Quoting DenvilleSteve: What I dont follow in the big bang talk is why we are able to detect the background radiation, the static detected by the bell telephone researchers in ( guessing ) the 1950s?

Quoting Ocean: How many goats and cows are you willing to pay for the answers?

Quoting thprop: No goats or cows - maybe a chicken or just an egg.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: What I dont follow in the big bang talk is why we are able to detect the background radiation, the static detected by the bell telephone researchers in ( guessing ) the 1950s?

Would not the radiation of the big bang have radiated out from the center of the universe at the speed of light, faster than the matter that constitutes Earth? Sean Carroll stated the big bang occured 14 billion years ago. I would expect the radiation from the explosion to be 14 billion light years away from the center of the universe by now. While the earth, travelling from the center at less than that speed, would be a lot closer and would not detect radiation which is not passing it by.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: If you believe in God, does it not follow that God could have created the Universe? Which would mean that at some point God blinked or willed it all into existance. Call it the big blink.

Sure, science may have evidence to prove what things were like in the universe pre blink, but that can be explained by saying God put that evidence there. A crude example being God created the world, fossil record and all other evidence of a prior history, 10,000 years ago.

Putting aside the scenario of God dummying up the physical record, an interesting extrapolation of this view of things is that science can be seen as the means to detect the actual physical manifestation of God. Where science is able to credibly explain the sequence of events going back billions of years. But beyond that there is no logical, physical explanation for how the universe at that point in time had come to be. That would be the point of creation, the moment in time that God had a provable, physical affect on the world.

Quoting thprop: Science deals with natural phenomena. God, as you described it, is supernatural. Victor Stenger said, in God: The Failed Hypothesis, that we should see some evidence in our physical universe for such a supernatural god. We do not.

"... The universe and life look exactly as they can be expected to look if there is no God. ..."

Quoting thprop: This vision of god is that he is a trickster - which makes him an immoral narcissist. He hides all evidence of his existence yet expects us to believe in him and worship him. If we do not we are subject to infinite punishment.

Quoting thprop: No goats or cows - maybe a chicken or just an egg.

Quoting ogieogie: Which came first?

Quoting Ocean: The one with the lowest entropy.

Quoting Ocean: Cheap! We'll have Mark and Sean decide whether that's worth their answer.

Surreal...

Quoting thprop: That would be the goat after he ate the egg and sat on the chicken.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: or God is just a series of logical extrapolations from various sets of initial premises. One premise being that God wants to be worshipped. Another that God wants us to experience the awareness that he does. All premises are valid because we cannot know what, if anything, motivates God. If you start with the premise of a logical God, my might be able to rule out other premises.

Quoting DenvilleSteve: Well, I feel I am on much more solid ground asserting that the Obama mega deficit will destroy the country. But I dont see how science, which cant explain sentience or quantum physics, which cant recreate the big bang, can rule out that God had something to do with creation and the workings of the world.

Thanks much for the astronomy cast link.

Quoting Ocean: Great diavlog! Thank you Sean and Mark.

The topics discussed can certainly make our imaginations hurt (borrowed from Ogieogie). But Sean provided the remedy: pragmatism. Instead of feeling lost in the existential uncertainty about being a quantum fluctuation in an infinite universe, go get a snack.

I'll cite a phrase from Voltaire recently posted by Francoamerican:

" Cela est bien dit, répondit Candide, mais il faut cultiver notre jardin."

And at least my garden is in this universe.

Quoting bjkeefe: Just started watching, and I wanted to pause to thank Sean for his opening remarks on the "failed experiment" of having a creationist on Science Saturday.

Quoting Ocean: Is that a goat?

Don't answer the question. It's OK. Better leave it there before it gets worse. Go keep the thread where you are discussing god in this, until now, Science Saturday.

Quoting thprop: My garden is behind the garage. I have tomatoes, cucumber. celery root, peppers, dill, parsley and butternut squash. Not sure what I am going to do with the squash - meant to get eggplant.

Quoting thprop: In the debate with Stephanie about debating creationist, I wish I had used the "threshold" concept that Mark (or was it Sean) brought up.

Quoting bjkeefe: Just started watching ...

Quoting thprop: What if I made it more than one egg? Maybe a whole omelet for each of them with hash browns and fresh squeezed orange juice. Do you put mayo on hash browns?

Quoting bjkeefe: Please remind me of what that concept was.

Quoting thprop: Do you put mayo on hash browns?

Quoting bjkeefe: Just started watching, and I wanted to pause to thank Sean and Mark for their opening remarks on the "failed experiment" of having a creationist on Science Saturday.

Quoting thprop: I swear that when I first watched the diavlog, either Sean or Mark used the word "threshold". Sean uses the phrase "some cutoff of respectability." I have watched the first 2:30 of the diavlog four times now and do not hear the word "threshold". In replies to Stephanie, the concept outlined by Sean in this segment was conveyed, i.e. we can engage in debate but there is "some cutoff of respectability", what I call a threshold. If you cannot reach that level, we don't debate with you.

Quoting thprop: When Sean was at the University of Chicago, he made frequent appearances on Chicago Public Radio. He was often a guest on a show called Odyssey. This search gives the episodes on which Sean appeared - you can still listen to them. The link is to all the episodes for a month - just search the page to find the one on which Sean appeared.

When WBEZ canceled Odyssey, I stopped being a member.

Quoting bjkeefe: I hope you told WBEZ why you canceled.

This morning I started with an egg, and made an omelet. Felt kind of like a cliche.

Quoting thprop: I stayed a member for a couple of years after Odyssey was canceled so I made sure to tell them the cancellation of Odyssey was a big reason for discontinuing my membership. WBEZ was pouring money in Vocalo rather than into its base - without really telling anyone. The Chicago Reader has covered it - but WBEZ says little about it. Now they have layoffs at both WBEZ and Vocalo. This story from the Reader a year ago does a good job of summarizing the issue. Since the Reader was purchased by Creative Loafing - now in bankruptcy - it has slashed its staff by 60% but is still doing some remarkable journalism.

Quoting SkepticDoc: Sean's people grid:

http://www.scienceandreligiontoday.c...ls-handy-grid/

Quoting thprop: Two questions for Sean and /or Mark -

1. The expansion of space - Is space expanding everywhere? We know that the Milky Way and Andromeda will merge in about 3 billion years. Is the space here in the Local Group expanding but the force of gravity is strong enough to overcome both the existing space between the galaxies and the "new" space between the galaxies. Is there a lower limit to the expansion of space? Is space expanding between molecules, within molecules, atoms, quarks?

Someone correct me, I am sure I did not get this completely right.

Quoting JonIrenicus: Exactly how small is the observable universe compared to the total universe? Is there any way to know?