Predict the 1st Banning for uncivil behavior in the new Religious Threads...

[mbills2223]

Who created the Creator? If He did not require creation why must the foam?

Agree or disagree: There must've been a beginning to everything at some point.

 

[CathyInBlue]

Then why does that beginning have to be with the divine? Why is it not possible in your view, for that beginning to have been with natural laws all set and in full operation?

 

[mbills2223]

Then why does that beginning have to be with the divine? Why is it not possible in your view, for that beginning to have been with natural laws all set and in full operation?

I wasn't saying I believe or disbelieve in the statement I posted, I was just asking Paul in response to his post.

 

[BugI02]

Many subtle parameters of the universe have a profound effect on what it's like to live within it - the strength of the weak and strong nuclear force, the masses of the fundamental particles, symmetry breaking etc. My preferred explaination is that god set the initial conditions and then let the system evolve with little interference - kind of like a terrarium.

 

[Doug]

Agree or disagree: There must've been a beginning to everything at some point.

This applies only to those who live within time. Those who live beyond time experience the "past, present, and future" as the unbounded "now."

 

[PaulF]

Agree or disagree: There must've been a beginning to everything at some point.

In my personal philosophy?

Disagree.

I think that the "big bang" event that led to our observable "universe" was probably just one of an infinite number of such events, if you scale back far enough and look over a broad enough period of time.

 

[CathyInBlue]

Thing is, god had very little choice in all of those universal constants. Very far at all from their values in our universe and a universe wouldn't evolve life, let alone intelligent life. In that case, what role does god even play?

 

[Cygnus]

IBTL!

Man if only INGO would allow a thread on the concept of absolute truths and religion.******,

 

[hoosierdoc]

Agree or disagree: There must've been a beginning to everything at some point.

There only has to be a beginning if you think time exists beyond the human mind

 

[D-Ric902]

Thing is, god had very little choice in all of those universal constants. Very far at all from their values in our universe and a universe wouldn't evolve life, let alone intelligent life. In that case, what role does god even play?

Are you referring to "fine tuning"

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Those that believe science reveals the truth have to be flexible of what they are willing to hold as truth. We're told by scientists,all the time, we're doomed for one malady or catastrophe or another, all the time only to find out later they were wrong. At the risk of being too flippant, science knows jack---- about a great many things.

Phys.Org Mobile: No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

 

[PaulF]

Those that believe science reveals the truth have to be flexible of what they are willing to hold as truth. We're told by scientists,all the time, we're doomed for one malady or catastrophe or another, all the time only to find out later they were wrong. At the risk of being too flippant, science knows jack---- about a great many things.

Phys.Org Mobile: No Big Bang? Quantum equation predicts universe has no beginning

Science is a method of observation of the natural world, therefore it cannot reveal truth...only fact. We can only collect so many facts, and we can only find so many ways to parse them, after that we are left with the dubious task of...interpretation.

I think it is in the interpretation of the facts where we tend to get ourselves into trouble. It is so easy to insert an agenda into an interpretation.

 

[Dead Duck]

Science is a method of observation of the natural world, therefore it cannot reveal truth...only fact. We can only collect so many facts, and we can only find so many ways to parse them, after that we are left with the dubious task of...interpretation.

I think it is in the interpretation of the facts where we tend to get ourselves into trouble. It is so easy to insert an agenda into an interpretation.

I have faith that you'll figure it out.

 

[CathyInBlue]

When I was studying astrophysics as an undergrad, I loved the idea that the Hubble constant would be so fine tuned that the expansion we saw would slow to a stop, reverse, and everything would end in a Big Crunch that would ultimately result in a new Big Bang that would regenerate a whole new universe. And over and over forever. The universe having no beginning, and yet having an infinite beginning, no end and infinite ends. Just as the standard model of subatomic particles has symmetry, the symmetry of that oscillating universe appealed to me on an aesthetic level.

And then physicists discovered that the expansion of our universe is not only not slowing down, it's not even a steady rate. It's accelerating.

Do you know what this did to my world view? Nothing. I was simply wrong. That is the power of science, not a weakness. Science is fully capable of admitting, indeed, designed graciously to admit, that what it thought before was wrong and to replace that wrong idea with something it now thinks is right. Science is not designed to claim, and indeed doesn't deal well with, absolutes. "But Cathy! What about the speed of light?" What about it? Did you know it's not the speed of light? Light as we know it is almost invariably made up, not of individual photons, but of packets of photons, and it is those packets of photons that are speed limitted. Within those packets, the average speed across all photons will be the speed of light. What that means is that for every individual photon travelling X amount under the speed of light, there will be a photon travelling X amount faster than the speed of light, at that very moment. Over all, the packet is limitted to the speed of light, but the photons that make up the packet is fully capable of going faster for short periods of time. There are thousands of scientists working on the frontiers of physics to engineer ways to violate this so-called universal speed limit, as well as thousands of other so-called absolutes of physics. Science looks at an absolute and sees a new avenue of discovery. What does religion look on an absolute as?

For religion, absolutes are places where inquiry and free thought is forbidden. To question the commands of god is heresy. If the speed of light were dictated by a deity, to ask "Why is the speed of light in a vacuum 299,792,458 m/s and not 299,792,459 or 299,792,458?" or "What would happen if something were to travel faster than the speed of light?" would be religious crimes. When a tenet of a religion is proven to be false, it's a cause for great sturm und drang and existential angst at the very least, and murder and war at worst. Just ask Galileo when he had the temerity to challenge the religious truth that the sun revolved around the Earth. When a tenet of science is overturned as false and replaced by a new tenet held to be more correct, it's just called Tuesday.

The problem comes when people want to overturn a tenet of physics and replace it with a tenet of religion. That's square peg in a round hole territory.

 

[D-Ric902]

I think you may have a skewed vision of religion

Some of the best Physicists and Astronomers in the world work for The Vatican. None have lost their faith so far.

 

[ModernGunner]

Everyone believes. As the old cliche says, "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice".

The most recent scientific findings (which may or may not be the 'final truth') indicate the universe isn't 'random' at all. There appears to be a definite 'shape' and 'order' to the universe, a 'design'. While events may appear to be chaotic, chaos isn't the 'norm'.

IF that's true, that there's a 'design' to the universe and all it contains, and according to current science it is, then there is, at the minimum, the inference that some 'one' or some 'thing' designed it.

Maybe science and religion aren't as far apart as we previously thought. At the minimum, they're increasingly converging. That may be 'collision course' for some (perhaps most), but unlikely. Galaxies don't collide. They merge, they assimilate, and new beauty is created from it. Perhaps we should follow the example we've been provided.

This issue MAY be 'separatism'. People tend to believe that it it MUST be 'this way' or 'that way'. Perhaps that's true. Perhaps that isn't. Perhaps we'll never know. Perhaps one day we'll know empirically. But it does appear that religion and science are coming ever closer together. The findings support the beliefs, and the beliefs support the findings.

With the Higgs boson being recently discovered, it appears the 'god particle' has been found. This may lead to the 'final answer', or perhaps it will just lead to further questions like: "Well, we proved god exists, but who created god?"

Through time immemorial, man has asked himself "Why are we here?". As we see from the responses in this thread, the opinions and beliefs are as vast and complicated as humans themselves. Maybe it's not the 'answers' that are important, anyway.

Perhaps 'to ask the questions' is the answer.

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Change is hard. For everybody. Just ask the believers in man-made global warming. Resistance to changing ones' beliefs is hardly the provenance of the faithful.

 

[PaulF]

I think you may have a skewed vision of religion

Some of the best Physicists and Astronomers in the world work for The Vatican. None have lost their faith so far.

Some of the greatest child molesters in the world work for the Vatican. Very few have lost their jobs so far. Her vision of religion may not be so skewed.

 

[Kutnupe14]

Some of the greatest child molesters in the world work for the Vatican. Very few have lost their jobs so far. Her vision of religion may not be so skewed.

I gotta back Paul on this one. The Vatican, to me, is way too secretive. That in itself makes me distrust them.

 

[CathyInBlue]

The Higgs boson is not proof that god exists. It is not "the god particle" as some idiot science writer dubbed it. It's just the particle that's responsible, by its inclusion in the make up of other, larger particles, for the mass of physical matter. Without the Higgs boson, nothing which relies on mass (i.e. gravity, momentum, etc.) would have any actual effect in this universe. There would be no stars, no planets, no galaxies, and no life.