Hiding in science?

[vz71]

The universe is pretty random and chaotic. There is hardly any order. It is 99.99% inhabitable, and unsuitable for life. But it is so big, that life pretty much has to form at some point. It is incredibly unlikely, and takes billions of years, but because of the size of the universe, it would be really unlikely for life not form.

This is sounding a great deal like faith.

We have no credible evidence that life is likely or not likely.
Scientific proof doesn’t play odds, it goes with what is provable.
Likely is simply a measure of probability, and as any statistician will tell you, likely does not mean inevitable.

Nor do we have any credible evidence that the universe is 99.99% uninhabitable.
See for that number to be anything other then a joke, we have to have explored a great deal more of the universe then we have. We have not even explored a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a fraction of a percent of what is actually out there.
Laying a percentage on what is or is not is laughingly short sighted.

 

[Cat_Herder]

"NotReligous:

But that is till an assumption. You still only assume the cause was infinitely powerful, just because we don’t know anything else that has caused it.

OK, the cause being singular is provided us by current scientific theory.
Exempt from limitations of time likewise is a product of the qualities necessary to kick off the big bang.

As for infinitely powerful, well that is an assumption.

Actually, friends, it is an inference drawn from the eternally expanding (and accelerating) universe. If the Big Bang had just a large, finite amount of energy, there is no way that the universe could still be expanding, and faster at that,[ because of the law of conservation of energy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation of Energy). If anything, the Big Bang should be decelerating and fizzling out as energy is converted to matter. But it isn’t… because Someone is putting more gas in the tank.

It may not have been. But then, if it was not then there is going to be a prime mover beyond that. And all we have done is push the question back a step.
I believe Hawking is an authority on pushing the question back.

Well, Dr. Hawking refuses to push the question back. He says time began at the Big Bang and thus, pushing the question back would be meaningless. Dr. Hawking could be right only if the Prime Mover is outside of/unbound by time, which as you note is a conclusion required by modern models of physics.

That leaves us with a proven fact: The Prime Mover is singular, infinitely powerful and outside of time. At this point the science book is closed.

NotReligous:

The universe is pretty random and chaotic. There is hardly any order. It is 99.99% inhabitable, and unsuitable for life. But it is so big, that life pretty much has to form at some point. It is incredibly unlikely, and takes billions of years, but because of the size of the universe, it would be really unlikely for life not form.

What an intelligent design, right?
NotReligious:

The cause is still unknown. You must present evidence for your own cause. Just saying that something powerful did it doesn’t cut it. For all we know, this something powerful could be a result of incredibly complex physics yet unknown, but completely natural.

[Et tu quoque.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu quoque)

 

[Cat_Herder]

Then how do you know which stories to take literal and which to take metaphorical/symbolical?

[BIBLEDRB]Matthew 18:17[/BIBLEDRB]

 

[NotReligous]

This is sounding a great deal like faith.

Why?

We have no credible evidence that life is likely or not likely.

Err…yes we do. How can life form in to places with 1000s degrees Celsius? Or somewhere where there are no available materials for life?

Scientific proof doesn’t play odds, it goes with what is provable.
Likely is simply a measure of probability, and as any statistician will tell you, likely does not mean inevitable.

Er…so? Did you know that there is a change that if you walk to a wall your atoms will move in a very precise way and not interact with the atoms of the wall? … (thus walking trough the wall) This simply means that you basically can not walk trough the wall.

Nor do we have any credible evidence that the universe is 99.99% uninhabitable.

We do… It is really simple too, all you need to do is map a part of the universe and see how habitable it is. (which is what scientists have done)

See for that number to be anything other then a joke, we have to have explored a great deal more of the universe then we have. We have not even explored a tenth of a tenth of a tenth of a fraction of a percent of what is actually out there.

So? We have already seen billions and billions of stars, and seen the likelihood of life near those. I am sure you are aware that you don’t need to know every detail of a concept in order to make likelihoods of it.

For example; You don’t have to count every fish in a lake in order to get an idea of how many fishes the lake has.

Laying a percentage on what is or is not is laughingly short sighted.

Err…why?

 

[NotReligous]

Actually, friends, it is an inference drawn from the eternally expanding (and accelerating) universe. If the Big Bang had just a large, finite amount of energy, there is no way that the universe could still be expanding, and faster at that,[ because of the law of conservation of energy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation of Energy). If anything, the Big Bang should be decelerating and fizzling out as energy is converted to matter. But it isn’t… because Someone is putting more gas in the tank.

Not true. Gravity was slowing the expanding of the universe a long time. Then the universe expanded to a point, where the gravity would not have such a large effect (bigger universe —> less effect from gravity), and is thus speeding, and has no sign of slowing down.

(I read this about three years, ago, so some details might be wrong, but I know for sure that it went something along those lines)

That leaves us with a proven fact: The Prime Mover is singular, infinitely powerful and outside of time. At this point the science book is closed.

How did you come to that conclusion…? Outside of time? Perhaps. Infinitely powerful? Not likely. Why should it be?

Let me quote myself;

"And, as I have stated before, I have no idea what created the universe. But until you give me solid reasons to think it was god, you are only guessing. You define god as something powerful, and outside of time. But how do you know that such things exist, but just not as something of a being. (as in atoms, etc.) From what I have seen anywhere in the universe, there seems to be no reason to assume that the creator was a thinking being.

Edit;

Here is a great video on this matter;

(watch it to the end)

youtube.com/watch?v=ANfvjNob3Qo

PS. A part of this directed to creationists. "

What an intelligent design, right?

The video I gave a link for answers this pretty darn well. I suggest you watch it, and the argue with the points made by it, if you wish. Also your own link has good criticism for that argument.

[Et tu quoque.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu quoque)

Er…why? I don’t see how my argument was in any way a logical fallacy…?

 

[NotReligous]

Er…so? Did you know that there is a change that if you walk to a wall your atoms will move in a very precise way and not interact with the atoms of the wall? … (thus walking trough the wall) This simply means that you basically can not walk trough the wall.

Oops…I missed a sentence.

It should say;

“Er…so? Did you know that there is a change that if you walk to a wall your atoms will move in a very precise way and not interact with the atoms of the wall? … (thus walking trough the wall) But it is so unlikely, that it basically means that you basically can not walk trough the wall.”

 

[lemondiesel]

That leaves us with a proven fact: The Prime Mover is singular, infinitely powerful and outside of time. At this point the science book is closed.

If you admit that something can exist without a cause, then you can not close the book on science. We do not even know if one God exist, yet he has always existed? Yet the universe, which does exist, and has existed is somehow incapable of always existing?

 

[vz71]

This is sounding a great deal like faith.

Why?

Because you are taking probabilities and assuming a scientific fact with it.
This is witnessed by the flimsy rebuttals.

How can life form in to places with 1000s degrees Celsius? Or somewhere where there are no available materials for life?

We don’t know.
But in accepting what we do not know, there is the wisdom of not accepting a wrong answer.

Did you know that there is a change that if you walk to a wall your atoms will move in a very precise way and not interact with the atoms of the wall? … (thus walking trough the wall) This simply means that you basically can not walk trough the wall.

Doesn’t matter one way or the other.
If you wish to bang your head on a wall on the off chance that it will simply pass through it, that is your business. Let me know how that goes.

It is really simple too, all you need to do is map a part of the universe and see how habitable it is. (which is what scientists have done)

Mapping a given region of space does not give enough information to indicate life one way or the other.

We have already seen billions and billions of stars, and seen the likelihood of life near those. I am sure you are aware that you don’t need to know every detail of a concept in order to make likelihoods of it.

True, you do not need to know every detail.
But you do need to know more then the cursory examination you describe in this ‘billions of stars’ statement.

For example; You don’t have to count every fish in a lake in order to get an idea of how many fishes the lake has.

No, but you do have to see the fish to prove the fish are there.

Accepting the ‘science’ that there is life elsewhere in this universe is not science at all.
It is faith. All you are doing is playing the odds.

 

[vz71]

Not true. Gravity was slowing the expanding of the universe a long time. Then the universe expanded to a point, where the gravity would not have such a large effect (bigger universe —> less effect from gravity), and is thus speeding, and has no sign of slowing down.

OK, why is it speeding up?

 

[Cat_Herder]

Not true. Gravity was slowing the expanding of the universe a long time. Then the universe expanded to a point, where the gravity would not have such a large effect (bigger universe —> less effect from gravity), and is thus speeding, and has no sign of slowing down.

Gravity does not explain why the Bang is still going despite having spawned innumerable galaxies. E=mc^2, so more M should mean less E… Where is all this energy coming from?

And how much gravity does it take to get energy to slow down anyway? You need a black hole for that… If the deceleration was due to gravity, the CMBR would show uneven redshifting. And where there is redshifting there is an non-gravitational answer for it. Why is the CMBR almost uniform, then?

Your argument is a fallacy because you have no evidence to prove the non-existence of God while you accuse us of the same. Even Dr. Hawking admits that we can’t look behind the Big Bang. But we CAN draw inferences based on the physical evidence we can see. That is all I am doing.

 

[Cat_Herder]

If you admit that something can exist without a cause, then you can not close the book on science.

That is a necessary conclusion of the scientific observation that the Prime Mover is outside of time. To be outside of time is to be outside of causality, no?

So then the book is closed.

 

[4Horsemen]

See the Wikipedia article on the ultimate fate of the Universe.

Here’s the abridged version: There was some debate about whether the total amount of matter in the Universe meant that the expansion would eventually decelerate to nothing (flat universe) or even cause the Universe to start contracting into a Big Crunch (closed universe). However:

1. Probability models have put the amount of matter just below that needed to make the Universe flat (stop expanding)–therefore it will continue expanding (open universe)
2. Recent models not only show that the Universe is still expanding, but that this expansion is speeding up. This is interesting because all of that Big Bang energy has to come from somewhere (or Someone, eh?)

Thank you for the link, which I read. and found revealing. That the Big Bang energy comes form an Intelligent Being seems like a no-brainer. However, all the rational arguments will rarely convert a non-believer. They need the experiential aspect. Cardinal John Henry Neuman had a passionate commitment to objective truth but, according to him, it is not enough to believe what is in itself true; the believer has also to “apprehend doctrinal truth imaginatively and experientially , that is, to apprehend it really and not just notionally.” (from an article in Laywitness by John F. Crosby)

According to the above, He is still at His canvas, painting.

And He is in each and every human life, His creation, and as a personal God, in our lives. All we have to do is trust that He is so incredibly and personally present and He cares about every detail of our lives.

.

 

[4Horsemen]

The universe is pretty random and chaotic. There is hardly any order. It is 99.99% inhabitable, and unsuitable for life. But it is so big, that life pretty much has to form at some point. It is incredibly unlikely, and takes billions of years, but because of the size of the universe, it would be really unlikely for life not form.

So what is your idea of “order?” To have the galaxies all lined up in a row? By order is meant that things work, and scientists can calculate and philosophers can reason and come to an understanding of reality.

Here’s a quote from Fr. Robert Spitzer’s book, New Proofs for the Existence of God in reference to the natural minimums of space, time and energy emission, which are necessary to prevent their being reduced to infinitesimals with no magnitude in order for a universe to be anthropic:

“If any universe is to be anthropic, then these three natural minimums would have to be virtually constant over the long-range age and expanse of that universe. If they were not, the universe would change in its small-scale and large-scale structure, throwing its elementary constituents into chaos and interupting any process of evolution or complexification.”

The point is that there are constants (20 of them) which sets up a variety of interactions and interrelationships from which the equations of physics are derived. Without the constants, the universe would be chaotic and filled with a bunch of black holes.

Fr. Spitzer quotes Roger Penrose:
“In order to produce a universe resembling the one in which we live, the Creator would have to aim for an absurdly tiny volume of the phase space of possible universes–about
1/10 to the 10th power and that to the 123rd power of the entire volume, for the situation under consideration.”

So the odds of our anthropic universe arising is “so exceedingly, exceedingly , exceedingly remote that its notation in regular exponential form is . . .” The number is so large, with so many zeros in the power that it would take me too long to count all the zeros. (They cover one and a half lines with an extra small font. And that’s just exponential form. The actual number is so large, it says “that if we were to write it out in ordinary notation (with every zero being, say ten point type), it would fill up a large portion of the universe!”

And, as I have stated before, I have no idea what created the universe. But until you give me solid reasons to think it was god, you are only guessing. You define god as something powerful, and outside of time. But how do you know that such things don’t exist, but just not as something of a being. (as in atoms, etc.) From what I have seen anywhere in the universe, there seems to be no reason to assume that the creator was a thinking being.

Only a Super-Powerful, ultra-Intelligent Being could create what I described above (and there is so much more), so I suggest that it would benefit you to get hold of the book I mentioned. Also, God has to be outside of time, since it’s been shown the past-time is finite. Therefore, the universe has a boundary. Other people on these threads with a good background in cosmology can explain these ideas much better.

Here is a great video on this matter;

(watch it to the end)

youtube.com/watch?v=ANfvjNob3Qo

PS. A part of this directed to creationists.

Oh please, but I did watch it. So out of step with science and reality. Of course God isn’t going to do something so ridiculous as crossing two different animals (whatever they were) and getting a bicycle. At the end, it seems that the video is suggesting religions do what science is doing. It’s not their proper place although metaphysics is beyond physics encompassing all avenues of thought.

 

[NotReligous]

Because you are taking probabilities and assuming a scientific fact with it.

Oh so now I am playing with probabilities? I was only replying to this; “Obviously, whatever/whoever created it must be intelligent and have a purpose.” He claimed that the universe had a lot of order, I pointed out that this is not true.

We don’t know.
But in accepting what we do not know, there is the wisdom of not accepting a wrong answer.

Wait what? We don’t know? We don’t know what? I just said that life can not form there, and then you reply that we don’t know…what?

Doesn’t matter one way or the other.
If you wish to bang your head on a wall on the off chance that it will simply pass through it, that is your business. Let me know how that goes.

That was an argument for you…not for me…

Mapping a given region of space does not give enough information to indicate life one way or the other.

…Why on earth not? You can see which places are habitable and which ones are not. Kinda like a map. You know you can’t build a house on water.

True, you do not need to know every detail.
But you do need to know more then the cursory examination you describe in this ‘billions of stars’ statement.

No, but you do have to see the fish to prove the fish are there.

Why? “The comoving distance from Earth to the edge of the observable universe is about 14 billion parsecs (46.5 billion light-years) in any direction. The visible universe is thus a sphere with a diameter of about 28 billion parsecs (about 93 billion light-years). Assuming that space is roughly flat, this size corresponds to a comoving volume of about 3×1080 cubic meters. This is equivalent to a volume of about 41 decillion cubic light-years short scale (4.1 × 1034 cubic light years).”

Seems pretty damn enough for me.

Accepting the ‘science’ that there is life elsewhere in this universe is not science at all.
It is faith. All you are doing is playing the odds.

I never made this claim. I said it is likely. You are the one twisting my words.

 

[NotReligous]

Gravity does not explain why the Bang is still going despite having spawned innumerable galaxies. E=mc^2, so more M should mean less E… Where is all this energy coming from?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy

That was the thing I read about a few years ago. I am not even sure why this subject matters?

And how much gravity does it take to get energy to slow down anyway? You need a black hole for that… If the deceleration was due to gravity, the CMBR would show uneven redshifting. And where there is redshifting there is an non-gravitational answer for it. Why is the CMBR almost uniform, then?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant

When did I even claim to look behind the big bang? And you get your facts right. I am pretty sure the dark energy or dark matter is used to explain those observations.

 

[NotReligous]

Oh, and 4horsemen, don’t worry I will reply, but I have loads of things to study right now… (really)

I will reply as soon as possible.

 

[Cat_Herder]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy That was the thing I read about a few years ago. I am not even sure why this subject matters?

So you gave it a name. Where is it coming from?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_constant

And why does the constant exist?

When did I even claim to look behind the big bang? And you get your facts right. I am pretty sure the dark energy or dark matter is used to explain those observations.

But you don’t know. So why do you have any business telling us that the cause of these things is not God if you don’t know yourself?

 

[AntiTheist]

He’s drawing an analogy, with which I largely agree, showing that certain methods are not applicable to finding certain types of truths.

Yes. Imaginary truths, for example, cannot be discovered by using science.

No amount of science can determine how Lord Voldemort can be defeated, for instance, since he’s a fictional character made up in the imagination of some British woman who’s turned a little escapist fantasy into a zillion-dollar industry.

Science is similarly incapable of determining the existence of – and facts about – other fictional characters, among them the various gods that mankind has invented.

 

[inocente]

Actually, friends, it is an inference drawn from the eternally expanding (and accelerating) universe. If the Big Bang had just a large, finite amount of energy, there is no way that the universe could still be expanding, and faster at that,[ because of the law of conservation of energy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation of Energy). If anything, the Big Bang should be decelerating and fizzling out as energy is converted to matter. But it isn’t… because Someone is putting more gas in the tank.

While the nature of dark matter and dark energy are not yet known, hence the word dark , the effects can be measured. Dark matter enhances gravity while dark energy accelerates expansion.

There is some evidence that the total energy in visible matter + dark matter = the total of dark energy.

The speculation is then that the sum of energy across the entire universe is and always has been exactly zero, a very neat result - Someone was smart enough not to have to keep putting more gas in the tank.

 

[GaryTaylor]

Faith is Truth of the Heart, once you elevate past science, there it dwells.