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stalhandske 03-Dec-20, 21:58 |
 MIRACLESActually, a thread on 'Miracles' might be interesting. I think a lot of non-Christians would be surprised at how little miracles matter to most educated Christians. In my mind, the only absolutely indispensable miracle (i.e., one that absolutely has to be interpreted literally rather than analogically) is that there is a Universe in the first place. (Ancient writers often used 'miracle stories' not to be taken literally as if 'science' today, but to emphasise the importance of what is being said in conjunction.) And most Atheists believe that the Universe exists, anyway, they just don't call it a miracle. |
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Circles within Circles.... ; Play loud;www.youtube.com In the end what is or what is not a Miracle is up to the individual. Most Miracles are unseen,unappreciated.;www.youtube.com (play loud) By the way,a thorough understanding of these unseen processes can and do lead to, ........Vaccines!! |
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stalhandske 03-Dec-20, 22:46 |
BC |
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???? Miracle;a highly improbable or extraordinary event, development, or accomplishment that brings very welcome consequences. |
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stalhandske 03-Dec-20, 23:05 |
BC In my simple view a "miracle" is - by definition - inaccessible by science. If it were accessible it would no longer be a miracle but something else. |
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then |
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corrections I post what i thing is a miracle!!! Please insert 'think' Sometimes i think seek God in the wrong places. Please insert 'we'. sorry. |
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@Bob Right. The miracles are not mentioned in the catholic credo. Except the Resurrection which is constitutive of the christian faith. But maybe it's not considered as a miracle. In this case what is the difference ? |
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the universe exists, ...and also does stuff. is the stuff it does miraculous, too? are these things above (life; natural processes) all a small but undeniable part of the universe and therefore describable in terms similar to those used to describe the universe? |
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Murphy's law is a miracle because it defies all scientific explanation. |
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miracles |
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To me. |
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found in any good Dictionary Consider this also; Out there in the vastness of the Cosmos, extremely advanced beings, might have solved problems Scientifically, that we would consider Religious 'Miracles'.. They're medical knowledge could be a million years more advanced then ours. They could 'heal lepers'.They could restore life to dead flesh, many hours after Death. Their vast knowledge of advanced Quantum Physics could allow them to part Seas, walk on water, harness the energy of entire Stars!! They could do things that to us, can only be done by 'Gods'. Zorro is correct. We don't know much. |
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Ptit 05:50 In this case what is the difference?> In common discussion, there are many 'miracles' accepted by the Catholic Church, the Resurrection being the core one. My comment was that miracles need not absolutely be taken literally. Almost by definition, if something happens that is inexplicable, then how can it be explained? Remember, the action happened first, and the words are an attempt to describe it. Unfortunately, modern readers tend to take the words as defining the action itself. An example; the Ascension. Jesus was last seen heading upwards until a cloud hid him. How far 'up' do you have to go to get to heaven? Any astronomer would tell you it's a silly question. So whatever those people saw, they tried to explain in terms of their own times, and in a way that would explain its significance. If we saw the same thing today, we might use a different form of words because we are accustomed to watching different phenomena. Look through writings of the tenth century and you will read about dragons in the sky, but no flying machines. Then read from the 20th century and you will see UFOs mentioned, but not many flying dragons. Different metaphors, all trying to describe something that had no parallel in the experience of the observer. |
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Zorro 6:49 A rather glib dismissal, Z! I am reasonably confident that the Average Adult Jew in the First Century had seen more crucifixions than the Average Adult American today. They also knew that Roman soldiers were not renowned for letting condemned criminals survive. They often put a spear through the heart when the sport was finished, as is recorded in the Gospels. So I would expect that the witnesses to the Crucifixion were considerably LESS ignorant about crucifixion and its consequences than most of us today. The 'Ignorance of the Ancients' simply doesn't stand up when dealing with matters of everyday life in the ancient world. A more likely explanation is that we MODERNS are misunderstanding what is written because we don't have their background knowledge. 'Ignorance of the Moderns' is more likely true, but we are not humble enough to accept that. |
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Hoggy 7:30 Excellent point! It is worth noting that John's Gospel doesn't use the word 'miracle'. At least, not in the original Greek. John uses the word 'sign'. In John's writing, Jesus doesn't 'work miracles', but he 'made signs'. This ties in with my earlier point, that miracles are not there to DEFY explanation, but to PROVIDE explanation for the accompanying words. So my 'definition' of a miracle would be "A miracle is an action that demonstrates the accompanying teaching." For example, healing a leper (a condition that made a person ceremonially unclean) showed that Jesus had the power to make a person clean in God's eyes; giving sight to the blind demonstrated that Jesus could show us what we would not be able to see without his help; Jesus raising the dead showed that Jesus gives 'Life more abundant', etc. |
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Religious Miracles versus Scientific Wonders. youtu.be BC is correct that we should differentiate between the two. Check the second youtube video above. There are a lot of religious miracles in the bible. I have see the ten commandments movie several times starring Charlton Heston. How can you explain scientifically, when Moses divide the red sea by the power of God so that Jews could flee to promised land ? The bible is teeming with many miracles. Check the first youtube video. Can you believe that when the astronomers recently found a star 200 million years older than the universe ? Nowadays, a lot of scientists are questioning about the Big Bang theory. The beauty of science is that with the discovery of new findings you can rewrite the scientific theory. In religion, you cannot do like that especially who believe in radical religious belief system. You can lose your head if you argue with ISIS terrorists when you are in their territory. Nowadays, we have a lot of scientific wonders such as TV, internet, satellite, transportation. We just take it for granted and they are no longer miracles anymore because most of them can be explained scientifically. BC is more knowledgeable in cosmos and astronomy. Can you explain why that particular star is older than the universe ? This is like saying that the kids are older than their parents. Believe it or not. I can explain scientifically that the children can be older than their parents. |
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Ace 20:07 Good question, Ace! There are a couple of levels of answer here... 1. The Charlton Heston scene was created for the Cecil B. de Mille movie. It wasn't an on-the-spot video taken by one of the Israelites. 2. The Bible doesn't refer to this as a 'miracle', but as a 'mighty act'. Throughout later Israelite celebrations, the emphasis is never that something astounding and inexplicable happened, but always on the God who acted to save. 3. I don't have to 'explain' how it happened because the Bible already does that for us, to take the guesswork out. Exodus 14:21 says "Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea; and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, and made the sea dry land." In other words, a storm surge blew the water in the shallow lake up to one end, leaving the other end dry. Similar events have been observed in modern times in shallow lakes set in open terrain, where winds can be strong and constant. A hot desert wind blowing all night would even dry the lakebed enough to allow foot traffic, but wheeled vehicles like chariots would get bogged, just as it says later in the narrative. Over time it got dressed up with poetic language and hyperbole, but the original account is the straight narrative we have in Exodus 14. See answer 2 above and read it again. |
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Ace 20:07 I'll give BC first swing at this one. It would be helpful if you could cite the article containing the data, but I can see a few possibilities just as general principles. |
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stalhandske 05-Dec-20, 05:07 |
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Multiverse hypothesis explained. youtu.be Science Time 63.6K subscribers The multiverse hypothesis or theory holds that a group of multiple universes (possibly infinite universes) comprise everything that exists: The entirety of space, time, matter, energy, information, and the physical laws and constants that describe them. The renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson explains in detail the multiverse hypothesis. However, prominent physicists are divided about whether any other universes exist outside of our own. Some even go as far as to say that the multiverse is not a legitimate topic of scientific inquiry. Because it can not be empirically falsified. But Neil deGrasse Tyson among other prominent cosmologists, thinks that given our understanding of quantum mechanics and the thoery of General relativity, the possibility of the existence of the multiverse is a legitimate scientific hypothesis. Steven Weinberg said that if the multiverse existed, the hope of finding a rational explanation for the precise values of quark masses and other constants of the standard model that we observe in our Big Bang is doomed, for their values would be an accident of the particular part of the multiverse in which we live. Some scientists analyzed the data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, an uncrewed spacecraft operating from 2001 to 2010 that measured temperature differences across the sky in the cosmic microwave background, the radiant heat remaining from the Big Bang, and claimed they found evidence suggesting that our universe collided with other parallel universes in the distant past. However, a more thorough data analysis from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and from the Planck Satellite, a space observatory operated by the European Space Agency from 2009 to 2013, which mapped the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background, did not find any statistically significant evidence of universe collisions. there was no evidence of any gravitational pull of other universes on ours either. And to add insult to injury to the proponents that the multiverse hypothesis has been backed up by statistical evidence, the Planck satellite, has a resolution three times higher than the WMA Probe. Our brains are not evolutionarily equipped to intuitively understand quantum mechanics and large scale cosmic phenomena. But Neil deGrasse Tyson with his usual wits explains the multiverse hypothesis in layman's terms. |
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stalhandske 05-Dec-20, 05:49 |
Ace That idea about the star is too early as I just explained. The error margins are large enough to allow it in a sinle universe. Big Bang theory, as such, is not questioned by anyone significant in cosmology. Or can you produce some facts? |
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profound miracles |
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Bob |
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Ace's Geriatric Star I think Stal went some distance towards the answer when he spoke of 'error margins'. Determining the age of anything in Astronomy is not as simple as checking the birth certificate. We have a reasonable idea of the age of the Universe, (to within a couple of billion years, unless something TOTALLY unexpected is discovered). The current figure of 13.8 Billion is probably accurate to a couple of percent, which would be enough to account for the apparent age discrepancy. But determining the age of a star is not that easy, either. The usual method is to first determine the star's mass, typically based on luminosity. The fainter the star, the lower the mass. Larger star burn fuel fast, and don't live very long. Our own sun has been around for about 5 billion years and probably has another 5 billion before it dies. Low mass stars burn fuel much more slowly, so all the really old stars tend to be very low-mass and therefore very faint. This makes their exact luminosity more prone to errors due to possible interstellar obstructions such as dust. Another way is by determining 'metallicity'. This is a measure of the ratio of hydrogen to helium and elements heavier than helium. As a star burns fuel, it converts hydrogen into helium. (The next step, into elements heavier than helium, is not relevant to low-mass stars.) This is done by measuring the strength of the lines in the star's spectrum. Again, a very low-luminosity star is subject to errors here, in part due to the strength of 'noise' from interstellar absorption of light on the way to us. There is also the question of how well a low-mass, low-temperature star 'churns' helium out of the core into the upper layers and photosphere where it can be detected. So there are lots of possible sources for error, and I'm stunned at how well astronomers have developed techniques to assess and compensate for these errors. But even so, these all make certain assumptions, usually that the history of the star is known. But what if there have been episodes in the star's past that we can no longer detect? I don't have any idea of the specific star you are referring to, so I'm only speaking generally here... For example, think of three very-small-mass stars, born a billion years after the Big Bang. (i.e. about 13 billion years ago). Space is full of these, called 'Population 1' stars. Now allow one of them to be just massive enough to 'turn on' and start fusing hydrogen. This is a genuine Pop 1 star. The others are a bit smaller, not quite big enough to trigger fusion. One of them rolls around for 8 billion years before it passes through a cloud of 'primordial' gas, left over from the Big Bang. It gathers enough gas and mass to trigger the start of fusion. To all appearances, it has all the signs of just being born a mere 5 billion years ago. The third also rolls around for 8 billion years, but passes through the remnants of a supernova. It gathers heaps of metallicity, but not very much mass; just enough to start fusion. To an observer in our time, the low luminosity would suggest it is burning fuel into metals very slowly, so the high metallicity would suggest it has been doing this for a long time and is very old indeed, perhaps even older than the Universe itself. So believe what the data says, but also remember that the conclusions depend not only on data but also on assumptions that might or might not be true. |
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Mo 6:19 Mo is being a bit of a tease here. In another thread I explained how stable planetary orbits would not be possible in a universe with other than three spatial dimensions. In two dimensions, escape velocity from any specified radius (no matter how large, even light-years!) is infinite, so all the matter in the universe would be trapped and collapse back onto itself. In four dimensions, escape velocity at any specified radius is exactly the same as orbital velocity at that radius, so any deviation from perfect circularity would result in a slow spiral inwards or a slow spiral outwards. In five or more dimensions, it wouldn't be a slow spiral; it would be a radial acceleration. It not hard to demonstrate this; school-level integral calculus is enough. |
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The Modern day Galileo www.youtube.com And this is only Pt 1. Like i said i will no longer argue this. I know i'll get a lot of flack. But so did Halton Arp. And so did.... Galileo. PS; Halton Arp bio;en.wikipedia.org |
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Athena17:46 If the data is there, eventually it will accumulate and the truth will tell. Being 'right', but not having the data to demonstrate it, means nothing in science. SHOW ME THE DATA!! Until then, I will tentatively go with the best fit for the data I have. In my post above I show this with phrases like "probably accurate to a couple of percent" "there are lots of possible sources for error" "these all make certain assumptions" "To all appearances" "would suggest" "remember that the conclusions depend not only on data but also on assumptions that might or might not be true." Does that sound too doctrinaire and dogmatic for you? Meanwhile, there is the question of who should get telescope time. The guy who is probably onto something, or the guy who is probably flogging a dead horse? You can understand that administrators want to be able to announce progress rather than 'nothing to report'. As you say, it's human nature. But I betcha you do the same yourself. Imagine you want to buy a new car, but know nothing about the latest models. Do you buy something that your friends recommend, or do you spend the same amount of money on something they think is a stinker? We all tend to go with the mainchance rather than the long shot. |
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field Astronomy Rules |
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