Posted by AF on March 19, 1999 at 06:04:26 {MW4z4H0.5soKM}:
In Reply to: ***Bible versus Science posted by WW on March 18, 1999 at 18:57:55:
: You know more about physics than a Phd Physicist?
That's not the point. I showed in a way that even you understood that Schroeder's claim about shrinking "creative days" was wrong because it was backwards from his assumptions. Have you forgotten this?
You seem to put a lot of stock in "the argument from authority". If a Ph.D. physicist claimed that his discoveries proved that the sun orbits the earth, why would you reject his claims? Or would you?
: It's on record, as is his Theology Phd.
So what? We're not interested in who makes a claim, but in what someone claims. Schroeder's claims are patently off the wall and self-contradictory. Anything as blatantly self-contradictory as Schroeder's arguments about shrinking creative days is obviously wrong. Of course, if you think his claims are correct, you're free to explain why, using your own words.
: What is it, is there no one who can explain a viable theory besides the one that says, we are not created, engineered and the universe is just a blind chance?
I don't think that anyone, religious or otherwise, has a good "theory of ultimate origins".
: Maybe I phrased my question wrong or haven't grasped what HAWKING is saying in his book. He has referred to 'God' several times. First cause is not what caused the initial expansion of the universe from the gravity of it's 'black hole'?
Hawking was deliberately unclear in his book about what he meant by "God". However, as has been pointed out several times on this board, his clearest statements explicitly say that "if my theory is true, the need for God as an ultimate creator is eliminated". Do you think that he would set forth a theory that he didn't more than half suspect was true? I don't. Given that, and given that other eminent physicists such as Einstein often used "God" as a substitute for "ultimate source of everything", as well as more general comments from these guys, it's safe to conclude that don't believe in a personal God of any sort, and certainly not the God of the Bible. My suspicion is that if we could question these guys directly, their answer would be the same as mine: "I don't know".
: The universe is still expanding and has been expanding for 15-20 billion years. If it was 'static' then it would have required no first cause, right?
Yes, but it's clear that you don't understand the implications of recent Big Bang theories. Do some reading about it, and in particular try to understand what Hawking said. You'll find postulates such as our universe is only a tiny part of everything that exists. Such postulates include the idea that our universe arose from a particularly large "quantum fluctuation" in some sort of ultimate "background soup" of "stuff", and that there may be unlimited numbers of universes that pop into existence in this gigantic, unimagineable "macrocosmic all".
I have no idea if any of this stuff is true or not. What I can say is that anyone who doesn't understand what real physicists are proposing as theories has no business trying to formulate a philosophy of life or religion around misunderstandings of those theories.
: Would you please tell me what you believe is true, as far as deism goes? After all, you said you are not atheist. I am curious as to how you think we began and what the
nature of God is to you.
Please enlighten me!! (seriously)
I truly have no idea beyond the following: My emotional feeling -- purely a gut feel -- is that there is some kind of intelligent Creator. However, this is subject to revision based on new information.
I've often wondered if there isn't an infinite regression of universes in both directions of scale. This theme is common in science fiction. The movie "Men In Black" nicely showed the science fictionish nature of this idea in the closing scenes, where "the galaxy" that was contained in the ornament that the cat wore was a real galaxy, which was in one direction of scale. The other direction was illustrated when the camera "backed out" of our earth, the solar system and our own galaxy, ending up in a scene where our galaxy was contained in marble laying on the ground of some world. A being then picked up the marbles and stuffed them into a bag.
This is all very entertaining but I don't think any of us are going to find the ultimate answers, unless there exists other "realities" beyond our own in which all questions are answered after we die or whatever. But here we get into mythology, religion and such all over again, so we've come full circle.
My bottom line on science versus religion is that when they conflict, it's best to go with science since religion inherently can't be demonstrated.
AF