Believe in God #2

[Xant]

Reading comprehension is difficult.

[Rumblood]

Reading comprehension is difficult.

I'm glad you finally realized that.

So practice more.

[Xant]

Yes, I was actually talking about myself there. I thought you were disputing the Big Bang, not the explosion part. I called it an explosion since I was replying to Tyefire, who also called it an explosion.

[Rumblood]

It is the physicists responsible who say that there was no explosion Heskey, so you go make your argument about physics with those physicists alrighty?  For your definition to be true, there would have had to have been a chemical or nuclear release of energy, or an external force compressing the early universe and then suddenly disappearing so that the internal pressure resulted in the expansion. In fact, the physicists say that prior to the "Big Bang", there was nothing at all, so no chemical, nuclear, or internal mechanical energy even existed at all to create this explosion of yours. Hence, the Ekpyrotic model theorizes the existence of branes and the "big bang" being a result of a collision between them so that rather than being an an expansion of "something" from "nothing", it is an interaction between 2 "somethings" that we can not perceive.
The "Big Bang" term was coined by someone with an alternate theory to the universe, not the theorists or proponents themselves.

[Rumblood]

I edited the above, but here it is below for you:

For your definition to be true, there would have had to have been a chemical or nuclear release of energy, or an external force compressing the early universe and then suddenly disappearing so that the internal pressure resulted in the expansion. In fact, the physicists say that prior to the "Big Bang", there was nothing at all, so no chemical, nuclear, or internal mechanical energy even existed at all to create this explosion of yours. Hence, the Ekpyrotic model theorizes the existence of branes and the "big bang" being a result of a collision between them so that rather than being an an expansion of "something" from "nothing", it is an interaction between 2 "somethings" that we can not perceive.

The only physics involved is in the proving that the universe is expanding. I'm not arguing pro or counter a creator, nor am i saying we have all the answers, cos we don't. Just nit-picking terminology the 'explosion' is now, and all around us.

Then you aren't using the terms that physicists use, and if you aren't, you aren't even speaking the same language.

[Xant]

I propose that from now on we only communicate with edits, to make things as confusing as possible.

[Kafein]

My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

"You appear to be astonished," he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. "Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it."

"To forget it!"

"You see," he explained, "I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones."

"But the Solar System!" I protested.

"What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently; "you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work."

To you, knowledge is only valuable if it has immediate use? Besides, it is completely false that more knowledge "clutters" your brain.




About the other debate in this thread, my point in not calling the Big Bang an explosion is because an explosion is defined by a rapid expansion of gazes. Yet gazes didn't even exist at that time. The expanding universe as we see it now isn't even an explosion because the reason it is expanding is not because it is made of elements that received an initial energy that made them drift in all directions, like a frag grenade. The reason it is expanding is because the empty spaces between them is becoming larger. So in a sense, it's a bit like if you had a grenade that released accelerating self-propelled rockets, even though this is not a good analogy either, because the universe has no central point "where the big bang happened".

[Osiris]

you know he just quoted Sherlock Holmes right? Kafein 

[Kafein]

you know he just quoted Sherlock Holmes right? Kafein 

No, I did not, and I really don't care.

Besides, that's technically quoting Poe.

[Osiris]

it would be if poe wrote sherlock holmes 

[Kafein]

it would be if poe wrote sherlock holmes 

Ho yeah right it's the other one. For once I don't check when I say something clever and it has to be the other one.

[SixThumbs]

To you, knowledge is only valuable if it has immediate use? Besides, it is completely false that more knowledge "clutters" your brain.

I'm aware we're not born "tabula rasa", a blank state in which we and others imprint things onto the mind, and I understand that neurologists say we have a "neuroplasicity" within our brains and that instead of losing information we only weaken synapses. But that's about the pennyworth of knowledge I have on that subject and what the deuce is it to me if I can't be as cognizant of the subject as neurologists and psychologists?

"--and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man.' This isn't just an epigram--life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all."

[bilwit]

I was a pretty stout atheist for a while but looking back it was a more of a backlash towards Christianity. I guess I'm agnostic these days. I watched a Lawrence Krauss lecture on the history of the universe and he says that we know that there is no god because we can measure exactly when the universe was created through the Big Bang. Then I read Phillip K Dick and Grant Morrison which showed me that creationism really isn't solely boxed into believing (or needing to praise/worship) in an omniscient, benign god that looks after humanity and has direct influence over our lives ala Christianity and that every physical and scientific theory we've come up with in modern science can still conceivably fit into creationist thinking.

For example:

• In All Star Superman, Superman smashes atoms together with his fingers in order to create a universe without superheroes so he can assure himself that humanity would be okay without him.
• In Flex Mentallo, another universe that consisted of all superheroes was being destroyed so at the last second, in order to preserve themselves, they became 2D, fictional beings (comic book characters) in a universe stitched together by two subatomic superheroes who sacrificed themselves to create our universe.

These still abide by any scientific explanation out there (big bang) and are more conceivable than Christianity's explanation, so why not?

[Brrrak]

Just let me believe in my 'imaginary friend', 'sky-fairy', or whatever you want to say, and you keep on shiggy-diggying.

Is it not so difficult?

[Rumblood]

I only get annoyed when people say "My sky-fairy says..." and then tries to shove it down your throat. No, your sky-fairy didn't say anything. Some humans wrote some things down they saw when eating moldy rye bread and said it came from the sky-fairy. Well when I did the same thing, I visited the sky-fairy myself and he told me that in actuality I was the sky-fairy, only the sky-fairy kept me from knowing it until then because really the sky-fairy is the only being in existence and was very lonely and so to overcome this, the sky-fairy splits off parts of itself and hides that knowledge from those parts so that it seems as though the universe is populated with billions of beings instead of just the single lonely sky-fairy. Sad really, but the sky-fairy has done what it could do to fool itself and not be so sad and feel at least a little less lonely, which is the main reason the sky-fairy hides from us all. We would recognize ourselves and the veil would be lifted, putting us back in that miserable lonely existence once again. It was so terrible that we can't go through that again, and so we maintain the farce to keep ourself from being so miserably alone.

So there.