(April 6, 2013 at 8:04 am)Mr_Dew7 Wrote: Oh yes I have. I read my Bible every day.

I wonder if you truly understand any of it, or if you only wish to interpret it in a way that supports your delusion of a good god.

As Isaac Asimov stated, after all: Properly read, the bible is the most potent force of atheism ever conceived.

The Pentateuch/Bible/Qur'an are the best books to support atheism ever written. Perhaps you are cherry picking only the "good bits"?

Quote:But there is much outside of the Bible that is learn-able as well

Welcome to atheism mate. Congratulations, you have taken your first steps...Keep coming and keep questioning.

(April 6, 2013 at 8:08 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: The Pentateuch/Bible/Qur'an are the best books to support atheism ever written. Perhaps you are cherry picking only the "good bits"?

Quote:But there is much outside of the Bible that is learn-able as well

Welcome to atheism mate. Congratulations, you have taken your first steps...Keep coming and keep questioning.

Hah! Don't do that. I'm not questioning the Bible, never have and never will. But I should learn the arguments of others, so that I can better equip myself with a defense. That's it.

(April 6, 2013 at 8:13 am)Mr_Dew7 Wrote: Hah! Don't do that. I'm not questioning the Bible, never have and never will. But I should learn the arguments of others, so that I can better equip myself with a defense. That's it.

Well, at least you're honest enough to admit it, and like the other theists here, willing to read what others write. I understand the approach only insofar as I tried to follow it myself for a time, but it gets more and more mystifying to me as time goes on.

(April 6, 2013 at 8:13 am)Mr_Dew7 Wrote:

(April 6, 2013 at 8:08 am)KichigaiNeko Wrote: The Pentateuch/Bible/Qur'an are the best books to support atheism ever written. Perhaps you are cherry picking only the "good bits"?


Welcome to atheism mate. Congratulations, you have taken your first steps...Keep coming and keep questioning.

Hah! Don't do that. I'm not questioning the Bible, never have and never will. But I should learn the arguments of others, so that I can better equip myself with a defense. That's it.

But I say you are Drew. You are not following you bible as you should, ergo you are on your way to being agnostic in the least, atheistic at best. And you should question everything including you babble.

(April 6, 2013 at 8:55 am)Tonus Wrote:

(April 6, 2013 at 8:13 am)Mr_Dew7 Wrote: Hah! Don't do that. I'm not questioning the Bible, never have and never will. But I should learn the arguments of others, so that I can better equip myself with a defense. That's it.

Well, at least you're honest enough to admit it, and like the other theists here, willing to read what others write. I understand the approach only insofar as I tried to follow it myself for a time, but it gets more and more mystifying to me as time goes on.

Well God said "My people perish for lack of knowledge" Hosea 4:6. I don't intend to be one of those. Especially when the knowledge is so easily accessible, ya know?

GC Wrote:I see in the article the scientist say they believe and use the word elusive, that wording is there because there is no proof, none, it is all speculation at best.
I did not try and use dark matter and dark energy as proof of God, you're reading your own conclusions into my statements, please don't. What I said if one can believe in the unproven and unseen dark matter and dark energy, then why is it so hard to say God is possible.

missl Wrote:Dark energy and dark matter are two different things. Dark matter, according to this article, HAS PROOF of it's existence now. Dark energy is elusive.
Either way, you're asking me why if I believe red and blue exist why I can't believe god exists.
I never said god was impossible. That was Maelstrom. Please don't read your own conclusions from my statements. I said your god as described by his bible, is not real. But that would have to be another thread and another night.

national geographic article Wrote:A team of researchers has found the first direct proof for the existence of dark matter, the mysterious and almost invisible substance thought to make up almost a quarter of the universe.

I see after the statement of direct proof, they use, thought to. Contradiction in the same sentence, and how is something almost invisible, it is either invisible or it's not, and no one has seen dark matter, if they had there would be pics of it all over the place.

Quote:I see after the statement of direct proof, they use, thought to. Contradiction in the same sentence, and how is something almost invisible, it is either invisible or it's not, and no one has seen dark matter, if they had there would be pics of it all over the place.

Surely you believe in air? You see its' effects on the leaves of a tree, so you know it's windy. You take for fact from your Biology teacher that there's air particles pushing on the leaves and causing them to move? You've never seen air. It's invisible. But it's been proven that air particles exist, microscopically. Air makes up only a percentage of the 5% of particle matter in our universe. Five times more than that, dark matter exists. The rest is dark energy, something we just don't know about. Scientists find proof for dark matter, so they know it exists, but they don't know everything about it yet. It's observable in large quantities only for now, like in a galaxy cluster colliding with another galaxy cluster. The way the gases and radiation and matter interact can be analyzed (with telescopes and xray scopes) and certain definitive conclusions can be drawn. When more evidence and data are available, those conclusions are refined and then co-affirmation through math and physics draw a map on the behaviors and attributes of the universe.



One of the most complicated and dramatic collisions between galaxy clusters ever seen is captured in this new composite image. This collision site, known officially as Abell 2744, has been dubbed "Pandora's Cluster" because of the wide variety of different structures seen. Data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory are colored red, showing gas with temperatures of millions of degrees. In blue is a map showing the total mass concentration (mostly dark matter) based on data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT), and the Japanese Subaru telescope. Optical data from HST and VLT also show the constituent galaxies of the clusters.

The "core" region (rollover mouse for labels) shows a bullet-shaped structure in the X-ray emitting hot gas and a separation between the hot gas and the dark matter. (As a guide, local peaks in the distribution of hot gas and overall matter in the different regions are shown with red and blue circles respectively). This separation occurs because electric forces between colliding particles in the clouds of hot gas create a friction that slows them down, while dark matter is unaffected by such forces.

In the Northwest ("NW") region, a much larger separation is seen between the hot gas and the dark matter. Surprisingly, the hot gas leads the "dark" clump (mostly dark matter) by about 500,000 light years. This unusual configuration may require a slingshot scenario, as suggested previously by scientists, to fling the hot gas ahead of the dark matter during an earlier interaction. In the North ("N") and the West ("W") two additional examples of hot gas separated from dark matter may be visible. The latter appears to exhibit the largest separation seen to date between hot gas and dark matter.

RELEASE : 06-297

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/aug...atter.html

NASA Finds Direct Proof of Dark Matter

Dark matter and normal matter have been wrenched apart by the tremendous collision of two large clusters of galaxies. The discovery, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and other telescopes, gives direct evidence for the existence of dark matter.

"This is the most energetic cosmic event, besides the Big Bang, which we know about," said team member Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.

These observations provide the strongest evidence yet that most of the matter in the universe is dark. Despite considerable evidence for dark matter, some scientists have proposed alternative theories for gravity where it is stronger on intergalactic scales than predicted by Newton and Einstein, removing the need for dark matter. However, such theories cannot explain the observed effects of this collision.

"A universe that's dominated by dark stuff seems preposterous, so we wanted to test whether there were any basic flaws in our thinking," said Doug Clowe of the University of Arizona at Tucson, and leader of the study. "These results are direct proof that dark matter exists."

In galaxy clusters, the normal matter, like the atoms that make up the stars, planets, and everything on Earth, is primarily in the form of hot gas and stars. The mass of the hot gas between the galaxies is far greater than the mass of the stars in all of the galaxies. This normal matter is bound in the cluster by the gravity of an even greater mass of dark matter. Without dark matter, which is invisible and can only be detected through its gravity, the fast-moving galaxies and the hot gas would quickly fly apart.

The team was granted more than 100 hours on the Chandra telescope to observe the galaxy cluster 1E0657-56. The cluster is also known as the bullet cluster, because it contains a spectacular bullet-shaped cloud of hundred-million-degree gas. The X-ray image shows the bullet shape is due to a wind produced by the high-speed collision of a smaller cluster with a larger one.

In addition to the Chandra observation, the Hubble Space Telescope, the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope and the Magellan optical telescopes were used to determine the location of the mass in the clusters. This was done by measuring the effect of gravitational lensing, where gravity from the clusters distorts light from background galaxies as predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.

The hot gas in this collision was slowed by a drag force, similar to air resistance. In contrast, the dark matter was not slowed by the impact, because it does not interact directly with itself or the gas except through gravity. This produced the separation of the dark and normal matter seen in the data. If hot gas was the most massive component in the clusters, as proposed by alternative gravity theories, such a separation would not have been seen. Instead, dark matter is required.

"This is the type of result that future theories will have to take into account," said Sean Carroll, a cosmologist at the University of Chicago, who was not involved with the study. "As we move forward to understand the true nature of dark matter, this new result will be impossible to ignore."

This result also gives scientists more confidence that the Newtonian gravity familiar on Earth and in the solar system also works on the huge scales of galaxy clusters.

"We've closed this loophole about gravity, and we've come closer than ever to seeing this invisible matter," Clowe said.

These results are being published in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., manages the Chandra program. The Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory controls science and flight operations from the Chandra X-ray Center, Cambridge, Mass. For additional information and images, visit:

http://chandra.nasa.gov

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@ missluckie26, there are others who say there is no proof of dark matter, and just because there are dark patches millions of light years from here does not mean there is dark matter. Yes air can be seen through a microscope, no one has a picture of dark matter. Like I said before if they did it would be plastered everywhere. As for your description of air, I can apply that to God, just because you can't see His work doesn't mean others do not.

I was going to say something about this being a necro, and then I realized the necroed portion is longer than the original thread.