A few astronomical questions

[Saved7]

Euthyphro,
From you're posts, you give the impression that you find yourself far too intelligent for us Christian folk, it seems that you feel you must intimidate us with your intellect to show how ignorant we must be to believe in something we "can't see or feel". Therefore, immediately setting a standard that must be met by your criteria, in so doing you hope to cause us to believe that "we must be wrong"....some kind of subliminal message I guess...such psychology won't work here, if that's what you are up to by using such big educated words. At least that's the impression I get from you, I may be wrong, and if so I do apologize. So as one has stated already let's try to tone it down a bit (in laymen's terms, since that's the language most folks speak) for the purpose of common communication.

[tango]

... I still maintain that you'd be challenged to show that religion is a reliably additive (opposing detractive) trait for the mind, and it's acquisition of content. The pretext of religion makes the world a far more complicated place to live in, especially for the religious literalists and (my biggest issue) their children, and (my purpose in bringing up hubble etc.) it lends itself well to a geocentric or human centric (and therefore self-centric and tradition-centric) view of the world....

Religion makes the world more complicated? How so?

When I think of the question of "where did it all come from?" the theistic answer is simple. God did it. The book of Genesis tells us that God created the heavens and the earth and everything on the earth. We might theorise endlessly about how God did it - whether it was a literal act of "and God said 'let there be wriggling things that wriggle in the sea'" or a more metaphorical concept of God fiddling with DNA strands over a period of time until the non-wriggling things started to wriggle and figured the sea was a better place to wriggle than the land - but we can accept that God did it.

The atheistic answer is far more complex. We have a theory of evolution that appears to hold at least some water but has a number of related questions, and still leaves the question of where the first life form came from unanswered. So where the theory of evolution ends we need a new theory of abiogenesis to cover how non-living matter became living matter. From there we need another theory about where the non-living matter came from in the first place until we go back through however many theories it takes until we get to the Big Bang theory. And even then we ask the question, how did it all happen. Or, to put it in more simplistic terms, who lit the fuse.

One doesn't need to look very far to find theistic mouse traps (similar to cycles of abuse or poverty, there are cycles of religious upbringing, and mimetic selection inevitably occurs), and as it so often said, you can't build a better mousetrap. Propagation and natural selection of religious memes follow the same laws, by the same means as child abuse or poverty, or slavery have for thousands of years, in that it's effect on people is self perpetuating and self sustaining.

Ah yes, sounds like an argument I posted on a bulletin board about 20 years ago when I thought how clever I was and how daft the religious types on the board were (at the time my intellectual assault had all organised religions in the sights although due to the dynamic of that board it was Christians who happened to take most of the flak). The meme approach is all well and good but completely breaks down when confronted with the God who created memes. I was raised in a Christian setting, went to church as a child when I was too young to have a choice (and too young to be left home alone), then continued to attend church as a teenager, and then in my university years decided beer and women were more fun than pews and hymns so left the church. Then I discovered the occult and turned really rather nasty in many ways. Certainly I totally rejected God, the church, anything that even looked like an organised religion.

You've probably come across Richard Dawkins. Somewhat ironically it was reading his book The God Delusion that gave me a heavy kick back towards God. That alone rather flies in the face of the idea of memes, and in evolutionary terms it seems rather like the notion that dark butterflies against a white background will get eaten by predators and removed from the gene pool only for the white butterflies to produce more and more dark offspring.

[scottyscotts]

It seems (in my mind at least) that the discoveries of modern science should be of perhaps the most interest to the religious, who are constantly searching for a sense of profundity and a larger context to their lives. Why aren't the men and women in sunday masses shown images taken by Hubble, or given sermons on evolution from simpler forms of life?

If one chooses to believe in god after all, the discoveries of modern science surely reveal a god more awesome and awe inspiring than our ancestors could have imagined.

Totally agree. Check out this video. It's showing exactly what you're talking about.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbTMT...eature=related

[excubitor]

Most Creation scientists ignore this obvious problem with young earth theory. If the universe is so huge that it takes billions of years for light to reach us, then how can we see stars which were created 6000 years ago? Creation scientists come up with various ridiculous theories like that God created the light from the stars in transit.
What Creation scientists fail to report is that there is no more evidence for a humungous universe than there is for evolution. In fact it is a hypothesis which has been built up over the years to discredit the scriptures, the church and all common sense.
The discoveries of modern science are not designed to provoke awe of God, they are designed to provoke doubt and disbelief in the minds of Christians. Which they have done to devastating effect. Now is the time to reject the theories of modern science and return to the teachings of scriptures.

Hi all.

I just had a few questions -maybe even for a few of you christian astrologers out there- about the sort of notions christians have about space and astronomical phenomenon. The sun for example, did it (in your view) form over time, or was it created as is? That question can be asked of all stars really, are the nebulae and supernovae we observe simply one off or "scenic" events that should not suggest a stellar lifecycle? Do the stars live and die, or are they static and eternal?

Another question that comes to mind involves the distances between our solar system or galaxy and points farther away (sometimes much farther) in space. Light waves propagates through empty space at roughly 300,000,000 m/s (or about 186,000 miles a second), and many of the most distant objects yet observed are hundreds of millions to many billions of light years away. The most distant quasar observed, ULAS J1120+0641 (quasars are an extremely energetic phenomenon that occur at a certain point during the early history of many galaxies) is about 13 billion light years away! The intimation of course, is that even travelling at 186,000 miles a second, the quasars light took a 13 billion year trip to reach us. Was the light from that distant point created in transit to earth? Did it travel faster than the speed of light to reach us? Are we simply incorrect about the distances between ourselves and the things very far away from us?

The life cycles of stars and and galaxies, and the immense spatial and temporal distances that apply to them are for some reason at odds with almost all modern orthodox religions. Even the comparatively small scales of geographical and evolutionary time are still disputed by certain theologies. I guess my big question is about why this is the case. It seems (in my mind at least) that the discoveries of modern science should be of perhaps the most interest to the religious, who are constantly searching for a sense of profundity and a larger context to their lives. Why aren't the men and women in sunday masses shown images taken by Hubble, or given sermons on evolution from simpler forms of life?

If one chooses to believe in god after all, the discoveries of modern science surely reveal a god more awesome and awe inspiring than our ancestors could have imagined.

[scottyscotts]

The discoveries of modern science are not designed to provoke awe of God, they are designed to provoke doubt and disbelief in the minds of Christians. Which they have done to devastating effect. Now is the time to reject the theories of modern science and return to the teachings of scriptures.

The discoveries of modern science aren’t designed to do anything. The discoveries of modern science are just that, discoveries. Discoveries of the universe around us that God created. Throughout history we humans have constantly made discoveries about the world God created. From fire, to gravity, to electricity, to aeronautics, to the universe outside the bounds of Earth.

These are things that have existed ever since God created the universe. All we are discovering is the truth about the world God made for us. You can’t design discoveries to do anything. Truth is truth. If that provokes doubt in the minds of Christians, then countless other things will as well, and they do. But isn’t that part of living life as a Christian?

Like the Bible, scientific discoveries need to be viewed in context. That context is that God created the universe and everything in it. He created time and space. He created the laws of physics. He created matter and energy, and he created life. With the growing list of amazing discoveries about the universe around us, how can we not marvel at the work of God? How can we not be in awe at its immense complexity and beauty? Science is simply discovering and explaining the work of God. It’s not something to be scared of. Scripture and science can co-exist.

[Ceegen]

Hi all.

I just had a few questions -maybe even for a few of you christian astrologers out there- about the sort of notions christians have about space and astronomical phenomenon. The sun for example, did it (in your view) form over time, or was it created as is? That question can be asked of all stars really, are the nebulae and supernovae we observe simply one off or "scenic" events that should not suggest a stellar lifecycle? Do the stars live and die, or are they static and eternal?

Another question that comes to mind involves the distances between our solar system or galaxy and points farther away (sometimes much farther) in space. Light waves propagates through empty space at roughly 300,000,000 m/s (or about 186,000 miles a second), and many of the most distant objects yet observed are hundreds of millions to many billions of light years away. The most distant quasar observed, ULAS J1120+0641 (quasars are an extremely energetic phenomenon that occur at a certain point during the early history of many galaxies) is about 13 billion light years away! The intimation of course, is that even travelling at 186,000 miles a second, the quasars light took a 13 billion year trip to reach us. Was the light from that distant point created in transit to earth? Did it travel faster than the speed of light to reach us? Are we simply incorrect about the distances between ourselves and the things very far away from us?

The life cycles of stars and and galaxies, and the immense spatial and temporal distances that apply to them are for some reason at odds with almost all modern orthodox religions. Even the comparatively small scales of geographical and evolutionary time are still disputed by certain theologies. I guess my big question is about why this is the case. It seems (in my mind at least) that the discoveries of modern science should be of perhaps the most interest to the religious, who are constantly searching for a sense of profundity and a larger context to their lives. Why aren't the men and women in sunday masses shown images taken by Hubble, or given sermons on evolution from simpler forms of life?

If one chooses to believe in god after all, the discoveries of modern science surely reveal a god more awesome and awe inspiring than our ancestors could have imagined.

According to quantum mechanics, the universe exists because it is being observed. Let that one sink in for a moment!

Then, I would suggest you go watch "Privileged Planet" by Illustria Media, free on youtube. You will see why they say that life on planet earth is itself a miracle. But what's even more a miracle, is that earth is in the perfect location in the universe, to observe it.

It is astronomically mind-boggling, and I stand in absolute awe of the one true Creator God that spoke it all into existence!

[scottyscotts]

According to quantum mechanics, the universe exists because it is being observed. Let that one sink in for a moment!

Then, I would suggest you go watch "Privileged Planet" by Illustria Media, free on youtube. You will see why they say that life on planet earth is itself a miracle. But what's even more a miracle, is that earth is in the perfect location in the universe, to observe it.

It is astronomically mind-boggling, and I stand in absolute awe of the one true Creator God that spoke it all into existence!

I agree, and what I find even more amazing is that not only does earth have the perfect conditions to support life, but that the universe does. The fact that the laws of physics exist as they do, that matter exists, that molecular bonds exist, that energy exists. Without the force of gravity, or heat energy, or matter, or countless other properties of the universe there is no way life could exist anywhere.

Even according to Stephen Hawking in his book, a Brief History of time (not that I recommend it), he states that during the big bang (if you believe in that theory); during the first few micro seconds of expansion, the temperature of the universe was unbelievably high, and that had it been either a fraction of a degree too high or too low, the universe would have collapsed in on itself. Even Hawking marvelled at the divineness of this. The universe is perfectly designed by God to support us. Amazing.

[Athanasius]

According to quantum mechanics, the universe exists because it is being observed. Let that one sink in for a moment!

That is not what quantum mechanics states.

[keck553]

According to quantum mechanics, the universe exists because it is being observed. Let that one sink in for a moment!

Then, I would suggest you go watch "Privileged Planet" by Illustria Media, free on youtube. You will see why they say that life on planet earth is itself a miracle. But what's even more a miracle, is that earth is in the perfect location in the universe, to observe it.

It is astronomically mind-boggling, and I stand in absolute awe of the one true Creator God that spoke it all into existence!

That's closer to teleology applied cosmologically than QED, but the concept goes back to Plato, I believe. Except teleology is more related to self-observance as the final outcome or "goal" of cosmological "evolution.". There's an interesting section on it in The Anthropic Cosmological Principal, but after all the fancy words and equations are neutrallized, its just a rehash of an ancient thought experiment.


Interesting thoiugh