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191 Comments
- inactive, on 06/25/2008, -1/+57Well, a mommy and a daddy universe, who loved each other very much....
- TheBrain21, on 06/25/2008, -0/+33"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."
-Douglas Adams - StuartGibson, on 06/14/2009, -0/+30It started with a mis-calculation in a previous universe's large hadron collider.
- kenvsryu, on 06/25/2008, -1/+23We don't need no makeup in here.
- gllopc, on 06/25/2008, -3/+24The burden of proof lies with the one whom makes the claim.
- gordonj, on 06/25/2008, -3/+21Disprove it.
- cryonix, on 06/25/2008, -1/+18The concept of the universe 'beginning' is only fitting for our own instincts. From our plane of perception everything has a beginning and end. (Almost like how we can see faces in abstract shapes, we need to make things familiar to understand them) Once we break that down enough, those concept may fall apart and we may discover the universe just simply 'is' and always has been. no beginning, no end. (However From our perception a 'beginning' is fairly logical with the facts at hand.)
- inactive, on 06/25/2008, -10/+24That cop-out is becoming a little stale. You are asking me to believe some tribal middle eastern deity created galaxies, gamma ray bursts, black holes, jupiter and dark matter? Don't be so childishly gullible.
- racco, on 06/25/2008, -14/+27doesn't exist
- zyklon, on 06/25/2008, -2/+14I do believe Julia Childs died with the only copy of the recipe.
- Murdats, on 06/25/2008, -2/+14do you know how scientists and other people who moved past kindergarten get past that circular argument?
by not debating everything anyone claims unless they can provide some reason to argue it.
for instance, Disprove that I have an undetectable, invisible dragon in my garage and an undetectable cat that always sits on my head.
oh but the universe is so much bigger then we have explored and bla bla bla.
so quit your hypocritical logic and disprove it or admit that you believe in only one out of the numerous mutually exclusive beliefs out there for the sole fact that your friends and family do.
The only thing more important then knowing is knowing that you dont know. - bratterscain, on 06/25/2008, -0/+1142
- Murdats, on 06/25/2008, -1/+11I think you will find that scientists are open to any possibility if you provide enough evidence.
obviously people claimed that dinosaurs existed before we had evidence, why do we now believe them? because they showed proof.
also why would someone seriously believe in dinosaurs without some evidence, its like me claiming I believe in some as of yet to be discovered species of creatures called gagemophorians who lived on earth but I have no evidence, its a stupid point to raise, do you believe me when i say i believe in these creatures? no of course not.
however if I provide some evidence then maybe you have reason to think that maybe I am not just making stuff up. - Murdats, on 06/25/2008, -2/+11actually I know about these counter arguments and they all just sound like rationalisations and the attempt to quell cognitive dissonance.
ask people who are born starving if they enjoy this liberal world that this all loving being has created for them, how about people who live in intense pain, dont worry, this super powerful being who loves you wanted you to feel this pain so that life would be better for you.
is it not true that by allowing evils that you have the power to stop continue you yourself are at the very least not good?
so then tell me why this all powerful all loving being would not only allow these things to continue but purposely commit them can still claim to love us or at the least claim to be good.
it sounds like some sick person who beats his wife then tells her he loves her and tells her she cant live without him, without him she would be nothing. - Chainheart, on 06/25/2008, -5/+14Astrophysicists? Don't you mean cosmologists?
- H0ns, on 06/25/2008, -4/+12Lolcatbible:
ยง3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz - Murdats, on 06/25/2008, -1/+9actually all anyone read into it was the attachment of a sentence to the word saying "doesn't exist"
then you started asking for proof of something intrinsically unprovable, that is when this debate began. - nitsuj, on 06/25/2008, -5/+13Nobody thinks the universe came from nothing.
There is potentially an infinite number of possibilities. It's only worth persuing those possibilities that have evidence supporting them. So far, there is no evidence that conclusively points to a creator being responsible for the universe.
In particular, most christians seem to have a myopic view that their particular creator story is the only one in town. It's not, there are thousands. As far as evidence goes the christian story is no more convincing than any other, i.e. not much.
You only have to look at some posts from creationist idiots on here when ever an evolution theory story comes up to understand why there is such a reaction. - inactive, on 06/25/2008, -6/+14Man created God in his own image. Not the other way round.
- wtrwlkr, on 06/25/2008, -4/+12I enjoy Stephen Colbert's take on trying to explain the origins of the universe, as written in his book:
"Step 1: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth
Step 2: Repeat as necessary" - nitsuj, on 06/25/2008, -3/+10@twomeyw23334
"...theologians that have debunked statements like those long ago."
Why should we care what theologians say?
I've never seen these statements debunked - your explanation certainly didn't do it. All I've ever heard from theologians is excuses and narrow minded tunnel vision on their subjects. - thebassmaster, on 06/25/2008, -1/+8While I do see where you're coming from, and totally agree, there still remains the fact that we can trace the movement of all matter in the universe back to a single point. Our plane of perception describes this as a 'beginning'; it doesn't necessarily have to be as such, but obviously something very complex (yet simple!) happened at that point in 'time'. It will be an amazing feat of physics if we can describe the series of events that happened there... I hope to live to see it!
- ApokalypseNow, on 06/25/2008, -1/+8The big bang is not about something from nothing - it is everything from everything in a different form. Educate yourself on the topic before you next attempt to speak on it.
- Murdats, on 06/25/2008, -4/+11so some guy just decided to build a new toy and demand we all satisfy our ego while telling us he is good but while allowing bad things to happen that are within his power to stop.
is that what you are saying? stop being childishly gullible. - kh99, on 06/25/2008, -6/+12The question is why, when some people want to try to understand as much as they can about the universe and it's origins, do people like you have to come along and say "stop trying to understand, it's just God?" If everyone listened to people like you, we wouldn't know anything about anything, because fanatical idiots have tried to stop science from the very beginning.
Another way to put it is, if you want to make the assumption (with no evidence) that God created the universe, that's fine for you. But many of us think that's not a very useful assumption. - kh99, on 06/25/2008, -1/+7But I never denied there might be a creator, I only said I thought it was a bad scientific theory, and insisting that it be treated as equivalent to other theories is unreasonable.
Your reply shows that even you don't think it's about science - you think it's about "people of faith" vs "other people". If you could separate the science from the religious beliefs, maybe it would be more clear to you why creator theories aren't taken seriously by many people. - nitsuj, on 06/26/2008, -0/+6"This is really pointless as you obviously aren't reading my comments or have comprehension problems."
Oh, I comprehend very well but I think your permise is flawed. Again, your imagining this reality but then hobbled somehow so that we aren't free. But imagine an existence where life doesn't need to consume other life, there is no struggle for survival and with it the need to possess territory and propagate war. There is no need for conflict or causation of suffering. In many ways it's easy to comprehend that we would have more freedom than we have now. Freedom from the shackles of our biological imperitives.
You haven't even come close to debunking this objection.
In addition, 'freedom' with the christian deity is only borrowed. Once you die it's payback time. Freedom in this mythology is an illusion.
"Societies try to lock people up in cells to prevent all bad from happening to them?"
I didn't say that. Don't try to put words into my mouth now.
Anyhow, regardless, all this talk of christian deity is rather pointless as there's no evidence for such an entity.
"if a God existed as you supposedly want"
I don't 'want' a god to exist. There seems to be no requirement for one. - nitsuj, on 06/25/2008, -2/+8We observe 'random' phenomena continuously and we know enough about physical materials to hypothesize on how matter formed shortly after the big bang. Go look up CERN to find out just how much we know about the subatomic world.
There is a (c) option that you didn't mention:
c) we don't know yet.
This is the path that science currently takes as it continues it's journey.
The rest is whether you consider that the universe is a product of natural processes much like we currently detect and observe, or whether you believe that an infinitely complex being of some kind magically made it all appear (out of nothing).
One is based on our latest models of knowledge and understanding. The other is based on mankinds love affair with mythology and self-important 'meaning' of life. Which, incidentally, religion doesn't really solve. - Toshibi, on 06/25/2008, -0/+6We suppose that even in nothing there exists states of nothingness. Nothing could be an average, honestly. Think of it like a number line, -1 on the left, 1 on the right, and 0 smack in the middle. Zero would be nothing, of course. -1 would be some strange state which I couldn't describe very well, and 1 would be what we have here. Now if you have these three states of "nothing" and they are balanced, then the average is 0, or nothing. Suppose that at some point, not in time, but in being nothing, the system falls into an imbalance. So we get a whole bunch of something on one side or the other...we get an abundance of 1 nothings, as opposed to -1 nothings, or so on. The average is no longer 0. You now have something. We see his sort of average to 0 in all sorts of fundamental behaviors in our universe today.
Time isn't some imaginary thing from the minds of man, it's a dimension, just like length and breadth and so on (or radius and degrees). Of course we could have the philosophical argument that everything in the universe rests only in the minds of man and such, but then that opens up all sorts of worm cans. When the universe began, it wasn't at some point in time, it was the initial moment in time, it's arrow gaining a direction and just as all the other dimensions did, expanding.
As for the problem of the creator, that isn't the goal of science....we don't care about your theology. Your theology teaches us nothing about the way the universe works, it's not falsifiable, we can't test it. Perhaps God (or Xenu or magic fairy dust) spawned this universe that we live in, but then, who created the creator and so on. Could our universe be a giant simulation in some alien cosmologist's lab, possible...but then that means we have an upper bound on our own processing power in this universe...we can't have more processing power than the computer we're in.
Finally, the big bounce that Hartle seems to be a fan of, last I heard, the math didn't work out right. From what I understood there is this noticeable acceleration occurring in our expansion which would prevent a closed and recurring system. But you know, i haven't kept up with the literature since college.
-Summer Glau
P.S. I can kill you with my brain. - gordonj, on 06/26/2008, -0/+6No, they're saying that if you can provide objective evidence for the existence of a god then it would be considered.
- kh99, on 06/25/2008, -1/+6No one ever said there was nothing before the big bang.
- nitsuj, on 06/26/2008, -0/+5"What the hell was that comment? Do you have something to contribute to the conversation or say what was wrong with my brief summary of the debunking."
I didn't realize your submission was a 'debunking'. It just seemed like weak apologetics to me.
Don't you think an ALL powerful being would be able to create a reality that did not include perpetual suffering and torment for all living creatures? This reality need not be some kind of impoverished 'prison' version of what we already have. That is a stawman argument. Your definition of 'freedom' is highly subjective.
You might baulk at Murdat's 'emotional' objections but he's bang on. Your opinion of 'freedom' is based around our state of reality and not that which could supposedly be created by an all powerful deity.
The fact that life must consume life to exist, often to much suffering, is a sadistic twist for any creator being to take. Why engineer life this way?
"Why don't you take someone and lock them in a cube where nothing can hurt them, provide them with food and water and great health care and see what they have to say about their life."
Complete strawman argument but this is interesting considering that this is what human societies try to achieve by forming villages, towns and cities. Food, water, sanitation and health care.
By providing these basic needs can we allure to being free from being constantly on the edge of existence and open to the ravages of nature (for which we are now ill adapted).
"By the way, you just hurt my feelings, in a world with your God you wouldn't have been able to type that, God would have intervened to stop you."
I'm not sure what this means as I don't believe in a god. - totallyspotless, on 06/25/2008, -1/+6with the words 'uhm hello, I'd like to welcome you all to..."
- inactive, on 06/25/2008, -2/+7It began with a bang.. A big, bang..
- ApokalypseNow, on 06/25/2008, -0/+4Not so - the only way it could be cyclical is if the mass density of the universe is greater than the critical density, and it doesn't look that way.
Having it be non-cyclical does not require the supernatural - events happen in the universe that are non-deterministic, non-causal. Check out quantum randomness sometime. - Phyraxus, on 06/26/2008, -0/+4If god created the universe he/she/it is obviously a scientist.
- Coven, on 06/25/2008, -0/+4Stephen Colbert is above underpants gnome jokes
- StaticThunder, on 06/27/2008, -0/+4I am continuously baffled by people who think that to explain one unlikely thing, you should posit an even MORE unlikely thing with less evidence for it.
They largely seem to think that they are so smart, that they are the first one to say "oh, it must have been God", noone has ever thought of THAT before, and that everyone is out to get them for it, too. Its really pathetic. Like if somebody didn't bring up God ever other minute we'd forget about what you stupidly believe in. - kh99, on 06/25/2008, -2/+6Sorry tragic8, you haven't shown me to be incorrect at all, much less "absolutely incorrect". You said "No one says 'stop trying to understand'" but in fact I see people saying that every day on digg and elsewhere. In fact you admit later that there are people who say this. I never said that all religious people feel that way. And I don't feel threatened at all by the idea of a creator, I just think it's a poor scientific theory. This isn't because it can't be proven (although it might be better to say that it's not a good theory because it can't be *disproven*). I think it's a poor theory because it leads nowhere. Science is an attempt to understand, and that theory is a dead end that doesn't add to our understanding (except maybe in a very trivial way).
As for michael43's comment, he implies that people aren't intelligent if they don't consider the "alternate theory", then goes on to call other theories bs and makes it clear that there's only one he is willing to accept. In fact I think it's quite obvious that he hasn't considered any theory whatsoever, but has just decided what to believe. I don't think that's someone who should be questioning other people's intelligence. Believing in a creator doesn't take any intelligence at all. - dvsbastard, on 06/25/2008, -0/+4I always thought the universe was delivered by a really big stork...
- kh99, on 06/25/2008, -1/+5Assuming you're serious, 1) How do you justify that statement? and 2) since we're talking about creating the time/space continuum and not something within it, how do you know that the time/space continuum itself is not a "supernatural entity"?
- ApokalypseNow, on 06/25/2008, -0/+4@dstz
Cosmologists base that hypothesis on the fact that the redshift in light from distant galaxies is actually increasing, indicating that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Were things cyclical, and the mass density were greater than the critical density, we would expect to see the opposite: that the expansion was slowing down (however fractionally). This is not the case, however.
What this means in the end is that, instead of a "Big Crunch" universe ending, we instead come across a situation known as Heat Death, where the universe reaches maximum entropy (remember, entropy in thermodynamic terms has nothing to do with "disorder" or "chaos" but rather is a measure of the unavailability of a system's energy to do work) and everything slowly cools to absolute zero. It has been suggested that, in an ever-expanding universe, the value of maximum entropy increases faster than the universe gains entropy, causing the universe to move progressively further away from Heat Death, but this claim is disputed. - nitsuj, on 06/25/2008, -0/+3The CERN reference is relevant if you want to consider how matter came into being from the big bang singularity. This reference is actually more to do with the subject at hand than your arguments regarding a deity.
You missed the point completely about being honest enough to admit that you don't know if (a) or (b) is true.
You fail to state why my "logic" is absurd. A naturalistic view of the world leads to a very humbling opinion of your own place in the universe. It is religion that seeks to place mankind at a central 'special' position. Also, I personally couldn't care less about intellectual superiority or what ever that means.
"I'm not saying I believe in a God, I'm saying that the believe that an extremely complex universe came from nothing is no more ridiculous than a God with our current knowledge."
No scientist claims that the universe came from nothing. Science claims that it doesn't know yet. Theists claim that their own particular brand of deity is responsible. Unfortunately, theists are unable to provide any evidence for this claim and therefore it goes largely ignored by those how have a scientific or naturalistic world view.
Beyond this your point doesn't make much sense to me. Only theists believe that the universe came from nothing, that a supernatural creator - for which there is NO evidence - somehow conjured it into existence. - Encablossa, on 06/25/2008, -0/+3That's what she said?
- Beakerboy1, on 06/25/2008, -0/+3How is it that "Life after Death" has been proven? It seems to me (someone trained in Physics) that when leaving a comment that is especially controversial that you would back it up with the evidence so others could independently verify this information. How is proving the existence of "Life after Death" any easier than proving the Existence of God or any other deity. To be more accurate, shouldn't you be talking about how the concept of God or any Deity is unfalsifiable. I would argue that "Life after Death" is similarly unfalsifiable. I would be grateful for any evidence to correct my stance.
Furthermore, theories on the origins of the universe aren't completely math dressed as physics. If a mathematical model is set to be a basis of theory it still has to predict the same observations that are made today, at least as accurately. Also, it if it add more explanatory power to our understanding such as greater accuracy in predictions, a deeper insight into the physics, makes new predictions which are verifiable (and subsequently verified), etc. A great help in this area is computational modeling and observational astronomy. To be a good theory it does not require that it be a complete description just a MORE complete description. Theories are certainly replaced with more complete theories (ie. Newtonian Gravity isn't as complete as General Relativity, which is far from being complete). Absence of evidence is not evidence against a theory. The evidence, like in much of observational astronomy tends toward slightly more indirect evidence (which is no less powerful than direct evidence, it just means that you had to be more clever in collecting it). Furthermore, we cannot "see" anything too far (out in space/back in time) because of what the Big Bang theory says about the opaqueness of the universe. Therefore, all information of this time (and earlier) isn't observable but we wouldn't say that there were no earlier times or it is meaningless to talk about them because we cannot observe them directly. We have theorized the existence of planets on the orbits of other planets, where the perturbations is the orbit were due to the gravitational pull of some other planet (Indirect observation). Later we would verify the planet's existence (Direct observation).
That said, this specific article puts forth an extraordinary claim in its theory and thus needs extraordinary evidence to support such a claim. Furthermore, I agree that some things are scientifically unknowable.
Scientifically unverifiable evidence is evidence that under the best ideal conditions could not be observed (directly or indirectly) through a principally repeatable/ reproducible controlled experiment or would require a principally unrepeatable/unreproducible experiment. That evidence which cannot be observed (directly or indirectly) because it is impracticable but not because it is principally impossible is still labeled as verifiable. This is because, just because it isn't practicable today doesn't mean it will remain so indefinitely. A Scientific theory must rely only on Scientifically verifiable evidence. Otherwise you engage in speculation since it is now only a matter of opinion (subjective) as opposed to verifiable independently of subjective belief (objective).
Whether or not you decide to believe that you can know things which aren't objective truths and the value of that subjective knowledge are again mostly "subjective". But, one thing is clear about subjective knowledge its relative value is lower than that of objective knowledge. This is obvious from the reasons above but if one needed a theistic argument one such would be, God's knowledge is completely objective (it is the absolute truth) any mortal's subjective knowledge surely could not equal God's. To clarify, I'm not claiming that any current or future scientific theory necessarily can or will provide an ultimate and complete description of reality. What I am claiming is that the only possible means for any being with limited resources to gain objective knowledge is through the scientific method, where knowledge just gets better without ever necessarily being perfect (therefore science never ends). - adasha, on 06/26/2008, -2/+5No serious scientist could ever accept that God has 'always' existed without 'external cause or beginning' because it goes against the whole concept of rational science. If God has always existed then there must be a reason for that - if his existence was proven tomorrow scientists would simply move onto the next layer down.
It all comes down to the same thing at the end of it all: if the Big Bang started it all what caused it, if God put us here where did he come from? Why is? - Phyraxus, on 06/26/2008, -0/+3"For all other world religions except Christianity: you are correct."
LOL BIG LOL - WoollyMittens, on 06/25/2008, -0/+3"The biggest bang since the big one."
- Phyraxus, on 06/26/2008, -0/+3I don't need to prove anything. That is the burden of proof fallacy. You are the one making a positive claim (i.e. jesus became a zombie) and you need to provide evidence for it.
- Phyraxus, on 06/26/2008, -0/+3The difference is that these other hypotheses/theories can all be explained by natural phenomena. A god by definition is supernatural and in no way does any explanatory work.
If, however, god did exist and there is empirical evidence for it, scientists would be the first to let you know after exhausting all natural causes. -
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