Posted on 05/24/2006 3:59:24 PM PDT by LibWhacker
In the real world, however, you would have to show that there is some reason not to get to zero when a function is decreasing constantly.
True, but the force causing the deceleration is not a constant. It is constantly decreasing (if you like Newton) at an inverse squared rate. Which means that doubling the separation between masses cuts the "attractive force" by 4 to 1.
Just looking at the "too little" mass, never ending expansion. Vs "too much" mass, cyclic expansion/collapse. There must be a just right case which would give you a finite volume solution. (Rather like balancing a pencil on it's point.) Defiantly meta stable since one scintilla more or less would inevitably tip the balance.
That's why I said that would be pretty strong proof of intelligent design starting with T=0 since it would be an almost unfathomable coincidence for such a stable outcome to happen by chance.
Regards,
GtG
I have a better question - from whence did matter/everything come?
Turtles all the way down.
It's clear this universe had a beginning and its origins cannot be explained by those living inside it. To me placing faith that this universe came from another universe, where a different set of physics operate, and wherein the origins -can- be explained, makes more sense than an eternal God. There is absolutely no difference between declaring "God just was, He's eternal" and "matter just was, it's eternal".
I believe I had made the point that both another (and the theory usually posits
many other) universe, and a divine fiat were equally unscientific (in the Popperian sense).
I would still suggest, that having left the realm of science, theism gains the advantage over unscientific naturalism when Occam's razor is applied: positing that the ground-of-all-being is person-like enough to earn the traditional name God and to be attributed a will seems to 'multiply entities' less than positing another universe to explain ours (and another to explain it . . . ).
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