h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

ohhhh youre right... imply!! express or state indirectly... im soo sorry
i will endeavor to really understand before i state from now on.. sorry sorry sorry

Let's have another look. Not sure now. Yeah, maybe you meant infer. Apologies.

Oh, ok then. Imply. I'm confused now!

nonono
the question 'what caused the Big Bang?' infers 'what circumstances led up to the Big Bang?'

the question 'what caused the Big Bang?' states indirectly 'what circumstances led up to the Big Bang?'
not
the question 'what caused the Big Bang?' establishes by deduction 'what circumstances led up to the Big Bang?'

I was imply could definitely fit, but after your post I started seeing ways that infer might, too!

Please insert "sure" somewhere in previous post

We're going to need another grammar/English usage smiley to go with the others.

okay now where were we? ah... this was my last allegedly relevant thing i said

F7307223?thread=4157801&skip=317&show=1

Wow! That was ages ago!

Oh no it wasn't. You've messed up my browser with that link!

Just joking about the browser.

It's interesting you say you're an agnostic.
We have a hypothesis that God exists. You neither accept nor reject this hypothesis.

An atheist rejects the hypothesis. But do they have sufficient grounds to reject it? Sorb would argue that's not the point. You could make up any hypothesis you liked, eg. there are fairies at the bottom of the garden. How can you disprove that?

But I'd like to see some alternatives to my hypothesis that God initiated the Big Bang.

BTW I posted an "if I ran the world" post.

good on ya for the ifirantheworld post!

>>> interesting you say you're an agnostic.
We have a hypothesis that God exists. You neither accept nor reject this hypothesis.
An atheist rejects the hypothesis.<<<

i think what's going on here is about the difference between belief and knowledge. granted, a lot of what laypersons think they 'know' about science is really a leap of faith based on the credentials of the science.
i started out believing in God and travelled to the point where i also wanted to know God existed... but i couldnt find a way to know... so im still on the fence wondering. i think my faith engine is still operating or else i would be an atheist.

>>>But I'd like to see some alternatives to my hypothesis that God initiated the Big Bang.<<<

as far as what initiated the Big Bang? i hypothesized that things got so compressed that the laws of physics demanded that they decompress. thats as far as i can get. i have been reading this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_cause and maybe in the next 10 years i can come up with a better answer.

< i hypothesized that things got so compressed that the laws of physics demanded that they decompress.>

What "things"?

"What "things"?"

Everything. Universe.

SoRB

"You tell me then.
What caused the Big Bang?"

I don't know. There, that was easy, wasn't it?

The thing is, if anyone is honest, their answer is the same. They don't KNOW. They *believe* it was a god, or gods, or the Great Green Arkleseizure, or whatever. But they don't know in the way they know, for instance, that the sun is shining or that rocks fall when you drop them.

And if you choose to say "I believe god caused the big bang", I can, with precisely the same authority and justification, respond "Well, I believe your god was caused by the Flying Spaghetti Monster." To which my bestest friend might well reply, "Yes, and the FSM was created by Barry, the Time Sprout." And of course we can go on like this all day, making up funny stories about what created what. And the beauty of every one of them is that they're all precisely as real, sensible and worthy of consideration as your chosen god myth.

This is the value of Ockham's Razor. It discourages my bestest friend from invoking Barry, and it discourages me from invoking the FSM. It *should* discourage you from invoking your particular chosen knowledge-gap-filling-fiction.

The only question really worth asking here is why it does not. The answer, I think, lies inside your head, rather than out here in the real world. You choose to invent a supernatural being, or (a little more lazily) rather to believe in one that has been invented for you by someone else. Why would you do something like that? There are all sorts of really good

"And is there any example in science of something happening without something having caused it?

Dunno. But I do know there are plenty of examples of something happening without us knowing or understanding what caused it. The difference between rational people (like myself) and superstitious people (like, well, most people it seems) is that the rational person sees something inexplicable and says "That's interesting. I have no idea how that happens, but there's bound to be a rational explanation. Let's see if we can find out." The superstitious person, on the other hand, says "That's mysterious. God must have done it. No, don't ask how! God works in mysterious ways and doesn't like to be tested."

This is a doctrine of ignorance, which is why it should be resisted by any rational adult who encounters it. Inventing fictional creatures to explain away natural events is *dangerous*. If everyone took your approach of simply saying "God did it" and being satisfied with that non-answer, our best treatment for polio would be prayer.

SoRB

"There are all sorts of really good "

... reasons. Obviously.

(i hypothesized that things got so compressed that the laws of physics demanded that they decompress.)

>>>What "things"?<<<

the stuff that exploded and became the universe.... mainly atoms i think

Ok, so the stuff that exploded and became the universe was already there before the big bang, was it? Can you tell me how it got there in the first place?