Origin of Universe: God <vs> Big Bang/Non-God theories

talloola

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I've consistently talked about the need for religious tolerance on this forum. I know a lot of atheists who are tolerant of religion, and I don't think they are any better or worse than anyone else. But in any type of belief system, there are judgemental people. Read through lieexpsr's posts, and try saying that atheists aren't 'so judgemental'. It's simply not true of all atheists. Atheists are no more and no less human and flawed than the human and flawed Christians.

To be clear, I really don't think Catholicism is any better or worse than any other belief system on the planet, atheism included. i think it's all a very personal choice.

Your right
 

Cobalt_Kid

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Feb 3, 2007
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No, you can't say that given enough time etc. that life will develop. If you want to say that then you have to back it up with scientific hypothesis. The hypothesis that life will only begin in 1 of 1 billion circumstances on planets which are suitable for sustaining some kind of life form is backed by scinece. People should not make unfounded statements. Unless you are prepared to back it up with something concrete.

You see, the problem is, the planet earth could be the only planet which supports life. That's not based on ancient religious dogma because that holds no water at all. It is based on science. I hope that doesn't confuse the issue for you.

The Earth and the Solar system would have to be unique for life to just exist here. We know for a fact that there are planets around others stars and while some of the systems would not have planets of suitable size and orbit some do. Given over 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone and billions of other galaxies it would be incredibly unlikely that ours is the only planet with life.

Also given that we still don't understand the process of bio-genesis how can we estimate how likely life is to develope. As I said, given the laws of physics and chemistry being constant if suitable conditions are present and enough time, life will develope. The same process that formed the Solar system and Earth must create a near identical system in the near infinite number of systems in the universe.
 
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Cobalt_Kid

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Sorry, that's not quite what I meant. The term "life cannot be created nor destroyed" refers to the fact that all of life we see infront of us was created from life previous to itself. When a human baby is created, it is created from two sex cells or gametes which contain genetic info. It is not created from nothing, but from a previously living organism.

Yes, everything thing alive today can trace it's roots back to the earliest lifeforms. We're at the endpoint of a 3.6? billion year process.

The reason there are few life forms in the present day is due to the many mass extinctions the earth has experienced over its lifetime. The theory is that every 67 million years or so (I think that's the right number) our solar system comes awefully close to a group of asteroids which bombard our planet and kill off a lot of things.

Yes, that's one theory. There's also periods of heavy vulcanism and glaciation than have played a role in mass extinctions. The oxygen content of the atmosphere may also play a role. I've read that the atmosphere had as little as 11% oxygen 65 million years ago when the last major extinction occured.



I think I already mentioned the same thing previously, just reworded. The earth before its atmosphere was very violent and contained mostly the basic elements, but there were a few special places (like under water beside volcanic vents) that provided a chance for organic compounds and various amino acids to form, which led to the creation of RNA and a protocell.

I don't know if life is a miracle or a chance, and I can't see which I believe to be true, because I've accepted that I really don't know. How I came to be isn't nearly as important as what I'll become in the near future, as far as I'm concerned.

I see the sequence of events that would create the life we know as miraculous. A tiny change long ago would have had a huge effect on our lives now. It's a matter of personal belief, I think life is a miracle.



Science is a wonderful thing. I don't understand why there are so many people out there who are determined to snuff out the creative ideas our communities can put forth. I'm not sure if science can discover what "god" is, only time will tell.

I see science as being neutral. It can be used to help and heal or destroy. The same science that gives us lifesaving drugs and technology that makes our lives more comfortable also produces atomic weapons, germ warfare and pollution.

Science isn't designed to discover God, it's a method of looking at the physical aspects of the universe. It's very good on how to manipulate the physcial laws of the universe and very poor at looking at the deeper implications of our actions. Science is made up of people and for that very fact it will never be truly objective and "pure".
 
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lieexpsr

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Feb 9, 2007
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The Earth and the Solar system would have to be unique for life to just exist here. We know for a fact that there are planets around others stars and while some of the systems would not have planets of suitable size and orbit some do. Given over 100 billion stars in our galaxy alone and billions of other galaxies it would be incredibly unlikely that ours is the only planet with life.

Also given that we still don't understand the process of bio-genesis how can we estimate how likely life is to develope. As I said, given the laws of physics and chemistry being constant if suitable conditions are present and enough time, life will develope. The same process that formed the Solar system and Earth must create a near identical system in the near infinite number of systems in the universe.

I would like you to consider that your guess may be wrong because it is not based on sound science. Consider that science can make an estimate based on factual experimentation that it is not easy for life to begin, based on experimentation. The experimentation I speak of is the thousands of scientists who have and are attempting to create life in a testtube. They have so far been unsuccessful but then they are only a few scientists working in a few labs over a perios of a 100 or 200 years. Evolution worked in nature on the earth in the huge natural laboratory for hundreds of millions of years and only had to succeeed once. This is why Richard Dawkins has postulated that only perhaps 1 in 1,000,000,000 (billion) planets may support any kind of life form. He's not optimistic on there being life to be found by us very soon. And for your added interest of participants of this thread, Dawkins states that in the amount of time that we have been capable of receiving radio transmissions, there has just been ample time for the signals to have travelled from the further reaches of our galaxy but we have received nothing. Not proof in the least but certainly something to base our assumptions upon, regardless of the fact that the signal would be exceedingly weak and the fact that nobody has chosen to send a message, in addition to the fact that we have been incapable of receiving it.

This is science! And he could be wrong but he is basing his assumptions on solid science as opposed to others of us who speculate that it is reasonable to expect that other planets will contain life and we will find it some day. I hope everyone understands that any rebuttal must also be based on firm science, not on what they hope or hope not will be true.
 

lieexpsr

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Feb 9, 2007
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I see the sequence of events that would create the life we know as miraculous. A tiny change long ago would have had a huge effect on our lives now. It's a matter of personal belief, I think life is a miracle.

But you must see Cobalt, that based on my previous post it is not just a matter of personal belief any longer. But life is a miracle in the strict definition of the word miracle, which you can look up. It was very unlikely to occur but that has no religious connotations attached to it in the least. Creations err in their put down of evolution because they just don't understand science and their beliefs prevent them for learning in many cases.
 

Cobalt_Kid

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Feb 3, 2007
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I would like you to consider that your guess may be wrong because it is not based on sound science. Consider that science can make an estimate based on factual experimentation that it is not easy for life to begin, based on experimentation. The experimentation I speak of is the thousands of scientists who have and are attempting to create life in a testtube. They have so far been unsuccessful but then they are only a few scientists working in a few labs over a perios of a 100 or 200 years. Evolution worked in nature on the earth in the huge natural laboratory for hundreds of millions of years and only had to succeeed once. This is why Richard Dawkins has postulated that only perhaps 1 in 1,000,000,000 (billion) planets may support any kind of life form. He's not optimistic on there being life to be found by us very soon. And for your added interest of participants of this thread, Dawkins states that in the amount of time that we have been capable of receiving radio transmissions, there has just been ample time for the signals to have travelled from the further reaches of our galaxy but we have received nothing. Not proof in the least but certainly something to base our assumptions upon, regardless of the fact that the signal would be exceedingly weak and the fact that nobody has chosen to send a message, in addition to the fact that we have been incapable of receiving it.

This is science! And he could be wrong but he is basing his assumptions on solid science as opposed to others of us who speculate that it is reasonable to expect that other planets will contain life and we will find it some day. I hope everyone understands that any rebuttal must also be based on firm science, not on what they hope or hope not will be true.

I'm not sure what experiments you're refering to, but scientists have had success in producing the building blocks of life in labratories using conditions they think may have existed on the early Earth. But we're not even sure what conditions gave rise to life here. How can we decide where life could develope in other places. There's even a small chance that life could have developed on Mars and one or more of the moons of Jupiter. That's just in our home system. Dawkins hypothesis is nothing more than a guess. His information is so incomplete as to be almost meaningless.

As for detecting radio waves from another civilization around another star, even if there are signals they would be almost impossible to detect. The amount of energy in a beamed transmission would be incredibly faint at interstellar distances, forget about the omnidirectional signals that some researchers have been looking.
 

Cobalt_Kid

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But you must see Cobalt, that based on my previous post it is not just a matter of personal belief any longer. But life is a miracle in the strict definition of the word miracle, which you can look up. It was very unlikely to occur but that has no religious connotations attached to it in the least. Creations err in their put down of evolution because they just don't understand science and their beliefs prevent them for learning in many cases.

Of course it's a matter of personal belief. Science is a belief system just as much as religion is. One of the reasons people reject what science has to say is the inability of some scienctists to accept this and the attacks they make on other belief systems. Science was never intended to prove or disprove the existance of God. It's a process of looking at the universe in strictly physical terms, that's all. To deny experiences that don't fit neatly into strictly physical terms also denies an aspect of human experience that's goes back for as long as we've been around.
 

Zzarchov

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Aug 28, 2006
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Why Herman, IMO that's just plain silly. We need only discover life on one other satellite of any one solar system to prove that there is life on other planets. Proof positive and it may be as close as one of Saturn's moon!
Enjoy!


Actually, if you go with science, if you find life on one other planet, you only prove life exists on one other planet. If you find it on TWO other planets you prove its on other Planets..but still only those two are proven. To know which planets hold life and which do not, you still need to search each and every one.


I think the whole concept that the universe "began" is more of us attributing human characteristics to innanimate objects.

Because we begin and end why try endlessly to prove that everything else has a begining and an end. Some things just are.

You can say what the universe came from, but not where that came from. Its just trying awful hard to put human characterstics on something without them.
 

hermanntrude

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Dawkins states that in the amount of time that we have been capable of receiving radio transmissions, there has just been ample time for the signals to have travelled from the further reaches of our galaxy but we have received nothing

I've read Dawkins. I can't honestly remember the passage you're referring to, and now you've been banned so u won't be able to repsond. But i have to say it anyway, we've been receiving radio transmissions for about 100 years. Slightly more i think, but nothing to quibble about. Our galaxy is 100,000 light years across. assuming that we're maybe 70% across (pure guesswork) then the "furthest reaches" of our galaxy are 70,000 light years away. Now please tell me how radio waves (which travel at the speed of light) can travel 70,000 light years in 100 years?
 

Zzarchov

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The other thing to remember, is broadband radio transmitions are going away, its looking like in 50 years we won't use them.

So assuming a civilization even used radio waves, it has about 150 year of projecting them, to coincide with our 150 years, with a 10,000 to 700,000+ year time dialation for us to find them. Its signals also have to not be garbled by cosmic radiation, our signals, and picked up in the right places to not get weeded out as static.

Its the equivalent of writing a letter to europe by throwing a note in a bottle in the ocean.
 

hermanntrude

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Jun 23, 2006
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The other thing to remember, is broadband radio transmitions are going away, its looking like in 50 years we won't use them.

So assuming a civilization even used radio waves, it has about 150 year of projecting them, to coincide with our 150 years, with a 10,000 to 700,000+ year time dialation for us to find them. Its signals also have to not be garbled by cosmic radiation, our signals, and picked up in the right places to not get weeded out as static.

Its the equivalent of writing a letter to europe by throwing a note in a bottle in the ocean.

a leaky bottle, with water-soluble ink
 

L Gilbert

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Science is not a belief system, Cobalt. You said it yourself, it is based on physical realities. It says things like, "in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state."; and "The ratio of the squares of the periods of any two planets is equal to the ratio of the cubes of their average distances from the sun"; and "all uniform motion was relative, and that there was no absolute and well-defined state of rest"; and "the evidence shows the likelihood of evolution". Science does not say "it is believed that apples fall down"; and "we believe parallax is the change in the position of an object in the sky due to the orbit of the earth". Science's purpose is to explain to us the various phenomena of our universe and you say it is a belief system? :roll:
 

MHz

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I haven't read all the replies so I'm not sure if this possibility has been covered yet.

Depending on how God determines time for creation those days do not have to conform to what we now call 'a day'.
Science shows us that our solar system is billions of years old, I can live with that. To have God's written words mesh with that a way has to be found to support both views. The generations in Scripture would put us back about 4500 years as when Adam and Eve started to have children. The easiest way to have those two views mesh is to add one zero for each of the 6 days of creation, no zero for the 7th day because at the end of the 6th day creation was finished, everything thatwas going to be created was created.

The first day would have ended 4,500,000,000 years ago. The sun, moon, and Earth would have been formed. Light would have been our sun bursting into fire. Earth had rotation. (More about this later in the post)

The second day would have ended 450,000,000 years ago, at that time the temperature of the Earth would have been at the temperature that allowed water to be both vapor and liquid forms.

The third day would have ended 45,000,000 years ago, at that time the seas would have started to form and on the land grass and trees would have started to grow. This doesn't mean they covered the whole Earth as that might not have happened until the end of the 6th day.

The fourth day would have ended 4,500,000 years ago, at that time the seas were more or less fully formed, most of the 'water' probably came from space in the form of ice. Since the oceans hold a lot of water that is also a lot of weight, that is why our seasons were not determined until the oceans were full. That is when the Earth came to be its current weight, that is when our current orbit was established. Add more, or subtract some, and the orbit changes.

The 5th day would have ended 450,000 years ago, at that time the seas got life and the skies got life. Whales also came into being, most likely from birds. Both are warm-blooded, their tails move the same. Loose the feathers and move the nostrils further up the head and you have a whale, evolution at its finest.

The 6th day would have ended 45,000 years ago, at that time all the beasts of the field existed and all other forms of life exited in some form. Adaptation to local condition would have been similar to the way whales came to be.

Scripture also points to a third Heaven. The first Heaven is more or less our atmosphere, that is why birds are called fowls of Heaven in Genesis. Were t-rexes warm blooded, who knows. The second Heaven is our visible universe, home of Heavenly beings, Angels being one type. The third Heaven would have to be beyond that.

The big bang. When a star explodes it's gasses expand forever, it never gathers to form another star. It is the collection of the gases from many exploded stars that collect to form a 'new' star. Our universe could follow that same pattern, once a big-bang happens those gases (observed as stars and galaxies) keep expanding, they never 'regather' for another big-band.
The way a big-bang happens would seem to be a collection of material from many, many big-bangs. That would increase the size of the Kingdom of Heaven greatly. The new size would be like comparing our solar system to the size of the Milky Way.

When God creates the new Heavens and the new Earth it doesn't mean it is the same size as it presently is. Our new Earth could be what the 'old' Heaven is and the new Heavens could be beyond that. People have children in the new Earth, out current size would not be able to hold an eternity of new life, not just us but also all the life we will have dominion over again.

The third Heaven,
2Co:12:2:
I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago,
(whether in the body,
I cannot tell;
or whether out of the body, I cannot tell:
God knoweth; )
such an one caught up to the third heaven.

The destruction of our Earth;
Isa:51:6:
Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
and look upon the earth beneath:
for the heavens shall vanish away like smoke,
and the earth shall wax old like a garment,
and they that dwell therein shall die in like manner:
but my salvation shall be for ever,
and my righteousness shall not be abolished.

The destruction of the second Heaven,
Re:20:11:
And I saw a great white throne,
and him that sat on it,
from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away;
and there was found no place for them.

The third Heaven,
Heb:12:1:
Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight,
and the sin which doth so easily beset us,
and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,

Heb:12:22:
But ye are come unto mount Sion,
and unto the city of the living God,
the heavenly Jerusalem,
and to an innumerable company of angels,
Heb:12:23:
To the general assembly and church of the firstborn,
which are written in heaven,
and to God the Judge of all,
and to the spirits of just men made perfect,

When New Jerusalem descends to this Earth it is probably barren, something like this,
Ge:2:5:
And every plant of the field before it was in the earth,
and every herb of the field before it grew:
for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth,
and there was not a man to till the ground.

I would assume since 'worlds' is plural it means we also get to travel to these 'worlds' and expand the new Eden,
Heb:1:2:
Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son,
whom he hath appointed heir of all things,
by whom also he made the worlds;

Heb:11:3:
Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God,
so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.

Creation IMHO