A Different Creation Model

I like to read and find ways of getting my head around things. I have my theistic beliefs, but I look to science to modify my beliefs. Creation has always presented a conundrum and this highly speculative theory has come out of all that.A literal reading of Genesis makes no sense. We didn’t actually even need science to see that. Science itself provides no real explanation except that it all started with the big bang and somehow evolved from there. I’d like to suggest another model of creation that is strictly speculative but seems to me to make sense.I’d like to start with this article. What's 96 Percent of the Universe Made Of? The universe as we perceive it is apparently only 4% of what actually exists. Science has shown us that there is a whole lot more out there.The 4% of all that is then, is the 4% that we are able to perceive with our 5 senses. Our theories on the 96% are based not of our perception of the 96%, but of its affect on the 4% we can perceive. Largely we are photon detectors. It seems to me reasonable to speculate that with different senses we would likely perceive a very different universe. For example if we didn’t have the sense of vision our perceived universe would be a lot less than the 4% that we actually can perceive. Also, if we didn’t have vision we would have no frame of reference to even consider the possibility of vision.Are there other senses possible that would give us a very different perception of the universe, or an expanded perception of universe?I read somewhere that our universe is an “emergent property of a greater reality”. If that is the case then it is reasonable to assume that our perception of creation is actually not of a creation of something from nothing. Creation of our perceived universe would actually be creation through evolutionary processes of creatures that were able to perceive a particular aspect of that creation, without directly perceiving the remaining 96%.If anyone is actually interested in my musings this could go in all sorts of directions, and I'd enjoy hearing your thoughts. I have my fingers in a lot of pies so I don’t always have time for EvC but I’ll do my best to keep up.I don’t really see a great fit for where this should go, but I suppose “Big Bang and Cosmology” might be the best fit. Whatever one of you moderators decide is fine by me.

I din't mean for this to go into the coffee house. I thought I was putting it in proposed new topic.

Our naked senses can detect an almost infinitesimally small amount of the universe - a negligible amount.The 4% we think we know about and the 96% that we don't is mostly deduced from mathematics, based on instruments that detect stuff that we are unable to unaided. We'll probably work out what the rest is in a generation or so. So then we'll know.I don't know where that gets you?

Thread copied here from the A Different Creation Model thread in the Coffee House forum.

I guess if it takes generations that leaves us out of knowing the answer.
There was a headline on the front page of Scientific American a few years back that read like this:

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Hidden Worlds of Dark Matter - An entire universe may be silently interwoven with our own

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The actual article ended up like this:

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After all, visible matter comprises a rich spectrum of particles with multiple interactions determined by beautiful underlying symmetry principles, and nothing suggests that dark matter and dark energy should be any different. We may not encounter dark stars, planets or people, but just as we could hardly imagine the solar system without Neptune, Pluto and the swarm of objects that lie even further out, one day we might not be able to conceive of a universe without an intricate and fascinating dark world.

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We understand the dark world primarily because of its gravitational affect on us. However with my minimal understanding of conceptual QM I believe that particles disappear from our perceived universe while others appear. Maybe our existence is far more interwoven with the dark universe than we currently realize.Going back to creation then, it seems reasonable to speculate that maybe the totality of all that is might be far grander than we currently are able to understand. Maybe the totality is infinite and ultimately isn’t subject to the entropy that we experience now. As we know it is meaningless to talk about time before the Big Bang it seems to me that if the totality is infinite it would explain just why it is that there was no time before the Big Bang. Time as we perceive it could just be a component of our little 4% corner of the totality, and creation isn’t about matter as we know it, but about the evolutionary creation of beings that are able to perceive life as we know it.

Uh oh! Absolutely beyond all doubt it is. We've quite literally only just started beginning to understand it. Basically you can invent anything here you like. But I'm not sure why you would. I think you need to start again with this 4% business. You're taking it too literally. We can't percieve the 4%. We have only deduced it. To all intents and purposes, rounded to the nearest whole number our senses tell us about 0% of the universe. Our intelligence has calculated to 4% (if that's the right number.)If, next week, a genius discovers what the remaining 96% is then we'll know all of it. But like I say, I don't know where that gets you - we'll only know it as hard physics, not experience.

GDR, I can appreciate your continuing efforts to somehow tie your beliefs in with current theories of physics, science, and cosmology. Tangle may consider us a bit odd, but I appreciate that he attempts to go along with it all and offer his viewpoint without the clutter that our "religious pin-holing" applies to the discussion. My contribution is a pet theory that I developed after I read about the Observer Effect in quantum mechanics. I basically came up with the notion of Jesus (as the only human being believed to exist through eternal time) being necessary as the "observer" that changed the essential nature of the behavior of all electrons during the formation of the universe as we know it. Am I as whacky as some of the newbies that post in the science threads around here?

And I can appreciate that our understanding need involve maths and physics. We can't simply make up stories without some basis of understanding the way that the hypothesis fit(s). GDR likes to tie his evolving understanding of science in with his dogmatic beliefs, as do I. It is ironic, but your input helps to cut through some of the clutter. Being unburdened with dogma frees up your mind.Basically, I'm attempting to keep my idea of God existing and being understood through Jesus. I think that GDR is attempting the same thing, though perhaps in a different way than am I.I don't want to lessen any respect that must be given to the maths in this discussion. The only comment that I would make is that there is a vast difference between knowing about something mathematically and knowing it experientially. (You also pointed this out)

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I basically came up with the notion of Jesus (as the only human being believed to exist through eternal time) being necessary as the "observer" that changed the essential nature of the behavior of all electrons during the formation of the universe as we know it. A

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Aside from the question of what “eternal time” might mean and the fact that human beings couldn’t live without a hospitable environment and the fact that most physicists seem to hold that observation is simply interaction with macroscopic objects - what is this “change” in the “essential nature of the behaviour of all electrons” you are talking about ? I’ve never heard of such a thing.

I'm just going with what I read in the theory. I don't have much of an understanding of quantum physics nor of the observer effect.

I don’t think you did go along with what you read. Certainly the webpage you linked to refers to the idea that conscious observation isn’t needed. And I have never heard of this change in electron behaviour and I doubt that you read it anywhere, either,

Perhaps I interpreted it in a biased fashion to conform to my preconceptions.

I looked at the site again and it specifically does not endorse the idea that conscious observation is needed.And I still don’t know where you could possibly have got the idea that there was some change in the behaviour of electrons early in the history of our universe.I will however point out that experiment has shown that particles are often NOT observed (in the relevant sense). Which is a bit of a problem if you want to try arguing that God counts as an”observer” in that sense (not that there is any reason why you’d have to).

As pointed out above by Tangle, we don't really perceive most of the 4%. Our understanding of it is based on its effects on the infinitesimal fraction of reality we do perceive. There are indeed different senses perceiving different parts of reality - there are animals which can directly sense changes in magnetic or electrical fields that we can't; there are animals that can see wavelengths of light that we can't, there are animals that can detect all manner of chemical traces that we can't. All of this stuff would be within the 4%, though - that's how we're able to understand it.Incidentally, does anyone know where this 96% figure comes from? Take dark energy, for instance. My understanding (which may well be wrong) is that dark energy is, in essence, the thing which accounts for the lambda term in the field equations of general relativity. We don't know what that thing is, but without that term the equations don't give answers that match observation. So we call whatever causes it 'dark energy' as a shorthand.What does it mean, then to say that dark energy makes up two-thirds of the universe?

But that's what you both do anyway... Yes, that's what religions have to do to prevent them dying when discoveries are made. If the dogma tries to hold on it just makes itself look stupid - earth being the centre of the universe, young earth, immutability of species etcWrong believes can't survive facts. But it takes time. Sure, but it doesn't work for at least two reasons. First, neither of you actually understand the science - and probably what science actually is (unless you've actually done any, it's hard to understand the discipline) - so you think you can just make stuff up. For scientists this sort of ad-hocery is non-scientific and/or just silly.And second, you can't recocile the bible with science - there's no point of contact. What you're indulging in is is a weird kind of pseudo-scientific, magical thinking. Yes, exactly, but we're only ever going to experience stuff like dark matter mathematically.On a more general note, those that refuse to acknowledge the facts of scientific discoveries are killing off religious belief because they're provably wrong. But those that accept them are having to indulge in these fantacies. It must be tricky - it would certainly have been easier a couple of hundred years ago when you could just accept what the preacher told you.It can only get harder too. In the coming years we'll probably create life from chemicals, find life on other planets, understand the neurology of beliefs and mess about with our own genomes.Religion is going to have to bend over backwards to keep any relevance at all. It's going to be an era of declining traditional beliefs and increasing fantastical and magical ones.