A stupid question

[Colonel Olrik]

The universe does not exist.

I am alone. The only thing I know for a fact is that *I* exist, because I think, therefor I am. For all I know, you could all be fake, and this entire universe and it's history is some bizarre experiment, or dream, etc.

/end idiotic philsophy

You're just a figment of my imagination

[Smalleyjedi]

look.....i respect that you believe what you do, why must you flame me? You cal me a dumbass, change the thread title. I have always liked this board but if this is the way I am treated I may have to consider leaving. I cant just stay with the SW section and pretend everything is ok.

[Darth Wong]

look.....i respect that you believe what you do, why must you flame me?

Because you asked a stupid question which has been addressed countless times before on this forum, you were too goddamned lazy to perform even the most superficial search to see if that was the case, and the phrasing of your question was both arrogant and ignorant.

You cal me a dumbass, change the thread title.

Neither of which I apologize for. Your question was combative, your question was stupid, your behaviour was moronic, and your answer to the first few (polite) responses was both moronic and dismissive of their basic point.

I have always liked this board but if this is the way I am treated I may have to consider leaving. I cant just stay with the SW section and pretend everything is ok.

Fine. Go away, dumb-ass. Easier than admitting you were wrong, eh?

[Master of Ossus]

For those who say there is no god, please answer this. Where did everything come from?

To be perfectly candid, this line of questioning from Creationists has always struck me as being somewhat... odd. Where did God come from, according to the Bible/other religious sources?

[Durandal]

Okay.... so back in the period when the universe was compacted, these forces didn't exist-- thus time didn't really exist either. So saying that a thing was 'always' there assumes that 'always' can be applied in the way that we know and love it today. It just was, and time had no bearing on the equation. The same could be true for God, if you want to believe in such a being-- God would have been a timeless entity.

Now you're treading on shaky ground. The forces we know today (gravity, electromagnetic, nuclear strong and nuclear weak) were all unified in a state called supersymmetry. The big bang broke that symmetry, and the forces separated. This is one of the ideas of the debate regarding a hot singularity or a cold singularity. Since the EM and nuclear weak forces unify at about 9E9K (coincidentally, the same value as the EM constant), some theorists believe that extremely hot temperatures would unify all four forces. Then again, a cold singularity would explain a couple of other things as well. So, the debate goes on.

[Durandal]

To be perfectly candid, this line of questioning from Creationists has always struck me as being somewhat... odd. Where did God come from, according to the Bible/other religious sources?

If by "odd," you mean "unbelievably stupid and hypocritical," I'm inclined to agree.

Creationists and intelligent design pseudoscientists assert that everything must come from something, and they somehow use this premise to "prove" the existence of an uncaused cause, which they label God. I'm amazed at how many people fall for this blatantly idiotic line of reasoning. If the premise asserts that everything must come from something, then there cannot be something which comes from nothing, an uncaused cause, or God! The conclusion fragrantly violates the premise! Moreover, the second premise is usually, "the cause/effect chain cannot be traced back infinitely." Again, this premise excludes the first one! As I said, it's simply amazing how many people think this idea is logically valid.

[Rathark]

I get rather tired of people who want to have it both ways. They want to believe in God and the Big Bang/ Evolution. They justify their belief by saying that the seven days weren't literal days but thusands or millions of years. The original Old Testament Bible was written in Hebrew, which I believe is a far more accurate language than English. The word "day" to us is a crude measurement of time, but in Hebrew it actually means a twenty-four hour period. You can't have it both ways folks, either God created the world in seven literal days and the Bible is accurate, or he is a figment of millions of people's imaginations.

Sounds like you prefer fundies to liberal theologians.

[Coyote]

Smalleyjedi, what Lord Wong said is true; this subject has been done over many times on this board-- the "Does God Exist" thread I recommended was only the most recent manifestation of the debate. I recommend to all visitors that they spend some time lurking and poking in the corners before getting hip-deep in a new subject, I still stumble across things I hadnt read before in some of the older posts and archives...

One thing I'd recommend is some of the stuff in the "Hall of Shame"... namely folks like Elite Fitness and Darkstar and some of the other gimps, limps, and wimps. Truth is, you got treated with kid gloves. And saying things like "I can't hang out in the Star Wars section and pretend nothing happened..." C'mon, it's not like you woke up broke, sticky and confused after a frat party. Some simple 'lurk before you leap' would have taken care of your curiosity.

[Johonebesus]

The forces we know today (gravity, electromagnetic, nuclear strong and nuclear weak) were all unified in a state called supersymmetry.

I have been curious about this for a while. The last time I read anything about this (about ten years ago), it seemed that there was no experimental or mathematical evidence that gravity was a result of the single force particle. Many people were trying to fit a graviton into the equations, but it never worked. As it was explained to me, Einstein saw gravity as a reaction of space to massive bodies, more of a quality or nature of the "fabric" of the universe than a force caused by a particle. Modern physicists are trying to understand gravity as a force that works in the same way as the other three, but cannot do it. It always seemed to me that they were working from an assumption that gravity is the same as the other forces without having any real evidence for that assumption. I am curious to know if recent research has generated real evidence that gravity and the other force are related. I have not been able to find an answer elsewhere, although I think of so many questions that when I am in a postion to actually research something, I forget most of what I was curious about.

[Archaic`]

Look up M theory, which developed from String theory and Supergravity theory. Explains everything you want to know (Gravity "leaks" from other Universes? WTF? Oo Still, that's what they say.). Well...if you can understand the language anyway. ^^;;

[Nick]

It always seemed to me that they were working from an assumption that gravity is the same as the other forces without having any real evidence for that assumption. I am curious to know if recent research has generated real evidence that gravity and the other force are related. I have not been able to find an answer elsewhere, although I think of so many questions that when I am in a postion to actually research something, I forget most of what I was curious about.

Basically, their inductive chains goes like:

"We used to think electricity and magnetism were separate. Then we discovered electromagnetism"

"We used to think electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force were separate. Then we discovered they were related"

Ditto for the combination of those three with the strong nuclear force.

This leaves gravity as the only unaccounted for force - a force so weak, that it is more conveniently modelled as a curvature of space than as a standard force. Basically, cosmologists operate on the assumption that gravity can be unified with the other forces because it was possible to unify the other forces with each other.

This assumption may turn out to be wrong - but until that point, Occam's Razor dictates that scientists keep searching for a unified field theory.

As for current evidence for a relation. . . I don't know. Everything I've seen takes it for granted that they can be related, until it is demonstrated otherwise.