Posted on 08/01/2005 10:58:13 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
Let me try:
Astronomers say that there are 'black holes' out in space, that have such intense gravity that what ever gets sucked into them will NEVER get out - even light - thus the term 'bh'.
They ALSO say that ALL matter in the Universe came from an extremely small source, 15(?) billion years ago (the ULTIMATE bh I would say). The question then becomes: how can BOTH of these assertions be true? Thus 'astronomical evolution', if you will.
Oops! I did not do that on the three references on reply #1651.
(I don't think folks here would be confused and think tht I had done all that work though ;^)
I just Googled® "PI king" and found them.
Ok, goes MORE insane. But is that possible?
But, I think that the religious sense some people profess is traceable to a biological basis in brain chemistry dealing with inquisitiveness, fear, caution, and familial love.
Of course none of this even approaches the question of whether God exists or not. As I've said, that's why I'm agnostic on the question.
The original singularity is hypothetical and not a black hole. Black Holes evaporate. You know that right?
Oh, you mean conservative Republicans? I thought you meant Christians. Well, are you not also a conservative Republican? If so, that means he was invited by folks speaking on your behalf as well.
XenuDidit place mark
Non-answer.
Do you approve or not? Simple question.
For the record, I disapproved; I do not approve of Republicans using tax money to hire Islamic extremists whether those doing the hiring are Christians or not.
Approve of what specifically? Having this guy as a 'witness' for allowing the teaching of issues with the theory of evolution? No.
But you attempted to claim he spoke for 'us' then claimed the 'us' is conservative Republicans. If you claim he speaks for me, then you'd also have to claim he speaks for you - unless you are not a conservative Republican.
I do not approve of Republicans using tax money to hire Islamic extremists
Hiring? I don't see where the article says this guy was paid by anyone.
They do??
HOW??
How do black holes evaporate?
-----------------------------
This is a tough one. Back in the 1970's, Stephen Hawking came up with theoretical arguments showing that black holes are not really entirely black: due to quantum-mechanical effects, they emit radiation. The energy that produces the radiation comes from the mass of the black hole. Consequently, the black hole gradually shrinks. It turns out that the rate of radiation increases as the mass decreases, so the black hole continues to radiate more and more intensely and to shrink more and more rapidly until it presumably vanishes entirely.Actually, nobody is really sure what happens at the last stages of black hole evaporation: some researchers think that a tiny, stable remnant is left behind. Our current theories simply aren't good enough to let us tell for sure one way or the other. As long as I'm disclaiming, let me add that the entire subject of black hole evaporation is extremely speculative. It involves figuring out how to perform quantum-mechanical (or rather quantum-field-theoretic) calculations in curved spacetime, which is a very difficult task, and which gives results that are essentially impossible to test with experiments. Physicists *think* that we have the correct theories to make predictions about black hole evaporation, but without experimental tests it's impossible to be sure.
Now why do black holes evaporate? Here's one way to look at it, which is only moderately inaccurate. (I don't think it's possible to do much better than this, unless you want to spend a few years learning about quantum field theory in curved space.) One of the consequences of the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics is that it's possible for the law of energy conservation to be violated, but only for very short durations. The Universe is able to produce mass and energy out of nowhere, but only if that mass and energy disappear again very quickly. One particular way in which this strange phenomenon manifests itself goes by the name of vacuum fluctuations. Pairs consisting of a particle and antiparticle can appear out of nowhere, exist for a very short time, and then annihilate each other. Energy conservation is violated when the particles are created, but all of that energy is restored when they annihilate again. As weird as all of this sounds, we have actually confirmed experimentally that these vacuum fluctuations are real.
Neat trick!
Sure, the Bible isn't a geometry book, but why do you have the liberty of explaining away problems in the math with rims, etc., but the creation story has to be taken as literally true?
I was talking to those that quote without references. You generally give references, especially when using the Bible.
you: It's always been the way of science.
Here’s an outline of the ancient history of science
The term “methodological naturalism” has no history prior to the 1980’s when it was coined by the intelligent design theorists themselves. Since then, correspondents who mount a defense against intelligent design have attributed the concept back to the enlightment and even further, back to the Greek philosophers.
These historical revisions/interpretations are rather humorous to me since science was always a branch of philosophy and more correctly associated with episteme. As betty boop has pointed out several times, the German language itself preserves the meaning.
You might find the results of the NTSE conference at the University of Texas which involved some 120 scientists and philosophers to be informative:
Philosophers love to make distinctions, and I am no exception. One important distinction that emerged for me in the course of our discussions is that between dogmatic or apriori methodological naturalism (DMN) and empirically-based or conjectural methodological naturalism (EMN). DMN involves the claim that the very definition or inherent logic of science demands that it accord with the rule of making use only of naturalistic explanations (that is, explanations in terms of events and processes located within space and time). EMN, in contrast, is the claim that in the long run it will turn out that all successful scientific research programs are naturalistic ones, that science will converge upon methodological naturalism in the long run. EMN is based, not on the definition of science or on any supposed direct access to the essence of science, but upon the actual history of science. A defender of EMN has no objection to the practice of theistic science, nor to calling it "real science". He merely conjectures that such scientific enterprises will not in the end prove successful.
I hope that, as a result of our conference, the thesis of DMN will be seen, once and for all, as definitively refuted. It is to my mind significant that no one defended DMN, not even those, like Michael Ruse, who have endorsed it in the past. I think we can only conclude that the DMN thesis is now in full and hasty retreat, and will in the very near future have no serious defenders. DMN is to the theory of scientific methodology what young-earth creationism is to geochronology.
If I may, I would like to interject a few words of encouragement and advice to those who are considering whether to join one of the theistic paradigms of scientific research (here I am speaking only for myself, and not for the conference as a whole). I think that the primary reason why theistic research programs have not been undertaken in the recent past (i.e., the last 200 years or so) is not from lack of courage or lack of opportunity, but from lack of imagination. I would encourage scientists to think theistically, to adopt a theistic heuristic (if you'll pardon the alliteration). Christians of course have nothing to fear from scientific progress, but instead of merely contributing to the research programs launched and developed by our agnostic colleagues, we need to consider the possibility that as theists we can discover order and regularity, even natural laws of universal design, that our unbelieving colleagues do not see because they are not looking for them. We need to realize that theism is not only not a hindrance to good science, it may be a necessary condition for certain discoveries being possible at all.
John Lennox, a mathematician from Cardiff at the conference, made a very paradoxical, but I think prescient, remark. He suggested that, just as it is possible to be an ontological theist but a methodological naturalist, so is it possible to be an ontological naturalist and a methodological theist. John and I agree that much of current biology (in so far as functional and teleological claims are still current) is in fact methodologically theistic (if only covertly). As the theistic paradigm develops, there is every reason to hope that it will be joined by scientists who are personally agnostic but who recognize good science when they see it. Indeed, historians of science like Duhem and Whitehead have argued that the development of modern physical theory in the 14th through 18th centuries would have been impossible without the Christ-engendered conviction that the physical universe might prove to be intelligible to us.
A number of design theorists have made an analogy to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and I think the analogy is an apt one. We are currently spending millions of dollars searching for evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence in the absence of any data that such exists. In contrast, we already have considerable evidence of the existence of extra-cosmic intelligence (for example, in the anthropic coincidences), so surely a scientific search for additional evidence is warranted.
As a metaphor: in the wave/particle duality, you are insisting only the particle exists and is a valid subject for science.
To the contrary, I affirm that both wave and particle exist and we see one or the other based on the observer's aspect. In my view, the wave is much easier to comprehend (Heraclitus, quantum field theory, etc.) – the particle is like a placemarker. That you are not comfortable with the wave doesn't make my approach incorrect.
OK, good enough.
His expenses were paid according to newspaper reports.
The BAV and Harun Yahya have been involved with creationists groups in the US for years.
I'll await your later reply, and will respond to both that and your 1,734 at the same time.
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann didn’t have an application for his geometry when he developed it in 1851. Einstein however was able to pull it off the shelf to describe general relativity five decades later. Georg couldn’t have guessed that consequence.
String theorists, algorithmic information theorists – all seeking a unification theory – have curiosity, a desire for understanding that exceeds our ability to confirm by empirical tests. Likewise, Penrose suggests we need a new kind of physics to bridge between the quantum and the classical Newton levels. Application and testing may well be for someone else.
I strongly aver that the quest for knowledge cannot be held back by what is testable in principle – and it will not be as long as physics and mathematics retain their epistemological zeal.
I am essentially equating science with empiricism. Mathematical physics, geometric physics, et. al, are 'science' to the extent that they generate testable hypotheses. If they do not generate testable hypotheses, then they are not 'physics' at all, but rather 'metaphysics'.
There must be an epistemic cut which keeps science from “poaching” on theology/philosophy as we define the terms today. But that cut ought to be with regard to the meaning.
For instance, it is within the domain of science to determine whether intelligence is a causative factor in adaptation, mutation and variation (e.g. selecting a mate) – and whether intelligence can emerge as a property from self-organizing complexity or be a fractal distribution between infinite and finite (e.g. a Mandelbrot set).
But attributing “meaning” to such statements is the domain of theology/philosophy.
Likewise, science is well within its bounds to explore and propose alternative cosmologies. But questions as to why something should exist instead of nothing at all is the domain of theology/philosophy.
Mathematics is unreasonably effective. The physical world reveals the math, the math the physical world (dualities, mirror symmetry, etc.) - there is no materialistic excuse for mathematics.
And for whatever reason, geometry is all the more so unreasonably effective. At the root, geometry is the alternative explanation to the Higgs.
Actually, the difference is nominalism v realism. Nominalism would say that universals do not exist. Realism says that they do.
you: If they looked elsewhere, what sort of answers might they find? And how could the accuracy of those answers be verified?
Well, garbage-in, garbage-out. The premise is itself based on a premise: That we already know all there is to know about matter, causation, space, and time. Thus we know that the natural world of cause and effect is strictly confined to a band of three dimensions of space, which are evolving in time. Time is linear, moving from past to future. Matter just "does its thing," in accordance with the physical laws -- and we sure do know all of those by now, now don't we?
I strongly agree with you, Alamo-Girl, that this is not the understanding that science had of itself before about a 100 years ago. And so I disagree with spunkets, who wrote that methodological naturalism has "always been the way of science."
I really liked your excerpt from Koonz, and especially admired this remark:
"We need to consider the possibility that as theists we can discover order and regularity, even natural laws of universal design, that our unbelieving colleagues do not see because they are not looking for them. We need to realize that theism is not only not a hindrance to good science, it may be a necessary condition for certain discoveries being possible at all."
You cannot find anything you're not looking for. But What if? everything in the Universe does not reduce to material causes? If this were so, then because all science is looking for is material explanations, science would routinely fail to make accurate descriptions of the Universe. Koonz points to a failure of imagination in his critique of DMN; and I think he's right.
spunkets wrote: "The nonphysical, does not support the physical. It's always the other way around."
Is it? On what evidence does spunkett's confident claim rest?
Thank you so much, Alamo-Girl, for the great essay/post!
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