God did not "create" anything.

[logician]

I'll go one further, no god created anything, because there was no creation.

 

[ManTimeForgot]

Is it my birthday? MTF sticking his neck that far out?

Religion ain't forestalling nuffink. It's religious nonsense within science itself that often causes the wheels to spin without imparting momentum. Whay religious nonsense? Ancestor worship, for one. Newton certainly made a quantum leap in his time, but that time is past. Holding on to "sacred truths," instilling "law in honor of accomplishment," in a domain that is far better served by theory; this is the kind of "blind faith" for which the science types rightly speak out against religion. Newton will always be worthy of honor; but he has been the giant. Now science must realise that in scientific terms, he has already past being a shoulder. (I could be wrong on this tidbit.) The last I heard it told, Newtonian mechanics now only exists in the classroom.

What am I rambling on about? Dark matter, of course. It is currently "the best scientific explanation for the discrepancies between theory and empirical evidence" or some such Scripture handed down from the high priesthood of Astrology (cough, cough) - I mean, astronomy. Forty years, countless man-hours, untold quantities of cash; and for what? Zippo. Zilch. Nada. Let Sherlock tell it:

When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains - however improbable - must be the truth.

Dollars to donuts, it is a misapplication of the philosophy of a fictional detective; combined with someone (once upon a time) not using the scientific method, that is what resulted in this completely extraneous variable. Once upon a time, someone must have thought it impossible that we do not understand gravity.

We do not understand gravity. We do not understand time. Heck, we don't even understand space!

As for the Big Bang, there is no real alternative explanation; you mentioned that one. But you failed to mention that rather than being "religious nonsense," the BBT is actually doing its job; prediction outcomes and holding up under scrutiny. Without turning this rant into an astronomy lecture; we thought we knew more about Cepheid variables and spatial expansion than we knew about the BBT. Then we thought again. I thought I was a SAP, but BBT without the Inflationary Corollary works fine for me.

Still ain't true. Ain't gonna be law. It's gonna be theory building better theory.

And if that ain't enough presents for me, the MTF-meister trys to be all logical and state that existence is some kind of boundary condition for that which is beyond existence. Don't you know reality trumps logic? You know what a back-door is, n'est-ce pas? I contend that god at least works through the span of human conception. I have an atheist on record in this very forum who would attest that all atheists accept that god is a concept. And I ask you, what is a concept, and where does one keep such a thing?

For the record, dark matter serves at least one useful function. It pulled an extraneous variable out of the ather just like Creationism tried, but it is still more science than Creationism will ever be. Someone may have formed an hypothesis before the first meaningful observation; but that's the human condition, we ask questions. It is easy to forget to stop asking questions because uncertainty smells like fear; because the scope of science has become so unimaginably vast, assumption becomes mandatory for deduction. Ain't like in Sherlock' s day when everything was biology.

Did god actually create anything? Well, it was a team effort. We made the unknown more knowable by naming it god, yet it is the shared conception of god that calls us all together to do science. To know god, to know that god does not exist; these will always be good reasons to do science. God is waiting for us, either way.

Pulsars in deep space don't show any evidence of time dilation. Either our methods of determining distance of stellar objects is wrong or relativity is wrong. Whatever the truth actually is it is not the current incarnation of the BBT with or without inflation, dark matter, or dark energy. Heck check out "Dark Flow"... We do know next to nothing about the universe. We are grasping at straws that are invisible and pretending that we have more straws in our grasp than we do.

And why do I care about creationism in science? I care only in as much as it stays out of science. The point I was making is so many creationists look at BBT and go "Oh that's just let there be light" and that is why BBT is so lasting. If you can think of a reason why BBT is more lasting, then I am all ears.

MTF

 

[camanintx]

Pulsars in deep space don't show any evidence of time dilation. Either our methods of determining distance of stellar objects is wrong or relativity is wrong.

Source?

 

[imaginaryme]

Pulsars in deep space don't show any evidence of time dilation. Either our methods of determining distance of stellar objects is wrong or relativity is wrong. Whatever the truth actually is it is not the current incarnation of the BBT with or without inflation, dark matter, or dark energy. Heck check out "Dark Flow"... We do know next to nothing about the universe. We are grasping at straws that are invisible and pretending that we have more straws in our grasp than we do.

And why do I care about creationism in science? I care only in as much as it stays out of science. The point I was making is so many creationists look at BBT and go "Oh that's just let there be light" and that is why BBT is so lasting. If you can think of a reason why BBT is more lasting, then I am all ears.

MTF

If, therefore, by means of thought, one wishes to attempt to retrace the course of time, one must search in the past for energy concentrated in a lesser number of quanta. The initial condition must be a state of maximum concentration. It was in trying to formulate this condition that the idea of the primeval atom was germinated. Who knows if the evolution of theories of the nucleus will not, some day, permit the consideration of the primeval atom as a single quantum?
~Georges Lemaitre, The Primeval Atom.

One of the books I'm reading concerns the unification of cosmology with particle physics. I found this excerpt interesting in that the father of the theory doesn't mention any "big banging" nor "god," only the consideration of the Second Law of Thermodynamics being traced back to its logical roots. Since I love the LHC, I would have to say that BBT is A'OK.

But I honestly believe that the frontiers crossed by the LHC will be monumental for not only science, but philosophy; in that eventually we will learn more of what it is that makes us human.

 

[imaginaryme]

God did not create evil. You make Him out to be a monster by saying He created everything.

There is no scripture which supports ex-Nihlo creation.

I don't agree. The RCC has "infallibly decreed" that god created the universe from nothing. Since I have Catholic roots, I would like to think they used Scripture to make such an assessment. But, then again; it's the RCC...

Another school of thought has it that god carved out an area of not-god, for such things as hell and evil; but if such is the case, what of omnipotence?

I personally believe that all the "omni-" things are merely a result of the evolution of saying "my god is better than yours" that went on back in the day. For instance, I have an omni-directional joystick; but it only accepts programming in eight directions across a two dimensional plane. I also don't believe in "evil" in the sense that it is anything beyond merely being part of the human condition. Besides, love is far more capable of evil than evil is.

 

[imaginaryme]

Source?

I don't know; got me looking.
Here's what I found so far: General relativity survives gruelling pulsar test -- Einstein at least 99.95 percent right - Biology Online Which, as the title implies, suggests otherwise. But it was either the pulsar or the quasar that "may or may not violate some physical law" and got me all spun up the other night when I started the "measuring the cosmos" thread. I'm still on it.

 

[imaginaryme]

I don't know; got me looking.
Here's what I found so far: General relativity survives gruelling pulsar test -- Einstein at least 99.95 percent right - Biology Online Which, as the title implies, suggests otherwise. But it was either the pulsar or the quasar that "may or may not violate some physical law" and got me all spun up the other night when I started the "measuring the cosmos" thread. I'm still on it.

OK... what we may actually be looking for is Lorentz symmetry violation. Everything looks like pdfs from the arXiv... this may take a while...

I'm back. Yay! It's a jungle in there, boys and girls. This is likely the sourceless source = http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2009/10/12/a-new-challenge-to-einstein/ Man, that was like work. I picked up a pile of links, learned a bunch of stuff... and MTF can go sit in the corner for this thread. Because it ain't about grasping at straws, it's about making hay. :xp

 

[camanintx]

OK... what we may actually be looking for is Lorentz symmetry violation. Everything looks like pdfs from the arXiv... this may take a while...

I'm back. Yay! It's a jungle in there, boys and girls. This is likely the sourceless source = A New Challenge to Einstein? | Cosmic Variance | Discover Magazine Man, that was like work. I picked up a pile of links, learned a bunch of stuff... and MTF can go sit in the corner for this thread. Because it ain't about grasping at straws, it's about making hay. :xp

Thanks for all of the research, I wish I had the time to keep up with all of the latest in cosmology. Even if we found Einstein's Theory of Relativity to be in error, I don't see how that would call into question our methods of determining distance of stellar objects. Maybe MTF will come back some day and educate us.

 

[ManTimeForgot]

Apologies, haven't really been on in a long time.

Discovery that quasars don't show time dilation mystifies astronomers (though a cursory google search revealed multiple articles all referencing this so I wonder why it was so problematic for everyone else). Even given that I mistakenly said pulsars rather than quasars (happens sometimes when I am working purely off of memory) google still came through for me "pulsars don't show time dilation" still found me the quasar article.


Thing is if you look hard enough BBT has problems, but it is still our most successful model for predicting the behavior of the observable universe. But when scientists start making claims about what will be possible or what can't possibly be true in the future based on this model I balk. Dark matter detectors for years on end haven't found squat. The fact that the model requires things like Dark Energy and Inflation (neither of which have any explanation; they just exist by fiat) should be a strong indicator that more is going on that what we are currently aware of.

And my argument is all done without even going into the tiny mathematical differences that high end cosmologists debate. There is as time progresses more and more diversity amongst cosmologists. Sure you still see Big Bangs, but there are several variations on it most recently you see a strong lack of singularity. You have collapse and new Big Bang predicated on the collapse or near collapse of a previous universe. You have membrane collisions which prompt new Big Bangs all the time (every several trillion years).


We haven't actually tested what happens to light or matter over extremely long distances and times. There are a number of scientists who actually think the laws of physics are different in different parts of the universe. Watch a couple of episodes of Through the Wormhole and then tell me that any of you are still supremely confidant in your or even our understanding of the Cosmos.

We are cosmic ants debating scent trails.

MTF

 

[blackout]

God evolves.

 

[Android]

We are cosmic ants debating scent trails.

Quote of the day!

 

[idea]

AWw, someone rsurrected my old thread

... There are a number of scientists who actually think the laws of physics are different in different parts of the universe. ...

I like this lecture:
[youtube]Q6Gw08pwhws[/youtube]
‪Lecture - 1 Classical Physics‬‏ - YouTube

it's worth the hour to watch it - he talks about the different areas of physics; classical Newtonian vs. quantum / relativistic etc. etc. how our intuition is trained to understand the classical/Newtonian world because that is what we constantly physically interact with - that what we do not conscientiously/physically interact with (the micro world, or the huge macro world) we will not have a good intuition for - but just because our brain finds some things non-intuitive/strange does not mean they do not exist etc. etc. (only he states this far more eloquently - you start wondering about your view of reality by the end) worth the watch!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

back to the OP - in the last 2 years I have tried to subdue my writing style to be a little less forward I should go back and re-write all that...

perhaps I would now rephrase it to say "the word create has not been defined correctly" rather than saying it is a mistranslation..
If I say that I created a new recipe - this does not mean I made the food out of nothing, but rather found a new way to "rearrange" what was there...
perhaps "creating a song" would be a little closer - this is still not creating out of nothingness, the air was there to vibrate, the piano and the matter that the instruments are made up are there, and I suppose the melody would be influenced by my experiences which is in turn influenced by everything... is a newly composed song really new? or has it always existed in some form?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace%27s_demon
According to determinism, if someone knows the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, their past and future values for any given time are entailed; they can be calculated from the laws of classical mechanics.

determinism would mean that everything has always existed - that we could know the future, because the future is controlled by the past, and so is already present within the past - that nothing really "comes into existence" - that everything that ever was and ever will be is contained within each moment...

but then there is also emergence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence
"Although strong emergence is logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic. How does an irreducible but supervenient downward causal power arise, since by definition it cannot be due to the aggregation of the micro-level potentialities? Such causal powers would be quite unlike anything within our scientific ken. This not only indicates how they will discomfort reasonable forms of materialism. Their mysteriousness will only heighten the traditional worry that emergence entails illegitimately getting something from nothing."(Bedau 1997)


emergence is non-deteministic I think, in that it describes phenomena which cannot be determined by reducing the system into fundamental building blocks etc. etc. - it is not reductionistic, but rather created through interactions... still not "something from nothing" though, still something from something - just a different causal direction within it.

 

[idea]

Job 38:4 "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have understanding.
....

I'll add one more thing on here - some of the scriptures which teach us our spirits existed before we were born - a little about where we were when the foundations of the earth were laid...

Did you ever wonder why we call God our "Heavenly Father" - ? It was because He is the Father of our Spirits -
Num. 16:22 (27:16) God of the spirits of all flesh
Heb. 12:9 subjection unto the Father of spirits
Zech. 12:1 Lord ... formeth the spirit of man within him
Acts 17:28 poets have said, For we are also his offspring
Eccl. 12:7 the spirit shall return unto God who gave it
notice the word "return" - not "come - but going back to a place that we have previously been to - return... We lived in heaven with God before our spirit joined flesh here on Earth.


Our spirit existed before our birth, and it will exist after we die...
Jer. 1:5 Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee


The apostles knew this - that is why they asked Jesus if "this man" sinned before he was born, causing his condition at birth. The apostles believed that we had the ability to sin before we were born...
John 9:2 who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind
(Jesus then replies that no, this man did not sin before he was born - that his blindness was given him so that everyone could witness the miracle of his healing)

We were there with God before the world was formed... God knew us, predestined when we should come upon the earth...
Eph. 1:4 chosen us in him before the foundation of the world
Rom. 8:29 For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate



So what happened before the Earth was formed? Why are we here now?
Before we came to Earth, there was a huge war in heaven.
Rev. 12:7 Michael and his angels fought against the dragon
Luke 10:18 I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven
Jude 1:6 angels which kept not their first estate...

This war was over our education - how we could best progress... God proposed a plan which enabled us to think for ourselves - make mistakes, use our agency, trial / error to learn and grow through experience.... Satan's plan was one of no pain - Satan would not let us make any mistakes, and would save us from pain - at the expense of our free will - we would all be robots whose actions were controlled by Satan... 1/3 of the spirits followed Satan and became fallen angels. The other 2/3rds followed God, and came here. If you are here now, it is because you have already kept your first estate.


See also Prov. 8:22–31; John 1:2, 14; 8:58; 16:28; 17:5, 24; 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 1:2; 3 Ne. 1:13; 26:5; Ether 3:16.


Wordsworth - ode to immortality.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

 

[Flat Earth Kyle]

we all know there are many mistranslations in the Bible. The English word "create" is one of those. The english word "create" should not be in the Bible, it is a mistranslation. "Creationists" have been duped by a translation error.

Hebrew Word Studies
[SIZE=+1]Child Root (Branches of the Tree)[/SIZE]

[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]Pronunciation: "Qa-NeH"[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]Meaning: To build a nest.[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]Comments: This child root is a nest builder, one who builds a nest such as a bird. Also God as in Bereshiyt (Genesis) 14.19; "God most high creator (qaneh) of sky and earth". The English word "create" is an abstract word and a foriegn concept to the Hebrews. While we see God as one who makes something from nothing (create), the Hebrews saw God like a bird who goes about acquiring and gathering materials to build a nest (qen), the sky and earth. The Hebrews saw man as the children (eggs) that God built the nest for. [/FONT]


[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]The English word "create" is an abstract word and a foriegn concept to the Hebrews. [/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]and should therefore NOT be in the Bible.[/FONT]



[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]Blue Letter Bible - Lexicon[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]bara' [/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]1) to create, shape, form[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]a) (Qal) to shape, fashion, create (always with God as subject)[/FONT]

[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]The Greek NT word:[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]Blue Letter Bible - Lexicon[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]ktizō[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]1) to make habitable, to people, a place, region, island[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]a) to found a city, colony, state[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]2) to create[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]a) of God creating the worlds[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]b) to form, shape, i.e. to completely change or transform[/FONT]


[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]Both Greek and Hebrew words do not mean to make something from nothing. The word means form, shape, change, to make habitable. [/FONT]

[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]Here is another interesting little tid bit. About starting out with a void (not starting with nothing)[/FONT]

[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]KJV Gen 1:1-2[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]1 IN the beginning God formed the heaven and the earth.[/FONT]
[FONT=Palatino Linotype, Book Antiqua, Palatino, Georgia]2 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
(Old Testament | Genesis1:1 - 2)

a better translation would be:

1 IN a beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
2 And the earth had become without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
(Old Testament | Genesis1:1 - 2)

notice "had become" - in otherwords, the Earth had one civilization, then the original civilization fell, became fallen, void, without form, and another civilization was then built on the ruins of the first. (The prior civilization involved dinosaurs by the way)

Don't believe me? see for yourself:
the word translated "was" in the KJV is:
hayah
Blue Letter Bible - Lexicon
1) to be, become, come to pass, exist, happen, fall out
a) (Qal)
1) -----
a) to happen, fall out, occur, take place, come about, come to pass
b) to come about, come to pass

Here is Gen 1:2 - click on "was" and you will find hayah
Genesis 1 (Blue Letter Bible: KJV - King James Version)


So the Bible does not teach "something from nothing" nor does it teach that Eden was the first creation on this planet.

Consider a farmer – farmer comes to a new piece of land, and what is the first thing they do? They clear the land. Cut/burn, haul away trees etc. etc.. then install irrigation, check seasons/ how much light etc… determine what to plant – only after they cleared everything else out have the ground prepared, do they start planting what they want to grow etc. etc.

I think it was the same with this Earth. So the gods look around, find one of the rare planets that can support life, in fact does have lower life forms growing on it, and decide it’s a good spot. Like the farmer, they first clear the land. They send a comet with just the right speed/etc to wipe everything out while preserving the life sustaining qualities of the planet. So everything is wiped out, extinction level event, and then the gods give the planet a new name, they might adjust the orbit slightly, add a little water, adjust a few variables – just like a farmer, situate everything and get everything just right, then They plant Eden – paradise, perfection, start everything fresh/new. And things progress from there.

We know about the flood, we also know about armagedon... God coming in, wiping everything out, and starting over.... this is not a new concept.

Now you know who killed the dinos.




[/FONT]

I love this thread!

 

[crocusj]

We would be unable to have "eternal" life, if we had a beginning.

Can't disagree with that.

 

[Azekual]

because thats not the publishers right.

Not true. The publishers have been changing things in the Bible for years (their reasons are beyond me).

This is the second time today I've had to use these sources (I'm presenting the facts only, please for the love of God don't think I agree with the opinions expressed in the videos), I'm impressed.

[youtube]TYwOXIQh424[/youtube]
‪This Bible's no good. I want my money back!‬‏ - YouTube

[youtube]8LFu4IdJdd0[/youtube]
‪Why do modern Bibles disagree if they use the same Greek?‬‏ - YouTube

[youtube]56D0lvZzEf8[/youtube]
‪3 Missing Words That Made Jesus a Sinner‬‏ - YouTube

 

[McBell]

Not true. The publishers have been changing things in the Bible for years (their reasons are beyond me).

This is the second time today I've had to use these sources (I'm presenting the facts only, please for the love of God don't think I agree with the opinions expressed in the videos), I'm impressed.

The problem here is that you are not presenting facts.
You are presenting propaganda.

 

[Chesterton]

A very fine historian and scientist by the name of Carrol Quiguley said that most people think that scientists don't believe in a supernatural realm but that this was a major misconception.

the reasons that scinece does not deal with the supernatural is that it can't be studied or analyzed like the physical universe. It wasn't that they didn't belive a supernatural realm existed.

But he was writing in the 1950s.

He recommended Bill Clinton for a Rhodes scholarship incidently.

 

[logician]

"Even the scientific community backs up the creation story via their big bang reference."

Totally untrue, what existed at the time of the big bang is undefined, as well as "pre" big bang.

 

[Me Myself]

"because"? no. There is no "because" about. Because entails cause/effect. There is no first cause, no cause/effect, no because involved. No beginning, has always been, there is no cause - for something to have a cause it has to have a beginning.



The farmer analogy was just that, a parable. The earth did not always exist - yes the matter/energy that the earth is made up of has always existed, but at one point the matter that is now in the earth was in a star etc. etc..

Laws of thermodynamics, conservation principles - everything changes form, but nothing pops in and out of existence.

The point is, Eden happens after a wipe/reset.

I´ll add to it that Big Bang would be an energy REDISTRIBUTION.

But things do pop in and out of existence according to quantum physics.

I am not a creacionist, and I beleive time had no starting line neither will have a finishing line (or will have infinite of those, however you wan´t to say it), but there is a lot that we keep on discovering.