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Topic: Stephen Hawking, doing his part. (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post ReplyPost New Topic
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James Woodcock
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 1:27am | IP Logged | 1  

Everything has a problem with the start point - if you have nothing, how can something pop into that nothing. There has to be a physical space for that nothing to pop into and then expand in to.

M theory seems to address this issue although you are still left with the issue of the 'first' universe in to which others have entered.

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Thanos Kollias
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 2:54am | IP Logged | 2  

Pft. Cop-out. This just amounts to saying "Whatever you can't disprove yet, that's what God is. If you can disprove this claim, it just means that God is something else. "
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No, it just means there is no "before" for an entity, as God is presented in various monotheistic religions, that transcends dimensions, which include time.
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William McCormick
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 3:08am | IP Logged | 3  

Of all the arguments for creationism that I hear, the dumbest one by far is that God just always "was". You can't believe that we could have evolved from single-celled organisms because we're  just too damn complicated, but you can believe that the single most complicated entity in your world view just always "was"?

Absolutely ridiculous.
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Thanos Kollias
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 3:27am | IP Logged | 4  

"Always" involves time. As God is presented in monotheistic religions is beyond time or the limitations of this plane of existance.
I would have thought this line of thinking would be very easy for comic-book fans to follow...
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Knut Robert Knutsen
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 4:31am | IP Logged | 5  

"I would have thought this line of thinking would be very easy for comic-book fans to follow..."

Pft. That Retcon is just so lame. Who thought of it? Peter David?

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John Byrne
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 4:54am | IP Logged | 6  

Everything has a problem with the start point - if you have nothing, how can something pop into that nothing. There has to be a physical space for that nothing to pop into and then expand in to.

M theory seems to address this issue although you are still left with the issue of the 'first' universe in to which others have entered.

••

According to Einstein, spacetime is curved. The beginning may therefore be the end, and vice versa.

It is not unlike the common description of the Universe as "finite yet unbounded". The best our little four dimensional brains can do to encompass this is to compare it to the surface of a globe. Finite, yet without any beginning or ending.

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William McCormick
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 5:13am | IP Logged | 7  

"Always" involves time. As God is presented in monotheistic religions is beyond time or the limitations of this plane of existance.
I would have thought this line of thinking would be very easy for comic-book fans to follow...

****************

Whether or not "always" involves time is beside the point. You simply cannot make the argument that we are too complicated to have evolved from nothing, but God, who would be infinitely more complicated, just spontaneously came into being or just always has been.

It's ridiculous on it's very face.
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Andrew Casamurata
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 6:31am | IP Logged | 8  

> According to Einstein, spacetime is curved.

True.

> The beginning may therefore be the end, and vice versa.

Doh! Very audacious syllogism, did he really say that?!

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Andrew Casamurata
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 6:47am | IP Logged | 9  

I think that a scientist talking about God is a man or woman just taking a break from his or her profession.

Mixing science and God, not just for scientist, imho, is a nonsense: science is a method to find out how things work, while the existence of divinity is someone's choice, or gift, if you want.

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Kevin Brown
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 6:49am | IP Logged | 10  

The thing that shocked me the most in that article?  Stephen Hawking is 68!  For some reason I thought he was in his mid-50s....
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Thanos Kollias
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 7:20am | IP Logged | 11  

Pft.
++++
Best Knut argument ever. And used twice to boot! How could I ever disprove that? :-)
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You simply cannot make the argument that we are too complicated to have evolved from nothing, but God, who would be infinitely more complicated, just spontaneously came into being or just always has been.
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First of all, I am not making the argument you claim. What I am saying, sounding like a broken record I am afraid, is that the 4 dimensions of our world can't be used to describe or contain an entity as God is described in most monotheistic religions. According to said descriptions, God exists and creates the world as we know it. including time.
Everything you say (spontaneously, always) involves time. God is beyond time.
And it's not beside the point, you wish to consider it that way.


Edited by Thanos Kollias on 03 September 2010 at 7:20am
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John Byrne
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Posted: 03 September 2010 at 7:27am | IP Logged | 12  

> According to Einstein, spacetime is curved.True.

> The beginning may therefore be the end, and vice versa.

Doh! Very audacious syllogism, did he really say that?!

••

No, / said that! But it seems like a logical extrapolation, depending on the degree of the "curve".

One of the more disturbing interpretations of Einstein's curved space that I have encountered recently posits that if the degree of the curve is GREATER than we might expect, then the whole universe may be a lot SMALLER than we think it is. When we look out into space, we're not seeing uncounted billions of galaxies stretching to infinity, but a relatively small number that, because of the curvature of spacetime, we are seeing over and over, at different points in their lifetimes!

That one just makes my head hurt!!

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