I began talking about this in the God thread and figured I would just make a new one. Does anyone know much about this topic?

96% of the universe around us is dominated by a mysterious "dark energy & dark matter" that cannot be seen or measured with human abilities... and that only the remaining 4% of our world is what we can actually see.

My pastor did a sermon on this topic this morning. And I found it to be very interesting. What is that mysterious dark energy or matter surrounding us? Could it be the presence of God...?

Post your opinions...

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I don't think so either ;)

I just read an article proposing a completely new idea about gravity and how it works in order to explain dark energy/matter as simply illusions.. I doubt that our current knowledge of gravity is incorrect.. but these scientists bring up a very good point. It's all very interesting.. and now I will have to stay up past 2 a.m. reading about this b/c of you! lol

Yes, it is a very complicated and mystical phenomena.. even to physicists.

Yeah, it's pretty interesting though.

Wow

This is acctually something that i have never heard of. I think i will be up all night reading about it just like josh. You probably won't get many posts until then i imagine.

Wow wish the people doing our sermons/lessons would talk about something like that

Wow wish the people doing our sermons/lessons would talk about something like that

Yeah, I actually learn in service, instead of falling asleep. ;)

lol.. Yea, I was never actually taught anything about it.. A student brought it up once in our Physics C class, but our professor (who has his doctorate in physics) was unsure of the subject himself.. and could only give us general information about the subject.

Hey um.... How do we know dark matter exists if we do not have any way to measure it?

It's just saying that we only know 4% of what our universe consists of. Everything else is just simply measureless.

I see. Ahh i will probably work it out after reading a bit about it tonight i suppose.

Yeah yesterday in church all we learn about was loving our neighbors. A good lesson and yet a pretty classic topic

Don't suppose your church does audio recordings of your lessons do they christina?

That's good. :)

What do you think the dark matter/dark energy is?

Quite possibly, it is simply another form of matter.. An anti-matter, if you will... Since everything must have an opposite in order to exist... matter and existence must also have an opposite.. maybe this dark matter somehow cancels true matter..

Possibly.

I guess there's just no telling in what it could be.

I couldn't tell you that clearly without finding out more about it but my first guess from the things i have heard in the last half hour would probably be Chaos.

Quite possibly, it is simply another form of matter.. An anti-matter, if you will... Since everything must have an opposite in order to exist... matter and existence must also have an opposite.. maybe this dark matter somehow cancels true matter..

Sounds like something out of Star Trek while talking about how warp engines work.

lol.. I hated that show..

What do you mean that it's chaos?

>What is that mysterious dark energy or matter surrounding us?
A placeholder theory until we can explain the effects of the universe that brought about the theory.

>Could it be the presence of God...?
It could be anything, though the "presence of God" tends to be an explanation that halts scientific discovery and understanding.

>How do we know dark matter exists if we do not have any way to measure it?
We do have a way to measure it. Measure the matter that we can measure and if the result isn't enough to create cohesion, there must be matter that we can't see. That's the whole idea behind dark matter. Astrophysicists realized that there isn't enough visible matter to to hold the galaxies together. The estimated amount of gravity simply couldn't be created by that small amount to keep a galaxy from falling apart. So some genius (note the sarcasm) filled in the missing matter with something that can't be seen or measured, creatively calling it dark matter.

Similarly, dark energy is the result of measuring the expansion of the universe and trying to explain why it's increasing rather than slowing down or remaining the same.

>maybe this dark matter somehow cancels true matter..
Well first, dark matter couldn't be antimatter because it's visible matter that we can measure. Second, if dark matter canceled true matter, that would kind of defeat the purpose of dark matter which is to fill in the missing matter that measurements of the universe have highlighted.

commented: Interesting point of view +8

I think you people have been watching too much Outer Limits ;) Dark matter exists only in your imagination.

commented: LOL +2

>Could it be the presence of God...?
It could be anything, though the "presence of God" tends to be an explanation that halts scientific discovery and understanding.

Yes, that may be true... but science can only explain 4% of what we actually see. What about the other 96% of energy and matter surrounding us? If this is true, and science can't measure everything else dominating the universe, it could very well be the presence of God.

Anytime there is anything unexplainable by science, the Christians always jump to the conclusion that it's 'god'. Just b/c something is unknown to us, that doesn't mean it is caused by some supreme being..

Anytime there is anything unexplainable by science, the Christians always jump to the conclusion that it's 'god'. Just b/c something is unknown to us, that doesn't mean it is caused by some supreme being..

It can though.
And just to let you know, Christians think that God is in everything. So it's not like we would think it was anything else but that.

>What about the other 96% of energy and matter surrounding us?
What about it? Our understanding of science is extremely primitive. People who think we're technologically advanced, assume anything we don't know is unknowable, and then start to put a divine spin on things just make it harder to view the universe objectively. Religion is all well and good if you need that sort of thing to bring you comfort, but as a scientific explanation of who we are and where we came from, it's pretty weak.

commented: =) +6
commented: nice... +1

>What about the other 96% of energy and matter surrounding us?
What about it? Our understanding of science is extremely primitive. People who think we're technologically advanced, assume anything we don't know is unknowable, and then start to put a divine spin on things just make it harder to view the universe objectively. Religion is all well and good if you need that sort of thing to bring you comfort, but as a scientific explanation of who we are and where we came from, it's pretty weak.

How is it weak? It doesn't bring me comfort, it's more of a peace that passes all understanding. (Philippians 4:7) ;)

But honestly, how are we not technologically advanced? We know things that we shouldn't even need to know. And all of that information that has been gathered and measured accounts for only 4% of our entire universe?

>What about the other 96% of energy and matter surrounding us?
What about it? Our understanding of science is extremely primitive. People who think we're technologically advanced, assume anything we don't know is unknowable, and then start to put a divine spin on things just make it harder to view the universe objectively. Religion is all well and good if you need that sort of thing to bring you comfort, but as a scientific explanation of who we are and where we came from, it's pretty weak.

I agree completely :)

How is it weak? It doesn't bring me comfort, it's more of a peace that passes all understanding. (Philippians 4:7) ;)

The purpose of religion is to make people feel better about themselves.. It helps comfort you, and gives you hope for an afterlife and a purpose..

But honestly, how are we not technologically advanced? We know things that we shouldn't even need to know. And all of that information that has been gathered and measured accounts for only 4% of our entire universe?

Information that we shouldn't even need to know? We need to know everything... As for being technologically advanced, yes we are.. relative to the past. But the present is always technologically advanced if you look at it that way. Relative to everything that we still do not know about the universe, we are still primitive.

>We know things that we shouldn't even need to know.

I hear that ignorance is bliss. However I never hear that before.

>How is it weak?
Okay, let's look at it from the perspective of the bible. The goal of the bible is to explain the purpose of creation and guide people to righteousness. The goal of science is to explain the mechanics of creation, find consistency in what already exists, and predict future effects. The two are mutually exclusive, and that makes religion an extremely poor scientific solution. It gives you peace of mind, not understanding.

>It doesn't bring me comfort, it's more of a peace that passes all understanding.
A peace that passes all understanding sounds a great deal like comfort to me.

>We know things that we shouldn't even need to know.
I disagree. Humans are driven to to learn more. If you put a limit on knowledge, you go against our very nature.

>But honestly, how are we not technologically advanced?
>And all of that information that has been gathered and measured
>accounts for only 4% of our entire universe?
Did you just answer your own question? Clearly if our understanding accounts for only a small percentage of the universe, there's no way you can describe us as advanced.

Relative to everything that we still do not know about the universe, we are still primitive.

It's not talking about just outer space, it's talking about everything around us too. Even ourselves...

>How is it weak?
Okay, let's look at it from the perspective of the bible. The goal of the bible is to explain the purpose of creation and guide people to righteousness. The goal of science is to explain the mechanics of creation, find consistency in what already exists, and predict future effects. The two are mutually exclusive, and that makes religion an extremely poor scientific solution. It gives you peace of mind, not understanding.

I'm not saying it's a scientific solution. I've said this before, God does not equal science.

>It doesn't bring me comfort, it's more of a peace that passes all understanding.
A peace that passes all understanding sounds a great deal like comfort to me.

Duh, that's why I put the ';)' beside my statement.

>We know things that we shouldn't even need to know.
I disagree. Humans are driven to to learn more. If you put a limit on knowledge, you go against our very nature.

Sure.

>But honestly, how are we not technologically advanced?
>And all of that information that has been gathered and measured
>accounts for only 4% of our entire universe?
Did you just answer your own question? Clearly if our understanding accounts for only a small percentage of the universe, there's no way you can describe us as advanced.

K.

>I'm not saying it's a scientific solution. I've said this before, God does not equal science.
So why are you trying to use God to explain dark matter and dark energy? :icon_rolleyes:

>I'm not saying it's a scientific solution. I've said this before, God does not equal science.
So why are you trying to use God to explain dark matter and dark energy? :icon_rolleyes:

It's called a belief... or rather, faith.

You're just a bundle of contradictions, aren't you? :)

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