To be fair, it's not more unstable than "the universe was created by some guy seven thousand years ago."Originally Posted by BienvenuJDC
To be fair, it's not more unstable than "the universe was created by some guy seven thousand years ago."
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
The universe only appears more meaningful because our sophisticated emotions and mentality have allowed us to embrace it under numerous perceptions. If one day it should ever become 'dark,' we feel we have no motivation, no purpose, no reason, basically nihilistic.
From a human standpoint we try to feed our emotions with both painful and pleasurable intakes based on our capabilities to give it a healthy balance of 'meaning.' We cannot help being curious, desirable, anxious and even arrogant, they are natural attributes we cannot fight. The basic strive for survival is no longer just about survival and reproduction. It's our 'curse' for being social animals. Whereas from the standpoint of other animals, sophisticated 'meaning' becomes more or less necessary.
The utilization of the natural or supernatural probably does not get us any closer to one definitive 'truth,' these have just been tools or mediums to help give our personal canvas more enriched color, a new sophisticated method for social cohesion which is needed for survival. There probably isn't an absolute 'truth' or meaning in the universe since there is not really any objectivity in our perception. Life itself is all part of the laws of probabilities as well the everyday occurrences within it. All we can do is cope with it and complacently sustain on a fundamental level of belief since a verification of absolute truth may be unable to grasp.
In Lewis's description, he may have been referring to God as the light and meaning in his universe and would have probably been in shambles to discover any truth behind the possible non-existence of something he held sacred. But this isn't just about God, it applies to anything we hold dear, and it's all at the expense of our confounded emotions. The ability of belief, regarding numerous concepts, may be what keeps us all fundamentally connected, and how we choose to utilize these beliefs can be our only ultimate way of meaning.
Last edited by Serena03; 11-13-2011 at 03:39 AM.
To be fair, it's not "some guy"...
Les Miserables,
Volume 1, Fifth Book, Chapter 3
Remember this, my friends: there are no such things as bad plants or bad men. There are only bad cultivators.
I think you are right in questioning why the current expansion of the universe implies that this expansion could be uniformly traced back to some origin. Maybe something stopped the expansion for a while or increased its speed or slowed it down in the past. However, if the universe did anything like that there would need to be a force to account for the change in velocity. Outside of the gravitational pull of the mass in the universe I don't know what that force would be.
Your original question was on my mind when I walked to the library yesterday. There I found that more evidence could be obtained from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe ( http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/ ) The data from the probe placed the age of the universe at 13.73 billion years plus or minus 1%.
I admit I don't know how to verify any of this evidence. I read it. I trust the source and so I "believe" it, as JuniperWoolf points out. You do the same thing with the Gospels. You read about Jesus' death and resurrection. You trust the sources and you believe it.
There is one thing to note about the big bang. It was a complete beginning of the universe out of nothing. As such, it completely undermines atheism. It is amusing to watch atheists stumble when faced with this evidence. All of a sudden scientific evidence becomes more questionable than it normally would have been for them.
This sort of irrationality is precisely what Lewis is talking about. Aside from the fact that you seem thoroughly unacquainted with logic or even the basic organization of rational thought (flat assertion after flat assertion does not an argument make), your only point seems to be that meaning is illusory. The problem, of course, is that you undercut not only Lewis's meaning, but also your own. If all human understanding of meaning is an illusion, it not only invalidates my understanding of God, my understanding of the universe, my understanding of meaning, but also your scientistic (not "scientific") notions about meaning's falseness. If you undermine the fundamental human capacity to discern meaning and truth, you consequently undermine your capacity to discern the meaning and truth of the very proposition you are advancing. What you are saying is self-refuting. You testify against your proposition by attempting to explain it to us.
Bienvenu,
Perhaps you do not understand that the Big Bang is the best piece of corroborating evidence a theist could ever hope for. Not too long ago scientists thought the universe was eternal, and then--whammo!--they discovered background radiation. Thus, an expanding universe. Thus, the Big Bang. This development in astronomy and physics is ideally problematic for atheists. Now, Aristotle's prime mover makes more sense than ever. To get an idea of just how perfectly the Big Bang fits with Judeo-Christian theology, consider the following passage from Nahmanides, a rabbinical scholar from the 13th Century:
"...At the briefest instant following creation all the matter of the universe was concentrated in a very small place, no larger than a grain of mustard. The matter at this time was very thin, so intangible, that it did not have real substance. It did have, however, a potential to gain substance and form and to become tangible matter. From the initial concentration of this intangible substance in its minute location, the substance expanded, expanding the universe as it did so. As the expansion progressed, a change in the substance occurred. This initially thin noncorporeal substance took on the tangible aspects of matter as we know it. From this initial act of creation, from this etherieally thin pseudosubstance, everything that has existed, or will ever exist, was, is, and will be formed."
No doubt that the historical account of that nonsense is true. Actually, the decadent and still decaying Catholic Church hired Hawkings in the 70's to try to enter into some of the picture again, after we overcame it in the 1940's with the outcome of wwii after deposing Benito and Adolf, and leaving Francisco to die on his own. Such is the nature of religion. Thank goodness it's now in a museum and there is nothing they can do to get a piece of the pie where the action is.
Last edited by cafolini; 11-13-2011 at 02:40 PM.
Thank you Caf for that pile of irrelevant balderdash. Perhaps when you figure out how to engage in a rational conversation you will rejoin this one.
There is nothing scientific or 'scientistic' about personal meaning, except from basic neurological standpoint, it really is a generation of our emotions. All it means is that there's no objectivity to the way we do discern meaning and truth; it appears 'illusory' because our interpretation for various concepts are so subjective and the possibility of absolute truth becomes even more obscured. I am not undermining my own personal existence and discerment just because I see the universe differently than yours, how does this undermine your discernment and understanding becuase various beliefs and perspectives exist?
You are welcome. Make sure you store it for when you need it.
Ohhhh, your god's female? My mistake.
Last edited by JuniperWoolf; 11-13-2011 at 09:51 PM.
__________________
"Personal note: When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun. So once when I was six, I did. At first the brightness was overwhelming, but I had seen that before. I kept looking, forcing myself not to blink, and then the brightness began to dissolve. My pupils shrunk to pinholes and everything came into focus and for a moment I understood. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal."
-Pi
Then why are not most cosmologists theists?
Edit: Further, why does Stephen Hawking, the world's leading cosmologist, come out and say that given what we know of the universe's origins, it is not necessary to posit the existence or the activity of a God? I know we've had this exact same conversation before, but I could not let that statement there pass unopposed.
Last edited by Darcy88; 11-13-2011 at 11:40 PM.
Ha! He'll probably say that they are, Darcy, and bring up Swaggart, Baker and Roberts as evidence. Don't the latter deal with the cosmos?
Last edited by cafolini; 11-13-2011 at 11:28 PM.
How does Hawking account for the origin of the universe without recourse to something outside of it where some choice was made?
He says it came about as the result of physical laws.
This is so ridiculous.
Fairly typical bunkum here. Is the above statement true? Does it have meaning? Is it true just for you? If so, why are you telling me? In your reletavistic world, I can simply choose to believe otherwise.
Why is it that reletavists try to confound objective truth by attempting to make objectively true statements about "our" interpretations? If you ever hope to sound rational, as opposed to irrational, which is all you accomplish here, you need to understand that you can never make statements that confound truth and meaning. You can still believe it, if you want. You can just never tell anyone without looking ridiculous.
You can't make sweeping statements about the illusion of truth and expect anyone to believe the truth of your statement. You can't make statements about the illusion of meaning and expect anyone to understand your meaning. All this hokum is just logically unteneable the second you try to share it with someone.
See, in our world of subjective truth and meaning, your post stated that you were buried in ice cream and waiting for aliens to whisk you away to Alpha Centauri, which I believe to be true and meaningful.
The atheists are now trying to suggest that (and I'm not kidding) "the universe caused itself."
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