For Christians - why is the Universe so big?

Hope he does that -- or that we get to a new page quickly. This is an interesting thread -- but a major pain in the butt to read with all that horizontal scrolling.

You just did that ..

Guys apologise - will do that later today!

I runn screens 1600 * 1200 so never noticed a change sorry!

BTW

1. Belief in God is a matter of personal make up / faith - not logic or science in my book

2. Science can lend weight against competing theories by showing inconsistencies or how improbable they may be

3. I am not trying to link the evidence proves God, rather the evidence discourages random chance and I personally believe in a creationist intelligence

4. I hate infinities - and the wild guess this allows, will speak more on this later

5. Frank - thanks, I have feelings too!

G__Day, I'm curious how you can define the backdrop to the universe as green.

With the limitations of time that "science" gives to the universe, evolution, or even god, would be impossible. That is, if we go with a thoery which begins with the big bang. If however we stay with a theory which allows for infinite time, and the big bang also being the end to a universe which had long since been winding down, and had there been infinite such universes before that, then it makes sense that eventually, in one of those universe something as complex as time could form, with only so much time under the belt of the current universe. In fact, with infinite time, it is not at all improbable that a god could eventually form. If technology on earth continues to progress as it does, eventually the race of man would work out it's faults, even mortality, learn to create life, and organize our own universes subject to our superlative judgement and mercy. This is of course assuming much evolution along with technology, but the potential is not absurd.

Colour of the Universe

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/space/SpaceRepublish_456194.htm



/file this under stange facts for Trivial pursuit nights!

The limitiations of finite timespawns make certain creation mechanisms unlikely. For the science guided faith views this might just mean God nudged random chance in the right direction at the right time.

Too it would infer elements of our creation models are weak.

I agree that our level of technology advancement is progressing almost exponentially. Using the civilisation levels matrix we are within 200 years of being a type 1 civilisation (able to harness the equivalent of all the Sun's energy falling on our planets surface).

http://library.thinkquest.org/C003763/index.php?page=concepts04&tqskip1=1&tqtime=0716

Physicsts estimate we may be at type 2 civilisation within 3,000 years (harness all the Suns energy) and type 3 (harness galatic levels of power sources within 20,000 years.

The right understanding of theoretical physics might allow us to rapidly accelerate that level of technology assimilation.

So we become more powerful every day.

Before you can postulate infinite time you need a mechanism to allow it. Two spring to mind - the Steady state Universe or the collapsing and rebounding Universe. Both have serious problems at the moment by our existing (incomplete) theoretical frameworks.

I feel we need to understand Vaccuum energy levels, loop quantum gravity, quintessence and M-Theory far better before we can rule things as definitely in or out. But I still dis-like infinities - they allow fudges. Black holes are being challenged by Grav-stars theorems - within the event horizon and before the singularity forms scientists propose a high angular spin vortex of teh collapsing matter that imparts enough centifugal force to prevent a total collapse into a singularity - thus preventing infinities in the calculations, yet still preserving all the expected properties of blackhole outside its event horizon.

g_day

in an infinite amount of time all probobilities can occur.

at least once.

Never forget the words...


...we really do not know at this time.


Something else I consider important:

The science which gives us the information we use to make all our suppositions about what "all this" IS...

...is brand spanking new.

Astronomy, the way we know it, came into existence during the lifetimes of people currently alive.

If the amount of information necessary to make a reasonable GUESS about what the UNIVERSE is; how it came to be; and how it operates were a yardstick...

...what we currently know and can infer probably is so small, atoms on one end of the yardstick would have to be divided to denote it.


We know practically nothing.


So some of the stuff being offered here is over-reaching on a galactic scale.

rue, you beg the question. Much depends on the character if the events in question. If all are possible than any can occur in any finite interval of time as well. To assert that they must of necessity occur in infinite time is a different matter entirely, and one which demands a more precise definition of the universe of possibilities in question.

One should also not fail to consider the possibility that what we may out of ignorance choose to view as probanbilistic events may in truth merely mask our failure to apprehend a deterministic model behind them. Conclusions drawn from a probabilistic approximation may be invalid.

g__day "Physicsts estimate we may be at type 2 civilisation within 3,000 years (harness all the Suns energy) and type 3 (harness galatic levels of power sources within 20,000 years. "

Where did you get that? This is quite an impossible statement for any physicist I know of to make! Unless (s)he is a journalist..

Frank:

"If the amount of information necessary to make a reasonable GUESS about what the UNIVERSE is; how it came to be; and how it operates were a yardstick...
...what we currently know and can infer probably is so small, atoms on one end of the yardstick would have to be divided to denote it.
We know practically nothing. "

This is maybe an interesting statement from a mouth of Socrates, but I doubt anyone knows how much we know. I wouldn't be picky if it weren't you , Franky!

Ahhh...as an agnostic who has so many discussions and disagreements with theists and atheists, I try never to miss an opportunity to express my agnosticism with the scientific pronouncements of our times.

The TRUTH about reality and existence may be so far beyond what we can comprehend...many of the suppositions we are making may be laughable.

We really do not know.

And, as I pointed out, the science is NEW.



Acknowledging one's ignorance is probably a first step on the road to intelligence.
:wink:

If you have any evidence that a God actually exists, please post it. If not, the probability is somewhere between 0 and 1, and my guess that the odds of any god existing is extremely small, with the odds of the Judeo-Christian version practically zero.

1. Nothing that we have found in the universe so far requires a creator. Everything seems to be explainable by natural laws. Saying "God did it" adds no information to the theory, and just leaves us with the same questions, but an added complexity that violates Occam's Razor. What did god make the universe out of, did he have a choice of physical laws, why did he create it, where did god come from, does god have a physical presence, etc.

2. There is no logical reason to create billions of galaxies with billions of stars each just to provide one planet to breed human beings on. One could argue that god created gazillions of planets with intelligent life, of course. But how could we feel "special" if he did?

3. The fossil record, DNA evidence, and observation clearly show that life evolved on earth over the last 3.8 billion years. For the first 3 billion years no multi-celled animals existed. There is no logical reason for the delay if life was created. There is no need for god if life evolved.

4. 99% of all species that ever existed on earth are gone. They were replaced by other species, which were replaced by still other species, each one becoming more like the forms we see living today. Why would a god make and discard so many prototypes before coming up with the current models?

5. The human body does not reflect good design practices, with everything from birth defects, autoimmune diseases, injury-prone joints, useless appendages that cause problems (wisdom teeth, sinuses, appendix), to unwanted body hair. If a god created woman, he is sadistic as well as an incompetent engineer. Many other animals are not optimally designed, but reflect the tinkering you would expect if they evolved naturally.

6. There is no logical reason to create parasites to infest, cripple and kill innocent children who have no access to medical care. Why would god want or allow parasites to torment wild animals? It does make sense that a mindless process of evolution produced them.

7. There is no consensus in the world about which god is the true one, and some of them claim that anyone who does not believe as they do will go to hell. There is no rational basis for choosing among them, and most people believe whatever they were taught to believe as children. Most claim divine revelation as their basis. Some have mutually exclusive beliefs, so they can't all be right. Since god has failed to indicate CLEARLY AND TO EVERYBODY which religion is right, one must assume that either god doesn't care what people believe, or he simply doesn't exist. If he doesn't care, he might as well not exist.

8. A study of the world's religions shows that the concept of god has evolved along with human societies. Gods are generally modeled on human traits and desires, rather than being independent of them. Therefore, it seems that god was created by man to explain the unknown and give man a way to affect his fate: by propitiating the gods with rituals, prayer and sacrifice.

9. There is no indication that god intercedes in any way in human existence. Heartfelt prayers by his most faithful followers go unanswered, and it is despicable to say that "sometimes the answer is no" when you have prayed for the life of your child to be spared or a disaster to be averted. If god makes no difference in the world, his existence is unnecessary.

10. "Is he (God) willing to prevent evil but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?" [Epicurus, 350-?270 BC]

Quantum mechanics. Mutations. Asteroids hitting the earth. The formation of galaxies, stars, and planets. The exact location and timing of volcanoes, earthquakes, and hurricanes. Yes I understand that they are caused by chaotic processes and are theoretically predictable if we had enough information, but for all practical purposes they are random.

The oft-repeated argument that it is impossible for life to evolve by "random chance" is based on an erroneous calculation. Hoyle proposed that bacteria evolved in space and rained down on the earth, his "panspermia" theory. He and Wickramasinghe wanted to show that a fully-formed bacterium was very unlikely to have popped out of the goo, so they made assumptions that would give them that answer. No biologist believes that a modern bacterium with 2000 enzymes with 300 amino acids each just randomly assembled!

Certainly amino acids do randomly string themselves together, and gazillions of these assembly processes would be running in parallel all over the earth for millions of years. They didn't have to form any particular sequence, since ANY sequence that was self-replicating would do. They didn't need DNA to replicate, either, since RNA or even a simpler precursor such as Kauffman's autocatalytic polymer catalysts would do. Clay substrates may have served as templates. Some molecules may have been caught up in naturally occurring lipid spheres.

Once a self-replicating molecule assembled, the process of evolution could take it in ANY direction. It didn't have to produce a particular species or DNA sequence. Whatever evolved, evolved. Mutations are random, but the process of natural selection is not. In any case, it took 2 billion years for prokaryotic cells to evolve into eukaryotic cells, and another billion years to get to the point where it could mutate efficiently (possibly due to the ability to reproduce sexually) leading to the Cambrian explosion.

Hoyle also seems to think that eugenics is a good way of dealing with the accumulation of human genetic defects. I don't agree with his assumptions, calculations, or ethics myself.

panspermia

Re the color of the universe, it turns out that it is actually beige, not green. You must have missed the correction to the original calculation:

Color of the universe

I don't think there is much to be gained from allowing this discussion to degenerate to disputes over whether or not our understanding of physics compels us to accept the idea of God or, on the contrary, precludes it.

g_day has already noted that the ideas are distinct and that modern physics neither precludes nor proves the existence of God. The march of physics has revealed more details about the origin of our detectable universe, and opened new details about the chain of cause and effect in our current models for fundamental physical laws, However, despite all its advances and the beauty of current theories, it does not, nor does it claim to, provide answers to our questions concerning the origins of existrence.

Just a note to everyone, it doesn't found an argument to say "Scientists say." "Scientist is such a general term, it is largely useless for credibility.

G__Day, I will retract the word "infinite" from my previous statement. Infinite time would never be REQUIRED for any possible event, anyway. I do see that error. However I believe the vast, imponderable ammount of time necessary to create our type of universe (one supporting intelligent life) should not have a limit set to it, which "scientists" have given to our current universe. I'm assuming a collapsing/rebounding universe theory supports multiple big bangs. Am I correct? Or has anyone traced a theoretical "first big bang"?

rue,

In an infinite amount of time, not everything can happen - some things stay impossible - but randomly possible things may happen with discernible chance.

Frank

Many of the sciences - developed from the basis of what has gone before them, they are not all totally new, nor discount scientific process before them, they merely extend and refine a model of reality.

To say we know nothing is way too imprecise for me. You are making assumptions (that possibly include infinite complexity somewhere) that need to be listed and validated to be scientifically credible.

Terry

The probability God exists is either 0 or 1 - depending on your viewpoint, I don't see how it can be possibly anything else

As I said absolute 'Proof'of a God that is outside our system being found by anything within our system - absolute proof - is extremely unlikely - until the day comes he pops up and says "Here I am!"

Your questions are good enough that I will respond to each as best I can later today.

SCoates

I do not hold with a "bouncing Universe" I will re-check Hawking's Universe in a Nutshell and get back to you why. From memory you have to play very strange games with spacetime curvature to get this model t look remotely feasible.

as george stated this whole "big" thing is the anthropomorphosizing of 'size'.

to a small insignificant bio being 'everything' would obviously appear somewhat 'large'.

and as far as 'god' goes (not very), the concept of 'god' is an attempt to avoid the basic chaos of the universe, in that alluding to its being the invention of a sentient being (in our image) implies that there must be an underlying logic, and pattern to everything.

reality is, of course, something 'else' entirely.

truth
BoGoWo, I can't imagine size and time that is not anthropocentric or "anthropomorphic". Man IS the measure of all things. He does the measuring.