'not really a Christian'

[cardw]

No Sir...

Your whole argument is a pretense to be on neutral ground.

Like a man who insists that he treats night and day equally, but makes sure he is asleep between sunset and sunrise so that he can prove the moon does not exist...

You are biased against God, that is clear from your arguments.

Have you heard the old saying?

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck...

Your argument are atheistic at their core.

If they were not, you would be saying things like:

"I will consider your evidence with an open mind, and consider both oppossing arguments."

That is not how you come across.

Mark :-)

Well Mark since you seem to be covering my side of the argument for me it doesn't look like you need me. I'll leave you to your conversation.

[Twilight]

Not sure whose posts you've been reading, but that description sounds nothing like mine.

I haven't called anyone stupid. I haven't appealed to my authority as a scientist at all. I made one parenthetical comment about my teaching of the philosophy of science, nothing to do with physics, and didn't use that to bolster my argument.

You asked the question, some pages ago, 'can you explain the origin of the universe?' I did explain you raised an objection that displayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the explanation, and I clarified.

The pitchforks, white coats, atheism, evolution and so on are all purely products of your own fevered imagination.

You didn't explain anything Bravus.

You just tried to get rid of gravity so that you could try to justify your views...

[Twilight]

A battle of wits with the unarmed it is...

Except the unarmed here has managed to murder gravity perhaps?

Whilst his friends cheer him on whilst kicking dirt over the dead body...

[Twilight]

Originally Posted By: Twilight

No Sir...

Your whole argument is a pretense to be on neutral ground.

Like a man who insists that he treats night and day equally, but makes sure he is asleep between sunset and sunrise so that he can prove the moon does not exist...

You are biased against God, that is clear from your arguments.

Have you heard the old saying?

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it is a duck...

Your argument are atheistic at their core.

If they were not, you would be saying things like:

"I will consider your evidence with an open mind, and consider both oppossing arguments."

That is not how you come across.

Mark :-)

Well Mark since you seem to be covering my side of the argument for me it doesn't look like you need me. I'll leave you to your conversation.

Sorry Cardw, that is the way I see it.

You do not come across as a true agnostic.

But as an athiest claiming to be agnostic.

[Bravus]

I'll probably regret it, but what the heck, it's before breakfast and I'm feeling positive.

Leave aside the standard model of the Big Bang in which the four forces appeared after some (miniscule) time. Assume instead exactly the situation Twilight posits: all the mass of the universe in a tiny, tiny, space, and the laws of physics just as they are now.

No slaying of gravity required: gravity is already by *far* the weakest of the forces. If all that matter was together, the dominant force would be electrostatic repulsion. The constant for electrostatic repulsion is 9 x 10^9 Nm^2/C^2.

The constant for gravitational attraction is 6.67 x 10^-11 Nm^2/kg^2.

That's a difference of 20 orders of magnitude. Electrostatic force is more than 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times as powerful as gravity, so massive expansion can occur and leave gravity alive and well.

[Twilight]

I'll probably regret it, but what the heck, it's before breakfast and I'm feeling positive.

Leave aside the standard model of the Big Bang in which the four forces appeared after some (miniscule) time. Assume instead exactly the situation Twilight posits: all the mass of the universe in a tiny, tiny, space, and the laws of physics just as they are now.

No slaying of gravity required: gravity is already by *far* the weakest of the forces. If all that matter was together, the dominant force would be electrostatic repulsion. The constant for electrostatic repulsion is 9 x 10^9 Nm^2/C^2.

The constant for gravitational attraction is 6.67 x 10^-11 Nm^2/kg^2.

That's a difference of 20 orders of magnitude. Electrostatic force is more than 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 times as powerful as gravity, so massive expansion can occur and leave gravity alive and well.

Ummm...

Forgive my ignorant uneducated question...

But...

...how is it that gravity was strong enough to hold it together until the point it was not strong enough any more?

You have all this energy held in one place by "gravity", then what does it do?

Have a heart attack and suddenly become so weak it gives up?

Gravity has to be in place to hold the singularity together.

If it can hold the singularity together, then how is it that it suddenly is not strong enough?

Sounds like a teenage fashion victim.

One moment it is "in", next moment it is "out", depending on the arbitrary fashion of the moment.

Gravity really is a problem here for your "proven truth" Bravus...

It seems you do not quite know what to do with it...

[Bravus]

I was right: I do regret it.

Just playin'. I'm posting this from a doctor's waiting room, more soon.

[cardw]

I was right: I do regret it.

Just playin'. I'm posting this from a doctor's waiting room, more soon.

I think I will give this free association thing that Mark has going a try.

We have Mark the self appointed gravity policeman of the discussion. He is prosecuting Bravus for murdering the law of gravity.

There is only one problem, we don't have a corpse. It seems that the law of gravity is alive and well.

Will Mark have to plant evidence to prove his case? Are the charges fabricated?

Or will he have the presentation of the law of gravity throw out of court on a technicality? We will have to inform the jury to ignore the fact that the law of gravity is still alive even though they are still in their seats.

No scientists will be allowed to testify because they carry pitchforks and there isn't room in the witness stand for both. There will only be legal opinions allowed on the law of gravity from the Bible.

[Bravus]

An attempt to clarify.

What you think you're doing, Twlight, is holding up the Big Bang theory and saying 'this is implausible and ridiculous'.

What you're actually doing is holding up a construct you have created yourself, that bears no likeness at all to the Big Bang theory, and showing that that is implausible and ridiculous.

And it is.

But since it bears no likeness to the Big Bang theory, you can hammer on your construct until the cows come home, demolish it utterly... and the Big Bang theory stands untouched.

[Mark Aurelius]

But there *is* evidence like the cosmic background (which you're still studiously avoiding) for the Big Bang, where I'm not seeing evidence for the existence of a God with the characteristics Christians ascribe to him. Not looking for incontrovertible, just looking for some...

I think Dave here you are guilty of extrapolating from a proxy consistent with the theory to accepting the whole theory. There is a heap of problems with modern cosmology. Dark matter, dark energy and the required expansion to name 3 of the biggest.

The human mind like nature abhors a vacuum. So our sharpest minds construct a consistent picture from scattered pieces of evidence. It's much more pleasant to present apparently successful theories than admit that we are confused. Even Feynman that great challenger of the status quo when he came to Auckland University and was asked to talk about what we don't know in physics instead explained his discoveries.

[Bravus]

The point is, science keeps looking. As Dara O'Briain says 'Science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it would stop'. Is our current theory 100% correct and internally consistent? Definitely not, and if you read back a page or two I clearly stated as much. But is our current theory consistent with all the evidence we have? Yes it is. Is Twilight's theory consistent with all the evidence? No, it's consistent with none of it.

Again,we were asked to explain the origin of the universe, and I did so. I assume it was meant to be a 'gotcha' question for cardw, in the vein of 'you agnostics can't explain the universe at all (because the only possible explanation is divine creation)'. I haven't ruled out a role - a central, essential role, even - for God, but I have outlined our best current understanding based on the evidence.

If anyone would like to actually challenge it based on the evidence and based on what it actually is, not some crazy caricature, I'm very happy to discuss it, and to acknowledge the holes and the thin places.

But 'it's not perfect' is not a valid criticism, because it makes no claim to be.

[Twilight]

Originally Posted By: Bravus

I was right: I do regret it.

Just playin'. I'm posting this from a doctor's waiting room, more soon.

I think I will give this free association thing that Mark has going a try.

We have Mark the self appointed gravity policeman of the discussion. He is prosecuting Bravus for murdering the law of gravity.

There is only one problem, we don't have a corpse. It seems that the law of gravity is alive and well.

Will Mark have to plant evidence to prove his case? Are the charges fabricated?

Or will he have the presentation of the law of gravity throw out of court on a technicality? We will have to inform the jury to ignore the fact that the law of gravity is still alive even though they are still in their seats.

No scientists will be allowed to testify because they carry pitchforks and there isn't room in the witness stand for both. There will only be legal opinions allowed on the law of gravity from the Bible.

Careful with that firebrand Cardw, you could set fire to an innocent questioner of athiestic doctrine!

Can you explain how one moment "Gravity" was a law, then the next an "inconvenience to athiestic dogma"?

[Twilight]

An attempt to clarify.

What you think you're doing, Twlight, is holding up the Big Bang theory and saying 'this is implausible and ridiculous'.

What you're actually doing is holding up a construct you have created yourself, that bears no likeness at all to the Big Bang theory, and showing that that is implausible and ridiculous.

And it is.

But since it bears no likeness to the Big Bang theory, you can hammer on your construct until the cows come home, demolish it utterly... and the Big Bang theory stands untouched.

So what happened to "gravity" Bravus?

The "insurmountable truth" you have presented so far is that one moment it was strong enough to hold the singularity together, the next it was the weakest force present.

Maybe it forgot to eat its weetabix that morning?

[Twilight]

The point is, science keeps looking. As Dara O'Briain says 'Science knows it doesn't know everything, otherwise it would stop'. Is our current theory 100% correct and internally consistent? Definitely not, and if you read back a page or two I clearly stated as much. But is our current theory consistent with all the evidence we have? Yes it is. Is Twilight's theory consistent with all the evidence? No, it's consistent with none of it.

Again,we were asked to explain the origin of the universe, and I did so. I assume it was meant to be a 'gotcha' question for cardw, in the vein of 'you agnostics can't explain the universe at all (because the only possible explanation is divine creation)'. I haven't ruled out a role - a central, essential role, even - for God, but I have outlined our best current understanding based on the evidence.

If anyone would like to actually challenge it based on the evidence and based on what it actually is, not some crazy caricature, I'm very happy to discuss it, and to acknowledge the holes and the thin places.

But 'it's not perfect' is not a valid criticism, because it makes no claim to be.

I have no problem with "science keeps looking".

But I do have a problem with atheistic doctrine pretending to be science.

You claimed you could validate the big bang Bravus.

I showed that actually, no you could not, because you could not fit the known law of gravity into the dogma you have bought into.

As to my theory?

I haven't even stressed a theory, I have just pointed out the logical fallacy that is the current foolishness served to our children:

Nothing exploded...

The Big Bang happened because gravity took the day off...

And all associated nonsense, that any rational being would be able to discern if their minds were not so blinded by satans lies.

By the way, I do not have a theory.

God did it...

I do not know how, but then that is okay, because science is progressive.

But science is the revealing of what God has done.

Not the confused ramblings of people steeped in a doctrine that at its core deny's Gods existance, through naturalism.

Yes Bravus.

God did it.

And we do not know how He did it, so maybe we should admit that and stop claiming that we do perhaps? :-)

Mark :-)

[cardw]

Careful with that firebrand Cardw, you could set fire to an innocent questioner of athiestic doctrine!

Can you explain how one moment "Gravity" was a law, then the next an "inconvenience to athiestic dogma"?

I don't see Bravus as an atheist at all. I see no where in his statements where he is saying that god is not the source of the Big Bang. He is simply suggesting that a miracle took place a little farther back in the process.

Just because scientists follow the evidence to what looks like a big bang doesn't mean that they are saying there is no god. You can't seem to tell the difference.

I on the other hand I am reasonably sure that the god of the Bible had no part in the creation of the universe. As an agnostic I don't know if the universe is created by some god or the result of some naturalistic eternity or something else. The point is I don't know. A hard line atheist states that there is no god of any kind. I on the other hand say that I don't know.

I don't claim to know things that I can't possibly know through methods of human knowledge or reasoning.

You on the other hand claim that the god of the Bible did everything. I honestly see absolutely no evidence of that. I do see a LOT of evidence that the Bible is made up by men to solve a number of human problems.

The fact that you refer to the Bible and it so-called internal consistency as proof of god reveals that you have a flawed knowledge of the methods of reasoning. Lies can be internally consistent. In fact the best lies often are.

[Bravus]

One more time, no, in the actual Big Bang theory, as opposed to your mental construct, it was *not* gravity holding the singularity together. Nothing was. The singularity was not sitting there in space, waiting, held in by gravity, and then (as you say) gravity took the day off and the energy escaped.

There was no space in which it could wait, and no time in which it could wait, and the singularity itself did not exist. Then the singularity appeared, instantaneously. You can call that a miracle caused by God (I do) or you can call it fluctuations in the quantum foam, but only in the process of the expansion were gravity, space and time created. And gravity was created after the bulk of the expansion had already happened.

Once again, (a) your inability to understand a theory, and your raising objections to it that are not objections to it at all because they fundamentally misunderstand it, does not invalidate that theory, it just shows something about your understanding[1]. ( Following the evidence to a Big Bang explanation of the universe (i) does not remove the central role of God as Creator and (ii) never had that as a goal.

I have said here, repeatedly, that I personally believe God is the Creator of the universe. That God is prior to the universe, and is immanent and transcendent, within, through and greater than the universe. I agree with your statement that science is the process of coming to understand God's creation. Which is why it's important to be serious and sensible and knowledgeable in our science, and to genuinely account for all the evidence rather than pretend it doesn't exist if it's inconvenient.

So really, not only is your model of the Big Bang fundamentally flawed, your model of my beliefs, goals and motivations is too... All the charges you have levelled at me are, again, mental constructs in your mind that bear no relationship to reality.

Join us over here in the real world: come on in, the evidence is fine!

[1] Saying that is not saying you are unintelligent, it is saying you are ignorant of the theory. Ignorance can be fixed by learning...

[Bravus]

The flipside, of course, is that *you* need to show clearly, both Scripturally and scientifically, why God *couldn't* have created the universe via the mechanism of the Big Bang.

[Twilight]

Originally Posted By: Twilight

Careful with that firebrand Cardw, you could set fire to an innocent questioner of athiestic doctrine!

Can you explain how one moment "Gravity" was a law, then the next an "inconvenience to athiestic dogma"?

I don't see Bravus as an atheist at all. I see no where in his statements where he is saying that god is not the source of the Big Bang. He is simply suggesting that a miracle took place a little farther back in the process.

Just because scientists follow the evidence to what looks like a big bang doesn't mean that they are saying there is no god. You can't seem to tell the difference.

I on the other hand I am reasonably sure that the god of the Bible had no part in the creation of the universe. As an agnostic I don't know if the universe is created by some god or the result of some naturalistic eternity or something else. The point is I don't know. A hard line atheist states that there is no god of any kind. I on the other hand say that I don't know.

I don't claim to know things that I can't possibly know through methods of human knowledge or reasoning.

You on the other hand claim that the god of the Bible did everything. I honestly see absolutely no evidence of that. I do see a LOT of evidence that the Bible is made up by men to solve a number of human problems.

The fact that you refer to the Bible and it so-called internal consistency as proof of god reveals that you have a flawed knowledge of the methods of reasoning. Lies can be internally consistent. In fact the best lies often are.

[Twilight]

One more time, no, in the actual Big Bang theory, as opposed to your mental construct, it was *not* gravity holding the singularity together. Nothing was. The singularity was not sitting there in space, waiting, held in by gravity, and then (as you say) gravity took the day off and the energy escaped.

[Twilight]

The flipside, of course, is that *you* need to show clearly, but Scripturally and scientifically, why God *couldn't* have created the universe via the mechanism of the Big Bang.

No I do not...

All I have to show is that God made the universe.

He did not need a big bang to do that.

I would consider it quite arrogant on mans part for man to insist He did.

I do not know how He did it, or when.

Neither do you.

You have absolutely no idea how He did it Bravus.

Neither does anyone else.

All you can do is guess.

But when you start guessing and trying to make out you know, do you not think that might be a tad assumptive?

The sign of a good athiestic naturalistic doctrine is:

"We know it is true, prove that it isn't..."

Followed by:

"Ooopppss, we got that wrong, all that time we insisted that we knew, now we know something different."

"But that is okay, because that is science, science is all about being dogmatic then humble, then dogmatic, then humble..."

Hmmmm....

[Twilight]

Shame we cannot have the humbler part all the time.

"This is what we think, but we cannot be sure."

Not:

"This is incontrovertible truth now, but in a few months it will be humble pie, then we will have a new incontrovertible truth to walk around proudly with...

...until that is shown to be false..."

There is nothing humble about being arrogantly assertive about something you cannot prove.

[Bravus]

Indeed: which is why people who do that might be journalists or various brands of huckster, but are not scientists. Scientists know and acknowledge the limits of their knowledge. And, again 'incontrovertible truth' is your own assumption, not anything scientists ever claim.

In terms of the evidence, no, there's no video, but every action leaves evidence behind. In the case of a crime it's forensic evidence, allowing what happened to be reconstructed from the evidence left behind. In a bank account it's the bank statement that helps us figure out where our money went.

No-one (apart from God) was present at the creation of the universe. We have to try to figure it out from the evidence - all the evidence - we have available. That includes both Scriptural and scientific evidence.

And I've made repeated attempts at answering your gravity question, albeit none that are satisfying to you: how about trying to account for the cosmic background now?

[Twilight]

Indeed: which is why people who do that might be journalists or various brands of huckster, but are not scientists. Scientists know and acknowledge the limits of their knowledge. And, again 'incontrovertible truth' is your own assumption, not anything scientists ever claim.

In terms of the evidence, no, there's no video, but every action leaves evidence behind. In the case of a crime it's forensic evidence, allowing what happened to be reconstructed from the evidence left behind. In a bank account it's the bank statement that helps us figure out where our money went.

No-one (apart from God) was present at the creation of the universe. We have to try to figure it out from the evidence - all the evidence - we have available. That includes both Scriptural and scientific evidence.

And I've made repeated attempts at answering your gravity question, albeit none that are satisfying to you: how about trying to account for the cosmic background now?

[Twilight]

Indeed: which is why people who do that might be journalists or various brands of huckster, but are not scientists. Scientists know and acknowledge the limits of their knowledge. And, again 'incontrovertible truth' is your own assumption, not anything scientists ever claim.

In terms of the evidence, no, there's no video, but every action leaves evidence behind. In the case of a crime it's forensic evidence, allowing what happened to be reconstructed from the evidence left behind. In a bank account it's the bank statement that helps us figure out where our money went.

No-one (apart from God) was present at the creation of the universe. We have to try to figure it out from the evidence - all the evidence - we have available. That includes both Scriptural and scientific evidence.

And I've made repeated attempts at answering your gravity question, albeit none that are satisfying to you: how about trying to account for the cosmic background now?

Further, when you use atheistic based naturalism as your basis for arguments (although I do not expect you to admit that of course), then you are actually denying Gods involvement unless He is given permission from the atheistic dominated "sciences" you want to champion.

The theories that theistic evolutionists want to present as fact are at there very basic level athiestic philosophies.

In every other culture that would be considered as a traitorous act...

Evolution has no mention or credence in the bible, yet theistic evolutionists champion that ABOVE the bible.

That type of testimony is the very worst for the gospel, as it betrays the very basic truths the bible presents.

One could not do more damage to the gospel than one who is claiming to be a Christian, yet arguing the athiestic case against the bible.

A time is coming when we will all have to choose where we stand.

Where do you stand Bravus?

Mark

[Guest]

Further, when you use atheistic based naturalism as your basis for arguments (although I do not expect you to admit that of course), then you are actually denying Gods involvement unless He is given permission from the atheistic dominated "sciences" you want to champion.

The theories that theistic evolutionists want to present as fact are at there very basic level athiestic philosophies.

In every other culture that would be considered as a traitorous act...

Evolution has no mention or credence in the bible, yet theistic evolutionists champion that ABOVE the bible.

That type of testimony is the very worst for the gospel, as it betrays the very basic truths the bible presents.

One could not do more damage to the gospel than one who is claiming to be a Christian, yet arguing the athiestic case against the bible.

A time is coming when we will all have to choose where we stand.

Mark

I believe you have smote the nail upon it's head, Mark.