Comment by Anna Silva on September 3, 2012 at 5:16pm

@ Unseen-
"Of course, you can explain anything with God. If there is radiation, God must have put it there, right?" You got me! I do believe God put the radiation there. Guess my gig is up.

Comment by Anna Silva on September 3, 2012 at 5:34pm

@ Archaeopteryx-


You- "It is worth pointing out that time is an aspect of the universe — without the universe, there is no time. Thus, it is possible to say that the universe has existed at every point in time and that at no point in time has there been no universe. That is just about as close to “eternal” as we’re going to get. Because time is an aspect of the universe, it‘s hard to see how it can be said to have a “beginning” in the way the word is normally used. The concept of a “beginning” normally assumes a “time before” at which the object did not exist — but there was no “time before” the universe. Without a time before, the notion of "cause" no longer applies.



Me- If the universe were eternal then we would have never gotten to this point, unless of course there is someone/something outside of time. Being outside of time, that someone/something would not be required to have a beginning (cause). This s/s would be just as you described, not existing (eternal).

 

You- Current theory proclaims that all time and space was enclosed within the infinitesimal singularity that became the Big Bang - if so, where did the singularity reside? It must have been outside of our space/time which, according to your reasoning, would make our universe eternal, not unlike your S/S. if all time and space were enclosed within the “universal” singularity, where, exactly, did the singularity exist? It couldn't have existed within OUR space/time, as it included our space/time within it.

Me- It would actually be my S/S ... the something part anyway. Another question: "How did it get to our space/time?”

Me- a god outside of time would not be under the law of time. Since we are inside time, we are limited to the laws of time. However, an omnipresent god by definition is outside of the limitations of time (or outside of time). Therefore this god would be at every point in time as well as present outside of time, able to do things within the confines of time or not 



You- How can you listen to what you just said, and not see it for the nonsense it is?

 

My logic piggybacks off of yours. You said it first… 

Comment by archaeopteryx on September 3, 2012 at 6:21pm

RE: "You gave me one example of philosophical evidence." - I gave you an example of scientific evidence, not "philosophical" evidence. The two men who discovered BB background radiation received the Nobel prize, which is rarely given out for philosophical evidence.

RE: "I gave you my reason why I think it is hogwash. and then you gave me a whole lot of links." - I gave you those links so you could fill the obvious vacuum that led you to believe the evidence was "hogwash."

RE: "Honestly, I only asked for your evidence so that I could make my point." You don't know enough about the subject you're trying to discuss, to even have a point.

RE: "Do you disagree with my "thoughts?" why?" Your "thoughts" have no scientific merit, they're mere speculation. For a number of years, there were those who speculated the moon was made of green cheese - scientific discovery determined that it was not.

When I suggested you go, learn, and return, I had no idea you'd be back so soon, and it would appear you've not learned much.

Comment by archaeopteryx on September 3, 2012 at 6:38pm

RE: "My logic piggybacks off of yours." - not so, you were the one who mentioned a god, not I, and that he resided/existed outside of space/time (which is never mentioned in your inerrant Bible, but is just another effort to bring your god into the scientific era, as places for him to hide shrink) - I simply pointed out that the universe could also have that distinction, thereby eliminating any need for a god.

Comment by Zia Dost Muhammad on September 3, 2012 at 6:39pm

@Reg- 

You're mistaken here my friend. 

Muslims believe in the same God as the Christians and the Jews, but we consider Him Alone without any sons or partners and we do not give any of His attributes to creation. In Islam there is a clear line between the Creator and the creation. Everything besides Him, is His creation.

In fact we also believe in Jesus. A Muslim cannot be a Muslim unless he believes in Jesus. But we believe in him not as a son of God  or one of the trinity but as a great Prophet and Messenger born a miraculous birth without a father to virgin Mary. He never claimed to be the son of God or said that he should be worshipped. 

Just to get the record straight.

Comment by Zia Dost Muhammad on September 3, 2012 at 6:41pm

@Arch-

"Certainly credible, but every religion - Hebrew, Christian, Islam, even Hinduism and Buddhism are fragmented - who speaks for the religion, this leader of fragment A, or the leader of Fragment B - you have your own Sunnis and Shiites -- which speaks for Islam?"

That's a good question. Even many Muslims struggle with it. 

The religion of Islam was revealed only once to Prophet Muhammad over 1400 years ago in the form of the Quran and the Sunnah (the teachings of Prophet Muhammad). Therefore anything that emerges thereafter and claims to have added something extra or leave off something - cannot be considered as part of the true religion of Islam as revealed to the Prophet Muhammad.

The first sect (Shias) did not come into existence until 40 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. So all sects have come later and cannot be considered to practicing the true religion of Islam which was revealed originally to Muhammad during his lifetime…even though they may practice certain things which are part of the original revelation, but they have tried to add and subtract many other things which have nothing to do with Islam.

So a Muslim should go to the original sources (the Quran and the Sunnah) and stay away from all sects. And these original sources are well preserved.

This leads to the next question. If the sources are the Quran and Sunnah, whose interpretation  do we take?  The further a person moves from an object, the blurrier its gets. The best interpretation of these sources  was done by the early generation of Muslims (especially those around Prophet Muhammad, as they witnessed the events and reasons for the revelation, etc.)  And this information is also well preserved. 

Comment by Zia Dost Muhammad on September 3, 2012 at 6:46pm

@onyango-

I didn't know you were eavesdropping all this while... just kidding :)

"Muslims consider it to be the unchanged Word of God- from this statement, what I infer, is that the Quran is not in itself the word of god but considered as such!"

I used the words 'Muslims consider..", since this is a Muslim's belief and I know many here do not ascribe to it. But if you want it point blank, then I am glad to give it - It is the unchanged Word of God. 

"Whatever a person believes in (referring to religion) is not to be based on dreams, personal experiences or blind following of one’s ancestors. You are right in this observation, but then if we take the Quran to have been revealed in a vision, are these not what dreams are made of? So in essence there is nothing wrong with the statement by Al Razi. Or rather if I may, what don't you agree with in Al Razi's statement? Forget his being atheist or not, looking at his statement, what do you find to be untrue?"

The revelation to Prophet Muhammad was brought down to him by Angel Gabriel. And Prophets are given miracles that cannot be performed by ordinary people so that people can recognize that these are not ordinary men and have been chosen by God to convey the message. And God gave miracles of things that were well-known at that time. For example at the time of Moses it was magic, so Moses was given something that people knew it could not be magic. At Jesus's time medicine was well known and his miracles were such that no one could dispute that this is not a miracle. Prophet Muhammad was given several miracles. His greatest miracle is the Quran. At the time of Prophet Muhammad prose, poetry and language skills were at its peak, and the Quran challenged to bring a chapter like it and people could not till today. It is amazing in its eloquence, beauty and wisdom. Al-Razi claims to produce a thousand Qurans like this but does not producer a chapter. Regarding his saying "By God what you say astonishes us! You are talking about a work which recounts ancient myths, and which at the same time is full of contradictions and does not contain any useful information or explanation."  His comment is so absurd, that I can only say, that read it for yourself. Here is a link to an online Quran:

The Quran written with an English translation and audio in Arabic:

http://en.quran.nu/     

"News just in, there are historians who have raised questions that the existence of Mohammed is in doubt. The Quran[ haven't read it] am told mentions prophet or teacher a few number times, so from it we cannot have a glimpse of the life of the prophet, maybe you could help me with this."

I have never heard of any historian doubting the existence of Prophet Muhammad. In fact Michael H. Hart, in his book "The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History", (New York: Hart Publishing Company, Inc.), ranks Muhammad as No. 1 and writes on p. 33:

“My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world’s most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular level.”

"On the unchanged Quran, I wouldn't want to say it remained so because it was the word of god, but rather because the religious leaders of the time maybe having seen what happened to other religious texts came up with an ingenious way to maintain the integrity of the Quran."

Yes true, the Quran is unchanged not simply because it is the Word of God. If this was the reason then the previous scriptures would not have been corrupted either. God has given us a free will to choose from and has shown us the right path and the wrong. It is up to us what actions we choose to do. The previous people decided to amend and change their scriptures due to their whims and desires and carelessness. The nation of Israel was blessed with several Prophets who came to remind them to return to God and Jesus was the last of them.

Then God sent Muhammad as the last Prophet and Messenger and gave him the Quran. Since there is no Prophet coming after him, God has promised to preserve the Quran till the Judgment Day, so those who seek guidance can find it. And exactly as you said, God guided people to ways that would preserve it. If you like the details on how it was done, then I could give it to you later.

Comment by archaeopteryx on September 3, 2012 at 6:47pm

The reason most people never tell their little children the truth about where babies come from Anna, is that after they've finished explaining all of the mechanics and the plumbing behind the act of reproduction, the child will normally just look at them funny and say, "Now, where do babies REALLY come from --?"

Basically, this is what I feel like you're doing - I've told you that none of us has the time or patience to spoon-feed you the information, I have given you links to use and books to read and videos to watch, and yet you still come back, wanting us to critique your thoughts. Learn the subject, so you'll know what you're talking about. Then next month, next year, come back with what you've learned.

And it's "jig is up," not "gig is up" - a gig refers to bits of computer information.

Comment by Sagacious Hawk on September 3, 2012 at 7:01pm

I think I'm finally going to jump in on this.

Anna, you'll have to excuse some of our jaded cynicism as to your motivations for this post. Many of us have had poor experiences with theists asking questions then not really wanting to know the answers, but to simply give their opinion. You have seemed to be genuinely interested in what people have to say, and have indicated that you are a searcher for truth and "Truth." I am willing to trust that you are here to hear us out, and I applaud your desire to seek information outside of your common group. Not enough people seem to do that, and it reinforces their own world views. I was a few years ago in a similar place as you, having considerable questions and interested to know the answers. The reasons I went questioning were because, as a devout Catholic, I had doubts I was trying to alleviate. I kept an open mind and was willing to accept fact as fact. I started looking into neuroscience, astrophysics, history, anthropology, and genetics. The more I learned about these subjects, the more I understood the natural world. The greater my understanding became; the less I saw that God was present and active in the world. The supernatural made less and less sense in a natural existence. Eventually, I became a deist until I found myself willing to accept the truth. There is no supernatural watchmaker looking out for me. The reason I'm telling you this is as both a warning and a promise. If you do continue to search for truth as to the reasons for why we are here and who we are and came to be, you will not see the hand of God sheltering and guiding humanity to its present form, but you will see chance and chaos in the haphazard development of all things natural.

If you want to understand an atheist viewpoint, I'd like to point out that our views are generally formed on facts. Atheists as a whole only agree on one thing for sure, that current concepts of a deity or deities are likely to be false. We don't all agree on why that is, but the outcome is never the less the same. The only other thing that I have found that seems to connect the rest of us as atheists is that we take the world on fact. For the most, we are skeptical of anything that doesn't have evidence to support it. The only belief that we could be said to have (and that's still not all of us) is that we should live by facts. So, if you have come looking for opinions and beliefs, words that your posts have used quite often, on the origin of the natural world... then you are in the wrong place. What we can provide you and what we expect you to accept are facts.

We know that the Big Bang did in fact happen. It all started with Edwin Hubble, as Arch pointed out, who noticed that galaxies were moving out from a central point. (Side note: before Hubble's observations, we didn't know that there were other galaxies). He deduced this by determining the speed and direction from which they were moving relative to us. Imagine holding a balloon against a wall and inflating it. Where the balloon touches the wall is us in the Milky Way and there are several on the wall of the balloon. When the balloon inflates, the one's near to us don't move quickly in relation to us, but those that are on the opposite side of the balloon move away very quickly. In this way he could determine that as a whole, galaxies were moving outward from a central location.

Then there is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) energy that is filling the universe. It helps first to understand that matter as we know it with its bonds between nuclei being created by a shred electron did not exist in the early universe. All was first energy. Then with expansion came cooling and the formation of basic particles like quarks. After a time, anti-matter loses to matter and then the quantum particles begin to form into protons, neutrons, and electrons, but the universe is still way too hot for them to create molecules so they are floating around as a super-hot hydrogen plasma. This plasma was the source of the radiation that we can observe today. The only way this radiation could exist is if it was expanding with the universe since its near conception. There is no other explanation for it. No other idea meshes with known quantum theory, our natural laws, and observable fact other than the Big Bang theory. Due to the nature of the universe at the time, we currently have no means of peering back before the CMBR to determine exactly how the universe began. All we can tell is that is did. The most prominent idea is that of the multiverse as Unseen as already commented, but there are many thoughts on what the nature of the multiverse might be. Will we ever know if there are other universes out there in much the same way that there are other galaxies out there? Maybe. Some people are already trying to find out right now (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19373118). It may be that we will never be able to determine if we are part of a multiverse.

So to answer your question, we aren't entirely certain how the universe as we know it came to be, but we do know, given what we can determine about the nature of our universe and what we have observed within it, that the only conclusion that can be reached is that approximately 13.75 billion years ago the Big Bang is the event that produced our observable universe. How it came to be is still a work in progress, but there is some promise in some of the theories with mathematic equations to back them up much in the same way that Einstein's theories were little more than advanced math before observable data could prove him right. Regardless of what the cause was, there is nothing to say that a supernatural source is needed nor is there evidence that a supernatural source is the answer. Considering that the universe is natural and holds to natural laws, there is likely a completely natural explanation for how it occurred; the tricky part is finding evidence for it.

Comment by Unseen on September 3, 2012 at 7:13pm

@Zia

Muslims believe in the same God as the Christians and the Jews.

That would only be true if God is real And how Muslims, Christians, and Jews describe the character of that God differs so widely, not just between religions but even within the religions, that I can't except that they're all the same. Just a bunch of different Gods having some scriptures in common.

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