Cosmology

Let me just say that I'm not a member of any religion at all. I'm just an
Astronomical "Stargazer" who has 2 telescopes, a refractor and a reflector,
and like to go out into my garden, under the dark country sky that I'm lucky
to have, and look at the sky.
All religions fundamentally say that there is a greater "Being" than us
humans; we can therefore blame something else for our problems,
catastrophes, wars et al, i.e.: "It's an Act of God etc." Nowadays we don't,
on the whole, believe this to the same extent as we did up until the
Renaissance. I think this is because Science has, since Galileo, Copernicus
and Darwin, gradually replaced Religion. I'm not saying whether that is a
good thing or a bad thing.
Mankind still needs something outside of its own intellect to lean on as
a sort of mental "crutch". Without exception ALL the peoples and races on
earth have always had some sort of "Creation Myth." All those peoples and
races have firmly believed that their Creation Myth was true.
Our current Creation Myth is the "Big Bang" theory. It's a very good
theory, well presented and quite logical until you get back to the moment of
the Big Bang itself. All Cosmologists and Astrophysicists then say that they
don't know what caused the Big Bang or what was there before it - "The Laws
of Physics don't apply before the Big Bang, they started with it" as Stephen
Hawking and others say.
Religion consists of Faith in the un-provable. If something can be
proved it doesn't require Faith and would not therefore be a Religion.
"Cosmology"/"Big Bang" is un-provable. We "believe" it to be true
because we are told, by people who we consider to be our intellectual
betters ("Cosmologists"), that it is true. Substitute "Religion", "Creation
Myth" and "Priests" for "Cosmology", "Big Bang" and "Cosmologists" in the
previous sentence. What I'm saying is that "Faith" is the belief in an
un-provable theory.
It's not possible to prove anything at all in Astronomy, Cosmology or
Astrophysics. The distances and time scales involved are literally
incomprehensible. We can "demonstrate" certain aspects of Cosmology, but
only with instruments built for the purpose of that demonstration. We are
relying absolutely on the evidence of one of our senses, our eyes, as
interpreted by our (human) brains. We cannot even attempt to understand
anything on this sort of scale so we, very sensibly, let the
Scientists/Priests do it for us, i.e.: we can ignore it completely and let
them do the worrying for us. In other words they are taking the weight of
the Universe off our shoulders.
Let me demonstrate Faith and Proof. I "believed" that France and Germany
existed. When I went there I "proved" that they existed. I now don't need to
"believe" that they exist. I "believe" that New Zealand exists. I've never
been there, but I could go at any time. It is within my reach and my grasp
to go to New Zealand or any other country and prove their existence so they
don't require Faith on my part. It seems to me that Cosmology is a perfect
example of Mankind's reach exceeding his grasp. I'm sorry if this sounds
nihilistic, it's not meant to be; Stephen Hawking often refers to God in his
writings...hmmm.
This train of thought started with me a couple of weeks ago; I was
reading an old "Astronomy" magazine and in the "Ask Astro" section someone
asked how many Atoms were in the Universe. Instead of giving a sensible
answer, e.g. "Beats me!" or "Quite a few" or even "Try going out more
often!" the mag said there were "10 to the power of 78". As an aside they
said the observable portion of the Universe was a sphere with a radius of 12
million light years, "Centred on the Solar System."

alisonuren wrote in >

religion is faith until god appears and proves it, read meaning of life,
there is statistical proof if you consider i had no control on the people
involved.

there are 3 techniques that measure the age of the universe that all
correlate within 20%, think expansion speed, half lives, ....

Herc

Is paranormal real?
Is paranormal possible?
Is it science to say no?
Is it mathematically correct to ascertain no?

Am I clever enough to coordinate these contributors?
Mr Budd - introduced me to mensa
Ford Prefect - most notable meaning of life character
bonechair - throne symbol

(rec.mensa)
life of brian - messiah

You saw a month ago - happy dog spotted my paranormal claim,
black the skeptic?? There are hundreds online, the
first comment on my ai theory from Lin Gu (lingo).

Now the uk.org.mensa readers from 18 months ago may
understand my free will theory, bonechair had no
option but to ask me the meaning of life.

We are characters of a celestial play.
You want proof of paranormal look here www.google.com

their particular message is reflective of their alias,
part of diety

weak as water, bit of causality statistics on language and
a proofs a proof

Mr Sir God to you

alisonuren wrote

or anything at all? mathematicians ask when can you ascertain anything,
is 1 + 1 really 2. Penrose said just draw the line somewhere. I think
there are absolute facts, it is the mechanism to interpret meaning
becomes part of the knowledge, making self referencing systems
complexity.

no you didn't prove anything, you are in a computer simulation, disprove
that.

think of the universe as 4 dimensional space time, just squash the earth
to a circle, now it is a cylinder with your movement encapsulated along
the depth. the length is determined and finite, maybe, we are a quarter
along allready, history is solid and static, set events do exist in the
future
but the formations are interweaved, deducing the future is an optimisation
problem. blah i gotta stop posting.

Herc

Alison

I agree with most of what you are saying.

Religion is just a sop for those small minded peeps who think of their life
as something worthwhile.

"We are - therefore we should " is my motto at the mo, but hey who knows
how we should adapt next?

Ref the big bang, that seems quite a simple dimensional crack issue. So I
think that means there is some existance in which the counter to our
expanding time and space is some diminishing energy.

Carry on posting, and ignore those small minded peeps who just come back at
yer with that para crap and we can't assume anything stuff.

Cheers 4 Now

"alisonuren" <aliso...@onetel.net.uk> wrote in message
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