Agreed but I still wonder how you make that work as a Christian. I wish you’d share that with everyone.
Faith predicated on desire. That’s how it works. I want God to be true. Real. For there to be transcendence, which there cannot be naturally. The only vague, tenuous, possible, rationalizable warrant for that is the writings of the early Church, i.e. Paul’s letters from 52 CE to multiple communities over the NE Mediterranean predicated on the Jesus story. The premiss (Brit. var.) of that is incarnation. It’s not a lot, but it’s all I got. Faith. Am I only allowed to be a Christian if I believe in anti-scientific nonsense, in magic, in delusion? That there is any other evidence, need of God being the ground of being? Of which there is absolutely none. None. Zilch. Zip. Zero. Nada. Bupkis. So why aren’t I atheist? Disposition. Lucky me! Does that grant your wish?
Don’t know why this didn’t show up as a reply so I hadn’t looked in this thread.
While I am a Christian, like you, I don’t think we Christians should play a heads I win, tails they lose game. If, it comes out that we are repeated billions of times, with our same memories etc, I think this clearly would say that life is meaningless. It would say that there is nothing special about iteration # 245,… 075, which is me writing this. As I have said, I came close to being an atheist. I don’t think we should ignore their criticisms or the implications of science to theology.
However, the good news is we will never verify that there are trillions of other me’s out there. It is faith, an assumption on the part of those claiming they exist.
the question to me Pevaquark is, “Is this science when there is no way to test it?” That sounds a whole lot more like my graduate school subject: philosophy.
What concerns me here is how the argument that you just made is basically the same argument that young Earth creationist or other anti-evolution creationists make against scientific ideas. They basically reject them based off of quotes or motivations of select scientists working on the relevant topic and then provide biblical or philosophical reason against scientific theories- essentially conflating scientific theories with atheism or some anti-Christian worldview.
No I didn’t. I did point out, what is philosophically true–eternal universes have more often been associated with pantheists and atheists (like Hoyle). If you or anyone thinks Camus is wrong about life being meaningless if endlessly repeated, please, tell us why? Camus, Nietsche, Buddhists, are not exactly known as Christians. But I also said this:
It seems to me that jumping to another theory that is untestable is equally problematical.
I waited til I had quoted Steinhardt before I said that because he is tired of non obsereable theories.
As to quotations, sheesh, tell me what is wrong with using them again? Explain why the ideas I presented in them are wrong or misunderstood, rather than making a rule that one can’t use quotes–which rule, I will refuse to obey.
The statements in the quotes are either true or false. If false please explain WHY they are false. To say someone can’t use information they have gathered all their life seems silly.
If you can’t quote experts as rapidly as I can, that is YOUR problem, not mine. Unlike YECs I don’t pull them out of context, I make sure it captrues the context.
Where did that come from?!
Given Pevaquark’s comments, I am going to address why I said that an eternal universe had not been associated with Christianity, but has been associated with atheists and Pantheists. But first, I am going to show a really big problem with an eternal universe with regard to science/history itself. Then I will go into history of philosophy to show some historical events and how the Church responded.
Going back to Tegmark’s doppelganger article (as I call it):
"Is there a copy of you reading this article? A person who is not you but who lives on a planet called Earth, with misty mountains, fertile fields and sprawling cities, in a solar system with eight other planets? The life of this person has been identical to yours in every respect. But perhaps he or she now decides to put down this article without finishing it, while you read on.
“The idea of such an alter ego seems strange and implausible, but it looks as if we will just have to live with it, because it is supported by astronomical observations. The simplest and most popular cosmological model today predicts that you have a twin in a galaxy about 10 to the 10^28 meters from here. This distance is so large that it is beyond astronomical, but that does not make your doppelganger any less real.” Max Tegmark, “Parallel Universes” Scientific American May 2003, p. 41
Tegmark’s calculation concerns the arrangement and velocities of baryons in a universe of our size. There are only so many ways to arrange them into such a volume. Familiar baryons are protons and neutrons. The assumption is that once you pack them in another volume in the same way they are packed in this universe, you have created another Glenn and Pevaquark who are debatinging this same issue with each having the same experiences and memories.
This ‘arrangement’ issue came up earlier in physics with the second law of thermodynamics saying that if the universe was infinitely old, it should have acheived thermal equilibrium but our world is far from such equilibrium Boltzman suggested that it might be due to a statistical fluke that we live in an eternal but low entropy world. Vilenkin wrote of this:
“Another consequence of the second law is that if the universe existed forever, it should have already reached thermal equilibrium. And since we do not find ourselves in the state of maximum entropy, it follows that the universe could not have existed forever.”
“Helmholtz did not emphasize this second conclusion and was more concerned about the “death” part (which by the way inspired much apocalyptic prose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuy). But other physicists, including giants like Ludwig Boltzmann, * were well aware of the problem. Boltzmann saw the way out in the statistical nature of the second law Even if the universe is in the maximally disordered state, spontaneous reductions of disorder will occasionally happen by chance. Such events, called thermal fluctuations, are common on the microscopic scale of a few hundred molecules, but become increasingly unlikely as you move toward larger scales. Boltzmann suggested that what we are observing around us is a huge thermal fluctuation in an otherwise disordered universe. The probability for such a fluctuation to happen is unbelievably small. However, improbable things do eventually happen if you wait long enough, and they will definitely happen if you have infinite time at your disposal. Life and observers can exist only in the ordered parts of the universe, and this explains why we are observing this incredibly rare event.” Alex Vilenkin, Many Worlds in One, (New York: Hill and Wang, 2006), p. 25-26
But Huw Price points out the problem
"So Boltzmann’s suggestion seems to have the unfortunate consequence that it implies that our apparent historical evidence (including the state of our own memories!) is almost certainly unreliable. We haven’t arrived at this point by sedate progression from some earlier state of lower entropy, in other words, 'but by a “miraculous” fluctuation from a state of higher entropy. " Huw Price, Time’s Arrow and Archimedes Point, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 35
So, let us apply this to a universe with an infinite “time” to have an infinite number of bounces. I put time in quotes because time was created with space in this universe, so as with my Days or Proclamation view of Genesis 1, it is hard to apply time to events in other cycles.
Given an infinite number of cycles, we would expect to find some of our doppelgangers in universes that parallel the Boltzman statistical fluctuation. The path to an identical packing of baryons in those other universes doesn’t have to be the same as the path our universe took, But once everything is packed similarly, we would have similar memories and memories of what history we were taught in both universes. Except in one of those universes, that history didn’t actually happen. My doppelganger somewhere remembers a mother who tried to kill his cousin, when in fact that didn’t happen in that other universe. As Price suggests above our memories and history becomes questionable if the universe has time (or space) to randomly pack particles in similar manners but without similar ACTUAL histories. The occupants of those worlds would have no idea that their memories were false (especially with a materialistically generated consciousness dependent only upon the arrangement of its neurons for what it remembers).
Theologically, if we are in one of those false history worlds, we could never be sure that Jesus actually died and rose? We couldn’t be sure that what we remember about history isn’t just a fluke based upon the random arrangement of matter in our brains.
This is a big problem with an infinitude of time.
So, now why did I say that the eternal universe idea has not been part of Christianity? Because historically it hasn’t (assuming that memory isn’t just due to the problem above). Lets start with Aristotle who argued:
The ancient philosopher Aristotle argued that the world must have existed from eternity in his Physics as follows. In Book I, he argues that everything that comes into existence does so from a substratum . Therefore, if the underlying matter of the universe came into existence, it would come into existence from a substratum. But the nature of matter is precisely to be the substratum from which other things arise. Consequently, the underlying matter of the universe could have come into existence only from an already existing matter exactly like itself; to assume that the underlying matter of the universe came into existence would require assuming that an underlying matter already existed. As this assumption is self-contradictory, Aristotle argued, matter must be eternal
Eternity of the world - Wikipedia
The article goes on to talk about Proclus, possibly the last Classical philosopher, who was not a Christian and who for the eternity of the world. He was opposed by the Christian John of Alexandia, aka John Philoponus.
Aristotle’s views were lost to the west for a while but when they came back into the West via Averroes, we see a big debate over the eternity of the world among many of the doctrines of Aristotle/Averroes Probabably the best historian of Medieval/early Renaissance philosophy wrote:
What were they to do in the many instances where their faith and their reason were at odds? For instance, their philosophy proved by necessary reasons that the world is eternal, perpetually moved by a self-thinking thought or mind, ruled from above by an intelligible necessity wholly indifferent to the destinies of individuals as such . In point of fact, the God of the Averroists does not even know that there are individuals , he only knows himself and that which is involved in his own necessity. . . Besides, as individuals, men have no intellect of their own; they do not think, they are merely thought into from above by a separate intellect, the same for the whole of mankind. Having no personal intellect, men can have no personal immortality , nor can they hope for future rewards or fear eternal punishments in another life. " Etienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1966), p. 54-56
Pevaquark, if you don’t like me using my 300+ megabytes of quotatins database, tough. I read that book 45 years ago, wrote tthe quote on a 3x5 card and then about 1982 computerized my decks of cards and I think this is the first time I have used that quote.
What Gilson describes led to this:
At first the Church tried to outlaw Aristotle, and that failed so in 1277 they banned specific items of Aristotle/Averroes, including the eternity of the world:
“That there is numerically one and the same intellect for all humans”. [6]
“That the soul separated [from the body] by death cannot suffer from bodily fire”. [6]
“That God cannot grant immortality and incorruption to a mortal and corruptible thing”. [6]
“That God does not know singulars” (i.e., individual objects or creatures). [6]
“That God does not know things other than Himself”. [6]
“That human acts are not ruled by the providence of God”. [7]
" That the world is eternal ". [8]
“That there was never a first human”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condemnations_of_1210–1277#cite_note-Rubenstein216-6
Thus, contrary to what Pevaquark said about Christians liking the eternity of the world, it has not ever been part of the orthodox view. And should it turn out that the universe is eternal, then I would content that Christianity is false and Hinduism is correct. I don’t beleive in a heads we win; tails they lose kind of apologetic.
Given Pevaquark’s comment about Hoyle, I thought this might be of interest
“Intuitively,’ McMullin writes, ‘an eternally existing universe seems a more plausible candidate for self-sufficiency than one which begins to be.’ Replace ‘self-sufficiency’ by ‘not being God-created’ and you may gain insight into F. Hoyle’s long fight for a steady state rather than a Bang.” John Leslie, “Introduction,” in John Leslie, ed., Modern Cosmology & Philosophy, (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 1998), p. 7
Prometheus books is an atheist publisher.
Note Augustine’s view of the eternity of the world:
“The ancient Greeks debated the origin of time fiercely. Aristotle, taking the no-beginning side, invoked the principle that out of nothing, nothing comes. If the universe could never have gone from nothingness to somethingness, it must always have existed. For this and other reasons, time must stretch eternally into the past and future. Christian theologians tended to take the opposite point of view. Augustine contended that God exists outside of space and time, able to bring these constructs into existence as surely as he could forge other aspects of our world. When asked, ‘What was God doing before he created the world?” Augustine answered, ‘time itself being part of God’s creation there was simply no before.” Gabriele Veneziano, “the Myth of the Beginning of Time,” Scientific American A Matter of Time, 2006, p. 73
It seems that Veneziano understands that Christianity has not been favorable to the eternity of the universe. As I said, if we are wrong, maybe we shouldn’t still claim that Christianity is true, but should follow the evidence where it goes. It doesn’t make sense to me to still say, "Yeah that is false as well, but I will still believe this religion. These issues DO have theological implications.
I wrote:
I don’t think we Christians should play a heads I win, tails they lose game.
I came up with that for the situation I see far too often. It applies to adherents of all religions who take the view that parts of their religious document can be untrue but regardless of how false they think the documents can be, the religion is still the correct religion, the true religion.
In otherwords, nothing will change the person’s mind. To me, that isn’t faith, it is intransigence.
Then color me intransigent and gladly so. I will call it faith. In fact, I will call it knowledge – God is knowable. It sounds like you want me to be willing to denounce my Father, not to mention the One who loves me, who has demonstrated his providential interventionism into my almost three-quarters of a century multiple dozens of times, sometimes just for fun. He knows I delight in him.
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Er, I’m not sure what you are trying to say. I think maybe I can clarify and note that I only care what the evidence is when we get such evidence. If we never collect more evidence from the early universe then I don’t really care what any of the models are since there would be no way to judge between them presently. And so I would argue that we should remain agnostic towards them, not necessarily preferring one over another for philosophical or theological reasons because the Bible can accommodate any model of Cosmology.
And you also wrote that:
I disagree. You propose that certain cosmologies can imply that we are not special to God. I propose that no cosmology ever can change what God has said about our specialness.
It’s great to grab quotes from various scientists but there’s a difference between the quotes of scientists and actual science. Sure, various cosmologists might be able to have more informed opinions on particular topics, but they are just that, opinions. It’s great if person X thinks Y about the universe and are an expert in Z, but it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. Maybe their motivation is even anti-Christian. It doesn’t matter at the end of the day. What matters is what the evidence says which we are presently lacking to judge between early universe models. And should we figure some more out someday, Christianity will be just fine.
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lol, I loved your response, but no, I don’t want people renouncing Christianity, but we should proclaim how false our bible is and then proclaim that it is the true religion either.
I haven’t been proclaiming how false the Bible is, and Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a Person, to borrow from Tim Keller, and Jesus is absolutely true.
I am asking if mathematics predicts something that is totally incapable of being observed is that really science? Physics has left its observational foundation when it talks about multiverses (unobservable), many dimension(possibly testable but so far no evidence of it), or even gravitons, which Tony Rothman calculated would take a clear fluid detector bigger than Jupiter and then it has to be run for 42 million years to get a statistical chance of having one detection. Can we really say that this is observational science?
“*Four years ago, Tony Rothman, a physicist at Princeton University was chatting with fellow physicist Freeman Dyson about the elusiveness of gravitons. In fact, gravitons are thought to be so elusive that Dyson wondered whether it was possible to detect one at all. And if gravitons are undetectable, do they really exist?*Marcus Chown, “The Longest Stake-out,” New Scientist, March 18, 2006, p. 32
Rothman and Broughan’s work is at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.339.1404&rep=rep1&type=pdf
YOu said I wrote this: So, yeah, Angela, there are religious implications. Don’t believe the denials to the contrary.
I did write that and subsequently posted why I stand by what I said.
It’s great to grab quotes from various scientists but there’s a difference between the quotes of scientists and actual science.
Why don’t you stop with the arrogance as if you think I am beneath knowing how to do science. I guess I have to put my dang resume out here, sans address and phone number. I only put 8 of my 100+ published items on my resume because most of them were theological, philosophical or anthropological in nature and Oilmen don’t care about that stuff.
Geophysicist:
Accomplishments
34 discoveries on 3 continents
3 patents pending—2 Petrophysical, 1 GTL
8 publications
Sold multi-million dollar international and domestic farm-outs for full carries.
Socially fluent in Chinese; Read some.
Experience
2007-present Glenn R. Morton, Geophysical Consulting . Generating and mapping development and exploration opportunities and reservoir simulation models on GOM assets for large independent oil company.
2005 –2007 Director of Exploration, Beijing China , Anadarko/Kerr-McGee China Petroleum Limited
Opened new Bohai play: CFD 22-2-1 was the first successful exploration well in China in 5 years
Funded program from outside,
Involved in government and contractor contract negotiations
Sold two prospect packages for over $30 of million, each
Worked closely with deputy minister level officials to achieve goals
2003 – 2005 Director of Technology , Kerr-McGee Oil and Gas Corp
Three patent applications: 1 in gas-to-liquids, 2 in petrophysics
Managed petrophysics, and reservoir simulation, Visualization,.
Integrated reservoir simulation G&G/Engineering processes
2000 – 2003 North Sea Geophysical Manager, Aberdeen Scotland , Kerr-McGee North Sea Limited
Significantly upgraded geophysical technologies used in exploration, negotiated contract
9 Discoveries: Tullich, S. Gryphon, Bluesky, Deep South 2, Deep South 3, Affleck, Plada, James, Dumbarton
Managed North Sea Reservoir simulation, well operations, and technology application
Saved 2% of total district costs by changing interpretive pkg.
On governmental geoscience data retention committee
1991-2000 Geophysical Manager, GOM, Oryx / Kerr-McGee
17 Discoveries: Conger, Boomvang, Nansen, Penn State, Penn State, Deep, Hi A 576, Gunnison, Durango, Red Hawke, GB 140/184, GB 152, HI A 553, Merganser, Pompano Subsalt, Horseshoe, Navaho, and Baldpate appraisal.
Invested budgets up to $24 million, negotiated contracts
Managed permit applications for drilling operations
1989-1991 South Texas Geophysicist – South Texas Geophysical Manager , Oryx Energy
Discoveries: Mickey Meadows, Starr Co. field( name forgotten)
1986-1989 Owner , Geophysical Consulting Company
6 Discoveries: North Carmine, Baby S., Namken, Banana Peel, Valentine Deep Pool, Cesare
Areas worked: Alaska, Algeria, W. Texas, New Mexico
1986 Manager of Marketing , Professional Geophysics Inc.
Doubled sales each month for Dallas office
1981-1986 Area Geophysicist, Atlantic Coast and Louisiana , ARCO
1979-1981 Manager of Geophysical Recruiting and Training , ARCO
Recruited 15% of U.S. geophysical graduates for ARCO
1973-1978 Seismic processor , ARCO, Pexcon and Seismograph Service Corp.
.
Education: B. S. in Physics, University of Oklahoma, 1972; Grad work in Philosophy
Publications of Glenn R. Morton:
Prieto, Corine, and Morton, Glenn, (2003), “New Insights from a 3D Earth Model: Deep Water Region of Gulf of Mexico,” The Leading Edge, 22(2003):4, p. 356-360
Morton, G. R., Conway, Paul. and McHugo, Steve. (2002), “Reversing the Earth Filter: Thin-sand Detection Using Single Sensor Data,” Petrol. Expl. Soc. of Great Britain’s, PETEX 2002 Meeting Abstracts given in London, Dec. 10, 2002, CD from Petroleum Exploration Society of Great Britain, London.
Morton, G. R., Dobb, Angela., Conway, Paul. and McHugo, Steve. (2002), “Acquisition of High Frequency Seismic and its Implications for Reservoir Management of the Murchison field, U.K. North Sea–A Case Study,” 72nd Ann. Internatl. Mtg., Soc. Exploration Geophysicists Expanded Abstracts. p. 548-551.
Knighton, Terry, Steve Western, Glenn Morton and Robert Fleming (1999), “Development of Alternative Interpretation Models and Discriminating between Them Using a Borehole Gravity Survey and a Walkaway Checkshot Survey,” Society of Exploration Geophysicists, Technical Program, Expanded Abstracts with Authors’ Biographies, 69th Annual Meeting, Oct 31-Nov 5, 1999, Vol.1, p. 228-231.
Morton, Glenn; Schlirf, Paul; Chang, Mark; and Kriechbaum, Victor, “The History of Seismic in the Gulf of Mexico,” Presented to and published by the American Association of Petroleum Landmen, Jan. 22, 2004, Woodlands, Texas.
Morton, Glenn; Miller, Steve, 2005. “Knowledge Management via the use of Collaboration Tools in the Oil Industry,” The Energy Forum, Houston, Texas.
Simons, Gordon, Yao, Yi-Ching, and Morton, Glenn, 2003, “Global Markov Models for Eukaryote Nucleotide Data,” Journal of Statistical Planning and Inference, Volume 130, Issues 1-2, 1 March 2005, Pages 251-275
Simons, Gordon and Morton, Glenn, 2003 “The Gene-Orientation Structure of Eukaryotes,” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 222:4:471-475.
end of resume
the last 8 years of my career I with my business partner invented a new way to do seismic inversion which removed almost all of the wavelet effect, turning seismic into a well log that actually matched the well logs. I was President of that company and it isn’t on the resume. We made a lot of money. so please stop with the down your nose looking at my abilities.
Where was he doing that, exactly?
The ‘grabbing quotes isn’t doing science’ and he has said things like this to me before. Tired of it.
Quotes of scientists about things that aren’t provable but are philosophical and religious is a legitimate criticism, if they are suggesting it’s science.
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Dale, its best you don’t get in this. He is not criticizing my quotes for that. I am criticizing the eternal universe views in the opening post for that.
Tell me more about what you mean by this:
I kinda hate to bring this topic into the thread on the Big bang. It has to do with accommodationalism. Go look at the thread I started on accommodationalism. or pm me and I will reply. gotta go to bed, I get two bags of poison tomorrow. lol need my rest.
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This seems exactly right to me. I guess falling in line behind a once only unique universe from nothing is a kind of signaling some do to demonstrate their bonafides in the faith. I would think that those attempting to maintain faith with eyes and mind wide open to science would no more engage in this sort of signaling than they would join in the chorus of evolution deniers. Glad to see you are not one of them and I’m sure you’re not alone.
So with all of your resume and expertise in your field, if you told us your thoughts/opinions on something that is presently (or never may be) testable, then I would say yeah, your thoughts/opinions are not science. I still stand by my statement that led you to write:
I didn’t mean to imply earlier that you are grabbing statements out of context, but instead the quotes were implying (from my perspective) that various early universe cosmologies are somehow against Christianity. The part that is similar to many young-earth creationist authors is that they can sometimes take a quote from some author that goes way beyond what science can tell us, imagine that the actual science really does say this, and then use it to reject certain hypotheses about nature. If you weren’t doing that, it looked like from my perspective that you were very close to doing that as you continually proclaim: