From: ednclark@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (Jeffrey Clark)
Subject: Re: Faith is illogical
Organization: ITC, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Date: 14 Oct 92 23:58:35 GMT

austin@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (timothy james austin) writes:

>As far as I can tell no one knows why the world comforms to reasonable well
>defined patterns (If any one has a good answer then let me know!).

Okay, ya ready! In the beginning (this is a human term I use loosely) there
was nothing, but nothing is relative. Due to Heisenberg's Uncertainty
Principle nothing cannot remain nothing indefinitely. One theory suggests
that because there was nothing to start with everything we see actually adds
up to nothing when added to everything else. My personal beleive is that
there exists a mirror image universe consisting of negative energy and
antiparticles flowing (as we would think) backward in time. Both of these
universes have origins of when there was nothing and when added together sum
to nothing. Anyway so there were two Big Bangs (one going forward in time,
consisting of positive energy and one going backward consisting of negative
energy) eventually as the uncertainty principle would say that eventually
the relative nothing should consist of some negative and some positive
energy and eventually this disparity will reach a critical point that will
cause a singularity (the above is the bit that we don't know the details of
but even in this vastly simplified version makes sense.

Anyway Energy is Matter, and once our singularity had exploded to point
where matter could form without instantly being converted to energy again
three families of matter were formed, and three (possibly four) families of
energy transfer were formed, though initially these all looked like on
family of matter and one family of energy eventually as things cooled these
primal families produced three or four offspring which acted differently in
oour cool universe. Two of the families of matter have very short half lives
and are all but extinct (except within stars and particle accelerators)
leaving us with the know familiar up and down quarks and the neutrinos and
electrons with which to build our observable universe with our 3 (possibly
four) energies (strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetic force and
possibly gravitational force though we haven't detected it yet). Accepting
gravity as a force and not getting bogged down in details, but noting that
it does not need to be, when our universe is cool enough the attractive
forces of nature begin to clump the newly formed bits of matter together.
Any inconsistencies in otherall charge would have become consistent quite
quickly due to the fact that the electromagnetic forces are so strong and we
are left with an electromagnetically neutral universe in which the strong
and weak forces do not last far enough to be of cosmic significance. This
leaves gravity ( a very weak force) to slowly clump the universe together.
Heisenberg states that there must be inconsistencies in the Big Bang so
these accounted for the clumping (if every particle was equally far from the
other gravity would not produce an effect but as soon as just one of these
particles gets closer to another they produce an increased gravitational
pull on other particles which also come and join the party. Eventually these
clumpings become large enough to cause tidal forces producing other
clumpings and so on and so on.

So know we have vast clouds of clumping neutral particles that are getting
denser and beginning to spin under the loss of angular momentum of each
particle and the tidal forces produced by other clumpoings. Eventually (note
the most stable particle for electromagnetic forces and strong and weak
forces is the Hydrogen atom of which most of the primal universe
consisted) the Hydrogen clumped to the point where conditions started to
becom very crowded and eventually enough heat was produced to restart the
process of converting matter to energy that hadn't taken place since the
very earliest times of the Big Bang. This produced heavier elements like
Helium and eventually Carbon, Oxygen, Potassium, Nitrogen etc, eventually a
primal star would not have enough simple material to convert into more
complicated elements to produce energy (this is called fission) and for a
variety of reasons some of them explode in supernova explosions which
produce an enormous quantity of gamma radiation and just as importantly lots
of their internal heavy products get flung into space.

Eventually the whole process of clumping repeats itself, but this time we
have heavier elements to play with. The clumping this time produces rockier
planets such as Venus, Mars and Earth to orbit stars as well as the gaseous
giants that orbited our primeval star. On at least one such planet, the
Earth, conditions were right for cosmic rays (produced by supernova
explosions), stellar radiation, and fusion reaction particles from within the
earth, as well as meteor strikes and lightning, to recombine the heavier
elements available to more complicated molecules. Eventually somewhere on
the Earth after about a billion years (remeber how long a billion years is
and how large the Earth is) a molecule was produced that could reproduce
itself, a simple self replicating protein. After making thousands and
thousands of copies of itself one of the molecules was mutated by one of the
sources of energy above but this caused it to lose it's replicative power so
eventually it disseminated without reproducing (the first rudimentary
natural selection, if you don't reproduce your species don't survive).
Finally a mutation occured that made our mutated molecule faster at
reproducing and using the raw material around it at the expense of the
original molecule (this is evolution) which eventually disseminated in a
resource depleted environment due to our new molecule. This process repeated
untill eventually we have after another 2 and a half billion years (a number
I bet you can't count to in your lifetime) what we see around us.

This is an extremely simplified version of the origin of the universe, but
it's all plausible and doesn't need a creator in fact there shouldn't be one
none of the processes we have detected should produce one, so where would
one come from and most of all why would he/she/it/they give a damn about us,
there's a lot of more interesting things to look at out there than
grovelling bunch of whingers like us.

Jeff.

PS.There's a lot of very interesting books to read so don't discount evolution
until you've read some and understood them. Natural selection must and does
happen and therefore evolution (on the long term) must also happen. I read
christian versions of creation vs evolution books so do us atheists a favour
and read the scientific versions of creation vs evolution.



>>2) God, as defined by Christians, will prevent atheists from entering
>>Heaven due to their lack of faith.  This is required because to 
>>admit atheists to Heaven reduces Christianity to a mere crutch 
>>for life.  (I don't know of many Christians who will willingly admit 
>>the crutch purpose.)

>>3) God, as defined by Christians, is just.

>>4) Requiring atheists to accept a logical fallacy is unjust.

>[other stuff deleted]


>Tim Austin.

>austin@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au.