The disintegration of American democracy thread

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_Res Ipsa
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Re: The disintegration of American democracy thread

Post by _Res Ipsa »

DoubtingThomas wrote:
Res Ipsa wrote:Incidentally, how does a Mormon scientist who accepts the Big Bang theory view Gods relationship to the Big Bang theory?

For many Mormon scientists the Big Bang was just an event and god had nothing to do with it.

Here's an interview with a Mormon astronomer who believes the Big Bang was God creating the universe.

https://rationalfaiths.com/science-big-bang/

I've also run into discussions of the multi-verse being consistent with eternal progression, with each individual universe being created by its god. That certainly implies that the God of our universe created our universe through the Big Bang.

Can you refer me to a Mormon scientist who has said that God had nothing to do with the Big Bang?

Res Ipsa wrote:People who identify as Christian have a wide range of viewpoints. Perhaps if you got to know a few Christians and really listened to what they say, you might move away from your black and white thinking about Christians.

Doubting Thomas wrote:What christian denomination is open to the possibility of human extinction?

I didn't say anything about Christian denominations. I'm talking about people. I've had discussions with Christians who were of the opinion that if humans were stupid enough to destroy themselves through war or environmental catastrophe, that God wouldn't save us from ourselves. They hoped he would. But they were doubtful he would. People who identify as Christian have a much wider range of views on all sorts of theological questions than I'd ever imagined when I was a Mormon. (Even Mormons have a a much wider range of views on all sorts of issues than I'd imagined back when I was a Mormon.)

To understand what individual people really believe, you can't rely on the labels.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
_DoubtingThomas
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Re: The disintegration of American democracy thread

Post by _DoubtingThomas »

Res Ipsa wrote: Can you refer me to a Mormon scientist who has said that God had nothing to do with the Big Bang?

A Mormon cosmologist believes "the big bang is this random chaotic thing."

https://www.fairmormon.org/wp-content/u ... mology.pdf

Some apologists do believe the Big Bang was a random event like a supernova for example.
_Res Ipsa
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Re: The disintegration of American democracy thread

Post by _Res Ipsa »

DoubtingThomas wrote:
Res Ipsa wrote: Can you refer me to a Mormon scientist who has said that God had nothing to do with the Big Bang?

A Mormon cosmologist believes "the big bang is this random chaotic thing."

https://www.fairmormon.org/wp-content/u ... mology.pdf

Some apologists do believe the Big Bang was a random event like a supernova for example.

DT, you are misreading what the author is saying. He is discussing scientific criticisms of the original or "Hot" big bang theory. He is saying that, under the hot big bang theory as originally hypothesized, the "bang" would have been a chaotic and random event. But when we look at certain actual data, it is inconsistent with a chaotic, random event. In other words, he's saying that the theory was inconsistent with the evidence -- not that he believes that the process that created the universe was, in fact, random and chaotic.

This and other problems with the hot big bang theory are well known scientific objections. The original hot big bang theory has been replaced by inflationary theory, which inflationary theory, some versions of which imply infinite creation of daughter or bubble universes. I found articles arguing that such a multi-verse is consistent with the LDS notion of eternal progression, with humans that progress to godhood, each creating his own universe.

I reviewed the astronomers and cosmologists on Mormon Scholars Testify. I googled "Mormon scientist big bang god" Nowhere did I find even a hint of a claim that God had nothing to do with the Big Bang. If this is a universal, or even a general, belief among Mormon scientists, they're keeping it really quiet.

ETA: EA or Shades, would you mind moving this discussion of what LDS scientists believe to new thread. It's a derail of the topic.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
_huckelberry
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Re: The disintegration of American democracy thread

Post by _huckelberry »

Exiled wrote:
huckelberry wrote:Exilded, Corporations are a large and important reality of America or the larger industrial world. Are you sure it is a good idea to avoid their money and influence? (aside from the consideration that that cannot happen no matter how long one pouts about it)

There is a reason anti-trust laws are on the books and at one time they were enforced. One can have a king controlling everything or one can have a cartel of corporations controlling everything. It seems to be the same thing at a certain point. This is why too big to fail should never be in our lexicon. This is why we should distrust corporate money in our elections. Corporations just want to make money and progressively at our expense. Over the last 40 years, income distribution has gone to the top at the expense of the rest of us. Corporate influence wants to keep that going. Hence, we should distrust it. Our goals ought to be to reverse the trend of the income distribution gravy train that has enriched the few at the expense of the many. This is the main goal, or should be, that continually gets obscured by corporate controlled narratives.

Exiled, much of what you say here I completely agree with. Anti Trust is a valuable example of a general principal that free enterprise only remains free in the context of a strong central government which blocks possible abuse of power by business organizations. Smaller as well as large organizations can abuse people, transactions and the environment. Larger organization have more power to protect their own actions.

The idea of too large to fail reflects the idea that the failure of some organization would have such large negative economic consequences that very large numbers of ordinary people would be seriously injured. It is a bit of a tricky judgement call to determine when that should apply. Perhaps more careful application of antitrust could help avoid that dilemma from arising. Yet if a large enough group of interrelated banks or investment fail the results can be bad for the entire economy.
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Re: The disintegration of American democracy thread

Post by _DoubtingThomas »

Res Ipsa wrote:I reviewed the astronomers and cosmologists on Mormon Scholars Testify. I googled "Mormon scientist big bang god" Nowhere did I find even a hint of a claim that God had nothing to do with the Big Bang. If this is a universal, or even a general, belief among Mormon scientists, they're keeping it really quiet.

ETA: EAllusion or Shades, would you mind moving this discussion of what LDS scientists believe to new thread. It's a derail of the topic.

Okay. Some Mormon apologists do not believe god created the universe. They interpret Abraham 4-5 as the creation of the Earth, not the universe. By definition the word "universe" means everything.
Last edited by Guest on Sat Nov 16, 2019 8:41 pm, edited 3 times in total.
_DoubtingThomas
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Re: The disintegration of American democracy thread

Post by _DoubtingThomas »

Mormon Trashumanists believe god is an extraterrestrial. I do like the idea that god is an extraterrestrial, but there is simply no evidence for that.
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Re: The disintegration of American democracy thread

Post by _Doctor CamNC4Me »

Looks like our democracy is fighting back. Despite three Trump visits to Loosiana, a Democrat retains to Governor’s mansion.

- Doc
In the face of madness, rationality has no power - Xiao Wang, US historiographer, 2287 AD.

Every record...falsified, every book rewritten...every statue...has been renamed or torn down, every date...altered...the process is continuing...minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Ideology is always right.
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Re: The disintegration of American democracy thread

Post by _Smokey »

The guy was an incumbent, lmao is this a shock?
Dr Shades is Jason Gallentine
_DoubtingThomas
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Re: The disintegration of American democracy thread

Post by _DoubtingThomas »

Res Ipsa wrote:I googled "Mormon scientist big bang god" Nowhere did I find even a hint of a claim that God had nothing to do with the Big Bang.

A Mormon astronomer said, "The biblical account is a remarkably peaceful story. By contrast, the big bang is a story of incredible violence, involving inconceivable forces and energies. It seems extremely unlikely that these two stories describe the same event, especially since the Bible deals specifically with objects and conditions on the earth. To read universe and big bang into the biblical creation account requires a spectacular leap of logic....Universes that bubble up from the multiverse might differ greatly from ours in their force constants or natural laws. If so, most would quickly disappear, and only a very few would have properties that allow for the formation of atoms, stars, life, and intelligence." http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/view ... ontext=msr

It doesn't sound that he believes god created our universe.
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Re: The disintegration of American democracy thread

Post by _Res Ipsa »

DoubtingThomas wrote:
Res Ipsa wrote:I googled "Mormon scientist big bang god" Nowhere did I find even a hint of a claim that God had nothing to do with the Big Bang.


A Mormon astronomer said, "The biblical account is a remarkably peaceful story. By contrast, the big bang is a story of incredible violence, involving inconceivable forces and energies. It seems extremely unlikely that these two stories describe the same event, especially since the Bible deals specifically with objects and conditions on the earth. To read universe and big bang into the biblical creation account requires a spectacular leap of logic....Universes that bubble up from the multiverse might differ greatly from ours in their force constants or natural laws. If so, most would quickly disappear, and only a very few would have properties that allow for the formation of atoms, stars, life, and intelligence." http://scholarsarchive.BYU.edu/cgi/view ... ontext=msr

It doesn't sound that he believes god created our universe.


DT, I'm going to start with a technical nitpick here. In your quote, you splice together with your ellipsis unrelated sentences that are separated by 17 or 18 pages. That's a misleading way of representing what the paper says. It implies that the two sentences are part of the same thought. They aren't. Your quote should look like this:

A Mormon astronomer said: "The biblical account is a remarkably peaceful story. By contrast, the big bang is a story of incredible violence, involving inconceivable forces and energies. It seems extremely unlikely that these two stories describe the same event, especially since the Bible deals specifically with objects and conditions on the earth. To read universe and big bang into the biblical creation account requires a spectacular leap of logic."

He also said: "Universes that bubble up from the multiverse might differ greatly from ours in their force constants or natural laws. If so, most would quickly disappear, and only a very few would have properties that allow for the formation of atoms, stars, life, and intelligence."


That tells the reader that it's you who has connected the two passages, and not the author. I don't think you meant to be misleading, but the form of your quote was misleading, nonetheless.

Nothing in what you quoted gives any hint about the author's opinion as to whether God created the universe. To see that, it helps to pay attention to the context of the quoted sentences. The entire paper is a rebuttal to a book published by two Christian authors. This quote from that paper nicely sums up the relevant part of the Christians' argument:

The Big Bang represents the origin of all matter and energy, even of physical space and time themselves. . . . Therefore, to hold that matter/energy are eternal or that God is the physical product of a beginningless progression is irreconcilable with the theory. The problem posed by the Big Bang for Mormon theology is especially severe, not merely because the Big Bang theory supports creation ex nihilo, but because the Mormon concept of God as an extended material object existing in the universe requires, in connection with Big Bang cosmogony, that God himself (or his progenitors) came into being ex ni- hilo. Thus, Big Bang cosmogony is a veritable dagger at the throat of Mormon theology. (p. 146)
See page 282 of the paper you linked.

Your first quote is one of many specific responses to that argument. Here is your quote in context:

4. Copan and Craig unjustifiably conflate the creation account in Genesis 1:1 with the idea that the entire universe originated by creatio ex nihilo. “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”—so opens the creation story in the majestic prose of the King James Version of the Bible. From the start of the Christian era, the theological discussion of the world has always been focused on the earth and its associated heaven (the celestial sphere), which constituted the known world of the early church fathers.

The biblical account is a remarkably peaceful story. By contrast, the big bang is a story of incredible violence, involving inconceivable forces and energies. It seems extremely unlikely that these two stories describe the same event, especially since the Bible deals specifically with objects and conditions on the earth. To read universe and big bang into the biblical creation account requires a spectacular leap of logic.


So, all this says is that the creation account in Genesis is an account of creation of the earth, not the universe. It says absolutely nothing about what the author's beliefs are about the relationship between God and the creation of our universe.

The second sentence comes from a section of the paper that is simply a general explanation of what multi-verse theories are. Again, no hint of the relationship between the various multi-verse theories and God.

This is one of the papers I read as a result of my Google search. The purpose of the paper is to (1) refute the claim in the book that the Big Bang is a death knell for LDS theology; and (2) show that nothing in the field of cosmology is inconsistent with LDS theology.

It also says this:

A Mormon cosmology ought to relate Latter-day Saint doctrines of God, spirits, revelation, and resurrection to the physical world. All truth must come together, but of course that will happen only in God’s time. After we have understood and obeyed the commandments al- ready given, we may receive more light. Clearly we have far to go.

Despite writings by several Latter-day Saint authors (including the groundbreaking book by Erich R. Paul,33 a few other books and articles,34 contributions in the book Of Heaven and Earth,35 and this present article), no well-defined field of Latter-day Saint cosmology exists. Perhaps our knowledge of the physical universe and of Latter- day Saint theology will never be sufficiently complete to allow it in this life.
pp.307-08.

When you say something like: Mormons believe God didn't create the universe, that's a claim that there is a well-defined, uniformly held Mormon cosmology. The author of this article says the exact opposite. He says there isn't one, and may never be one.
​“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951
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