🚀 go-pugleaf

johan@blade.stack.urc.tue.nl (Johan Wevers) wrote:
> So [the Church] won't resist against the inflation model were the big
> bang was created from an instable false vacuum, where no gods are needed
> any more for the creation of the universe?

crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) replied:
> Please keep your particular religion out of science, it
> has no place there.  Since there can always be a time *before* you
> have any kind of false vacuum, bang or inflation, this discussion 
> simply *invites* consideration of initial conditions set up by 'gods'.

The canonical view of relativistic cosmology is that there is *not* a time
before the Big Bang; asking what came "before" is like asking what lies
"north" of the North Pole, in that it makes an incorrect assumption about
the range of a coordinate (time).  Furthermore, the fairly new field of
quantum cosmology attempts to show how the existence of a 4D macroscopic
universe is a "likely" "event" in a spacetime-less background, and that no
"initial conditions" need be externally imposed.

Not that these questions have been satisfactorily answered yet, but the
point is that even the most fundamental questions of existence are now
being explored by science.  And if they can in fact be answered
scientifically, where does that leave the Big Guy?  Historically science
has continually encroached on territory once belonging to religion, and the
gods have retreated from the trees, to the mountains, to the sky, to a
nebulous omnipresence, to the First Cause, to ???  This trend alone is
sufficient to convince me that "God" is a purely human creation.

--
Staccato signals of constant information,  |  David Brahm, physicist
A loose affiliation of millionaires and    |  (brahm@cco.caltech.edu)
  billionaires and Baby ...                |---- Carpe Post Meridiem! --
These are the days of miracle and wonder,  | Disclaimer:  I only speak
And don't cry, Baby, don't cry, don't cry. | for the sensible folks.