Is evolution enough?

[DrNorm]

IMO, alternatives to the church - like the Sunday Assembly - aren't really necessary

 

I'd like to think that there is a grassroots organisation somewhere that could grow and gain sufficient popular appeal to provide secular services for births/marriages/deaths/state occasions/comfort during national disasters etc. I'm not that happy that the church all but has a monopoly on these occasions.

 

I guess most people, despite not attending church, are happy for the church to provide these services for ever more. There is no alternative as yet, and no organisation that dares to think that big as far as I know.

 

Speaking for myself, I have far more interesting things to be doing on Sundays ... Personally I'd rather be sat at a RSPB wildlife reserve watching birds ... car boot, playing sport, ... Tramlines ...

 

Absolutely great stuff - I love the outdoors myself and many people have a "spiritual" connection with nature.

 

However, do you never feel the need to re-examine existential and philosophical questions within a social context? Are you happy for churches with diminishing influence to have the last word on morality?

 

Do you not feel that the demise of the church is leaving a bit of a vacuum or are you happy that one day coke sniffing Lords cavorting with prostitutes will be left to decide for themselves whether they've done anything that should cause them to question their position?

 

PS CampQuest looked like a brilliant initiative but it doesn't look like they survived beyond their first year. Did anything happen this year?

 

Foundation Beyond Belief and the Beyond Belief Network look like they're off to a solid start. At first sight though, this is an American organisation supporting other charities world wide ... good luck to them!

 

---------- Post added 28-07-2015 at 18:54 ----------

 

We're doomed I tell you, doomed!!

 

Well, yeah. But not for a while yet ...

[Ryedo40]

I'd like to think that there is a grassroots organisation somewhere that could grow and gain sufficient popular appeal to provide secular services for births/marriages/deaths/state occasions/comfort during national disasters etc. I'm not that happy that the church all but has a monopoly on these occasions.

 

I guess most people, despite not attending church, are happy for the church to provide these services for ever more. There is no alternative as yet, and no organisation that dares to think that big as far as I know.

 

The church no longer has the monopoly. Humanist organisations up and down the country have, for sometime, been performing weddings, naming ceremonies & funerals. They're a great alternative for those who aren't religious. In Scotland, more people are now opting for non-religious weddings than Church weddings. Secular alternatives are becoming increasingly popular.

 

However, do you never feel the need to re-examine existential and philosophical questions within a social context? Are you happy for churches with diminishing influence to have the last word on morality?

 

Do you not feel that the demise of the church is leaving a bit of a vacuum or are you happy that one day coke sniffing Lords cavorting with prostitutes will be left to decide for themselves whether they've done anything that should cause them to question their position?

 

If the demise of the church is leaving a vacuum, it's not one I've noticed. The church has also hardly been a bastion of morality(quick look at history supports that.) Almost every social reform that many of us take for granted today has been opposed at sometime or another by the church - or the church has been responsible for the behaviour and attitudes than many of us would consider wrong today. Religions and their institutions are usually lagging behind in that department - and are often dragged kicking and screaming while society changes for the better.

 

If by existential and philosophical questions, you mean the problems people have with facing their own death, etc, then there are secular organisations and counsellors that help. Having said that, religion has, and is responsible for much of the angst that many people suffer (indoctrinating them with absurd fears and profiting from selling the "cure".) Hardly moral.

 

CampQuest was started in 2008 and is still going strong:

https://www.facebook.com/campquestuk/timeline?ref=page_internal

[Hots on]

 

NCSA (National Center for Science Education)

 

That organisation needs to learn how to abbreviate and spell properly.

[Ryedo40]

That organisation needs to learn how to abbreviate and spell properly.

 

Doh.. I've really gotta stop being so sloppy

[woolyhead]

The total energy of the universe is zero.

This is because the amount of dark energy, dark matter, and regular matter is exactly balanced by the gravitational potential energy.

Are you telling me that gravitational potential energy is negative energy? Even if it is negative energy, where did all this energy come from?

[unbeliever]

Are you telling me that gravitational potential energy is negative energy? Even if it is negative energy, where did all this energy come from?

 

To the first question, yes.

 

To the second question, since the total is zero, it didn't have to come from anywhere.

[DrNorm]

I did have a long reply, but I began to bore myself. The bottom line?

 

Brian: You've all got to work it out for yourselves.

The Crowd: Yes! We've got to work it out for ourselves!

 

I'm off to go live my life.

[Annie Bynnol]

That organisation needs to learn how to abbreviate and spell properly.

 

National Center for Science Education is the correct spelling of an American organization.

[woolyhead]

To the first question, yes.

 

To the second question, since the total is zero, it didn't have to come from anywhere.

I see. So zero anything , or is it only energy, can split into positive something and negative something, right? Where does it get the energy for making the split? Which condition, split or unsplit, is its stable one?

[unbeliever]

I see. So zero anything , or is it only energy, can split into positive something and negative something, right? Where does it get the energy for making the split? Which condition, split or unsplit, is its stable one?

 

Good questions.

I'm afraid I don't have all the answers.

I think you need a cosmologist and whilst I've studied it to an extent, it's not my specialty.

Sorry.

 

As I understand it, the popular idea for how the universe came into existence is that it arose from a large quantum fluctuation in vacuum energy. This is a well known phenomenon whereby things pop into existence for very brief periods before disappearing again. Quantum fluctuations naturally occur all the time inside the universe, but not on this scale. Under these conditions it would be a requirement that the total energy add up to zero. I think the idea is that in the absence of a universe to constrain things, quantum fluctuations get much larger.

 

The idea dates back to 1973 when a clever chap called Pascual Jordan suggested it even through at the time it did not appear that the universe was balanced in this way. It gained a lot of credit in the last ~15 years because astronomical measurements unexpectedly detected exactly the right about of "dark energy" for a zero energy universe through a combination of measuring the rate of expansion of the universe as a function of time by observing a particular type of supernovae at various distances, and a highly detailed map of the remaining light from just after the big bang (cosmic microwave background).

Before the discovery of dark energy, it appeared that there was not enough matter to balance the gravitational potential so the maths for a zero energy universe did not add up.

Edited August 5, 2015 by unbeliever