Big bang and God... [Archive]

Marc

24th October 2003, 10:42 AM

Nothing like starting with the easy stuff eh? ;)

One thing about the Big Bang, I understand that it is meaningless to try and refer to 'before' the BB. Sort of like... no not sort if, it IS refering to before time began. Time is a part of space, with the universe starting off in a singularity all of space was in one infinite point, there effectivly was no space or time. There is the possibility the universe had it's start in a quantum fluctuation. Then there is this quote I can't remember where it is from

"As to why it happened, I offer the modest proposal that our universe is simply one of those things that happens from time to time"

Now as to life, the formation of life is honestly just the result of natural processes. The way the universe works allowed for the existance of self replicating materials that allowed variation in the replication. Once that got started here the cat got let out of the bag and we get tons of variations.

I know these are probably no where near as good an answer as you'd like, but it is something to keep you busy till the smarter people answer. :)

Brown

24th October 2003, 10:43 AM

This little question has a rather lengthy answer. (I could say the same thing about the "Second Amendment" thread, too.)

It is puzzling to understand how it is possible for things to come into existence without a creator. But if you say "Things came into existence because of a creator," have you really answered anything? If you then ask, "Where did the creator come from?" aren't you right back where you started?

As for where everything came from, the honest answer might be "I don't know."

Personally, I much prefer to an honest "I don't know" than to some bogus religion-based solution manufactured by someone else who doesn't know, either.

Ipecac

24th October 2003, 10:45 AM

Ruby,

No one knows or probably will ever know what happened prior to the Big Bang. It's one of those things you just have to live with. Putting a creator behind it may make people feel better, but all they're doing is fooling themselves.

There are an infinite number of things you won't know during your lifetime. Why let this one get to you? :)

Brown

24th October 2003, 10:53 AM

As to the formation of life:

Living things as we know them are made of organic materials. In many instances, the organic materials are organized as chains of amino acids to form proteins. Proteins are "the building blocks of life," and amino acids are "the building blocks of proteins."

In a series of famous experiments by Miller and Urey (and others), organic materials (water, ammonia, hydrogen and methane) were put into a container and were subjected to electrical arcs (to simulate lightning). In a very short time (less than a week), amino acids and other organic compounds appeared in the container. There was no human creator, no designer... these things just formed under ordinary conditions.

If the same forces are at work for billions of years, the formation of life becomes probable. Not just possible, but highly probable.

LawnOven

24th October 2003, 11:03 AM

Just some interesting articles from Space Daily in regards to how life may have started...

space (http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-01d.html)

clay (http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-03zzi.html)

roger

24th October 2003, 11:14 AM

Ruby, your first question has been handled, so let me tackle the life starting issue.

Imagine something that can replicate itself. Don't care what, say a matchbox car :) Each time they replicate, they come out just a bit different.

It stands to reason (and all our experiments) that when you put those things in a hostile environment, some will do better than others.

Those that die before reproducing will not be able to influence the next generation. Therefore, in general, the things that don't cope well will die off, and those that cope well will continue to survive.

To use my matchbox example, put them in a room with a normal (ie destructive) 3 year old. The kid will try to stomp on them, flush 'em down the toilet, eat them, etc. Pretty quickly any car that can't evade the 3 year old will no longer exist, and now you have a fleet of cars that are better. Some will be faster, but some will be structually stronger, others may just blend into the carpet.

Does that make sense so far?

A natural objection is that there are only tiny changes in each generation, how can that add up to the huge differences we see in different species?

The math behind it is nonintuitive, yet proven. In laymans term, suppose only 1% of the population has an advantage that gives them only a 1% greater chance of survival than the rest of the population. Those are small numbers. However, these things work exponentially. For example, in the next generation, just a couple extra kids survived in that 1% population than in the rest of the population. So now the ratio is 1.1%.

No Big Deal, right? Wrong. Because now they reproduce again, and now there are more in that group, so even more will survive. So this time it is 1.4%. Next generation 2.3%. Next generation 4.9%. The next generation 18.7%. The next generation 47.5%. The next generation 87.1%. (I just totally made those numbers up, but it's basically how it works)

So in just a few generations, you have a minor segment of the population with a tinyadvantage, and it is spread throughout the population in just a few generations.

And if that is not impressive, remember things like bacteria reproduce every 20 minutes or so! A couple of hours, and you have just bred for an advantage.

So, if you started just with a very simple chemical that can reproduce itself, it'll just start adapting. Not because of any hard to understand rules, but because that's just what happens when you make more copies of a good thing than a bad thing.

Note I didn't say anything about genes, mutations, etc. We can get into the mechanics of it if you want, but can you see how _anything_ that reproduces itself with variations will neccessarily evolve in a hostile environment? If not, just ask questions, there's a lot of us who will be happy to explain it.

How those first chemicals got started, nobody knows yet. There are ideas, but nothing proven. However, scientists conclude that evolution is true because it is a very simple explanation (what I wrote above is the gist of it, the rest of the theory is just working out the details) for what we see around us. Again, if you have questions about the nature of that evidence, just ask.

Silicon

24th October 2003, 11:24 AM

Ruby,

What if the creator is a really giant alien who created the big bang in some gigantic test-tube?

That still doesn't make them God, as in

Omnipotent
Omniscient
Omni-benevolent

(Which are pretty much the 3 things that all definitions of God pretty much share)

There are probably an infinite number of ways that the universe could have come into existance. You could suppose any number of them, if you somehow imagine a time before the universe.

But the question is, what means "coming into" existence. That implies a before and and after, and causality, which is like a time question. And we know that time is mearly a direction in the universe. Time is an aspect of the universe, entwined with space itself. Time started with the big bang.

It's like asking "what's north of the North Pole?"

Well, you can't answer that question. There is no such thing as "North" when you are standing at the north pole. Similarly, there is no such thing as "before" when you are standing at the beginning of time.

To ask "Who created the universe?" You could answer "it always has existed, from the beginning of time."

It's an more logical answer than "Who created the Universe?" "God Created it." "Who created God?" "God has always existed, from the beginning of time."

Yahzi

24th October 2003, 11:38 AM

Here's the short answer (much hand-waving follows):

First, the Planck length. Max Planck discovered that there was a number (a very very very small number) which was effectively the smallest thing you could have. Expressed as distance, the Planck length is the smallest distance you can measure, like the limit of resolution of your ruler. Expressed as energy, it's the smallest bit of energy (the so-called quantum). Expressed as time, it is the smallest bit of time you can measure. (Remember that time and distance are functions of each other, so the smallest distance and the smallest time are related).

Then Stephen Hawking discovered that underneath this limit, all sorts of hanky panky was going on. For instance, sometimes particles (like say an electron) will just appear out of nothing, for no reason at all. So the old adage that something cannot come from nothing is false: it happens a gazillion times a second.

Of course, you are wondering, why don't we notice this? Well, its because the universe is as bad as a bank: you can't take money out without putting money in. So when that electron just pops into being, an anti-electron is also created. And here's the kicker: the two of them wander around a bit, and then collide. Well you know what happens when a particle and an anti-particle collide: they both go woosh! And the energy they create from their explosion is exactly the same amount of energy it took to create them... so everything balances out!

But wait, you say. Wouldn't we notice all this wooshing? The answer is, all of this takes place under the Planck limit. So no, we don't notice it. You know that movies are really just still frames displayed really quickly, right? And because your eyes can't adjust faster than 30 times a second or so, you can't tell. You don't see the stillness, just the motion. The Planck limit is like that: you can't see well enough to see the individual actions, just the net result.

So... imagine the universe when there was no matter in it. No distance, either (and hence no time but that's a different issue). Nothing at all. So along comes some innocent particle, pops into being just like they always do, but wait: there is no distance. Well you know what happens when you stuff 20 lbls of potatos into a 5lb bag, right. No distance means that the first particle had infinite density. Infinite density means infinte mass, which means infinite energy. And stuffing infinite energy into a tiny point means kaboom!

And there's your Big Bang. Out of nothing. Of course, now that we have distance, we don't have infinite energy anymore. So all those little guys popping in and out don't matter so much. But they still serve to evaporate black holes, so we're grateful they're around.

Now, onto life:

Take a few trillion megatons of loose dirt, and dump into empty space. Nothing around, just empty space. Come back a few thousand years later, and what shape will the lump of dirt have formed? That's right, a sphere. Every single time. The sphere is the best balance between all the competeing gravitational pulls of each little piece of dirt. So, absent any other influence (like gravity from somewhere else), a pile of dirt will always form a sphere.

What this tells us is that there is some law of physics that causes dirt to form a sphere. Well, we have seen chemicals that organize themselves into patterns (like crystals). We have also seen chemical transformations that form patterns, cycling from one form to another. Apparently there is some law of physics that causes chemicals to fall into patterns that eventually lead to life. It's not chance, anymore than the lump of dirt formed a sphere by chance.

Now the particular life formed is controlled by chance. Our sphere of dirt isn't going to be perfectly round, of course: there will be little hills and valleys in it. Which hills and where they valleys are are determined by chance, just as what kind of life arises is goverened by chance. But the basic process is like a rock rolling downhill.

Did this help?

Landis

24th October 2003, 11:52 AM

Victor Stenger is a leading particle physicist. Here is his take on how the Universe was created out of nothing:

"Every measurement that we make indicates that the total energy of the Universe is balanced between the rest energy that's in the matter, the kinetic energy that's in the motion of objects, and then this is balanced by a negative potential energy of gravity. And the total energy is very close to zero. So, if the total energy is zero, and if you had zero energy to begin with, there was no violation of energy conservation. There was no miracle that created energy at the beginning of the Universe (other than, perhaps, a little quantum fluctuation that is, again, in agreement with existing knowledge, and so would not be a miracle).

Hope it sheds some light on the subject.

Silicon

24th October 2003, 12:11 PM

Yahzi,

Bravo. Well written.

(Now please tell us what causes that wackyness below the planck limit.)

headscratcher4

24th October 2003, 12:18 PM

I don't know the answer to either of these questions, or how to answer them.

I simply have a question of my own: why couldn't life come into existence by chance or luck?

Why does there have to be a motivating "creator" behind existence...especially given that life as we find it on earth is so completely varried, random and seemingly disconnected (things that live at the bottom of the oceans near vulcanic thrermals to man). To me, a mere observer and no scientist or religious scholar, nothing about life seems predicted or predictable. It seems traits and varrieties are many and varried, yet with the exception of the same organic/chemical basis, there is nothing to suggest any sort of profound uniform organizing principal.

I don't know if that makes sense or is true, but chance and luck are as good an explaination as "god" unless you can show something inherent in the existence of life that requires a creator...and that I am not sure you can do.

EdipisReks

24th October 2003, 12:46 PM

Originally posted by Yahzi
You know that movies are really just still frames displayed really quickly, right? And because your eyes can't adjust faster than 30 times a second or so, you can't tell.

i hate to nitpick and thread jack (actually, i don't hate it, i love it), but the human eye can differentiate well over 200 frames per second as long as they are distinct, non motion blurred frames. movies and tv looks smooth (tv more than movies, as celluloid film, at least to avid video gamer me, has a very distinct flicker) because each frame is blurred into the one before and the one after.

Silicon

24th October 2003, 01:21 PM

200 seems a bit high to me. Where do you get that number?

The test should be of flicker. White and black alternating. How fast does it have to be before people percieve it as a smooth grey value?

I'd put the number closer to 72hertz, which is the flicker rate of your top-of-the-line 3-bladed movie projectors. I don't know anyone who can perceive the flicker at that speed.

(most current movie theaters have 2-bladed projectors, so that's flickering at 48 hertz. Do you percieve a flicker in the theater?)

DangerousBeliefs

24th October 2003, 01:24 PM

Here's a really good interview with Charles Seife, author of Alpha and Omega: The Search for the Beginning and End of the Universe.

Slashdot Interview (http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/08/1435245&mode=thread&tid=134&tid=160)

SkepticalScience

24th October 2003, 01:41 PM

Great Questions!

I won't go into them here, since they are pretty lengthy and MUCH more elegantly put by Carl Sagan in the Cosmos collection. GET IT if you haven't seen it. . . he explains it brilliantly. If you don't agree post back, and I'll buy them from you, since I've scrateched up my collection! You have nothing to loose, and a WHOLE LOT to gain!

One quick point about this question though, which I think is really important:

How it is possible for the world to come into existence without a creator?

-How is it possible then for the creator exist? Since he would need a creator too? You can't say, 'Everything needs a creator, but God doesn't need a creator'

I know that doesn't answer your question, but I just wanted to make sure that point was made.

Again, please take a look at the Cosmos collection. . .

Yahweh

24th October 2003, 02:06 PM

Yahzi, you did an awesome job describing the Big Bang.

Brown, also did an awesome job describing life.

:clap: :clap: :clap:

If the formation of Life by chance still seems unusual, consider this: 100s of millions of years ago, the oceans were teaming organic molecules. The organic molecules didnt form by chance alone, they formed as a result of chance and the laws of Physics. In an ocean of organic molecules, it doesnt seem unlikely (actually its very probable) that a few amino acids would come together to form the first proteins.

Tez

24th October 2003, 02:25 PM

Sorry to go off on a tangent, but this post is so full of inaccuracies, I have to comment.

Originally posted by Yahzi
Here's the short answer (much hand-waving follows):

First, the Planck length. Max Planck discovered that there was a number (a very very very small number) which was effectively the smallest thing you could have. Expressed as distance, the Planck length is the smallest distance you can measure, like the limit of resolution of your ruler. Expressed as energy, it's the smallest bit of energy (the so-called quantum). Expressed as time, it is the smallest bit of time you can measure. (Remember that time and distance are functions of each other, so the smallest distance and the smallest time are related).

This is simply a plausible conjecture, based on the physics we have at hand. There is no scientific evidence for any of this.

Then Stephen Hawking discovered that underneath this limit, all sorts of hanky panky was going on.

Hawking had nothing to do with any of the "discoveries" mentioned in this post, except for that of the last sentence quoted here.

For instance, sometimes particles (like say an electron) will just appear out of nothing, for no reason at all. So the old adage that something cannot come from nothing is false: it happens a gazillion times a second.

It is far better to think of this as simply being a misunderstanding of "nothing".

Of course, you are wondering, why don't we notice this? Well, its because the universe is as bad as a bank: you can't take money out without putting money in. So when that electron just pops into being, an anti-electron is also created. And here's the kicker: the two of them wander around a bit, and then collide. Well you know what happens when a particle and an anti-particle collide: they both go woosh! And the energy they create from their explosion is exactly the same amount of energy it took to create them... so everything balances out!

But wait, you say. Wouldn't we notice all this wooshing? The answer is, all of this takes place under the Planck limit.

Your quite nice description is based on quantum electrodynamics - for which the Planck limit is irrelevant

So no, we don't notice it. You know that movies are really just still frames displayed really quickly, right? And because your eyes can't adjust faster than 30 times a second or so, you can't tell. You don't see the stillness, just the motion. The Planck limit is like that: you can't see well enough to see the individual actions, just the net result.

So... imagine the universe when there was no matter in it. No distance, either (and hence no time but that's a different issue). Nothing at all. So along comes some innocent particle, pops into being just like they always do, but wait: there is no distance. Well you know what happens when you stuff 20 lbls of potatos into a 5lb bag, right. No distance means that the first particle had infinite density. Infinite density means infinte mass, which means infinite energy. And stuffing infinite energy into a tiny point means kaboom!

I am not sure where the heck you got this description, but its simply fantasy. The only cosmological scenario we have evidence for is an inflationary universe. It is well worth reading "The Inflationary Universe" by Guth. He explains lots of things very nicely - for example, why gravitional energy is "negative", and exactly counterbalances the positive energy that makes up the trees, flowers and us. Thus we did not get "something out of nothing".

And there's your Big Bang. Out of nothing. Of course, now that we have distance, we don't have infinite energy anymore. So all those little guys popping in and out don't matter so much. But they still serve to evaporate black holes, so we're grateful they're around.

Let me point out a few other things: It is true that there is a simple solution to the equations of General Relativity for which time "originates" at the Big Bang. Those solutions also bceome unphysical (infinite density etc) at time t=0. We do not know that time "began" then - its simply a useful model. It seems unlikely this model is correct all the way down to t=0 for a variety of technical reasons - the simplest is that it doesnt take quantum effects into account. So one should always be leery about treating philosophical positions built on such a model as anything but a useful way of sharpening the mental saw, so to speak.

Martin

24th October 2003, 02:48 PM

Originally posted by Tez
Let me point out a few other things: It is true that there is a simple solution to the equations of General Relativity for which time "originates" at the Big Bang. Those solutions also bceome unphysical (infinite density etc) at time t=0. We do not know that time "began" then - its simply a useful model. It seems unlikely this model is correct all the way down to t=0 for a variety of technical reasons - the simplest is that it doesnt take quantum effects into account. So one should always be leery about treating philosophical positions built on such a model as anything but a useful way of sharpening the mental saw, so to speakIndeed. I find it somewhat irritating to hear people who should know better banging on about the age of the Universe. We haven't the faintest f*cking idea how old the Universe is. Some inflationary models quite happily extend back to past infinity. We have a good lower limit, but that's an entirely different creature. It's not at all clear that the Universe need begin in a singularity at all, since inflation throws Hawking-Penrose out the window by violating the strong energy condition.

mummymonkey

24th October 2003, 03:12 PM

So let me get this straight. We're all made out of potatoes right?

Ruby

24th October 2003, 03:13 PM

Thanks everyone!!! I will respond more when I have time...but just wanted to say thanks for now.

Lord Kenneth

24th October 2003, 05:04 PM

Also, another point: "How did we come around from pure chance? Imagine how lucky we were!"

Remember, the universe does not revolve around us. We are just the result of natural events in the universe, and live can't only form in our solar system.

Imagine a lottery: The chances of winning are extremely low, yet someone does it. Just because that person beat the odds doesn't mean a deity acted in their favor. No, everything just turned out in their favor.

That's kind of like us. Yes, earth is pretty much in position to let life flourish. Earth was not put into place to suit our needs, we appeared on earth because conditions for life to flourish are ripe.

triadboy

24th October 2003, 05:12 PM

Originally posted by mummymonkey
So let me get this straight. We're all made out of potatoes right?

:roll:

triadboy

24th October 2003, 05:22 PM

Yahzi said:

For instance, sometimes particles (like say an electron) will just appear out of nothing, for no reason at all. So the old adage that something cannot come from nothing is false: it happens a gazillion times a second.

Tez answered:

It is far better to think of this as simply being a misunderstanding of "nothing".

As we increase the granularity of 'nothing' and we see live action - doesn't that change what we mean by 'nothing'?

I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. I just didn't understand how you meant your response.

Tez

24th October 2003, 05:44 PM

Originally posted by triadboy
Yahzi said:

Tez answered:

As we increase the granularity of 'nothing' and we see live action - doesn't that change what we mean by 'nothing'?

I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. I just didn't understand how you meant your response.

Hmm - I dont precisely understand what you dont understand (not being facetious). But let me elaborate:

Yahzi said something about the particle/antiparticle pair appearing out of "nothing". I was simply saying that a better way of looking at "nothing" (i.e. the vacuum) is not by thinking of it as really being "nothing". Adopting my viewpoint makes this process less puzzling. There are very good reasons beyond this particular pair creation process (which is in itself an unobservable interpretation of equations) for adopting the viewpoint that the vacuum really is "something" and not nothing. For example - the vacuum only looks empty of particles to inertial observers - accelerating observers see the vacuum as contain particles. Another example is that the "state of the vacuum" is believed to determine the physical properties of certain particles - for instance their mass (Higgs mechanism). In string theory (for which there is no evidence, I hasten to point out on this forum!) the only free parameter is basically the amount of a certain field in the vacuum. Many more such examples...

Einstein convinced us all there was no ether for a few years. Then quantum mechanics came along and has been slowly reversing this viewpoint - although the "quantum ether" is nothing like that which Maxwell imagined!

Hope that clarifies my somewhat terse comment.

Tez

24th October 2003, 05:47 PM

Oh - and something I didnt say, but should have - is that it is not clear to me that pair creation is at all a good analog to use for initiation of the big bang, since the pair creation comes out of the vacuum (i.e. "something") while the big bang purportedly (modulo what Martin said) created the vacuum....

triadboy

24th October 2003, 06:45 PM

Tez,

Understood! Thanks

I thought Yahzi did a great job explaining the complicated in simple terms for those of us who need that.

I see you agreed with many of his points, but had some exceptions - which is - what this forum is about.

I understand you are a physicist and are used to speaking in non-laymen terms. But could you possibly give us your perception of the 'creation of existence' as if you are talking to a uni-browed, slack-jawed yokel from 'up in the hills'? :)

I love this stuff.

Tez

24th October 2003, 08:10 PM

Originally posted by triadboy
Tez,
I understand you are a physicist and are used to speaking in non-laymen terms. But could you possibly give us your perception of the 'creation of existence' as if you are talking to a uni-browed, slack-jawed yokel from 'up in the hills'? :)

Mate, I'd love to, but I really have little more to say than what I have, which I know has not been in any way constructive! I probably have a marginally larger understanding of the possibilities that have been considered than most have, but I certainly have no lines of thought on the stuff about which I have any level of confidence. I'd really be much happier passing the ball to Martin, who I know has a much broader understanding of whats going on in modern cosmology than I do. Even if he hasn't a specific opinion, it'd be nice for all of us to get a brief summary of the various ideas and possibilities being thrown around. Since he's scottish we may have to all give him a penny for his thoughts...

To be honest, I spend the majority of my time thinking about plausible scenarios for the ontological underpinnings of the universe - in particular based on the sort of weird crap that quantum mechanics seems to dictate is necessary. Your post has made me realise that in none of my musings do I ever address the important issue of plausible "origins" of such scenarios. All I will throw out is that I personally feel that we have to go a step further in cutting the umbilical chord with Time's bending sickle's compass. Special relativity started the process, general relativity cut a little more of the chord. We have a long way to go. (And yes, those last sentences were written for the slack-jowed yokel who reads both shakespeare and modern physics ;) )

So, sorry to duck the question - but to write clearly for the layman one should choose issues one understands deeply - and your request falls outside that sphere for me. I promise its not laziness - when appropriate I spend considerable time on this forum trying to elucidate those things I do feel confident about....

kedo1981

25th October 2003, 11:46 AM

The notion that the universe came from nothing, really means, "from nothing that we now understand"

Interesting Ian

25th October 2003, 12:17 PM

Originally posted by Martin
Indeed. I find it somewhat irritating to hear people who should know better banging on about the age of the Universe. We haven't the faintest f*cking idea how old the Universe is. Some inflationary models quite happily extend back to past infinity. We have a good lower limit, but that's an entirely different creature. It's not at all clear that the Universe need begin in a singularity at all, since inflation throws Hawking-Penrose out the window by violating the strong energy condition.

Martin, I thought it had basically been established that the Universe is between 10 billion and 20 billion years old :confused: If we know the rate of expansion now, then we can extrapolate backwards in time to arrive at a figure can't we?

Yahzi

25th October 2003, 02:23 PM

Originally posted by Tez
Sorry to go off on a tangent, but this post is so full of inaccuracies, I have to comment.
You must have missed the part where I said: "(much hand-waving follows)".

I was not trying to give a mathematically valid description of the Big Bang. I was trying to communicate the flavor of the answer. Ruby doesn't want a bunch of math right now, she wants to know what the answer looks like. I think I did a very good job of explaining a lot of basic concepts. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone to settle for this as a final answer: it is merely a starting point, a sort of table of contents.

Also, the fact that some of this is now debated or even refuted by current physics isn't terribly damning. I think the history helps a lot in understanding the issue, and provides a base for going forward. You certainly recognized everything in my description. Do you think you could understand the refinements and objections to my description if you had never even heard my description first?

I realize you mean well: but your comments on the vacuum have confused a lot of us. I enjoy them, and I even think I know what you are getting at: but Ruby needed a little more background before she dives into such technical details.

I encounter this problem a lot. Many fine scientists (and philosophers) are not very good at reducing their explanations to something people who haven't studied their field for years can understand. I think they forget what it was like when they didn't know so much contextual information. You've already considered the Big Bang and moved beyond it: but lots of people haven't figured out what it really means yet, so they aren't quite ready to consider objections or modifications to it.

So, in conclusion, I concede that my post was rather imprecise. I hope everyone understood my disclaimer at the beginning. However, despite the fact that it was imprecise and not entirely current, I think it was absolutely accurately targeted to the audience, and very helpful at moving on to the more detailed questions. How would you rate my post in light of these goals and considerations, Tez?

triadboy

25th October 2003, 02:28 PM

Yahzi,

I clearly understood where you were coming from and really appreciated and enjoyed what you wrote. It was clear and easy to follow. I think you did a great job breaking it down for us. You should be a teacher. Thanks!

Tez

25th October 2003, 03:33 PM

Originally posted by Yahzi

You must have missed the part where I said: "(much hand-waving follows)".

I was not trying to give a mathematically valid description of the Big Bang. I was trying to communicate the flavor of the answer. Ruby doesn't want a bunch of math right now, she wants to know what the answer looks like. I think I did a very good job of explaining a lot of basic concepts. I certainly wouldn't expect anyone to settle for this as a final answer: it is merely a starting point, a sort of table of contents.

Also, the fact that some of this is now debated or even refuted by current physics isn't terribly damning. I think the history helps a lot in understanding the issue, and provides a base for going forward. You certainly recognized everything in my description. Do you think you could understand the refinements and objections to my description if you had never even heard my description first?

I realize you mean well: but your comments on the vacuum have confused a lot of us. I enjoy them, and I even think I know what you are getting at: but Ruby needed a little more background before she dives into such technical details.

I encounter this problem a lot. Many fine scientists (and philosophers) are not very good at reducing their explanations to something people who haven't studied their field for years can understand. I think they forget what it was like when they didn't know so much contextual information. You've already considered the Big Bang and moved beyond it: but lots of people haven't figured out what it really means yet, so they aren't quite ready to consider objections or modifications to it.

So, in conclusion, I concede that my post was rather imprecise. I hope everyone understood my disclaimer at the beginning. However, despite the fact that it was imprecise and not entirely current, I think it was absolutely accurately targeted to the audience, and very helpful at moving on to the more detailed questions. How would you rate my post in light of these goals and considerations, Tez?

Aside from the inaccuracies, what I object to most about posts like yours Yahzi is that they simply do not contain the appropriate equivocations and qualifiers. These are absolutely critical when writing for a non-specialist audience. They are easily inserted in perfectly plain language, and serve to differentiate for the layman those things which are simply speculative possibilities, those for which we have partial evidence and those things which are widely believed. They can also serve to point out the difference between analogies and concrete propositions for different processes. You made no such distinctions. One would think that, considering this is a skeptics board, absenting these qualifiers would be punishable by, well, you should at least be buying us all a beer...

So, since you asked, I think your post doesnt rate particularly highly, even though I respect what you were trying to do and the manner in which you approached it. I am afraid it sounds like you are paraphrasing from books for the layman - the danger of this is the phrasing in such books is normally chosen carefully so as to be somewhat accurate, though not necessarily complete. It is very common for paraphrasings to actually be incorrect nonsense, even though they superficially sound very much like the original. Any scientist who has had their work reported on by a journalist knows how painful this is!

So now I'm sorry to have merely taken the role of critic (though I hope a somewhat constructive one, despite my abrasiveness).

If I was trying to explain the origins of the big bang to a layman I would start by explaining what we see that makes it looks like a bang happened. Then I'd explain the crucial idea that, unlike a normal explosion, its not just gunk flying away into empty space from the explosion's epicentre, but rather the empty space itself (the vacuum?) exploding out (this is the most common misconception). Perhaps in a fit of misplaced enthusiasm I'd even go further and try to explain how its the spacetime stretching! Anyhow, I would then point out that if we naively run the clock backwards, so to speak, it looks like the bang happened from a single, highly dense blob of something. And then, to be honest, we have no fricking idea what happended at that point - in fact there are plausible models in which that point never happened! We can, however, speculate by analogy with quantum fluctuations, as you did (b.t.w. you seem to be very confused about the vacuum fluctuations/uncertainty principle and its (non)relationship to the planck length/time).

Just my opinion, and I apologise for the tone - if we were talking not typing I think you'd hear it somewhat different than I am afraid you might be reading it. The truth is I very often see people post incorrectly about scientific issues here, but I don't speak up because the problems are either not egregious or - more often - because the problems do not potentially obscure possible philosophical/religous/etc positions. It is only in these latter cases that I feel compelled to post.

triadboy

25th October 2003, 04:01 PM

Originally posted by Tez
It is only in these latter cases that I feel compelled to post.

Tez,

As I understand it - The "Big Bang" blew hot space-time in all directions. [We can still hear/see the echo, right?]

I also understand we see little ripples in the fabric?

As space-time cooled - it started globulating in places. Is this correct? If so then, matter is cooled down space-time?

Thanks for your time.

Tez

25th October 2003, 04:49 PM

Originally posted by triadboy

Tez,

As I understand it - The "Big Bang" blew hot space-time in all directions. [We can still hear/see the echo, right?]

I also understand we see little ripples in the fabric?

As space-time cooled - it started globulating in places. Is this correct? If so then, matter is cooled down space-time?

Thanks for your time.

Please don't say things like "thanks for your time" - makes me feel like a jerk. I get far more from this forum than I give to it, and am always very happy to try and answer anything thats put to me.

I guess I never really thought of it as hot "spacetime". Kind of an interesting picture...

What we do with our models of the big bang for which we have a reasonable degree of confidence is only extrapolate back to a time where the universe was very very hot, but still only about as hot as we can make particles in our biggest particle accelerators. At this sort of temperature (which the universe had cooled to quite quickly, though I don't have any reasonable number in my head) ripples in spacetime would no longer have an effect - in much the same way as they dont play a part in our current (non-speculative) physical theories. As the universe cooled (if you take any container of hot gas and increase the container size it cools) we understand quite well how the matter/light changed from a very hot mess of quarks, gluons, photons and other quantum stuff, to the point at which electrons started being captured by protons to form neutral hydrogen. Much like a slow enough (low temperature) rock entering our solar system might be captured by the sun, whereas a fast one (high temperature) one would simply "scatter" away.

This "recombination" time was very important, because once the hydrogen is formed the photons don't interact with the matter nearly as strongly as they did when there was just a gloop of charged stuff flying around. So to all intents and purposes the photons, which were still very hot, start travelling freely - the universe becam quite transparent to them. However, the spacetime in which they were travelling was expanding. Now hot photons are like waves with a very short wavelength - if you stretch them they stretch to a longer wavelength - which means they go to a lower temperature/energy. Today their energy is so low their temperature is about 3 degrees above absolute zero, and their wavelength is presently quite long - in the microwave region. It is this stuff which is called the echo of the big bang, the cosmic background microwave radiation.

At the time of recombination the hydrogen in the universe must not have been perfectly uniformly distributed, because we see today that it has gravitationally collapsed into galaxies and whatnot. It was a major breakthrough when we saw this very small inhomogneity reflected in the microwave background photons which had last scattered off them.

So, I hope its clear that all of that is pretty mundane particle physics - no ripples of spacetime, or matter being cooled down spacetime, as your post asked. However, those intuitive pictures you present are, in fact, what we conjecture was going on - we think that the divide between matter and spacetime that we have at present is somewhat artificial. That whole story I told just treated spacetime as some sort of expanding container - a background spectator. What we speculate is that at times earlier than the earliest one I described, that fluctations in spacetime were important, and, more likely, that there was only one initial kind of "stuff" from which matter and photons and whatever were formed, as well as spacetime was formed.

triadboy

25th October 2003, 05:28 PM

Tez,

The Hindus have a cosmology that features an exploding egg-universe - that eventually collapses back on itself - causing the next iteration of the universe.

They have some kind of wild repeatability timeframe of like - 500 billion years!

Cinorjer

25th October 2003, 05:38 PM

This "recombination" time was very important, because once the hydrogen is formed the photons don't interact with the matter nearly as strongly as they did when there was just a gloop of charged stuff flying around. So to all intents and purposes the photons, which were still very hot, start travelling freely - the universe becam quite transparent to them. However, the spacetime in which they were travelling was expanding. Now hot photons are like waves with a very short wavelength - if you stretch them they stretch to a longer wavelength - which means they go to a lower temperature/energy. Today their energy is so low their temperature is about 3 degrees above absolute zero, and their wavelength is presently quite long - in the microwave region. It is this stuff which is called the echo of the big bang, the cosmic background microwave radiation.

Why, I understood that!

At the time of recombination the hydrogen in the universe must not have been perfectly uniformly distributed, because we see today that it has gravitationally collapsed into galaxies and whatnot. It was a major breakthrough when we saw this very small inhomogneity reflected in the microwave background photons which had last scattered off them.

Nope, lost me again. Dammit, you had to go and spoil it by using a word like "inhomogneity". Not in my Funk or online dictionaries. Root word, something like homogeneous? Could you define that term for me. The "gneity" part is throwing me.

arcticpenguin

25th October 2003, 05:41 PM

Originally posted by Cinorjer

Nope, lost me again. Dammit, you had to go and spoil it by using a word like "inhomogneity". Not in my Funk or online dictionaries. Root word, something like homogeneous? Could you define that term for me. The "gneity" part is throwing me.
Add vowels to suit. "Inhomogeneity". Lack of homogeneity. Yes, same root as homogeneous, but the 'In' means opposite.

Tez

25th October 2003, 05:47 PM

Sorry Cinorjer, damn baseball game kept me from proofreading properly! It is a somewhat terse paragraph, so if you want elaboration please ask...

Thanks AP...

LFTKBS

25th October 2003, 09:20 PM

Originally posted by Cinorjer
Nope, lost me again. Dammit, you had to go and spoil it by using a word like "inhomogneity". Not in my Funk or online dictionaries. Root word, something like homogeneous? Could you define that term for me. The "gneity" part is throwing me.

With all due respect for the original poster (Tez), I'd go ahead and use the term heterogeneity. The concept is basically that the background radiation isn't uniformly disributed, if that helps.

Cinorjer

26th October 2003, 04:08 AM

This stuff fascinates me. I learned enough math and physics in college to know just how much I don't know. We think in terms of time and space, and they both seem infinite, so it's hard to grasp the concept that they're a property of our present universe. After all, language assumes that both are constant and only by using mathmatical equations can we really "discuss" them as variables.

We live in a weird universe. When I look at the stars at night, it freaks me out knowing that I'm a tiny spec of star matter, evolved into consciousness and able to comprehend to some degree the beauty of what exists. Knowing it's all a process of impartial, unknowing forces doesn't take away the wonder or the miracle of our existance.

egslim

26th October 2003, 09:22 AM

Interesting Ian

26th October 2003, 09:33 AM

Originally posted by Cinorjer
This stuff fascinates me. I learned enough math and physics in college to know just how much I don't know. We think in terms of time and space, and they both seem infinite, so it's hard to grasp the concept that they're a property of our present universe. After all, language assumes that both are constant and only by using mathmatical equations can we really "discuss" them as variables.

We live in a weird universe. When I look at the stars at night, it freaks me out knowing that I'm a tiny spec of star matter, evolved into consciousness and able to comprehend to some degree the beauty of what exists. Knowing it's all a process of impartial, unknowing forces doesn't take away the wonder or the miracle of our existance.

Does it not occur to you that the modern western understanding of these things might be incorrect? Seems strange to me that you say you know such things and ignore not only the internal incoherence of your position, but a vast amount of evidence.

And of course, if you are indeed right, it completely takes away the "wonder" and "miracle" of our existence.

Yahzi

26th October 2003, 10:41 AM

Originally posted by Tez
Aside from the inaccuracies, what I object to most about posts like yours Yahzi is that they simply do not contain the appropriate equivocations and qualifiers.
I started the entire post with a very direct qualifier. Did you miss it? Shall I repeat it for a third time? MUCH HAND WAVING FOLLOWS. How many qualifiers do I need? Did you notice my use of terms like "wooshing?" Don't you think that the entire tone of my piece is equivocating?

You still don't get my point, either. It may be possible that Ruby is following your posts, and thus learning a more accurate explanation. The question you seem unable to grasp is this: could Ruby (or a simliar audience) understand your more accurate explanation without having read my post first?

You know, at some point, you first learned about all this stuff from a description very similar to mine. You've just forgotten that you ever thought about it in those simplisitic terms. Which is why you know so much more about it, and yet you can't even explain what you mean by vacuum so that everybody else can understand.

I have to say, I have little sympathy for a person who reads a description that is introduced as "hand-waving" and then complains there aren't enough equivocaters. It's not enough that you complain about my physics, now you want to complain about writing.

If I was trying to explain the origins of the big bang to a layman I would start by explaining what we see that makes it looks like a bang happened. Then I'd explain
Here we see the problem. First, Ruby didn't really want fifty pages of physics text. Second, your explanation of these basic concepts immediately diverts into a long exposition on your particular bugbear (the vacuum). You're so full of physics that you don't even realize that the vacuum issue is not, overall, that more important than the dozens of other concepts that need to be mentioned. Third, if you don't like my explanation, why don't you provide one?

DangerousBeliefs

26th October 2003, 10:49 AM

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

Does it not occur to you that the modern western understanding of these things might be incorrect? Seems strange to me that you say you know such things and ignore not only the internal incoherence of your position, but a vast amount of evidence.

The reason the "modern western understanding" of things works is because it generally fits the model and evidence.

Is this opposed to the "ancient Eastern mythology" of things where cause and effect were little more than superstitious guesses?

If so, I think we used to have that in the West as well. Here's an example that even exists today:

*sneeze*

"Bless you"

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
And of course, if you are indeed right, it completely takes away the "wonder" and "miracle" of our existence.

Existance is quite wonderful and amazing enough without all the WOO WOO.

Interesting Ian

26th October 2003, 11:45 AM

triadboy

26th October 2003, 11:49 AM

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
And of course, if you are indeed right, it completely takes away the "wonder" and "miracle" of our existence.

We are all just lucky germs on a nice, warm petri-planet.

Chaos

26th October 2003, 12:22 PM

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

And of course, if you are indeed right, it completely takes away the "wonder" and "miracle" of our existence.

No, it doesn´t. Indeed, it adds to the wonder. In a way, the universe is like an extremely complicated clockwork mechanism: billions of cog-wheels all interacting with one another, one within the other, all working smoothly.
And I assure you that, discovering what the universe is really like, even just as far as we humans have managed to do this far, makes for a much better "miracle" than thinking things up, like...well...some people do.

Tez

26th October 2003, 12:56 PM

Originally posted by Yahzi

I started the entire post with a very direct qualifier. Did you miss it? Shall I repeat it for a third time? MUCH HAND WAVING FOLLOWS. How many qualifiers do I need? Did you notice my use of terms like "wooshing?" Don't you think that the entire tone of my piece is equivocating?

You still don't get my point, either. It may be possible that Ruby is following your posts, and thus learning a more accurate explanation. The question you seem unable to grasp is this: could Ruby (or a simliar audience) understand your more accurate explanation without having read my post first?

You know, at some point, you first learned about all this stuff from a description very similar to mine. You've just forgotten that you ever thought about it in those simplisitic terms. Which is why you know so much more about it, and yet you can't even explain what you mean by vacuum so that everybody else can understand.

I have to say, I have little sympathy for a person who reads a description that is introduced as "hand-waving" and then complains there aren't enough equivocaters. It's not enough that you complain about my physics, now you want to complain about writing.

Here we see the problem. First, Ruby didn't really want fifty pages of physics text. Second, your explanation of these basic concepts immediately diverts into a long exposition on your particular bugbear (the vacuum). You're so full of physics that you don't even realize that the vacuum issue is not, overall, that more important than the dozens of other concepts that need to be mentioned. Third, if you don't like my explanation, why don't you provide one?

If it is true that "much hand-waving follows" exonerates you from providing a mish-mash of poor science, speculation (of others) silly speculation (of yours) and analogies and conjectures you have at best half-understood, then yes, you are right. Generally, in my mind at least, approaching any topic in this fashion is poor form. It takes little to no effort to explain the things for which we see evidence and the things for which we do not. How could someone reading your post know what was blind speculation (i.e. most of it) and what we actually have strong evidence for? You took it upon yourself to educate others, you failed to fulfill the responsibility that I believe it entails. You're upset with me for pointing that out, but I see no other alternative.

On re-reading, I see that my use of the term equivocation was not proper. In my scientific circles we often use the term with regards to being careful not to overstate one's case, and to provide competing alternatives. This is not the common usage - I really meant that, IMO, one should be careful to insert terms like "a possible scenario is", or "in analogy with X, it seems that something like Y is not impossible", or "although there is no direct evidence, the beauty of an explanation like X is that...".

I dont provide "an explanation" (or summary of currently considered possibilities thereof) because I have no particular expertise in this rapidly changing area of physics. If pushed, I would only say that my current understanding is that we see evidence for a big-bang, but we have no freaking clue how it came about, whether there was something around before the big-bang, whether space and time were actually created at that event, or anything along those lines. We have a whole bunch of drastically different toy models which we use to examine the various possibilities in a theoretical way - experimentally we have no data to enable us to exclude all but the most implausible of suggestions.

Let me re-emphasize: The only reason I chose this confrontation is that I can not, in good conscience, let the impression be perpetuated that "scientists know how it came about". That is the impression I was concerned a lay reader would receive from reading your post. I don't enjoy this argument at all and I am sorry to have upset you this much.

Martin

26th October 2003, 01:28 PM

Originally posted by Interesting Ian
Martin, I thought it had basically been established that the Universe is between 10 billion and 20 billion years old :confused: If we know the rate of expansion now, then we can extrapolate backwards in time to arrive at a figure can't we?Broadly speaking, yes. That's the pop science version, though. If we take the standard Big Bang model, plug in the best data (from WMAP) and project backwards, we get an age of 13.7 Gy, give or take one percent or so. Problem is, the standard model doesn't work. There are several observations it simply can't explain. So we move to inflation, which solves the most immediate problems. If you want more detail on this bit, I'll be happy to provide it.

Now, the problem with inflation is that while we can be fairly sure it happened, we haven't the slightest idea exactly how it happened. There are numerous different models and precious little data to distinguish between them. More detailed study of the CMB should help pin it down, as well as (hopefully) a look at the gravitational wave background. But for now, we're free to speculate on the exact way in which inflation operates. Some models have the Universe emerging from a singularity as per usual. Others go way back to past infinity. One particularly interesting model is Andre Linde's chaotic inflation. In this, we start off with an infinite, inhomogenous Universe. In this Universe, the inflationary potential varies - indeed, it can be wildly different at different points. This means that some patches of the Unvierse will inflate at insane rates, while others might collapse into black holes. Still others will inflate rapidly before settling down and thermalising - just like ours. What we think of as our Universe would actually be just one of many bubbles in a wider multiverse.

Whichever model is correct, they all predict pretty much the same thing as the standard Big Bang model, except for some differences very early on. The time at which they diverge is earlier than we have the capacity to see at present. Whatever statements we can currently make about the Universe are only really good after that time - which is about 13.7 Gya.

Hopefully, the next generation of observational instruments will allow us to take a peek behind the curtain.

Martin

26th October 2003, 01:31 PM

Originally posted by Tez
At this sort of temperature (which the universe had cooled to quite quickly, though I don't have any reasonable number in my head) ripples in spacetime would no longer have an effect - in much the same way as they dont play a part in our current (non-speculative) physical theoriesApart from doing the somewhat useful job of holding everything together, that is :D

Martin

26th October 2003, 01:36 PM

Originally posted by Tez
I'd really be much happier passing the ball to Martin, who I know has a much broader understanding of whats going on in modern cosmology than I do. Even if he hasn't a specific opinion, it'd be nice for all of us to get a brief summary of the various ideas and possibilities being thrown around...I promise its not lazinessIn my case, however, it is laziness. So, I'll see what I can come up with when I can be bothered. Probably be a couple of days, though. For once, I actually have work to do :eek:

triadboy

26th October 2003, 01:44 PM

Originally posted by Martin
This means that some patches of the Unvierse will inflate at insane rates, while others might collapse into black holes.

Please speak to the latest finding - that we are in a big soccer ball. :)

Tez

26th October 2003, 02:11 PM

Originally posted by Martin
Apart from doing the somewhat useful job of holding everything together, that is :D

yeah - apart from that part. Got to keep us loonies on the path ;)

So is my head exploding too or not smarty pants?

Originally posted by Martin

For once, I actually have work to do :eek:

What be this "work" of which you speak?

Relax, Relax, Relax. I'll need some information first. Just the basic facts. (Can you show me where it hurts?)

I move to London next weekend, so I'll see you on the dark side of the...

the_ignored

26th October 2003, 02:52 PM

You could just try a search on the "Bad Astronomy" (http://www.google.com/custom?q=Big+Bang&sa=Search&cof=LW%3A500%3BL%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.badastronomy.c om%2Fpix%2Fbalogo500x100_2.jpg%3BLH%3A100%3BAH%3Al eft%3BAWFID%3A335a96841179147e%3B&domains=www.badastronomy.com&sitesearch=www.badastronomy.com) website.

Martin

26th October 2003, 03:19 PM

Originally posted by triadboy
Please speak to the latest finding - that we are in a big soccer ball. :)Short version: it's probably a load of crap.

Medium version: it's based on two data points out of about 600. The two with the most annoying foreground junk. Also, there's other data from WMAP which appears to rule it out. Thus, it's probably a load of crap.

Long version: The CMB is almost exactly uniform temperature, but there are slight fluctuations from the mean - about one part in a hundred thousand. We can measure these fluctuations by dividing the sky into equal sections and comparing the average temperature in each to the average temperature of the whole sky. We can expect the answer we get to depend on how many sections we divide the sky into, so we study the fluctuations as a function of scale. At the two biggest scales we can measure, the fluctuations seem weaker than theory suggests. If the Universe is finite, then there's an upper limit to the largest wavelength any ripples in the stuff the CMB comes from, and so this lack of fluctuation makes sense.

However, the largest scales are rather difficult to reliably measure. Indeed, the largest scale cannot be measured at all, since the Earth's motion relative to the CMB makes the CMB look warmer in the direction we're travelling and cooler back the way. This effect is roughly 100 times larger than the fluctuations theory predicts at this scale. So, we have much foreground junk which confuses the picture at large scales. The paper which gave the low values for the two largest measurable components made it clear that these results were prelimenary and a more rigorous clean-up of the data was required. So, chances are good that it's just a data artifact.

More damningly, if the Universe is compact there should be other clues in the CMB. We see the CMB as originating from a sphere centred on us. But in a compact Universe, if we look far enough into the distance we ought to be able to see an image of ourselves. The CMB is a sphere centred on that image, too. If the distance between us and that image is small enough, the two spheres should overlap, and the intersection should be circular. As we look towards our image, we should see this circle between us. As our image looks back at us, he should see the circle too. But our image looking back at us is really just us looking the other way. So we ought to see the same circles in opposite directions. WMAP data has been checked for these circles, with no success. While this doesn't rule out all compact topologies, it does look bad for the soccer ball. I don't know if it can squeeze through the gaps or not.

So, it's probably a load of crap.

Martin

26th October 2003, 03:25 PM

Originally posted by Tez
What be this "work" of which you speak?Heh. Lazy sod.

Actually, I'm working on something pretty topical - studying the inflationary potential through CMB fluctuations.I move to London next weekend, so I'll see you on the dark side of the...Oh, cool. I finally get my beer :D

Tez

26th October 2003, 04:25 PM

Originally posted by Martin
Oh, cool. I finally get my beer :D

Yah - you'll get it (them, in fact). Though presumably sometime before 11p.m closing time. :(

I wonder if the thread I made that foolish offer still exists....

arcticpenguin

26th October 2003, 05:26 PM

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=0000E0A0-4928-1F98-892883414B7F0000

New findings suggest that a lump of clay could have provided a platform for the formation of primordial cells.

Previous research indicated that chemicals found in so-called montmorillonite clay could catalyze reactions involved in constructing RNA from nucleotides. Martin M. Hanczyc, Shelly M. Fujikawa and Jack W. Szostak of Massachusetts General Hospital determined that the clay could also encourage fatty acids to form small fluid-filled sacs known as vesicles. Indeed, vesicles developed 100 times faster in the presence of clay than they did without it, suggesting that clay could have "greatly facilitated the emergence of the first cells," the authors write in today's issue of the journal Science.

Clay was also promoted by A.G. Cairns-Smith in his book Seven Clues to the Origin of Life: A Scientific Detective Story (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0521398282/qid=1067218687/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0148870-9455318?v=glance&s=books)

Cinorjer

27th October 2003, 02:37 AM

Does it not occur to you that the modern western understanding of these things might be incorrect? Seems strange to me that you say you know such things and ignore not only the internal incoherence of your position, but a vast amount of evidence.

I "know" it in the same sense I know the sun isn't being pushed across the sky by a cosmic dung beetle. And I'm not interested in yet another fruitless discussion of creationism or the limitations of science and logic. Replace know with "highly suspect" if it makes you feel better.

And of course, if you are indeed right, it completely takes away the "wonder" and "miracle" of our existence

Nonsense. I have an extensive collection of rocks and minerals, and spend many hours just peering into the complex wonders of nature. Some are so beautiful it takes my breath away. Knowing these were formed in the distant past in holes in the ground under immense heat and pressure instead of by someone carving and polishing them doesn't take away from the wonder.

Scientists and skeptics don't check their emotions at the door when they explore the mysteries of the universe in fact or imagination. If you don't respond with awe when looking at the latest images from the Hubble telescope, then you have no ability to appreciate beauty, sir, in spite of any beliefs or lack of about the ultimate cause. And in quiet moments of contemplation, the existence of consciousness itself can only be looked at with wonder, in spite of its origin.

Interesting Ian

27th October 2003, 03:41 AM

Originally posted by Chaos
And of course, if you are indeed right, it completely takes away the "wonder" and "miracle" of our existence.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No, it doesn´t. Indeed, it adds to the wonder. In a way, the universe is like an extremely complicated clockwork mechanism: billions of cog-wheels all interacting with one another, one within the other, all working smoothly.

Well perhaps Tez could inform us whether this is wholly in accordance with QM and non-locality.

And I assure you that, discovering what the universe is really like, even just as far as we humans have managed to do this far, makes for a much better "miracle" than thinking things up, like...well...some people do.

I rather think that acknowledging the Universe is wholly mysterious rather than pretending we understand it leads to more wonder.

Chaos

27th October 2003, 05:24 AM

@Interesting Ian:
Mind you, I did not say the universe actually is composed of cogwheels. (Tez would probably rip my head off if I had said so)

I was trying to say that all those energy forms, particles, and the laws of physics all seem to combine so flawlessly (at least that is my impression as a layman), and probably will combine flawlessly if and when we discover them all, that the universe, as it presents itself to the informed and educated observer, is much more of a wonder and "miracle" than any mysterious universe could ever be.

By the way, scientist don´t claim (at least not to my knowledge) that they really understand the universe; they are trying to understand it.
On the other hand, your approach "it is wholly mysterious and that is all we need to know about it" is the very essence of woo-woo.

Note: Even if science did take away the sense of wonder, I would prefer knowledge over sense of wonder. I can take sense of wonder from any novel if I feel I need it; I can take knowledge only from science.

Interesting Ian

27th October 2003, 07:17 AM

Originally posted by Chaos
@Interesting Ian:
Mind you, I did not say the universe actually is composed of cogwheels. (Tez would probably rip my head off if I had said so)

Obviously I don't think you meant cogwheels literally. Anyway, you should be aware that the mechanical philosophy model of the Universe wasn't tenable even as far back as the 17th century.

I was trying to say that all those energy forms, particles, and the laws of physics all seem to combine so flawlessly (at least that is my impression as a layman), and probably will combine flawlessly if and when we discover them all,

I agree that it is very interesting that the Universe should be susceptible to a mathematical description, and such an elegant one at that where prima facie apparently disparate and unrelated phenomena can be encompassed within the same mathematical equations.

that the universe, as it presents itself to the informed and educated observer, is much more of a wonder and "miracle" than any mysterious universe could ever be.

Whether there is, or is not, something more to the Universe than a mathematical description of it, it is clear that if the latter is the case then this cannot be more of a wonder and miracle than the former, since the former includes the latter, but has additional elements to reality.

By the way, scientist don´t claim (at least not to my knowledge) that they really understand the universe; they are trying to understand it.

Yes, but at a descriptive level rather than a metaphysical level.

On the other hand, your approach "it is wholly mysterious and that is all we need to know about it" is the very essence of woo-woo.

Is it indeed. Well now I know.

Note: Even if science did take away the sense of wonder, I would prefer knowledge over sense of wonder. I can take sense of wonder from any novel if I feel I need it; I can take knowledge only from science. [/B]

Do I take this to mean that you think that our current scientific theories about the world characterise reality per se?

Ruby

27th October 2003, 10:00 AM

Originally posted by Silicon
To ask "Who created the universe?" You could answer "it always has existed, from the beginning of time."

It's an more logical answer than "Who created the Universe?" "God Created it." "Who created God?" "God has always existed, from the beginning of time."

Actually, Christians claim that God always existed...even before the beginning of time.

Ruby

27th October 2003, 10:02 AM

Originally posted by Yahzi
...................Now the particular life formed is controlled by chance. Our sphere of dirt isn't going to be perfectly round, of course: there will be little hills and valleys in it. Which hills and where they valleys are are determined by chance, just as what kind of life arises is goverened by chance. But the basic process is like a rock rolling downhill.

Did this help? [/B]

Yes....your post was excellent...thanks!!!:)

Ruby

27th October 2003, 10:12 AM

Originally posted by Yahzi
First, Ruby didn't really want fifty pages of physics text. Second, your explanation of these basic concepts immediately diverts into a long exposition on your particular bugbear (the vacuum). You're so full of physics that you don't even realize that the vacuum issue is not, overall, that more important than the dozens of other concepts that need to be mentioned. Third, if you don't like my explanation, why don't you provide one?

I am going to have to corroborate what you are saying. You are laying things out in way that is easy for me to understand. I am afraid that Tez is over my head and confusing.:(

Dancing David

27th October 2003, 02:55 PM

Hi Ruby,
Sorry I didn't zoom over here sooner!

You asked some great questions, and it looks like a pissing contest ensued.

I hope I don't repeat anything, basicaly the big bang (or big band) is an explanation for the way things look. It does not offer much of an explanation of the way the universe may have come about, because currently that is not an observable thingy ma bob.
So while you will read about things like inflation and photon decoupling, they are really an explanation of the way things went after the big band started to play the music. It is a way of explaining what we observe, and most of it comes down to a certain fact.
If you look at these stars called cephid variable you can try to guess the distance to distant galaxies, this is because the star varies in brightness proportional to it's actual brightness. In other words you can look at the period of variablity of the star and know how bright the star is.
When you start to compare the brightenss of these stars in galaxies it becomes apparent that the farther the star is the more of a red shift it has. The red shift currently is to be the byproduct of the universe expanding.
The universe is expanding so ergo, at one point it was all in one 'someplace'.

But this is all conjecture, the universe appears to be expanding, the amount of elements in the universe appears to support the big band theory as do some other things like the cosmic background radiation.

But none of this really point to where the big band came from or why they started to play.

Steven Hawkings says 'god may have done it', quantum mechanics says that 'quantum mechanics did it' and inflationary theory says that we are just an expanding universe in a series of regressive expanding universes.

My theory on the evolution of life.
the overwhelming power of time and space.
Life is a doohickey that given the proper conditions will create other doohickeys like itself.
But you can't get to a doohickey like that on the first go.
The universe is likely to be 14 billion years old. So say that once a year a particle(be that an atom, molecule, complex molecule, lifeform) has the chance to interact with another particle that might lead to a doohickey. And say that in each interaction that a particle has a one in a million chance of making a step towards a doohickey. In a billion years that particle could have made a thousand interactions leading to a doohickey , and that is only interacting once a year and at only one in a million chance of making a step towards a doohickey.

So say that it takes two thousand steps to get a self replicating doohickey. That means that it might only take two billion years for a doohickey to arise.
Then given the fact that galaxies collide, stars go in and out of galactic arms, asteroids knock stuff off planets that go to other planets. Once you have a dohickey, it is going to get spread around and be doing the dohickey dance evry where.

Hope that I haven'y muddied the waters too much. What I find cool is this, there are doohickeys that can turn light into biological energy(plants) and there are other doohickeys that can look at the universe and go'Wow!'

Wow!

Fun2BFree

27th October 2003, 03:32 PM

Just to jump in with a few opbservations..

Certain basic ideas and theories that were inaccurate still can contain important elements of truth..example --early models of our solar system that abandoned the earth centered model were wrong for all sorts of reasons but they got the basic idea right that we do revolve...that current theories of bigger questions don't fit things perfectly is not a reason to abandon basic concepts altogether just yet..

Second I enjoyed Yahzi's descriptions but I also agree that saying something about hand waving had no meaning to me whatsoever as a qualifier...I thought it meant you talk with your hands moving around alot --which could mean you are from a certain ethnic background or you just talk with your hands alot..so I see why Tez was not impressed with that as any kind of qulifiyer about the uncertainties and simplifications that were being offered up-

Bottom line- with regard to the whole God vs Big Bang--as somebody or other (was it Laplace?) once said to Napoleon regarding why he did not mention God in his mathmatical proof..."I have no need for that hypothesis." As theories go the God one has nothing to recommend it over so many others offered.

Silicon

27th October 2003, 04:30 PM

Originally posted by Ruby

Actually, Christians claim that God always existed...even before the beginning of time.

Hmm...

I think they have a fundamental logical contradiction there. How is there a "before" the "beginning of time"? Isn't that rather like saying someone had green eyes 4 years before they were born?

What I think Christians are defining the beginning of time as is the beginning of when God started creating things, ie the beginning of HISTORY. Where they get into trouble is when they start calling The Big Bang the actual moment of God's first creation. (Don't you know, that's usually when it all falls apart, when folks start using partial science concepts to validate their mythology.) If time did start with the Big Bang, that fundamentally contradicts the whole idea of a "before".

So we have to look at the possibility that what they mean is that God exists outside of time, "always" being a human concept, when what they really mean is that God is atemporal.

But nowhere in the Bible do we get the impression that God exists outside of time. In fact, it seems that God is bound by time, as if Time is a force outside of God's control.

Of course, it's because time itself seemed like a given to the writers of the Bible. A measure of the universe so sublime and pervasive as to go unnoticed.

That God himself is described as being a slave to time (on the seventh day, He rested), seems to show (at least to literalists) that God, like us, is a prisoner of time, and so probably didn't create it. The God of the Bible doesn't know the future, and is frequently surprised and often angered by things that Man does. He is a slave to time.

By definition, time has always existed.

According to traditional beliefs, God has always existed, but according to our knowlege of the nature of time, that only gives God an alibi just as long as the universe has existed. I can't imagine a God existing who didn't create Time, Time being probably the primary ordering structure of the universe.

If God does exist, surely He created time, since time permeates the universe, orders it and follows the rules of His creation.

Tez

27th October 2003, 05:14 PM

Originally posted by Ruby

I am afraid that Tez is over my head and confusing.:(

Yeah - sorry Ruby. In fact none of my posts were really intended for you or other non-experts. I wasn't addressing the questions you'd asked, rather I was ultimately objecting to the perception being put out that scientists know how the big bang came about without a creator. I personally believe this to be true, but I am sensitive to such abuse of science - there is enough of a cult of scientism within skeptical circles.

I too was a fundamentalist christian for many years (first time I've admitted that on this forum!), and I watched how my intellectual need for God was pushed back all the way to this magic point. All I'd like you to be assured of is that we have many plausible hypotheses (none of which require a creator) - but no particular evidence yet for any of them. It seems highly unlikely that we'll never have evidence for any of them and then be forced into a "God did it" type of dictum....

Whomp

27th October 2003, 05:21 PM

I love you guys ... (sniff).

I've had these exact questions on the brain for days. Ruby's been in my head again.

Whomp!

Fun2BFree

27th October 2003, 08:30 PM

Originally posted by Tez

we have many plausible hypotheses (none of which require a creator) - but no particular evidence yet for any of them.

Tez-

you obviously know more about these theories and their weaknesses than I do- bu to say we have "no particular evidence yet for any of them" seems a bit of an overstatement...aren't these theories mostly based on some evidence but are at present inadequate explanations for ALL of the evidence we have so far...example the Big Bang was based on observations about the expanding universe, the oldest ages of the stars yet observed, the speed at which things are moving etc calculated back and a guess that there would be some background noise eventually discovered that should be there of the original "bang"...and that background noise was later on found as the Big bang predicted it would be?--agreed there are all sorts of problems in trying to find a model that fits all of the known observations but surely there is more "particular evidence" for any of the naturalistic explanations of cosmology than there is for any supernatural explanation whatsoever....as I have said on these boards on several occasions---science is sometimes wrong, sometimes right on and sometimes gets partial credit but these things all are found out as time goes on and we learn more...meanwhile the more we test supernatural explanations we continue to show a perfect record for the supernatural--O for ever...it has been a bad slump for the supernatural and maybe someday it will get something right...but given its track record I would not hold my breath.

Tez

28th October 2003, 01:18 AM

Originally posted by Fun2BFree

Tez-

you obviously know more about these theories and their weaknesses than I do- bu to say we have "no particular evidence yet for any of them" seems a bit of an overstatement...aren't these theories mostly based on some evidence but are at present inadequate explanations for ALL of the evidence we have so far...example the Big Bang was based on observations about the expanding universe, the oldest ages of the stars yet observed, the speed at which things are moving etc calculated back and a guess that there would be some background noise eventually discovered that should be there of the original "bang"...and that background noise was later on found as the Big bang predicted it would be?--agreed there are all sorts of problems in trying to find a model that fits all of the known observations but surely there is more "particular evidence" for any of the naturalistic explanations of cosmology than there is for any supernatural explanation whatsoever....as I have said on these boards on several occasions---science is sometimes wrong, sometimes right on and sometimes gets partial credit but these things all are found out as time goes on and we learn more...meanwhile the more we test supernatural explanations we continue to show a perfect record for the supernatural--O for ever...it has been a bad slump for the supernatural and maybe someday it will get something right...but given its track record I would not hold my breath.

Sure - if you read some of my earlier posts I talk at length about the fact there is plenty of evidence for a bang. What there is little evidence for is the state of the universe at the t=0 point - the point where our naivest model breaks down... There have been many proposals, some that do not even have a t=0 point (in the sense of time "starting" then). We are somewhat hampered by having no complete theory of quantum gravity - but in fact its only a conjecture that such a theory is necessary (or sufficient) to explain the conditions which led to the particular big bang we live in...

homunculus

28th October 2003, 03:57 AM

Hume suggests a couple of distinctly non-Christian alternatives which are consistent with an ordered and complex universe - firstly, a "infinite succession" of world-making, in which the Artificer is stupid, and "copies an art", and makes countless mistakes and missteps, accumulating any fortuitous bits of design over time, and rejecting all the botched parts. This robs the Designer of all his brilliance!

He also suggests that even without the Intelligence of a Designer, matter - being particulate - would of necessity have fallen into every possible combination and arrangement, an infinity of times (given infinity in which to do it) simply by virtue of chaotic, pointless shuffling.

More recently, John Wheeler suggested the universe might sort of oscillate back and forth, expanding and contracting endlessly, with random variation of the constants and other parameters occuring in each oscillation.

As to the problem of something coming from nothing, what is "inconcievable" to me is that in order for this to have happened, there must have been something else, pre-existing, to bring it about! After all, this only shifts the problem to how this new something came from nothing...and onward like this, in an infinite regress of multiplying entities...

So actually IT ISN'T "inconcievable" to you that something can come from nothing, because you already believe (or did beleive) that it can, in the form of God - that is what Christian believers claim of Him, isn't it?

Paul.

Interesting Ian

28th October 2003, 04:17 AM

Originally posted by Fun2BFree
science is sometimes wrong, sometimes right on and sometimes gets partial credit but these things all are found out as time goes on and we learn more...meanwhile the more we test supernatural explanations we continue to show a perfect record for the supernatural--O for ever...it has been a bad slump for the supernatural and maybe someday it will get something right...but given its track record I would not hold my breath. [/B]

What is a supernatural explanation? What supernatural explanation for things were tested?

Interesting Ian

28th October 2003, 04:20 AM

Originally posted by homunculus

As to the problem of something coming from nothing, what is "inconcievable" to me is that in order for this to have happened, there must have been something else, pre-existing, to bring it about! After all, this only shifts the problem to how this new something came from nothing...and onward like this, in an infinite regress of multiplying entities...

So actually IT ISN'T "inconcievable" to you that something can come from nothing, because you already believe (or did beleive) that it can, in the form of God - that is what Christian believers claim of Him, isn't it?

Paul. [/B]

I don't have any problem whatsoever with something coming from nothing, but please let's have some sensible arguments. In many conceptions of God, God is eternal and timeless and so therefore didn't come from nothing.

Some Friggin Guy

28th October 2003, 04:45 AM

homunculus

28th October 2003, 04:49 AM

I don't have any problem whatsoever with something coming from nothing, but please let's have some sensible arguments. In many conceptions of God, God is eternal and timeless and so therefore didn't come from nothing.

These are "sensible" arguments. For my money, the most sensible arguments that have EVER been levelled against the traditional "proofs" of the existence of God. You see, it is just gratuitous special pleading to suggest that because something cannot come from nothing, something else must have "created" it - but that this additional something did not need to have been created! This just replaces one mystery with another. It tenders an inscrutable in place of an inscrutable. It solves nothing. Why not just dismiss the problem from the outset, and claim that the UNIVERSE itself is timeless and eternal (and that introducing "gods" or other entities is therefore superfluous)?

These are the philosophical counter-moves, but some physicists would say the whole question is meaningless, since it makes no sense to ask what hapenned "before" the Big Bang. In other words, there was no "nothing" for something to come from...

Paul.

DangerousBeliefs

28th October 2003, 05:30 AM

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

I don't have any problem whatsoever with something coming from nothing, but please let's have some sensible arguments. In many conceptions of God, God is eternal and timeless and so therefore didn't come from nothing.

He is also supposed to be all-knowing and all-powerful... and yet... he does not impart any special knowledge beyond what primitive humans would know about the world NOR does he choose to show any measureable powers in our modern society.

In fact, it's as if... well... they made him up.

(By "he" I mean the concept of the Judea-Christian-Muslim god, keeping in mind there are literally tens of thousands of different sub-factions, all with their own unique beliefs in said god.)

So we have a God that doesn't need to be present during the creation of the universe, doesn't describe said creation accurately in his holy texts, nor shows any measurable impact once the superstition surrounding him is dispelled.

It reminds me of the invisible dragon in the garage...

Some Friggin Guy

28th October 2003, 05:36 AM

Originally posted by DangerousBeliefs
It reminds me of the invisible dragon in the garage...

You have one of them, too?

Dancing David

28th October 2003, 06:15 AM

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

What is a supernatural explanation? What supernatural explanation for things were tested?

It is up to the proponet of a theory to test and prove thier hypothesis. So if the Hubble looks far enough back in time and we see god waving his arms and making galaxies, it would support that theory.

On the whole; before time; time in our universe can only mean the space time in our universe, there were certainly initial conditions before the big band started to play.
There is most likely 'somewhat' that our universe came from and is part of in an ontological sense. So you can talk about what there was before time(our universe's space) but it is all speculation because we are in a closed system, so we can't observe outside of it. We may eventualy find that our universe budded off another universe or we may find that Thoth and the other gods wrested space/time out of the lords of chaos. It is all speculation at this point.

homunculus

28th October 2003, 07:25 AM

What is a supernatural explanation? What supernatural explanation for things were tested?

The "supernatural" is the same as the "impossible" - or that which abrogates natural laws. But natural laws are not prescriptions to be kept or obeyed, but fallible descriptive statements - mathematical aggregates - to be modified or abandonned if found innaccurate. They can never be "broken".

So the "supernatural" is on shaky ground already. If something has happenned, it simply CANNOT HAVE BEEN "impossible" (since by definition, everything which HAS happenned, CAN happen, and was in fact "possible").

The whole notion is contradictory. Nothing more than an abuse of language...

Paul.

Interesting Ian

28th October 2003, 07:27 AM

Originally posted by Some Friggin Guy

Ian, just a question (and I am not a scientist, nor do I have any evidence for or against what I am about to propose):

If the concept of god, as you state, is that he is eternal and timeless: why is it too much of a leap to discard the idea of god and simply say that the universe itself is eternal and timeless?

It's not.

Ruby

28th October 2003, 07:42 AM

Originally posted by Dancing David
Hi Ruby,
Sorry I didn't zoom over here sooner!

You asked some great questions, and it looks like a pissing contest ensued.

I hope I don't repeat anything, basicaly the big bang (or big band) is an explanation for the way things look. It does not offer much of an explanation of the way the universe may have come about, because currently that is not an observable thingy ma bob.
So while you will read about things like inflation and photon decoupling, they are really an explanation of the way things went after the big band started to play the music. It is a way of explaining what we observe, and most of it comes down to a certain fact.
If you look at these stars called cephid variable you can try to guess the distance to distant galaxies, this is because the star varies in brightness proportional to it's actual brightness. In other words you can look at the period of variablity of the star and know how bright the star is.
When you start to compare the brightenss of these stars in galaxies it becomes apparent that the farther the star is the more of a red shift it has. The red shift currently is to be the byproduct of the universe expanding.
The universe is expanding so ergo, at one point it was all in one 'someplace'.

But this is all conjecture, the universe appears to be expanding, the amount of elements in the universe appears to support the big band theory as do some other things like the cosmic background radiation.

But none of this really point to where the big band came from or why they started to play.

Steven Hawkings says 'god may have done it', quantum mechanics says that 'quantum mechanics did it' and inflationary theory says that we are just an expanding universe in a series of regressive expanding universes.

My theory on the evolution of life.
the overwhelming power of time and space.
Life is a doohickey that given the proper conditions will create other doohickeys like itself.
But you can't get to a doohickey like that on the first go.
The universe is likely to be 14 billion years old. So say that once a year a particle(be that an atom, molecule, complex molecule, lifeform) has the chance to interact with another particle that might lead to a doohickey. And say that in each interaction that a particle has a one in a million chance of making a step towards a doohickey. In a billion years that particle could have made a thousand interactions leading to a doohickey , and that is only interacting once a year and at only one in a million chance of making a step towards a doohickey.

So say that it takes two thousand steps to get a self replicating doohickey. That means that it might only take two billion years for a doohickey to arise.
Then given the fact that galaxies collide, stars go in and out of galactic arms, asteroids knock stuff off planets that go to other planets. Once you have a dohickey, it is going to get spread around and be doing the dohickey dance evry where.

Hope that I haven'y muddied the waters too much. What I find cool is this, there are doohickeys that can turn light into biological energy(plants) and there are other doohickeys that can look at the universe and go'Wow!'

Wow!

Thanks! I find doohickey's and thingameebobs to be very intriguing!!!:D

Ruby

28th October 2003, 07:50 AM

Originally posted by Silicon

Hmm...

I think they have a fundamental logical contradiction there. How is there a "before" the "beginning of time"? Isn't that rather like saying someone had green eyes 4 years before they were born?

What I think Christians are defining the beginning of time as is the beginning of when God started creating things, ie the beginning of HISTORY. Where they get into trouble is when they start calling The Big Bang the actual moment of God's first creation. (Don't you know, that's usually when it all falls apart, when folks start using partial science concepts to validate their mythology.) If time did start with the Big Bang, that fundamentally contradicts the whole idea of a "before".

So we have to look at the possibility that what they mean is that God exists outside of time, "always" being a human concept, when what they really mean is that God is atemporal.

But nowhere in the Bible do we get the impression that God exists outside of time. In fact, it seems that God is bound by time, as if Time is a force outside of God's control.

Of course, it's because time itself seemed like a given to the writers of the Bible. A measure of the universe so sublime and pervasive as to go unnoticed.

That God himself is described as being a slave to time (on the seventh day, He rested), seems to show (at least to literalists) that God, like us, is a prisoner of time, and so probably didn't create it. The God of the Bible doesn't know the future, and is frequently surprised and often angered by things that Man does. He is a slave to time.

By definition, time has always existed.

According to traditional beliefs, God has always existed, but according to our knowlege of the nature of time, that only gives God an alibi just as long as the universe has existed. I can't imagine a God existing who didn't create Time, Time being probably the primary ordering structure of the universe.

If God does exist, surely He created time, since time permeates the universe, orders it and follows the rules of His creation.

Oh thanks. That is a perspective I never thought about. I was always taught to believe that God existed out of time and space. But it does seem that he is constrained by time according to what I know of scripture. I don't know why I never thought about it before.

Ruby

28th October 2003, 07:55 AM

Originally posted by Tez

Yeah - sorry Ruby. In fact none of my posts were really intended for you or other non-experts. I wasn't addressing the questions you'd asked, rather I was ultimately objecting to the perception being put out that scientists know how the big bang came about without a creator. I personally believe this to be true, but I am sensitive to such abuse of science - there is enough of a cult of scientism within skeptical circles.

I too was a fundamentalist christian for many years (first time I've admitted that on this forum!), and I watched how my intellectual need for God was pushed back all the way to this magic point. All I'd like you to be assured of is that we have many plausible hypotheses (none of which require a creator) - but no particular evidence yet for any of them. It seems highly unlikely that we'll never have evidence for any of them and then be forced into a "God did it" type of dictum....

Another former fundy! My congrats on being deconverted!!:D

I refuse to accept "God did it" even without evidence of what caused a "beginning"............but not ready to throw out the possibility of a creator.

Some Friggin Guy

28th October 2003, 08:14 AM

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

It's not.

Fair enough, though I have heard from some christians that such a concept is nonsense. I am simply trying to figure out why. You seem to be a little more able to objectively answer that type of question, that's why I asked you.

Anyone else have any theories as to why some cristians think the idea is nonsense?

Fun2BFree

28th October 2003, 11:49 AM

Originally posted by Some Friggin Guy

Fair enough, though I have heard from some christians that such a concept is nonsense. I am simply trying to figure out why. You seem to be a little more able to objectively answer that type of question, that's why I asked you.

Anyone else have any theories as to why some cristians think the idea is nonsense?

Because they have poorly developed critical thinking skills that allow them to "think" that God gave his only begotten son and had him crucified to purify man's sins .etc etc is not nonsense.

Stitch

4th October 2004, 03:49 AM

Originally posted by Some Friggin Guy
Fair enough, though I have heard from some christians that such a concept is nonsense. I am simply trying to figure out why. You seem to be a little more able to objectively answer that type of question, that's why I asked you.

Anyone else have any theories as to why some cristians think the idea is nonsense?

If the universe has always existed that negates the need for a creator and so their faith comes crumbling down. So they cannot acknowledge a creator and an eternal universe.

chance

4th October 2004, 02:29 PM

Ruby A possible scenario for abiogenesis :

1. Earth cools.
2. Free standing water and atmosphere.
3. Powered by heat, chemicals build up in all environments that are no too hot.
4. With no life processes, chemicals are only affected by the natural elements.
5. Rapid increase in quantity and complexity of chemicals.
6. Some simple chemicals are able to make crude copies of themselves.
7. Replicating chemicals dominate the earthâ€™s wet environments.
8. Some replicating chemicals form more stable forms (simple DNA).
9. Simple DNA, out evolves, all other replicating chemicals, and dominates the wet environments.
10. Simple DNA evolves into countless billions of forms.
11. Simple DNA evolves into complex forms by combining with other chemicals and other forms of DNA (Symbiotic or Prey).
12. Complex DNA becomes â€˜super complexâ€™ and is able to form stable structures to protect itâ€™s self from the environment (Simple life).
13. Complex forms of Simple life dominate the earthâ€™s wet environments.
14. Complex life, form symbiotic relationships with other forms of Complex life.
15. An explosion of Complex life (equivalent to Virus and â€˜components of single cellsâ€™) dominates the Earthâ€™s wet environments.
16. Symbiotic processes become unstoppable. Countless billions of different forms of life evolve.
17. Single Cell Life becomes Stable. Everything else is either food or a building block of life.
18. Two dominant life forms evolve (Plants and Animals).
19. Multi cellular structures survive, and evolve into all forms of life as we know it.