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Originally posted by Phage
What's the point? You believe and nothing will change your mind. Others don't believe and nothing will change their mind.
26: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
27: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
Originally posted by thirdeyeflight
Do you really believe that? I personally know people from both sides some non believers turned believers and vice versa.
"Before" is a concept inherently linked to our concept of linear time. That is, we think of ourselves moving on a line from the past to the future and "before" refers to a past-ward direction from a specific point on that line. Given, however, that the direction we label "past" is not necessarily the same direction labeled as "past" in some other part of the universe, The universe does not have an absolute time line, only a local one.
The second key fact that must be understood is that matter and energy are interdependent with spacetime. Without matter and energy, there can be no spacetime. Without spacetime, there is nowhere for matter to be. The reason for this is beyond the scope of this article.
The third key fact is that the current best theory is that the Big Bang was triggered by quantum fluctuations, which are the spontaneous creation and subsequent destruction of quantum level pieces of matter. Again, the reason why this happens is beyond the scope of this article.
Now, given that spacetime is dependent upon the existence of matter and energy, the quantum fluctuation that was responsible for triggering the Big Bang is also responsible for bringing spacetime into existence. More to the point of this discussion and in everyday terms, it brought time into existence. Thus, it is nonsensical to talk of a time "before the Big Bang" because it is equivalent to talking of a time "before time" or asking "What is North of the North Pole ?"
fact
a concept whose truth can be proved; "scientific hypotheses are not facts"
fact
a statement or assertion of verified information about something that is the case or has happened; "he supported his argument with an impressive array of facts"
Onioncloud chids religion for criticizing science for not knowing what it hasnt yet found the technology to demonstrate, but science is highly critical of religious or mystic claims about the nature of "what is" or the universe because they have not done the experiments. Science may yet serve to prove some of the mystic claims. It seems to me both sides are accusing the other of the same thing. Neither of us know, but claim absolute right to say the "truth."
Science is (that is to say, this is science and its natural properties):
1. Public and replicable
2. Cumulative
3. Systematic, Coherent, Comprehensive
4. Empirical
5. Fallible and Falsifiable
6. Comes from real evidence and conclusions
7. In Science, the Burden of Proof is on the Affirmative
Originally posted by OnionCloud
Hey, I don't claim that science can know everything. If you've read any of my posts in other topics, you'd know that. Or, if you read in this very thread that I say the very nature of science to change when better and more accurate knowledge is obtained, you would immediately know that implies we can never be 100% correct. If you want to accuse me of something, accuse me of trying to get other people to use some rational thinking, or explore outside of their comfort zone.
Originally posted by OnionCloud
I would also like to take this opportunity to state that religion likes to go where science hasn't gone yet (or is trying to go) and claim that we can't figure it out.
Anaximander is often regarded as a precursor of the modem theory of development. He deduces living beings, in a gradual development, from moisture under the influence of warmth, and suggests the view that men originated from animals of another sort, since if they had come into existence as human beings, needing fostering care for a long time, they would not have been able to maintain their existence. In Empedocles, as in Epicurus and Lucretius, who follow in Hs footsteps, there are rudimentary suggestions of the Darwinian theory in its broader sense; and here too, as with Darwin, the mechanical principle comes in; the process is adapted to a certain end by a sort of natural selection, without regarding nature as deliberately forming its results for these ends.
Leucippus of Miletus (490-??? B.C.). Greek philosopher. First to introduce the idea of the atom, an indivisible unit of matter. This idea was later extended by his student, Democretus.
Lastly, a thing may be perceived solely through its essence; when, from the fact of knowing something, I know what it is to know that thing, or when, from knowing the essence of the mind, I know that it is united to the body. By the same kind of knowledge we know that two and three make five, or that two lines each parallel to a third, are parallel to one another, etc. The things which I have been able to know by this kind of knowledge are as yet very few.