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BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!!
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Subject: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Rapparee Date: 22 Oct 13 - 03:25 PM In 1650, James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, calculated that the Universe was created at 8 p.m., October 22, 4004 BCE. Who am I to argue with such authority as this? Happy Birthday, Universe! I hope you have many more!!! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Bill D Date: 22 Oct 13 - 03:37 PM Ahhh... created on Irish time calculation? I'll bet God had a few Guiness just before He began.. from the looks of things. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: GUEST,sciencegeek Date: 22 Oct 13 - 03:38 PM Primate of All Ireland... so strange that a primate's work should be used against the notion of human evolution. Maybe they would have preferred beetles? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Rapparee Date: 22 Oct 13 - 03:39 PM God needed a laugh, and so created humanity. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: gnu Date: 23 Oct 13 - 06:30 AM Is this the punchline? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Bee-dubya-ell Date: 23 Oct 13 - 07:04 AM In a sense, the good Bishop may have been pretty close to correct. The physical universe may be billions of years old, but the concept of "universe" as part of human consciousness may well have only been around for the 6,000 or so years his calculations stipulate. It's analogous to the old "If a tree falls in the forest" question. Did the universe truly exist before human consciousness had sufficiently evolved to comprehend its existence? If not, then the universe is only as old as the human origin myths which attempt to make sense of it, and those myths are only thousands of years old. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: GUEST,Musket grinning Date: 23 Oct 13 - 07:12 AM Ah but the good Bishop wouldn't have had that train of thought. More of Genesis than gene... Him being a primate and all that, Darwin was a canny bugger or what? Of course, Christians don't believe that sort of thing any more. Do they? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Rapparee Date: 23 Oct 13 - 07:26 AM Deep inside I think almost everyone believes that the universe started with their birth and will end when they die. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Bee-dubya-ell Date: 23 Oct 13 - 08:26 AM Ah but the good Bishop wouldn't have had that train of thought. True, but it wasn't his fault. The concepts of evolution and modern cosmology had yet to be created during his time. In the absence of those relatively new ways of looking at the world/universe, the furthest back one can delve is to the dawning of human mythic storytelling*. Nothing exists before that point. We know there were people around long before then, but their stories died with them. Their descendants five or six generations down the road never knew they existed. Attempting to determine the point at which humans began to create myths and transmit them forward to subsequent generations by using chronologies referenced within the myths themselves is, naturally, imprecise. But, barring extreme exaggerations within the transmission process, the result should be somewhere within the ballpark. Six thousand years ago is actually a pretty reasonable, though ultimately unconfirmable, estimate. * "The dawning of human mythic storytelling" is not the same as "the dawn of history". The dividing line between historic and prehistoric times is generally considered to be the invention of writing. But myths were transmitted orally long before they were ever written dawn. The age of an ancient document can be scientifically determined, but the age of the story that document tells can only be estimated. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: GUEST,Musket Date: 23 Oct 13 - 08:36 AM Oh aye, the bible was their genuine science, God filling the gaps as he was devised to. In fact, many aspects of religion are good public health science of their day. Circumcisions stopped infection under the foreskin, as daily showers weren't the done thing. Not eating pork or shell fish in hot countries, spot on. Not too sure about Lot and incest though... Unless musical instruments in those days required six digits. What is fascinating is the number of people who cling to this date and genuinely believe it to be true. No wonder marketing is such a huge industry..... We can believe anything if we want to.... In answer to your particular point about the dawn of what we call history. That in itself is subjective, as you infer what someone of c21 would recognise as history. Understanding in the pack animal sense and methods of knowledge management could predate this, but in a way we couldn't make use of, so not in our way history? Just a thought. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Bill D Date: 23 Oct 13 - 10:13 AM " We can believe anything if we want to...." Not only can we 'believe' anything, we can analyze, interpret, distort, translate... and refer to a committee for clarification... anything we hear, or think we hear. However: "A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand." ― Bertrand Russell,A History of Western Philosophy Bishop Ussher's computations, or similar ideas, are still commonly accepted because they are 'clear', and do not require any long, personal struggle to swim thru the morass of alternatives those tedious scientists keep inundating us with. ☺ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: gnu Date: 23 Oct 13 - 06:01 PM Mudcat RESURGO! Modern translation... Now, that there is the shit I'm talkin bout when I tell my friends they gotta check out Mudcat BS. Best thread in a god's age. WOOF! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Rapparee Date: 23 Oct 13 - 09:16 PM James Ussher also trained youths to lead ticket holders to their seat in the theater, saying as they did so, "Here is your seat, you Godless, damned, theater-going heathen, and may God have mercy on your soul." With a variant spelling they are still used so today, but without the statement. But Ussher's (or Usher's) family did not prosper and eventually it disappeared and his manor collapsed. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Les in Chorlton Date: 24 Oct 13 - 05:29 AM Ussher was simply following the 'logic' of believing the Bible was history. What he in effect did was to reveal the inadequacies of that strategy. The Bible isn't history any more than it is geology, ethnolgy, linguistics, a guide to moral behaviour or a road map. People who believe it is and act on it are out there on their own. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: GUEST,pete from seven stars link Date: 24 Oct 13 - 12:38 PM yes, les. and the rest are following the herd. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Bill D Date: 24 Oct 13 - 08:44 PM "Some" of the Bible does mention known historical figures & places... but so do many "historical novels". When the details are written by many authors, edited & translated by many more, no one should expect it to resemble fully accurate history. It has many 'interesting' parables, ideas & issues, providing much food for thought. One can find certain guidance there, if they are careful.... but if it is taken as literal truth and the rules as requirements, be careful... there are contradictory passages. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Rapparee Date: 24 Oct 13 - 10:06 PM "The word was 'celebrate'!" |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: GUEST,Musket to pete Date: 25 Oct 13 - 05:25 AM Baa! Or Baa! Humbug! To Come over all Dickensian. The fascinating thing is that the hubble telescope turns round, snaps today's piccy and the age of the universe moves by a few hundred million years. Makes the biblical stance somewhat in need of a new slide rule. That said, we all need a birthday so happy birthday and all that. Don't listen to the entrenched views though because the humans inhabiting your parlour can't even get the date constant when we executed the most famous of all the claimants to your paternity. We only need to work back from his fixed birthday date for crying out loud but if Bible type people can't even get that right, what chance of guessing your age Mr Universe? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Keith A of Hertford Date: 25 Oct 13 - 07:05 AM Of course! We only need to work back from his fixed birthday date. Why has no-one ever thought of that before? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Nigel Parsons Date: 25 Oct 13 - 07:19 AM Happy birthday dear parent of mine! "You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here." (Desiderata) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Bill D Date: 25 Oct 13 - 10:40 AM As Musket says... Most distant galaxy discovered...so far estimated 13.1 billion years old. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: GUEST,Midchuck (cleared my cookies a while ago) Date: 25 Oct 13 - 11:25 AM Deep inside I think almost everyone believes that the universe started with their birth and will end when they die. Yes, but they're all WRONG! It started with MY birth and will end when I die! And since I'm getting quite ancient, that's kind of rough on most of the rest of you... Well, maybe not. An awful lot of folkies are quite ancient. Peter. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: GUEST Date: 25 Oct 13 - 02:40 PM Cookies are easy to reset, Click on the 'Membership' link at the top of any page. Cheers Nigel |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Nigel Parsons Date: 25 Oct 13 - 02:42 PM OOPS! That last post was me. I've now followed my own advice. Cheers |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Rapparee Date: 25 Oct 13 - 03:27 PM Bovine patooties! That galaxy can't be that far away OR the Universe that old. Al Einstein his own self postulated -- and has been proven right -- that light bends near gravitational sources AND that time "speeds up" as the speed of light is approached. Izzy Newton and others demonstrated that things slow down as they go around curves because of centripedal and centrifugal forces. We see the light from that "galaxy" and not the thing itself. Since light travels at the speed of light AND it has been bent by gravitational thingies, it has sped up and been slowed down so much that we can no longer use it to determine much of anything (see Wern Heisenberg's "Uncertainty Principle"). Taking all of the above into account, my calculations clearly demonstrate that the so-called "most distant galaxy" is actually about 200 miles away, near Boise, Idaho. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: GUEST,Guest from Sanity Date: 26 Oct 13 - 02:19 AM Rapparee: "In 1650, James Ussher, Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, calculated that the Universe was created at 8 p.m., October 22, 4004 BCE." Was that Daylight Savings Time??? GfS |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: GUEST,Musket between courses Date: 26 Oct 13 - 03:12 AM Not Idaho. Sorry. I make it Cleckheaton in Yorkshire England. Based on refining Raparee's observation but allowing for the fact that centripedal force can only act on mass and photons exhibit wave duality therefore mass is zero, so centripedal force cannot alter rate of displacement, or speed as we erks call it. Hang on, make that Oldenzaal in The Netherlands. .... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Bill D Date: 26 Oct 13 - 11:55 AM Idaho? The Netherlands? I'd have thought there'd been some mention of it in the local news....at present, that galaxy is 18 inches away on my compter screen (what I can see of it.) Now....MY question for the cosmologists is: IF we could be instantly transported to a 'safe' planet in the galaxy, what would we see 'beyond'? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Will Fly Date: 26 Oct 13 - 12:25 PM IF we could be instantly transported to a 'safe' planet in the galaxy, what would we see 'beyond'? I predict a parallel Mudcat. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Lighter Date: 26 Oct 13 - 03:51 PM Wackipedia has a detailed and *seemingly* reliable article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ussher_chronology Not surprisingly, Ussher seems to have had equally learned rivals who came up with different estimates. His is the chronology remembered, however, because from 1701 it was often referenced in marginal notes to editions of the King James Version. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Nigel Parsons Date: 26 Oct 13 - 06:18 PM We may all debate on the age of the universe Some say it's been growing for billions of years. I'll try to resolve it in one simple pithy verse, Then go to the pub and imbibe a few beers. We'll rant and we'll roar about Ussher's chronology He sets the world's age at just six thousand years. That's now been disproven by geochronology (if you believe the scientists) So-o Ussher is silly, let's have some more beers! Okay, rhyming 'chronology' & 'geochronology' might look like cheating, but who's counting ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Happy Birthday, Universe!!! From: Rapparee Date: 26 Oct 13 - 10:56 PM Chronology rhymes with horology. That is the study of watches and watchmaking, so get your mind outa the gutter. |
