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Science, religion and the truth

cladking

Well-Known Member
...they are one and they are virtually one with the horse as well.

It is language with its abstractions, taxonomies, and reductionisms that separates us from the consciousness and life. We believe that abstractions are reality itself so we must see reality through its kaleidoscopic effects.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
It´s not "my belief system" at all. I am talking of a COLLECTIVE system which origin from the study of Comparative Religions and Mythology. The very essence in these studies is just that there is a cultural agreement and not disagreements.

I am just speaking of the very Creation Myths and nothing else here.

Well, to me, the creation bit - which all of us no doubt ponder - is the least important of anything to try to understand, especially when such answers might come from ancestors with much less knowledge about even our own world than we have. If they even did come to some consensus it hardly means that they are correct, and you still have to account for the one god or the many, etc. Not involved in creation?

Positing any creation story is a seed that could develop into virtually anything, and has, and causing a lot of conflict because of such 'growths', so why do it?
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Then I suppose all the "evidence" you need will surely come when your time comes.

If I am presented evidence after death, I will happily review it then.

What if the best way has a limit as to what it can answer? Some answers to questions in science in effect unknown?

Then there is a limit to what can be discovered.

just adding unobserved matters and energies isn´t a strict scientific method.

When it was discovered that some newer observations were not accounted for by the Standard Model of cosmology, the model had to be revised to account for those observations. That is the scientific method, or part of it.

We do this in daily life as well. For example, you wake up in the morning with a hangover, and remember that you were out clubbing last night. You have an initial concept of what happened that fits the available evidence. Then, you notice a broken vase in the hallway. New evidence about what happened last night. You begin considering a list of possible explanations (hypotheses) such as that you staggered and broke the vase, looking for evidence that that is correct. Then you go outside an see that your car is damaged. You modify your hypothesis of what happened last night again. Then you get a call from the police that your vehicle was identified in a hit-and-run accident. All the while, you modify your narrative of the night before to fit new evidence. When new evidence stops coming, the narrative ceases evolving.

When scientists discovered that the galaxies should not be gravitationally stable based on known science, and that the universe appeared to be accelerating in its expansion, it modified the narrative to account for this new evidence. Same process.

That´s the bad point in modern cosmological science.

There is no bad point in modern cosmological science, just unanswered questions. What you call the bad point is one of the best points about the scientific method. It's pronouncements are tentative and represent the best ideas available to account for all relevant observations to date.

The "truth" is in this case is that the scientific method demands repeatable experiments and as such, the very Big Bang fantasy isn´t even a scientific theory.

Feel free to repeat the astronomical observations upon which the theory is based yourself. Go ahead and repeat Hubble's work and measure the red-shifts of celestial objects. Measure the cosmic microwave background. Determine the composition of pristine nebulae. The evidence is still out there for your reproduced experiments should you care to do so.

The Big Bang theory is one of the most well-established scientific theories. It will no doubt be tweaked further over the decades and centuries for as long as there are still scientists, but, like evolutionary theory, the cell theory of life, the germ theory of infectious disease, and the heliocentric theory of the solar system, its main tenets cannot be upended at this time. The evidence is simply too robust.

I most certainly would call it a "time travel" when standard cosmologists refers to the 13.8 bill. years age of the Universe from a zero point when even "time began". An idea which of course can´t be repeated anywhere as science claims as a method.

The initial expansion of the universe does not need to be repeated or directly observed. As I alluded, observation in science does not mean going into the past and observing history. It means observation of what is present here and now and making deductions about the past.

And reproducibilty refers to experiments and observation that have already been performed, not reproduction of the Big Bang.

Don´t you tell me what I dont understand as long as the TOE isn´t found!

You told us what you don't understand by misspeaking. You don't seem to understand how science works, mistaking its self-correction as a weakness rather than the great strength it is.

And you didn't understand what observation and reproducibility refer to.

That's fine. I don't need for you to understand it. But wrong is wrong, and is especially important to comment on when the source implies an advanced understanding of the subject and is spreading misinformation.

And you can take off explaining to me how a Universe can be created from a "super-cell" in a singularity. That should keep you busy for a while

How is that relevant? Cosmology, like biology, has an origins problem that is much knottier than solving the evolution problems beginning with the primordial seed of physical reality to present and from the primordial population to the modern tree of life we see today. The lack of answers to the twin origins problems does not invalidate the evolutionary theories that describe what followed once those primordial seeds were present.

Incidentally, implying that the Big Bang theory is somehow weaker because it is not known what set it off is a logical fallacy called argument from ignorance, which in a nutshell is the erroneous conclusion that if something has not been or cannot be explained, it is wrong, or that some competing hypothesis is therefore correct.

So GRAVITY IS A RESULT of the other three fundamental EM forces? Or at least it was once unified with the other three fundamental EM forces at at time?

Here's another error. Only one of the four forces was EM (electromagnetic).

Where did you get that excellent information from? Links please.

I read two helpful books in the mid-eighties, In Search of The Big Bang by John Gribbin, and The First Three Minutes by Steven Weinberg :

upload_2020-3-22_9-19-17.jpeg
upload_2020-3-22_9-18-18.jpeg


If you want to find something on the Internet, these books may be available in PDF format, or you can just search symmetry breaking in the Big Bang.
 

It Aint Necessarily So

Veteran Member
Premium Member
there APPARENTLY IS ONE HUMAN TRUTH in the religious stories of Creation

The creation myths are mutually exclusive and contain no truth. The only creation story with any truth content is the scientific one, which even the religious recognize as authoritative when they strain to show conformity between the scientific and mythical accounts with a Texas Sharpshooter fallacy - emphasizing the small amount of overlap between the two while downplaying or ignoring the considerable differences. Thus we hear about how the scriptures anticipated that the universe had a beginning (like every other creation story) or that the scriptures foretold that life came from the sea, while ignoring things such as that the scriptures also say that terrestrial life was created on the land and thus didn't evolve from marine forms.

Let's look at a couple of those mythical creation stories. Here's the Viking version
  • "Odin, Vili, and Ve killed the giant Ymir. The sons of Bor then ... made the world from him. From his blood they made the sea and the lakes; from his flesh the earth; from his hair the trees; and from his bones the mountains. They made rocks and pebbles from his teeth and jaws and those bones that were broken. Maggots appeared in Ymir's flesh and came to life. By the decree of the gods they acquired human understanding and the appearance of men, although they lived in the earth and in rocks. From Ymir's skull the sons of Bor made the sky ... The sons of Bor flung Ymir's brains into the air, and they became the clouds. Then they took the sparks and burning embers that were flying about after they had been blown out of Muspell, and placed them in the midst of Ginnungagap to give light to heaven above and earth beneath. To the stars they gave appointed places and paths." The Norse Creation Myth
Here's the Mesopotamian version:
  • "The mighty Marduk took his club and split Tiamat’s body in half. He placed half of her body in the sky and made the heavens. He created the moon to guard the heavens, and set it moving back and forth, on endless patrol. With the other half of Tiamat's body he made the land." http://mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/marduk.html
I see no truth there. It's interesting, which is why I know something about it, but not useful except to study human psychology and the proclivity of mankind to spin stories in the absence of answers.

My point was that the stories don't resemble one another, nor the science. Look at how much was left out. Where's the symmetry breaking of original superforce? Where's the expansion of the universe? Where's the inflationary period?

Incidentally, I just saw the idea of Bor throwing Ymir's brain into the air to form the clouds in a Jeopardy repeat from 2018. Look at Mythological Origins Stories for $800 at J! Archive - Show #7827, aired 2018-09-25 . Answer: What are clouds.

The mechanical way and the mythical/spiritual way of understanding cosmos should really be the same - and in some areas they are too if interpreting the myths correctly

But I've just demonstrated that they not the same. The methods are different - science and mythopoeia - and the conclusions are wildly different with almost no overlap between the myths or between them and science.

Regarding the historic divergence of religious understanding, it is also important to deal with the way former cultures got their knowledge of the creation. This of course implied physical observations of the human surroundings ON and ABOVE the Earth, but it also implied SPIRITUAL and INTUITIVE informations from both areas.

I don't call false beliefs knowledge. Their observations of reality were limited to the apparent inasmuch as they lacked telescopes, microscopes, and the like. So, they saw the stars, but didn't understand what they were, how they came to be, how far they were, etc.., so they just made up stories, which you call spiritual and intuitive, but I call guessing and guessing wrong.

so you are learned by modern cosmologists who don´t even agree in making a reliable and testable theory of anything at all

The scientists are in agreement about the basics of cosmogenesis. The theory is reliable and testable. It has been tested and passed. A few times. Once when the cosmic microwave was predicted to exist at a particular temperature / frequency and was found where prophesied, once when the relative composition of the pristine nebulae was predicted in detail (% H2, % He, % Li) and discovered to be exactly as prophesied, and more recently when the Higgs boson was discovered at the precise energy / mass and with the precise characteristics (spin, parity, etc) prophesied by the priests of science.
  • "Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy. Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science?" - Carl Sagan
The science is correct.

It all just assumptions based on former assumptions which results in cosmological questions in the video below whether their theory is wrong and need serious reconsidering

No, many of the hypotheses that comprise the theory have been confirmed as I just outlined above. That is compelling evidence that the fundamental assumptions contained in the theory are valid.

Once again, it's not important whether you understand that, but it is important that you don't spread your misinformation. You have decided that you want the ancients to be correct and in accord, and science to be wrong - just guesses and assumptions. The evidence shows that you have that entirely backwards.

Incidentally, I didn't look at the video. It's what I call an orphan link - "Here, what this guy says" - substituting for an argument. Invariably, one views or reads the link, comments, and is then told that that is not what the poster understood the link to mean, or the part one commented on wasn't the part they posted the link for, or some other failure in communication.

Summarize the argument, and provide supporting links if you care to. The link is optional, the argument not. If you want to try again by making the argument yourself, we can proceed from there.

now have a chance to think otherwise and for your self by watching the video

Actually, we are thinking for ourselves now. You're looking for conformity with your ideas.
 

mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
...

If you want to find something on the Internet, these books may be available in PDF format, or you can just search symmetry breaking in the Big Bang.

"Symmetry breaking is equally important in the world of particle physics. ... Physicists believe that just after the big bang, all of the forces of nature were identical and all elementary particles were the same. But within an instant, symmetry was broken."

The operative word is what? To me it is believe. So science is a belief system?
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Well, so you are learned by modern cosmologists who don´t even agree in making a reliable and testable theory of anything at all. It all just assumptions based on former assumptions which results in cosmological questions in the video below whether their theory is wrong and need serious reconsidering:
Wal Thornhill? Electric Universe?

His website says:

"all matter is electrical. Yet astronomy is stuck in the gas-light era, unable to see that stars are simply electric lights strung along invisible cosmic power lines that are detectable by their magnetic fields and radio noise.​

Grateful if you could clarify for me:

When he says 'electric' / 'electricity', what definition is he using? Or doesn't he know?

What is the 'cosmic power' he refers to?

Why does he think neutrons and the neutrinos (which have zero electric charge) aren't part of 'matter'?

When he says stars are "electric lights", how does this view differ from the view that eg the sun is a hydrogen plasma heated by the compression of gravity from its own mass to such energy levels that it radiates energy? Or is he just saying the identical thing?
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
The cart is consciousness and the horse is life. Life precedes consciousness and you go nowhere at all without the cart. Indeed these are so intimately connected one could say we ride bareback and that the brain body is so intimately connected they are one and they are virtually one with the horse as well.
Agreed :) GIDEO! and away into the sunset :)
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
Native said:
Oh yes indeed :) It´s called the cycle of Creation :)
Yes, the cycle of death.
Are you serious? If death was the only thing, you even couldn´t speak of life and without life, death on itself is completely irrelevant.
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
Native said:
Well, so you are learned by modern cosmologists who don´t even agree in making a reliable and testable theory of anything at all. It all just assumptions based on former assumptions which results in cosmological questions in the video below whether their theory is wrong and need serious reconsidering:
Wal Thornhill? Electric Universe?
His website says:
I didn´t link to his website but to the video contents. If you want to discuss something in that, please notise and write the timestamps in question.
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
Well, to me, the creation bit - which all of us no doubt ponder - is the least important of anything to try to understand, especially when such answers might come from ancestors with much less knowledge about even our own world than we have.
From WHICH cultural Story of Creation do you conclude this?
Positing any creation story is a seed that could develop into virtually anything, and has, and causing a lot of conflict because of such 'growths', so why do it?
How many cultural Stories of Creation have you investigated?
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
When scientists discovered that the galaxies should not be gravitationally stable based on known science, and that the universe appeared to be accelerating in its expansion, it modified the narrative to account for this new evidence. Same process.
Do you realize what you´re saying and claiming here? Of course galaxies are stable in their own right and formational stage! This has NOTHING to do with any human theory in the first place!

The point is HOW humans INTERPRET the galactic imageries and motions.

1024px-M101_hires_STScI-PRC2006-10a.jpg


1920px-Hubble2005-01-barred-spiral-galaxy-NGC1300.jpg


A logical test for you: What´s the similarities and differences between these two galaxies?
When it was discovered that some newer observations were not accounted for by the Standard Model of cosmology, the model had to be revised to account for those observations. That is the scientific method, or part of it.
Native said:
Just adding unobserved matters and energies isn´t a strict scientific method.

When a "Standard Model" is insufficient or directly contradicted, the very basics of that model itself has to be revised, in this case the gravitational idea/law of celestial motions which didn´t fit on the galactic orbiting pattern.

You can take off pondering and answering the question about the posted images.
 

blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I didn´t link to his website but to the video contents. If you want to discuss something in that, please notise and write the timestamps in question.
If I'm going to listen to Wal, I want to be on the same page as he is.

At least reassure me:

When he says 'electric' / 'electricity', is he using standard definitions from physics? Or his own?

Why does he think neutrons and the neutrinos (which have zero electric charge) aren't part of 'matter'?

In standard physics, the sun is a hydrogen plasma heated by the compression of gravity resulting from its own mass to such an extent that it radiates energy. When he says stars are "electric lights", does he mean anything different? If so, what?
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
From WHICH cultural Story of Creation do you conclude this?

How many cultural Stories of Creation have you investigated?

What creation story am I supposed to look at? The point is, unless one is to believe any particular view from such-and-such religion, the question of creation - life, the universe, and everything (to quote Douglas Adams) - is mere speculation, and doing so leads one on to so many things which might not be useful for humans. One can hardly argue that all religions are just the same and never conflict with each other - and perhaps this is the result of speculating about our origins. One could argue, why does it matter how we come to be here, when surely it matters what we do whilst we are here. Perhaps our lives would be better if we concentrated on this. Some, like myself, see religions interfering in such, and no doubt coming from initial speculation as to our creation.

It might be argued that it was just inevitable that those in the past would try to understand our origins, and that of the universe (which I tend to believe, given our nature) and that there are benefits for having beliefs which might arise from something based on how creation is perceived, but perhaps there are more downsides to such.

I tend to be in the category of rather having no answers than wrong answers. Now why can't everyone be like this. :D
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
The creation myths are mutually exclusive and contain no truth.
Correction: The creation myths are excluded by you because you don´t understand these and the astronomical and cosmological descriptions.
Let's look at a couple of those mythical creation stories. Here's the Viking version
  • "Odin, Vili, and Ve killed the giant Ymir. The sons of Bor then ... made the world from him. From his blood they made the sea and the lakes; from his flesh the earth; from his hair the trees; and from his bones the mountains. They made rocks and pebbles from his teeth and jaws and those bones that were broken. Maggots appeared in Ymir's flesh and came to life. By the decree of the gods they acquired human understanding and the appearance of men, although they lived in the earth and in rocks. From Ymir's skull the sons of Bor made the sky ... The sons of Bor flung Ymir's brains into the air, and they became the clouds. Then they took the sparks and burning embers that were flying about after they had been blown out of Muspell, and placed them in the midst of Ginnungagap to give light to heaven above and earth beneath. To the stars they gave appointed places and paths." The Norse Creation Myth
Here's the Mesopotamian version:
  • "The mighty Marduk took his club and split Tiamat’s body in half. He placed half of her body in the sky and made the heavens. He created the moon to guard the heavens, and set it moving back and forth, on endless patrol. With the other half of Tiamat's body he made the land." http://mesopotamia.mrdonn.org/marduk.html
I see no truth there. It's interesting, which is why I know something about it, but not useful except to study human psychology and the proclivity of mankind to spin stories in the absence of answers.
Nice mythical examples :) Why can´t you se any truth in this even when " . . . light to heaven above and earth beneath. To the stars they gave appointed places and paths" is mentioned in the Norse Mythology?

Is it just pure mumbo jumbo when it´s said in the Mesopotamian version that: "He created the moon to guard the heavens, and set it moving back and forth, on endless patrol."?

And what Tiamat "half parts" are in question with "one part in the heavens and one part represent the land"? Is it all just mythical mumbo jumbo?

No. The problem here is that you, per biased automatism, refuse the ancient knowledge and don´t even take factual astronomical descriptions in myths seriously because you can´t connect the correct myth to the correct astronomical or cosmological issues.

It is on this unconscious and disconnected level that you conclude ancient myths to be nonsense and claim modern science to be objective facts.

If only you had the courtesy to ask before you refuse what you don´t understand, that would in itself be a huge step forward :)
 
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mikkel_the_dane

My own religion
What creation story am I supposed to look at? The point is, unless one is to believe any particular view from such-and-such religion, the question of creation - life, the universe, and everything (to quote Douglas Adams) - is mere speculation, and doing so leads one on to so many things which might not be useful for humans. One can hardly argue that all religions are just the same and never conflict with each other - and perhaps this is the result of speculating about our origins. One could argue, why does it matter how we come to be here, when surely it matters what we do whilst we are here. Perhaps our lives would be better if we concentrated on this. Some, like myself, see religions interfering in such, and no doubt coming from initial speculation as to our creation.

It might be argued that it was just inevitable that those in the past would try to understand our origins, and that of the universe (which I tend to believe, given our nature) and that there are benefits for having beliefs which might arise from something based on how creation is perceived, but perhaps there are more downsides to such.

I tend to be in the category of rather having no answers than wrong answers. Now why can't everyone be like this. :D

Now the bold we agree on.
As for this part: "Some, like myself, see religions interfering in such, and no doubt coming from initial speculation as to our creation." - I disagree, that is not unique to religions. It also happens in other world view and even with how some humans claim science. Not science as a practice, but science as incorporated as a world view.
So let us talk about the singularity in regards to the Big Bang. In practice it is a form of mysticism, because it is apparently unknowable, because "I know something" is not a singularity, so I can't know a singularity, because knowing a singularity is as it appears in effect a contradiction.

So here it is in the words of a scientist:
"For a start, how is the existence of the other universes to be tested? To be sure, all cosmologists accept that there are some regions of the universe that lie beyond the reach of our telescopes, but somewhere on the slippery slope between that and the idea that there is an infinite number of universes, credibility reaches a limit. As one slips down that slope, more and more must be accepted on faith, and less and less is open to scientific verification. Extreme multiverse explanations are therefore reminiscent of theological discussions. Indeed, invoking an infinity of unseen universes to explain the unusual features of the one we do see is just as ad hoc as invoking an unseen Creator. The multiverse theory may be dressed up in scientific language, but in essence it requires the same leap of faith."
Author and cosmologist Paul Davies

Now strip away that is about multiverses and ask how can you even in principle explain how you observe a singularity?
Remember I am not talking about science as such. I am talking about the limits of knowledge and how that pertains to science.
So some claims in the name of science are apparently no different than religions.
That is what I am trying to get across to you. And yet you limit it to religions and as if it is only religions, which do this.

Regards
Mikkel
 

Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
Native said:
I didn´t link to his website but to the video contents. If you want to discuss something in that, please notise and write the timestamps in question.
If I'm going to listen to Wal, I want to be on the same page as he is.
And I asked you to refer from the video and WITH time-stamp numbers.

Edit: BTW you really should be able to get your answers by LISTENING to the video contents!
 
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Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
Native said:
From WHICH cultural Story of Creation do you conclude this?
How many cultural Stories of Creation have you investigated?
What creation story am I supposed to look at? The point is, unless one is to believe any particular view from such-and-such religion, the question of creation - life, the universe, and everything (to quote Douglas Adams) - is mere speculation, and doing so leads one on to so many things which might not be useful for humans
To me this is a nonsensitive argument and I just asked you from which cultural Story of Creation you´re making your conclusions. IMO you can take any cultural story since they´re all very much the same. The question was/is IF you have studied ANY story of creation at all.
 
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Native

Free Natural Philosopher & Comparative Mythologist
So some claims in the name of science are apparently no different than religions.
That is what I am trying to get across to you. And yet you limit it to religions and as if it is only religions, which do this.
Generally agreed. In science there are lots of assumptions and assertions on the very belief levels which just is called "hypothesis" - and in religion lots of belief systems have occurred throughout time. IMO mostly because of the general loss of understanding the human symbolic language and it´s cosmological extend in the myths.
 
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blü 2

Veteran Member
Premium Member
Native said:
I didn´t link to his website but to the video contents. If you want to discuss something in that, please notise and write the timestamps in question.

And I asked you to refer from the video and WITH time-stamp numbers.

Edit: BTW you really should be able to get your answers by LISTENING to the video contents!
I'll listen to the video when you provide me with the meaning of the words he uses.

If you know the answers to my questions, please tell me.

If you don't know the answers, just say so.
 
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