable and what can be deduced from that. It is also subject to the agreement of those observing the events and what has been observed.
I consider science a better way of determining reality because (as I stated before) I believe that the universe is out of our control, and so acts as a dispassionate arbiter for our theories. You can have the most beautiful, logical, all-encompassing theory ever seen, but if it doesn't fit the facts, it's ruled out.
As a final note, please remember that whenever someone says "eventually science will bear this out," that is a statement of faith, not science. There is no way to know if "eventually" will ever come. Science must deal with the facts we have now, and the ones we can look (test) for.
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Not long ago I watched a TV program that claimed that not only are the objects in the universe moving away from each other, but that they are moving away from each other at exponential speed. Has anyone else heard this? Why haven't we heard more about it?
On the surface it seems obsurd. We can come up with no provable reason *why* this would happen. (In fact, I see this happening a lot in science. We can't come up with provable reasons why things happen, so we jump to conclusions. Since the conclusions do a good, practical job of describing observed phenomena, they are favored and used, even believed.) And yet, exponentially speeding up expansion is what we are "observing". As explained before, I am not one who believes observing is the end-all-be-all of knowledge. I believe our ability to observe is handicapped by our assumptions *and* our lack of knowledge. How much of our scientific "knowledge" is false because it is based on faulty assumptions?
Anyway, among the brilliant minds here, what are your thoughts on this observed phenomenon?
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posted
I have no idea how correct this is, but that would make sense to me. If the universe was expanded from a singularity the size of a dime, then the expansion would indeed be travelling radially outward, or away from each other. Newtons law of motion says everything that is in motion tends to remain in motion unless acted upon by an external force, and I don't think there's friction in space, thus they would continue to move. The outward expansion would be changed if the moving object encountered an astronomical gravitational force from a planet or star.
__
quote:We can't come up with provable reasons why things happen, so we jump to conclusions. Since the conclusions do a good, practical job of describing observed phenomena, they are favored and used, even believed. How much of our scientific "knowledge" is false because it is based on faulty assumptions?
If they do a good job of describing observable phenomenon, how are they faulty?
Posts: 2756 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
The original point of the thread was to determine if it was possible for the SoL to become a variable and if it was linked to radioactive decay rates. We have determine that it is possible, next we should determine if it is.However a post on page 2 explains that if the decay rate from 175,000 years ago matches todays rates perfectly then there is no change in the speed of light. Now if there has been no change in the speed of light (thus no change in our perception of time thus a dynamic clock matches the atomic clock) then the creationist scientist arguement in favor of a YEC can be safely refuted. If evidence had been otherwise then there would be cause to support the YEC view point. The discussion on wether nor not god (which one you bow to) is lying to us is now quite old and possibly ridiculas.
Now however I have a new theory, does anyone here think that it is possible that when the story of Genesis was told that God told it simple fashion because early man could not understand quantum/meta/theoretical physics? ANd it is ultimately up to us to explain it all to ourselves????
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"does anyone here think that it is possible that when the story of Genesis was told that God told it simple fashion because early man could not understand quantum/meta/theoretical physics?"
Sure, it's possible. Unlikely, but possible.
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No, kaioshin, according to this TV show, they are speeding up. At an exponential rate. This is not behaving the way an explosion in space would, where after the forces accelerating them stop, they continue to expand at a steady rate. Does this make any sense to anyone?
Edit: They are speculating that there is a force that runs counter to gravity on a large scale that is pushing objects away from each other.
Edit2: An article on the subject. And this article discusses that and some other interesting observations that do not match what was expected in our current theories.
Seriously, why do we think we understand the universe when it keep surprising us?
quote:Though I'm a little mystified why y'all are still jawing instead of eating the cookies I brought.
It's because your cookies are beneath the contempt of any civilised person, fugu. You really shouldn't have gone with the store brand.
Avin, I'm curious what you consider the hallmarks of a primitive belief system to be. Could you elaborate on that a bit?
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posted
Skillery, let me blow your mind and your philosophy with one idea...
God the Creator of Everything created everything in the universe--including TIME!
You can not ask "Where was God before he created the Universe" because God created Time.
That is hard for the limited finite human mind to grasp, but physicists have been dealing with time as a thing for over a century.
If they can do so, then God certainly can.
I was stuck in the debate of "what existed before God made the Universe" then I took physics and realized there was on when before the universe and time were created.
However, since we mere mortals live along linear time, that is all we normally assume there is.
Perhaps the eternity in heaven won't be what we expect, a long and possibly boring time, but an eternal existance outside of time.
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I imagine it would take awhile, since mass increases as acceleration does. I dunno. It all sounds like hogwash to me.
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Certainly big bang theory suggests that, but only in a scientific sense. As the LDS church already posits a physical heaven that is undetectable to (living) science, positing other matter that is scientifically undetectable is equally reasonable.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:You can not ask "Where was God before he created the Universe" because God created Time... However, since we mere mortals live along linear time, that is all we normally assume there is.
What blew me away was that article in the September 2002 issue of Scientific American that asserted that time doesn't exist at all - that time is merely a byproduct of the sequential nature of human perception and memory.
Posts: 2655 | Registered: Feb 2004
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quote:Seriously, why do we think we understand the universe when it keep surprising us?
No one really understands the universe, and only those who deceive themselves believe they do.
On the other hand, everyone believes they understand a good part of the universe, or at least those parts that are practical to us. Otherwise, how could anyone live, if you're not sure there will be a coffee pot in the kitchen in the morning?
What it all comes down to, though, is what do you trust to determine what is true? Do you trust what you see and hear and feel, the observable? Or do you trust feelings and revelations?
Both are unreliable. Science does revise itself (although not as much as some creationists believe--lately, revisions look very much the same as the original theories, with only slight modifications of the details). Also, science is limited to what can be observed. The invisible is, by defintion, beyond what science can observe.
Feeling and revelations are notoriously unreliable, of course. Just compare how many different, contradictory versions of reality are based on these. However, that does not mean one may be true, or even parts of all.
Who knows which is superior. (I prefer science, as stated in a previous post.) It comes down to "you put down your money, you take your chances."
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quote:positing other matter that is scientifically undetectable is equally reasonable.
In my little half-baked philosophical model of the universe, if there is unorganized matter in the path of the expanding organizational wave front, that matter has yet to be acted upon - there would be no detectable energy returning from that region of space.
Beverly, if there is an expanding organizational wave front with the purpose of processing the unorganized universe beyond, then the arc of available unorganized space ahead of any segment of the organizational front would become increasingly narrow. It would make sense to increase the speed of the expansion.
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