Not all religious persons will accept that black holes exist. But there have to be some who do, right? So how do they explain the existence of black holes? What is the purpose of the black hole, from a theological standpoint? Angel condominiums?
God’s plan of physics for his creation in perfect working order?
–Tim
I’m confused. What is the theological explanation for gravity? Magnetism?
Black holes are predicted by scientific theory. What has theology got to do with that?
What is the theological explanation for the fact that the earth is not the center of the universe? Ever hear of Galileo and what happened to him?
There is no theological explanation for black holes that I am aware of. And I wouldn’t expect theology to have one any more than I would expect theology to explain why the earth is not the center of the universe.
I think you are looking for an explanation in the wrong place.
I don’t see why any religion would have any trouble with the notion of black holes. If nothing else, they’d make for pretty effective Hells.
Well, jeez, what’s the theological explanation of quarks? Or tunneling? Or the Republican party? (Wait, don’t answer that last one)
Face it, religions can’t even figure out how many angels can dance on the head of a pin… a black hole would have them stumped quicker than the plot of Mission: Impossible.
Then again, it would be an interesting question to ask the Pope.
Shame on you and everyone else for vastly underestimating the capacities of fundamentalist nuts! Fundamentalists will latch on to any concept at all and then interpret it in any way that fits with their beliefs. Read on.
Abe’s Argument of the Week
I have something interesting for you guys on the topic of black holes and religion. From what I know this is not at all a popular argument, but if you have already come across it, apologies.
A black hole is a theoretical object predicted by phyiscs that is incredibly dense and heavy. It consists of a central singularity, which is a single massive point of zero volume and infinite density, and a surrounding event horizon, which can be considered a black hole’s surface. The acceleration due to gravity of a black hole is enormous, so that even electromagnetic radiation (including light) cannot escape from it once it crosses into the event horizon (because escape velocity inside the event horizon is greater than light, and nothing goes faster than light).
WOM is a purely hypothetical philosophical concept and stands for Without Output Machine, or in other words a perfect energy sink. No matter how much work you throw into the WOM, there will never be any output.
It’s easy to see how the concepts of black holes and WOMs could be lumped together. After all, everything (energy/mass) you lob into the event horizon of a black hole is sucked in, and the black hole just sits there and does nothing except absorb input. This nice ditzy associative breakthrough is ruined by the fact that quantum mechanics predicts that black holes do produce output. They certainly output X-rays, and we have observed them.
WOMs are impossible philosophical constructs. However, we are now certain about the existence of black holes. We are also certain that black holes radiate energy. Unfortunately, invalidating knowledge has never stopped a dedicated fundamentalist.
Anyone who recognizes the existence of black holes and who associates them with WOMs is also likely to start thinking about Without Input Machines, or WIMs. The only (I’m aware of) remotely credible WIM that has been suggested is, of course, God.
You can see where this is leading. Religious nuts will foam at the mouth as they equate WOM (impossible objects) with black holes (which have been verified by science). They will gnash their teeth as they take the scientific evidence for black holes to mean that the diametric opposite of a WOM, being the WIM, is also likely to exists. And the only possible WIM is God.
To make a long story short, black holes provide arguments for the existence of God in that false-premise flawed-argument non-sequitur kind of way dear to fundamentalist freaks.
Next thing ya know, someone’ll ask the scientific explanation for wisdom and goodness.
Maybe we could reproduce them in a laboratory using that tautology-based question-begging self-referential kind of method dear to arrogant geeks.
Oh look, A fundie. Never seen one in person before. Lets discect it and see how it works. 
Might want to catch up on some reading before your next joke.
Something bothering you? If you are attacking me or the argument I presented above state your problem and save the puerile sarcastic device of imitative expression. My closing sentence is a contribution to an argument; there is nothing remotely similar in your feeble and inapplicable imitation.
Me, a fundie? 
I didn’t know we were supposed to be arguing or attacking fundies (“fundamentalist freaks”) in GQ.
Maybe this is a (not so) Great Debate.
I wonder if he would look at you blankly and ask “who put these strange notions in your head!?” From what I have read, the Pope seems pretty cool with the sciences. He has no objections to most of the major cosmological theories, including the Big Bang.
OK – now I gotta put on my “fair guy” hat and wade into this.
Just because someone is religious – ecven intensely religious – doesn’t mean that they don’t accept science. Lotta Jesuits are and were scientists. Lotta devout scientists of various creeds out there. To most people, modern physics isn’t incompatible with a life of Faith. So if you’re asking what they say about how black holes work, in most cases it’s the same way other people say they work. (I’m sure you’ll find a residuum of people with eccentric views.)
If you’re asking why black holes are there you have an entirely different question, and it’s one that you can argue physics doesn’t explain, so the theologians can spin their theories without contradiction or stepping out of the bounds of their own discipline.
And “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin” has been covered by the Master already.
I thought everyone knew this. If your entire spaceship crew is Good and True, and you can fly directly through that angel-shaped hole in the center, you get into heaven. Conversely, if you’re an evil zombie-manufacturing despot, you just end up eternally fused with your robot.
:: ignores the collective groan from bad-movie fans everywhere ::
And I still don’t see one in this thread. Who you referring to, exactly? Abe’s post was clearly tongue-in-cheek *anti-*Fundie. Libertarian? Really? I had no idea.
Yo, Abe, I don’t think Lib was addressing you, but the OP.
Hey, Albert Rose, do you actually know any Fundamentalists who disbelieve in the existence of black holes, or are you just tossing out a “fer instance”?
Obligatory physics nitpick:
Quoth Abe:
Both true statements, but unrelated. The radiation predicted by Quantum Mechanics, Hawking radiation, is a miniscule trickle which has never been detected. For a normal-sized black hole, it’d be equivalent to the radiation produced by an object at a temperature of a millionth of a degree above absolute zero, which is pretty small, considering that the cosmic background radiation 9the temperature of the Universe, so to speak) is nearly three degrees above zero.
The x-rays that we observe from things like Cygnus X-1 don’t actually come from the black hole itself, but from stuff just outside of the black hole, falling in.
The flaw in the argument you cite isn’t so much the WOM, since black holes are a pretty good approximation to that. In fact, the more input you put into a black hole, the less output you’ll get. The flaw is assuming that the existance of a WOM implies a WIM.
Come On!
Since singularities are a finite mass in zero volume, Black Holes are where God is dividing by zero, just to prove to mathematicians that He’s omnipotent!
Cite?
I think some of the confusion in this thread (certainly in my reading of it) may stem from the fact that I’ve never encountered a fundamentalist, etc., who has denied the existence of/explanation for black holes on religious grounds.
I’ve heard people dispute the big bang, age of the universe, proposed planetary formation theories, etc., but not black holes. Perhaps a link to some anti-black-hole rant on a web page?
See, God demonstrates the answers to all our stupid questions whether we understand them, or not. Black holes are the answer to the often repeated stupid question: “Can God make a rock so big he cannot pick it up?”
So, please stop asking that, OK?
You barked, I barked back. Maybe I misunderstood some deep and witty humor in your post, but it seemed to me that you were insulting science. (Oh so, yet not so subtle)
Ahh here it is. Pit material in the GQ area. Tsk, Tsk:
Watch out, Lib is on a crusade against science.
If I were a fundy, I would equate black holes with the fallen angels. But I’m not.