Starship Asterisk*

Astroton,

I have never heard of ISKCON nor Chinmoy Mission.

The Vedanta Society is actually Advaita Vedanta, a sub-branch of Vedanta, which is a branch of Hinduism. It's an international organization, so they probably have an office somewhere in Australia.

http://www.vedanta.com

There's lots of religious stuff there, but I'm not into that.
When a philosophy becomes a business, they all get lost.
One of Dobson's complaints is that Vedanta has gotten lost in all the BS that organized religions all get lost into. He wishes they would get back to doing science.
The bookstore is good tho., there is a search box.

One of the good science things they used to do was,
They formed a separate branch of the religion to investigate each aspect of the subject under study. So 4 groups were formed to study Matter.
The question at the fore was, is Matter;
Inert, Insentient, Ert, Sentient

Which are the qualities Matter exhibits.

Inert - inactive, non-moving
Ert - active, able to move
Insentient - unaware, having no consciousness
Sentient - aware, being cognizant of other than itself

After much study it was deduced that Matter is Ert and Sentient.

Matter is active - it moves towards other matter, gravity.
Matter is aware - it knows where other matter is, rest mass.

In the West we have been taught matter is inert and insentient.
Wrong twice !

As a side note, Dobson wrote his book in '79, well copywrited then, it took a while to write it. Some time later he had a revelation that is connected to the Recycling aspect of the Universe.
Do you remember the phrase from the 1960's, "It's Alive, the Universe is Alive " .
The definition of Life is something that reproduces, eats, and maybe a couple of other things, I forget exactly whatall. In terms of the eating aspect, or also defined as "directing a stream of negative entropy upon itself" . The Universe in the aspect of the Recycling feature of having the particles recycle in from the border, is directing a stream of negative entropy upon itself !
It's Alive, the Universe is Alive"

Dobson said it was such a flash to see it in these terms , and he suddenly realized what that phrase meant ! And it's true !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Have a Flashy weekend !

Kovil

When you look at the map, something very fast happened at the beginning. After all the x-axis indicates 13.7 billion years and look at the y-axis. the word " Big bang " fits tha graph. I have seen " Big Kablooye " also. As a matter of fact, I believe we are still in the mddle of the Big Bang as the data presented by people who know all that stuff indicates the " universe " is accelerating outward. I find id majestic that I can go out the back door on a clear night and look at all this stuff and wonder if it was created just for me to look at. Pass the ice cold one, please.

Kovil! I'm not into BBT myself; Harry said he was more into recycle theory. Which I suppose brings up the chicken and the egg. However; to recycle you need something to recycle. I believe all matter was always here; like space dust which gradually attracted to each other to form the galaxies and the stars. Still going on in stellar nurseries. No proof just conjecture. No proof on anything else either.
Orin

From the philosophy class that compaired religions, I found I liked Hindu cosmology best, it made the most sense to me. They see the Universe as always being here, in the sense of, its been here so long it's like it's always been here; so it isn't a logical question to ask, when did it begin. LOL And they moved on to other questions ! of more relevance.

Hydrogen the magical duo.

Everything builds from that,
and it's all energy, the Infinite.

kovil wrote:From the philosophy class that compaired religions, I found I liked Hindu cosmology best, it made the most sense to me. They see the Universe as always being here, in the sense of, its been here so long it's like it's always been here; so it isn't a logical question to ask, when did it begin. LOL And they moved on to other questions ! of more relevance.

Hydrogen the magical duo.

Everything builds from that,
and it's all energy, the Infinite.

That's not unique to Hinduism. In fact, the word "creation" comes from the Latin crescere which means "to grow". It does not mean to make something out of nothing, as was taught by the religious authority of the "dark ages".

Furthermore, studies of the Old Testament and even New Testament related apochrypha make it evident that the original story of the creation uses the word "creation" like a synonym of "organize".

I've personally read lots of writings from Christian religious authorities from the 1800's that insist that matter cannot be created or destroyed, and even allude to principles of relativity long before Einstein appeared on the scene.

It seems the world is so quick to attribute the wacko beliefs of a few to whole generations - probably because it makes a good story. The "flat earth" concept is one example. The truth is that most people in academic circles have always believed the world was round, even during the height of the "flat earth" theory. Likewise, it's amazing so many people attribute strictly catholic teachings (like the universe was created out of nothing) to christianity as a whole.

Ipaq,

What I was meaning by 'the church' was the Catholic Church, which took Christianity and turned it into a Big Business, and became as powerful and influential as the Government or the King.

In terms of Hinduism, my understanding is that it was a flourishing culture in the era of 7000-5000BC; but it was an oral tradition and history and all their knowledge was orally remembered. So when a group of people, who had a written language, wandering in their explorations, encountered these people, they created the Sanskrit language for them. It was an amalgum of their own language, but incorporated the philosophy and ideas of these Hindu people. This is why Sanskrit is called the perfect language and it exhibits inherent qualities of a designed language; not a language that developed over a longer period of time by hit and miss and different generational attitudes and ideas and preferences which would influence its construction and rules and formations, and words and concepts. Sanskrit predates western civilization by several thousand years, as well as Egyptian.

kovil wrote:...it predates western civilization by several thousand years, as well as Egyptian.

Just a side note, I just came back from Egypt, where I've seen all that ancient stuff in Cairo history museum, and I'm not impressed. I mean it was big deal 5k years ago, but compared to western civilization as it exists now, they would be very, very primitive.

kovil wrote:Ipaq,

What I was meaning by 'the church' was the Catholic Church, which took Christianity and turned it into a Big Business, and became as powerful and influential as the Government or the King.

In terms of Hinduism, my understanding is that it was a flourishing culture in the era of 7000-5000BC; but it was an oral tradition and history and all their knowledge was orally remembered. So when a group of people, who had a written language, wandering in their explorations, encountered these people, they created the Sanskrit language for them. It was an amalgum of their own language, but incorporated the philosophy and ideas of these Hindu people. This is why Sanskrit is called the perfect language and it exhibits inherent qualities of a designed language; not a language that developed over a longer period of time by hit and miss and different generational attitudes and ideas and preferences which would influence its construction and rules and formations, and words and concepts. Sanskrit predates western civilization by several thousand years, as well as Egyptian.

Well put, but I think you'll find that all religions will claim to have roots that go that deep. Even many Christian churches suggest that it is a reformed version of Juddaism, which is why the Old Testament is part of their cannonized scripture. Sumerian and ancient Babylonian texts have elements and epics in common with nearly all the major world religions, and I'm sure most scholars will have a serious problem with the suggestion that Hinduism is the pure unadulterated version of those ancient beliefs.

All religions get corrupted over time as long as men are in charge of rewriting the doctrine, and that has happened with Christianity, Juddaism, Hinduism, Bhuddism, etc. This means three things:
1) Just because a religion is old and couched in ancient writings, that doesn't make it's current incarnation as being right and accurate in all things.
2) Just because a religion is wrong about something, doesn't mean it has always been wrong in that thing.
3) A non-theocratic religion is going to go through degrees of accuracy. That's because infallible men are writing or rewriting the rules according to their fancy or fallible observatrions of the universe around them.

One thing I do strongly agree with you on is that the only way to keep a belief unadultlerated is through the maintenance of original texts. Interpreting those texts however is an entirely different matter altogether. The Bible is the perfect example of how a religious authority managed to use it to convince it's adherents that matter was created out of nothing whereas the Bible itself does not explicitly suggest that in any way whatsoever. If merely having accurate texts was enough then there would be no arguments about well documented history - but even the best documented histories are hotly debated.

makc wrote:

kovil wrote:...it predates western civilization by several thousand years, as well as Egyptian.

Just a side note, I just came back from Egypt, where I've seen all that ancient stuff in Cairo history museum, and I'm not impressed. I mean it was big deal 5k years ago, but compared to western civilization as it exists now, they would be very, very primitive.

Depends on what you define as Civilization. All I have to do is turn on the TV to convince myself how uncivilized we are. Technologically advanced perhaps. But civilized? Then again, they killed all their servants when royaly died. How civilized is that?

Hello

When they killed all the servants, its called all for one and one for all.

In many cultures the servants went along with the royalty so that up in heaven they would continue their service and not lose out on long service leave and the bonus.

A fascinating debate, no doubt about that, yet one that will (probably) never be fully answered in our lifetimes. One only has to look at the advances in science in the last 2000 years to see that we are merely beginning the quest to understand the puzzle that is our universe. The Hubble telescope has given us a window onto the vastness of the universe that would have been quite unimaginable a few years hence. With Hubble we can view what we take to be the outer edges of the universe and yet its future replacements may yield objects that are further away again, one can only guess.
Speaking purely from a philosophical viewpoint the idea of the big bang is a purely human one. Being, as we are, a sentient species with a limited life span it is hard for us to image something (the universe) which has existed forever, outside of the constraints of time, and will never end (or die if you will) as we are condemned to.
Or course this leads us conveniently onto the subject of 'the creator', a highly convenient get out clause to easily explain the creation of everything. In searching for the answers for our existence we risk losing sight of the question itself by overcomplicating the debate. One could argue that we (i.e. humans) are not that special, life (in general, from bacteria to the whale) however IS and the purpose of life is to create more life, that is the essence of its existence. Life exists in the form that we know it because the prevailing chemical and physical conditions allow only this kind of combination; oxygen, hydrogen and carbon all fit neatly together to form its building blocks. There can be no other way, despite the science fiction writers' love for rock, cloud or any other type of creatures.
Wherever it is out there, and there can be no doubt that amongst the billions of galaxies each containing billions of stars that life will exist, it will most probably look something like us.

ipaqgeek wrote: most scholars will have a serious problem with the suggestion that Hinduism is the pure unadulterated version of those ancient beliefs.

All religions get corrupted over time as long as men are in charge of rewriting the doctrine, and that has happened with Christianity, Juddaism, Hinduism, Bhuddism, etc. This means three things:
1) Just because a religion is old and couched in ancient writings, that doesn't make it's current incarnation as being right and accurate in all things.
2) Just because a religion is wrong about something, doesn't mean it has always been wrong in that thing.
3) A non-theocratic religion is going to go through degrees of accuracy. That's because infallible men are writing or rewriting the rules according to their fancy or fallible observatrions of the universe around them.

One thing I do strongly agree with you on is that the only way to keep a belief unadultlerated is through the maintenance of original texts. Interpreting those texts however is an entirely different matter altogether. The Bible is the perfect example of how a religious authority managed to use it to convince it's adherents that matter was created out of nothing whereas the Bible itself does not explicitly suggest that in any way whatsoever. If merely having accurate texts was enough then there would be no arguments about well documented history - but even the best documented histories are hotly debated.

Hinduism began as a way of life. So far I have not heard any Hindu scripture use word such "Hindu" to describe anything with the ancient way of life. The name was coined during recent migration in history.

The Caste System was designed to classify people based on what they did for living. With the advent of a single person - Manu - the system was made rigid. Buddhism started merely as a philosophy to advice against rigidity and became religion in its own right. Due to the so called upper caste opposition, Gautam Buddha's teachings though done in India never found popularity in India and went eastward to China and rest of east asia.

With any complex and powerful structure, the decay always sets in. And this decay has not left any institution safe be it a religion or science.

Not a bad post Rob S. I would like to point out one fact that cannot be debated is that everything WAS created at some point. Meaning creation is very real. The reason for and by what means is the only possible debate. This is left open to interpretation and misrepresentation. It’s only from fear that we humans attribute such things as human traits to creation.

I would certainly argue that we are NOT here to serve a reproductive function. It is a necessity for any species here on Earth to survive -true, however the most important and most obvious purpose for us humans is to "experience" life. Someone once said "In the end we are only as great as the experiences we take with us." I find this to be a very accurate statement.

And frankly I am tired of hearing that human imagination is limited. Every time I hear this I feel abnormal. I can imagine endlessly and maybe more than most but I certainly do not feel unique. I know there are many people out there that can go beyond what is only observable.

……We will find that life extends beyond our own limitations and from elements that are unknown to us. I can imagine our macro universe being another’s micro universe and so on and so fourth, with each universe seemingly endless in its relative size.

Hello All

Martin said

Not a bad post Rob S. I would like to point out one fact that cannot be debated is that everything WAS created at some point. Meaning creation is very real. The reason for and by what means is the only possible debate. This is left open to interpretation and misrepresentation. It’s only from fear that we humans attribute such things as human traits to creation

You are right on one point everything has a point at which it is created.
That is part of the never ending story of everything in the universe going through a recycle process.

There has never been a point of origin for all the parts of the universe.

Just 1 point, eh Harry?

"There has never been a point of origin for all the parts of the universe".

= pure speculation.

Hello Martin


I am not speculating.

The universe did not originate from one spot.

That is stone age thinking.

If you wish to think along those lines so be it.

If you think its just my reasoning, I can live with that.

In my opinion
The universe is endless and the parts within the universe move in a random chaos motion giving the largest parts such as super clusters of clusters of cluster galaxies territorial locations. They are randomly distributed according to their size and mass. This is seen from the super clusters observed. They do not seem to be moving apart from each other.

kovil wrote:Ipaq,

In terms of Hinduism, my understanding is that it was a flourishing culture in the era of 7000-5000BC; but it was an oral tradition and history and all their knowledge was orally remembered. So when a group of people, who had a written language, wandering in their explorations, encountered these people, they created the Sanskrit language for them. It was an amalgum of their own language, but incorporated the philosophy and ideas of these Hindu people.

Kovil,

While reading through this topic, I came to this line. Besides, astronomy, Indology is my another interest.

It is a human trait, more prominent in the ones that enjoy power over the other, to dig history to seek very intelligent and successful ancestors for themselves.

Since, Vedanties represented such philosophically oriented race in ancient times, many different groups have tried laying a claim or at least tried seeking a compromise of some sort with Sanskrit speaking people and Vedic culture. The word Arayn, I think was proposed by Max Muller to account for the Indo Iranian language group where Sanskrit belonged. With time some other languages were added to this group and the group started to be known as Indo Europian group of languages. Max Muller borrowed a word "Arya" from scriptures to describe people who spoke these languages (Including Modern). One of the ancient names of the northern Parts of India is Arayvratta – the land of Arayns. Since then the word was high jacked by all and sundries that tried taking their ancestries back to the so-called Aryans who invented Sanskrit. The fact is that Sanskrit language has survived few thousand years and the oldest known definitions of grammar were carried out much recently sometime in 5 BC.

In short, the language Sanskrit was not invented as per the statement, “So when a group of people, who had a written language, wandering in their explorations, encountered these people, they created the Sanskrit language for them. It was an amalgum of their own language, but incorporated the philosophy and ideas of these Hindu people.” Obviously, people who would know philosophy would have known creating language. Besides, non-Indo European group of languages there are four major languages in India – the so-called Dravidian languages.

The Indology is as much a political issue as any other issue related to human race. Aryan languages have no relation to any of the north European languages and people have tried looking for connection. And the rest is the history.

harry wrote:The universe is endless

What about Olber's Paradox (the night sky is dark), which was brought up earlier in this thread?

harry wrote:the parts within the universe move in a random chaos motion giving the largest parts such as super clusters of clusters of cluster galaxies territorial locations. They are randomly distributed according to their size and mass.

What about large-scale galaxy cluster surveys (see this map covering out to about 2% to the edge of the observable universe) suggesting that galaxy distribution is decidedly non-random?

Pete
you gonna get a bookfull of internet links from Harry.

Hello All

Smile,,,,,,,,,,,,,,a book full
Where did you get the name,,,,,,ta152h0

Pete I know very little in the scope of things.

Random yes,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,that does not mean that we do not see some form of pattern within the parts.

What we see is just a dust partical of it all.

Harry,
Do we see the patterns because they "ARE" there or do we see them because our minds try to put order to chaos???

How does one go about telling the difference???

Hello BMAONE23

There are patterns that we see and the patterns we do not see we assume that they may repeat the pattern.

We could apply the Laws and theories that we have at hand to guesstimate the pattern.

Usually the seed dertermines the pattern of the tree or the animal.

We have basic seeds in atomic structure and we can estimate the type of pattern we see locally and confirm this pattern by actual observations.

If the universe is endless and ageless than looking at the bigger pattern I would expect large super glusters of galaxies would be scattered at random and with maybe their own territory. Who knows???

Maybe there is small Big Bangs going off every so often say,,,,,14 Billion years or more.

It would be nice if we knew.

A pattern is defined by its predictability. Since, we are creatures of repetition, we by default look for patterns even when there are none to be found. However, I believe there is such a thing as random patterns. A force applied will result in a pattern of random dispersement.

Hello Martin


Yep

Whether there was a big bang or not; it is interesting to note that mature galaxies exist far out into the universe.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=14524
It would seem to me that if there was a big bang; these galaxies should be in there infant stages. Or; the universe is a lot older than and more vast than what we can even imagine.
Orin