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How did the universe come into existence?


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Phil Deakins wrote:

The world is carried through space on the backs of 4 giant elephants that are themselves standing on the back of a super-giant turtle. The turtle, and many others like it, is headed for a particular point in space. When they get there, they get together to produce the next generation of super-giant turtles that will carry more worlds on their backs. That's the Big Bang theory, isn't it?

No, The Big Bang Theory is a television sitcom.

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

Oh no! I've been duped! It sounds as if they are saying million. Another lie that has caused me to believe in an untruth. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

We dupe ourselves all day long, Charolotte.

Here's a link to an example like that at the Exploratorium...

http://perception.questacon.edu.au/saying.html

Watch the video for a few seconds, then close your eyes and continue listening.

 

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Oh. My mistake. Or maybe there are several Big Bang theories.

I am sure there are an infinite number of possibilities ever expanding outwards.

Here's a clip from the show that has nothing whatsoever to do with this discussion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U3S43O1Sqs&feature=related

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Phil Deakins wrote:

Anaiya. Please stop ranting at me. You are the one who keeps saying that I "assume a creator", and now you've added that I use the title of the thread in two opposite ways. They are both wrong and it's just ranting. I noticed that you started on someone else now too.

I haven't been rude to you, unless you consider me not replying to the bulk of your posts as rude. I'm sorry that you've been getting it wrong, but I can't help that. I've done my best to tell you how you've been getting it wrong, and I can do no more. So don't you think it would be better if you joined in the actual discussion instead of going off at people?

The bit of my first post that you quoted is what I would call clutching at straws. In the first sentence, I stated "something", followed by "your intelligent creator" - that was written to Porky, who suggested an intelligent creator. The second sentence was merely winding up the first. The whole thing together did not indicate that I "assume a creator". Whether I do or not hasn't been indicated in this thread. It may get indicated later, but it hasn't been indicated yet.

So please take a step back, forget about putting assumptions and words into my mouth, and simply add to the discussion if you have anything to say. All this "you said" and "you assume" stuff has nothing to do with the discussion, and it's distracting for everyone who is actually taking part in the discussion. You don't
have
to keep insisting that what you understood about what I wrote must be true because it's what you'd understood. Just forget it.

ETA: I can understand how you first arrived at what you think is my assumption, but when I tell you it isn't, the thing to do is simply forget what you thought and carry on from there. Keeping on insisting that I have an assumption when I keep saying I haven't is a bit silly, don't you think? You said that only you know what you think. Don't you think that only I know what assumptions I have?

Stop trying to bully me out of this discussion.  I have as much right to participate as you.

You have been very rude.  You have repeatedly accused me of being argumentative for the sake of it which is unfair, unrealistic and very rude and disrespectful.    If you are frustated that is not my fault and is no reflection on me, so you should just stop making nasty and unfair accusations at me.  You even took the time to tell someone else that you had already told me what I mean when I type the word creator.  So according to you, you know what you mean, and what I mean, but I don't even know what I mean myself.  That's polite and respectful in your world is it?

Now you're even accusing me of ranting because apparently you post replies, but if I do exactly the same, that's ranting. and "going off" at people.  You fill your posts with accusations that I am just being argumentative, insist that you know better than me what I meant, lie about what you posted earlier so you can persistently accuse me of interjecting a creator (and tell me what I mean by that), and in your view, that's my problem not your's?  That's not just rude and disrespectful, it's decidedly odd.

First you claimed to me that you never posited a creator.    Then you claimed you meant something else by a creator, but that I did not (no matter what I say I meant), then you told maddy that even if you did posit a creator, you made it clear at every point that this was not necessarily an intelligent someone but could be a something or event.  Now you are trying to pretend that your absolute statement that the answer to porky's question, an answer to the effect that the universe was created by an intelligent designer, does not posit an intelligent creator.  At this point it looks to me like there is nothing too outrageous or absurd that you would not argue it just to avoid admitting you made a boo-boo and taking responsibility for that.  Or in other words it looks like when you accuse me of just being argumentative, you are indulging in the nasty and dishonest tactic of accusing "the other person" of what you know you're up to.

That last sentence that you are trying to explain away with a tissue thin and frankly absurd "explanation" does not say "so you porky think there is a creator", or anything that fits into your current explanation/excuse.  It states emphatically that "in answer to your question" (or in other words your answer to porky's question), and then goes on to assert an intelligent creator did it.  I have no idea why you think you  can twist your way out of that one.

As for your ETA, if you had done that at the outset, this branch of discussion would probably have ended.  It is you who told me what I mean despite my counter-claim, and then even went on later  and told Charlotte that you'd already me what I meant by the word creator.  Note you did not tell Charlotte what I mean, but that you'd already told me what I meant.  So here we have yet another example of you accusing me of doing what you are up to.

Stop trying to bully me into silence. I've as much right to participate as anyone else.

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It sounded like ba ba ba to me, although I was completely off on what I thought the woman in the video was saying.  I think I might have been influenced by reading your post because I thought she looked like she was saying la la, but apparently it was ga ga (while the actual audio was ba ba, which I possibly got right only because after reading your post I expected to hear ba ba).

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Anaiya Arnold wrote:

It sounded like ba ba ba to me, although I was completely off on what I thought the woman in the video was saying.  I think I might have been influenced by reading your post because I thought she looked like she was saying la la, but apparently it was ga ga (while the actual audio was ba ba, which I possibly got right only because after reading your post I expected to hear ba ba).

What is important is that you hear something a difference between when you see the speaker's lips and you don't. I clearly heard "ba ba" with my eyes closes and something more akin to "tha tha" when watching her lips.

I do recall when young, noticing that I could "hear" the words of the church hymns more clearly if I was reading them in the hymn book. I didn't pay enough attention at the time, or I might have realized I really was hearing the words differently.

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Phil, I have to say I was getting the same things out of what you were saying as Anaiya was, that you were speaking of an intelligent creator. The reason I thought this is because you used the words creator and intelligent. When Anaiya pointed that out to you, you said that you were assigning different meanings to your words, which I guess is fine, but that is why we thought what you were saying is what you were saying and not because anyone wanted to be argumentative.

So, I think if you look at it from that perspective, you will see and understand why Anaiya is justifiably upset, because she wasn't trying to claim you said something you didn't, it was just that what you said sounded an awful like like what we read.

So, in summary, it did sound like you were saying intelligent creator. When that was pointed out to you you appeared to become defensive and in the process either inadvertently or not upset Anaiya. It is inevitable that in a discussion of this nature that persons are going to become offended, but lets not let it be because of the misuse or mistranslation of words, ok?

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:


Anaiya Arnold wrote:

It sounded like ba ba ba to me, although I was completely off on what I thought the woman in the video was saying.  I think I might have been influenced by reading your post because I thought she looked like she was saying la la, but apparently it was ga ga (while the actual audio was ba ba, which I possibly got right only because after reading your post I expected to hear ba ba).

What is important is that you hear something a difference between when you see the speaker's lips and you don't. I clearly heard "ba ba" with my eyes closes and something more akin to "tha tha" when watching her lips.

I do recall when young, noticing that I could "hear" the words of the church hymns more clearly if I was reading them in the hymn book. I didn't pay enough attention at the time, or I might have realized I really was hearing the words differently.

Yeah, I heard ba ba with my eyes open and closed, but I suspect this was because I already expected to hear ba ba.  I'm not sure if the volume being turned off when I first went to the page might have influenced what I heard as well because I saw the lips moving with no sound initially, so this might produce a different effect than if I had first perceived the sound and video simultaneously.

I do think that when I read along my internal mind adds to what I am hearing and influences how I perceive what I hear.  When I read I generally tend to have a "narration" voice in my mind that is definately not my voice*, and I think this probably influences my perception of what I am hearing if I read along to someone talking.  When I was a child I used to have  few of those records that came with books that you read along with (you'd play the record and turn the page at a certain sound so you could read along) and it was always a slightly different experience to read along while the record played, rather than to just listen.

 

ETA

*well it is "my" voice in that it comes from my mind, but it's definately not what my voice sounds like when I speak.

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Interesting aside, now that I think of it, I don't know what aside means, is it in addition to or not having to do with?

Anyways, once upon a time I worked at a window and people would come to that window and tell me things. Sometimes they had accents, or it was loud, or they mumbled, or whatever, and I would look at their faces to understand what they were saying. Well, one time a man with dark glasses was speaking to me and I could not understand anything he was saying. It sounded like semi muted gibberish to me. I asked him to please remove his glasses, without explaining why, but it seemed a reasonable request given the scenario. When he spoke to me without his glasses, he had a very pleasant voice that was easily understandable.

I don't know if he noticed that I wasn't understanding him and that made him change the way in which he was speaking or if that break in the conversation changed something, but I felt at the time and up until this moment that the reason I could not understand him was because I could not look into his eyes.

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I think 'aside" means a branching tangent.  It's right next to the core of the issue discussed, in its immediate vicinty so to speak, but not actually at the core.  To the side of the core of the discussion or subject in other words.  Or at least that's what it suggests to me.  It's a discussion point or tangent at the side of the thing being discussed, so strongly related but not necessarily directly pertinent.

As for your aside, there is a "popular wisdom" that 90% of all communication is non-verbal.  I'm not sure where it comes from (it pops up often) or if it's entirely accurate (that seems a possible over estimation to me) but the core point that non-verbal aspects are really important to communication is certainly true, and it's possible that that rather than one or other, both his ability to communicate clearly and your interpretive ability were influenced by the eye-contact obstruction. 

I do know that our brains are usually capable of "filling in blanks" and "translating errors" so that if you listen to an audio recording in which some sounds have been removed or "swapped out" apparently most people will still accurately interpret it (as compared to computers which I understand are difficult to 'teach" speech interpretation to precisely because of these imperfections that our brains handle relatively easily). 

It's entirely possible since this talent for "fixing" what we are hearing to make sense of it, on-the-fly, evolved predominately in a context of face to face interactions, and that because in our culture this is the predominate means of communication for most of us, that your brain's ability to fill the gaps in or make sense from slightly garbled speech is enhanced by having usual face to face interaction, including clear eye contact.  Perhaps the eye contact "primes" your brain (or our brains) to trigger enhanced interpretive skills kind like a pavlovian response.

Equally how clearly we speak might also be influenced at a brain level by clear eye contact.  When my step son looks at me when he speaks, he tends to speak more clearly, and I've noticed this quite a bit with children.

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:

Interesting aside, now that I think of it, I don't know what aside means, is it in addition to or not having to do with?

Anyways, once upon a time I worked at a window and people would come to that window and tell me things. Sometimes they had accents, or it was loud, or they mumbled, or whatever, and I would look at their faces to understand what they were saying. Well, one time a man with dark glasses was speaking to me and I could not understand anything he was saying. It sounded like semi muted gibberish to me. I asked him to please remove his glasses, without explaining why, but it seemed a reasonable request given the scenario. When he spoke to me without his glasses, he had a very pleasant voice that was easily understandable.

I don't know if he noticed that I wasn't understanding him and that made him change the way in which he was speaking or if that break in the conversation changed something, but I felt at the time and up until this moment that the reason I could not understand him was because I could not look into his eyes.

A good bit of the brain is dedicated to face recognition and understanding. I don't know just how the eyes were involved in your experience. It could have been that the absense of them distracted you (because your brain wanted to understand the emotions present and the eyes are a bit part of that) or that their presence helped you understand the words. I lean towards the former, but wouldn't trust my opinion here.

I just attended a neighborhood meeting to address safety along our common road. Our concerns prompted the county to perform a traffic analysis and accident/citation review. We received a report from the traffic enginerring department that mentioned the difference between "actual" and "perceived" danger. Although we all (me included) clearly perceived increased danger over the years as our area continues to develop, the actual statistics show no appreciable rise in either accidents, citations or traffic counts. What I did notice (after that revelation) is that those who have lived on the road the longest perceive the greatest danger.

So, I recommend you trust me no farther than you can throw me.

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Anaiya, that is very interesting information and seems to coincide perfectly with my experience. The combinations of his not focusing or me not being able to focus because of the physical barrier all seem like relevant possibilities.

Madelaine, I do think that the dark glasses were distracting me because I remember being very uncomfortable that I could not see his eyes. When persons don't look me in the eyes when they are speaking to me, unless it's not feasible, such as if they are driving or whatever, I get very uncomfortable, like something is wrong with me or with them.

Maybe the people that had lived on the road the longest perceived the greatest danger because they were older and older persons seem to tend to worry more. Like when they tell you to slow down, or be careful, or whatever else they say. Also, if it was developing I gather that meant more people, and if there are more people around there is more cause for worry.

I would neither attempt to throw you or trust you, but thanks for the warning anyways. :P

 

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Fascinating.  I had not kept up with that particular track since the early 90s, so I was unaware of this.  However, it actually provides a more compelling element to the proof, since acceleration requires energy to be applied.....and where would the energy come from?  Thermodynamics still says that energy has to come from somewhere else, either in the system, or from outside it.  And if it is coming from inside it, we've got another violation (creation of energy from nothingness.)

 

 

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Coby Foden wrote:

The more ..

reading.gif

I read this thread,

The more ..

hypnotised.gif

dizzy and confused I get.

 

Anybody got clear short, simple, understandable explanation how all came to be?

Thank you in advance.

:smileyhappy: :heart:

That answer has eluded us since our current records have been in existence, I doubt we are going to come to a short simple understandable explanation in this thread :)

Stay tuned though, you never know.

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thanks (:

you don't owe me any apology either. i was using the term Null quite loosely in my attempt to understand Phil's reference to Nothing in his discussions. in doing this though i end up leading you down the garden path which wasn't my intention

+

the simplest dictionary explanation of Null is: an absence of information, as contrasted with zero or blank or nil, about a value

we can prove zero, blank and nil by the rules of construction that govern these things. we cannot prove something by its absence by these same rules. like: "see that space, is proof that there are oranges." can take it a bit further even: "see that empty apple box, is proof that there are apples." these conclusions are invalid by these rules

however, if we could do this by a rule then we could also prove the easter bunny by the same rule. same God and anything else. and the magicapple by making a magicapple box

we cannot prove the easter bunny because of the absence of information. same God. so God is Null in this sense. we cannot disprove God either for exactly the same reason. is no information available to reach that conclusion by the same rule.  God is not zero, or blank or nil either. we can assign these properties to God and the easter bunny, or equate them even, but we are being axiomatic when we do. axiomatic in this sense meaning we believe that this is the case. which is not the same thing as proof by the rule of construction

we can though certainly conjecture or postulate, guess at even, pretty much anything in the absence of information. something we actual do in the face of the unknown so that we may go boldy forth and all that

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Charolotte Caxton wrote:


Coby Foden wrote:

The more ..

reading.gif

I read this thread,

The more ..

hypnotised.gif

dizzy and confused I get.

 

Anybody got clear short, simple, understandable explanation how all came to be?

Thank you in advance.

:smileyhappy: :heart:

That answer has eluded us since our current records have been in existence, I doubt we are going to come to a short simple understandable explanation in this thread
:)

Stay tuned though, you never know.

Are we limited to explanations that are also correct? If you give us some wiggle room, I think we can craft a theory you'll like.

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:


Charolotte Caxton wrote:


Coby Foden wrote:

The more ..

reading.gif

I read this thread,

The more ..

hypnotised.gif

dizzy and confused I get.

 

Anybody got clear short, simple, understandable explanation how all came to be?

Thank you in advance.

:smileyhappy: :heart:

That answer has eluded us since our current records have been in existence, I doubt we are going to come to a short simple understandable explanation in this thread
:)

Stay tuned though, you never know.

Are we limited to explanations that are also correct? If you give us some wiggle room, I think we can craft a theory you'll like.

We are only limited by our imaginations. As long as we don't declare that our imagination is more correct than the others, then wiggle away!

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Phil Deakins wrote:


Celestiall Nightfire wrote:

There was a MICA (Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics) talk given back on Nov, 26th, 2011, by Dr. Rob Knop, in Second Life, about this very subject. Dr. Knop, was on one of the two teams, working with Dr. Saul Perlmutter.


I would like to have attended that but I didn't hear about it until it was too late - soon after the event.

I learned about the inflationary expansion not too long after it was discovered - on a tv documentary. If my memory is correct, they were trying a new method of finding supernovas, and they found plenty. In doing it, they accidentally discovered that the universe's expansion is still accelerating, and also that there is a 'fabric' of space. At that time, space was believed be extremely empty.

Hey, Phil, if you join the MICA group inworld, you can get the weekly notices sent to you, for the science lecture schedule.

There are a lot of interesting topics to be covered as this spring season winds down.  Here is the current topic schedule, just scroll down on the link page to see it.   : 

http://www.mica-vw.org/wiki/index.php/Upcoming_Public_Events

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Helium Loon wrote:

Fascinating.  I had not kept up with that particular track since the early 90s, so I was unaware of this.  However, it actually provides a more compelling element to the proof, since acceleration requires energy to be applied.....and where would the energy come from?  Thermodynamics still says that energy has to come from somewhere else, either in the system, or from outside it.  And if it is coming from inside it, we've got another violation (creation of energy from nothingness.)

 

Yes, is it fascinating.   I actually had an astrophysicist tell me, just this last Saturday, that it is believed to be a form of vacuum energy.    (which, of course, lead to jokes that the universe..sucks)  

If you Google "vacuum energy" you'll find lots of interesting reading... 

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