/sci/ - Science & Math

explain to me why you can't put 5 equidistant points in 3 dimensional space.

>Arguments for God as cause of the universe rest on the assumption that something can’t come from nothing. But given the laws of physics, it turns out that something can come from nothing.

Are you guys serious? The laws of physics aren’t “nothing.” Ergo, this isn’t even a prima facie counterexample to the principle that ex nihilo, nihil fit. That’s just blindingly obvious. Are you guys serious?

"First, we do not yet know all the basic laws [of physics]: there is an expanding frontier of ignorance." (p.2)

"Where do the laws that are to be tested come from?"(p.2)

"The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics…actually, we do not have all the rules now."(p. 24)

"The calculations that are involved in this theory [quantum nucleodynamics] are so difficult that no one has ever been able to figure out what the consequences of the theory are…we do not yet know where it fits." (p. 39)

"Everything works exactly the same for the muon as for the electron, except that one is heavier than the other. Why is there another heavier, what is the use for it? We do not know." (p. 43)

"We do not know how the universe got started, and we have never made experiments which check our ideas of space and time accurately." (p. 44)

"We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of sub-atomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task." (p. 44)

"We do not know the patterns of motions that there should be inside the earth." (p. 66)

"It is important to realize that in physics today, we have no knowledge of particles inside the nucleus, and we have formulas for that, but we do not have the fundamental laws. We know that it is not electrical, not gravitational, and not purely chemical, but we do not know what it is." (p. 71)

"We do not understand energy as a certain number of little blobs." (p. 84)

Aquinas allows for the sake of argument that the universe might have had no beginning, given that the series of causes extending backward in time is ordered per accidens. When he argues for God as first cause of the world, then, he does not mean “first” in a temporal sense. His argument is rather that the universe could exist here and now, and at any particular moment, only if God is conserving it in existence, for anything less than that which is Pure Act or Being Itself could not in his view persist for an instant unless it were caused to do so by that which is Pure Act or Being Itself, to which it is related in a per se rather than per accidens way. In particular, anything which is in any way a compound of act and potency (as all compounds of form and matter are, and, more generally, as all compounds of existence and essence are) must be continually actualized by that which need not itself be actualized insofar as it is “already” Pure Actuality.

>Copernicus
>May have been ordained a priest

>Galileo
>Seriously considered the priesthood as a young man

Praise be to Jesus

Can anyone provide me with a list of New-Atheist arguments against religion?

A miracle is not to be understood as “a violation of a law of nature”.

Miracles are suspensions of the laws of nature rather than violations.

How does this science explain the existence of the primordial cosmic “egg” whose immense amounts of pent up energy eventually broke out in a big bang? Where did that energy come from? Smaller elements before the “egg”? Nothing? How did random concatenations of the elemental atoms that later cooled themselves into existence decide to come together and form a unit that takes in other exterior matter and assimilates it into its own substance? What about sensation? Does the action of electro-magnetic waves upon rods and cones in the eye and impulses to the brain really explain how an animal “sees”? What about intellectual potencies? How is it that some of these animals can extrapolate from the individual things that they sense and come to a universal idea, not only of “dog” and “cat”, but also of things that are unsensible, like “free market,” and “communism,” or “the virtue of bravery”? How are all these things explained from the observable activities of matter? “Tell me, if thou knowest all things.” (Job 38:18).

Ptolemy's model of the cosmos was adopted by the Catholic Church and held as official doctrine for fourteen hundred years. It was not until 1543 that an alternative model was put forward by Copernicus. So which is real? Although it is not uncommon for people to say Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true. As in the case of the goldfish, one can use either picture as a model of the universe. The real advantage of the Copernican system is that the mathematics is much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.

To offer a scientific account of the Big Bang is not to say anything about whether or not the universe is created. Those contemporary cosmological theories which employ a multiverse hypothesis or an infinite series of big bangs do not challenge the fundamental feature of what it means to be created, that is, the complete dependence upon God as cause of existence. An eternal universe would be no less dependent upon God than a universe which has a beginning of time. For one who believes that the universe has a temporal beginning, any theory of an eternal universe would have to be rejected, but a believer should be able to ask what kind of universe God creates (e.g., one with or without a temporal beginning) while remaining secure in the fact that whatever kind of universe there is, God is its Creator.

>Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence

Where is the extraordinary evidence that shows that the universe appeared out of nowhere for no reason?

>The first, most common, and most obvious objection to the whole family of design arguments is the fact that any god which would have been able to create the universe would itself have to be rather complex and certainly couldn't be 'accidental.'

In what sense is a supernatural designer more complex than its creation? I don't understand this line argument. I mean, doesn't complexity usually refer to the number of parts--the more parts the more complex? How exactly can a non-material being have parts? Or is complexity used in a different sense here?

A talk on 'The Importance of Medieval Science'.

http://www.sms.cam.ac.uk/media/866809;jsessionid=0072237DE0EAA71048A14CCB8F09852E#

You claim to honour truth, and yet you reject Christ.
Have you all lost your minds?

I'm looking for good science-related prayers.
Any suggestions?

All science and all of the natural world are the work of God. If natural selection exists, it is His genius.