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Atheism is a set of beliefs that requires very great faith.

ForEverAfter said:
^How about you don't dodge this question?
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It's a hypothetical so not answering is not 'dodging.' But I will indulge you anyway. :D How about a nice 26 billion light year wide void?

ForEverAfter said:
Who said it was a fact?
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Certainly not me...

Mind you I understand your confusion - I did mistype - the 'and' before adherence was meant to be 'any' - didn't get a red line so I missed it... le sigh... :D
 
IMO it requires more faith to not believe in God/creator than the opposite.
The origin of life/dna, origin of finely tuned universe, unbreakable symbiotic relationships,
and the fact we are hardwired to seek God;
are proof enough there is a creator.
What this enitity requires of us is more debatable.
 
ForEverAfter said:
The expansion of the universe and the big bang doesn't imply a void.
Despite all your talk, you don't actually understand the basics.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PVitVku_C0
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That turns out NOT to be the case. Balloon analogies are for Dark energy NOT inflation... and you might want to consider what's in the middle of the balloon anyway. You should have found the bread dough analogy - it works better, although it still doesn't disprove the idea of a void in the middle.

See, hear's the thing - there is a sudden inrush of matter/energy into nothingness. Then, in a very short time, something grabs it all and blows it out into something huge, in femto-seconds. Now unless you wish to posit God, you have to accept that everything got blown out. Which puts a void in the middle. Unless you'd like to have an Inflation force that is discriminating?

But of course then you wouldn't get a universe where the tiny imperfections in the original Big Bang are magnified to produce our current scenario, because EVERY piece of plasma would have been isolated equally.

You MIGHT have responded, if you knew the theory, that a 10 billion light year void could be enough, but hey... QED.

Ever since then, according to BB theory the Universe has been expanding, AWAY FROM THE CENTRE! That leaves a void in the middle... unless you'd like to posit there is some kind of ongoing creation of matter from the centre, a Big Squirt perhaps? :D

Now you might want to consider DE as somehow compensating but that doesn't work either - the space in the void would also be expanding. Unless you'd like to propose DE only works where there is matter?

So, rather that relying on simplistic Youtube videos, try thinking it through. If there was a Big Bang, why would there NOT be a void in the middle - after all, all I did was provide a response to YOUR hypothetical about what might constitute evidence of a Big Bang.
 
The middle of the balloon?
You describe the video as "simplistic" (it is) but you don't even comprehend it.
There universe exists on the surface of the balloon. In the beginning there is a single point. The point expands. Space expands. The "center" expands.

Ever since then, according to BB theory the Universe has been expanding, AWAY FROM THE CENTRE!
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There is no "center", in the sense that every point in the universe is as much the center as any other point.

...

Considering that the universe is 90 billion light years wide and we can only see about 15 light years in any direction: if there was a void, would we have evidence of it?

You should have found the bread dough analogy - it works better, although it still doesn't disprove the idea of a void in the middle.
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I've encountered it before.

Let's change it to the baby analogy.

The universe is like a baby. It doesn't have a center.
As it grows (expands), it doesn't become doughnut shaped.
Understand?

There is no "center of the universe".
It is not expanding from one point.
It is expanding everywhere.
Hence: no void.
 
You need to go back and read what I say. Balloons are analogies for Dark Energy, to try to explain the (invalid) idea that the whole Universe began to expand about 5 billion years back. That's NOT how Inflation worked - a scalar field doesn't work that way and if it did, every particle existing in the BB would have become instantly equally distant from every other particle and we wouldn't have got the Universe we see.

There is no evidence our Universe is on the surface of anything, unless we bring in the very likely probability that it is a hologram universe, but even then it is the hologram source that sits on a surface, not the universe. Analogies are only useful to a point and most often fail when you try to change the dimensions - as this one does.

In THREE dimensions, any expansion from Inflation has to leave a void or make choices about what gets expanded and what doesn't - I'm pretty sure you don't want to go there. Later... MUCH later... comes Dark Energy effects, but the void already has to be there, unless the Big Bang kept right on spewing forth matter and energy - the Big Squirt. The Big Squirt is the baby analogy - the baby might be expanding but that's because matter is constantly being added.

Your problem is, to NOT have a void, Inflation has to only expand space and leave the matter and energy behind. But then we do not get the universe we see all around us. To get that, Inflation has to grab all matter and energy and stretch it instantly across vast spaces - at which point, IT IS ALL STILL EXPANDING from the initial impetus. Thus... Void - because all that matter and energy is rushing away from a central point.

Now you might think the Universe is 90 billion light years wide but that is just some guy's guess. Not only is there no evidence for it, there cannot be evidence for it, because redshift = velocity is a wrong consideration, so any theory based around it cannot be correct. And the entire BB theory is based on, and comes from, the redshift observations. So does Dark Energy.
 
It's not literally on the surface of anything, balloon or otherwise.
It's simply a better illustration than an explosion.

An explosion has a central point and matter moves away from that central point.
A balloon has a central point (the deflated balloon) which expands.
There is nothing inside the balloon.

The universe is represented as the surface area of an expanding sphere.
The universe is (probably) more like a 4 dimensional sphere. If you represent a 4 dimensional sphere in 3 dimensions it looks like a doughnut.
Like there being nothing in the center of the balloon, there is nothing in the center of the doughnut.
When I say nothing, I don't mean a void. I mean the lack of a void.

The Big Squirt is the baby analogy - the baby might be expanding but that's because matter is constantly being added.
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No, it isn't.

The baby isn't expanding from a central point. It has no central point. It is expanding everywhere. Do you understand, yet?
 
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You are simply demonstrating the problem with analogies.

Back to the real world - to get around the fact the Big Bang doesn't work they invent magic and when we look at it closely all sorts of weird shit has to be true for it to work. There are better theories. There is evidence that denies the basis of the BB theory, and it is PHYSICAL evidence, so all your expansion analogies are simply nonsense. They apply (if at all) to an unreal situation.

Which is why I say both God believers and Big Bang believers have no evidence for their beliefs - the evidence you consider backing the Big Bang cannot do so because Big Bang fails as a theory. Not only does it NOT predict the universe without magic, it has physical evidence showing it cannot be right.

And all babies have a central point, just like all things of mass have a central point - if you're going to use an analogy you need to accept the limitations of it. Babies expand around their centre of gravity. Think it through... And the baby analogy is the Big Squirt because it requires a constant input of matter for it to grow. Which is what a universe with no void would require.

Remember, Inflation and Dark energy are NOT the same thing.

And in fact the baby analogy works better for DSSU than for the BB - except the DSSU doesn't require expansion anyway. :D
 
I don't have time for this.
Maybe you should consider not pretending to be a professor on the internet, any more.
You're not a scientist. You come across, at best, like an obsessive conspiracy theorist.

Before I go, answer me this: how is it that you know more than the international scientific community?
99.5% of scientists agree that the Big Bang theory is the best model for the origins of the universe.
But you know better?

If there is indisputable evidence that denies the basis of the BB theory, as you said, then why hasn't the theory been refuted?
It seems weird that scientists believe there is sufficient evidence in the BB theory to accept it as the best explanation we have available.
Do they know about your evidence?

You could change the world.

And all babies have a central point, just like all things of mass have a central point - if you're going to use an analogy you need to accept the limitations of it. Babies expand around their centre of gravity.
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Babies don't expand from their center of gravity.
Their muscles and their bones grow. They have many centers of growth.
Are you really high right now, or something?

And the baby analogy is the Big Squirt because it requires a constant input of matter for it to grow. Which is what a universe with no void would require.
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If the same logic applies to feeding babies and feeding universes, sure. Maybe it does. It's a bit of leap to conclude that a universe will behave like a baby. But, okay. Let's say that it does. The Big Squirt isn't in the center of the baby, filling up the hole that is forming as the baby expands. The Big Squirt is distributed, via veins/arteries/etc.
 
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It's an analogy - as I said, what you were demonstrating is the problem with analogies. To put it another way, mine's as good as yours. :D And actually, no matter what the mechanism, babies DO expand from their centre of gravity - or it wouldn't be the centre any more... see how this works?

Perhaps you could enlighten us with how a baby can expand in odd directions without having a centre of gravity? You can call it centre of mass if that makes it easier for you. :D

Maybe you should consider not pretending to be a science buff and instead go find a place where believing is all that is required... like... oh, I don't know... a church? :D

Your strawman about me pretending anything is just pure made-up BS - I pretend to nothing. I just type MY opinions and thoughts. Clearly you simply type other people's thoughts because you cannot defend them and just keep repeating similar stuff over and over. A conversation is about taking in what has been said, considering it and replying in relevant ways.

You fail at that.

As for the rest - you're yet another believer that consensus makes for rightness. It doesn't. There is not a single discovery ever came from consensus. It always comes from the guy who stands alone and goes chasing the "that's odd" stuff. The 99.5% DO know about this stuff, but like you, they have their beliefs and ain't nothin' gonna change that.

It takes only one high RS object linked to a low RS object and Big Bang, along with the SMC, is dead in the water because they BOTh rely on RS = velocity.

And there are numerous cases of High RS connected physically to Low RS objects.

And if you don't have time for this, why do you keep on and on with it. You've told me several times now how bothersome it all is so just go somewhere else - time to keep your word and move on. :D
 
You win.

I concede defeat.

You are the master.

The baby center of gravity things is publishable, seriously.

You've got an incredible grasp of the analogical.

Maybe you should consider not pretending to be a science buff
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I'm not claiming to know more than the international scientific community, nor am I throwing around terms I don't understand.
 
Believers in God and Disbelievers in God both belong over at the same end of the belief line - the opposite end is Agnostics. Both theists and atheists structure by belief rather than facts. Agnostics simply say, "I don't know" and therefore cannot be in the belief camp. Many people misuse the word Agnostic and are really Atheists.
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I went ahead and merged in some posts from another thread explaining why I think conceptualizing atheism and agnosticism along distinct dimensions is superior (the posts appear in original chronological order).

ebola
 
If both religious belief and atheism require a good deal of faith, what is it called to have no faith? I'm not talking about agnosticism.

What is the word for being truly faithless in any religious context?
 
Bardeaux said:
If both religious belief and atheism require a good deal of faith, what is it called to have no faith? I'm not talking about agnosticism.

What is the word for being truly faithless in any religious context?
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It doesn't exist.
Everyone has a world view they put faith in.
 
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Bardeaux said:
If both religious belief and atheism require a good deal of faith, what is it called to have no faith? I'm not talking about agnosticism.

What is the word for being truly faithless in any religious context?
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Why isn't that Agnosticism? Seems to me that having no faith in anything religious would come down to 'I don't know' because in this context, as soon as you say, "I Know!" you are evincing faith.
methamaniac said:
It doesn't exist.
Everyone has a worldview they put faith in.
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I'm not sure this is true. There is a big difference between faith and not faith so why is it not possible to put aside decision on such things until we learn more? One might even have leanings towards a world view or even a Religious view and not have faith in them - kind of "this seems the most likely possibility" rather than '"this must be true."

Also is a world view the same thing as Religion?
 
Journyman16 said:
Why isn't that Agnosticism? Seems to me that having no faith in anything religious would come down to 'I don't know' because in this context, as soon as you say, "I Know!" you are evincing faith.
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Because agnosticism implies faith that the divine,or god or whatever is unknowable or improvable whether it exists or not (according to the logic of the thread). Atheism to me is just a lack of belief, I don't have faith that there is no god. I don't hold any trust in this belief, it's just a lack of the belief in god. It's not me saying "I KNOW there is no god, there isn't a grand deity", it's a mere unbelief. I wouldn't call this a faith.
 
I'm not sure just when the addition of 'unknowable' or 'unprovable' got added into what an Agnostic is meant to be. When I decided back in the early 70's that I was agnostic it had no such connotation, it was just someone who knew that they didn't know either way - in the religious sense at least.

The Urban Dictionary gives a closer-to-my-view -
An agnostic is a person who believes that the existence of a greater power, such as a god, cannot be proven or disproved; therefore an agnostic wallows in the complexity of the existence of higher beings.

Agnostics on religion (Christianity, Islam, Buddhists, etc): Religious zealots are often viewed as ignorant by agnostics’ because of their blind following of a supreme being which may or may not exist. Agnostics will often question the existence of a supreme power because a lot of modern religious beliefs have no basis in modern logic; therefore blind following of popular religions is viewed as an easy out for people who chose not to think for themselves.

Agnostics on atheism: On the other end of the spectrum, unlike atheists, an agnostic uses a more scientific approach to their belief system. An agnostic knows that just because there is no physical proof of the existence of a higher being, it dose not automatically mean that one does not exist. An agnostic views an atheist on the same plane as a religious zealot; often because the belief that human beings are the pinnacle of intelligence and there are few things that we do not or have the potential to understand.

The realization of knowing that “we cannot know everything” is the backbone of the agnostic belief.
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In my time it was Atheist that had the double-barrelled definition - an Atheist could be either one who simply didn't believe in a god or one who believed there is no god.

In both instances the term is based around Belief, which is why I, as an old-time Agnostic, lump them over on the same end of the scale as the Believers.
 
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