The God Argument

kmisho · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:15 pm Post subject:

Entropy says that there is a constant diminution of heat (relevantly) toward equilibrium in isolated systems. If the universe is in fact cyclical or flowering it may be that no iteration is truly isolated. If so, entropy would not universally apply and the cosmos itself might be a legitimate perpetual motion machine.

This is pure speculation of course but it gives us idea-parameters.

The problem for the big-crunch idea with the recently detected accelerating expansion is that right now nothing known could reverse the process. Because of this, the big crunch is virtually a religious idea (at least for the time being) because it requires an appeal to something utterly unknown to keep it.
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K Michau
Now this religion happens to prevail/Until by that one it is overthrown/Because men dare not live with men alone/But always with another fairy tale.
al-Ma'arri, Syrian Poet, died 1057

You deny the existence of 999 alleged Gods. I merely deny one more - yours.
John MacKinnon Robertson, "Godism" 1896

"Never is a long time." Robert Fripp, 1998

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tonyman1989 · Posted: Sat Jun 16, 2007 10:28 pm Post subject:

they used to think (And a few still do, I don't) that gravity could be strong enougth to stop it.
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"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." Albert Einstein

"For then we will know the mind of God." Stephen Hawking

"We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes." Richard Dawkins

http://www.atheistforums.com/weblog.php?w=22 Tonyman1989 blog's - updated on 8/28/07 - An interview of steven weinberg on religion

kmisho · Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:17 am Post subject:

tonyman1989 · Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:47 am Post subject:

Rudism · Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 11:58 am Post subject:

Moloth · Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 12:02 pm Post subject:

kmisho · Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2007 12:41 pm Post subject:

Dark matter may or may not be related to dark energy depending on the theory, but both are simply names for the unknown thing that would have to fill the hole that is responsible for observational results.

The case for dark matter is much firmer than for dark energy. Dark matter was postulated early on to explain the whirlpool behavior of galaxies. Assuming no dark matter, the rotation speeds did not add up. So it seems pretty sure that there is dark matter, but whether it's mini black holes or WIMPs or MACHOs or non-radiating normal matter or some combination is unknown.

Dark energy is the name given to whatever is driving the continued acceleration of universal expansion. This could be all sorts of things, including a resurrection of Einstein's "biggest mistake" of the cosmological constant. An interesting thing about dark energy is that it may not be real, that is it may be a not-well-understood effect of processes already known, whereas the case for dark matter is very strong and it appears there is LOTS of matter out there we can't see.
_________________
K Michau
Now this religion happens to prevail/Until by that one it is overthrown/Because men dare not live with men alone/But always with another fairy tale.
al-Ma'arri, Syrian Poet, died 1057

You deny the existence of 999 alleged Gods. I merely deny one more - yours.
John MacKinnon Robertson, "Godism" 1896

"Never is a long time." Robert Fripp, 1998

Poetry, Art, Music

tonyman1989 · Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 4:04 am Post subject:

Wikipedia talks about Alternative explanations how popular are they? I watched a show about darkmatter and the person that found stars stying the same speed said that it could be gravity laws not understand yet.
_________________
"If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for a reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed." Albert Einstein

"For then we will know the mind of God." Stephen Hawking

"We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes." Richard Dawkins

http://www.atheistforums.com/weblog.php?w=22 Tonyman1989 blog's - updated on 8/28/07 - An interview of steven weinberg on religion

tonyman1989 · Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 4:05 am Post subject:

Rudism · Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 8:47 am Post subject:

tonyman1989 · Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 9:02 am Post subject:

kmisho · Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:02 am Post subject:

It's an interesting time for cosmology. A number of things taken as common knowledge for years have been turned on their heads recently. The feeling I have is that cosmologists and physicists are scrambling for coherence.

My grandparents have about 30 years of Year Books. Once I was looking through the one for the year I was born (1964) and ran across the entry for the recently-discovered Quasar. It was interesting to read early ideas of what they might be. All of them were WAY off by modern standards, placing them nearby or even inside the Milky Way. There was no mention of spectroscopic analysis showing that they were extremely far away and therefore extremely bright.

Ever since then, I'm very dubious when I see speculations about what newly discovered phenomena might be.

A case in point is massive gamma ray bursts. At first some scientists thought Einstein was broken because the bursts were just not possible under relativity. To produce the energy involved, some speculated about self-annihilating collisions of matter and anti-matter neutron stars. I believe it was Martin Rees who suggested that the bursts are emissions from quasars with a pole that just so happens to be pointing at us, saving relativity.
_________________
K Michau
Now this religion happens to prevail/Until by that one it is overthrown/Because men dare not live with men alone/But always with another fairy tale.
al-Ma'arri, Syrian Poet, died 1057

You deny the existence of 999 alleged Gods. I merely deny one more - yours.
John MacKinnon Robertson, "Godism" 1896

"Never is a long time." Robert Fripp, 1998

Poetry, Art, Music

Moloth · Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:25 am Post subject:

Hell, just a few years ago at about 1999-2000 they still didn't have much of a clue of what a gamma-ray burst was. i read some pretty strange theories about them around then.

One theory was that they were the energy bleedthrough of a collapsing universe that was next to our own. O_o
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www.Moloth.com

Last edited by Moloth on Tue Feb 30, 2026 13:61 am; edited 426 times in total

tonyman1989 · Posted: Tue Jun 19, 2007 10:27 am Post subject:

notsaved · Posted: Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:02 pm Post subject: Re: The God Argument

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