The Other Worlds Shrine

Your place for discussion about RPGs, gaming, music, movies, anime, computers, sports, and any other stuff we care to talk about... 

  • Life, the Universe, and Everything: The Discussion

  • Somehow, we still tolerate each other. Eventually this will be the only forum left.
Somehow, we still tolerate each other. Eventually this will be the only forum left.
 #144632  by Mully
 Mon Mar 01, 2010 12:38 pm
I think TOWS would be a great place for this topic; we have all kinds of users here: science-minded, creationists, agnostics, atheists, christian/catholic/jewish (et al) and we are all "adults" here (for the most part O:) ).

What are your thoughts on creation of the universe?
 #144637  by Imakeholesinu
 Mon Mar 01, 2010 2:08 pm
I don't think we are meant to know that information. We're here. We need to make the best of it.
 #144639  by Mully
 Mon Mar 01, 2010 2:16 pm
Me, I have faith in the Christian God. I think you know what entails that line of thinking, along the lines solely of creation.

The reason for this topic, I was watching this youtube clip of Stephen Hawkings, Aurthur Clarke, and Carl Sagan from 1985 and just kind of disagreed with what they were saying.
 #144646  by Flip
 Mon Mar 01, 2010 5:14 pm
Haha, Mully makes the best typical forum style posts ever. Lets describe the person above you in one word and lets talk about the universe are classsssic.
 #144657  by Oracle
 Mon Mar 01, 2010 6:44 pm
Flip wrote:Haha, Mully makes the best typical forum style posts ever. Lets describe the person above you in one word and lets talk about the universe are classsssic.
Is Mully a bot? Where's the 'En1a4gz yer Dck' links?
 #144662  by Shellie
 Mon Mar 01, 2010 9:52 pm
I am agnostic, and I don't think anyone has all the answers, but I respect everyone's right to have an opinion. Just don't push your opinion on me :)

I don't necessarily believe that a one in a gazillion chance we evolved from microbes, and I don't necessarily believe that a man in the sky said let there be light and there was. I don't think we will ever know the true answer..at least in my lifetime.

 #144663  by SineSwiper
 Mon Mar 01, 2010 10:39 pm
I think the creationist theory was a decent theory at the time it was created, 2000 years ago. Twelve thousands years ago seemed like a long time ago, so you could put any story you wanted in there. Thus, the story in the bible was born. Don't fool yourself; the bible was created by a bunch of men, which is fallible, even if you believe that God is not. (I'm not going to dive too far into the theist/atheist arguments, even if we are dancing close to the edge.)

And disagree with Stephen Hawkings, Arthur Clarke, and Carl Sagan all you want, but these guys have had 20+ years experience with science. Specific science like astrophysics, astronomy, theoretical physics. Each of these sciences have many many different people who apply the scientific theory to achieve a greater understanding of their field. Each little theory and subject of these fields have many different pieces of evidence to support them.

For example, people who try to discredit the theory of evolution (and keep talking about "it's just a theory") don't seem to understand just how many different applied sciences are tied to evolution. Evolution is supported by physics, chemistry, geology, cosmology, paleontology, genetics, and biology, among others. The entire idea of DNA or the human genome cannot exist without the science behind evolution. If you believe in DNA and the more practical applications of evolution, why not believe in evolution itself? Is it such a leap to believe that you look like your parents because you inherited genes from your parents? And if you look beyond that and believe that your grandparents gave your parents their looks and personality, does that make sense?

At what point does it stop making sense? Does the ape to man thing throw you off? Keep in mind we are talking about millions of years of evolution. Very small changes throughout the course of those years adds up. Even if we looked at our genome, we are still about 98% similar to apes. It's that 2% of our genes which gives us our greater intelligence, lack of body hair, more upright shape, etc.

Science and religion can co-exist, but you have to be willing to accept that some things in the bible are not 100% correct, and were written by men who did not understand the world as well as we do now. People who try to "prove" creationism are merely taking the bible as its source, and finding ways to pigeonhole their theories to fit that evidence. Real scientists take existing evidence to create theories that make sense with the world around them. If the theory doesn't fit, they prove that it doesn't fit, and adjust or completely change that theory. Science itself evolves. The bible remains the same, despite the evidence. Science changes because of the evidence. The theory of evolution has changed over the years to incorporate genes, for example, and is not just Darwin's theory word for word.

And as far as the whole "theory" thing goes, it stems from the strict definition of the term. Science has to use exacting language to make sure everybody is clear to what they are talking about. However, part of that has to do with understanding the exact definitions of those terms. A theory is "a well-supported body of interconnected statements that explains observations and can be used to make testable predictions". Fact are "empirical data, objective verifiable observations" or in a more practical sense: "A fact is hypothesis that is so firmly supported by evidence that we assume it is true, and act as if it were true." Therefore, evolution is both a fact and a theory. This Wikipedia article explains it much better than I'm doing, especially with its comparisons to gravity.
 #144672  by Kupek
 Tue Mar 02, 2010 10:05 am
Huh. That's a well reasoned post, Sine. I agree with pretty much all of it.

Although, did you assume Mully meant evolution when he said creation? 'Cause yours is the first actual mention of evolution.
 #144673  by Mully
 Tue Mar 02, 2010 10:11 am
Flip wrote:Haha, Mully makes the best typical forum style posts ever. Lets describe the person above you in one word and lets talk about the universe are classsssic.
Sorry, I get bored. I wanted to use my brain instead of crying about my PS3 being broke or about Kristen Dunst dancing in Japan or how slow In N Out is (Sorry about the very typical "Post about above person"...that was a slow day at work). But in all seriousness, wanted to pick your brains. The video I mention was discussion about Christian Creationism with no other views whatsoever; very one sided. I wanted to know your side. Yes, you Flip, and everyone else too. We may not get anywhere, but at least we will be thinking.

Sine - great. That's what I was looking for.
Kupek wrote:Although, did you assume Mully meant evolution when he said creation? 'Cause yours is the first actual mention of evolution.
Yes, I meant that... I meant anything you thought about the epoch of life as we know it.
Seraphina wrote:I don't necessarily believe that a one in a gazillion chance we evolved from microbes
Me neither, it's too much of an odd that it just happened.

If you talk about evolution as Sine does, you have to talk about the Big Bang, which in their theories go Hand-in-hand. Here's what I don't believe, these questions don't have to be answered, and it's not saying anyone is stupid for believing this by the way they are questioned, it's just stream of consciousness: What happened before the Big Bang? Primordial ooze? What cause the spark that cause an explosion? The Big Bang theory relies on the idea that everything is moving away from some point with the universe continually expanding from some point (the middle of the explosion) in the universe...where did "space" come from? What's beyond the current reach of the universe, something is if we are expanding? Is nothing there?
C.S.Lewis wrote:Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, three views have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view. People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us. Another view is called Life-Force philosophy, or Creative Evolution, or Emergent Evolution. People who hold this view say that the small variations by which life on this planet 'evolved' from the lowest forms to Man were not due to chance but to the 'striving' or 'purposiveness' of a Life-Force. When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then 'a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection' is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not. then what is the sense in saying that something without a mind 'strives' or has 'purposes'? This seems to me fatal to their view. One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen? The last view is the religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know. That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like itself--I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds. Please do not think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men all views turn up. And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the right one by science in the ordinary sense. Science works by experiments. It watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run, however complicated it looks, really means something like, 'I pointed the telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 a.m. on January 15th and saw so and-so,' or, 'I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to such -and such a temperature and it did so-and-so.' Do not think I am saying anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this is the job of science--and a very useful and necessary job it is too. But why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes--something of a different kind-this is not a scientific question. If there is 'Something Behind,' then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way. The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make. And real scientists do not usually make them. It is usually the journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of half-baked science from textbooks who go in for them. After all, it is really a matter of common sense. Supposing science ever became complete so that it knew every single thing in the whole universe. Is it not plain that the questions, 'Why is there a universe?' 'Why does it go on as it does?' 'Has it any meaning?' would remain just as they were?
 #144678  by Kupek
 Tue Mar 02, 2010 10:45 am
"How did the Universe begin?", "What was there before the Universe began? (And is that even a sensical question?)", "How did life as we know it begin?", and "How does life change over time?" are all different questions.
 #144680  by Mully
 Tue Mar 02, 2010 10:55 am
Kupek wrote:"How did the Universe begin?", "What was there before the Universe began? (And is that even a sensical question?)", "How did life as we know it begin?", and "How does life change over time?" are all different questions.
Stream of thought, but they are all related indeed and are sensical. Here's how:There is nothing (What was there before the universe), something created life (How did the universe begin?), we are now here.

Not sure where you got "How does life change over time).
 #144681  by Kupek
 Tue Mar 02, 2010 11:21 am
We can relate them all, but they are all different questions. What I mean by that is don't confuse the answer to one as the answer to another. And depending on the answers to some things, some questions may indeed become nonsensical. As an example by what I mean by this, the question "If I'm driving at the speed of light and I turn my lights on, what happens?" is a nonsensical question because it assumes things that are impossible.

"How does life change over time" -> Evolution. I was trying to phrase the fundamental question that evolution is the answer to while avoiding the keywords that get people in a tizzy.
 #144682  by Julius Seeker
 Tue Mar 02, 2010 12:08 pm
Open the Ruminations forum for a while each year. Why not?

Anyway, the creation of the Universe, was it created or does it span into infinity?

You have the philosophical big bang theory which implies an event of creation. The big bang theory is of kin to belief in God, it is based on assumptions about observations, and hypothesized dark energy; dark energy can never be observed in the same way God can never be observed. It is philosophy, not science. Yet the big bang theory allows space for a God creating all matter an energy. Even Hoyle (who coined the term "big bang theory") believed the higher redshift on quasars (assumed to be the result of the doppler effect) is the result of the Compton effect from the many free electrons surrounding quasars. It is also notable that looking billions of light years away hasn't yielded observations of a higher density of galaxies. With ajustments the big bang theory fits observations; just as the theory of Jupiter, Zeus, Indra, and Thor once fit observations of lightning.

Evolution? It is a theory solidly supported by many scientific facts.
 #144683  by Kupek
 Tue Mar 02, 2010 12:24 pm
Julius Seeker wrote:You have the philosophical big bang theory which implies an event of creation. The big bang theory is of kin to belief in God, it is based on assumptions about observations, and hypothesized dark energy; dark energy can never be observed in the same way God can never be observed. It is philosophy, not science.
I have a friend who is an astrophysicist. She is a scientist, not a philosopher. You have fundamental misapprehensions about what the big bang theory is, and what constitutes a scientific theory.
 #144707  by SineSwiper
 Tue Mar 02, 2010 10:20 pm
Kupek wrote:Huh. That's a well reasoned post, Sine. I agree with pretty much all of it.
What were you expecting? I've been arguing on the Internet for 13+ years. I know when and when not to rave like an idiot, and I'd done enough of that with these specific type of topics several years ago (and not going anywhere with it).
Mully wrote:
Seraphina wrote:I don't necessarily believe that a one in a gazillion chance we evolved from microbes
Me neither, it's too much of an odd that it just happened.
We mistake the temporal context of the facts when we read them in a book, or hear them in a conversation, to be in some short span of time because we are not interested in the gaps in-between, nor do we talk about them. However, the time scale is expansive. We are talking about BILLIONS of years. They estimate close to 2,100,000,000 years ago when the first complex cell-like organisms were formed. If humans lived in that era, they would have 70,000,000 generations between now and then. There would be 745,209 Egyptian empires (like the ENTIRE 3000 year history of Egypt) during that time. In the timeline of a solar system forming, billions of years is how they measure it.

Heck, it was an estimated 3,800,000,000 years ago when microscopic life was first formed. It took 1,700,000,000 years just to go from microscopic cells (ie: bacteria) to the more complex cells you find in animal and plant life. When producing a number of those cells during that time that gave their lives to EVER SO S-L-O-W-L-Y evolve into the complex animal cells, that number would fill up a couple of pages on this post, probably close to a googol. It's the kind of number that no human could completely wrap their head around.

So, please do not mistake the BILLIONS of years it took to go from bacteria to human as being just like a somebody buying a single lottery ticket and winning. When you think about it, the odds are actually damn good that at least SOMETHING complex is going to come out of that ooze several billion years ago. In fact, we had millions of different species come out of it: plants, animals, insects, fish, etc., etc.
Mully wrote:If you talk about evolution as Sine does, you have to talk about the Big Bang, which in their theories go Hand-in-hand. Here's what I don't believe, these questions don't have to be answered, and it's not saying anyone is stupid for believing this by the way they are questioned, it's just stream of consciousness: What happened before the Big Bang? Primordial ooze? What cause the spark that cause an explosion? The Big Bang theory relies on the idea that everything is moving away from some point with the universe continually expanding from some point (the middle of the explosion) in the universe...where did "space" come from? What's beyond the current reach of the universe, something is if we are expanding? Is nothing there?
These are the gaps in our knowledge where the science ends and the philosophy and religion begin. Our scope of science is ever expanding in both space and time as our knowledge of the universe increases. Sometimes, it is met with resistance with the religious who insist that it was written or foretold that a certain piece of knowledge is right, and the new evidence of science is wrong. Eventually, the ever mounting evidence wins out, and the boundaries between science and religion expands.

At one point, we thought that the gods lived in the sky just above our heads. Then we thought they lived on the other planets. Then we believed that we were the center of the universe. But all of that was proven wrong.

One could say that science is always gaining new ground and religion is losing its "territory" overall, but there will always be a boundary, and religion will fill that boundary for some people. Even if we explore the universe, there is always other dimensions or other boundaries or the afterlife, or entire new and foreign concepts that we couldn't dream of.

However, these are the kind of dualities that can still co-exist for even scientists. Einstein was still religious, despite having a strong grasp of the concepts around how the universe worked. He came up with the (now paraphrased here) quote "God does not play dice with the universe" and "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Newton were all religious scientists.
 #144725  by Kupek
 Wed Mar 03, 2010 11:56 am
SineSwiper wrote:What were you expecting? I've been arguing on the Internet for 13+ years. I know when and when not to rave like an idiot, and I'd done enough of that with these specific type of topics several years ago (and not going anywhere with it).
It's not how you said it, but what you said that surprised me. I thought your general world-view was more mystical.
 #144730  by Julius Seeker
 Wed Mar 03, 2010 12:15 pm
Kupek wrote:I have a friend who is an astrophysicist.
Is that supposed to make you an expert in the field of astrophysics? =\
Kupek wrote:She is a scientist, not a philosopher. You have fundamental misapprehensions about what the big bang theory is, and what constitutes a scientific theory.
In short, you're wrong.

And this is why you're wrong.

The big bang theory is based on assumptions and deductive reasoning. This is what we call a philosophical theory. It is either valid or invalid. I could say that God exists and existence is proof of that, all evolution and physics were his design, and you couldn't prove me wrong.

The big bang does not satisfy the scientific method, like say, the theory of gravity.

Leading strophisicist (scientist, not a philosopher!), and co-author of Stephen Hawking, George Ellis states on the big bang theory:

"What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that."

http://www.big-bang-theory.com/

Now you can argue against a point made by George Ellis or just get your astrophysicist friend to confirm this.
 #144734  by Kupek
 Wed Mar 03, 2010 12:48 pm
No, I'm not an expert in the field of astrophysics. I'm an expert in the field of computer science. But I have taken two courses in astrophysics as a part of getting my physics minor, and I often discuss my astrophysics friend's work with her.

Scientists use personal bias and hunches all the time to choose models. That does not make their work philosophy.

Scientific theories are falsifiable. That is, it can be proved incorrect. The theory that Zeus creates the thunder is not falsifiable, and therefore not a theory on the same level as, say, the big bang. The big bang theory is falsifiable, yet it has been supported by experimental data.

Eliezer Yudkowksy on making distinctions between levels of uncertainty:
Likewise the folly of those who say, "Every scientific paradigm imposes some of its assumptions on how it interprets experiments," and then act like they'd proven science to occupy the same level with witchdoctoring. Every worldview imposes some of its structure on its observations, but the point is that there are worldviews which try to minimize that imposition, and worldviews which glory in it. There is no white, but there are shades of gray that are far lighter than others, and it is folly to treat them as if they were all on the same level.

If the moon has orbited the Earth these past few billion years, if you have seen it in the sky these last years, and you expect to see it in its appointed place and phase tomorrow, then that is not a certainty. And if you expect an invisible dragon to heal your daughter of cancer, that too is not a certainty. But they are rather different degrees of uncertainty - this business of expecting things to happen yet again in the same way you have previously predicted to twelve decimal places, versus expecting something to happen that violates the order previously observed. Calling them both "faith" seems a little too un-narrow.
 #144740  by SineSwiper
 Wed Mar 03, 2010 8:45 pm
Kupek wrote:It's not how you said it, but what you said that surprised me. I thought your general world-view was more mystical.
Well, what I know and what I believe are two different things. I can separate the difference between scientific fact (or highly supported theory) and things that are conjecture or poorly supported theories. To segway to your previous point, I know the levels of uncertainties and am aware of them. (I am also a member of the Tautology Club.)