DrP

Quite - I agree. Of course it matters. If that 99% runs into thousands and thousands. If they are quoting the results that they found using scientific methods that they then publish in peer reviewed papers, then it isn't an argument from authority - it is a statement of know fact (or at least the best of our knowledge). Are you saying you'd believe the 1% over the 99%? Especially if the 99% are impartial experts that have spent years researching the subjects and the 1% are blokes from the pub employed by people that have invested interests in the outcome. Come on! Are you seriously going to stick to that argument? Sorry - I haven't read the thread fully and have just been dipping in and out of it - this has probably all been said already much better by someone else.

Yes it is. It is when you say 'my Uncle Geoff recons that dogs cant run backwards'... or, Dr XYZ said that broccoli cures cancer' or Reverend Smith said 'Jesus is Alive!'. BUT - When you say.. '99% of the worlds experts say...blah' and presuming you aren't lying and 99% of them HAVE said 'blah' after studying the topic in close detail using scientific methods to draw their conclusions - this isn't an argument from authority surely? This is just relaying what science has discovered.

I'm not sure what they believe - each one believes their own different mythological wonderings/ramblings. Seeing they have absolutely no evidence for the nonsense they are spouting who cares really?

Exactly - I gave up making excuse after excuse for god a few years back. I know I have said it before but it is relevant to this line of discussion. It has only been illegal to rape your spouse in the UK for the last 20 years or since we entered the EU and took their laws. This law, or rather lack of laws previously banning it, was kept in place due to religious (mis)beliefs and the power the church obviously still held sway over government. Now we are out of the EU I wonder if they will try to dig their hooks back into our politics - I hope not. I want education and equal rights for my women. I want social care for the poor (not left to charity). I want our most up to date understandings of the world taught in schools, not backwards myths from thousands of years ago.

I never said I did not believe in a metaphysical nothing. I said you do not know what was before T=0.... you do not know it was a metaphysical nothing before T=0, how could you? It might have been 'nothing' as we know it, but I doubt it - how would anyone possibly know? Even if it was nothing - you can't know how whatever happened happened or anything to do with the mechanisms of it as we weren't there and have no data or machines to record data about the event or pre event. I do not believe the universe just popped into being out of nothing. Something very big happened at T=0. I have my own speculations but they are most likely wrong and I am not an expert anyway. I have read what scientists believe the hot dense state was aome speculations as to how it was formed etc... but you have to accept that we can't know everything. Also, and I don't really feel I need to say this, but just because we do not know what happened you can't just say 'it was god that did it' without any supporting evidence - that is just childish and being honest doesn't do what you think god is proud.... that is the god of the ever shrinking gaps.... which I don't think anyone really believes in.

But it doesn't really make any sense, is unprovable, gives no meaningful understanding of anything and doesn't lead to any conclusions pertaining to anything at all due to the fact that it is a made up definition with relevance to nothing. What are you trying to get at with this definition? What is your point? (and if you reply with 'well, nothing can come from nothing so BBT can't be true' we will all groan loudly and assume you are an idiot because we have been over that non argument over and over and you would just be repeating yourself again).

Unless I am misreading things it is still legal in the USA for a parent to consent to the marriage of a child to, er, anyone. This gets even more disgusting when the person is a child and has to marry her rapist. Read this:- https://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/29/health/ending-child-marriage-in-america/index.html HOW is this legal in a country that describes other countries that do this as 'shithole' countries? Surely when your president hears of this there will be an outrage and he will do something about it no? For the love of god!! I did not know whether to put this in Politics or Religion as it seems that this is more to do with the church shunning rape victims and abortions and preferring the lifetime enslavement of the victim to the rapist rather than suffer the shame of a girl being raped and the sin of abortion. FFS! Why are people in the USA not shouting and demonstrating about this to change the law? How is it tolerated in this day and age? So - do you think Trump will outlaw this? Why didn't Obama or any of his predecessors do it? How is it not bigger news? It is totally fucking despicable - 50 years ago!... Nothing done about it - still legal! In a country where the church and the law are supposed to be separate, how does this still happen?

Any evidence for them?

Wot?

So - back to 'what is nothing' - where do these particle pairs, that pop into and out of existence, come from? The antimatter/matter particle pairs that destroy each other that were reported recently I mean (er.. a few years back even?). I guess that the answer is that we just do not know and have not thought of any way to test it yet? He tends to engage until you give him something that he can't defend against or answer... then he goes quiet and comes back with something similar or a different line of arguing the same tired debunked point. If God himself came down from heaven and stated in a press conference to the world that he did not exist... he STILL wouldn't believe it. ;-)

So I was right when I said that this topic was an obfusticated attempt to trap us into a discussion that would lead to 'the BBT can't be true because "nothing can't come from nothing"' again. Shame.

I think I was right - the whole thread is a trick to turn the conversation into a creation debate because of the 'proof' that 'nothing can come from nothing'... We have been down the same road over and over with the same guy and many others.

I don't have time to look it up but, no, it is NOT fact. Not at all and is hotly debated as to whether the guy even existed. I used to worship him as my god... but you have to be real to your self. He was just a man.... IF he even existed. If he did exist, then so what? Doesn't mean the fables about him rasing the dead, healing the blind etc are true. Every case of it happening in modern times has been proven false, tied in with probable happenings or has no documented evidences. If it happened the church would be all over it to make it public... it never does because it is just obvious bollocks.

I don't think you can say there was nothing before T=0... 1 - how would you possibly know. 2 - what WAS there could have been totally different to what can after. Maybe it was empty space and something from somewhere spilled in by chance... might have taken a few googleyperplexing years or more.... but how could we possibly know with the information (and misinformation) and the instruments we have today? Where did it spill in from? Expecting an answer to what was before the BB is just incredibly naïve, and using our ignorance of what was there to invent some fiction about it being created by a being that loves US in particular (a drip in the ocean of all 'creation') is rather snake oily.. drop the con you have been fed - you will be happier for it. Don't let your pastor tell you that you will be miserable without god - you have lived you whole life with out it anyway, lol. It is in your 'heart' not in your reality.

Really? There is documented evidence of this Jesus being crucified beyond that of the bible story book or other fictional works? That Myth is the same as about 4 or 5 other earlier myths about someone dying for your sins. Mythras was it? and several others that are similar. Total rubbish and un supported by anything. It is there to make you think, like any parable.... forgive yourself, forgive others, repent from your sins - all good stuff..... but you don't need this feather to fly (see the film Dumbo by Walt Disney - the animal could fly without the feather, but thought he needed it to fly). .....unlike the Bible? lol. Which is full of errors historically and spurious claims... what nonsense. Right - I'm out. Back to work for me. Have a nice day. .

Can a life form that lives in a flame have a concept of it's universe before it's universe was a flame? Can it even begin to fathom that the plasma universe it is in was once a different state of matter? How can a plama come from just a block of wood? (Sorry - this analogy is obviously a bit of a strawman, but as NOONE knows what state the universe was in before T=0 as we know it then it is all speculation anyway.... I'll bail out now and let more experienced cosmologists talk to you, if they will entertain you, it isn't my field. Just challenging it with 'nothing can't come from nothing' though will probably result in eventual ridicule though if you don't change your tack.

Most of them have the same level proof that Christianity does. Pretty much nothing. Mohamed was a real person from History. There have been many many people die in the name of Islam. Would they have dies for nothing? (you used that as evidence for Christianity earlier - they all same the same things). They have books, reports of eye witnesses, reported miracles. Are you serious? All of them have 'evidence' - none of it is conclusive.... but there is plenty of supporting scientific evidence to point to them all being fiction. What evidence is there for Christianity? How do you reconcile the fact that most of the Christian stories are rehashes of myths and stories from older religions?

The bear has it! People repeat the 'nothing can't come from nothing' argument, even after they have been told that this isn't what the theory says. So... are we going to talk about 'nothing' or is this a trick to repeat the same old non sense argument against BBT? Even if it did 'come out of nothing'... as you pointed out - we don't know what that nothing is/was.

Doesn't say 'nothing popped out of nothing' as far as I know. I don't think anyone knows what did exactly happen. How could they possibly know?

People write fiction. People mean well and want the world to be a better place. Take the Christianity myth for example. There is a lot of love and peace taught there. But there is love and peace taught in most of them. Good willed people trying to make the world a better place writing works of fiction trying to pass them off as god's word. It is a recurring theme across the ages. 'the path to hell is paved with good intentions' they say. Your Christianity is just another of the worlds myths. It will crumble to 'nothing' like all the others because it is clearly based on a work of fiction.

Didn't we have this conversation a while back? Yes we did - I think it was concluded that your definition was important as the word gets used to mean a lot of things... 'nothing in your pocket' for example was mentioned because, although there may be 'nothing' in your pocket, there is still air. Is a complete vacuum nothing?... again - depends on how closely you look. You mentioned Krauss above in this light. Unfortunately, many people come here trying to force a definition of 'nothing' so they can then harp on about the big bang and progress to try to rubbish the bbt because 'nothing can not come from nothing' because that is what their pastor has told them. It just shows a total mis-understanding of what the bbt is and how it has evolved over the years. It is quite dishonest when people do this because they are not interested at all in what the most up to date theory is - they just want to argue that 'nothing can't come from nothing' from their position of total wilful ignorance of the theory actually says. Shame when that happened because 'what is nothing' is actually an interesting question.

I agree with you here... but there is a difference between stupid and just plain lies. Plain lies are propaganda - political lies designed to enflame your anger and get you to vote a certain way. It's called 'Hypernormalization' I think. It is where there is so much shouting and stupid stuff done deliberately that you then do not notice the very plain and simple change made by the people designing the mayhem. It just goes un-noticed or just seems pretty normal and acceptable compared to 'everything else going on'... which is nothing, just there to obfuscate something else. You let pass something big hidden as small because no one can see through all of the deliberately confused misdirection and 'stupid' stuff.

He changed my view about Mother Teresa that is for sure, lol. His gripe with her is more anti catholic rather than with her in particular I think. He came across as a grumpy old sod and wasn't very diplomatic when addressing those with a faith - but spoke pretty clearly and plainly and I find it hard to argue against most of the points he raises on most topics he has spoken on. I am a fan. Regarding books - I wasn't joking earlier in the thread when I said "The God Delusion" by Dawkins. Good book. Saw a youtube vid by some creationist trying to 'debunk' points in the book - it was just embarrassing. The guy mis quote and misunderstood almost every point he was arguing on. Still... some take the 'debunking of the god delusion' vid as sure proof that Dawkins doesn't know what he is talking about.... even though they have failed to debunk a single point. lol.

except this brother has the power to take the world into a MAD war and to make the lives of the poorest in the country worse and to take away their safety net of shared health insurance and to encourage kkk type groups to legitimacy. I'm off for a bit. Peace out. Have a good day. Off to try to cheer up a bit. lol - have work to do also.

OMG. I might expect that sort of story coming out of Iran or 'some other shithole country' - how is it legal to force a girl to marry without consent? To her rapist of all people. Barbaric and totally depressing. Do they not have pedophillia laws in Florida? Sorry - this is off topic - it just seemed to come up in the conversation. Lets drop it.