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Legallee Insane
Skeptic Friend
Canada
126 Posts |
 Posted - 11/28/2002 : 19:01:49 [Permalink]
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This time, Slater I believe you are at fault. You read to much into words. If you look closely I quite frequently use the word "perhaps" in my statements, leaving them broad and open. You are completely right in that if there is a god, I have no way of proving it.
Truth be told, I am lost and searching for what to believe in, or as the case may come to be, what not to believe in. It just so happens that I enjoy a good conversation along the way (which is what I seem to have found here). |
--"Only the fool says in his heart: There is no god -- The wise says it to the world"
--"I darn you to HECK!" - Catbert
--"Don't worry, we're not laughing at you, we're laughing near you." |
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Kilted_Warrior
Skeptic Friend
Canada
118 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2002 : 20:31:22 [Permalink]
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Legallee Uses 'perhaps' alot, so don't think much of it.
Don't go too hard on us, we are still in our first Physics class in high school, and still have much to learn.
Oh well...
We still can't be sure of what will happen.
Will the universe continue accelerating until the mass loses its density and then we just crumble into our component elements, and eventually into energy, OR will the universe slow down in expantion until it starts reversing in direction until the big crunch, and then another big bang.
We just don't know.
The problem with people comprehending before the big bang, is that there may well have been nothingness, which cannot in any way be comprehended by our meager brains. We also cannot comprehend the end, which is depressing, and also nothingness.
God seems to fill that void for some people, even if they only believe in it for some kind of meaning in this overly complex universe...
Its a Screwy existance, isn't it? |
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Espritch
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 11/28/2002 : 21:26:00 [Permalink]
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quote:
But one thing to consider is that TIME is a side effect of motion. The faster the universe goes the slower time. So the universe might end because time stops if it goes fast enough.
Not really. The recession due to the big bang is different from conventional inertial motion. According to the currently favored inflationary big bang hypothesis, in the first few moments of the big bang, the universe expanded at a rate much faster than the speed of light. This doesn't violate relativity because it is an expansion of space time itself rather than inertial motion. Even today, a lot of what we see through telescopes is receding from us a rate greater than the speed of light. Again, this does not violate relativity because this recession is a result of expansion of the intervening space time.
To stop time, you have to inertially accelerate an object to light speed. But the closer you get to light speed, the more energy is required to accelerate the object. The result is that nothing with rest mass can be accelerated to the speed of light so time can not be halted in this fashion - slowed - but not halted.
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Boron10
Religion Moderator
USA
1266 Posts |
Posted - 11/29/2002 : 02:13:07 [Permalink]
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Back to the "Universe is accelerating" one more time: a conventional explosion sends one impulse only, and inertia carries the objects away. How is there still a motive force from the Big Bang? This is the part that really screws with me.
Edited to add: Since there was no time "before" the Big Bang, there is no such thing as "Before the Big Bang." The statement is as meaningless as "a square circle." |
| Edited by - Boron10 on 11/29/2002 02:14:38 |
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riptor
Skeptic Friend
Germany
70 Posts |
Posted - 11/29/2002 : 02:42:47 [Permalink]
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Universe is accelerating because the explosion still continues. Heck, it's a pretty big explosion, so can be a pretty long explosion as well.
Still a big question mark to your "no time before Big Bang": That depends on the answer to the question if there is matter outside our universe. If there is then there has likely also been a time before the Big Bang. |
Hail the Big bearded Jellyfish up in heaven above. |
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Slater
SFN Regular
USA
1668 Posts |
Posted - 11/29/2002 : 14:28:58 [Permalink]
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Legallee, the word perhaps is an adverb, which means possibly or probably.
It doesn't mean "let's pretend."
What riptor is saying Boron is the old "energy can neither be created or destroyed" so it's still there, still "pushing." On Earth when you set off a bomb the energy is absorbed by the surroundings. With the BB there are no surroundings to absorbe it.
The galaxys that seem to be going faster than light are the ones that are the furthest away form us. It's not an entirety accurate discription (since it is space itself that is expanding) but it will give you a reasonable picture if you think that they are going in one direction and us in the other. They aren't going faster than light and neither are we but adding the two speeds together it gives that impression. |
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I learned something ... I learned that Jehovah's Witnesses do not celebrate Halloween. I guess they don't like strangers going up to their door and annoying them.
-Bruce Clark
There's No Toilet Paper...on the Road Less Traveled |
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Kilted_Warrior
Skeptic Friend
Canada
118 Posts |
Posted - 11/29/2002 : 14:46:56 [Permalink]
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I like how we're discussing cosmology on a skeptic board...
In the beginning... Wasn't there only energy, but that slowly coalesced(I don't know how to spell it) into matter, as said in E=mc2? So there isn't as much energy in the universe as there was. Or am I misinterpreting cosmology?
You probably have way more experience in this subject than I do |
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Espritch
Skeptic Friend
USA
284 Posts |
Posted - 11/29/2002 : 17:58:00 [Permalink]
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quote:
Back to the "Universe is accelerating" one more time: a conventional explosion sends one impulse only, and inertia carries the objects away. How is there still a motive force from the Big Bang? This is the part that really screws with me.
This is the part that really screws with most cosmologists as well. When the Supernova type Ia survey was conducted, they expected to measure the rate of deceleration due to gravity. Instead, they found that the rate of expansion was increasing. This can not happen if the only factors are the original rate of expansion imparted by the big bang and gravity. So cosmologists have posited that there must be an additional factor involved, the so called dark energy that acts in an opposite fashion to gravity, forcing objects in the universe apart.
There is precedent for this: the solution to the equations of Einstien's General relativity suggested that the universe must be either expanding or shrinking. Einstien introduced a repulsive force called lambda to balance out this tendency and produce a stable universe. When the Hubble expansion was discovered, he decided that lambda was a mistake and dropped it. However, the discovery that the expansion is accelerating has caused cosmologists to revive the idea of lambda.
Interestingly, as noted in the link posted by Tokyodreamer, some physicists think it is possible that this dark energy could reverse itself so that the universe ends in a big crunch despite the lack of sufficient matter to reverse the expansion.
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Dr Shari
Skeptic Friend
135 Posts |
Posted - 11/30/2002 : 01:55:01 [Permalink]
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We will never know the origin of the universe to a certainty but to suggest that that evolution is the way creationism was accomplished is to say that a supreme being(God) created us and that is not acceptable to me. Why is it so hard to believe that a random set of occurances led to the creation of man and our world? Why do we need a higher power at all?
I am willing to accept the fact that purely by chance the right combination of energy, amino acids and timing started the whole thing and life was created. I see no reason to think there is any purpose to my being being here beyond luck and I owe no one or thing gratitude for the set of circumstances that created my life.
There is no reason to believe it is a mixture of both unless you want to start another religion based on yet another set of unprovable suppositions. Stop looking for how we got here and live life to it's fullest as a society bound by ethics and not morals. |
Death: The High Cost of Living
It is easier to get forgiveness then to get permission! |
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NottyImp
Skeptic Friend
United Kingdom
143 Posts |
Posted - 12/02/2002 : 02:44:34 [Permalink]
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Legallee and Kilted Warrior, a great place for Cosmology and all kinds of science related discussions is Phil Plait's astronomy site at:
www.badastronomy.com
Just in case you don't knoew it already. Lots of professional astronomers and knowledgeable amateurs post on there. |
"My body is a temple - I desecrate it daily." |
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jmcginn
Skeptic Friend
343 Posts |
Posted - 12/02/2002 : 08:18:21 [Permalink]
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The key I believe in whether we live in an osccilation universe or an open universe is in the amount of dark matter which is still debated.
http://www.duke.edu/~gra/bang.html
There is a critical density point that if the universe is below then we live in an open universe and this is the case if dark matter is not considered at all, it all depends on the amount of dark matter which is still debated. |
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ConsequentAtheist
SFN Regular
641 Posts |
Posted - 12/02/2002 : 20:01:22 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Slater
..., the word perhaps is an adverb, which means possibly or probably. It doesn't mean "let's pretend."
Very well said! |
For the philosophical naturalist, the rejection of supernaturalism is a case of "death by a thousand cuts." -- Barbara Forrest, Ph.D. |
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ConsequentAtheist
SFN Regular
641 Posts |
Posted - 12/02/2002 : 20:24:41 [Permalink]
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quote:
Originally posted by Legallee Insane
Let's face it, I guess the fact is that we can't really prove that there is a god, but we can't prove there isn't either.
The class of absurdities which cannot be disproven is unbounded. It includes Aliens, Baal, Ghosts, Jesus, Kali, Leprchauns, Mithra, Nessie, Past Life Regression, Reincarnation, Unicorns, Vishnu, Yeti, YHWH, etc. What methodology would you suggest as a means of preferentially accepting some subset of this class? On what basis would you feel justified in rejecting the rest? |
For the philosophical naturalist, the rejection of supernaturalism is a case of "death by a thousand cuts." -- Barbara Forrest, Ph.D. |
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LordofEntropy
Skeptic Friend
USA
85 Posts |
Posted - 12/02/2002 : 21:01:36 [Permalink]
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The concept of the right combination of energy, amino acids and timing started the whole thing and life was created isn't difficult for me to accept. As far as I am concerned it is very believable given my assumptions based on some of the theories out there.
Here is my thought process:
My Assumptions:
1. Our universe was created by a big bang.
2. While the universe may be expanding currently, eventually it will collapse on itself.
3. Once collapsed into a nice dense tennis ball, it big bangs again.
4. Rinse, wash, and repeat.
Alot of the time I hear, "the odds that all these things would come together just right and create life out of that mess are just impossible."
I can accept that statement to certain extent if we are talking about a one time occurance.
My next assumption now, as pedestrian and cliched as this one may be:
1. Put an infinite amount of monkeys at an infinite amount typewriters for an infinite amount of time, not only will you get the works of Shakespeare, but you will get every work ever created eventually(along those same lines, given enough harddrive space filled with random 1s and 0s, you could be considered a criminal because you would eventually have childporn, copywrited works, and classified documents on that harddrive. Normalization kind of shows why making certain bits illegal or patented can lead to big issues, but that is a different topic.)
Given that assumption, as far as I am concerned our "current" universe, may be the result of the 9.254 x 10^47 big bang. In all those other ones, maybe "life" never occured, or maybe it did in a drastically different way. It just kept happening over and over and eventually produced life as we know it. After this one collapses it may be another 9.254 x 10^47 big bangs before some semblance of life is created. |
Entropy just isn't what it used to be.
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a65phalcon
New Member
USA
44 Posts |
Posted - 12/03/2002 : 00:05:24 [Permalink]
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quote:
The class of absurdities which cannot be disproven is unbounded. It includes Aliens, Baal, Ghosts, Jesus, Kali, Leprchauns, Mithra, Nessie, Past Life Regression, Reincarnation, Unicorns, Vishnu, Yeti, YHWH, etc. What methodology would you suggest as a means of preferentially accepting some subset of this class? On what basis would you feel justified in rejecting the rest?
I am pretty sure you forgot the Loch Ness monster. Very popular! Lets try not to leave him/her out of the picture next time.
I am interested in the BB and its possible parallels with an infinite creator. Is it not plausible for such a thing to happen.
Here is my point, the bible is a book written and re-written for thousands of years so obviously you cannot take it word for word. But if you were to draw parallels bewteen some of the information could it not be said that several theories could possibly fit into biblical doctrine. |
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