A god probably wouldn't.

It does however complete the narrative to believe that one would.

Last bit of Dawkins I'll add, sums up the equation I believe.

There are two games being played at once, the long game and a short game. The long one is the game played by genes.
They determine everything about you, the length of your legs and colour of your eyes etc but they have no control on your conscience. It's explained as the analogy of sending a message through space, it has to have everything needed at the same time since it would take too long to receive responses and then return more input.
So everything is predetermined in the code of each of your cells before birth.

What isn't passed down is knowledge, you don't inherit anything in the form of information from your ancestors.
So every person starts from scratch, but are products of their environment. Their consciences are moulded by their upbringing.
So if you are taught for eg. That killing is wrong (Ten Commandments) then your conscience shapes the very environment, if you grow up in war torn depravity then killing is acceptable.
The point being you won't see the example of where the rules are different because it's self replicating in the environment where killing is mostly unacceptable, because the equilibrium is met and harmony prospers, where depravity is the norm everyone kills each other.

Sorry, I should also have concluded....
And that is the answer to those that use the poor excuse that religion's existence being longstanding must be proof that God exists.

The clever thing was that Poe asked why the night sky was not a uniform brightness and then realise the scientific reason, although he was a poet and not a scientist.

Thanks xmoney I couldnt remember the details.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olbers'_paradox

Olber is a bit before Poe so Poe got it from Olber

olber

It wouldnt cross most peoples minds to ask such a silly question

Is it not just down to wavelengths?
Think Fion mentioned he was a physics buff

The closer you get to the source the brighter the surround due to the increase in number of wavelengths or something

The closer you get to the source the brighter the surround due to the increase in number of wavelengths or something

Inverse square law of light. If you move twice as close to a source then the brightness increases 4x. Our eyes adjust automatically and it's not common sense.

how is their a beginning of time?

must be a beginning before the beginning


There are no easy questions. If you substitute it with a creator then who created the creator? Why not save a step and go for the more simplified question?

Physics has never fascinated me enough for me to delve into it but sometimes you have to consider parts of it that are addressed as part of other things.
I don't know where I had come to the conclusion but I was simply of the understanding that light from stars appear to us as dots because it's only a fraction of the waves that reach this distance.
The pitch of the frequency of the wave determining how far the light travels.

Though I accept that might be a million miles away from being accurate.
Fu ck it, what you supposed to do, specialise in everything?

It actually shows the problem faced with progress. To make a difference today you'd have to spend too considerable a time to get to the coal face as it were so I just think bolox to it let everyone else worry about it.

The question is what constitutes being a scientist I believe.
If we look at 'nature' then the abundance of genes that do no significant job but exist simply incase they are needed in future suggests that the number of individuals competent enough to tackle the bigger questions are needed in abundance.

I have a theory that perhaps 90 odd percent of humanity is at face value of little significant use though it's unwise to cull them before you think that's what I meant since they all carry the potential to provide the Einstein of the future.

Einstein himself justified everyone of his ancestor's existence.

So for a ready supply of 'wheat' there needs to be infinite numbers of 'chaff'

And at the risk of sounding very stupid indeed, there's something else I'm not sure I ever knew.

Are there not constellations of stars in all directions from this point?
If so how do you determine the best direction to look in?

The closer you get to the source the brighter the surround due to the increase in number of wavelengths or something

I think you just mean ‘waves’ in this context. You’re right. Think of a magnifying glass and the Sun. The convex character of the lens changes the direction of the photons that hit it so that they all get pointed at one spot. This is like a star backwards, the light going to a point rather than coming away from it. At the focal point the light is very hot. Nothing special happened to the photons, they just got lined up in phase by the lens, and the closer they get to the focal point the closer they all get to each other. As they combine the intensity of the light increases, but the individual photons themselves are unchanged just as if the glass wasn’t there. The rule is that two waves with the same wavelength and amplitude will double in intensity if they share the same space. The more the waves diverge as they travel from a point source, like a star, the less relationship there is between the phase of one wave and its near neighbour.

Another way to view it could be as two waves that emerge from a point, with one going downwards and travelling along the opposite of a right-angled triangle and the other moving away along the hypotenuse. Even if they start aligned, the wave on the hypotenuse soon starts to lag behind (because unlike the other wave, it is going through two dimensions, not only moving ‘down’ but also partly ‘across’). You could employ probability amplitudes. You’d imagine two ‘clocks’ each with a single hand starting at 12. One rotation of the hand equals 360 degrees of phase of the waves, so there’s one lot of these ~ per clock spin . If both waves end up at a base line, the one along the adjacent will arrive first (as it has the shortest route). The clocks spin according to the frequency of the light, so many thousands of times a second. But the one on the hypotenuse has to spin more because it has further to go. The upshot is they arrive out of phase (their clocks don’t read the same) and so the intensity is less than if you had two waves travelling down the opposite together. In that case the clocks would keep the same ‘time’ and the intensity (and the probability of you seeing the light) would be very high.

I think Ill sit on that for a bit, perhaps once Ive had a swill later in the day
Does the sum total of all that mean light bends the further away from the source you get?

I have some science questions that for one reason or another were never filled in for me, documentaries have the problem of telling stuff they think is appropriate, which isnt always the thing that all of us need to know to grasp certain things.

Ill put a thread up later because it's not necessarily relevant to the god question.

But if light radiates out at the same speed say within a vacuum then each point it reaches given the same point is a vertex.
If the object it 'strikes' at any given moment were large enough then surely the surface of contact would be a curve?

I was basing my original assessment on something Id read years ago about the wavelengths given off by everything.
The cells in the human body give different pitch wavelengths that travel different lengths based on frequency, from recollection (though Id probs have to go and read it again)
The arc at the top of the wave traveling huge distances out into space, while others dont even reach the edge of your body.

I assumed light would have been similar

So this is for the opening poster.
IN THE BEGINING THERE WAS SOMETHING OR NOTHING.
IF THERE WAS NOTHING THERE WOULD BE NOTHING TODAY,BECAUSE NOTHING COMES FROM NOTHING.
SO THERE HAD TO BE SOMETHING IN THE BEGINING.
THIS SOMETHING HAD TO BE ALWAYS THERE AND WILL ALWAYS BE THERE.
THE SOMETHING THAT WAS THERE IN THE BEGINING WAS NAMED GOD BY MANY PEOPLE.
YOU MAY CALL IT WHATEVER YOU WISH BUT GOD IS THE MOST POPULAR NAME USED.
so I hope you agree that something had to kick start everything,and most use the word god to describe this something.
well done opening poster,it was truly a great thread,and I hope you found the answer that you wanted.

For the budding scientists on here,

Horizon tonight 10pm BBC4 "What time is it?"

Hopefully Prof Cox will explain the concept of space-time.

If there is no God then where does the money go from the collection baskets?.. see ,..see.. answer that one  wise guys.