Re: Evidence for "Big Bang Theory"
Gil Hardwick (gil@landmark.iinet.net.au)
Wed, 03 May 1995 04:13:41 GMT
In article <3o33tl$qui@lll-winken.llnl.gov>, William S. Lawson (lawson@ludwig.llnl.gov) writes:
>On the contrary, zero is the only realizable number. One can only observe one
>of something (1 times oranges, mathematically speaking), but zero of
>anything is zero flat out.
You might explain then for our further edification just what zero is.
If this zero in fact "no thing"; by which I mean "nothing", or perhaps
"nothingness"?
This is the crux of the argument about religion, isn't it, where out
of nothingness, out of THE VOID, Moses invoked the name of God.
I quote for you here in fact, the very first paragraph of The First
Book of Moses, commonly called Genesis (Revised Standard Version):
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The
earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face
of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of
the waters."
Surely they are simply arguing that the idea of God transcends (goes
beyond) the idea of nothing, aren't they? Beyond your idea of zero,
isn't that right? That a Life-Spirit or such sort of energy gave form
and brought forth life unto the void, that *something* is here now;
something else which is living and breathing and self-replicating in
fact that wasn't here before. That you physicists are unable quite
to get a handle on.
Where you astrophysicists choose to stop right there at the point of
nothingness, and simply call it zero, only because past that point it
just gets to difficult.
But that you decide not to take the further step does not make what
they are doing is wrong in any way. It suggests merely that they are
uncomfortable with the idea of nothingness, and because of that have
built up a vast cosmology of their own to fill it.
I don't want to enter here into an argument on some philosophical "God
of the Gaps" (although that will undoubtedly be pursued elsewhere ad
nauseam), only to point out that the gap remains which your people
have been no more successful in filling than anyone else.
In the meantime, some of their efforts have turned out to be among
the most breathtakingly awe-inspiring and beautiful of all things
achieved by humans. There is simply no conflict.
As I come in from the field with piles of data sheets needing to be
entered, surely there is nothing better to keep me at the task that
the duet from Bizet's The Pearl Fishers.
Or Anni Frind singing The Nuns Chorus.
Or playing some of my tapes over again from the ceremonies . . .
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He who refuses to qualify data is doomed to rant.
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