Perspective...

[cleanhippie]

Kind of makes use of the term "creator" a bit hyperbolic, don't you think?

[progressoid]

1. That graphic,

minus the last bit about gods, reminds me of this National Geographic poster.

http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/maps/print-collection/universe.html

[FiveGoodMen]

2. Perspective, indeed!

Great post!

[rug]

3. Except the Torah (and the other books beyond those five), the New Testament, and the Quran proclaim

the action, and then some, occurred in the first oval.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made."

&quot Allah is He) who has made everything"

[Warren Stupidity]

7. well no, the cosmology of the time had "the heavens" as a shell around earth.

Nice try though.

[cleanhippie]

10. +1

[rug]

12. You're assumig the Scripture of the time is a cosmology.

Nice try though.

[Warren Stupidity]

15. I was respoinding to your absurd claim regarding the biblical cosmology.

Which, by the way, in revelations, has the stars detaching from their mountings in the "heavens" and falling to earth.l

[rug]

24. I made no claim about cosmology. The absurd claim about biblical cosmology is in the OP.

The reply to which you ineptly replied is about creation.

[Warren Stupidity]

26. um yes you did, but carry on.

[rug]

27. um, no I didn't.

[edhopper]

8. The "heavens" started some 14 billion years ago,

the earth 4 or 5. So not even close. And then there is the problem of the Sun being created after the Earth, birds and fish together, seas before the land, etc...
Not accurate at all really.

And language didn't happen until a feww hundred thousand years ago, so this "Word" thing has always been a meaningless metaphor to me.

[cleanhippie]

11. +1

[rug]

13. Which has exactly what to do withthe post you're responding to?

[edhopper]

29. I guess I have no idea what you were trying to say with your post then.

Could you be more succinct?

[Warren Stupidity]

67. When backed into a corner by one's own statements, best to pretend that

one is being misinterpreted, or better yet, run away.

[Act_of_Reparation]

4. Everywhere else, there's Xenu

Scientology wins this round.

[rug]

5. Uh-uh.

The Loyal Officers finally overthrew Xenu and his renegades, and locked him away in "an electronic mountain trap" from which he has not escaped.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu

[struggle4progress]

6. That's an interesting series of charts, and it might help me understand something about

the radiation seen by various detectors pointed towards the sky

It wouldn't help me very much if I wanted to sail from Bantry Bay to Ringaskiddy, and it wouldn't help me at all if I wanted to drive from Montreal to Fargo

Nor would it tell me where to look for nerve damage in a patient suffering limited facial numbness

Different ways of describing bits of human experience serve different purposes

[cleanhippie]

9. That's nice, except this graphic wasn't intended to help you with any of that.

And it's not describing one perspective of human experience, it's describing reality.

[struggle4progress]

14. An "object" like "the Virgo Supercluster" is just a way of organizing certain detector data

in accordance with current physical understanding with the help of some reasonable simplifying hypotheses, some of which seem to be untestable

For example, one assumes that there are certain universal physical laws that hold throughout the universe and involve invariant constants; in particular, one assumes that radiations propagate through vast empty interstellar space in a simple and known manner

On the basis of such assumptions, one can "interpret" observations and chart the results

The resulting charts are reasonable, in the sense that they are constructed to be consistent with what we think we know now

But one ought not confuse an attempt at representation of some part of "reality" with the "reality" it purports to represent

[edhopper]

16. True

But it is a much better description of cosmic reality than any religion has done.
And it illustrates why any God from those religions does not fit in our present understanding of the Universe.

[struggle4progress]

17. Not everyone's religion aims at "description of cosmic reality"

And, of course, the reason no "god" appears in any theory of physics is simply that any appeal to a "supernatural" agent would be contrary to the program of explaining natural phenomena in terms of natural laws: physics, by definition, is entirely uninterested in "supernatural" agents

[trotsky]

18. True, not everyone's.

But yours does. And the other two of the "big three." And Scientology. And Hinduism. And several others.

[struggle4progress]

19. You would do better to discuss your own views, rather than putting words in others' mouths

[trotsky]

20. Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you believed that your god created the cosmos.

I apologize for my error.

[struggle4progress]

22. That, in my view, is not and cannot be a scientific theory, as I have often said here for years

[trotsky]

23. On the contrary, that's the granddaddy of all scientific theories.

The ultimate theory - where everything came from.

Your opinion that it is not, is duly noted. But I guess it turns out I was correct after all.

[struggle4progress]

25. See #17 upthread

[trotsky]

35. See #18 upthread. n/t

[Act_of_Reparation]

49. 85% of Americans believe in creationism of some kind...

... and he's the one putting words in peoples' mouths?

[struggle4progress]

51. The poster in #18 purports to tell me what my religion says, my views notwithstanding

I in #19 object to this as putting words in my mouth

Your response is that I am obtuse?

I think you are trolling for reactions, instead of attempting to engage in any clarifying discourse

[trotsky]

57. The poster in #17 is apparently having difficulty grasping that...

proposing some outside agent responsible for creating the cosmos is a de facto "description of cosmic reality."

Simply arbitrarily slapping on a "supernatural" label does nothing to change that.

[Act_of_Reparation]

59. Contrary to what you might think...

...I am not so narcissistic as I am intolerant of bullshit. I don't like you much, and would prefer not to converse with you at all, but every now and then you say something so mind-shatteringly insane I can't help but get involved.

By "your religion", it is clear trotsky meant "Christianity". While YOU may make no assumptions as to the genesis of the universe, your fellow Christians over-fucking-whelmingly do... so much that your petulant "not everyone blah blah blah" drivel is utterly irrelevant.

And whether or not such questions are important to you is completely beside the point; I'll bet you have an answer nonetheless. If your answer is "God did it", then your religion is exactly as trotsky described.

[struggle4progress]

61. Maybe you need a nap? Maybe have some milk and cookies after you're rested?

?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1354730167401

[Act_of_Reparation]

68. I'll take that as the capitulation it is. n/t

[struggle4progress]

69. I think you may find the following article interesting

Internet trolls are also real-life trolls
Why do some people find so much pleasure in harassing others online? A new study attempts to shed light on the behaviour of internet trolls
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024565462

It could give you additional ideas to consider when you are thoughtfully telling other posters "I don't like you much" --- or as you otherwise bring your gems of wisdom to the conversation

[Act_of_Reparation]

71. I would find it interesting...

... If I didn't know what the definition of a "troll" is. But I do. So I don't.

While I've managed to stay on topic here, you're the one running around hurling ad hominems at everyone. Sure sounds like projection to me.

[edhopper]

30. Physics is interested in reality

It's not that physics is uninterested in a supernatural agent, it's that none are necessary for explanations.

[struggle4progress]

40. I consider your philosophy of science murky. Let us try to make our ideas clear

The program of a science, like physics, is to understand the natural world by discovering -- through experiment with and observation of natural phenomena -- "universal laws" that account for the phenomena

It should be immediately clear that the very assumption of supernatural agents is in conflict with this program, and it is in conflict with the program for diverse reasons

The first reason is programmatic. One searches only for what one hopes to find: in particular anyone, who is searching for natural explanations of natural phenomena, cannot be content with a purported supernatural explanation -- for the very straightforward reason, that such an explanation is not at all the sort of explanation sought. If I go in search of a grocery store, and someone tells me they have no idea where any grocery store is but offers instead to direct me to a hardware store, they have not helped me find the grocery store I sought; and similarly, if I seek a natural explanation of some natural phenomenon, someone, who cannot offer me a natural explanation but instead offers me a supernatural explanation, has not in the least aided me in my search

A second reason is a matter of practical psychology. The search for natural explanations of natural phenomena is not always easy and does not always yield immediate results. To allow the gambit -- of claiming that no natural explanation has been found and therefore one must admit supernatural explanations -- is to allow a cheap cop-out. The preferred psychological stance is rather along the lines that no one has found the natural explanation of a phenomenon yet, simply because no one has done the right experiment or made the critical observation or has had the proper insight: this leaves the matter open for further investigation, rather than inappropriately ending study of the issue

There may be other reasons. For example, the claim -- that the vast detectable universe of space-time, together with all of its laws, is a creation of some agent -- cannot possibly be a testable scientific hypothesis, because such an agent would so vastly beggar our abilities and comprehension, that there could be no experiment we can imagine to detect such an agent: our very tools of measurement, and the laws governing them, would be trifling playthings of such an agent. So such a claim cannot possibly be a scientific hypothesis, for there is no definitive way to falsify it

Your claim that no supernatural agents are necessary for physical explanations is therefore uninformative: it is a tautology, following from the definition of physics; and it is a psychological prerequisite for the study of physics. Moreover, to claim that physics has found no supernatural agents, and that therefore there are no supernatural agents, is circular reasoning, because physics by definition does not admit any supernatural explanations whatsoever

[edhopper]

42. sorry you had to write so much for so little results

Your assumptions are flawed (but you know that) and if a super natural agent has an effect on the Universe there would be evidence of it.
Your statement about the agent being incomprehensible is just an opinion without foundation.

[struggle4progress]

43. Which physicists in your opinion search for supernatural phenomena?

How would you construct a theory of supernatural physics?

[edhopper]

44. First I would suggest

you give one example of something super natural ever occurring.
Or does your God have no impact on anything in the physical Universe, or ever has.
If God has never had any effect, what is his purpose?

[struggle4progress]

45. I provided a philosophical analysis, explaining why I think physics does not and cannot

have any connection with supernaturalities

In my view, philosophy never sheds any light on reality, and it never tells us about what exists or does not exist: it merely helps us think more clearly

In particular, I do not expect a philosophical discussion of physics to tell us anything about "reality" -- it can only help us make our ideas about physics clearer

That is, to explain "why physics does not and cannot recognize any supernaturality" cannot itself shed any light on whether supernaturalities do or do not exist, or whether we can or cannot point to any supernaturalities, or how we might go about trying to convince ourselves that supernaturalities are necessary or unnecessary, possible or impossible

The philosophical analysis does shed light on some logical issues entangled in various statements: "Physics has never found an evidence for supernaturalities" (for example) is a statement which has no probative value, because it disguises a circular argument

[skepticscott]

47. It is the very notion

that a supernatural agent can even exist as something that we can detect or interact with, or that is capable of influencing, or being influenced by, events in the natural world, that is fundamentally flawed. Anything capable of interacting in the natural world is, by definition, not "super" natural. It's not that physics hasn't found evidence for supernaturalities, or that it doesn't need them. Physics (or any other method of inquiry available to us in the natural world) cannot, by its very nature, detect anything "supernatural", because if it could then that thing wouldn't be supernatural, it would be natural.

For us in the natural world, we can conceive of the supernatural as a concept, but that is all. All of the things we like to call "supernatural" are either natural, or they exist only in our imaginations.

[edhopper]

48. That would only be true

if supernaturalities had no effect on the physical Universe, including it's creation.
If that is your claim, then yes there is nothing to study, but if that is so, why even propose a super natural entity that has no effect.
I don't buy into the non-overlapping magisteria.

If you are talking about purely philosophical arguments for God, there is a very long thread about this already.


BTW. There have been scientific investigations into the super natural, with uniformly negative results.

[skepticscott]

53. Science has investigated things

that we like to call supernatural in common usage (ghosts, for instance), but those investigations are really made with the implicit assumption that what is being investigated is NOT "super" natural, in the sense of being above or outside of nature and the natural world, otherwise there would be no point to trying to detect them in any way.

[edhopper]

62. We have a different definition of supernatural

But I understand what you mean.

Don't want to get into a semantic back and forth.

[skepticscott]

63. Just out of curiosity

how would you define "supernatural"?

[edhopper]

64. something that happens outside or counter too

known physical laws.

[skepticscott]

65. That sounds like much the same thing, stated differently

But it begs the question of how a "physical law" is defined. If it is something that can't be violated, then things can only seem to violate physical laws, but not actually do so. Any appearance of violating physical laws by a "supernatural" entity, would be just that...appearance...and an indication that our understanding of the physical law that seems to be violated is imperfect. Rutherford saw alpha particles passing right through solid gold foil, but what seemed to be "ghostlike" behavior simply exposed an imperfect understanding of natural physical reality.

[edhopper]

66. True

But perhaps it is better to talk of specific examples of things one would call supernatural than getting into a nuanced conversation in a forum. (I am not good at long entailed posts ) Angels, Psychics, God would be under the category.
It might also have to do with what is suggested as the cause. If somebody appears to levitates and says they have invented a technology to do so, it might be bullshit, but it's not supernatural (And can be tested) but if someone says an angel lifted then, or they did it with their mind, I would say that is.
But i suspect we see the same things as supernatural, just describe it a bit differently.

[eomer]

72. If something happens counter to known laws then the laws are wrong and will be reworked.

Prior to the theory of relativity some experiments were done that measured the speed of light from sources having different motion relative to the observer. When these things didn't fit the known laws they were not treated as supernatural. The laws were reworked, resulting in the theory of relativity.

This same exact response is the only appropriate one for any and every thing that doesn't fit known laws.

Science should never admit that anything is supernatural. There's no justification for treating any phenomenon as being outside of science or outside of nature. If some thing exists or some process occurs then it is not supernatural.

[edhopper]

73. This is all semantics

because the supernatural doesn't exist. And people who posit that something that would be called supernatural has occurred have no evidence of it.
It might be more productive to talk about specific events or entities that are generally called supernatural.

This is the big difference between science and religion. Science might say, we don't know yet, or there isn't enough observation and evidence to make a determination, religion often says this or that supernatural agency is the cause with out any evidence but their belief.
Your point of relativity is a good example.

[eomer]

74. Agreed. The supernatural doesn't exist, in fact makes no sense, by definition.

It's not an issue of not having seen evidence for it because all evidence that's ever seen or will be seen is by definition evidence of something natural, not supernatural.

I see the concept of God in the same way. The mere concept of God is a problem of carelessness in semantics.

[AtheistCrusader]

46. Actually, Hawking has shown that nothingness conditions prior to the bing bang

must produce a universe. MUST.

Meaning, no deity is required to kick the first domino over, let alone set them up, let alone manufacture them and the table upon which they rest.

That doesn't mean a deity that is all-powerful couldn't have done it that way, and as must needs follow the claim of omnipotence, if it didn't wish to be perceived, by definition, it could not be perceived. Fine.
Hawking accepts that, and lets the matter rest in the judgment of the observer; If a creator isn't necessary to produce the universe, and one is not apparent, is one likely to exist?


I'm sure his personal likeliness rating is 'not bloody', as is mine, but sure, we cannot prove an omnipotent, universe-creating deity doesn't exist, if it doesn't want to be perceived.

But that does make it an abnoxious hidey-seeky pain in the ass of a deity though.

[struggle4progress]

50. Independent of any religious view, Hawking's popular claim that

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing"

is not in itself a scientific theory

It may actually be that he has some particular set of axioms and resulting calculations in mind, that lead to a result he summarizes in this fashion

Taken too seriously, Hawking's summary might seem to imply that conservation of mass-energy fails at a cosmic scale -- but that apparently involves setting aside one of the most fundamental of physical laws. Moreover, physical observation provides the "gold standard" for determining the degree to which we accept a physical theory, and there seems to be no way at all to go observe a universe creating itself from nothing

So such a popular summary should perhaps not be taken too seriously: Hawking's actual results can only be that certain assumptions permit certain calculations

[AtheistCrusader]

52. Not at all.

"Taken too seriously, Hawking's summary might seem to imply that conservation of mass-energy fails at a cosmic scale -- but that apparently involves setting aside one of the most fundamental of physical laws."

Taken too seriously, meaning, taken as a WHOLE idea, one must total up the sum energy of the universe, both positive and negative. If the sum is zero, conservation of energy doesn't fail at all. (And that looks to be the case, we just don't know what a large portion of the gravity-revealed mass of the universe IS, yet. But we can measure it is there, and its effect, and total its mass.)

[struggle4progress]

54. If you wish to reason from crude summaries, and to introduce further physical hypotheses

unsupported by observation in support of your reasoning, I cannot prevent you from doing so, but your activity will not qualify as "physics" in any modern sense of the word

Negative mass-energy is an interesting idea, but there seem to be no known examples

[AtheistCrusader]

56. I refer you to Krauss and Hawking.

Both explained the concept rather well. However, I did say 'looks to be' not 'is certainly'.

[struggle4progress]

58. On the Origin of Everything (Sunday NYT Book Review)

On the Origin of Everything
‘A Universe From Nothing,’ by Lawrence M. Krauss
By DAVID ALBERT
Published: March 23, 2012

Lawrence M. Krauss, a well-known cosmologist and prolific popular-science writer, apparently means to announce to the world, in this new book, that the laws of quantum mechanics have in them the makings of a thoroughly scientific and adamantly secular explanation of why there is something rather than nothing. Period. Case closed. End of story. I kid you not ...

Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from? Krauss is more or less upfront, as it turns out, about not having a clue about that. He acknowledges (albeit in a parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that every­thing he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted ... And what if he did know of some productive work in that regard? What if he were in a position to announce, for instance, that the truth of the quantum-mechanical laws can be traced back to the fact that the world has some other, deeper property X? Wouldn’t we still be in a position to ask why X rather than Y? And is there a last such question? Is there some point at which the possibility of asking any further such questions somehow definitively comes to an end? How would that work? What would that be like? ...

The particular, eternally persisting, elementary physical stuff of the world, according to the standard presentations of relativistic quantum field theories, consists (unsurprisingly) of relativistic quantum fields. And the fundamental laws of this theory take the form of rules concerning which arrangements of those fields are physically possible and which aren’t, and rules connecting the arrangements of those fields at later times to their arrangements at earlier times, and so on — and they have nothing whatsoever to say on the subject of where those fields came from, or of why the world should have consisted of the particular kinds of fields it does, or of why it should have consisted of fields at all, or of why there should have been a world in the first place ...

Krauss, mind you, has heard this kind of talk before, and it makes him crazy. A century ago, it seems to him, nobody would have made so much as a peep about referring to a stretch of space without any material particles in it as “nothing.” And now that he and his colleagues think they have a way of showing how everything there is could imaginably have emerged from a stretch of space like that, the nut cases are moving the goal posts. He complains that “some philosophers and many theologians define and redefine ‘nothing’ as not being any of the versions of nothing that scientists currently describe,” and that “now, I am told by religious critics that I cannot refer to empty space as ‘nothing,’ but rather as a ‘quantum vacuum,’ to distinguish it from the philosopher’s or theologian’s idealized ‘nothing,’ ” and he does a good deal of railing about “the intellectual bankruptcy of much of theology and some of modern philosophy.” But all there is to say about this, as far as I can see, is that Krauss is dead wrong and his religious and philosophical critics are absolutely right. Who cares what we would or would not have made a peep about a hundred years ago? We were wrong a hundred years ago. We know more now. And if what we formerly took for nothing turns out, on closer examination, to have the makings of protons and neutrons and tables and chairs and planets and solar systems and galaxies and universes in it, then it wasn’t nothing, and it couldn’t have been nothing, in the first place. And the history of science — if we understand it correctly — gives us no hint of how it might be possible to imagine otherwise ...

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/books/review/a-universe-from-nothing-by-lawrence-m-krauss.html

[el_bryanto]

21. That presumes that the God of the Bible (or the Torah or Koran or any other faith)

was completely understood and compartmentalized by the people of that time. If that were true than yes, God clearly doesn't exist. But many religious people of that time and our time understand God to be greater than we are. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." - Isiah 55 .

Bryant

[edhopper]

28. I'm not sure what that means?

Those books, clearly state God created the Universe, I see nothing that would help confirm that.

Are you talking about a different interpretation of God?

[el_bryanto]

31. No - I believe that God Created the Universe

I'm just saying that believing that God created the Universe can't be disproved by saying that the people who wrote the Bible and other holy texts didn't understand the magnitude of the Universe as well as we do now.

But I also don't believe that we are likely to discover scientific proof of the existence of God.

And, just to be safe, I don't favor teaching any brand of creationism in schools.

Bryant

[edhopper]

32. Yes,

but God doesn't have to be disproved, why bother disproving something that there is no evidence for.

Extraordinary claims and all...



(Yes, I know you don't wish to prove God exists to me)

[el_bryanto]

33. Nods - this is sort of the chasm that can't really be crossed

I believe in God because I've experienced his presence - felt communion with him. But that experience can't really be shared or communicated to others - they have to seek it for themselves.

From the experience the rest of my beliefs about him kind of flow - but without that experience the rest fall apart.

Bryant

[edhopper]

34. As long as you realize

that other people might experience things with equal conviction, which might not be true at all.

[skepticscott]

37. What you seem to mean

is that you've experienced a warm and fuzzy feeling at certain moments in your life, and have chosen for no reason other than emotional need to associate those feelings with the "god" that you had been indoctrinated to believe in.

[el_bryanto]

38. I understand that's your interpretation.

I guess that's better than calling me delusional as some have.

Bryant

[skepticscott]

39. Well, delusional is another way

that some might refer to it, as you say. But I think deep-seated emotional need and unshakeable rationalization cover it well enough, in the absence of any objective evidence for the nature of your "experiences".

[Lordquinton]

36. Replace LORD with DONALD

and you get how some people actually think about themselves, and I don't think that's unique to our time.

[uriel1972]

41. That's an awful lot of scenery for one small stage...

Makes you wonder.

[nil desperandum]

55. Creator

I've always been amazed at how arrogant we humans are when it comes to creating God....man created God to explain those things man could not explain, but placed man at the center of it all by declaring that God created man in the image of God and then hangs around to hear the prayers of these creations....

Were I to assume that an omnipotent being created the universe I would be pretty well convinced that such a being would have no use for the likes of mankind, a dirty murderous species of mammal that infests the planet like a plague destroying vast swaths of the land created by this God....

I am far more convinced that this accident of cosmic chemistry created our species, with a similarity more akin to our base animal counterparts than we care to admit....we kill our young, we abandon our elderly, we take territory from each other we murder each other all over the planet in amazingly large numbers and while we have the capacity to be extremely kind and generous to each other more often than not we are cruel and selfish. Hardly the actions of any being worthy of creation by a God or the consideration of a God. Our language has created the ability to lie to each other, and we are very good at being liars. We lie about everything every day, we lie on our taxes, we lie to our spouses, we lie to our constituents, we lie to our children we lie to our coworkers. It would appear we developed language to better articulate our fabrications than to advance our understanding and communication with each other.

Our narcissistic self image refuses to easily accept the idea that we mean nothing to the universe and our existence bears no value to the earth or the universe in any capacity. We are however, no more than the dinosaur the apex species of our time. When our time is over the earth will begin again with a different species, perhaps the next species will be the one that understands the concept that just because we came from animals doesn't mean we have to act like them always red in tooth and claw.

If your God helps you define others as lesser humans, as infidels, as somehow unworthy I'm not even a little interested in those concepts. If your God helps you shoot an abortion doctor or fly a plane into a building then I hope your God dissipates quickly and you come to your senses before you act on the wishes of your God....we humans are close to having long outlasted our usefulness to this planet, if there ever was a time we were useful to it once we are done soiling it to the point of making it uninhabitable for ourselves we will slough off and be replaced...as it always has been with life on earth one species dies and another is born.

[hrmjustin]

60. That is right.

[Humanist_Activist]

70. People seem to forget that YHWH is a tribal god, born from a polytheistic pantheon...

as thought up by some Canaanite tribes about 2600 years ago or so.

The fact that this god and his demigod son became popular in much of Europe around the time of the Late Roman Empire is due to the circumstances of that time and the political situation of that time as well, no different than the spread of Hinduism or Buddhism in their respective spheres and countries.

This god wasn't even written up as nothing more than the god of a single nation or kingdom until after that nation was conquered and its people dispersed to other nations. For their religion to survive, they had to change the nature of their god, and they did.

This explains some of the contradictions about the "God of Israel" who also happened to have created the universe, but still prefers being the god of one nation, not all, or sometimes its all nations, but only from later writings, not earlier ones. He doesn't care about those who aren't his chosen people, until later that is.