The Physics of God

[CraigD]

In a previous theology thread, Boerseun rather novelly applied scientific estimation to the question of the existence of God

So, it boils down to Standard Theory is right and God doesn't exist, or God exist but is a liar and not omnipotent, the latest in a long list of weak and failed deities in human history.

…

Religion is bunk. All we need are some scientists with balls to simply apply Standard Theory and say so.

Though I applaud this approach, and personally believe these conclusions to be correct, I think this particular chain of reason errs both scientifically and theologically in the proposition

Hence, if God is omnipotent, we should be able to detect an object of practically infinite mass somewhere in a radius of 6,000 light years from Earth.

Whoever suggested that God necessarily has infinite mass-energy?

 

Rather than try to trot out theological or scientific literature, I’d like to provide an example from science fiction of scientific proof of the practical existence of what a reasonable person would call “God”. In the last two books of Arthur C Clarke and Gentry Lee’s the “Rama” series, “Garden of …” and “… Revealed”, the authors present the theory, supported by extensive fictional evidence that the current universe was engineered by very one or more very advanced intelligences in order to maximize the appearance of intelligent life. Although advanced beyond the detailed comprehension of any intelligent being present in the novels, these engineers were finite in mass-energy, and far from omnipotent, capable of making subtle, “fine tuning” adjustment to the early universe (according to the novels, the universe is gravitationally closed, allowing information to be passed between big crunch/bounce/bang cycles), and either initiate or influence beings who initiate huge (The Rama spacecraft, one of many, masses about [math]10^{16}[/math] kg) engineering projects, but not simply “will” worlds and beings into existence, per usual religious creation stories.

 

Is not a not all-powerful, but merely sufficiently powerful, “God”, as depicted in these stories, compatible with scientific theory?

[Buffy]

Whoever suggested that God necessarily has infinite mass-energy?

Basically this conclusion flows from the theological notion (recently discussed in this forum here) that "Nothing is greater than God."

 

This statement is obviously--at least to the non-believer--intended to show that God is worthy of being the sole recipient of our worship, and in order to be true in the simplistic sense, ends up needing to be applied to all measurable senses that man can relate to/imagine.

 

Thus from a mathematical/physics perspective, any countable dimension must be assigned at least an Aleph-null infinity value.

 

I think! ;)

 

Is not a not all-powerful, but merely sufficiently powerful, “God”, as depicted in these stories, compatible with scientific theory?

This is traditionally the problem that the early mono-theists had with the notion that Gods were merely "super-human": God cannot be "perfection" if she suffers from human foibles. Most Christian interpretations of the Bible even have problems with the Old Testament lines about God calling herself "a Jealous God" or "a Wrathful God," and if anything try to rationalize them away.

 

I think it just boils down to anything finite being emotionally unsatisfying, and while a finite God might be plenty in a closed Universe (God could be countably larger than the entire state definition of every Planck-interval in the entire history of the universe and still be finite!), its still easy to imagine something *greater*, and if you can *imagine* something greater than God, then shouldn't you really be worshiping that?

 

Beyond the Infinite, :eek2:

Buffy

[Boerseun]

Well, I agree with the Rama-idea, that's quite fitting with Standard Theory.

 

However, the concept of an "Omnipotent" God, comes from the Bible itself. The Bible claims omnipotency. And omnipotency requires infinite energy, or at least energy equal to the mass of the universe, not so? And that will constitute one helluva big black hole somewhere in the vicinity of Earth, at least within a radius of 6,000 light years (but that, then, will invalidate the entire New Testament - that'll require a black hole within 2,000 light years)

 

That not being the case, means that:

 

God might exist, but is not omnipotent.

The fact that the Bible says He is omnipotent, constitutes an error (or a lie, whatever your convictions)

The fact that we have undeniably proved the Bible to contain at least one error (a fundamental one at that, a serious error that cuts right to the core of Christianity), cast doubt on everything else contained in the Good Book.

[Buffy]

Well, being fond of the various multi-verse theories, I don't have a problem from a scientific stand point saying that she's not *in* the universe, so doesn't need to be finite in order to fit somewhere inside or be a super-massive black hole or whatever.

 

I'm not sure that "omnipotency" does require "infinite" power though. If God were larger than the entire universe, it would stand to reason that there could be a finite power that could "have absolute power or authority" (Online Etymology Dictionary) although almost all definitions of "omnipotent" use the phrase "having unlimited power" which is clearly "infinite" in sense. I'm just not sure its possible from a scientific point of view to say that "unlimited"--in the sense of "anything that could be conceived could be done" requires "infinite" power in a finite Universe.

 

OTOH, if God is "outside" the Universe, then she is not necessarily finite or bounded as the Universe is, so could be "infinite" in some dimension, so I don't think this is grounds for picking out a "contradiction."

 

The only completely consistent people are dead,

Buffy

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

But wasn't the Bible written at a stage where humans were not advanced enough to understand even the most simple scietific truths? So wouldn't it be illogical to criticize such claims, being as those who wrote them weren't in the position to make any other claim?

[InfiniteNow]

But wasn't the Bible written at a stage where humans were not advanced enough to understand even the most simple scietific truths?

No. It was not. Which makes your next claim...

 

 

So wouldn't it be illogical to criticize such claims, being as those who wrote them weren't in the position to make any other claim?

 

...rooted in a false premise:

 

 

 

Science is not about truth, it's about method. :shade:

[Inter.spem.et.metum]

Yes. It was. Although I do admit to a bit of overstatement, but not much.

[Buffy]

Yes. It was. Although I do admit to a bit of overstatement, but not much.

When do you think the Bible was written?

 

Do you require knowledge of quantum mechanics in order to qualify as being beyond "the most simple scietific truths"?

 

Define your terms, ;)

Buffy

[CraigD]

But wasn't the Bible written at a stage where humans were not advanced enough to understand even the most simple scietific truths?

The answer to this question depend very much in the answer to this one

When do you think the Bible was written?

For at least the past couple of centuries, a very socially, emotionally, and politically charged question.

 

If we take the most widely accepted secular historic theory, the Documentary or JEDP hypothesis, the earliest parts of the Bible were written between roughly 950 and 400 BC.

 

We can choose a specific scientific truth and compare its history to this one. For example, the spheroid shape (or, in some cases, an incorrect belief in a cylindrical shape) of the Earth was believe by post 100 BC Greek historians to have been known as early as the 700s BC. This belief, reasonable enough, was based on the assumption that sailors noticed that they could sail past the horizon. Although difficult to document (due to being nearly prehistoric) such sailing was almost certainly occurring regularly among cultures such as the Phoenicians by 1200 BC, well prior to the first writings of the Bible.

 

Knowledge in the ancient world was more geographically isolated than in the modern. It’s reasonable to speculate that the 1st Millennium BC writers of the earliest parts of the Bible wouldn’t have written factual details most of their readers believed to be false. Although the Bible doesn’t describe the shape of the earth in lengthy, unambiguous detail, biblical scholars often point to Isaiah 40:22 as one such verse.

[math]^{22}[/math] It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in:

Although some argue that “circle of the earth” should be taken to mean “sphere of the earth”, and hold that this verse is evidence that the Bible thus correctly describes Earth’s spheroid shape, most credible scholars believe that the KJV translation is accurate, and describes the earth as a flat disk, with the heavens (stars, etc.) draped over it like a tent. By the previous sentence’s reasoning, then, the earliest readers of the early texts that would be compiled into the Torah and the Old Testament of the Bible, were not among the people of that time who had knowledge of the curvature of the Earth’s surface – that is, they did not commonly sail more than a couple of kilometers offshore.

 

IMHO, the original texts that came to be collected in the Bible reflected their author’s best knowledge of their world. Had these texts been written by Phoenicians, the equivalent of Isaiah 40:22 would have been very different, reflecting their greater knowledge of geography.

So wouldn't it be illogical to criticize such claims, being as those who wrote them weren't in the position to make any other claim?

I think not.

 

Although it’s discourteous and unproductive to criticize the author of a text for making an error they could not reasonably avoid, it’s necessary – and logical - to the scientific process to criticize claims shown to be false, regardless of the knowledge of the claims’ authors.

 

Although we commonly consider writing to be an unequivocally positive product of civilization, an argument can be made that, with regards to religious traditions, it is not. Prior to their writing, oral religious traditions were likely much more flexible, able to incorporate scientific discovery. With the invention of religious literature, religious literalism becomes possible. The net effect of religious literalism on human culture and civilization is, IMHO, negative.

[rockytriton]

You can't really say when "the bible" was written, it's several books written hundreds of years apart from each other. The first books were generally written by a jew a few thousand years ago in order to give himself some kind of divine authority over his people and to divinely justify the murdering of women and children to take over the lands of the people who already lived in his "promised" land. Or it was written by a prophet and God actually wanted them to slaughter women and children. You decide.

[Majik]

Is not a not all-powerful, but merely sufficiently powerful, “God”, as depicted in these stories, compatible with scientific theory?

 

It seems to me that this would be defining God as some sort of creature - a being constructed of very large features, or an intelligence which can be constructed with various algorithms, etc.

 

I think there is another way to define God that may be more acceptable to the scientific mind. What in all our conceptions is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient? Is there a power that exists everywhere that determines all the facts in the universe? Wouldn't logic be such a force? If there were a force of logic maintaining consistency between all facts in the universe, then couldn't we say it exists everywhere, is all powerful in the sense of determining all facts, and all-knowing in that every fact can be derive by it?

 

If God is this Logic, then science and religion are just different ways of studying Him. Science tries to understand the reason (logic) behind all things. And religion sees the ultimate fate of heaven and hell as reflexions of the truth and falsity determined by the supreme Judge who is Logic.

 

The only thing that remains is to prove that the laws of physics can be derived from this logical consistency and then to show that these laws also lead to the ultimate fate predicted by religion. That would then make religion a science and science a part of religion.

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, Majik, and thanks for your well-written post :)

Is not a not all-powerful, but merely sufficiently powerful, “God”, as depicted in these stories, compatible with scientific theory?

It seems to me that this would be defining God as some sort of creature - a being constructed of very large features, or an intelligence which can be constructed with various algorithms, etc.

I agree. My intention was to define God in precisely this way, as I think this definition is most central to what most theists hold: a God that had an active role in shaping the universe as we currently perceive it, and possibly a continuing, interactive role in events of which we’re aware.

I think there is another way to define God that may be more acceptable to the scientific mind. What in all our conceptions is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient? Is there a power that exists everywhere that determines all the facts in the universe? Wouldn't logic be such a force? If there were a force of logic maintaining consistency between all facts in the universe, then couldn't we say it exists everywhere, is all powerful in the sense of determining all facts, and all-knowing in that every fact can be derive by it?

I believe Majik is stating a popular definition, what Einstein in a famous response to the question of his own religious views referred to as “the God of Spinoza”, and Spinoza himself described as "Deus sive Natura" ("God as/in/or Nature")

If God is this Logic, then science and religion are just different ways of studying Him. Science tries to understand the reason (logic) behind all things. And religion sees the ultimate fate of heaven and hell as reflexions of the truth and falsity determined by the supreme Judge who is Logic.

 

The only thing that remains is to prove that the laws of physics can be derived from this logical consistency and then to show that these laws also lead to the ultimate fate predicted by religion. That would then make religion a science and science a part of religion.

The only school of though of which I’m aware that attempts to do this are variations of the “Omega point” idea, in particular Frank Tipler’s “Omega Point Theory”. According to Tippler and other proponents of this school of thought, every conceivable afterlife described by every religion that will every exists will, at some future time, by some very advanced technology, be made real via what can be described either as an advanced form of virtual reality, or engineering of reality itself. A fictional variation of this theme can be found in Philip Jose Farmer’s ”Riverworld” series of novels, in which advanced technological beings known as “the Ethicals” create “artificial souls” that allow human beings to live many times in an artificial world that little resembles the afterlife described in popular present-day religions.

 

Although I find Tippler a good writer and physicist, his Omega Point arguments (via his 1997 book “The Physics of Immortality”) struck me as the result of wishful thinking on his part more than sound physics, motivated, I suspect, by a profound dread of his impending death, and a driving desire to construct an at least vaguely scientific vision in which that death is not permanent.

 

Farmer’s work employs afterlife as a fictional device to allow him to craft stories involving interactions between different historical figures, and speculate on various moral questions.

 

:shrug: In short, outside of the possibility of Omega Point Theory being correct, for which there seems little scientific support, I can imagine nothing that would result in science and religion agreeing on any “ultimate fate”. Further, the idea of agreement between religious and scientific predictions is troubled by many religions predicting different and mutually exclusive ultimate fates, and the predictions of particular religious changing significantly with the passage of time.

[Majik]

In short, outside of the possibility of Omega Point Theory being correct, for which there seems little scientific support, I can imagine nothing that would result in science and religion agreeing on any “ultimate fate”. Further, the idea of agreement between religious and scientific predictions is troubled by many religions predicting different and mutually exclusive ultimate fates, and the predictions of particular religious changing significantly with the passage of time.

 

This pretty much is a challenge to come up with physics that can justify a particular faith. OK, I'll give it a go.

 

I think that much of creation and miracles and even the heaven to come can be justified by the entropy limit theorem of horizons of black holes, etc. Obviously, creation of life, miracles, resurrections, and new creations of heaven and earth can be seen as circumstances in which entropy is reduced. These are in contract to the usual observation of increasing entropy with time as given by the 2nd law of thermodynamics. But according to black-hole horizon entropy theorems, there is a limit to the amount of entropy that can occur within a given region. If too much is destroyed, something will be created so that there is not too much entropy in that region.

 

Recently we have discovered that the expansion of the universe has been accelerating. The acceleration started about 5 billion years ago. It is interesting that life started to appear on earth about 4 billion years ago. When space itself expands, points in space travel away from each other with increasing velocity at farther distances. At some distance far away points in space are receding from us faster than the speed of light. This forms a cosmological horizon beyond which we can not see. There is an entropy associated with that cosmological horizon, and the entropy inside that horizon is limited by the area of that horizon. As the universe accelerates in its expansion, that cosmological horizon gets closer and smaller. This shrinking horizon decreases the entropy limit allowed within it. This constitutes a force to reduce entropy on a global scale but not necessarily on a local scale. This may account for life on earth and the rise of intelligence.

 

This means that intelligence is a physically meaningful reduction of entropy. Understanding reality and believing what is correct and having reasons to hope can have physical consequence. Your belief system can not be instantly destroyed. And so miracles of healing and deliverance can happen in times of distress when it is clear that you have some seed of unshakable faith. "According to your faith will it be done unto you." This may account for the miracles recorded in the bible, for example.

 

The 3 main monotheistic faiths all predict a judgment to come and the resurrection of the just. This could happen for example if some astronomical disastar were to strike the earth. There could be so much destruction of most life on earth that it might have to be counter balanced with the resurrection of others.

 

And the monotheistic faiths also predict the coming of a new heaven and earth. In the Christian faith this is suppose to occur after the 1000 year reign of Christ after the resurrection. This could happen, for example, if after 1000 years no more doubt remains, and everyone alive understand perfectly. The complete perfection of faith might reduce entropy so much that there would come another inflationary expansion of the universe. This is allowed by chaotic inflationary models. This second inflation would cause the sun, moon, and stars to disappear from view, as is predicted. It could cause the earth and sky to flea away, as is predicted. And the dramatically strinking horizon that would result would cause the such a reduction in entropy that there would come a general resurrection of all the dead, each would get according to his faith. And there would come a new heaven and earth for those whose faith is right.

 

This is all just a theory of mine. And it involves things I can't measure such as the entropy associated with faith. So I don't have any mathematical proof of all this, but I'm working on it.

[CraigD]

This pretty much is a challenge to come up with physics that can justify a particular faith. OK, I'll give it a go.

Excelent!

I think that much of creation and miracles and even the heaven to come can be justified by the entropy limit theorem of horizons of black holes, etc. … But according to black-hole horizon entropy theorems, there is a limit to the amount of entropy that can occur within a given region.

Please correct any misunderstanding in my assumption you’re referring to the holographic principle, a fascinating conjecture dictating a limit to the fundamental amount of information that can be contained in given volume of space.

 

Though I’ve a far less than expert understanding of this conjecture and its underlying physics, I think it mischaracterized by the statement

If too much is destroyed, something will be created so that there is not too much entropy in that region.

In tangible, intuitive terms, the holographic principle states that information requires mass-energy, and that if too much exists in any state in a particular volume of space, it will collapse due to gravity to a black hole of a well defined maximum entropy. Note that, in this as in most rigorous, formal contexts, entropy and information can be considered synonyms.

 

Note also that, counter to its less formal use in humanities and soft sciences as a synonym for destruction, decay, disorder, etc., entropy is defined in formal, mathematical physics as synonymous with information entropy – in short, as a measure of the number of possible states a system can have.

 

Obviously, creation of life, miracles, resurrections, and new creations of heaven and earth can be seen as circumstances in which entropy is reduced.

In informal, metaphorical terms – that is, equating increased entropy with “badness”, and decreased with “goodness” – this does seem obvious, though arguable. In terms of physical thermodynamics, though, everything on Earth, including life and intelligence, is negligible compared to the increase in entropy due to fusion in stars and other processes involving large masses and energies, such as the dynamics of galaxies and clusters of galaxies.

 

The entropy of all matter and energy on Earth is not strictly bound by the laws of thermodynamics because Earth is a very thermodynamically open system, enjoying large influxes of solar energy, and able to freely radiate heat into space.

 

Although a useful philosophical and poetic metaphor for “inevitable dissolution and decay” and similar themes, equating an decrease in entropy with the emergence of highly organized systems such as biological organisms and biological organism with human-like intelligence is not scientifically rigorous or appropriate. There is simply little significance, when measured as information entropy, between animate and animate mater, or between intelligent and unintelligent life. In fact, since biological life requires substantial amounts of information-processing capability, if considered independently of such effects as heat gradients, biological life such as our own requires dramatically more entropy than the pre-biotic matter thought to precede it.

 

Recently we have discovered that the expansion of the universe has been accelerating. The acceleration started about 5 billion years ago.

What is your source for this, Majik?

 

To the best of my knowledge, the best accepted cosmological theories – none of which are free from considerable tentativeness, debate, and controversy – postdict that “cosmic expansion” was far greater in the past than now, and that the rate of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe (roughly, its second derivative) is steadily decreasing. I’m unaware of any observation or theory that suggests that 5 billion years ago was a significant time in the dynamics of the universe.

 

At some distance far away points in space are receding from us faster than the speed of light. This forms a cosmological horizon beyond which we can not see.

This is, to the best of my knowledge, incorrect according to widely accepted cosmological theories, which explain the increasing rate of expansion of objects in the universe as resulting from the aforementioned cosmic or spatial metric expansion, in which space itself is expanding. So, although very distant objects are receding from one another at speeds that, if measured in a simple geometric manner, result in a speed exceeding that of light, light is itself subject to this metric expansion of space, and is thus able to travel be.

This means that intelligence is a physically meaningful reduction of entropy.

This also, I think, disagrees with best current scientific theory, and is essentially a restatement of spiritualism, dualism, and related metaphysical ideas metaphorically borrowing scientific words. As I argued above, intelligence simply doesn’t have much effect on the rate of increase of universal, closed-sysem entropy, or increase or decrease of it in a local, open system.

 

Understanding reality and believing what is correct and having reasons to hope can have physical consequence. Your belief system can not be instantly destroyed.

That cognitive processes, such as scientific or religious thought, can effect behavior and individual health is, I think, supported by empirical data, biological, and “soft” scientific theory. However, outside of some very speculative theories such as those of offered by Penrose his 1989 book “[/wiki]The Emperor's New Mind[/wiki]”, the Omega Point theories described in previous posts, and “advance engineering” science fictional scenarios such as the “Rama universe” with which I opened this thread, I know of no scientific thought that suggests that human thought or belief affects reality in a special manner – that is, that the universe much “cares” about or is affected by life, intelligent or not, on Earth or elsewhere.

And so miracles of healing and deliverance can happen in times of distress when it is clear that you have some seed of unshakable faith.

Yes, they can – but, in every instance that such occurrences have been studied with adequate experimental and statistical controls, it appears that miracles of healing and deliverance happen with equal frequency to people without faith, or with faith of varying shakability, than to people with unshakable faith.

 

For those who are not already familiar with the literature, it’s worthwhile to make a thorough, independent study of the several alleged experimental verifications of “the power of faith, such as those Herbert Benson and Larry Dossey.

And the monotheistic faiths also predict the coming of a new heaven and earth.

Again, can you provide a source for this, Majik? I’m unaware of any canonic (Biblical, etc) scriptures that support such a claim. For example, the Revelation of John, a common source of “end time” predictions for Christians, fairly explicitly states that the coming heaven will be physically on the old Earth and under the old heaven. Traditions of early Christians and other resurrection cultists, particularly burial traditions, strongly suggest that they believed the afterlife to be a literal resurrection of one’s body to live again on Earth – that is, the return of decayed flesh and bone to its living form and the physical emergence of the once-dead from tombs and ossuaries.

 

I believe this claim is an example of a commonly poorly understood shift in among Christians and related religionists from a very literal interpretation of “eternal life” to increasingly obscure and metaphysical ones. This has been discussed a good bit in this forum.

This is all just a theory of mine. And it involves things I can't measure such as the entropy associated with faith. So I don't have any mathematical proof of all this, but I'm working on it.

Best wishes with that, and send it hypography’s way as your do. However, I council taking a deep look at the differing uses to which the term “entropy” is put, and caution recognition that the thermodynamic and informational uses employed in physics are related in only the most metaphoric manner to those commonly found in the humanities and present day religion. I’ve known an alarmingly large number of humanities academics and enthusiasts who fail to do so, to the detriment and discredit of their disciplines.

[Majik]

Please correct any misunderstanding in my assumption you’re referring to the holographic principle, a fascinating conjecture dictating a limit to the fundamental amount of information that can be contained in given volume of space.

also see black hole thermodynamics.

 

 

The entropy of all matter and energy on Earth is not strictly bound by the laws of thermodynamics because Earth is a very thermodynamically open system, enjoying large influxes of solar energy, and able to freely radiate heat into space.

I don't think you've proven that.

 

Although a useful philosophical and poetic metaphor for “inevitable dissolution and decay” and similar themes, equating an decrease in entropy with the emergence of highly organized systems such as biological organisms and biological organism with human-like intelligence is not scientifically rigorous or appropriate.

Or do you mean it is not politically correct. Those who believe in Intelligent Design try to show that the high improbability of life is proof of God. What I'm doing is providing a scientific reason why such improbabilities might exist.

 

To the best of my knowledge, the best accepted cosmological theories – none of which are free from considerable tentativeness, debate, and controversy – postdict that “cosmic expansion” was far greater in the past than now, and that the rate of the acceleration of the expansion of the universe (roughly, its second derivative) is steadily decreasing. I’m unaware of any observation or theory that suggests that 5 billion years ago was a significant time in the dynamics of the universe.

Actually, I thought the supernova redshift data pointed to an increase in acceleration starting about 5 billion years ago. Before that the universe was slowing down, after that it began to speed up. Or were you referring to inflation.

 

 

I know of no scientific thought that suggests that human thought or belief affects reality in a special manner – that is, that the universe much “cares” about or is affected by life, intelligent or not, on Earth or elsewhere.Yes, they can – but, in every instance that such occurrences have been studied with adequate experimental and statistical controls, it appears that miracles of healing and deliverance happen with equal frequency to people without faith, or with faith of varying shakability, than to people with unshakable faith.

I don't know how one would measure the entropy of the "faith" of the subjects of those studied to begin with. Faith doesn't seem to defined well enough at this time to enable even the subjects of this study to tell you if they have "faith" or not. That's the whole point in contention. The problem is in how to measure this kind of faith or understanding or intelligence.

 

It seems the whole point of intelligence is to survive on as little energy as possible, thus reducing the increase in entropy their rotting corpse would otherwise represent. So one way to measure it may be to calculate how much decay would occur if scientists did not do anything to prevent a plague or disastar. Then their faith and intelligence would have reduced that much entropy in the universe.

 

There is an entropy calculate for computer code. More efficient code has less entropy. And artificial intelligence is a computer code. So another way to measure the entropy of our faith is to calculate the entropy of a computer code that simulates human intelligence.

 

 

I’m unaware of any canonic (Biblical, etc) scriptures that support such a claim. For example, the Revelation of John, a common source of “end time” predictions for Christians, fairly explicitly states that the coming heaven will be physically on the old Earth and under the old heaven.

 

Rev 20:11, "Then I saw a great white throne and him who was seated on it. Earth and sky fled from his presence, and there was no place for them." This indicates everything accelerating away - a big rip if you will.

 

Rev 20:12,"And I saw the dead, great and small, standing before the throne, and books were opened. .. The dead were judged according to what they had done..." This indicates a type of construction, a reduction of entropy.

 

Rev 20:15,"If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire." The damned are cast away from God's presense, indicating even more accelerated expansion.

 

Rev 21:1, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away..." And this indicates even more construction and reduction of entropy.

[jedaisoul]

Basically this conclusion flows from the theological notion (recently discussed in this forum that "Nothing is greater than God."

 

This statement is obviously--at least to the non-believer--intended to show that God is worthy of being the sole recipient of our worship, and in order to be true in the simplistic sense, ends up needing to be applied to all measurable senses that man can relate to/imagine.

 

Thus from a mathematical/physics perspective, any countable dimension must be assigned at least an Aleph-null infinity value.

 

I think the idea of scientifically "proving" whether God exists or not is silly. Don't get me wrong, I do not believe in an omnipotent creator God. I'm not defending that belief. I'm just saying that scientific discussion of the subject only allows you to refute the claim that "God wrote the bible, so everything in it must be true". Everything in the bible is blatantly not true, and it doesn't take much scientific enquiry to realise that. Indeed it takes blind absolute faith to believe otherwise.

 

However, if you accept that God (at best) inspired the writers of the bible, criticism of the scientific implications of what they wrote tells us nothing about whether God exists or not. At most it suggests that those men were mistaken about the nature of God. Questions about the nature and existence of God lie outside science. So lets leave it there?

[Mike C]

CraigD and others

 

There is some physics involved in the Origin of Religion.

The physics I speak of is the Image on the Moon.

This image can be interpreted as a 'fetus' in a womans womb because the 'menstral cycles of women and the Moons periods around the Earth are almost equal.

 

So I am certain that the females during that early period were aware of this coincidence and then could have practiced or contolled their desires to become pregnant or not by avoiding their fertility periods that are about 10 days long.

This could be an example of the first 'family' planning.

 

However, we can say that this is not a spirit created coincidence unless you would portray the ''genes' within these woman as created to be in tune with this heavenly body.

In other words, the Moon was here long before the human race was created.

 

Then the separation of the bibles 'day' and 'night' that has established the lion as the biblical spirit god is another example that the Sun was here long before the lion established himself as the Sun god.

 

These two creations, I would have to consider as subjectively modified genes by the creatures themselves over long periods of time IMHO.

 

Mike C