(April 29, 2016 at 7:50 am)Jehanne Wrote:(April 29, 2016 at 12:49 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote: My knowledge of God, comes from the scriptures.
I don't believe in any of that; you can start another thread on that topic, if you wish.
Fair enough.... I've talked a little bit about it in the past (it always seems to bring out the conspiracy theory nuts). However it doesn't change the arguments from the evidence found science about the cause.
Quote:As for "uncaused events," some things in physics are counter-intuitive. Imagine that you are standing alongside a track, and train is approaching you at 50 mph. You have a tennis ball, which you throw directly at the train at 30 mph, hitting it dead center. How fast will the tennis ball rebound back towards you? (No cheating!) Write your answer down before proceeding.
Why is it, that every time I ask this question (why it is believed that something can come from nothing) I get an interesting but completely unrelated anecdote?
Now a key principle in science is causality; and part of that principle is that the cause(s) need be sufficient for the effect. Now in your example, you explained where the possibly unexpected acceleration came from. But if I where to try this as an experiment, and I come up with a result that I didn't expect. Even after I study the data, I may not understand or be able to reason where this unexpected momentum came from. So, what I would do is insert an unknown variable in the equation, that requires an explanation. As we are dealing with a lot of theoretical physics in this conversation, you may see this (where a constant is added, to balance out the equation). Now I believe that a good scientist see's this as in need of a reason.
In you example, you start out with a train moving at a set speed, and a tennis ball moving at a set speed in the opposite direction along the same plane. And you explained why the equation balanced out to give you a tennis ball moving at 130 MPH on the other side of the equation. Now lets add nothing to the equation.... do we get the same answer? Would it be reasonable that by adding nothing to causal side of the equation, that I would get a tennis ball moving away at 200MPH now?