The universe does not expand into vacuum. If you ask a scientist do you probably get the answer that the universe _itself_ (the room!) is expanding. It was no outside of the point that was the universe at the time for big bang.

Ok, I seriously am getting very tired of this. You seem to miss half the points I am saying, and now in response to posts I am going to again have to go over old ground so you can see the connections I have been trying to draw.
I admit that I don''t know as much as I should about this issue, but I see it in two ways.
1. It is important for me to discover that evolution is true, so I would like to study it to as great a detail as possible
2. I have already seen enough that I know that it cannot be possibly true...and if I felt that you had considered what I had to say accurately then I may have reconsidered this position. There are many more important things I should be doing with my time given this insight. To spend it studying this issue would be a waste unless I intended to use it to help others, because ultimately it is other people that matter.
Again, I would like to state that I have not felt that what I have said was given a fair trial or was there any willingness to consider an alternative.
So you could consider this my last post. I am frustrated that to reply to the comments made above I would again have to repeat myself and explain in even simpler terms what I am trying to express. I got exactly the kind of response I was expecting I suppose. Until I feel that you have examined the evidence also, then I will not be convinced. Until you have countered the many problems with evolution, I will not be convinced. Of the few that I presented, only one presented a challenge for me to verify my sources (regarding helium in the atmosphere).
In the future I hope you guys are more willing to consider the evidence. Science is not established over time. It is the study of universal laws. It is verifiable by empirical research. It must be observable and be possible to test. Evolution is mere speculation, as is the details concerning the creation and the flood. All we have to work on is the data available to us today.
Your comments on the fossil record were extremely inadequate, and quite dissapointing.
I shan''t be reading any more posts on this particular thread. If you wish to say something, then e-mail me.

Tyreth

quote:

---

Original post by BurningGoat

1. If the universe was created by the big bang, then where did the matter that caused the big bang come from?
2. Also, where did the energy come from that could have caused an explosion that large?
3. Was there just some kind of spontaneous reaction that caused the random creation of all matter and energy in the universe?
4. If there was such a reaction, what created the existence of the posibility of the reaction to occur in the first place?
5. Was "existence" spontaneously created from nothing or did it "exist" from "the beginning of time"? (let''s see you argue that one )
6. If "the beginning of time" was created at the beginning of the big bang then try to answer the above questions.
7. If the universe is described as all matter in space, and if the universe is expanding, what is the universe is expanding into?

---

1. We know that so called "virtual" particles are created and then dissolve all the time on vacuum. As for where these might come from:
2. Have you heard of zero point energy? I''ve heard an estimate that one cubic cm of "vacuum" holds more energy than all the matter of the universe combined. Of course this is not entirely certain, but I don''t see any problems with it.
Why assume that just because we can''t see it it isn''t there? We are matter ourself and (logically) should only be able to interact with matter, but that''s not saying matter is all there is.
3. As I stated there are spontaneous reactions all the time creating short-lived particles from what we see as void. Although the particle that dissolved into our universe would have to be bigger, but there''s nothing that limits the size of these virtual particles as far as I know.
4. The universe itself? I don''t really know, but I know that it happens.
5. I think the universe just is. Like David(I think) I also believe time is an illusion.
5. I guess I needn''t answer this...
6. The universe is all there is, regardless of what might be(exist).

Please not that much of this is just pure theorizing on my part, but it is founded on real world observations so it might just be true...

Hmm...where to start?

First, David, thanks for clearing up the helium emission thing, and thanks for continuing the argument

Second, to tyreth, I respect your choice to cease posting on this topic, and I also respect your opinions. I believe that everyone has a right to believe what they want, no matter how zany it may be. I do have a problem however in advocating a certain belief without putting some facts/supporting evidence on the table. Face it, evolution in the scientific world is the leading *theory* for explaining the magnitude of the diversity of species on the earth. I emphasize theory because I want to accentuate the point that it is indeed a theory, one which has been tested, observed, and also weakly attacked. As you know, it has stood up the test of time over the past 130 years.

Evolution is such a firm-rooted theory because an overwhelming amount of evidence supports it, whereas the only "evidence" supporting creationism are *speculations* against evolution. Face it, if the theory of evolution is ever overturned, it will only be overturned by another theory that better describes speciation in ways that have been OBSERVED and TESTED. Speculations make up creationism. FACTS back up evolution.

I remember reading a while back (I will search online for the story later) of a population of a certain species of frog (I think a frog...) that was divided after some natural occurrence (i forget what, i know my facts are fuzzy). What occurred was that after a period of time, not only were certain biological characteristics of the frogs changed (diet, from a different food supply, etc.), but their sexual organs were slightly modified. Today if two frogs of different sides of the population were met in order to mate, they could physically not mate because sexual reproduction could not take place. Wala, two different species. Again, only one very practical example of evolution taking place.

BurningGoat, hi, those are very good questions But first, I just want to say that I want you to realize that you can believe in science and religion at the same time. True, evolution and the big bang may disprove some parts of the catholic religion, if you feel that there is some personal God (I don''t by the way, and I don''t believe this) that is helping you in moral decisions, whatever, then that is a different matter. In the origin of life, the universe, the diversity of species, etc., religion and science, I feel, are not mutual.

Anyway, I won''t pretend to be an expert, but these are my answers to the very questions that have plagued philosophers for centuries and that libraries of books have been written about.

1. No one knows. But I pose a question: Why is it so extraordinary, or more extraordinary, in thinking that this infinitely shrunken space/matter just WAS than thinking that a god just WAS/IS? One theory suggests that this infinitely shrunken space/time/matter, yet unbounded and infinite, was indeed a previous universe that had collapsed into itself due to gravity. So really, it was a single point Sorry, I can''t really give a better answer than that.

2. Think about it. All the billions of galaxies, all the stars, planets, comets, matter, space, energy in the universe in their expanded sizes falling back into eachother into "singularity" (when space CEASES to exist). Think about it

3. I will come back to this in a later post

4. Evidence. The expanding universe, decreasing temperature of the universe, this reaction adhering to current physics theories (2nd law of thermodynamics, etc.), helium abundance calculations as compared to the theoretical abudance during the big bang, etc, etc.

5. Very ambiguous question: What do you mean by existence? Do you really mean "nothing" as really nothingness, or "empty" space. In physics "empty space" is something. Theoretically, time along with space was created in the moment after the singularity/big bang.

6. Theoretically, it was. There is evidence supporting this, but I''m not an expert, nor do I remember off the top of my head

7. I will come back to this later too.

If I botched some of this stuff up, please tell me.

Bye,
Martin

>>The universe does not expand into vacuum. If you ask a scientist
>>do you probably get the answer that the universe _itself_ (the
>>room!) is expanding. It was no outside of the point that was the
>>universe at the time for big bang.

The universe is not a room, there are no edges. It is not the universe that is expanding, but everything in it is spreading out.

>> It is important for me to discover that evolution is true, so I
>>would like to study it to as great a detail as possible

Yes it is important that you discover that evolution is true.

>> I have already seen enough that I know that it cannot be
>>possibly true...and if I felt that you had considered what I had
>>to say accurately then I may have reconsidered this position.
>>There are many more important things I should be doing with my
>>time given this insight. To spend it studying this issue would
>>be a waste unless I intended to use it to help others, because
>>ultimately it is other people that matter.
>>Again, I would like to state that I have not felt that what I
>>have said was given a fair trial or was there any willingness to
>>consider an alternative

Studying this issue would only be a waste if you don''t care if it''s true or not. I have considered everything you said accurately, and responded to it in the same way. Everything you have said can be classified into several groups:
A) An example of some of the .1% of fossils found in the wrong place (about plants, the dinosaur and human footprint thing was disproved many times, the feet were more 15 inches long and many were poor imitations by the residents, obviously not human)
B) A last-ditch effort by creationists to refute the obvious fact that the Earth is many millions or billions of years old (Riemannian space for example)
C) Talking about ideas that have nothing to do with evolution (uniformitarianism and entropy)
D) Based on lack of understanding of evolution (DNA never gets new info, lol. microevolution = macroevolution on smaller time-scale)
E) Quotes from the Bible
F) Lack of research (you said there is no evidence for linguistic and cultural evolution, and that there are no transition fossils, hehehe) Not sure if this was you but someone said that humans and monkeys have no DNA in common, LOL
G) Lack of thought about the subject (saying jails are the only punishment for murder, not taking into account fear of hell, the chances of getting killed while trying to murder, etc.)
H) Lack of understanding about the subject(saying that the fact that continents are constantly being pushed up does not counter erosion)

etc.

>>So you could consider this my last post. I am frustrated that to
>>reply to the comments made above I would again have to repeat
>>myself

If all you can do is repeat yourself, that is not a very good point, you should be able to show how all other scientific evidence supports it.

>>Of the few that I presented, only one presented a challenge for
>>me to verify my sources (regarding helium in the atmosphere).

Ummm, how about Reimannian space? How about the dinosaur and human footprints? How about transition fossils? How about your "Greek was being adopted large scale at the time of the Roman emperor."? All of these and more are based on false ''evidence''.

>>Until you have countered the many problems with evolution, I
>>will not be convinced.

You should be convinced then, all the problems you brought up have been countered twice. (or more)

>>Science is not established over time. It is the study of
>>universal laws. It is verifiable by empirical research. It must
>>be observable and be possible to test. Evolution is mere
>>speculation, as is the details concerning the creation and the
>>flood. All we have to work on is the data available to us today.

Science is not the study of universal laws, it is the categorization and explaination of observed facts and experiments. Evolution is now scientific fact, it has been observed many times, it explains all the mysteries of the origin of species, and is much more realistic than any other theories on the same subject. The data available to us today is all in favor of evolution, or at least 99.9%

>>Your comments on the fossil record were extremely inadequate,
>>and quite dissapointing.

I could say the same thing about yours, the difference would be that I am correct. I wasn''t disappointed with the creationist responses, I expected nothing better.

>>I shan''t be reading any more posts on this particular thread. If
>>you wish to say something, then e-mail me.

And the evolutionists are triumphant yet again.

-David

Here we go !! We are on the Top 25 Hottest Topics of All Time, at position 14, better than the (un)fameous Gore vs. Bush thread !
We gonna make the top 10, aren''t we
To beat the Hasbro Thread on place 1, we need a little more flaming though, 1077 replies...

Bwahahahaha! We must use to plot a strategerical attack and let our wings take dream!

-David

Thank you, we now have around 1000 times more religion
in our forums.

#define Evolution 36
#define Christianity 6
#define Other (UNINESTIGATED)

quote:

---

Original post by RPGman

this is an opengl forum, why do people have footnotes that say stuff like "#define jesus 1"...

i know its freedom of speech, but please, it gets annoying. We do not gather at a programming forum to talk about religion.


P.S. if any of you churchies are gonna rant and nag about this religion stuff, please just head on over here... www.athiests.com...

---

Yes, it seems like we''ve gotten quite a few replies, but now that tyreth is gone (boohoo ), we don''t have any more meaningless arguments going on.

Anyway, I am going to try to look up a couple of things and add to my previous post.

By the way, if anyone is really interested in astrophysics and philosophical questions, a great book for this kind of stuff is "God and the New Physics" by Paul Davies. Also, "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking is very good.

Bye,
Martin

David20321, lpsoftware:

I agree with most of your points, but I would like to add something too this expanding universe and big-bang point:

> The universe is not a room, there are no edges. It is not the universe that is expanding, but everything in it is spreading out.

This is not entirely true. The universe can be thought of a kind a ''room'' bound by space/time curvature. This isn''t a 3 dimensional limit, but you can define an inside and ''outside''. This outside cannot be clasified, it is just an area, where normal time and space are inexistant, only energy.
The ''inside'' is expanding, along with it all matter and energy in the universe. This is why we cannot define an expansion origin of the universe (if it was just matter expanding, then we could calculate the point in space where everything began). The universe is heading to the ultimate goal of total equilibrium. It is a dynamic system heading for stability, this is why it is cooling down (currently at around 3 Kelvin, I think). Our sun, as other stars, planets, energy, whatever, are turbulences in this strive for energetic stability. They will all disappear, as the universe will expand and cool down even more until it reaches almost 0 Kelvin (the absolute zero), until no energy for expansion is left.
It will not expand into a vaccum, and not expand infinitely. I said almost 0 Kelvin, because it can never reach total stability due to quantum dynamics, that are unstable by definition (random, chaotic, ''uncertain'', see Heisenberg).
The virtual particles the anon talked about earlier, are one factor, they are called vacuum fluctuations, and indeed give vaccum energy, or better: they are pure energy without matter (that is extremly powerful, eg. the strongest fundamental force, the strong nuclear force (holding together quarks), is believed to be ''created'' by virtual exchange particles, ''gluons'').
Those quantum effects get stronger, the more degenerated space and time are (eg. in/on the border of a black holes, or neutron stars). Spacetime was extremely degenerated at the big bang. The processes that happend can be retraced until a certain limit in time, the Planck-time (the quantization of time). Prior to this, spacetime was ruled by highly complex, not yet understood, quantum mechanical processes.
There are several theories trying to explain the fundamental question ''where did all the energy for the big bang came from ?'', none of them proved, ofcourse. It could be the leftover from another collapsed universe, or it could be created by unrolling dimensional ''strings'' from quantic foam (the superstring theory).

I think in our current view of the universe, there is still room for a God. With ongoing research, the probability for his existence might decrease, but we will never be able to prove his non-existance. I don''t think it will be a christian God, Allah or whatever, perhaps some ''higher intelligence'' that controlled the creation processes of our universe.
If you study physics, especially astro physics or quantum physics, you will be amazed to discover how perfect the universe is, so extremly well done, kind of engineered. Hard to believe that all this was just created by ''coincidence''.

Hope I haven''t bored you too much with my quantum mechanical stuff


- AH