Most excellent post!Originally Posted by IceM
The RCC, Anglican and many other churches accept evolution, so thankfully your point is already understood by the majority of christians.
Sorry, but I must concur with other posters.
The things you're quoting are far from factual. They may well be right, although the laws of thermodynamics suggest not, but either way, the premises remain unproven.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
For a discussion of this sort one has to take quantum mechanics into account, since mass and energy was compressed what takes place in a subatomic level can no longer be ignored. That and gravity.
But i agree that it has little to do with the OP.
Well that's only one model of the universe (it may be the prevailing model but i am not sure about that).
Have a look here, at the last image where Ω is explained.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_constant
Through the darkness of future past
the magician longs to see
one chance out between two worlds
'Fire walk with me.'
Twin Peaks
Here's a great presentation on current ideas on the origins of the universe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo
Don't worry, Dawkins is just doing the introduction.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
I also would like to challenge the idea that the universe has a finite end on the premise that it had a finite beginning.
I read somewhere that the edges of the universe is expanding at the speed of light in all direction. It seems a puzzling notion to consider. We don't know what lies beyond the edge of the universe. By all means, the forces responsible for creating the edges of the universe could be transforming extra-galactic life into matter for all we know. There is no way to test what lies beyond the Universe.
To assume that the expansion of the universe will someday end insinuates that the creative forces responsible for said growth will eventually terminate, or that the materials necessary for such growth will run out. But your logic relies on the assumption that the universe operates on the structure of a beginning-middle-end. This is highly unlikely. To even understand what lies beyond the universe requires an evolution of thought, from what is to what can be--and in the vast spectrum of things possible, those both within and beyond us, to assume such forces are limited to a specific limetime seems limited. Time, space, matter, God: these ideas are all infinite. "There is no vestige of a beginning, no sight of an end." Excluding God, the universe is a physical, or metaphyiscal, representation of the three infinte notions; how then do they all terminate? Under what circumstances can an infinitely expanding universe just implode and end? If matter exists, so too does the universe.
Physicist think the net energy in the universe is 0, so it's entirely possible there was no matter, no space, and no time prior to the Big Bang. We also know from observation that the universe is actually accelerating in all directions, and it will eventually reach a point where light from other galaxies will no longer be able to reach us, it is possible in general relativity for galaxies to move away from us faster than the speed of light.
It's true we don't know what's happening beyond our universe, or even at the edges of our universe, but I don't think the question is all that relevant since we will never know what happens beyond our universe.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Yes, Lawrence Krauss was very entertaining.
The universe is flat!
Such a relaxing thread
Why OrphanPip?
Beyond the Universe, Time
E=mc2
Don't try to encapsulate the universe as though it's a Galaxy within a Universe - look at it from the perspective of the Plasma Ball
And imagine the Plasma Ball to be all there is
I rewatched some parts of the ending of Lawrence Krauss' talk that you linked earlier because, after sleeping on it, it made me wonder if I really heard right what he said and if it made sense.
He says the following about the universe (starting 40:34): "The universe is flat. It has zero total energy and it could have begun from nothing."
This nothingness of the universe seems to support the Hindu/Buddhist idea that the universe is an illusion or "maya", basically, nothing. All one needs is an agent to even justify the view that the universe was created by God from nothing which is what I think many Christians believe. Far from defeating theism, showing that the universe could have come from nothing actually supports those traditions.
The data does not support Creationism, that is, a literal acceptance of J's version of creation in Genesis, since that has been contradicted by the 13.72 billion year age of the universe. But Creationism is a marginal and extreme belief. I think the majority of Christians could toss Creationism, if they haven't done so already.
The existence of a beginning (The Big Bang) and the new evidence that this beginning could have come from nothing (The Universe is Flat) falls right in line with theistic beliefs.
A steady state universe or one that MystyrMystyry has supported of the universe being a perpetual motion machine going eternally from big bang to big bust would be something more opposed to a general religious perspective. A theist would have to do more explaining if such a universe existed.
I'm not sure it really falls in line with theistic views though. The fact that the universe came about from quantum fluctuations, that nothing needed to be created to create the universe so to speak, suggests that no outside source was needed to trigger the universe. It just exists so to speak, if nothingness exists at some point then a universe such as ours can come about by random chance. It defeats the argument that a God was needed to create the universe, if the universe had a net positive energy or was round we would have a problem of where the energy came from.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
One must dissect an atom to understand the proportion of nothingness in the universe
We're all used to seeing the diagram of an atomic cross-section of hydrogen - nucleus at the centre with electron circling around it
If the atom was life size (the size of the diagram) the distance of the electron to proton would be as Pluto is to the Sun
Atoms are mostly nothing
Likewise the space between planets and galaxies and Big Bang to Big Bang is mostly nothing
Last edited by MystyrMystyry; 01-10-2011 at 05:43 PM.
There's actually a lot of something in between planets and galaxies, radiation primarily.
The Bohr-Rutherford atomic model is also highly oversimplified, in actuality there is a probabilistic cloud where the electron can exist at any given time around the nucleus.
"If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
- Margaret Atwood
Thankyou for the clarification OrphanPip
I was referring to the way we think of the Universe in material terms
The radiation is electro-magnetic
and electrons, protons and neutrons are of course not material entities individually
Last edited by MystyrMystyry; 01-11-2011 at 04:48 AM. Reason: lack of brains
You need to shine up what you think "material" means, because they most certainly are material.
Go to work, get married, have some kids, pay your taxes, pay your bills, watch your tv, follow fashion, act normal, obey the law and repeat after me: "I am free."
Anon
That is exactly what "material" is, and nothing more (well, you can actually break that down a bit further hypothetically).
Last edited by JuniperWoolf; 01-10-2011 at 10:25 PM.
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-Pi
cheeky
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