Atheism leaves too much room for error.

[Darwinian]

You said, "Approximately 13½ billion years ago the universe was compressed to a point with no dimensions. This, in lay terminology, was the moment before time and space existed ... there was no matter/energy, time, or space, literally NOTHING. Then the universe started."

Energy/Matter have always existed. This is the First Law of Thermodynamics. Your copy and paste job is inconsistent.

I never claimed anything of the sort, neither did I copy & paste. I simply said that the singularity may have always existed negating the need for a creator, meaning that our universe has always existed but just not in the form we see today.

If you're suggesting that I looked this up then I'm sorry to dissapoint you as I am that you seem unable to grasp such a simple concept.

[theVOID]

the_Truth:

There are many potential explanations for the beginning of the universe and God is only one of many possibilities both imagined and unimagined. The fact that it was the first explanation dreamed up by primitive minds in the infancy of human civilisation means nothing, neither does the circular logic of the book in which these ideas are contained, what matters is objective evidence that could be used to distinguish one possibility from another. Until such evidence is found every possibility is only an assumption and that makes god just an assumption too, the god of the gaps.

What makes me think you're a loon is not that you have made the assumption that god is the unknown (although it is rather silly to assume) it is the fact that you assert as truth not only god in a deistic sense, but that you manage to extend the assumption of god all the way to the Judeo-Christian god.

Not only that, but you have completely failed to provide the proof of God that you touted when you opened this discussion, 5 pages ago.

So hurry up and provide this proof of god, or go make your unsupported assertions elsewhere.

[Kyuuketsuki]

I'm sorry, but I don't debate people that copy and paste from a website and then claim "it's their argument". And especially copying and pasting that much information, and then topping it off with a slew of smiley faces is hardly worthy of debate.

It IS my argument!!!!! It's on my website!

---

God said 'Let there be light' before the Sun was created. What light was God talking about? The explosion of particles, big bang?

So let me get this straight ... you are claiming that your bible is a science book, that the one line, "Let there be light", is the equivalent of the following (and trust me on this) which is a very, very, very, very simple overview of what is suppose to have happened:

The Universe "Explodes"
Approximately 13½ billion years ago the universe was compressed to a point with no dimensions. This, in lay terminology, was the moment before time and space existed ... there was no matter/energy, time, or space, literally NOTHING. Then the universe started.

At this point the universe was highly ordered, immensely hot and spinning ... it was in the lowest state of entropy the universe has ever been and ever will be again.

The entity, known as a singularity, expanded very rapidly. Sometimes this is called an "explosion", but this is misleading. In a typical explosion, matter and energy expand into space. But there was no space to expand into. Instead, space itself expanded very rapidly. Although there is evidence (background radiation and more) there is no way that we mere humans can conceive of the immensity of that "explosion" or the energies and temperatures involved. Suffice it to say that in the first thousandth of a second the universe expanded from sub-atomic to something just over a thousand metres in width

The major forces (strong & weak nuclear, electromagnetic and gravity) didn’t exist initially and only in the first fractions of the first second (10^–43) did they appear forming themselves into a combined super-force. The first particles began to form photons, positrons, neutrinos and their corresponding anti-particles began to form and most of these were destroyed in the fury around them. It is sobering to consider that the surviving particles (less than 1 in a billion) went on to form the physical universe we know today.

With matter and radiation inseparable (an ionised plasma) the universe expanded until, at 100th of a second old, neutrino decay began on a massive scale, allowing for free electrons and protons to combine with other particles and the formation of deuterium (heavy hydrogen). Few of these particles could survive long (a few nanoseconds at best) due to intense bombardment from electrons. Due to the density of the exploding mass no light was visible in the “cloud.” Finally, during the “epoch of last scattering,” the major forces could exert their unique influences.

With matter and radiation inseparable (an ionised plasma) the universe expanded until it was 100th second old at which point neutrinos began decaying on a massive scale, allowing for free electrons and protons to combine with other particles and the formation of deuterium (heavy hydrogen). Few of these particles could survive long (a few nanoseconds at best) due to intense bombardment from electrons and the density of the exploding mass means that no light was visible in the “cloud”. Finally, during the “epoch of last scattering”, the major forces are allowed to exert their unique influences.

At the end of its first second, the universe having cooled to a mere 10 billion degrees, photons and electrons are no longer capable of disintegrating newly formed particles and by the end of the third second, at a billion degrees Kelvin, nucleosynthesis is able to start. Helium nuclei begin to form at a rate that will eventually form our universe with around 25% helium. Thirty minutes later conditions dictated that electron-positron pair annihilation allowed for an increase in the rate of formation of photons and some scientists believe that our universe could not have formed the way it has if it weren’t for the fact that the universe contains slightly more electrons than positrons.

Over the next 300,000 years the universe cools to around 10,000 Kelvin, helium nuclei acquire electrons and form helium atoms, hydrogen undergoes fusion with helium to form lithium. Radiation and matter can now separate and visible light can now be seen.

Evidence Supporting the Big Bang
So what evidence do we have to support the theory of the big bang?

After its invention in the early 19th century, spectroscopic analysis revealed that the sun and nearby stars have similar spectral lines (Huggins, 1863). Meanwhile others were able to detect hydrogen, sodium and magnesium in many stars (Kirchhoff and Bunsen). Another physicist theorised that, like sound, light waves would vary in frequency dependent on the motion of the observer relative to the object in question (the Doppler shift) and in 1848 the French physicist Armand Fizeau demonstrated that as cosmological objects moved away their visible spectrums were shifted towards the red.

It was established that cosmological “red-shift” is not Doppler shift but, like it, is measurable. Doppler shift is caused by the expansion of light emitted by an object that is moving rapidly away from us. Red-shift is caused by the expansion of space itself (and the light that moves through the expanding space) so the more distant an object is the faster it appears to be moving away from us. Using the same techniques Huggins demonstrated that Sirius’ spectrum was “red-shifted” and moving away from us at around 30 miles per second.

As part of research carried out by the Lick Laboratories at the end of the 19th century the relative speeds of some 400 stars and other celestial objects were measured and a few years later papers were published revealing the relative speeds of 14 nebulae. Nearly all of them were moving away and featured red-shifted spectra (Slipher, 1910). Research continued and in 1924 Hubble demonstrated that the galaxy M31 was separate from our own and very distant. Later Hubble reported that the Andromeda galaxy was some 900,000 light years distant and also noted correlations between the radial velocities of galaxies and their relative distances. He confirmed previous astronomers’ findings that galaxies in general were moving away from us and the light we received from them was red-shifted. He noted that the greater the relative distance of these galaxies the greater their relative speed and logically concluded that if then they were moving away, at some point in the distant past they must have been closer. Hubble had finally obtained conclusive proof that the universe was expanding.

Astronomers began to build their models of the universe taking into account Einstein’s recently developed general/special theory of relativity. Despite his personal beliefs that the universe was of heterogeneous, uniform nature Einstein calculated that the universe was an oscillating one with the potential to expand or contract. His calculations revealed the universe to be a four-dimensional closed construct.

More astronomical models were developed: a universe without matter but predicting red-shift (de Sitter); a forever-expanding universe (Lemaître) and a static universe based on Einstein’s cosmological constant (Friedmann). Friedmann’s work was dismissed by Einstein until Hubble, in 1932, proved beyond doubt that the universe was expanding. An expanding universe begged the question of a beginning, an origin for the expansion and, in 1931, Lemaître published a paper incorporating Einstein’s General/Special Theory of Relativity, based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics and an assumption of an increasingly disordered universe originating in a singularity. It was not well received.

Gamow (1947) expanded on Lemaître’s work using recent discoveries in quantum theory and developed the concept of a giant nucleus that rapidly broke down and expanded allowing all the universe’s elements to form very early in the universes life. Flaws were found in this theory (notably that the atomic masses 5 and 8 could not have been constructed in this way). Now known as “the big bang”, a term coined by Fred Hoyle, Gamow’s universe began to lose ground to the religiously adopted steady-state theory. Steady State defined a universe where young galaxies formed in the voids between the more mature ones and it was only abandoned when evidence of radioactivity was found in galaxies and was consistent with an expanding universe based on a big-bang cosmology. Refinements of George Gamow's (1947) calculations indicated that if the universe were compressed to the size theorised in the "big bang," "explode" and then cool, some 13 billion years later the temperature would be around 3 Kelvin. According to Planck's law all bodies emit energy and, depending on the length of the wave, can register any radiation between X rays and radio waves. A celestial body’s energy emission depends on its constituent elements, the surface area and the surface temperature. The body that emits the greatest amount of energy is termed a black body. Penzias & Wilson (1965), whilst tuning a new antenna, detected static (persistent radio noise) where there should have been none. In a paper, for which they won the Nobel Prize in Physics, the two scientists revealed data showing the universe glowing in the microwave spectrum. They interpreted these findings as the remnant glow of the "big bang".

Essentially, that the "big bang" actually occurred is supported by observable phenomena i.e. an expanding universe, a background radiation of around 3 Kelvin, ratios of hydrogen to helium etc.

Current Thought
According to modern cosmological theory (based on Einstein's Theory of General Relativity) at the time of the Big Bang space did not exist or rather the big bang occupied the whole of space. Subsequent to the big bang the universe has expanded and as it does so it creates (becomes) the space into which it is expanding.

Evidence of this is that distant galaxies are not moving at high-speed through space but move slowly relative to their neighbouring counterparts and as space expands the wavelength of light lengthens (as earlier stated this is commonly referred to as "red-shift").

Space is infinitely elastic and does not expand into anything.

One scientist, Robert Dicke theorised that a temperature in excess of a billion Kelvin would be required to create our universe. Using Planck's Black Body Curve as a guide he calculated that the Cosmic Background Radiation of the Big Bang should be about 3° above absolute zero (Dicke).

Dicke also suggested that our universe may have been created from the remains of a previous one and that infinitesimal amounts of radiation would be detectable if this were so. This possibility represents a modification to the big bang theory and also suggests that one day our universe may stop expanding and begin to contract. If so it is possible that our universe may contract to a point as small as the original singularity that formed our universe, an event that has been termed “the big crunch”.

Returning to the early expanding universe ... at 3000 Kelvin, helium and hydrogen (25% to 75%) would have been the major constituents of the galaxy and that is reflected in the constituents of stars today (Peebles). Peebles further predicted that had the big bang occurred in the manner described it’s background temperature would be around 3 Kelvin and more recent precision measurements have revealed that the universe is bathed in radiation that fitted a "black body curve" for an object with a temperature of 2.735K.

---

Now, again, can you really (I mean truly really) be THAT stupid?

Kyu

[Minimalist]

Didn't a group of Jews write this down 3,500-4,000 years ago?

No. Somewhere around 2,600 years ago they may have started to write some things down...after plagiarizing much from the older and wiser Sumerian culture. As near as we can tell they did not have a written language until sometime around 900 BC and we certainly do not evidence for extensive literacy then.

And, before you make things worse, the oldest OT texts in existence are written in Greek. Not Hebrew. The Septuagint dates from the 3d century BC.

[Tiberius]

It IS my argument!!!!! It's on my website!

Haha! Well that's even better

[Retorth]

If there is one thing I realized, you gotta be quick to respond to a thread or else everyone else will mention everything you want to...haha *sits back and observes*

Oh, by the way, Truth, if there is one thing I've noticed, it's that there is a communication breakdown between yourself and those you are debating with.

Far be it for me to critisize and add facts of my own, because I'm not half as knowledgable as some of the veterans here, like Adrian, Kyuu and Darwinian just to name a few.

However, you seem so dead set, if I may call it that, on what you percieve to be the undeniable truth, that you don't seem to even try and understand what everyone else is saying.

[The_Truth]

And, before you make things worse, the oldest OT texts in existence are written in Greek. Not Hebrew. The Septuagint dates from the 3d century BC.

Did you just say the OLD TESTAMENT was written in Greek?? Don't tell that to the jews.

The NEW TESTAMENT was written in Greek. The OLD TESTAMENT was written in ancient Hebrew.

[Retorth]

The NEW TESTAMENT was written in Greek. The OLD TESTAMENT was written in ancient Hebrew.

I think you still have some mighty big quesions higher up in the page and previous, pending an answer.

[The_Truth]

You said, "Approximately 13½ billion years ago the universe was compressed to a point with no dimensions. This, in lay terminology, was the moment before time and space existed ... there was no matter/energy, time, or space, literally NOTHING. Then the universe started."

Energy/Matter have always existed. This is the First Law of Thermodynamics. Your copy and paste job is inconsistent.

I never claimed anything of the sort, neither did I copy & paste. I simply said that the singularity may have always existed negating the need for a creator, meaning that our universe has always existed but just not in the form we see today.

Yes, the singularity has always existed. This singularity is God. Everything we know in existence came from this cosmic singularity. It's proven science.

If you're suggesting that I looked this up then I'm sorry to dissapoint you as I am that you seem unable to grasp such a simple concept.

You said energy/matter are not eternal. That is incorrect.

---

[quote='Kyuuketsuki' pid='26730' dateline='1250540740']

I'm sorry, but I don't debate people that copy and paste from a website and then claim "it's their argument". And especially copying and pasting that much information, and then topping it off with a slew of smiley faces is hardly worthy of debate.

It IS my argument!!!!! It's on my website!

---

God said 'Let there be light' before the Sun was created. What light was God talking about? The explosion of particles, big bang?

So let me get this straight ... you are claiming that your bible is a science book, that the one line, "Let there be light", is the equivalent of the following (and trust me on this) which is a very, very, very, very simple overview of what is suppose to have happened:

The Universe "Explodes"
Approximately 13½ billion years ago the universe was compressed to a point with no dimensions. This, in lay terminology, was the moment before time and space existed ... there was no matter/energy, time, or space, literally NOTHING. Then the universe started.

At this point the universe was highly ordered, immensely hot and spinning ... it was in the lowest state of entropy the universe has ever been and ever will be again.

The entity, known as a singularity, expanded very rapidly. Sometimes this is called an "explosion", but this is misleading. In a typical explosion, matter and energy expand into space. But there was no space to expand into. Instead, space itself expanded very rapidly. Although there is evidence (background radiation and more) there is no way that we mere humans can conceive of the immensity of that "explosion" or the energies and temperatures involved. Suffice it to say that in the first thousandth of a second the universe expanded from sub-atomic to something just over a thousand metres in width

The major forces (strong & weak nuclear, electromagnetic and gravity) didn’t exist initially and only in the first fractions of the first second (10^–43) did they appear forming themselves into a combined super-force. The first particles began to form photons, positrons, neutrinos and their corresponding anti-particles began to form and most of these were destroyed in the fury around them. It is sobering to consider that the surviving particles (less than 1 in a billion) went on to form the physical universe we know today.

With matter and radiation inseparable (an ionised plasma) the universe expanded until, at 100th of a second old, neutrino decay began on a massive scale, allowing for free electrons and protons to combine with other particles and the formation of deuterium (heavy hydrogen). Few of these particles could survive long (a few nanoseconds at best) due to intense bombardment from electrons. Due to the density of the exploding mass no light was visible in the “cloud.” Finally, during the “epoch of last scattering,” the major forces could exert their unique influences.

With matter and radiation inseparable (an ionised plasma) the universe expanded until it was 100th second old at which point neutrinos began decaying on a massive scale, allowing for free electrons and protons to combine with other particles and the formation of deuterium (heavy hydrogen). Few of these particles could survive long (a few nanoseconds at best) due to intense bombardment from electrons and the density of the exploding mass means that no light was visible in the “cloud”. Finally, during the “epoch of last scattering”, the major forces are allowed to exert their unique influences.

At the end of its first second, the universe having cooled to a mere 10 billion degrees, photons and electrons are no longer capable of disintegrating newly formed particles and by the end of the third second, at a billion degrees Kelvin, nucleosynthesis is able to start. Helium nuclei begin to form at a rate that will eventually form our universe with around 25% helium. Thirty minutes later conditions dictated that electron-positron pair annihilation allowed for an increase in the rate of formation of photons and some scientists believe that our universe could not have formed the way it has if it weren’t for the fact that the universe contains slightly more electrons than positrons.

Over the next 300,000 years the universe cools to around 10,000 Kelvin, helium nuclei acquire electrons and form helium atoms, hydrogen undergoes fusion with helium to form lithium. Radiation and matter can now separate and visible light can now be seen.

Evidence Supporting the Big Bang
So what evidence do we have to support the theory of the big bang?

After its invention in the early 19th century, spectroscopic analysis revealed that the sun and nearby stars have similar spectral lines (Huggins, 1863). Meanwhile others were able to detect hydrogen, sodium and magnesium in many stars (Kirchhoff and Bunsen). Another physicist theorised that, like sound, light waves would vary in frequency dependent on the motion of the observer relative to the object in question (the Doppler shift) and in 1848 the French physicist Armand Fizeau demonstrated that as cosmological objects moved away their visible spectrums were shifted towards the red.

It was established that cosmological “red-shift” is not Doppler shift but, like it, is measurable. Doppler shift is caused by the expansion of light emitted by an object that is moving rapidly away from us. Red-shift is caused by the expansion of space itself (and the light that moves through the expanding space) so the more distant an object is the faster it appears to be moving away from us. Using the same techniques Huggins demonstrated that Sirius’ spectrum was “red-shifted” and moving away from us at around 30 miles per second.

As part of research carried out by the Lick Laboratories at the end of the 19th century the relative speeds of some 400 stars and other celestial objects were measured and a few years later papers were published revealing the relative speeds of 14 nebulae. Nearly all of them were moving away and featured red-shifted spectra (Slipher, 1910). Research continued and in 1924 Hubble demonstrated that the galaxy M31 was separate from our own and very distant. Later Hubble reported that the Andromeda galaxy was some 900,000 light years distant and also noted correlations between the radial velocities of galaxies and their relative distances. He confirmed previous astronomers’ findings that galaxies in general were moving away from us and the light we received from them was red-shifted. He noted that the greater the relative distance of these galaxies the greater their relative speed and logically concluded that if then they were moving away, at some point in the distant past they must have been closer. Hubble had finally obtained conclusive proof that the universe was expanding.

Astronomers began to build their models of the universe taking into account Einstein’s recently developed general/special theory of relativity. Despite his personal beliefs that the universe was of heterogeneous, uniform nature Einstein calculated that the universe was an oscillating one with the potential to expand or contract. His calculations revealed the universe to be a four-dimensional closed construct.

More astronomical models were developed: a universe without matter but predicting red-shift (de Sitter); a forever-expanding universe (Lemaître) and a static universe based on Einstein’s cosmological constant (Friedmann). Friedmann’s work was dismissed by Einstein until Hubble, in 1932, proved beyond doubt that the universe was expanding. An expanding universe begged the question of a beginning, an origin for the expansion and, in 1931, Lemaître published a paper incorporating Einstein’s General/Special Theory of Relativity, based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics and an assumption of an increasingly disordered universe originating in a singularity. It was not well received.

Gamow (1947) expanded on Lemaître’s work using recent discoveries in quantum theory and developed the concept of a giant nucleus that rapidly broke down and expanded allowing all the universe’s elements to form very early in the universes life. Flaws were found in this theory (notably that the atomic masses 5 and 8 could not have been constructed in this way). Now known as “the big bang”, a term coined by Fred Hoyle, Gamow’s universe began to lose ground to the religiously adopted steady-state theory. Steady State defined a universe where young galaxies formed in the voids between the more mature ones and it was only abandoned when evidence of radioactivity was found in galaxies and was consistent with an expanding universe based on a big-bang cosmology. Refinements of George Gamow's (1947) calculations indicated that if the universe were compressed to the size theorised in the "big bang," "explode" and then cool, some 13 billion years later the temperature would be around 3 Kelvin. According to Planck's law all bodies emit energy and, depending on the length of the wave, can register any radiation between X rays and radio waves. A celestial body’s energy emission depends on its constituent elements, the surface area and the surface temperature. The body that emits the greatest amount of energy is termed a black body. Penzias & Wilson (1965), whilst tuning a new antenna, detected static (persistent radio noise) where there should have been none. In a paper, for which they won the Nobel Prize in Physics, the two scientists revealed data showing the universe glowing in the microwave spectrum. They interpreted these findings as the remnant glow of the "big bang".

Essentially, that the "big bang" actually occurred is supported by observable phenomena i.e. an expanding universe, a background radiation of around 3 Kelvin, ratios of hydrogen to helium etc.

Current Thought
According to modern cosmological theory (based on Einstein's Theory of General Relativity) at the time of the Big Bang space did not exist or rather the big bang occupied the whole of space. Subsequent to the big bang the universe has expanded and as it does so it creates (becomes) the space into which it is expanding.

Evidence of this is that distant galaxies are not moving at high-speed through space but move slowly relative to their neighbouring counterparts and as space expands the wavelength of light lengthens (as earlier stated this is commonly referred to as "red-shift").

Space is infinitely elastic and does not expand into anything.

One scientist, Robert Dicke theorised that a temperature in excess of a billion Kelvin would be required to create our universe. Using Planck's Black Body Curve as a guide he calculated that the Cosmic Background Radiation of the Big Bang should be about 3° above absolute zero (Dicke).

Dicke also suggested that our universe may have been created from the remains of a previous one and that infinitesimal amounts of radiation would be detectable if this were so. This possibility represents a modification to the big bang theory and also suggests that one day our universe may stop expanding and begin to contract. If so it is possible that our universe may contract to a point as small as the original singularity that formed our universe, an event that has been termed “the big crunch”.

Returning to the early expanding universe ... at 3000 Kelvin, helium and hydrogen (25% to 75%) would have been the major constituents of the galaxy and that is reflected in the constituents of stars today (Peebles). Peebles further predicted that had the big bang occurred in the manner described it’s background temperature would be around 3 Kelvin and more recent precision measurements have revealed that the universe is bathed in radiation that fitted a "black body curve" for an object with a temperature of 2.735K.

---

Now, again, can you really (I mean truly really) be THAT stupid?

Kyu

Please allow me to point out your inconsistencies.

1. there was no matter/energy, time, or space, literally NOTHING. Then the universe started.
(This is incorrect, energy/matter have always existed). First Law of Thermodynamics.

2. The entity, known as a singularity, expanded very rapidly. Sometimes this is called an "explosion", but this is misleading. In a typical explosion, matter and energy expand into space. But there was no space to expand into. (You claim there was no space for matter and energy to expand into)

3. Dicke also suggested that our universe may have been created from the remains of a previous one and that infinitesimal amounts of radiation would be detectable if this were so. (Further down, you claim there was a previous universe). therefore, allowing energy/matter to expand.

Is this correct?

[Retorth]

For the sake of argument, lets say you are right about matter being eternal. Even if it is so, if to you that equals the existance of a god, where is this source now? How will you account for it's disappearance since the days claimed in the bible?

It is still an overly-described, drastically stretched fable about a man who healed people by touching their foreheads, assisted in parting seas, caused a plague upon first borns and turned the water to blood..etc..

I just wonder how believers can justify all that and much much more as being actual fact/truth.

I mean no offence to you, it is nothing personal on my part, please bear in mind. I'm just stating what I think, ya'know?