Extraterrestrial Life and Baptist Theology

Philip, you say you are an engineer. The director of the Biblical Astronomer (whose website that is) has a PhD in Astrophysics. I would rather believe him on what is possible in terms of astronomy than you.

Philip, you might do well to read my posts again. I said I don't know whether or not to accept relativity. However, I do subscribe to most/all of Mach's principal - i.e. that a universe rotating about the earth would create the same effects as we observe. The website didn't give the gorey maths, but did referance some papers proving this principle works. They were written by respected scientists, not anti-science Christians or cultists. I have copies of some of these papers, but it seems that you have never seen them. how, then, do you know that they are wrong? With all due respect, I believe their authors would understand the under-lying physics and maths better than you do. If you can't prove them wrong, then stop accusing them.

If that's what you think, then get those papers I referenced, and prove them wrong.

That's because it's very complicated maths, and isn't suited to use on a website. However, the references are there so you can check up the maths in the scientific papers. Besides, I only put that website address there so Johnv could find out what the theory position I advocate actually is, rather than keep accusing something I don't even hold to.

So in other words, you say something that you actually don't believe, but because everyone else uses it like that, you do too. Of course the judge knows what you mean! But you're not God! God can't go saying things he doesn't believe! If the sun doesn't really rise, then God can't say it does! This isn't an example of metaphor, but of God saying something DID rise when it only APPEARED to. But if you'll allow God to do that (and you're allowed your opinion), then you must be consistent: When he said his Son rose, are you prepared to accept that he might only have APPEARED to rise???
Nobody ever answers that question.

I've made my points. If anyone wants to know what I think, read the previous posts. I've said all I need to, and I don't want to post any more.

Your friend and brother,

Bartholomew

 

Well I am sorry to say that I have given you most of what I know. I am an engineer by training so more detail is out of my league. I took this thread as an opportunity to educate myself a little bit. I didn't even know enough about the CMB to give the explaination I did a week ago. I happened to have seen a article of some kind that mentioned the CMB as the "surface of last scattering" about a month ago. It did not really explain what that meant but when I saw the topic come up in this thread I thought that by using that phrase to search (I like Google ) that I might come up with some more technically detailed articles. It worked and I have summarized above what I learned. You might want to try Amazon for some general, modern astronomy books or better yet go down to the bookstore and flip through books in that section. The last such book I read was "A Brief History of Time" and while I found it informative and at a decent reading level for the educated layman I disliked towards the end where he went out of his way to show that the universe might not have had a beginning and then tried to extrapolate that to say that a god is not needed if there is not a moment of creation.

The main thing I would like from you from the previous exchange is an explaination of the origin of the CMB in geocentral logic.

 

Hi Philip,

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. You do not understand the geocentric theory I believe in; and nor do you understand the implications of relative motion. Those papers I referenced (written by respected secular scientists) show that if the universe were to rotate about the earth, the same equations would be derived. It is not the motion of the sun that matters, but the motion of the universe as a whole. The laws of gravity, etc., used for rokets are true relative to the universe. So, the results will be the same no matter whether it is the universe, or the earth, that is rotating. Where you consider the rocket is given a "kick" from the earth's rotation, I believe that same "kick" is actually given from the universe's rotaion about us. The two are identical and indistinguishable in terms of the physics. Go and read the papers I referred to.

As for your point about the speed of the rotating universe, I answered that earlier. I appreciate you've been away, but I've already spent a lot of time answering your questions (and similar ones), and I'm not in the mood to do so again. Go and read what is already there, starting from page 4.

Your friend and brother,

Bartholomew

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. (Eccl 1:5)

[ October 21, 2002, 06:20 PM: Message edited by: Bartholomew ]

 

P.S. If the sun only appeared to rise, but didn't really do so, is it possible that the Son only appeared to rise, and didn't really do so???

 

Synonymous apples and oranges.

Come to think of it, since the words for "rise" and "sun/son" aren't even the same word in the original biblical text, it's not even apples and oranges, it's more like apples and beef.

Come to think about it, wasn't there an original series Star Trek episode on the same subject about this kind of faux paix?

[ October 21, 2002, 07:04 PM: Message edited by: Johnv ]

 

Well, Bartholomew is both right and wrong. He's right because the universe COULD be considered to be rotating around the earth; he's wrong because it is also perfectly legitimate to take the lazy way and consider that, instead, the earth moves. But just as a favor to Bartholomew let me explain what happens to the stars and why they don't move faster than light if the universe rotates around the earth. By the way, the universe has rotated around me several times, and that is proof that I am special and therefore qualified to share this with you.

Imagine a record player with a record on it, rotating so fast that the rim gets caught up into relativistic effects. Imagine further that the record is made of such tough stuff it can't split apart. The material shrinks at the rim in the direction of rotation. What does it do in that shrunken state? Picture it being forced by that shrinking to curl up, forming a bowl! What will the shape of that bowl be? I hope you have sometime in your life taken the trouble to chart the curve for Y = sqr(1/(1-v^2)), the adjustment factor of Einstein's equations, because that is the shape the bowl will form. If the record were indefinately large, then the curling would fix it so that the v scale never reached one hundred precent of the speed of light. It would curl upwards instead of streaching outwards. In this fashion, no part of it would ever rotate faster than light!

Now when we transfer this picture to the universe instead, a three dimensional object instead of a platter, we find that we must suppose the warping to take place in another dimension unseen to us. The curling, however, keeps the stars "close enough" in the crucial dimension to not rotate faster than the speed of light. The suppressed dimension of space created by the contracture causes gravity forces from the far reaches to be concentrated on the central point of rotation as if it were a radial attractive force towards the outer reaches of space. The forces balance at the exact center of rotation, but grow stronger towards the disant universe as you depart from the center. You might think, if you were to mentally transform this picture into its opposite, where the universe is still and the object at the "center" really rotates, you were witnessing centrifigal force.

There. It's possible. Awkward, difficult, counter-intuitive, and yet - possible. And it works for any rotating body anywhere in the universe!

 

UTEOTW,

Thank you for your honesty. I to began my debating as an attempt to further educate myself. I have read Stephen Hawkings book and his explanation of the CBR can be found about mid-way through the third chapter. I would like for you to notice that he states that "there is no scientific evidence for, or against, [his] assumption" that the universe "looks the same whichever direction we look."

The standard scientific explanation which you have posted states that the early universe was very hot. Did this heat produce immediate expansion? If not, what force prevented that expansion and what change negated that force to eventually allow expansion? If the heat did produce immediate expansion, where within the universe did this expansion first occur? And where did this heat come from anyway?

The explanation also stated that the early universe was “made essentially of all hydrogen.” Does this mean that there were other particles present as well? If so, what was the ratio of those other particles to hydrogen and how even was the distribution of those particles? Were those particles completely isolated from each other because of the hydrogen?

The explanation further mentioned the presence of light in the early universe. Since the ionized hydrogen is opaque to light, it cannot be the source of that light. Therefore, the light must have been radiated from those other particles. If those particles were isolated from each other, the light from those could not have been scattered by the hydrogen and would not have produced efficient heat transfer. This inefficient heat transfer would have prevented thermal equilibrium, and the “fog” of ionized hydrogen would not have dispersed “at roughly the same time everywhere” to produce an even “surface of last scattering.”

My answer to Helen’s statements have already been posted. In that post, I explained how her analysis confirms my conclusion. That explanation has not been challenged.

The CBR is light which, in traveling to us from the distant edges of our universe, is so greatly red shifted by the expansion of our universe that we can only perceive it as microwave radiation. My argument was that the consistency of our measurements of this radiation proves geocentricity. Such a consistency is attainable only if the paths of the radiation we receive from different parts of the sky were affected by similar amounts of gravitational influence. This similarity of the amounts of gravitational influence is a result of the earths location at the gravitational center of the universe.

 

Johnv and Phillip,

A verse to consider...

 

Johnv and Paul of Eugene,

I am speaking of a scientific proof.

Please prove your assertion of inaccuracy.

Please state how my description of a spherical universe with the earth located at the center of the sphere is inconsistent with observation. Mere concepts of men do not interest me.

 

Johnv,

Have you ever seen the bead rollercoaster toys for little kids. The toy is made by taking a bead with a hole in the center and threading it onto a twisting track. The purpose is for the child to move the bead or a string of beads along the track through the different twists and turns from one end to the other.

If observing this, one would say that the bead is moving along the track. However, if I were to hold the bead still at one end of the track and move the track itself until the other end reaches the bead, one would say that the track moved around the bead.

This is the type of model Bartholomew is proposing. He is not stating that the planets revolve around the earth instead of the sun. He is stating that the entire solar system moves around the earth. Just as the toy rollercoaster does not assume a different shape if the track moves around the bead, so our solar system would not need to assume a different shape to move around the earth.

Therefore, according to his model, the pictures sent back by voyager I would show the "bead" (earth) moving along the "track" (solar system) if it is moving in a straight line in relation to the position of the sun, but if it were moving in a straight line relative to the earth's position, it would send back pictures showing the "track" (solar system) moving around the "bead" (earth).

By the way, what is voyager I's distance from earth?

 

A verse to consider...

</font>[/QUOTE]Well, now, we have some interesting possibilities here if we are to take this at 'face value':

1. Jesus is the sun, in which case we are involved in sun worship

2. Jesus has wings

3. It is the wings that heal, not Jesus Himself

4. That Jesus revolves around us and not us around Him.

I have problems with all four of those, fortenberry -- what about you?

 

Sorry, bro. If you don't understand those explanations then I can't do much more.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. (Ecclesiastes 1:5)

 

So, I have no need to appeal to Paul of Eugene's answer.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. (Ecc 1:5)

[ October 22, 2002, 01:55 PM: Message edited by: Bartholomew ]

 

1. Maybe Jesus didn't die? Will you allow the possibility that science may, in the future, tell us Jesus actually went away into another dimension (or some other scientific explanation)? After all, the people of the time wouldn't understand that; so maybe God just told them he'd died just to go along with what it looked like had happened?
2. Surely the evolutionists are right? I mean, the Genesis account of creation is how it appeared God made the world. I mean, who, in ancient Egypt, is going to understand the quantum mechanics behind the big-bang theory?
3. Other hypothetical "scientific" explanations can be given for Biblical events, and can continue ad infinitum. But I find it strange, because there are many more confusing things in the Bible than the idea that the earth rotates! Why didn't God just simplify those for our simple minds?

How do you know the sun's rising is different from reality? Answer: [out of date] science. So will you give science the authority to tell you that Jesus' rising was also only apparent?

Jesus died from man's point of view. He also died from God's point of view. We know God's point of view because it's in the Bible. If all the Bible is is God taking our (wrong) point of view, and talking about it as if it's actually true (so as to stop us being confused), we can have no idea what is actually true from the Bible. In accepting Copernicus, the Bible's authority begins to rot away...

He did!!!
1. He was probably put in the tomb lying down. When he rose, he walked and stood upright.
2. He went down into the heart of the earth whilst dead, and came back up to the earth's surface when he rose.
3. He rose from earth to heaven.

Your friend and brother,

Bartholomew

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. (Ecclesiastes 1:5)

[ October 22, 2002, 02:27 PM: Message edited by: Bartholomew ]

 

Sorry, bro, but that doesn't answer the question.

The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose. (Ecclesiastes 1:5)

[ October 22, 2002, 02:35 PM: Message edited by: Bartholomew ]