• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Evolution?

Magic Man

Reaper of Conversation
right... so it's an appeal to authority....

wa:do

Sure, but it's not the fallacy of appeal authority. I'm not saying it's right just because he says it is. I'm saying you could check into his ideas and see why he's right. Unfortunately, I've only read his book once, so I can't really explain it very well.
 

gnomon

Well-Known Member
The fact everything came from one particle is so childish to me!
psssss: Where did the particle come from?

What are your views?

Evolutionary theory does not state that everything came from one particle. Such a theory does not even encompass everything.

Current cosmological models regarding the Big Bang do not state that everything came from a particle. The "Big Bang" model holds conjecture during that moment defined as Planck time in which current physical models do not work to describe the state of the universe during that time. Even for a scientist with the stature of Penrose or Hawking to say that we came from a particle does not mean much. But, they don't say that.

Perhaps when you said particle you meant really small point but even that holds no meaning for the various theories regarding string theory and quantum mechanics. At least, not in the manner you present it.

Everything has to come from something, but that would be impossible because that would be a never ending cycle until you meet the beggining, so there has to be a God

Perhaps everything has to come from something and that some event called First Cause exists.

However, speculating the existence of any god as First Cause is not a scientific argument nor is it a logical argument.

Relating god as First Cause is more of a language game than an argument.

Given that I stopped reading the thread once it turned into a discussion of the merit of Jay's posting style, of which I shall not comment for the sake of the pot calling the kettle black, I have no clue if you have responded to the subject any more.
 

Alceste

Vagabond
Funny stuff time. :D

No kidding! But to sum it up, the idea is that the universe does not have a temporal boundary. Picture walking around on a sphere - you will never arrive at the beginning or end of it no matter how careful you are to walk in a "linear" fashion. As far as I gather, he proposes the universe is shaped this way, and is expanding like a balloon, or something like that, which would explain why everything appears to be moving away from us at the same rate.

Wouldn't this also work against bringing up Hawking?

wa:do

No, that's citing a source. Could be that Jay is also just citing a source, but until he tells us why he brought up Godel, I only have wiki to go by.

Gödel essentially constructed a formula that claims that it is unprovable in a given formal system. If it were provable, it would be false, which contradicts the fact that in a consistent system, provable statements are always true. Thus there will always be at least one true but unprovable statement.
...
Gödel was a convinced theist and a lifelong Christian. He rejected the notion that God was impersonal, as Einstein believed. He believed firmly in an afterlife, stating: “I am convinced of the afterlife, independent of theology. If the world is rationally constructed, there must be an afterlife."
 

Autodidact

Intentionally Blank
Everything has to come from something, but that would be impossible because that would be a never ending cycle until you meet the beggining, so there has to be a God

1. Please stop with the giant font. Now that's childish.
2. So you want to debate the existence of God? Why are you in the evolution forum?
 

Autodidact

Intentionally Blank
Hi, in thread late. So I gather that our creationist friend remained clueless, and did not return to learn anything, and that we are done evaluating the merits of Jayhawker Soule's posts? Would that be about it?
 

Alceste

Vagabond
Hi, in thread late. So I gather that our creationist friend remained clueless, and did not return to learn anything, and that we are done evaluating the merits of Jayhawker Soule's posts? Would that be about it?

We're also discussing the merit (or lack thereof, depending on your perspective) of the First Cause / Uncaused Cause argument. I say it's childish circular rubbish, Jay says everything but that is childish circular rubbish. :p And we're tossing around some pretty weighty names in the thinking department to spice things up.
 

painted wolf

Grey Muzzle
well...someone has to keep the discussion on track-ish. :cool:

I'm pretty sure Jay doesn't go for the 'first cause argument'. :D

wa:do
 

Autodidact

Intentionally Blank
Well, as to the argument from first causes, I think that it has not been established that the universe ever had a start. It may well be eternal, in which case the argument fails there.
 

Alceste

Vagabond
Well, as to the argument from first causes, I think that it has not been established that the universe ever had a start. It may well be eternal, in which case the argument fails there.

Agreed. From what I gather, the Big Bang theory itself is based mainly on observations of distant stars that appear to be moving away from us due to a phenomenon called "red shift". But they're moving away at the same speed in every direction, so there's something dodgy about the proposition that the red shift indicates the universe is expanding in a manner that is similar to an explosion. Wouldn't we have to be in the geographical centre of the bang for everything to be moving away from us at the same speed? I think the red shift is caused by something else - maybe some force other than velocity is acting on the light of distant stars - but I will wait for cleverer monkeys than me to tell me what that might be.
 

Kilgore Trout

Misanthropic Humanist
Agreed. From what I gather, the Big Bang theory itself is based mainly on observations of distant stars that appear to be moving away from us due to a phenomenon called "red shift". But they're moving away at the same speed in every direction, so there's something dodgy about the proposition that the red shift indicates the universe is expanding in a manner that is similar to an explosion. Wouldn't we have to be in the geographical centre of the bang for everything to be moving away from us at the same speed? I think the red shift is caused by something else - maybe some force other than velocity is acting on the light of distant stars - but I will wait for cleverer monkeys than me to tell me what that might be.

Imagine dots drawn on the surface of a balloon. As you blow the balloon up, and the surface expands, every dot moves further away from every other dot. There is no center.
 

Alceste

Vagabond
Imagine dots drawn on the surface of a balloon. As you blow the balloon up, and the surface expands, every dot moves further away from every other dot. There is no center.

Sure, but what about the dots on the inside of the balloon in relation to the dots on the outside (picture a really thick balloon)? I'm pretty sure the red shift indicates the same velocity in every direction, not just on a single plane. Maybe the saddle-shaped universe works better than the balloon.
 

Autodidact

Intentionally Blank
I'm not too good at this stuff, Alceste (hurts my head) but I think the idea is that it's an analogy, and you have to sort of extrapolate. You can imagine it on the surface of a balloon. Now extrapolate that idea to a 3-dimensional space, like the whole balloon including the air inside. It's all rushing away from everything else in every direction at once. Unlike the balloon-inside, there's no center. In that way, it's like the balloon-skin analogy. You can't really picture it, just almost grasp the concept. Or so they tell me.
 

Kilgore Trout

Misanthropic Humanist
Sure, but what about the dots on the inside of the balloon in relation to the dots on the outside (picture a really thick balloon)? I'm pretty sure the red shift indicates the same velocity in every direction, not just on a single plane. Maybe the saddle-shaped universe works better than the balloon.

There is no inside of the balloon - it's an analogy to show how numerous objects can all grow farther apart, without there being a "center" from which they are all moving away from.
 

fantome profane

Anti-Woke = Anti-Justice
Premium Member
Sure, but what about the dots on the inside of the balloon in relation to the dots on the outside (picture a really thick balloon)? I'm pretty sure the red shift indicates the same velocity in every direction, not just on a single plane. Maybe the saddle-shaped universe works better than the balloon.
Forget about the inside of the balloon. What this analogy is doing is trying to explain a three dimensional expansion by comparing it to a two dimensional expansion.

The surface of a balloon is a two dimensional plane that has been curved into the third dimension. If you can imagine a three dimensional universe being curved into a fourth dimension then you start to get the idea of what we are talking about here. Of course you can’t really imagine such a thing, no one can. That is why we use the balloon analogy.
 
Top