Creation or Evoloution? Big Bang or Big Belief -- which is it?

[IAHM-COL]

+1
Also, time for more splash-screens
Keep them coming

I sent you an invitation to FGMEMBERS. I strongly advise you fork a plane, add the splash to your fork, and send a pull request.
Once you are FGMEMBERS' member, you will be able to complete the merge of the pull request by yourself.

That is the recommended proccedure.

[SkyBoat]

@MIG29pilot,

I'm glad to hear you have very high academic aspirations! I have been on the campus of Oxford University and it is an awe-inspiring place just to walk through. I'm interested to know what your thinking about is for a major?

I hold the perspective that a participating in FlightGear can be helpful preparation for heading off to a university experience in an international setting. You are learning a lot of skill sets you aren't even aware of. Learning to fly, especially in a flight simulator like FlightGear, demands that you learn a fairly realistic range of aviation skills, real life navigation, and mathematics. It demands a lot of critical thinking, learning to think under pressure, decision making, juggling lots of information, communication skills, interacting with people literally from all over the world, forming work groups, learning technical thinking and skills--if you can figure out how to "work under the hood" with FlightGear aircraft, you have a unique set of problem-solving skills right there-- use of computer design through Blender or other tools, and many others. On top of that you have a community that is usually pretty supportive and willing to help you solve problems when you get stuck on something.

So, congratulations on aiming high. FlightGear is among the best places you could invest your free time while you are in school, and if we can be of any help along the way with research on a specific topic, just throw it out there on the forum and it's very likely one of us will know something about it and can give you some help. Just ask F-36!

[jwocky]

And I find it interesting that we actually can discuss those not directly flying related subjects here as well. Makes the whole thing more colourful. Maybe we should open another forum for such totally unrelated non-nonsense subjects, especially since we have also a lot of people going step by step into development of new aircraft and thus are about to acquire new skill sets that in their nature are used for FG but not FG specific. Maybe I can get some opinions about that idea because I feel this morning (or almost noon) still a little bit too brain damaged to make up my own mind due to the events of last night in Paris.

[Lydiot]

I think this response actually belongs in this thread as opposed to the split off thread;

Perfectly true, we as yet have no idea whether there are other earths out there. The important thing about our little sphere is that there must be a thousand conditions that could doom human life if not just right--the thickness of the atmosphere, the temperature, the distance from the sun--tiny changes in any and more could erase life, and yet here I am.

There's plenty to say on this topic, but I think the above is very important.

In my opinion our sphere, and you, and me, are completely unimportant and insignificant. We're all unique little snowflakes, but that doesn't make us important. The importance you see is the one you place on yourself and our earth. The view is highly ego- and geo-centric. It's a fundamental trait of Abrahamic religions as far as I can see, and I think it's a damaging and misleading basic point of view (no offense meant in any of this).

I think it's pretty easy to explain just why the above view of us being important has absolutely no bearing on the probability of a god.

Also, as far as the discussion went for the first 4-5 pages, on-topic, I agree with JWocky I think. If I remember correctly he made some very good points.

[Lydiot]

Yes that Cause and Effect issue has always struck me as odd. The whole science and astronomy is built upon cause and effect, but then suddenly they say that with the big bang they can do without cause. This bending of their own rules is one of the strongest arguments against the big bang story.

Actually, I don't think it does. The argument that is put forth is that since time and space are intimately tied together we don't really know that time as we know it even exists at "the time of" the big bang. It might simply be a notion that no longer makes sense.

But further more the exact same thing can be asked of a proposed creator. Ask any religious person if they think god is irrelevant, useless and essentially 'void', and they'll probably tell you the opposite, which is to say that god is not nothing. So if god is not nothing, he is something. And if something can't come from nothing, god too came from something. And if god could have always existed, then so could the universe. No real reason it couldn't have.

Essentially it just distills - as it always does - down to the very fundamental problem of god being unfalsifiable and therefore impossible to 'nail down'. Since he's supernatural any argument goes. Nothing can be dismissed. Of course that goes for the teapot, the IPU and the FSM as well. The only thing I dislike about it is when we embark on a journey to investigate the issue based on science, yet throw that out when it doesn't suit us. In other words: If god doesn't obey the natural laws (because he is supernatural), then we have proven that natural laws don't have to be obeyed. Since they don't have to be obeyed, there's actually no reason to keep saying that science says this or that or the other about cause and effect, because we now know those relationships can be broken.

[Lydiot]

I mean, perhaps a tornado may blow parts of metal into a 747 fuselage (but will not weld it together), but with software installed? With a cabin in place? Painted?
Software being DNA. Cabin and paint being eg the complex systems of the body.

Then again, look at the Creation. If you look at a diagram of the eye... smell the roses...see the butterflies... see how Earth is in precisely the place most suited to life (not near supernovae, not near black hole, among other things...)... look at man, and how we can take to the skies in gravity-defying machines. We are not mere dogs that can think. We are special.

This is what I mentioned in a post earlier. It's tempting to think that we are special because we are unique, and therefore take the step to assume that we therefore must have been intelligently designed, because the odds are so incredibly small that we'd be here through other means (chance, whatever).

However, we're not even sure we're that special. Out of the billions of billions of planets out there, how many are in the goldilock's zone? How many planets are outside of the zone but still have properties that allow for life to exist.

Not sure if you play poker at all, but if you do, the analogy is you having a decent hand, but me having a better one. As the hand unfolds you end up making a full house and win. So we all marvel at the odds of you making exactly a full house the way you did. Clearly the odds are low if we look at your five cards you got, and no other cars. However, just because your hand contained a king of spades and a king of diamonds doesn't mean the odds of those two cards being given to you are relevant. That's because you would have won with the king of hearts or clubs as well. Not only that, but you could have beaten me with other hands.

So what you seem to be doing in your argument is that you're imparting a "value" on your hand, it's "special", because you won your hand. And because the odds of that special hand are so low, you think something else must be behind it. But that view of your hand as being "special" clouds your view of all other possibilities. If you had ended up with a straight flush your hand would have been equally unique, you would have won just as much, and I bet you (all else being equal) would have thought it was equally special and have attributed it to something other than chance.

So with the universe tuned differently we actually have no idea what would have happened. Different elements with different resulting lifeforms could very well have happened. So out of all possibilities, is ours really that special? We just don't know that.

By the way, whoever voted no beginning no end, this directly contradicts the Laws of

https://youtu.be/-EilZ4VY5Vs?t=4m4s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oh5ekwsj_Zs

(the first one is long, and you may have to ignore his sense of humor, but the content is good)

[HJ1an]

However, we're not even sure we're that special. Out of the billions of billions of planets out there, how many are in the goldilock's zone? How many planets are outside of the zone but still have properties that allow for life to exist.

It might be worthwhile to point out that in our solar system alone, there are already 3 planets in the 'goldilocks' zone. The other two being Venus and Mars. Venus probably went to poop a bit earlier with a runaway greenhouse, and Mars possibly supported life long before it became barren. So not only we have to consider place (goldilocks zone) for life, but also time...

[KL-666]

KL-666 wrote:

Yes that Cause and Effect issue has always struck me as odd. The whole science and astronomy is built upon cause and effect, but then suddenly they say that with the big bang they can do without cause. This bending of their own rules is one of the strongest arguments against the big bang story.

Actually, I don't think it does. The argument that is put forth is that since time and space are intimately tied together we don't really know that time as we know it even exists at "the time of" the big bang. It might simply be a notion that no longer makes sense.

Well there we go, nothing can be said about the big bang (they speculate there is no time). Yet they tell it to the world as a fact. Over time and probably now already they believe in big bang themselves, so much that they will base other theories on this quicksand, making everything they say into quicksand.

As i said before, ever since Hubble science has transformed in a bunch of meddling apes that do anything to uphold the expanding universe theory. Non believers are crucified. There have been people that saw a phenomenon of two stars interacting, yet the one had the red-shift and the other had not. Instead of triggering the curiosity of the other scientists, they were bullied until they left the scientific community.

Expanding universe causes many inconsistencies. What did the scientific community do about that? Inventing stuff like black matter and black energy to make everything still fit. What they should have done is research the core of the problem, the red-shift theory.

[edit]
In a far future people will look back on this period of unconditional belief in the expanding universe and all the excesses that stem from that belief, like we look back now on the period of Galileo.
[/edit]

Kind regards, Vincent

[MIG29pilot]

We are in the center of the universe, therefore I infer that (however arrogant this may seem) we are special.

[MIG29pilot]

I know what you are going to say; We aren't. I answer: There are two theories about the shape of the universe: One says it is a three dimensional space, with a definite center; think of the inside of a balloon. The other says that the universe is like the surface of that balloon, or the surface of the earth; definite distance and size, but no center.
BOTH are only theories.
The first has the evidence of daily experience, of the fact that we know that it is clear to see that the universe is three-dimensional space in its favour.
The other has the word of a handful of persons who don't want to be in the centre of the universe.