Is there a "Creationist" Cosmology?

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by al onestone, Oct 15, 2015.

  1. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    No one disputes "fields" exist or that we can see or feel their effects. Why you call them "extra-ordinary" escapes me.

    The problem is that you have not provided proof that this is the purposeful result of an intentional creator. Where is the proof of that?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. exchemist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,451
    I think you are misunderstanding John. He said the evidence for them is "extraordinary", not the fields themselves.

    When we touch something and feel it, this is due to charged particles (the electrons and atomic nuclei in molecules) in our body being repelled by more electrons and nuclei in the object being touched. The interacton is thus electromagnetic and is due to the EM field.

    My understanding is that the point being addressed was the assertion that fields cannot be directly perceived. Fields cannot be seen (usually) but they can be directly perceived.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,152
    And from there I would challenge them to discover what Einstein wondered about the reason that the night sky is not lit up by the primordial light of the Big Bang, which, regardless of how it was imagined, was understood to emit a burst of intense radiation. Someday we will probably see children's books which depict the Big Bang as a fictional character, which said "Let there be light." I mean, come on people, God is just a myth!

    And again, no wonder so many religious apologists (undercover or not) come here to argue against relativity, and the constancy of c. I guess most educated folks are sick and tired of them, but I for one still enjoy throwing a few pies now and then at the clowns lined up in the dunking booths. Somehow it seems that something's gotta give. At some point, after hearing so many great explanations of complex topics in science, all boiled down and beat into pap ready to slide down their craws, the apologists ought to finally holler "uncle" and yield to the experts who made these astounding discoveries about the strange inner workings of nature.

    Unfortunately, that assumed the apologists are being genuine, which is often not the case.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. exchemist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,451
    Actually I would have thought the Big Bang - expanding universe or otherwise - was pretty consistent with the concept of a Creator creating. I was in fact amused to find that Fred Hoyle espoused the Steady State theory partly because he didn't like the theological smell of the Big Bang idea. (It was he that coined the term Big Bang, actually, in an attempt to ridicule it.)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    I think it is only the bible-bashing literalists who hate the Big Bang, because they cannot stand the age of the universe not being 6,000 years or whatever it was that Bishop Ussher came up with.
     
  8. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    But the Big Bang could not have been a creative process, at least not creative in a specific way, since the outcome could not have been predicted, even theoretically. That means God didn't care whether he ended up with humans or some other thing.
     
  9. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    Remarkably, it was a Catholic Pope who admitted that evolution is a fact. "One small step for religion".

    http://www.biblelight.net/darwin.htm
     
  10. brucep Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,098
    No text.
     
  11. brucep Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,098
    The classical Big Bang theory describes what happened after the inflation event. When you study inflation theory you find out some very interesting predictions. The predictions associated with the evolution of the inflation event have been confirmed by the WMAP and Planck experiments. The very interesting I'm referring to are associated with the quantum scalar field where the event occurred. The prediction would be the quantum scalar inflation field exists before our inflation event and is eternal into the future. It also predicts time exists before our universe. When you use the cosmological metric to evaluate the past quantum scalar field the metric comoving observers eventually cross over a horizon which hides everything to that point including the origin, if there is one, of the quantum scalar field. So the possibility of a creator still exists. Just not the one the fundamentalists are positive exists.
     
  12. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    Yes, but the Church's full statement shows they don't really accept its full implications.
     
  13. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    True, but it removes most of the claims in the OT. As I said "a small step in the right direction".

    I just found this interview, which might interest you and actually touch on the persistence of commonly held beiefs, which are so difficult to modify. There are two topics discussed.
    First, Bohm's proposition of the Imlicate Order, then his views on the aspects of how we think and how our thinking can be modified through self awareness of the mirror function of the mind.
     
    Last edited: Oct 28, 2015
  14. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,152
    Especially if the CMBR were seen with a visible band. Then the only thing for the Creationists to argue is how God uttered "let there be light" (conceivably initiating the Big Bang) in a vacuum, what he used for a vocal tract, why he said it in Hebrew, why he said anything at all, without first creating language, who he said it to, and, if not, why he was "talking" to himself, what auditory organs existed to "hear" the words, how the sound waves propagated at all (as I said without air or some medium to carry the waves) when there was no space or time for any wavelength to span, and who the heck was present to attest to what God was doing before any people existed. That last one is a kicker: given that even a Creationist should eventually conclude that this fact alone qualifies this portion of the story as an invention of someone's imagination, it would seem quite easy for them to rationally conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with their belief in the inerrancy of the literally interpreted Bible . . . although I suspect that day will come when Hell freezes over . . .

    Oops . . .

    Evidently the Universe's birthday is either 6 pm on Oct 22, 4004 BCE, or 9 am the next day, if you incorporate the comments of Ussher's contemporary, John Lightfoot. Putting this in perspective, the very pregnant singularity yielded quadruplets (the fundamental forces) from whence all the begattin' of matter and energy began, and the inflation reached near-present day extent within some 24 hrs. of Earth time, or so -- either that or the Hebrew scholar who recorded Genesis (ahem), no doubt by interviewing the midwife, forgot to note that God was apparently so entranced by his little rug rats that he picked the 3rd rock from our sun as a dreidel to entertain them with, accelerating it to such a high angular velocity that some 14 billion years (the original angular velocity, you see) would, by the Second Day, complete with some 24 hrs (plus some irrational fractional amount, just because He can). And this works (dontcha know) since God spans all reference frames at the same time (omnipresence) so he can reach into the future and spin something if he wants to, and the rug rats can be entertained by it even though it reference stuff that happens long after matter begins to condense. Or, to make that idea work better with the cosmology of Genesis a little better, God first spins the dreidle on the first day to span 10 billion years within 24 hours, arriving at the creation of the Earth, and then with successive spins he alters it a little each day to account for the approx 4 billion year history of events on Earth, arriving at the evolution of grass and so forth by the Third Day (approx 35 million years ago . . . oops!). Day Four is kind of problematic because stars, the Sun and Moon get created, so we might propose that he spun the dreidel in reverse, faster than the speed of light, and then, recognizing this got things out of whack, he spun it back in the original direction, at near light speed, arriving approximately at the Cambrian explosion (which zips along in a day arriving at the evolution of angiosperms roughly 125 million years ago, from which the the grasses evolved (yikes!). Then on Day 5 fish and mammals (whales) all evolve which means he probably tried to be really tricky flicking the dreidle back and forth, probably just to marvel at Special Relativity and the evolutionary sequence gets pricked and poked kind of randomly on the timeline. But at least by Day 6, he gets the cattle to emerge before Mitochondrial Eve -- preceded of course by the ungulates from which whales emerged, just to keep things interesting -- and completes the rest of the classes of animalia: Aves, Reptilia, Amphibia, Insecta, worms, hydra, sponges, crustaceans and the rest -- probably just getting carried away with tunicates and maggots and tons more of fun stuff to mess with, esp. thanks to His clever idea to use the Homeobox gene to fool around with body arrangements. If this were not enough, He had to keep track of all of the emerging galaxies, black holes, supernovae, pulsars/quasars and accretion disks, not to mention the clouds of light and dark matter and all those dang orbitals, all while preserving the conservation of momentum and energy, as well as centers of mass; not to mention the atomic orbitals and all the excitation levels of all of the electrons and creation annihilation pairs and what not -- it's no wonder He was seen resting on the Seventh Day.

    At least that's a semi-technical equivalent of the apology which explains that a day is a year sometimes, as God sees fit. Unfortunately, GMT had not yet been created, so we have a little trouble figuring out where the Sun was relative to that venerable meridian, back before either the Sun of Earth had been created. I suppose we could assume that Ussher & Lightfoot were both willing to use Jerusalem time in their assessments (Ussher actually avoided trying to be too specific; evidently he was aware of leap time, and shied from the responsibility of getting trapped into trying to nail this down with too much precision).

    Phew. And that's just a very brief summary. Interesting bit of trivia: Lightfoot says:

    heaven and earth, centre and circumference, were created all together, in the same instant, and clouds full of water," and that "this work took place and man was created by the Trinity on October 23, 4004 B.C., at nine o'clock in the morning.

    Kind of an interesting concept, that Jesus existed before he was incarnated, or that he participated in the Creation at all, which, as per Chapter 2 of Genesis, was purely the work of Yahweh. (Of course this gets into the issue of reconciling the opening statement of the Bible, in the beginning the gods created the heavens and the Earth, within the doxology of Trinitarianism. )

    I didn't see any neon signs last week announcing "Happy 6019th Birthday, Universe!" so I guess no one pays too much attention to Ussher's work, as amended by Lightfoot. Geez, you would think there would be a massive celebration, or at least something big enough to offset all the people that are ready to predict the apocalypse!

    Given that some of these folks try so hard to be sure they have the right day for celebrating the Sabbath (Saturday for American Jews, Sunday for most Christians, Monday for American Anabaptists, and Wednesday for some other groups) there ought to be a council convened to decide which day the Sabbath really should be. I would argue that it's the same day the Singularity went through the nine months of carrying quadruplets, so maybe this could best be set on the date presently used for the Feast of the Conception (Sept 8th) from which we might deduce that nine months in Singularity Time are equivalent to 44 Earth days, plus or minus the uncertainty over that irrational fraction of leap time involved.
     
    Write4U likes this.
  15. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,152
    Yeah, I think the medieval popes tended to believe that science merely revealed the mysteries of God's work, that since science is God's creation, science can't lie. Too bad the fundies can't find this same reverence anymore.
     
  16. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    "WOW, that so good, it had me almost convinced"

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

     
  17. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    IMO, a lot of people are getting tired of praying for something and it never happens. I'd be mighty pissed if I prayed for rain and God never answers. And then, the few times God grants my prayers, everyone says "it's a miracle from God" and I am the one who talked to God in the first place and prayed for it .

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    "it just ain't fair

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    " I never get even a thank you"
     
  18. exchemist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    12,451
    Yes, I think that it is close to the view of most literate Christians as well. They all know the bible has to be interpreted and it is a waste of time trying to argue that science is mistaken whenever it shows that a particular traditional reading of the bible cannot be literally true.
     
    Write4U likes this.
  19. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,152
    I think that level of insight comes with about a 9th or 10th grade education in the US. Beyond that, for folks who revisit this in college humanities classes, there is quite a bit of research available concerning the scholarly analysis of Biblical texts. (Religious folks who want to know more about this can start reading about exegesis.)

    The other thing reasonably educated folks will remember is that the Bibles used by Christian fundamentalists are all derived from those books deemed sacred by the early Catholic Church, after they (Protestants in general) excluded (arguably with good reason) certain writings Protestants do not hold sacred (esp. the Apocrypha). Then there are other collections of ancient writings (the Pseudepigrapha) which purport to be sacred, but are not consistent with the "baseline" Catholic (and hence Protestant) works. I think a Fundamentalist would simply discount them as "not belonging to the Bible" without stopping to consider that this question of "what to leave in and what to leave out" is highly subjective, whereas nearly all of Christianity, from past to present, has unwittingly simply surrendered to the judgment of early Catholic experts, esp. St Jerome, who analyzed those works most commonly found in primitive Bibles and collated them into the Vulgate. I suppose we would have to consider it the longest used Christian Bible, lasting even longer than the 800 years the Moors occupied Spain. Jerome's work is around 400 AD, while it was reaffirmed at the Council of Trent (1545) as sacred material. The Protestants undertook to translate their versions (English, French, German) directly from the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts (presumably much newer codices and subject to new errors) but ironically they followed Jerome's canon almost to a tee, which makes the Protestant schism seem somewhat remarkable since there is almost not argument from them concerning core Biblical doctrine.

    On that note, it seems remarkable to me that Fundamentalists tend to hang their hats on the doctrine of "salvation by faith alone" (echoing certain texts by Paul) whereas the older Orthodox view they were rebelling against preached "salvation by faith and works". On the one hand, you would think the safer option is to hold yourself to the larger scope of Orthodoxy. But then, there are some pretty severe words from Jesus himself for failing to do the "works" (shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, etc.) . For failing in these, Jesus says you will go to Hell at the Last Judgement (literally, a lake of fire). As far as I can tell, the Fundamentalist fear of adopting these requirements (the "corporal works of mercy") is that it smacks of socialism. In particular, they seem offended by the notion that people are sitting around depending on handouts instead of grabbing a shovel or a broom and getting some kind of work, to pay their own way rather than mooching off of the public dole. Quite a departure from a doxology methinks, but I do still puzzle over how and why this phenomenon (politics posing as religion) still persists in the present day.

    I just did a spot check, and it looks like the US is 70% Christian, with about half of them in the Catholic or mainstream Protestant category, and the other 35% or so belonging to those groups best characterized as Fundamentalists. Another source shows that Americans are more likely to express Fundamentalist views in public policy than US born Muslims, and, to a lesser extent, European Muslims. I think elsewhere we have discussed how this trend correlates inversely with the amount of education, which substantiates the point you make here.
     
  20. Aqueous Id flat Earth skeptic Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,152
    This brings to mind the premise of the Mesopotamian flood myth (Epic of Gilgamesh). The humans were slaughtered by a global flood, not for evils like idolatry and adultery, but rather because they were disturbing the peace of the gods by bothering them all the time with mundane and frivolous requests (prayers).
     
  21. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    You might want to reead up on David Bohm (physicist). He clearly models a free-energy based model of the universe. Moreover, IMO. M-theory also deals with free energy, some which combine to form potentials for expression, some which remain free energy.
     
  22. FOLZONI Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    129
    Greetings al onestone,

    Given your name I guess you have a passing knowledge of German!
    Your initial posting surprises me a bit since the ruling cosmology of our era IS a creationist cosmology - the 14,000,000,000 year old Big Bang Theory. While a bit longer in time that the Judeao-Christian 6,000 years the difference is ONLY a matter of degree, not of kind.

    Hence modern cosmology is a retreat to medieval thinking - so no wonder we have so much religion-engendered conflict today!

    But to adopt a creationist cosmology is to reintroduce religion on the sly - except for the mathematics-obsessed few who think they hold back a finite created universe from an incoming religious tidal wave! So I agree with your position entirely; creationist cosmology is absurd. But this means that we have to reformulate the traditional idea of an infinite universe - yet this has already been done, the Lambert-Charlier Hierarchical Cosmology.

    FOLZONI
     

Share This Page