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Tomdstone
Guest
This assumes that the universe had a beginning.
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
There is no scientific evidence of this. It is a hypothesis that you atheists need to entertain, but there is no proof of same…
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Charlemagne_III
Guest
All the evidence points to the likelihood that it did. Why is this so difficult for you to grasp?
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Tomdstone
Guest
There is scientific evidence for the cyclical model in the form of a series of (concentric) rings of unexpectedly low variance in the pattern of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background seen by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe . Please see:
arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1011/1011.3706.pdf
Please explain your claim that this is not scientific evidence for pre-Big Bang activity in the universe.
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Tomdstone
Guest
Because of the concentric rings of low variance in the pattern of fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background seen by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe.
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LogosSokratikos
Guest
I’m not saying you are extorting me. What I am referring to is to the moral issue of caving to threats of eternal hellfire or any other sort of torture. Also, it is an example of fallacia ad baculum. An example of invalid argumentation listed as such by logicians for centuries.Well, since you have dismissed all gods, if there is a God, you may well be in big trouble. This is not extortion. I am not demanding money. I am suggesting that you are happily oblivious of all warnings on the road to death.
But then, as others have noted, you seem to contain all the wisdom of the universe in your singularly wonderful brain. You know for a fact there is no god, so why worry yourself about any ultimate fate other than that in your own mind you are ultimately doomed to be no more than food for the worms.
What if, after all, there is a God? Do you really want to make an enemy of God?
As the Psalmist put it: “The fool says in his heart there is no God.”
The Muslim God is the God of Abraham. So he is my God too.
Also, I have not said I know there is no god. Gee whiz, who do you think you’re arguing with? Are you reading even?
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Charlemagne_III
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When you call yourself an agnostic, you dismiss God as a reality.
If you thought for one moment there is a God, you would not hesitate to act accordingly.
Would you?
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Linusthe2nd
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Again, you are misrepresenting what the Pope has said. It is true that the CCC is primarily intended as an aid to Catechists. But this is meant in the sense of supporting documentation ( footnote references, etc.) and form of presentation, not in that the actual content is optional. After all, you don’t teach six year olds as you would mature adults. The idea is that Catechists would present the teaching of the Church in accord with an age appropriate and maturity approach. But this does not mean that the teaching of the Church is optional or open to reform. And the Pope would agree with this. The CCC contains the entire teaching of the Church and this the Pope would agree to.
" Ecclesiastical rules and precepts " refer to Canon Law which is reformable and has been reformed several times. Church Law is not Christ’s Law, it refers to the " power of the keys. " But the " power of the keys " does not allow the Church to change Christ’s own Revelation of the Truth. It is the Revelation of Christ’s Truth which the CCC contains. Not even the Pope can change that. The Church may of course present this Truth in different ways and with varying methods of emphasis and according to more enlightened explanations. And these methods have been employed in the Catechism. You can compare it with past Catechisms and see that a great effort has been made to make the CCC accessible to various mentalities.
But you missed the main point, that the Church defends the ability of the human intellect to come to a knowledge of God through reason alone. The reader can refer to my post 905 to see what I refer to.
Again, I would advise you that the Pope’s " interviews " are not Catholic teaching. And they suffer from the same problems as that suffered by all intervfiews. Those problems are first, the lack of precision suffered by all spontaneous remarks, and second, the personal interpretations by the interviewer and by those who read the interview, both of whom read the remarks in accord to their own personal prejudices…
Linus2nd
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Peter_Plato
Guest
I am disappointed with this post because, while it sounds impressive, it is actually not saying very much at all. In fact, it seems to have been a copy and paste job from this article that suggests the point be taken “with a grain of salt.” What is striking, however, is that the bold-faced part of your post (my emphasis) above is identical to the blog wording below, including parentheses. You must have read the blog since it appears to be where you got the information, but you sidestepped completely that the author was making a case against the cyclical model.
telescoper.wordpress.com/tag/roger-penrose/
The author adds as an update that two papers have recently refuted the Gurzadyan-Penrose claim.
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Tomdstone
Guest
The analysis in the papers you have mentioned does not refute the conformal cyclic model as shown by a later paper of V.G.Gurzadyan and R.Penrose. It was pointed out in the two papers and the blog that the existence of low variance circles in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky does not contradict the LCDM (Big Bang) model, which G and P agree with, but this was not their reason for saying that they have found support for the conformal cyclic model. Here is a quotation from the abstract of their later paper:
" We point out two discrepancies between their treatment and ours, however, one technical, the other having to do with the very understanding of what constitutes a Gaussian random signal. Both groups simulate maps using the CMB power spectrum for LCDM, while we simulate a pure Gaussian sky plus the WMAP’s noise, which points out the contradiction with a common statement [3] that “CMB signal is random noise of Gaussian nature”. For as it was shown in [5], the random component is a minor one in the CMB signal, namely, about 0.2. Accordingly, the circles we saw are a real structure of the CMB sky and they are not of a random Gaussian nature. Although the structures studied certainly cannot contradict the power spectrum, which is well fitted by LCDM model, we particularly emphasize that the low variance circles occur in concentric families, and this key fact cannot be explained as a purely random effect.** It is, however a clear prediction of conformal cyclic cosmology." **
arxiv.org/abs/1012.1486
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Linusthe2nd
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Aside from the fact that you can design a model to support any theory you want, those who suggest that the universe could have " created " itself or that it eternally accounted for its own existence must answer clearly how dumb matter could boot strap its own existence and how it could possibly have directed itself to its present state of universal order. It is a common human experience that the formation of organized systems arise only through the activity of intelligence. It must be demonstrated further how dumb matter could give rise life, fistly, and to intelligent life, secondly.
Linus2nd
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oldcelt
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The existence of the universe, intelligent life, etc., are facts. It is incumbent on those who put forth a theory of its origins to provide some sort of proof. This includes those who support a supernatural creator. To say that the universe is orderly I think is a gigantic stretch. Planets, galaxies colliding with each other…great voids, or seeming voids, continuing expansion, etc are not indicative of an orderly state.
Once the universe began on its way, what we see is the result of virtually unfathomable stretches of time. It seems just as likely that it did it naturally through the gradual collision of elements, which we are seeing to this day, as to attribute the creation to an unseen creator.
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tonyrey
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If the universe were not orderly it would be unpredictable and the success of science would be inexplicable.
“the gradual collision of elements” rules out deism!
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Charlemagne_III
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It is as incumbent upon you to prove the lack of order in the universe as you say it is incumbent upon others to prove the existence of a Creator of the order in the universe.
You can never prove that we inhabit a chance universe without reason or purpose that just suddenly popped into existence for no particular reason.
That seems to me a “gigantic stretch.”
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Tomdstone
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The claim that you can design a model to support any theory you want easily meets the criteria of a crackpot claim. Take for example the massive traffic gridlock on George Washington Bridge that occurred in September. Most people would say that the gridlock was due to the fact that a Christie appointee had closed access lanes to the bridge. Since you claim that a model can be designed to support any theory you want, can you please show us a model which supports the idea that this massive gridlock was not due to the closure of the lanes, but was due to something else like the price of gasoline or global warming?
politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/12/27/documents-raise-new-questions-in-christie-bridge-controversy/
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Charlemagne_III
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I agree with Linus. You can design a model to support any theory you want. The difficulty is in finding the evidence for that theory. There is no evidence that the universe could have created itself. There is evidence that the universe was designed because we see order in the universe. We do not see chaos. We could not even exist amid chaos, and chaos cannot be believed to have created order. You can name chaos, but you cannot even imagine it except in a fuzzy nightmarish way. It defies all description. Order never defies description. It just defies us to fathom itself, as Newton fathomed the solar system and Einstein fathomed relativity.
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Tomdstone
Guest
Not everything can be predicted. For example, did anyone predict the assassination of JFK by LHO? And many predictions are false. For example, in 1973, the prediction that the comet Kohoutek would result in a spectacular display of outgassing, which it did not. it was more or less a dud.
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oldcelt
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Yes it does…unless it was the deity who pushed them together.
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oldcelt
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How would you know that a self-creating universe would result in chaos? You can’t have any evidence because we have never seen such a thing. Therefore, that whole theory is based on speculation, just like most, if not all, of the others.
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tonyrey
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