Religion in a nutshell.

Originally posted by Rajk999
A bunch of ants discussing whats happening on the piece of land over the road .... . 😀

I agree somewhat. That is why a book of this God trying to communicate to us by revelation is important.

I believe God is speaking to us in the Bible within which are many things that we simply could not have a clue about unless God told us.


Man is smart and can deduce a lot. But he has his limits.

Andrew Hamilton,

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Again you demonstrate your complete ignorance of science:

1, “Quantum Tunnelling” does not cause things to "pop into existence “! “Quantum Tunneling” causes microscopic particles to pass through certain barriers that would otherwise be impossible for them to go though -it doesn’t create new particles by making them “pop into existence“! So what you say here doesn’t even make sense.

2, again, I accuse you of pretending not to quite understand what I said. As you must know, obviously neither I nor anyone else said nor implied that: “the universe popped into existence according to Quantum Tunnelling” because that is total claptrap to anyone with basic understanding of Quantum Tunnelling.
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You may know more about the subject than I do. And real corrections to my knowledge on it I appreciate.

However, the article I read on Quantum Tunneling science theory made arguments that challenged to traditional Theism roughly by making these points to me:

1.) Many prominent theologians regarded Quantum mechanics as a modern day Galiath size threat to Christianity. The theory involved defining the energy relationships of particle-sized physical phenomenon in terms of discrete levels."

2.) "Besides Stephen Hawking, several famous physicists and many New -Age proponents have proliferated poplular books exploiting the difficult and mysterious nature of quantum mechanics to undermine the Christian view of origins."

3.) British astrophysicist Paul Davies wrote a book God and the New Physics which locked all cause and effect phenomenon into the time dimension of the universe. He used this time-bound activity, the evidence of the origin of the universe to argue against God's agency n the creation of the cosmos.

This discussion was under the paragraph heading of Quantum Tunneling in Ross's book The Creator and the Cosmos. I understood in general the discussion that followed about particles theoritically being produced out of absolutely nothing, providing they are converted back into nothingness before the human observor can possibly detect their appearance.

The diagram that followed sought to demonstrate this and was labelled "Quantum Tunneling"

The diagram sought to portay the theory of a particle, like a marble rolling down into a half spherical container from a height of H and rolling up the other side to a height of H+delta H.

Now some of this stuff I admit was not too well understood by me.

4.) Then I came accross these two paragraphs which I think I basically understand:

"Davies next appealed to the grand unified theories of particle physics to suggest that by the SAME MEANS (my emphasis) the entire cosmos could have popped into existence."

From that sentence I derived that Quantum Tunneling had to do with an alternative explanation of the Cause of the universe which eleminates the need of God. Would that be a fair understanding of the author's explanation? If so then please do not accuse me of dishonesty. Perhaps Ross is wrong but this is his analysis of Davies' appeal to the subject matter under Quantum Tunneling.

Moving on:

Then Ross writes:

"Davies next appealed to the grand unified theories of particle physics to suggest that by the SAME MEANS the ENTIRE COSMOS COULD HAVE POPPED INTO EXISTENCE (my emphasis). However, he forgot to acknowledge that for a system as massive as the universe, the time for it to disappear back into nothingness must be less than 10 -103 second (102 zeros between the decimal point and the one), a moment a bit breifer than the age of the universe."

Therefore my comment that the universe according to Quantum Tunneling has not popped back OUT of existence and we are still here.

Ross continues his discussion of the ideas of Paul Davies:

"Ironically, Davies's argument against God's creating can be turned against his hypothesis. Quantum mechanics is founded on the concept that quantum events occur according to finite probabilities within finite intervals of time. The larger the time interval, the greater the probability that a specific quantum event will occur. This means that if the time interval is zero, the probability for that quantum event occuring is also sero. Because time began when the universe was created, the time interval is zero, eliminating QUANTUM TUNNELING (my emphasis) as a possible candidate to be the creator of the universe.

Of course, some will argue that since we do not know exactly what occurred before the universe was 10-43 second old, the possibility necessarily exists that the relationship between time and the probability for certain quantum events in that tiny time interval could break down. However, this argument is based on pure speculation, actually multiple speculations. First one must speculate that a specific breakdown occured. Then one must speculate that the breakdown occurred at precisely the needed moment of time and location of space. Finally, one must speculate tht this breakdown occured in a such a fashion [SIC] that the QUANTUM TUNNELING (my emphasis) of the entire universe took place."


[ See pages 96,97 of The Creator and the Cosmos, Hugh Ross, Phd., Navpress ]

These comments served as the backround for my post.

Originally posted by 667joe
I wanted a bike. I prayed to god for a bike. I did not get a bike. I stole a bike. I prayed to god to be forgiven. I was forgiven.

Is this all you believe it takes to be forgiven? A simple prayer and baam...instant forgiveness.

It takes much more than this. You are way off the mark here.

Originally posted by stepnkev
Is this all you believe it takes to be forgiven? A simple prayer and baam...instant forgiveness.

It takes much more than this. You are way off the mark here.

Not according to Christian propaganda which I am suggesting is bogus.

Originally posted by jaywill
I agree somewhat. That is why a book of this God trying to communicate to us by revelation is important.

I believe God is speaking to us in the Bible within which are many things that we simply could not have a clue about unless God told us.


Man is smart and can deduce a lot. But he has his limits.

But your reasons for believing that it is the Bible and not the Quran that is the word of God are questionable at best. From what I have been able to determine it has more to do with where you were born than any form of reasoning or logic.
And what is possibly worse is that what God says in the Bible seems to come out different for each individual and the results are more often than not contradictory. God seems to love causing arguments. And what you think you 'know' based on reading the Bible someone else 'knows' is false from reading the same Bible. So is that real knowledge?

Originally posted by jaywill
Andrew Hamilton,

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Again you demonstrate your complete ignorance of science:

1, “Quantum Tunnelling” does not cause things to "pop into existence “! “Quantum Tunneling” causes microscopic particles to pass through certain barriers that would otherwise be impossible for them to go though -it doesn’t create new pa Ross, Phd., Navpress ]

These comments served as the backround for my post.

“…1.) Many prominent theologians regarded Quantum mechanics as a modern day Goliath size threat to Christianity. …“

I believe you, -but that is certainly news to me! I see some (not all) parts of science as a threat to certain to parts (not all parts) of certain religions (not all religions) -and, even then, only to those theists that interpret those certain parts of their religion literally and with an interpretation that can be scientifically demonstrated to be false. The top three examples that come to my mind of those parts of science that are a potential threat to certain to parts of certain religions would be:

1, The theory of evolution.

2, Evidence of the age and origins of the Earth, sun, planets, and stars.

3, Evidence of the age of the universe (but not its origins because you could always say “god” created the big bang).

Right at the bottom of my list of examples would be quantum mechanics and relativity because it is extremely far from obvious to me how they could contradict religion.

“…The theory involved defining the energy relationships of particle-sized physical phenomenon in terms of discrete levels. …“

Does this contradict any part of Christianity? Is there some verse or part of the Bible that says something that is contradicted by saying that “energy is always in the form of discrete levels” etc?
I honestly don’t know! -but I find it hard to imagine that this is the case but if you correction me on this I will appreciate it.

Perhaps it something to do with the fact that quantum mechanics says that certain events are random and have no “cause”.? if so, you my be glad to hear you can get round that by simply stating that that apparent “randomness” is not real randomness but “pseudo randomness” because that is one of the possible interpretations of quantum mechanics! I wouldn’t want to try and show a flawed belief to be false by using the wrong reasons! So I for one certainly wouldn’t choose to try and use quantum mechanics against religion - I would use better arguments than that!

I bet many quantum physicists are Christians and see no contradiction in that!

”…From that sentence I derived that Quantum Tunnelling had to do with an alternative explanation of the Cause of the universe which eliminates the need of God. Would that be a fair understanding of the author's explanation? If so then please do not accuse me of dishonesty.…”

I can see now that you were not dishonesty there so I was wrong about you there and I sincerely apologise. 🙂
I honestly thought you where being dishonest when you said “… So if the universe popped into existence according to Quantum Tunnelling…” because I thought to myself “where on earth did you got that from? Quantum mechanics doesn’t say that the universe popped into existence because of quantum tunnelling! that’s total claptrap!” I now see where you got that from. 🙂


"Davies next appealed to the grand unified theories of particle physics to suggest that by the SAME MEANS the ENTIRE COSMOS COULD HAVE POPPED INTO EXISTENCE (my emphasis). However, he forgot to acknowledge that for a system as massive as the universe, the time for it to disappear back into nothingness must be less than 10 -103 second (102 zeros between the decimal point and the one), a moment a bit breifer than the age of the universe."

I would agree that this is a highly dubious hypothesis and only in part for the reason indicated (-if a whole universe can just “pop into existence” as a result of quantum tunnelling than why doesn’t that happen now in our universe? Why are there no other “big bangs” suddenly appearing wherever there is quantum tunnelling in our universe?). It is one hypothesis I have certainly never heard of before! I am sure that such a dubious hypothesis would not be shared by most cosmologists nor most other scientists.