ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE..??
Offline Perhaps one of you articulate, logical and rational posters can provide an answer / explanation to something that's always bothered me.
First off, I believe in the "Big Bang" theory.
But in order for the Bang Bang to have happened, there had to be some basic "building blocks" there in advance of the Big Bang in order for the Big Bang to have happened i.e. molecules / atoms / gases / etc.
Where did they come from - science tells us that something doesn't just happen out of nothing. So how did this happen - if gazillions of hydrogen atoms, for example, were present at the Big Bang, where did they come from.??
I look forward to your answers / explanations.
PS Let me throw this out in advance because RATIONAL THINKERS ALWAYS bring this up - the laws of science / nature don't apply to GOD so I don't have to come up with a logical explanation when I say that he ALWAYS existed.
But Rational Thinkers have to come up with a logical explanation to explain how something can "magically" materialize from nothing.
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We are now treading in the waters of belief, since all we know is that about 13 billion years ago something explosive happened and light is reaching out in all directions from that time. Quite frankly, you won't get a real answer, because none of us knows for sure. There are theories ranging from continuous big bang cycles to a happenstance collision between 2 structures existing on more dimensions than ourselves. It is a fascinating topic.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
First of all, the best answer we have to the origin of the universe right now is "We don't know." The Big Bang Theory explains why the matter/energy that makes up our universe is in its present configuration. We can currently figure out the state of the universe up to a very small fraction of a second (somewhere around 10^-42 or so seconds) after the big bang. After that, there are many interesting and promising hypotheses, but no emperical evidence.
The main point is that we don't KNOW the origin of the universe and neither do you. However, you are the one offering claims with absolutely nothing to back them up when you claim a god is responsible for the universe as we know it. Based on our current understanding of the universe, the most plausible explanation I can find is that matter/energy exist. I noticed that you used the increasingly tiresome strawman about the universe coming from nothing. I have never met anyone who believed this, atheist or theist.
Personally, from what I know, I can say that existence exists. From what we know, it seems most plausible that matter/energy exist. The cannot be created nor destroyed. Thus, the big bang that led to the current state of our universe was simply a transitional point of the matter/energy that makes up our universe, not a beginning of it.
As for the excuse that god doesn't have to follow the laws of nature or any kind of rules whatsoever, well, this just seems far too convenient an explanation. Actually, it seems like yet another unjustified claim with no evidence to back it up. God is just ad hoc addition to the explanation of the origin of the universe. How do you know that god is eternal? How do you know the nature of such a complex being?
I'd like to suggest something as plausible as god. There is a scientist who is so massive in comparison to ourselves that we are incapable of percieving him. He's doing experiments and happened to create our universe from a bunch of old garbage, and is now studying it. Stretching it and squishing it as he wills. His concept of time is far broader than ours, akin to us looking at an insects life cycle, only even more of a pronounced difference. Our whole species has effectively existed for a minute for him. In fact, he doesn't even realise that there is life inside his experiment, and we are far too small for him to percieve. Even if he could percieve us, he'd be unlikely to classify us as anything more than germs.
Enlightened Atheist, Gaming God.
Agreed. I often wonder why when I tell someone I don't believe in their God that I need some other alternative explanation for the origin of the universe. It's hard for them to stomach the idea of not knowing. In regards to the Big Bang, I admit my knowledge is very incomplete on the subject. Moreover I find it difficult to accept it due to the vastness of space and our limited knowledge of it. I don't think there is enough information out there and might never will, to determine the origins of the universe.
"The main point is that we don't KNOW the origin of the universe and neither do you. However, you are the one offering claims with absolutely nothing to back them up when you claim a god is responsible for the universe as we know it"
Honestly, I SERIOUSLY have to question whether posters like Captain Entrophy actually read the posts they're referring to in their responses.
Please "copy and paste" the SPECIFIC section in my post where I state that God created the Universe.
I threw out a fundemental question to the rational responders in the hopes that I would get a scientific, rational, logical response.
Instead, I get "existence exists" -that cannot be created or destroy.
That the Big Bang was not the beginning as many would believe, but merely a transitional phase.
So what were the origins of the transitional phase - do the laws of science and logic and nature not apply to the transitional phase..??
But when you can't come up with a good response, the next best thing to do is to claim it's a "strawman" argument - by doing so, you can deflecft the reader's / listener's attention away from the fact that you're floundering with no good argument.
Well done..!!
"How do you know that god is eternal? How do you know the nature of such a complex being? "
With respect to the first question, I have to accept the word of Christ.
As to the second question, I can't know the nature of such a complex "being" as GOD - it's too big a concept and the human mind is not capable of wrapping itself around a concept that "big".
But we can understand and relate to another "person - a flesh and blood human being who an feel pain and experience all of the same emotions as we do.
This is why Jesus made an appearance 2,000 years ago.
If this is true, if it really bothers you, then why ask us? Why not go to a library and pick up a few books on cosmology?
I suggest that you try Andre Linde, Alan Guth (he's pretty funny) or Timothy Ferris, or Briane Greene (very popular right now), or Martin Rees... or the old reliable Stephen Hawkings. Any of these writers can provide you with some of the answers you seek.
We don't 'believe' in scientific theories, we accept them based on the evidence.
First, I'd like to note that "Big bang' theory is not a creation account. It's an account of our universe from Planck time.
Second, your claim that there HAD to be basic building blocks is actually not true. I'd suggest you look into Edward Tryon's argument for a universe via vacuum fluctuation. This is a scientific ex nihilo argument that does NOT violate any basic laws of physics. I will present a chapter on these scientific ex nihilo arguments within the next few days.
Third, there isn't a need for an ex nihilo beginning for the universe, there are other possibilities. I will discuss them below. So your claim is a false dilemma.
Fourth, I always find this complaint rather hollow, when it comes from a theist. You're the one who believes in miraculous creation via an even greater miracle: god.... so why should a
scientific ex nihilo argument even faze you?
Ah, but this law that you're referring to, that "matter is neither created or destroyed" is a law that applies within the universe and not to the universe itself. To apply a law concerning the workings within the universe to the universe itself is a fallacy of composition.
Believe it or not, there are theories for a plausible ex nihilo beginning for the universe that do not violate basic physics! If the energy in the universe sums to a total of zero, and if the universe began as a vacuum fluctuation that underwent hyperinflation, then we can have a universe for 'free'...
How can the energy in the universe sum to zero? If gravity is placed on the negative ledger, and the other forces are positive, it turns out that the sum may in fact equal zero.
This is an early view on the matter... I hope to give you a more up to date and complex account of current ex nihilo arguments.
There are many theories. I will discuss them below.
It follows that if you special plead yourself out of the logical conundrums found in your claim, by appealing to the supernatural, then you must concede that your claim is irrational and incoherent.
If your claim is incoherent, then you can no longer make any rational claims about your 'god' at all.
You sure you want to go down that road?
They have. If you actually investigated the matter for yourself, you'd know this.
And there's nothing magical about their arguments.
http://www.rationalresponders.com/common_cosmological_misconceptions
Common cosmological misconceptions
1) The "big bang" theory is not a 'creation theory', but a description of what occured at planck time, and immediately aftwards:
"Before a time classified as a Planck time, 10-43 seconds, all of the four fundamental forces are presumed to have been unified into one force. All matter, energy, space and time are presumed to have exploded outward from the original singularity. Nothing is known of this period - (from the perspective of the big bang - ed.)"
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/astro/planck.html
Big bang and hyperinflation
"The inflationary hypothesis has generated considerable interest in cosmology. It proposes that during a dawning moment of cosmic history the expansion of the universe proceded much faster than had been thought - indeed at a rate far greater than the velocity of light. For reasons we shall strive to make clear the inflationary hypothesis not only solves several problems that afflicted earlier versions of the big bang theory but indicates that the universe is extremely large and flings open a door onto the startling speculation that our universe originated as a microscopic bubble arising from the space of an earlier universe which may in turn be among many universes strewn like stars across inaccessible infinities of random space and times and sets of natural laws"
- Timothy Ferris, The Whole Shebang
2) There is no reason to hold that there MUST have been a creation point.
According to Penn State physicist Lee Smolin, there are three possible scenarios, not just one:
* [A] There is still a first moment in time, even when quantum mechanics is taken into consideration.
* [B] The singularity is eliminated by some quantum mechanical effect. As a result, when we run the clock back, the universe does not reach a state of infinite density. Something else happens when the universe reaches some very high density that allows time to continue indefinitely into the past.
* [C] Something new and strange and quantum mechanical happens to time, which is neither possibility A or B. For example, perhaps we reach a state where it is no longer appropriate to think that reality is composed of a series of moments that follow each other in a progression, one after another. In this case there is perhaps no singularity, but it may also not make sense to ask what happened before the universe was extremely dense.[6] [7]
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/bigbang.html
One particular explanation of the third option: The theory of Stephen Hawkings holds that the universe is finite, but boundless, without any "beginning point"
http://www.lfrieling.com/univers.html
"In his best selling book, A Brief History of Time, Professor Hawking suggests that in order for the "Big Bang" to work, the mathematics requires that the condition of the Universe at the beginning must have been finite and boundless. There must have been no edges, or points of discontinuity. Without this assumption, the laws of physics could not be used to explain the activity and state of affairs in the first moments of the creation of the Universe. By assuming that the Universe was and is finite, yet boundless, physicists are able to avoid the problems created by discontinuities."
In Hawkings "Universe in a Nutshell" he furthers this argument, by hold that a universe that his finite but boundless has no beginning or end point, and no need for a creator. Hawkings himself declared that this point would not possess any 'special' status. It would be akin to any other point in a circle - or more accurately, a globe. Hawkings states rather plainly that his model proposes a boundless, yet finite universe - without any special points in space or time. He covers this in Universe in a Nutshell.
Another third scenario option:
The Myth of the Beginning of Time
String theory suggests that the big bang was not the origin of the universe but simply the outcome of a preexisting state
By Gabriele Veneziano
"While there would be no matter prior to the big bang, the big bang would release an enormous amount of energy in the form of light, which comes in discrete packets called photons. When photons have enough energy, they can spontaneously decay into a particle and an antiparticle. This is easily observed today, as gamma rays have enough energy to create measurable electron-antielectron pairs (the antielectron is usually called a positron).
This would explain the existence of matter."
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=631
As for the source of the original energy? There are several theories:
1) Edward Tryon has put forth the idea of a vacuum fluctation, which is NOT a violation of physical law, as the original source. Alan Guth's Inflationary Model explains the rapid expansion of this energy.
Source: The Inflationary Universe by Alan Guth.
Tryon makes the point that the total sum of positive and negative energy in the universe may well be ZERO, indicating again, that no physical laws are violated by the big bang event.
As Tryon writes: "Im my model, I assume that our present universe did appear out of nowhere 10 to the 10th power years ago. Contrary to the popular belief, such an event need not have violated any of the conventional laws of physics.
Source: The Inflationary Universe by Alan Guth.
Note: this version is akin to ex nihlio creation, except that it does NOT violate any laws of physics and does not require a 'miracle'.
2)
'Brane-Storm' Challenges Part of Big Bang Theory
"The new idea would not replace the Big Bang, which has for more than 50 years dominated cosmologists' thinking over how the universe began and evolved. But instead of a universe springing forth in a violent instant from an infinitely small point of infinite density, the new view argues that our universe was created when two parallel "membranes" collided cataclysmically after evolving slowly in five-dimensional space over an exceedingly long period of time."
This collision would provide the original energy.
Brane theory holds that there would be no beginning or end to existence.
Sources cited:
I'm only a layman when it comes to cosmology, but I've read quite a bit on the subject: alan guth, andre lind, tim ferris and stephen Hawkings to name four.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
At the outset, thanks for the detailed response.
I love these "something came out of nothing" responses.
As the Hunter College physicist Ed Tyron is fond of putting it, "the universe is simply one of those things that happens from time to time." Tryon holds the distinction of being the first of the "nothing theorists".
What the callow Tryon was suggesting was that the entire cosmos might have bounded into existence out of nowhere -- in complete accordance with the laws of physics.
The key to it all is the notorious Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which says that, provided the scale is tiny enough and the duration is sufficiently brief, anything can happen. Little space-time bubbles can froth up from nowhere, elementary particles can appear and disappear. Add to this the "inflationary theory" developed by Harvard physicist Alan Guth in the early 1980's, which allows minuscule things to blow up to colossal proportions in the blink of an eye -- miraculously boosting their own energy in the process -- and the cosmogenic possibilities are endless.
The nothing theorists have fleshed out a variety of rococo scenarios for creatio ex nihilo in recent years, all relying on the idea that nothing is in some sense unstable.
Ed Tryon's universe pops out of a "false vacuum" -- an infinitesimal patch of empty space-time that, thanks to the Uncertainty Principle, is a mad ferment of particles and fields. Stephen Hawkins calculates the probability that the cosmos might have arisen from a three dimensional geometry of zero-volume.
Of all the nothing theorists, the one who appears to have got closest to real creatio ex nihilo is Alex Vilenkin, a Ukranian emigre cosmologist now at Tufts University. When Vilenkin says the universe arose from nothing, he means it. "Nothing is nothing," e. "Not just no matter. No space, no time.
Interesting theories and opinions.
I'm very curious now.
How is it that you are familiar enough with cosmological theories to critique them -- and you even know what some of the scientists are fond of -- and yet you make such a basic error in logic that you honestly believe that something that defies logic can be logical?
You're skeptical enough to have a hard time believing that the universe just randomly sprung into being, but gullible enough to believe that some illogical (but still logical) being of infinite complexity just happened to always exist, and happened to have the desire to plop this little spec of dust planet into a corner of the universe and get all jiggy about whether or not one species on it was having sex before marriage?
Seriously, that boggles my brain.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
My belief on the Big Bang has little, if nothing to do with God. So just take what I say with a grain of salt(energy)
So there are a lot of universes. This isn't the only universe in this "world" because if it was, then wow, this whole thing called life really isn't that special, because this universe isn't that special.
These universes pass through each other like bubbles(Michael Green, string theory, M theory, whatever you want to imagine it as) and Universes are passing through each other all the fucking time.
So if we all believe in what Sir Isaac Newton told us about kinetic energy, then every peice of matter in this universe has a whole lot of energy. I mean, how fast is the earth moving alone, then take regards to the solar system spinning around the center of the galaxy in a univerese that is probably revolving around something "else"
Well, these bubbles pass through each other, and the likeliness of 1 atom in one universe hitting another atom in another universe is in all fairness probably very very unlikely.
But the "UNIVERSE" is fucking huge. So there are a lot of universes(ours for instance) which are in actuality at the same time, not having these collisions, but at the same time having a whole lot of these collisions all the time.
E=MC^2 right? Then a lot of energy equates to a lot of mass. Isn't kinetic energy then, essentially mass, and hydrogen, and the Big Bang?
Ohhh, don't even get me started onto what happens when the universe gets too big... What happens as volumes of gas get spread out over larger areas.... Temprature diffusion? So it's going to get pretty damn Cold in the universe. Brrrr, I like really big black holes. Singularity is an awesome topic that should be explored by you rational seekers of knowledge. Does anyone or anything really know what singularity is. I mean, Stephen Hawkings knows a thing or two about singularity right? What good has that done humanity?
1 in 5 Americans believe we live in a Geocentric solar system. Who do you blame for that? God? I blame god.
As for the excuse that god doesn't have to follow the laws of nature or any kind of rules whatsoever, well, this just seems far too convenient an explanation. Actually, it seems like yet another unjustified claim with no evidence to back it up. God is just ad hoc addition to the explanation of the origin of the universe. How do you know that god is eternal? How do you know the nature of such a complex being?
----What if God follows the laws of nature like its the fucking Bible? Then what? Is he so supernatural?
1 in 5 Americans believe we live in a Geocentric solar system. Who do you blame for that? God? I blame god.
This post are excerpts from this article "Nothing Ventured", if anyone is interested in reading the whole thing.
Aha!
I knew that didn't sound like the same author, but I wasn't going to scream plagiarism unless I could prove it.
I figured as much. Not willing to write his own opinions because...
um...
what was that reason he didn't want to write his own opinions about cosmology?
um...
wait... it's coming to me...
HE DOESN'T KNOW JACK SHIT ABOUT IT.
(oops... sorry for the outburst. Just tired of xtians lying to try to look smart.)
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I don't claim to have the monopoly on rational thought - that's your domain.
I,
I don't claim to have the monopoly on rational thought - that's your domain.
I,
unfortunately,I don't claim to have the monopoly on rational thought - that's your domain.
I,
unfortunately, allowDon't leavvve togangst..but I've got to go.
I have much to say about such fascinating concepts...
Zero is a pretty perfect number eh? Pretty hard to believe that every peice of energy in the universe really adds up to ABSOLUTE ZERO. I've got so much to say about singularity right now... 1=1 1-1=0 what does 0+0 equal? why cant 0+0 equal 1? Because mathemeticians told us so? Well the universe might be trying to tell us something really different then we have all been led to believe. Not infering that 0 + 0 actually in fact equals 1, because we all know that is not true. But what if? Is our ENTIRE universe upside down then?
1 in 5 Americans believe we live in a Geocentric solar system. Who do you blame for that? God? I blame god.
Yes. Vilenken's 'ex nihilo' theory is really the first ex nihilo theory. Tryon's was based on vacuum energy, and some argue that this really 'isn't nothing' at all.
Learned opinions....
By the way, you cut and pasted this (with changes) from here:
http://dbanach.com/holt.htm
So why didn't you cite it?
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
hmm...
Let me anticipate what you were going to say...
Nobody here claims to have a monopoly on logic. At least not that I've seen. As is so often the case, you, the theist, claim to have a monopoly on knowledge. You accept what you want from science, discard what you don't like, and do it all based on the so-called "revelation" of a being that can't exist! Furthermore, you deride people who think that's irrational, and explain to them that they can't possibly understand what you mean unless they think irrationally.
Who is the one claiming a monopoly on knowledge, my friend? We claim not to know everything, but to require proof of what we are asked to accept. You claim to have knowledge of a being that can't be proven, but happens to be the resource for absolute knowledge. Doesn't that make you and others who believe as you do the only possible source of knowledge, since we can't trust science?
Pot calling the kettle black, is it?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
"We claim not to know everything, but to require proof of what we are asked to accept."
Firstly, I'm not asking you to accept anything. You can beleive whatever you want.
Lastly, there is no proof - on either side of the equation.
Do you understand..??
There is no proof that the world is going to exist in a week's time - or that you're going to be alive.
But we have hope and faith that the world is going to be here and you will be around.
Well done.
Like I said in a previous post, truth can sometimes be a very subjective and elusive "thing" depending on who you're speaking to.
I provided you with an example of how it's done.
Never fear, Smith is here.
Me too. I think I will do that chapter review tonight.
Well, that depends. It might be the most 'natural thing in the world.' Perhaps the universe couldn't be created unless the positive/negative ratio is perfect.
But I have to read up on it again, so that's just a conjecture.
Well, again, we must remember that applying rules concerning how things work within the universe may not apply to the universe itself.
This may seem strange, but we encounter things in our world that demonstrate this possibility.
Consider the gases oxygen and hydrogen. Both are gases as room temperature. So if one were to infer that H20 at room temperature were a gas, it would make sense, right? After all, it's made up of two gases. So why wouldn't we expect H20 to be a gas at room temperature?
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
You're not asking me to accept anything? Why are you here?
We've covered proof. You don't understand logic, and that's nobody's fault but your own. Go read a textbook and learn that no proof is needed on the atheist side of the discussion. No proof exists because we're not the ones making the claim!
Prove to me that there are no three headed blobs of jello, invisible to all science, that burp three times a day and control the number of tears that each and every baby in the world cries when their pacifier falls to the floor.
See? You can't do it. You can't prove a negative. Only things that do exist can be proven to exist.
Do I understand? Yes. Completely. You don't understand logic, and you're just beating your head against the wall now. No matter how many times you say the same thing, the answer will be the same. Go read a book about logic, ok? Don't take my word for it. Look it up for yourself so you won't have to accuse me of being a know it all.
I'm so tired of this thing about faith. I don't even want to get into it. Maybe todangst will be kind enough to explain to you the differences between the colloquial and religious definitions of faith. I don't have the energy to argue it, and I've got work to do.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Stephen Hawking proposed the theory that the universe is a continuing cycle of expansion and contraction, thus always having had existed. But the beauty of science is that Hawking himself is not required to believe this. Not so much can be said for theology.
"You're not asking me to accept anything? Why are you here?"
Because I feel like it.!
I understand logic - I use it all day long in my job. I'm just smart enough to know that logic isn't applicable to everything.
Your "hero" - Todangst - is an academic. - that's obvious from his posts. His life is books.
He's actually kinda funny - thinking that love is a perfectly natural and "logical" state of being.
I can assure him that there are times when love is anything but logical..!!
But you can't learn that from a book.
Yet you're unable to work out that defining something as 'beyond logic' would render it incoherent.
And you had no idea that axioms were the foundation of classical logic.
You say you know logic. But you don't demonstrate this knowledge.
But you're not smart enough to figure out that no one here has ever made such a claim.
Thanks for the compliment. Now, let me tell you what's going to happen before I read the rest of this post.You're going to have to tear down 'book learnin' in order to help assuage your wounded ego.
You've uncovered that you're not all that good at debating these issues.
So you have a choice.
Admit that you're not all that good.
Or try to minimize its importance of it all and claim that what really matters is something that you think that you are good at, that silly old todangst somehow ain't all that good at...
Whats 'kind of funny' is that you're not able to follow what's actually said to you, so you have to create these pathetic little strawmen forms of what is actually said to you.
I've told you that love is an emotion, and that as an emotion it's driven by desire. Nowhere have I defined love as a logical state of being, and I'm surprised that you got it that wrong. What I said was that love was natural, and therefore, something we could discuss. It wasn't BEYOND logic.
That's the point you simply can't get into your head. And the reason you can't is because you just don't have the slightest idea what it really means to say that something is 'beyond logic", so you can't follow the ramifications of your own claims. To define the supernatural as 'beyond logic' is to hold that we cannot make any rational claims for it at all. We can't discuss it. It's utterly incomprehensible, because to be 'beyond logic' is to be beyond identity.
To define emotions as irrational is not to say that emotions are 'beyond logic'.It is merely to say that their emotions are not fully reasoned, they are driven by passions. Emotions are natural, they are human behaviors, we can observe them, understand them, they are not beyond our ability to comprehend them.
Now, you can go on with your pathetic strawman arguments, or you can just concede that you don't follow my points. Why not pick the latter?
I can assure you that you're attacking a strawman. I've never said that love is 'logical', what I said was that it was a natural phenomenon, a set of behaviors we could discuss.
But the reality is that you don't seem equipped to handle the real argument before you, so you have little choice but to attack a grade school type of argument that you are able to grasp....
And here is where you seek to tear down 'book learnin'' coz you just ain't all that good at it.
Seriously, is your argument that "you can't learn that love isn't completely logical from a book?" Coz even within your ridiculous little strawman world, that's a pretty fucking goofy argument.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
This is not faith like religious faith. This is faith that can be defined as reasonable expectation. We can reasonably expect the earth to exist in a week's time due to our knowledge that the earth has already been in existence for billions of years and, barring some disaster unknown to us now, shows no evidence that would indicate stopping now.
Hmmm, that's fascinating.
Isn't the Bible a book? (or at leats a collection of texts).
So, why is one book useful for learning and another not? Upon what criteria does one make this decision?
Seems somewhat arbitrary, until some criteria is chosen.
Upon what criteria does one choose said criteria?
I understand that nothing can be proved absolutely, but what we can do is use our limited faculties to derive which impressions seem to cohere with the other ones, and build up an admittedly faulty but useful standard for determining what we will accept. We will make mistakes, but over time the method is improved, and we get some reaosnable answers.
It's somewhat funny to me to see someone who is admittedly an epistemological nihilist defending the truth of "Christ." That's not a leap of faith, that's a freaking attempt to jump when one is without legs.
Shaun
I'll fight for a person's right to speak so long as that person will, in return, fight to allow me to challenge their opinions and ridicule them as the content of their ideas merit.
I don't know if anyone covered this in their responses thus far, honestly, I didn't read them all. I heve done some research into this though, and here's what I've come across. Before the "Big Bang" the universe didn't exist, time and space didn't exist. This because space is roughly defined by the distance between objects, and time is roughly defined by the movement of those objects. Before the explosion, the universe was an infinitesimally small point of pure energy, this is where the confussion begins. No one knows what happened to destabilize that energy, but it theoretically happened. The force of the explosion that resulted from the destabilization is what created all of the protons and nuetrons that currently form the universe as we see it. Scientists actually have been able to create very small amounts of matter in a lab using massive a mounts of energy, I think it was one or two protons, but enough to show that it could be done. I would suggest doing a search for a series that waas on the The Learning Channel years ago called "The Practical Guide To The Universe." It was 10 parts, and it was hosted by Tom Sellec (of all people), but it gives a lot of ineresting info on this subject. It also breaks down the mathematical probability of life in this galaxy alone, fascinating stuff! Also recommended is anything Steven Hawkings has written.
In fact, here you go!
http://www.ambrosevideo.com/displayitem.cfm?vid=107
A link straight to where you can buy the series!
The darkness of godlessness lets wisdom shine.
After responding the first time, I thought I'd dig a little deeper and found this page that may also help,
http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bb1.html
Some clarification, and some new hypothosese, cool stuff.
The darkness of godlessness lets wisdom shine.