Coincidence or Explanation? [Kill Em With Kindness]

bayjohn
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Coincidence or Explanation? [Kill Em With Kindness]

Hello Everyone:

A couple years ago (about the time RRS had the debate with the Way of the Master folks) I saw an interview where an interesting theory (coincidence? speculation? observation?) was presented on a talk show, only I can't remember who presented this idea.  Maybe Peter Atkins or Melvin Calvin... I just can't remember.

Anyway, here it is:  Quasars.  They are believed to be the most distant object in outer space and are known to be the brightest (most intense radial energy producing) objects, as well as the most gravitational objects known to science.  Most scientists agree that quasars on average have the intensity of about ten trillion times the energy of our sun.  Also, quasars are the most distant objects from the earth known to mankind (way beyond my explanation capabilities).

Within the past ten years scientists have speculated that super massive black holes are at the core of every quasar, thus giving them the intense gravitational power and luminescence on gamma and x-ray telescopes (I think).  Quasars have gigantic pools of super-heated gases swirling around their center at about 1,500 miles per hour or more, slowly being consumed by the core.  I believe there are about 100,000 known quasars to date.

Now the atheist/theist speculation observation (for lack of better terminology):  The Lake of Fire described in Revelation 20:15 is a literal place in Christian theology located in the "outer darkness" (Matthew 8:12) where the "blackest darkness" (Jude 13) contains the wicked and there is no escape (Matthew 25:46).  Correct me on my verses if I'm wrong, please!  Quasars are in the deepest, darkest part of the universe with the most powerful black holes at the center which nothing can escape (not even light) surrounded by swirling massive lakes of super-heated gases.  A good place to fulfill prophecy?  Or is this just another person's reasoning getting two idealogies messed up?  I thought it was interesting, to say the least.

Not my idea, just repeating it; I don't remember if I saw it on YouTube or regular television.  Did anyone else see this clip?  Or does anyone have anything to add regarding this theory?  Fascinating stuff.

Take care and be safe.


deludedgod
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Quote:Or is this just

Quote:

Or is this just another person's reasoning getting two idealogies messed up?

Yeah. The thing above.

I simply cannot fathom what kind of logical connection one can even begin to make here.

Well? Give us a good laugh, then. Spell out what they are trying to say, in syllogistic form.

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

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HisWillness
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deludedgod wrote:Well? Give

deludedgod wrote:

Well? Give us a good laugh, then. Spell out what they are trying to say, in syllogistic form.

Good luck with that. Why is it that every time something's discovered (or even theorized, apparently) someone wants to point out that it confirms the thing they believe for no reason?

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zarathustra
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Fascinating Stuff? Not really.

Chalk it up to our ability to pattern match.  Pick at random any two concepts (for example -- a scientific discovery and a piece of fiction), and the average person can can get them to match up without too much work.   It's this ability -- and desire -- to pattern match that allows such nonsense as:

1.  Dinesh D'Souza claiming the 7-day creation story in genesis fits with the big bang.

2.  Nostradamus devotees (not naming any names...) using the exact same quatrain as evidence for the prediction of Khomeini, Saddam and George Bush.

3.  Correlating the doctrine of the holy trinity with wave functions (as suggested by a questioner at one of Dawkins' book readings)

4.  Cold-reading psychics to throw out all sorts of vague statements ("His name starts with a J...&quotEye-wink, and then tasking the subject with making sense out of them.

Quasars in the book of revelation is is not at all a theory, and it is not at all fascinating.

 

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 Hold on a minute.... The

 

Hold on a minute.... The Goonies descended into a large underground cavern.... Dante descended into a large underground cavern.... but Dante's cavern had Satan at the very bottom.... Oh! But the Goonie cavern had One-Eyed Willie at the bottom!

 

By superficial pattern matching, I think we can safely conclude that Satan is One-Eyed Willie and that Hell is merely a series of deadly traps!!! (Therefore, surmountable?!)

 

Now that I think of it... when Mouth was in the cave, he stole back all of the wish coins from the bottom of the wishing well, which were made of metal. But Jesus once descended into Hell and stole back some keys, which were also made of metal.

 

Therefore, Corey Feldman is Jesus?

 

I'm still new at apologetics. Cut me some slack.

 

A place common to all will be maintained by none. A religion common to all is perhaps not much different.


bayjohn
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Syllogistic Argument...

If I understand correctly, the "syllogistic argument" is one that commands a logical scheme or analysis that results in a formal agreement, or at least some type of deductive reasoning.

One man's treasure is another man's trash.

I cannot even begin to explain the logical functions, mathematical measurements, or chemical analysis of a quasar.  The dimensions of such a phenomenon are too extreme for my limited mental capabilities to encompass.  Even still, I am less able to fathom the creation of these enormous bodies in our known universe.

On the same level, I cannot comprehend how millions and millions of microscopic nerves and cells within my body allow me to see, hear, think, feel, and reason.  Science and logic do not offer a credible explanation for the capabilities of the human mind and conscience.

I stood outside the box and my argument fell apart; if logic cannot exist outside the boundaries of this dimension, how are we to understand that which is without explanation?  "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now."

Enjoy MLK day!


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Quote:I cannot comprehend

Quote:

I cannot comprehend how millions and millions of microscopic nerves and cells within my body allow me to see, hear, think, feel, and reason.Science and logic do not offer a credible explanation for the capabilities of the human mind and conscience.

Hell, you'd make a good apologist (and unlike Arch, you weren't trying!). Amazing. Let me repeat to you what you said:

Sentence 1: I am not familiar with the scientific understanding we currently possess of the nature of the mind and its functions and capacity

Sentence 2: Despite this lack of familiarity, I feel qualified to dismiss this understanding out of hand

 

 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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 Quote:Hell, you'd make a

 

Quote:
Hell, you'd make a good apologist (and unlike Arch, you weren't trying!). Amazing. Let me repeat to you what you said:

Sentence 1: I am not familiar with the scientific understanding we currently possess of the nature of the mind and its functions and capacity

Sentence 2: Despite this lack of familiarity, I feel qualified to dismiss this understanding out of hand

ROFL!

Isn't it amazing how many people self-pwn and don't even know it?

Epistemological rights, kids.  They're not just good for breakfast.

 

 

Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin

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HisWillness
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 Yeah, uh ... put simply,

 Yeah, uh ... put simply, john, just because you don't understand an explanation, that doesn't mean it's a bad explanation. It just means that you're going to have to take more time to understand the explanation before you dismiss it out of hand.

Saint Will: no gyration without funkstification.
fabulae! nil satis firmi video quam ob rem accipere hunc mi expediat metum. - Terence


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Quote:Anyway, here it is: 

Quote:
Anyway, here it is:  Quasars.  They are believed to be the most distant object in outer space and are known to be the brightest (most intense radial energy producing) objects, as well as the most gravitational objects known to science.  Most scientists agree that quasars on average have the intensity of about ten trillion times the energy of our sun.  Also, quasars are the most distant objects from the earth known to mankind (way beyond my explanation capabilities).

...WHAT?

My good sir, although a few of your basic statements are correct, you really need to go back to your literature (read information from roughly the 80s onward). We know what Quasars are: active galactic nuclei.

Galaxies like our own all likely began as these active nuclei; supermassive black holes surrounded by an accretion disk that fed into it. The act of 'consuming' the surrounding disk invokes a violent cyclonic motion of the nuclei and a tremendous release of energy & radation. Once the accretion disk has been 'used-up', the Quasar would wind down into a much less violent state and mature into a full-blown galaxy.

 

Quasars are fantasically awesome & rare astrophysical objects (there are likely none left in the universe; the ones we see today would have long since quieted down by the time their light reached us), but they have nothing to do with your theology's place of torment. Even if Quasars were still active, they would not be an effective place to torture people as said people would be immediately annihilated upon their introduction.

Quote:
"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

- Leon Trotsky, Last Will & Testament
February 27, 1940


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ALL POSTERS...This is

ALL POSTERS...

This is the
Kill Em
With
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Forum!

 

PLEASE MAKE
SURE TO
FOLLOW THE
RULES!


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Dracos
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Black holes, Quasars

I believe, have faith, that the incomming matter falling into a black hole may exceed 1500 miles per hour.


bayjohn
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I guess I'm not quite up-to-date...

Thanks Kevin Brown & Dracos:

I guess my information isn't as up-to-date as I thought regarding the quasars.  I could see how the theory that quasars don't exist any more based upon the distance they are from earth (and the light we see is from ancient history).  Still, this stuff blows my mind because I consider myself to have "average" (at best) intelligence.  And when someone makes a theology comparison with this type of information, it really sparks my interest.  I love getting feedback from all sides of the argument!

I never did understand why a "black hole" is called a "hole"...  I mean, isn't it just a chunk of matter that has an enormous gravitational pull?  Seems like the matter being sucked into it would either stick to what is already there or be shot out the other side, right?  Whoops, there I go thinking again.  I'd better stop...

Thanks for the feedback, guys.  I'll have to dig up the info I saw recently regarding the "Mt St Helens Phenomenon" and the evolution of the earth to get your feedback on that, too.  Take care!


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Quote:..  I mean, isn't it

Quote:

..  I mean, isn't it just a chunk of matter that has an enormous gravitational pull?

No. I think was Bose (actually it may have been Einstein, but I think it was Bose) who pointed out that a black hole isn't made of anything. A black hole is a phenomenon purely related to the curvature of space-time. It is strictly inaccurate to talk of the "gravitational pull" unless we are talking about Newtonian physics (in which the concept of a black hole wouldn't make sense anyway). The gravitational field created by massive objects is directly proportional to their mass. But the curvature of space-time in a region is a phenomenon which is caused by a very high density, although to fully follow this argument one must understand Ricci tensors. Really a black hole should be called a black well, since that's really what it is, the ultimate potential well that results from the curvature of space time.

Quote:

Seems like the matter being sucked into it would either stick to what is already there or be shot out the other side, right?

A black hole which has another side is called a white hole. To be sucked into a black hole (not a white hole) is a process which is very difficult to understand since no information can be gleaned from objects past the event horizon. It's all theoretical, but strictly speaking the whole concept of "matter" ceases to be meaningful insofar as it is stripped apart at the subatomic level in a black hole and according to some physicists, may rend particles into their constituents strings (if you like string theory, that is).

 

"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.

-Me

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