Amusingly, today’s major theories actually conclusively predict their own failure in any condition of singularity: the very condition we may be dealing with in the BB.
Well, because it is. I mean, why have existence at all? I don’t mean that I don’t have a life because I sit worrying about the end of the Universe, but occasionally I think about these things and existence itself seems pretty pointless when thought about from that perspective.
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Well, I wouldn’t be happy if I’d asked my physics teacher “Why do thing fall to the ground?” and he’d replied “They just do.” That’s the kind of dissatisfaction I meant. I want to know the “why” of things and when you have all these beatiful structures in our universe from the quantum level to the swirl of galaxies it seems rather facile to say “It just is.”
I’ve read a little from his site, and so far I’m not impressed. For example, this article about the Big Bang makes much of the fact that the Bible says that God “stretches” the heavens. This could mean absolutely anything. The rest of that article seems to play the old “improbable” card over and over again, saying that this or that tiny change in this or that law of nature would make stars impossible and so on, missing the point that if those laws were in fact changed and there were no stars, there would be something else and the creatures living in that universe would be saying the same things about their universe.
In the end, I really wonder, “What’s the difference?”
I mean, really, isn’t the “supernatural” just as ordinary as anything else? The only difference is that we don’t deal with it as much or as obviously. From my point of view, the creation of the universe and things getting up to where we are IS a miracle of the highest order.
This is the inherit problem with any religon of course. It is at the end of the day, unknowable.
the irony of this statement is not lost to me dinsdale… i have often been amused by my own words when decrying religon as relying on faith too much, when i rely on just as much faith in science. if you don’t know everything about science (and noone does) then you rely on faith that if you could know it, it would be something that would fit into your idea of the universe.
it is quite obvious to me that at least some part of me wants to be able to believe in something, otherwise I would not be thinking about it so much. its just that i am a sceptic by nature, and as of yet, i have not heard of anything that seems plausible enough to me.
I am agnostic. I don’t feel a need to have all the answers. What I have is a need to search for the answers. I am perfectly content in saying that I don’t know why we’re here, who, if anyone, put us here, and what comes next. I like the journey. I like to peruse the variety of possible answers.
No reason why the optical explanations of rainbows and the explanation given in Genesis cannot coexist – one explains the phenomena in terms of basic mathematics and physical principles that underlie all other observable phenomena, and the other simply states that rainbows were generated as a miracle by a divine entity as a pledge of good faith not to destroy humanity by a particular method.
Oh, wait a minute… those aren’t compatible at all, are they?
They can be. There’s no reason God couldn’t change the laws of optics in order to create rainbows.
…except that changing the laws of optics would require rewriting all of physics and mathematics.
And the Almighty can’t do that?
The lenses of our eyes work according to the same principles that cause tiny drops of water to refract light into its component parts… so God must have changed all the eyes on Earth to work with the new system.
And changing the way light works would require altering the electromagnetic force, which would in turn alter the way chemical bonds form… so God must have changed all of the matter in the universe to somehow function as it did before He made the change.
And of course light given off by distant galaxies would no longer be consistent with the new rules… so God must have changed that as well.
In fact, making such a change of fundamental principles is equivalent to destroying the universe and replacing it with one that’s only superficially similar. Yes, Pricebuy, I’m sure God destroyed and remade the universe just so that he could produce an admittedly lovely meterological phenomenon as a sign of His agreement not to slaughter humanity with floods.
So, in essence, because you wouldn’t do it, you don’t believe God did it? Lucky you. In your world there’s no crime or cruelty. You wouldn’t do it, so why would anyone else?
I’m not saying I believe in Genesis. I’m just saying that there’s no reason the scientific explanation and the biblical one are incompatible. For one thing, if God does in fact exist then he is by definition so dissimilar from us that we haven’t got a clue as to what’s going on in his head. For another, the Genesis story may well be symbolic. To sum up, rainbows or no rainbows, trying to prove or disprove God’s existence, especially when using the Bible as proof one way or the other, is futile. And stupid.
The claim that the entire nature of the universe and physical law was altered several thousand years ago, made without evidence by a historical document of questionable accuracy, is inconsistent with the most basic principles of scientific inquiry and rational thought.
Using the Bible as evidence one way or another is futile and stupid. It simply has no scientific value.
I agree, and you’ll note that I’ve made no such claim. I’ve merely admitted the possibility.
This is rather close to what I said.
No, you’ve said that the accounts are compatible with each other. They’re not.
Do you also admit the possibility that I have the power to sentence you to an eternity of pain and torment and pull you out of reality to a place of infinite horror, then return the universe to its configuration at the moment I took you?
TVAA, I see no suggestion that the rainbow was “a miracle” but that it was invested with meaning (and, JFTR, most Christians take Noah’s flood, to the extent that it had any historial meaning whatsoever, as a legendary account of a particularly major flood in Mesopotamia, not as the fundamentalist world deluge).
In short, if somebody points out something natural in a context that invests it with an added emotional connotation, it’s no more a “miracle” than the idea that :wally: reminds those of us who knew WallyM7 of a guy with a particularly wise and witty posting style whom we liked a lot and who is no longer with us in the flesh, though he’ll always be a part of this board in spirit.
Can you see yourself as trying to apply the Law of the Excluded Middle in a situation where it may not apply? That “This Land Is Your Land” does not imply commonality of property title to the entire United States among all who have ever heard it sung (the literal meaning), but nonetheless carries a very powerful message about commonality of sovereignty?
Ah, so Genesis is an “empty” symbol. In other words, it’s a lie.
If Genesis is merely a metaphor, then indeed there’s no conflict with science, because it never says anything about the world in the first place (except possibly it reflects an emotional reaction held by a limited number of individuals, in which case it’s easily scientifically verified). If it’s not a metaphor, it is necesssary incompatible with science.
You should know better than this, Polycarp. I’m afraid I have to sentence you to an eternity of torment now.
[discontinuity]
Well, how did you like your infinite pain?
Well, the answer’s obvious. 1000 years ago the Universe was only 3000 years old and operated under different laws of physics. It’s only now that it’s 15 billion years old. I predict that in 1000 years time it will be 1 million years old.
Hmm…there’s the making of a science fiction story somewhere there. I try to have at least one weird thought a day. 
Yes they are.
Of course. I also admit the possibility that tarot works, that aliens crashed at Roswell and that I can buy a pill that will make my penis three feet longer.
I think that the point is though, that when you are talking about “God” then you have to think along other lines… yea he probably did not destroy the universe and recreate it so that he could make a rainbow, but he could have known beforehand that he may want to make a rainbow in the future and set up everything for it in the begining so he wouldn’t have to destroy the universe.
what i mean is, he could have set up the universe in the begining knowing in advance everything that could possibly be done, so when he wanted to send a sign that he wouldn’t destroy humanity with the floods, he just thought about what was possible and chose the rainbow for that specific time.
any way, he could have done any of a number of things, it is only the ones that can be disproven with science that are the hardest things for me, like the parting of the reed sea, or jesus coming back alive, or any of a number of miracles that seem highly implausible to say the least