the universe can be observed to be expanding.. an expanding universe must have had a beginning.
whatever begins to exist had a cause.
therefore the universe had a cause.
I know this is properly in vain but..
And something from nothing isn't magic? At least with magic you start with a magician. Materialists start with literally nothing. Why isn't this happening now?
this is false and it is not the conclusion of the Vilenkin articles (2003 and 2012 versions).
if you were to read the watchtower literature and you believed it to be the exclusive divinely inspired interpretation of the bible, i suggest that you would not be learning anything useful, instead you would simply be absorbing the indoctrination of the jw org..
what is the difference between indoctrination and education?.
take any passage from the watchtower this sentence for example which assumes significance in the end of six thousand years of human history in 1975: “how then does this fit in with god’s timetable?”.
What a great post. A quote that I often think about on this topic (I can't recall where I first saw it) goes something like this (I think i am butchering it pretty badly though): The difference between a scientific mindset and a non-scientific mindset is that a non-scientific mindset tries to label statements as either true or false whereas a scientific mindset asks how likely each statement is to be true and how we can know.
my eyes for ttatt opened in 1995 with the generation change and the wt magazine stated "some witness thought that the generation started in 1914".
since 1997, with internet at low speed, i followed h2o hourglass, www.xjw.com and later on www.jehovahs-witness.net.. did a bachelor and post bachelor since then.. now, nearly completed with fading, i feel it's time to go on with my life and do some other things, spending more time with my wife abd children instead of thinking about jw topics in my head.
goal is being a better person and less grumpy at 45.... everything what could be said is already said.
the universe can be observed to be expanding.. an expanding universe must have had a beginning.
whatever begins to exist had a cause.
therefore the universe had a cause.
I have read the two articles in question by Vilenkin (and coauthors) and it might be relevant to state what the articles show and do not show because this is often being confused as it is on this thread.
What Borde, Guth and Vilenkin showed (and the proof is not in dispute) is that if you start out with a classical space-time, and you assume it has always been expanding, then at some point in the past at least parts of the space-time will undergo a singularity, i.e. our description will break down.
To put this in lay-mans terms: Suppose we ignore quantum mechanics and assume the universe has always been expanding, then at some point in the past our current laws of nature won't work anymore.
However I can't think of any cosmologist who would think that we should not take quantum mechanics into account when the universe is the size of an atom, and the BGV theorem does not do that because we don't know what that description should be. This is not me saying they are mistaken or ignoring something, they say so themselves in the paper!.
To use the BGV theorem to argue for God is no better than to say: "Oh gee, a simple model of the universe we know is wrong can also be proven to break down, therefore god must have made everything".
And it's even worse than that. In reality, some scientists believe the universe had a "beginning" (but this certainly include natural beginnings), and some that it did not. Even if we trust the BGV theorem despite being based on a known incomplete model of the universe that would still only leave us with those models of the universe where there is no beginning. it does not get us anywhere.
i'm hearing rumours of huge changes within the berkshire circuit here in the uk .
congregations being dispanded and kingdom halls closing down and being sold off.... official announcements within the next month apparently .
does anyone else have anymore info?.
i've decided to go full public with a new username on this forum.
it's been almost a decade since i've been out and i don't care at this point who knows.
that being said, here's a letter that i'm mailing to bethel.
i just got back from the bookstore and i can't wait to sink into it based on all the reviews and press it has been getting.
it's called the big picture - on the origin of life, meaning, and the universe itself by sean carroll.. “weaving the threads of astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, and philosophy into a seamless narrative tapestry, sean carroll enthralls us with what we’ve figured out in the universe and humbles us with what we don’t yet understand.
yet in the end, it’s the meaning of it all that feeds your soul of curiosity.” —neil degrasse tyson, host of cosmos: a spacetime odyssey*publishers weekly #1 most anticipated science book of spring 2016*"already internationally acclaimed for his elegant, lucid writing on the most challenging notions in modern physics, sean carroll is emerging as one of the greatest humanist thinkers of his generation as he brings his extraordinary intellect to bear not only on higgs bosons and extra dimensions but now also on our deepest personal questions.
i've decided to go full public with a new username on this forum.
it's been almost a decade since i've been out and i don't care at this point who knows.
that being said, here's a letter that i'm mailing to bethel.
So, yes, that must have been tricky for Jehovah: no rain/precipitation until 4000 years ago; then lay down what looks exactly like 400K years of snowfall (including seasonal differences) in less than a year.
BoC: You know more about this stuff than me, but do they really believe that?! I.e. the part about no rainfall? I thought they had not mentioned anything about this for something like 40 years and it was considered old light?
i've decided to go full public with a new username on this forum.
it's been almost a decade since i've been out and i don't care at this point who knows.
that being said, here's a letter that i'm mailing to bethel.
TruthExplorer: "As someone who questions everything, (...) They carbon date the rock and bingo, it's 230 million years old? Where on earth do they come out with these figures?"
Hi truthexplorer. It is good that you question everything, but you got to start by questioning your own assumptions. For instance nobody has ever carbon dated a rock because you can't use carbon dating on rocks.
For me, believing archeologists estimates in years based pn carbon dating would be like believing the overlapping generation teaching
You are right the historical record only goes back so far (and is largely constructed), but that's why scientists have tested carbon 14 dating against a great many external sources of verification representing very diverse chronological processes. Are you aware of that literature?
Here is a graph i made a few years back that shows the agreement between C14 dating and more than 10 external datasets offering more than 10 sources of independent confirmation of Carbon 14 dating for the past 10000 years.
in an effort to reduce the number of posts, this year i will try to add links to this post.
now, on with the leaks & releases!
first up.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nzvwhflss4.
