...I don't know about a "sudden" leap Mars has frozen water at its poles and the popular theory is that Mar's atmosphere was lost due to solar radiation bombarding the planet and because Mar's magnetic ionosphere was not strong enough to block the radiation. I also don't really get the second part of what you said but meh. According to current astronomical theory...no, the Universe is finite and expanding (some theories have it contracting)
Guys, quit it, for the sole reasoning that this thread is focused on stating your beliefs not attacking others. As GruntHunter said, if you want to talk about Christianity or any other religion, then message the person in private. Or else explore it respectfully on your own. On the other hand, I'm interested in hearing other people's beliefs/perspectives, not the same 10 people.
Ancient Aliens - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia You're link mentioned that, which is a show I watched a lot last summer. It really began to change my views on things. A lot of people would honestly laugh if you told them you believed aliens created life on earth, but that show does a really good job of supporting its case, especially since it doesn't do so completely directly. Honestly, the possibility of extraterrestrials being the creators of life on earth is more likely than some beliefs.
On a scale of creationism to natural evolution I'd say the ET scenario is a little closer to the creationism side of things.
we selectively breed dogs, whats to say that with a little expertise and technology the same couldn't be done to primates?
Supposedly nothing or possibly other universes. My point was you said the universe is infinite when according to current scientific theory it is not. I get what you meant to say but I was correcting how you said it.
The vacuum is full of expansion energy and let's just leave it at that. We cannot and will never be able to (until we discover gravitational detectors AND the Graviton particle) see past the boundary of the observable universe. There is a static region around where we live where all matter passing through it is accelerating at more than the speed of light away from us. At this point all of the light is red-shifted to such an extreme that there is little difference in temperature than a few degrees above absolute zero. We call this the microwave background. We think there are hundreds of billions of galaxies outside of the boundary, and every second galaxies are passing over the boundary, never to return. As time goes by the very proof of our existence is speeding away from us and as it does it's information is being stretched and distorted until it can no longer provide us with the evidence that it once did. It won't actually be long into the future before things like the cosmic microwave background and our views of distant galaxies completely disappear from our view.
So what do you want me to call it? Please don't bring up pointless semantics arguments. It promotes flaming which this thread will already get enough of.
...a finite but very large universe. It's not pointless semantics, there's the wrong thing to say and the correct thing to say. Simple as that. Anyway, moving the conversation away from the universe and back to religion sort of, while I don't believe in any organized religion (again silly rules on how to live your life and indoctrination and all that) I do believe (or at least hope) there is an afterlife. I've watched and researched just about every thing to do with ghosts and paranormal stuff. The idea of conservation of energy applying to what happens when you die appeals to me.
There is a very important principle in physics called the information paradox, that states although matter can be destroyed and annihilated, information cannot. Something akin to the quantum position of the matter is always preserved. You can attribute that to saying that the information that makes you will exist forever, but that doesn't really work, because they aren't your particles. The matter that is you is just the product of natural cycles that we know are going on everywhere around us. Conservation of energy doesn't exactly cut it, as we know space is expanding so energy must be decreasing, but it's not, yada yada dark energy physics. And there is no reason to assume that the universe is finite, in fact most of the leading theories in cosmology allow for an infinite universe.
Well that was a long way of saying you don't know or that we can't know (the nature of a paradox). I've seen no proof or read any research to suggest conservation of energy doesn't hold true. People who don't believe in ghosts suggest that when you die a person's energy is slowly released as decomposition occurs but I just find it hard to believe that the complex processes that make up the human brain, the billions of neurons and the electrical pulses that make up one's personality (their soul if you will) just cease and that energy lost to feed worms and what not. As for the second part there, until an infinite universe theory is the theory of our universe I'll change my tune on it but as a finite universe is what is traditionally taught I'll stick with my point. There will always be dissenting theories about anything and I wouldn't call them leading (The leading theory is the universe is expanding, and an infinite thing can't expand that defeats the notion of infinite).
This is where my problem lies. It detracts from the basic human premises of intelligence and the ability to cope with ****. If you need someone to listen to, surely you can find a friend to confide in other than an entity that may or may not exist, that has never answered? And surely you can find other things to put your mental energy into? **** happens. There's pain and suffering, and everyone goes through it. The fact that someone goes through something, comes out the other side due to their own will and self confidence, and then says "Thank God for guiding me through that" is something I find unbelievable. It makes us all seem completely invalid. And why do you need a meaning to life? Maybe that sounds a little nihilistic, but in my view, you're only here once. So why waste that one chance trying to get a better one? Why not just enjoy yourself while you're here? BTW, my family are all christian. It was pretty much shoved upon me from the beginning, but I never really understood anything until I grew up and read into it. Eventually, what I think was my common sense drew me away from it all. And in my honest opinion, I think I'm a better person because of it. I don't help people and do good things because I have to, I do them because they're the right things to do. I don't need someone to tell me what's good and what isn't.
Our inability to get a handle and understand this topic is in my opinion the strongest evidence of why we are an evolved species, because this is the reason why we invented/discovered religion in the first place. I don't want to sound blunt but you really just need to do some more reading. If you knew anything about neuro-science you wouldn't be telling me that you find it hard to believe, in fact you would be explaining to me how personality is formed using different parts of the brain. Likewise, if you knew enough about the current state of physics you would know that the current theories do allow for an infinite universe, some of the more important ones require one, and there are no theories that stand that tell us we can't have one.
You misunderstand what I was saying, I wasn't saying I find it hard to believe how personality forms, in fact I know very well how that works, I'm saying when a person dies I find it hard to believe those impulses dissipate into the ground as nothing more than calories for worms. And again, there are literally thousands of "theories" on how our Universe works. There are very few of which that are accepted as the current understanding of how it works and you keep misinterpreting me saying that there can't be an infinite universe from me saying the current theory is that it is finite. Current theory in that is what is taught in school, that is what you see on all the discovery channel shows, that is what we are to believe. Of course there are other theories, of course some theories can't be true without those other theories but that's missing the point. Right now you're arguing the semantics of "some smart people do believe there is an infinite universe" which I never said there aren't with what our scientists' current beliefs are which is a finite and expanding universe. You don't seem to be arguing that point but disagree with me telling pyro this fact?
"there are no theories that stand that tell us we can't have one." In other words, there is no current theory of a finite universe. The realm is completely undecided.