G.o.d (((((((((athiest))))))))))

[titey]

Nice to see you back ilw.... it's been a while!

[ilw]

Thanks, nice to be back . Had a nice holiday travelling around germany, italy and croatia. 3 weeks of blazing sunchine, beautiful beaches and tanned godesses. B)

[lynx]

Hi, ilw, now you've made me jealous.
Do you know what the equation is for strong and weak nuclear forces ? I never really got into those.
This doesn't really have much to do with religion or atheism, so I think I should start another thread about this, when I've had time to gather my thoughts.

[ilw]

The big bang theory seeks to explain what happened at or soon after the beginning of the universe. Scientists can now model the universe back to 10-43 seconds after the big bang. For the time before that moment, the classical theory of gravity is no longer adequate. Scientists are searching for a theory that merges quantum mechanics and gravity, but have not found one yet. Many scientists have hope that string theory will tie together gravity and quantum mechanics and help scientists explore further back in time.

Because scientists cannot look back in time beyond that early epoch, the actual big bang is hidden from them. There is no way at present to detect the origin of the universe. Further, the big bang theory does not explain what existed before the big bang. It may be that time itself began at the big bang, so that it makes no sense to discuss what happened "before" the big bang.

According to the big bang theory, the universe expanded rapidly in its first microseconds. A single force existed at the beginning of the universe, and as the universe expanded and cooled, this force separated into those we know today: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. A theory called the electroweak theory now provides a unified explanation of electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force theory. Physicists are now searching for a grand unification theory to also incorporate the strong nuclear force. String theory seeks to incorporate the force of gravity with the other three forces.

One widely accepted version of big bang theory includes the idea of inflation. In this model, the universe expanded much more rapidly at first, to about 1050 times its original size in the first 10-32 second, then slowed its expansion. The theory was advanced in the 1980s by American cosmologist Alan Guth and elaborated upon by American astronomer Paul Steinhardt, Russian American scientist Andrei Linde, and British astronomer Andreas Albrecht.

The inflationary universe theory solves a number of problems of cosmology. For example, it shows that the universe now appears close to the type of flat space described by the laws of Euclid's geometry: We see only a tiny region of the original universe, similar to the way we do not notice the curvature of the earth because we see only a small part of it. The inflationary universe also shows why the universe appears so homogeneous. If the universe we observe was inflated from some small, original region, it is not surprising that it appears uniform.

Once the expansion of the initial inflationary era ended, the universe continued to expand more slowly. The inflationary model predicts that the universe is on the boundary between being open and closed. If the universe is open, it will keep expanding forever, even though the rate of expansion will gradually slow. If the universe is closed, the expansion of the universe will eventually stop and the universe will begin contracting until it collapses. Whether the universe is open or closed depends on the density, or concentration of mass, in the universe. If the universe is dense enough, it is closed.

source http://www.angelfire.com/realm/shades/horo...es/abigbang.htm

As for equations about the nuclear weak and strong forces, i know that weak is related 10^-5 for distance and theres a bit of info at the top of this page about the strong force (less info on the weak force further down)

[titey]

Um..... yeah..... I was just about to say that very thing m'self.


Errr..... well..... yeah..... nice to have you back ilw!

[hobbes]

Originally posted by ilw@22 August 2003 - 19:37

To anyone who expressed disbelief that evolution could create life, I would recommend Richard Dawkin's books he's the writer of 'The selfish gene' and 'The blind watchmaker'. I was surprised by the amount I learned about evolution.

Could you give us a synopsis or insight into how he uses evolution to explain creation.

I read reviews about the "selfish gene" and "watchmaker" and they really dealt more in the mechanism of evolution and it's pointlessness (the fallacy of the watchmaker), rather than on the initial creation of life.

I really don't feel like reading 2 books which may not actually relate to creation at all. Can you give us enough of a teaser from these books which might give us a reason to examine them further.

Thanks.

[hobbes]

[ilw]

As u say both books concentrate on evolution as a whole more than any specific in depth probing of evolution as a method of creation. However, if i remember well 'the blind watchmaker' does contain some interesting information on the subject because the book is constructed partially as an argument against religion. If memory serves, the subject matter discussed included:
why life is carbon based, information regarding why silicon would also work,
precursors to dna (RNA and i think other simpler forms of protein coding/blueprint transmission) also why a precursor(s) to dna would have been necessary and why dna succeeded it(them)
Some discussion of the primordial soup and info regarding how the small steps evolution requires could have culminated in producing the first organism

I think that list is accurate, but woefully incomplete, i'm sure theres more in there but i don't have the book anymore so i can't easily check.
If all your trying to get out of it is info regarding evolutionary creation then there are probably better books out there, but if evolution as a whole interests u I would recommend reading at least the blind watchmaker.

[hobbes]

Originally posted by ilw@22 August 2003 - 23:18
As u say both books concentrate on evolution as a whole more than any specific in depth probing of evolution as a method of creation. However, if i remember well 'the blind watchmaker' does contain some interesting information on the subject because the book is constructed partially as an argument against religion. If memory serves, the subject matter discussed included:
why life is carbon based, information regarding why silicon would also work,
precursors to dna (RNA and i think other simpler forms of protein coding/blueprint transmission) also why a precursor(s) to dna would have been necessary and why dna succeeded it(them)
Some discussion of the primordial soup and info regarding how the small steps evolution requires could have culminated in producing the first organism

I think that list is accurate, but woefully incomplete, i'm sure theres more in there but i don't have the book anymore so i can't easily check.
If all your trying to get out of it is info regarding evolutionary creation then there are probably better books out there, but if evolution as a whole interests u I would recommend reading at least the blind watchmaker.

Evolution is real enough. I'll let some beaker boy worry about hammering out the details.

As I said in another thread, evolution is not limited to biology and sometimes this can be helpful in explaining how unique entities can arise from a common precursor.

My example was Latin. From this parent language, there have been many new languages formed. They came about from time and geographic separation. A speaker of the parent language is unable to understand the offspring and vice-versa.


I'm more interested in creation.

[billyfridge]

I thought believing in god or whatever, is only for the semi-literate, now i KNOW
billyfridge. (unbeleiver)