Religion anyone?

tim

@tim said:

argh! Nonsense. A theory is NOT that. For goodness' sake try to at least read some serious philosophy of science before you make daft claims like that.

Id be interested to hear what you think the definition of a scientific theory is.

It doesn't matter a damn what I think a theory is - there's a large, rigorous, well argued body of literature on the subject. For a very basic introduction, try "what is this thing called science" by Alan Chalmers.

@unknownuser said:

But their are people who have had better ideas, and have subsequently thought of better theories than others. I think this is the sort of person alan was talking about, rather than some all seeing scientists who dishes out theories by popular demand. [?quote]
Perhaps you are right - but my experience is that most people making that argument are treating Great Scientists as a proxy deity. You see this spectacular idiocy a lot whenever evolution comes up "the god of evolution, Darwin" and other pathetic fallacies.

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

What? Where on earth do you get that idea from? Certainly not from any serious scientific source. There is no evidentiary or theoretical basis for expecting gravity to propagate faster than light.

Do you know what gravity is, at the most fundamental level?

Irrelevant - the fact that I do or don't know something like that has nothing whatsoever to do with my statement.

@unknownuser said:

@unknownuser said:

What gibberish. If it were the case that 'would require more energy than exists in the entire universe' then it couldn't be that way - not to mention that you are abusing the terms 'forever' and 'infinite distances' horribly.

Not a fan of the fundamental forces then?

Again, irrelevant. Whether I'm on first name terms with Mr. StrongForce or Ms.ElectroWeak has nothing to do with anything. The original statement was gibberish of the form that often flows from people that know bugger all about physics.

A good example, again from the constant stream of IDiocy wrt evolution - "well, the second law of thermodynamics prohibits evolution". No It Doesn't. Learn some physics. Look up in the sky at that big glowing ball (yeah, ok, we didn't see it today on Vancouve Island, get over it) - it provides energy. If you don't see the connection - Learn Some Physics.

remus

@tim said:

It doesn't matter a damn what I think a theory is - there's a large, rigorous, well argued body of literature on the subject. For a very basic introduction, try "what is this thing called science" by Alan Chalmers.

Well youve told me what a scientific theory isnt, and i havent read much to the contrary, so i think a brief explanation of what you think scientific theory is wouldnt be amiss, seeing as it's contrary to a lot of people's definition.

@unknownuser said:

Irrelevant - the fact that I do or don't know something like that has nothing whatsoever to do with my statement.

Alan said "Basically we don't have a clue other than it appears to be intimately related to both space and time." You said that was wrong, so presumably you know whats actually happening.

@unknownuser said:

Again, irrelevant. Whether I'm on first name terms with Mr. StrongForce or Ms.ElectroWeak has nothing to do with anything. The original statement was gibberish of the form that often flows from people that know bugger all about physics.

Well it seemed pretty accurate to me. Feel free to correct it though.

plot-paris

you are right, Alan. it is important, that we carefully read the statements of others and respond to them, directly answer questions instead of stating something that has no relevance. we are no politicians after all

about the "anti christian" video of the farting priest, RickW: well, this guy is just so ridiculously funny - someone had to make fun of him. and I think this is one of those guys who are responsible, that many people have an aversion to the christian church.

and the question, why many of the comments here are confronting christian religion... I think the most important reason is that many of us here have grown up in a christian country and the only real contact and confrontation they had was with this religion.
of course I think we could have this discussion with another religion as focus as well.

and one last thought: I think that many of the last posts tried to impress with scientific facts. but I believe that will to as much good to the discussion as Corel's bible quotations.
no offence, Corel, but you will not be able to convince people who believe in science by repeating lines out of a book, hundrets of years old, that are even more difficult to understand when not read in context.
of course it is quite difficult because the different point of views are quite far apart. but I am afraid any other approach than a philosophical won't work here...

Alan Fraser

Tim, are you being deliberately obtuse or what?
What is gibberish about the term "...would require more energy than exists in the universe."

For example, "To accelerate a particle of matter up to and beyond the speed of light would require more energy (according to Einstein's famous formula) than exists in the entire universe." This is a perfectly valid statement that explains why c...the speed of light...is a universal limiter; and why only particles with no mass, such as neutrinos or gravitons can travel at or close to the speed of light.

That phrase that you are getting on your high horse about merely illustrates a state of impossibility. No state can require that much energy, so such a state is therefore impossible. Not a difficult concept to grasp, one would have thought...but apparently we need to make an exception in your case.

Fred Hoyle, the Astronomer Royal, one of the most eminent scientists of his day and the man responsible for the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis...the idea that stars act as factories for the production of the heavier elements...firmly believed that the Big Bang theory was misguided and that the Universe existed in what he termed a "Steady State". Ironically, it was he who actually first coined the term Big Bang.

Note, he didn't dispute that the universe was expanding...he'd done much to prove that it was...he just disputed that it had a beginning, as that would imply a creator....and he was an atheist. Note also that there are perfectly viable models that can explain expansion without tracing it back to an ultimate point of creation. Does that make him an idiot, someone who needs to "..learn some physics", worthy of your patronising attitude and gibes about Special Crystals and Holy Water?

He was mistaken; the Penzias-Wilson discovery of microwave background radiation proved that (probably).

That was my whole point about scientific theory...that very few scientists at the cutting edge are correct 100% of the time...and that anyone with any sense recognises that their theories and hypotheses may be proved wrong, or at least in need of adaptation, at some point in the future.
Your learned and apparently thoroghly researched reaction to this simple point was "Aargh! Nonsense."

The whole Quantum Field Theory relies on purely theoretical particles, some of which may in time prove to be just that...merely theoretical. I am happy for you, that you are so sure about scientific certainty. You seem to be casting me in the role of some religious mystic instead of someone who has no time for Creationist nonsense and the like. Did you read ANY of my comments on this and similar threads, or do you prefer pulling comments out of context and turning them 180 degrees?

I write this:
Sure, we can model it (gravity) mathematically in precise detail
...we can send spacecraft to slingshot their way from planet to planet and end at a destination with near pinpoint accuracy...but we don't know what it actually IS.

You reply with this:
Did you know that Newtonian mechanics is adequate for handling probes to Pluto etc?

Is it really? That's not at all certain. For starters, it doesn't explain the deceleration anomaly of Pioneer 10 and 11 as they passed Uranus...and to which conventional physics (read Newtonian) has no answer whatsoever. Amongst the factors already considered and ruled out are:-
Nominal thermal radiation and plutonium half-life...and
Drifting clocks, general relativity and the speed of gravity.
Clever bugger old Isaac, wasn't he...relativity and radioctive half-life way back then?

But even if it were true, what's that got to do with my statement? It just seems to be some patronising soundbite, like the rest of your response. It still doesn't explain what gravity actually is or how it's propagated.

Like Modelhead, I don't get it. What's your point, other than just being a confrontational smart arse?

The only point I was trying to make in that post you took such exception to you felt the need to quote me multiple times, was summed up in the final paragraph...that the universe is too weird to rule out anything.
Rather more elegantly, at a conference in Brussels in 2005, Nobel Prizewinner David Gross stated "We are in a period of utter confusion...These equations tell us nothing about where space and time come from and describe nothing we would recognise. At best, string theory depicts the way particles might interact in a collection of hypothetical universes...we are missing something fundamental."

Obviously you know better than Nobel laureats in Physics. That being the case, I bow to your vastly superior intellect and now withdraw from this pissing contest.

cornel

Jakob,

You are partially right! Those quotations are apparently out of context, but, those who are interested, can use ‘Bible online’ (if they have no a hard copy of The Bible) for necessary information (for entire text).
In The Tribulation time (after The Rapture), 'things' will be different…!

Regarding “hundreds of years old”, again, you are partially right…!

Why?
Because:
“THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES FOREVER "(1 Peter 1:25)

Cornel

RickW

@unknownuser said:

Funny thing Rick, I had never attached you to the Windowizer product. You know there is so much in the forum. It does explain a few things for me. The product looks just great!!

Thanks I'm thinking now, though, that I might have been better off sticking to the ruby forum These discussions are interesting, but time consuming...

@unknownuser said:

My personal observations re your character are of course just anecdotal.

No problem.

plot-paris

@unknownuser said:

Regarding “hundreds of years old”, again, you are partially right…!

Why?

Because:
“THE WORD OF THE LORD ENDURES FOREVER "(1 Peter 1:25)

that was very good response. I really like it, Corel

boofredlay

@plot-paris said:

about the "anti christian" video of the farting priest, RickW: well, this guy is just so ridiculously funny - someone had to make fun of him. and I think this is one of those guys who are responsible, that many people have an aversion to the christian church.

Who said the Farting Preacher video was anti Christian? I am a Christian and I posted it up. I just think (with my childish brain) that putting this silly guy's sound/video bites with a bunch of fart noises is just plain funny.

Hey, did you guys see the news on Dark Flow?
Here is a snip from one of the articles:

@unknownuser said:

"The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe's expansion and does not change as distances increase," says lead researcher Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We never expected to find anything like this."

Kashlinsky calls this collective motion a "dark flow" in the vein of more familiar cosmological mysteries: dark energy and dark matter. "The distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for this motion," he says.

I am interested in you and your son's thoughts/research on this is Alan (or anybody for that matter).
Pretty interesting stuff.

tomasz

You lads, are exploring such interesting aspects of science.
Everything has very 'reasonable' explanation.
ONE FORCE UNIFICATION UNIVERSE THEORY
Just to add more spice to the mixture.

[flash=425,344:1chtisqb]http://www.youtube.com/v/RrRKVG5F2DY&hl=en&fs=1[/flash:1chtisqb]
Despite the video, I don't think scientists are all ... weird.. neither Christian preachers
I wouldn't dare to think that all efforts to find 'The Unified Theory' are useless, even the one displayed above.
Please do not spend to much time on watching this video

Alan Fraser

Thanks for the link Eric. We hadn't heard about that. Maybe it will appear in next month's Physics World.
The fact that NASA is suggesting that this matter is being attracted by something beyond the observable universe may well lead to a verification of Alan Guth's theory of Inflation in the early stages of the Big Bang.

The observable universe has nothing to do with the resolution of telescopes. It's the physical limit placed by the age of the universe itself. As the universe is approximately 13.7 billion years old, then the furthest objects observable are those that have been speeding away from us for all that time. So the observable universe has to lie within the cosmological horizon in which the light from those distant objects has had the necessary time to reach us. Anything beyond that will remain forever invisible. The exact distance of this horizon is governed by a complex set of equations based on the distance of a galaxy and its present speed of recession. Basically there is a race between the galaxy receding in one direction and the light coming back to us in the other, but it's not a simple question of relative motion like a golf ball being thrown from the back of a speeding train.

The basic Big Bang theory has a number of problems, the principal one being that of flatness.
The inflationary theory postulates that a massive influx of energy caused an exponential expansion of the early universe. This process was necessary to account for the flatness of the universe, which is basically much flatter than it ought to be, Flatness refers to the density of the universe, not its physical shape.
Inflation also dictates that the actual universe is much larger than the observable universe...something of the order of a gumball compared to the Earth itself. It might just be that we are getting the first physical evidence of this.

Of course, now we have the questions of where did all that energy come from...and what exactly is out there beyond where it oughta be. I guess we are right back on topic for the Religion thread.

JuanV.Soler

impressive

fascinating

%(#004080)[thanks for the link Tomasz ]

tomasz

Alan, your son and others - I've got something to heat up your minds and probably hearts as well.
Now It is my turn to play with quotations. I thought it would be better to put it into 'Love- a path to follow' thread, but I realized 'Religion anyone?' is much more appropriate, as we all are looking at/for a religion(s) from a scientific point of view, rather then spiritual. In my view, it is not wise to separate those approaches as each of them brings in something valuable. Therefore you will find below quotations from both sources.

Just as introduction - first quote:

@unknownuser said:

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to contemplation of the truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth in a Word, to know Himself so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves."

It won't be wrong if we say that there is just one reality in our World. Therefore reason and faith are trying to describe same thing, but from opposite directions. If science will get deep enough, where it will find that there are things beyond its possibilities and when the faith will not reject the founding of former,but will try to incorporate them, there is a chance they will meet. The faith must be therefore right in its description of the reality otherwise it will never meet the reason.

So let's start.

@unknownuser said:

"The clusters show a small but measurable velocity that is independent of the universe's expansion and does not change as distances increase," says lead researcher Alexander Kashlinsky at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "We never expected to find anything like this."

Kashlinsky calls this collective motion a "dark flow" in the vein of more familiar cosmological mysteries: dark energy and dark matter. "The distribution of matter in the observed universe cannot account for this motion," he says.

Lets consider that this article says true and scientists are not wrong what they write. Dark matter is a 'temporary name', as far as I know, because scientists are not really sure what they are dealing with.

@unknownuser said:

Zero point energy - in quantum field theory, it is a synonym for the vacuum energy, an amount of energy associated with the vacuum of empty space. In cosmology, the vacuum energy is taken to be the origin of the cosmological constant which is thought by many to produce dark energy. Experimentally, the zero-point energy of the vacuum leads directly to the Casimir effect, and is directly observable in nano-scale devices.

Because zero point energy is the lowest possible energy a system can have, this energy cannot be removed from the system. A related term is zero-point field, which is the lowest energy state of a field; i.e. its ground state, which is non-zero.

This point may bring a lot of discussion, but what I want to emphasize that science is observing forces that were not expected in the nano-scales - when probability starts to rule, not a 'precise science'.
Alan has written about a 'horizon of events' we will have never insight beyond.
(btw. I enjoyed Stephen Hawking's 'A Brief History of Time' very much)

So both in macro and nano scales the reason is loosing it confidence.

Let's have a look at what faith has to say in macro and micro scales.

@unknownuser said:

I am that I am

It is a common English translation of the response God used in the Bible when Moses asked for his name (Exodus 3:14).
A finding from a point 1. mentions a 'measurable velocity that is independent of the universe's expansion'. I've got a theory, good as any other, that this constant and independent of the universe expansion is Love. Of course this theory doesn't have to be true. The point is that there is a good chance that at those levels science and faith can meet. Can start a dialogue.

@unknownuser said:

"In him we live, and move, and have our being.

Paul's experience of Love gives him confidence in declaring this truth to residents of Athens. It means, in his opinion, we are submerged in Love. The love is surrounding us, filling us and letting us live. Is it not close to points 1 & 2 which are stating an existence of an energy from unknown source? Of course, it doesn't have to be Love, it doesn't have to be our Father. It can be other kind of energy... but.. aren't those statements from opposite 'side of a coin' not correlated??

@unknownuser said:

The blue planet was getting smaller and smaller and surrounding was getting brighter and brighter. I have had a gradually increasing feeling that all my problems, all problems of the Earth are not that important and not that scary. I have started to worry about my parents and all loved one I had left on the planet, but that feeling has vanished as well. Its place has been taken by growing peace and I realized I hear an choir somewhere singing just one waving sound and noticed that the light is very bright then ... it has hit me. The feeling of LOVE AND PEACE I cannot describe in words. It was so immense, so powerful that I haven't even thought about a fear.

My own experience of Love that fills the entire Universe with itself. 'The field' that is bringing everything to right place - gives a Peace. If my faith and faith of all Christians is true it will meat the reason one day.

Take care
Tomasz

cornel

Tomasz wrote:
“My own experience of Love that fills the entire Universe with itself. 'The field' that is bringing everything to right place - gives a Peace. If my faith and faith of all Christians is true it will meat the reason one day”.

I think it’s doable, because God is omnipresent and God is love:
“We have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love, and the one who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.” (1 John 4:16)

Besides that, Jesus Christ said:
“If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.” (John 15:10)

Cornel

pbacot

@unknownuser said:

DAVENPORT, Iowa (CNN) – A minister delivering the invocation at John McCain’s rally in Davenport, Iowa Saturday told the crowd non-Christian religions around the world were praying for Barack Obama to win the U.S. presidential election.

“There are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens,” CNN News 10/11/08

@unknownuser said:

...If God's on our side He'll stop the next war. *Dylan

"So now as I'm leaving
I'm weary as Hell..." (also Dylan)

tomasz

The only thing I pray for is a wisdom for Americans, whatever it means in this case.
A society being fed upon world wrestling entertainment and such definitely needs it a lot.

solo

3rd time lucky .... hopefully

bellwells

@unknownuser said:

Pete, don't spend too much time searching for this junk or you might get sucked in.

Here is one I saw years ago. There are many more versions but this one is the first... the classic... the
FARTING PREACHER.

[flash=425,355:rav05xuy]http://www.youtube.com/v/6waXPTSrGiA[/flash:rav05xuy]

Eric, this is the funniest darn thing I have seen in years. My head and stomach hurt from laughing so much. Thanks..