Danshawen: So, you are saying that 'light' energy is not bound energy (if that even matters!)
You might not be able to "see" bound energy, even if it was there (from a black hole, for instance). If the light was suddenly there, it would have come from accelerating an electric charge, and such a force would require another electric charge. Electrons are bound energy, but they don't suddenly appear out of nothing either.
Why does Genesis need TWO massive sources of bound energy that also need to collide?
Because you don't get something from nothing. It would break the Law of the Conservation of Energy. A pair of hypermassive black holes colliding at relativistic speed would fill the same void as the Big Bang, but explain the sudden appearance of all kinds of matter and energy in a way that would not violate the Law of the Conservation of Energy, or really mass / energy.
If God is ALL powerful, then he CAN create energy out of nothing.
That would make him a perpetul motion machine. Even this topic is banned from most scientific discussion forums. The Cesspool here is full of those.
Agreed that God has no "need" for symbols - or (us) mortals - but His utilization of the birth-life-procreation-death process is certainly an interesting mechanism for improvement of the mortals over an extended period of time.
To what purpose? So far, he has created the dominant species on this planet that is dominant only because evolution has crafted them to care for each other. This is a miracle, yes. Does it require a G-d? No idea. Does it require a G-d of perpetual motion? Definitely, the answer would be 'no'.
Religious symbolism s no more a "con game" thanis scientific symbolism (IMO).
IMO also. Congratulations on being the first person at sciforums or anywhere else who, in hundreds of threads where I have posted exactly the same idea, took the effort needed not only to read, but to actually think about the idea. It's one of my more powerful ones, or at least, I think so.
Even your own words: "Science was my first faith" serves to demonstrate that faith is indeed an important condition. "
For the record, I have never said (or meant to say) that it wasn't. This is one of the reasons, I was never the one to suggest our friend Eugene's threads belonged in the Cesspool area of these forums.
rubbish from lesser areas of scholarship" seems (again, to me) to convey a sense (on your part) of egotistism and haughtiness that reveals your inate fear that you may subscribe to an incomplete sense of being, worth, and proscribed life purpose. All the foregoing are IMO, of course - nothing personal!! A useful discussion - Thanks!
You are welcome. I probably need to check myself for such "haughtiness". Scholarship does not require anything more of scholars than to be able to trace what has been said on a subject and by whom, and also in what context. There are scholars in religion (where scholarship comes from) as well as in science. The only difference between the two is, when someone in science has an idea that turns out to be wrong, the idea is stricken from the chronicle of scientific knowledge, never to return. Somehow, this process never seems to work with religion, for whatever reason.
The book of Genesis, for instance, is self contradictory, inconsistent pseudoscientific rubbish that was argued by Talmudic scholars for thousands of years before anyone self-identifying as members of the other faiths that adopted it, and which many now revere as they do any of the moral teachings of their respective faiths. It is a myth, not the revealed word of G-d, and certainly not science, and was never truly intended either as a literal history or even a proper moral lesson.
The "tree of the knowledge of good an evil" is so much moral garbage that is as anti-science (and even anti-literacy and anti-scholarship) as it can possibly be. It really needed to have its pages torn out or that part of the scroll burned to ashes a very, very long time ago, because it is teaching the moral equivalent of burning books (from trees, no less) containing knowledge. Its symbols speak clearly that it was written by a human being, and an ignorant individual who must have barely known how to write, much less read; in other words, not a deity.
Even the vengeful G-d of the Old Testament would not fault or punish someone for deleting the book of Genesis entirely forever. Think carefully. What valued moral lesson would really be lost if it were? I can't think of even ONE, other than one shouldn't make G-d angry. Can you? Does it specify how to go about accomplishing this, other than to remain stupid? Stupid lesson. Stupider followers who belive this lesson.
