Our Place in the Universe

It's always a good time to have a beer...

No wait...

Beer can always help make good times...


Ummmmm...

Good beer is no waste of time...


OK OK...

I got this...



Three dimensions of space and one of time...

 

Ah yes, it is the same time all around the world. Cheers

 

Apparently the rise of the big bang from the quantum vacuum does not violate the conservation of energy, just as the spontaneous occurrence of a particle and its antiparticle, and their subsequent annihilation (or not, if it happens near enough to the event horizon of a black hole and one falls in, an event known as Hawking radiation, which causes black holes to "evaporate") does not violate the conservation of energy.

To really understand what's going on probably requires a level of mathematical facility that takes years of study to acquire. But since QM is the most massively successful construct in all of human history, it's a good bet it's right about this also.

On my other point, if the concept of "origin" turns out to be a false concept, and there is no "origin" in the common sense of the word, then there is no "creation" and a "creator" also becomes a meaningless concept: There is no creator if there is no creation.

We know from relativity that time is a very different dimension than what we experience in this slow-moving low-gravity world. A great deal about the universe is entirely unlike our experience of it. Thus extrapolations of philosophy to such deep questions as origins (i.e. religion) are baseless and probably wrong. Only science can tell us anything about how the world actually works.

 

The Galaxy Song. Never gets old!

 

According to quantum mechanics there is no such thing as a perfect vacuum. Particles like quarks come into and go out of existence spontaneously. Therefore, it is not correct to say the big bang arose out of "nothing", since there is no place of absolute "nothingness". Our universe, which is likely just one of many (the "Mulitverse) arose out of the normal workings of quantum mechanics. I recommend this book: " The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions" by Alex Rosenberg.

 

Oh, ok...

 

Actually the beer time problem was solved by the Physicist Dave Barry. He figured out that when time stood still, the void created was beer time. More specifically, if a digital clock was stuck blinking 00:00, that meant beer time had arrived.

 

Cool, then by definition, since my VCR is still blinking 00:00 anytime is a good time for a beer.

 

There is no evidence for a multiverse, and probably cannot ever be. The known laws of physics do not prohibit it, but to say it is "likely" is an opinion based on nothing at all (just like religion).

I agree with the rest of your post.

 

Interesting video clip of Common ape-like human/chimp genetic ancestry.

 

Well clip just explains everything... and what an authoritative source, a Roman Catholic!

 

Are you prejudiced against Catholics, Spiderman? The Catholics believe in god, of course, but they also believe in evolution and an old Earth. They just believe that evolution is the way god made this changing Earth and the changing life on it to be what it is, and that the six days of creation is an allegory, not a literal history. Maybe they learned their lesson with Galileo, that when you argue against science you're gonna get egg on your face eventually.

 

That's just his opinion (one in the video.) Every church/belief is going to have a few odd ones.

While my background is Bible church, I tend to agree 90% with my Catholic friends, more so on typical FHOP topics.

 

My point is: towards the end of his presentation he points out that "he is even a Roman Catholic!" as if this makes him some kind of an authoritative source. No, that simply makes him "religious". Now I don't know this guy's heart of hearts but I can judge him on the fruits of his labor (Matt 7:15-20, Luke 6:44, et. all). He is preaching what is contrary to the Bible... it, the Bible, must be taken at face-value (literally) or it is left up to interpretation by none other than sinful man who by nature would certainly rather do things his own way and not told what to do or how to act or what to think.

Hope that clarifies my point.

My wife wanted me to add that it wouldn't have matter if he said "Baptist" or "Presbyterian" or whatever.

 

Today is St. Patrick's Day and I don't care if he was Catholic or what. Do I have to drink Guinness? Its beer time even in Japan and the Toyota factory workers may be drinking Kirin. They don't give a hoot about who St. Patrick was or how the universe was created.
KAMPAI !

 

I like beerpie.

 

There never were any snakes in Ireland. St. Patrick's claim to fame is that he drove the snakes out. I guess that's pretty typical of religion: Base your claims on false premises.

Thank you for your explanation.

I take his claim to be Roman Catholic not to mean that he is an authority, but rather that a person can be a devout Christian and still believe in science (in this case, evolution).

You make the claim that the Bible "must" be taken literally. But I'd offer that the people who compiled the canon held the contrary view: The Bible is a testament to the faith of its authors, and a collection of statements of doctrine. Many Christians (e.g. a Congregational UCC minister of my acquaintance, who asserts that there is no faith-based reason to take it literally) read the Bible as an allegory created by people of faith who lacked our modern scientific understanding of the world.

In fact, some people feel that it's essential that the Bible be allegorical so that each individual's own personal faith becomes a part of the experience.

But back to the compilers of the canon: They were well aware of contradictions in the Bible, such as the two disparate creation accounts, and the two different crucifixion accounts. They were not bothered by this precisely because they did not view the work literally. Jesus himself spoke in parables, which are not literal. When you say that the Bible must be literal you are telling god how he can or cannot tell his story, if indeed the Bible is god's story.

And even if you take it literally, you are forced to make some "imperfect human" interpretations, such as the meanings of the obviously fictional monsters in Revelations. A Pentecostal minister (actually the chaplain at Sandstone FCI where I was a resident for some months) told me that everything in the Bible was literal EXCEPT for the prophetic books, which are open to interpretation, and very large round numbers, which are approximate, such as the number of people Jesus fed with the loaves and fishes. So even this hard-core Bible literalist, who considered belief in evolution to be a greater sin than even denial of god's existence, exercised some degree of interpretation.

I'm afraid that Bible literalism is untenable, and that even the most hard-core literalist ends up allowing some measure of interpretation.

Do you take Jesus's parables literally? He clearly did not, as he explained some of them as being allegories. If Jesus was god and used allegory, then how can you claim that god could not have used allegory in the Bible?

This does not solve the question of evolution. But it does mean that the Bible cannot be used to disprove evolution. And indeed, most sincere Christians accept evolution while still holding the Bible as the word of god. It's just that they allow that he might have told his story with a bit more imagination, and a bit more faith in his readers, than merely to recite literally true facts.

 

For such an enlighten guy, you sure do come up with some zingers.
Yes, I take the parables literally… their meaning. As you know, parables were a way to covey a moral a spiritual lesion back then. Most if not all of the people that Jesus dealt with were illiterate and this was a common way teach a lesson.


Well let us just take the parable of the prodigal son for example. So a man’s son thinks he can go his own way and takes all the money his father has set aside for his future and takes off to hit the town. After blowing all the money doing every bad thing possible, the son comes to the conclusion his way isn’t the right way but wonders if his father would take him back. Goes back to his father and asks forgiveness. His father is overjoyed, forgives him and even throws him a party.

Much in the same way God, with open arms, waits for us to figure it out and come back to Him. I take that literally yes.


You can learn a lot from a story.