How will the new Texan textbooks explain the assassination of JFK

[Evan Burton]

The LHC super conducting super-collider in Switzerland, which was originally to have been built in Texas, provides only experiments on which scientists then propose theories about matter vs anti-matter, about which those scientists and opposing scientists will argue for decades or centuries more, about the big-bang theory "which created everything", according to some scientists, who are opposed by other scientists who insist that "everything cannot be created from nothing". Scientists are to be encouraged to look for answers.

But they will not find them in super conducting super-colliders...which may provide clues, but not answers.

Jack,

You appear not to have read my previous post: scientists do NOT claim they have all the answers. They do their best to develop hypotheses that match the observed results and then test those hypotheses to the best of their ability. It is called science.

Burton is no more qualified than I am to say that an explanation for creation can be found.

Correct - and I do not claim that any explanation has been found. I simply assert it is closed-minded to assume something cannot be discovered.

Philosophers have pondered the question as long as there have been philosophers: WHAT EXISTED BEFORE ANYTHING EXISTED? Or did "something" ALWAYS exist? Was there a beginning, or no beginning? This amounts to pondering the imponderable. It is unknowable. Only scientific theorists and religionists believe they have answers.

Jack

Again, refer to my above regard what we know and what we think. Regarding "...was there a beginning..." you should do some reading of the subject. It is a difficult concept, counter-intuitive at times, but have a look just the same.

What came before the Big Bang? Science Daily

]What came before the Big Bang? Frequently Asked Questions in Cosmology

[Jack White]

I am more well read than you imagine and am not as ignorant as you imply.

The LHC super conducting super-collider in Switzerland, which was originally to have been built in Texas, provides only experiments on which scientists then propose theories about matter vs anti-matter, about which those scientists and opposing scientists will argue for decades or centuries more, about the big-bang theory "which created everything", according to some scientists, who are opposed by other scientists who insist that "everything cannot be created from nothing". Scientists are to be encouraged to look for answers.

But they will not find them in super conducting super-colliders...which may provide clues, but not answers.

Jack,

You appear not to have read my previous post: scientists do NOT claim they have all the answers. They do their best to develop hypotheses that match the observed results and then test those hypotheses to the best of their ability. It is called science.

Burton is no more qualified than I am to say that an explanation for creation can be found.

Correct - and I do not claim that any explanation has been found. I simply assert it is closed-minded to assume something cannot be discovered.

Philosophers have pondered the question as long as there have been philosophers: WHAT EXISTED BEFORE ANYTHING EXISTED? Or did "something" ALWAYS exist? Was there a beginning, or no beginning? This amounts to pondering the imponderable. It is unknowable. Only scientific theorists and religionists believe they have answers.

Jack

Again, refer to my above regard what we know and what we think. Regarding "...was there a beginning..." you should do some reading of the subject. It is a difficult concept, counter-intuitive at times, but have a look just the same.

What came before the Big Bang? Science Daily

]What came before the Big Bang? Frequently Asked Questions in Cosmology

Edited May 21, 2010 by Jack White

[Evan Burton]

I am more well read that you imagine and am not as ignorant as you imply.

Your posts in this thread do not reflect that.

[Greg Parker]

I am more well read than you imagine and am not as ignorant as you imply.

Judging from this statement:

The LHC super conducting super-collider in Switzerland, which was originally to have been built in Texas,

provides only experiments on which scientists then propose theories about matter vs anti-matter, about

which those scientists and opposing scientists will argue for decades or centuries more, about the big-bang

theory "which created everything", according to some scientists, who are opposed by other scientists who

insist that "everything cannot be created from nothing".

I would say what you have read has been put out by those charmers at the Discovery Institute.

Their Wedge Manifesto has, for example, among it's strategies, the very lie you repeat above - that there is argument in the scientific faternity about this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy

Oh, we're meeting at the courthouse,

At 8 o'clock tonight.

You just come through the door and take the first turn - to the right.

Be careful when you get there

We'd hate to be bereft

BUT WE'RE TAKING DOWN THE NAMES OF EVERYBODY TURNING LEFT!

"The John Birch Society" - Chad Mitchell Trio

Been to the courthouse lately Jack?

[Duke Lane]

Does anyone know how the assassination of JFK is dealt with in US school textbooks?

Briefly, John. Very briefly.

My step-daughter graduated high school a couple of years ago; her history teacher had a personal interest in the case, and even still only spent a short amount of time on it (generally, I gather, to warn students against paranoid conspiracy theories).

The actual assassination was essentially a footnote, given all of the attention that a weekend-long event in any context might be expected to garner, but important enough to include.

After all, they've got to cover everything from the Alamo to present day in a single book, and leave room for the Pilgrims and John Smith too (but not Joseph!).

[Jack White]

Philosophers have pondered the question as long as there have been philosophers: WHAT EXISTED BEFORE

ANYTHING EXISTED? Or did "something" ALWAYS exist? Was there a beginning, or no beginning? This amounts

to pondering the imponderable. It is unknowable. Only scientific theorists and religionists believe they have

answers.

Jack

I await your answers. Or is it that you do not know?

[Evan Burton]

What happened before the Big Bang?

By Phil Plait

July 2007

********

Does that question even make sense?

When astronomers think about the Big Bang, in general they don’t actually mean that one singular moment when the Universe burst into being. It’s really the name given to the model used to describe what happened an infinitesimally thin slice of time after that moment.

The problem is, right at that moment, at T=0, our laws of physics… well, they stall out. You wind up dividing by zero a lot, which causes a lot of headaches. You get things like zero volume and infinite density of matter and energy. It’s not that this moment didn’t exist physically, or that something impossible happened, it’s just that the math we currently use can’t describe it. And let me be clear: what happened after that one moment we can model fairly well. We may not have a complete picture, and the model may yet be supplanted (more on that in a moment), but we have a relatively (har har) good grasp on how the Universe behaved after T=+0.0000000000000…1 seconds. But at T=0, fuggeddaboutit. And T<0? The way the math works, that question doesn’t even make sense.

The basic trouble is that Einstein’s relativity gives us a good description of some things (large scale gravity, for example), and quantum mechanics tells us about other things (how particles behave), but no one has ever successfully combined the two, and they must be combined to understand that First Nanonanonanonanonanosecond. Einstein himself tried, and failed.

It’s possible, now, that this has changed.

Martin Bojowald, an assistant professor of physics at Penn State University, may have broken through this barrier for the first time. He is working on a theory called Loop Quantum Gravity, and it combines relativity and quantum mechanics. Using this new math, something amazing happens: at T=0, the volume of the Universe is not zero, and the density is not infinite.

In other words, the math still works, even at The Big Moment.

Loop Quantum Gravity has been around a while, but Bojowald appears to have simplified it, using different mathematical terminology. This allows solutions to be determined for what was, before, an intractable problem. And what his solution reveals is something that’s… well, it’s astonishing.

It’s been thought for sometime that there may have been some previous Universe that existed "before" ours. This is a difficult idea, because in the Big Bang model, space and time were created in that initial moment. But if Bojowald’s solutions are correct, it leads the way to understanding this previous Universe. It was out there, everywhere, and it contracted. Eventually it became an ultradense, ultrahot little ball of space and time. At some point, it got so small and so dense that bizarre quantum laws took effect — things like the Uncertainty Principle, which states that the more you know about one characteristic of an object (say, its position) the less you know about another (its velocity). There are several such laws, and they make it hard — impossible, really — to know everything about the universe at that moment.

What Bojowald’s work does, as I understand it (the paper as I write this is not out yet, so I am going by my limited knowledge of LQG and other theories like it) is simplify the math enough to be able to trace some properties of the Universe backwards, right down to T=0, which he calls the Big Bounce. The previous Universe collapsed down, and "bounced" outward again, forming our Universe. No doubt the physical aspects of this previous Universe were somewhat different; the quantum uncertainties at the moment of bounce would ensure that. It may have been much like ours, or it may have been quite alien. In his equations, it’s the volume of that previous Universe that cannot be determined. How big was it? It may literally be impossible to ever know.

In a sense, this uncertainty wipes the slate clean after a Universe crunches back down.

I want to stress that all of this is very interesting, and may possibly be borne out to be a better solution to the real physical situation of the Universe than anything we have now. Or, let’s face it: it might all eventually be tossed into the toilet. It’s a bit early to know. But it’s fascinating, and provides a glimpse into the future of cosmology, where we may not be limited by the one singular Universe in which we live. Another theory, called Brane Theory, is similar– it posits that there are other Universes as well, and they, well, they bounce back and forth, colliding every few hundred billion or trillion years. And that’s not even the weird part of brane theory… it might be able to explain dark matter and dark energy, and why our Universe appears to be accelerating. It’s well beyond what I can write for this blog entry (though it’ll be in my next book, heh heh). There is plenty of info on it on the web if you’re interested (here’s a good page to start you off).

Also, and what’s perhaps most exciting about these theories, is that they make predictions, predictions which can be verified or falsified based on observations. These are delicate experiments to be sure, but some will be possible to perform in just the next few years (for example, different cosmological origin theories predict different behaviors for the Universe at very early times, and these would imprint themselves on objects which can be observed).

These theories may seem like mumbo-jumbo or magic, but they have that very basic property of science: they’re testable.

And of course, I have to use this to stick it to the creationists once again. One thing they love to talk about is "fine tuning", how so many physical constants (like the charge on an electron, and the strength of gravity and the nuclear forces) appear to be incredibly well-adjusted to produce not just our Universe, but intelligent life in it: us.

Well, some of us.

The creationists claim that the only way this could possibly happen is if some sort of Intelligent Designer — and let’s not be coy, they mean God — set these values to be precisely what they are. Even just on its merits this isn’t right. I talked about this in the video clip I posted last week, so I won’t elaborate here. Go watch it.

But now we see another answer to the creationists: maybe this isn’t the only Universe. There might have been a string of them, reaching back in time, in meta-time beyond time. In those other Universes, maybe the electron had more charge, and stars couldn’t form. Or maybe it had less, and every star collapsed into a black hole. But if you get enough Universes, and the constants change in each one, then eventually one will get the mix right. Stars will last for billions of years, planets can form, life can evolve, and on one blue green ball of dust, chemicals can get complicated enough that they could look inside themselves, understand what they see, and marvel at the very fact of their own existence.

And maybe, just maybe, they can also figure out how it all came to be. This isn’t fantasy, folks, it’s science. It’s how things work.

Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.

[Evan Burton]

Before the Big Bang - a twin universe?

[John Dolva]

I've been hesitating introducing on this big bounce thing. It's been around a while, but it's been around and it's some time I looked at it, (uni physics I think), one thing is the Universal Constant. It appears it's not (constant), it appears to be slowly changing, and in cosmological terms I mean slowly, ie we may be heading for another contraction point, but I wouldn't loose sleep over it.

edit:another one is a continual oscillation of matter antimatter which presupposes an alternate universe. Some theoretical physics also finds its ''language'' in tao, ie the space between moments are knowable in the sense of being experiential according to the ancients, but modern scientific techniques cannot measure or observe it which doesn't mean that it is ultimately unknowable, nor, imo, in any way denies a god. It could be just a matter of interpretation by non omniscient, non omnipresent, non omnipotent humans grappling with the issue necessarily from a state of un knowing.

Edited May 23, 2010 by John Dolva

[B. A. Copeland]

The only explanation is NOBODY KNOWS. It is unknowable.

Reminds me of Kant, Mr. White, if you know that much, then surely you can (or would be able to) tell us if a creator exists or not. No sarcasm intended in that statement. I think there is decent evidence (at the least) to support the claims of Jesus of Nazareth. As for the question of macroevolutionists and/or christians, well for one "Out of nothing, nothing comes". Something cannot possibly come from nothing. The evidence that the universe came from something is astounding. The Kalam Cosmological Argument comes to mind. In other words, you have to know (theoretically) an awful lot to know that ultimate reality is unknowable. Just take a look at the very well reasoned answers from reknowned theologian William Lane Craig, in a Q&A he usually answers weekly, to get an understanding of the defense of the christian worldview:

Subject: God, Time, and Creation

Print | ShareThis

Dr. Craig, you seem to believe God exists outside of time when there is no universe [God (a)] and inside of time when there is a universe [God (].

My question: Which of the two created the universe?

God (a) cannot create the universe because a timeless being cannot “create” [“create” is a temporal action].

God ( cannot create the universe because a being which exists in time cannot create the time from which He creates.

Blake

Dr. Craig responds:

I wonder if you realize, Blake, that you’ve just presented an argument that the Christian faith is incoherent in claiming that God created the universe? For God is either temporal or atemporal, and, according to your argument, creation makes no sense on either alternative. So much for the doctrine of creation!

The problem of God, time, and creation is a knotty one, and I came to propose the view I defend in God, Time, and Eternity (Kluwer, 2001) and in Time and Eternity (Crossway, 2001) precisely to solve this conundrum.

Let’s first get clear on the view I propose. In describing my position as the view that “God exists outside of time when there is no universe and inside of time when there is a universe,” your use of the word “when” could lead to misunderstanding. If taken literally, it would imply that there was time prior to the creation of the universe. I think that time began with the first event, which I take to be God’s first creative act. So I prefer to state my view in the following way: God is timeless without the universe and temporal with the universe.

The reason I hold God to be timeless without the universe is that I think that an infinite regress of events is impossible, and, according to a relational theory of time, in the absence of any events time would not exist. The reason I hold God to be temporal since the beginning of the universe is that the creation of the universe brings God into a new relation, namely, co-existing with the universe, and such an extrinsic change alone (not to mention God’s exercise of causal power) is sufficient for a temporal relation.

And, of course, it goes without saying that God (a) and God ( are not two Gods, but one entity described in two states.

So let’s consider first the second horn of your dilemma: “God ( cannot create the universe because a being which exists in time cannot create the time from which He creates.” A similar argument for divine timelessness has been offered by the Oxford University philosopher Brian Leftow, so you are in good company! In my opinion, however, this assertion is false (see God, Time, and Eternity, pp. 19-23). Leftow thinks that if God is contingently temporal, He cannot at a time t create t because His action at t presupposes t’s existence: t’s existence is explanatorily prior to God’s action at t. I disagree. On a relational theory of time, time is logically posterior to the occurrence of some event. So on a relational theory, God’s acting is explanatorily prior to the existence of time. All God has to do is act and time is generated as a consequence. So God could both create t and exist at t.

Now consider the first horn of your dilemma: “God (a) cannot create the universe because a timeless being cannot ‘create’ (‘create’ is a temporal action).” As medieval philosophers loved to point out, we must distinguish two very different senses of this claim:

1. Not-possibly (God is timeless & God creates the universe)

and

1.´ God is timeless & not-possibly (God creates the universe)

The ambiguity in the first horn of your dilemma is like the ambiguity of the sentence “It is not possible for the white house to be brown”—do we mean “It is not possible that the house be both white and brown” or that “It is not possible for the white house to become brown”? Understood in the first sense the sentence is true, but understood in the second sense it is false.

So think about (1). Whether you think it is possible for God both to be timeless and to create the universe will depend, I am convinced, upon your theory of time. According to the so-called tensed or A-Theory of time, temporal becoming is a real and objective feature of the world, as things come into and go out of being. But on a tenseless or B-Theory of time, all events and moments of time are equally real, and temporal becoming is an illusion of human consciousness. Now on a B-Theory of time I think it’s easy to see how God can create the universe in the sense that the universe contingently depends upon God for its being. The whole four-dimensional spacetime manifold just exists as a block on this view, and God exists “outside” the block and sustains it in being. On this view creating is not necessarily a temporal action; God can create timelessly. So (1) is false.

On the other hand, if you adopt an A-Theory of time, as I am strongly inclined to do, then (1) is true. For at the first moment of its existence the universe quite literally comes into being. God’s real causal relation to that event will be new to God at that moment, and therefore God must be temporal at that moment. On this view creating truly is, as you say, a temporal action and therefore in creating the universe God must be temporal. So on an A-theory, (1) seems to be true.

But what about (1´) on an A-Theory of time? If God is timeless, is He incapable of creating a universe? Is He somehow imprisoned in timelessness, frozen into immobility? I see no reason to think so. The claim that if God is timeless, it is impossible for Him to create the universe is based upon the assumption that timelessness is an essential, rather than contingent, property of God. But as in the case of the color of the house, I see no reason to think that God’s being timeless or temporal cannot be a contingent property of God, dependent upon His will. Existing timelessly alone without the universe, He can will to refrain from creation and so remain timeless; or He can will to create the universe and become temporal at the first exercise of His causal power. It’s up to Him.

So on the view I propose, God exists timelessly without the universe with a timeless intention to create a universe with a beginning. He exercises His causal power, and time as a result comes into being, along with the first state of the universe, and God freely enters into time. It all happens co-incidentally, that is, together at once. This is, I own, a mind-boggling conclusion, but makes better sense to me than the alternatives.

Anyway, I won't stay off topic here lol, just food for thought. You had best have a blasted excellent defense for "hard agnosticism" (ultimate reality is unknowable) as opposed to soft agnosticism (no one knows at the moment (which is a questionable claim), but we may/will someday).

Edited May 24, 2010 by B. A. Copeland