Cosmology Flashcards
What are the 4 ways of knowing truth?
The 4 ways of knowing truth are:
1. Personal testimony, which includes intuition and inspiration
2. Authority, which includes friends, experts, tradition, & popular opinion
3. Rational, which includes reason & logic
4. Empirical, which includes sensory perceptions, experiments that can be tested, and & it works.
Name 3 cognitive evolutions that made people predisposed to conceive of supernatural agents?
Mercier, Brett, Azim Shariff, & Stephanie Kramer. The Belief in God: Why People Believe & Why They Don’t. Current Directions in Psychological Science. December 2018.
3 cognitive evolutions that predisposed people to conceive of supernatural agents are
- Hypersensitivity to clues because failing to notice dangerous agents was costlier than making false alarms
- Hypersensitivity to perceiving events & objects as relevant to human because of the need to understand intentionality & usefulness of tools
- Certain cultural beliefs were more likely to survive (e.g., an all-knowing god) because they favored behaviors such as cooperation.
What are 4 motives to believe in God?
Mercier, Brett, Azim Shariff, & Stephanie Kramer. The Belief in God: Why People Believe & Why They Don’t. Current Directions in Psychological Science. December 2018.
4 motives to believe in God are
1. a believed association with God creates a positive self-image
2. deceases feelings of aloneness
3. increases a sense of control
4. observing other engaging in religious behavior
Name 3 arguments against cosmology as evidence for theism?
Halvorson, Hans & Helge Kragh, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy “Cosmology & Theology”, Winter 2021
The arguments against cosmology as evidence against theism are
- the big bang theory doesn’t account for a 1st state of the universe before the big bang
- it makes no sense to have a “before” the big bang because time wasn’t yet introduced
- quantum cosmology postulates the probability of universes in which there is a high probability of one like ours.
What is the age of the universe and why?
The universe is 13.8 billion years old because any light or radiation that occurred more than 13.8 billion years ago hasn’t yet reached us.
Name 4 characteristics of the universe at the beginning
Tyson, Neil DeGrasse & Donald Goldsmith. Origins Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
- Infinitely dense
- dimensionless energy
- a quintillion (10 plus 15 zeros) hot
- Four fundamental forces (gravity, strong nuclear force, electromagnetic, & weak nuclear force) were 1 unified force
Name 8 things that happened in the first 2 minutes of the universe? What happened in the next 3 minutes and then in the next 380,000 years.
Tyson, Neil DeGrasse & Donald Goldsmith. Origins Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
- The first 1/20 of a tredcellionth of a second (10 followed by forty-three zeros) is a mystery.
- Black holes appeared and disappeared as time and space came into existence.
- Gravity separated from the other 3 forces.
- The strong nuclear force brokway whivh cased a rapid increase in energy and increased space by over 97 quadrillion times (97 followed by fifteen zeros).
- Density reduced.
- Energy became up quarks, down quarks, and anti-quarks.
- Quarks and anti-quarks combined to reconvert to energy. For every billion pairs, there was an extra quark, which later became matter.
- As the universe cooled, the electromagnetic force and weak nuclear force broke apart.
— - For about 3 minutes the strong nuclear foce bound quarks to form atoms. 1 up and 2 down quarks formed a neutral neutron. 2 up quarks and 1 down formed a proton with a positive charge equal to the negative charge of an electron.
— - When the universe cooled to less than a few thousand Kelvin, the electrons slowed down enough to combine with protons and neutrons and make the 3 lightest elements: hydrogen, heliium, and deuterium.
- For another 380,000 years the temperature remained hot and electrons bounced around. Then it dropped to half that of the sun’s surface and electrons joined nuclei while the universe continued to expand.
After the initial 380,000 years what happened for the first billion years of the universe?
Tyson, Neil DeGrasse & Donald Goldsmith. Origins Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
- The universe cooled and expanded
- The mass gathered into a hundred billion galaxies with billions of suns, each more than 10 times the size of our sun.
- The heat & pressure of the stars produced the remaining 91 elements, including carbon and oxygen.
4 The stars became supernovas and exploded, releasing the elements into the universe.
When, where, and how did solar system begin?
A little over 9 billion years after the beginning of the universe,
on an outer arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, away from the violence in the center of the galaxy,
a gas cloud with heavy elements formed a solar system which included a 2nd or 3rd generation sun, asteroids, comets, and planets.
Name 7 factors that make Earth special
- It’s away from the violence of the center of the galaxy
- Larger planets protected it from comets
- Distance from sun
- Tectonic plates & thin crust allow carbon to recycle
- Moon’s gravity stabilizes axis and climate
- Mass creates magnetic field that protects the atmosphere from solar winds.
- Correct amount of heavy elements to sustain life.
Name 9 of the 15 required constants in the early universe.
- up quarks
- down quarks
- anti-quarks
- energy
- gravity
- electromagnetism
- strong nuclear fore
- weak nuclear force
- speed of light
Name the consequence of 4 ratios
- If gravity had been weaker or electromagnetism stronger, stars would be too cold to become supernovas and release heavy elements.
- If gravity was stronger or electromagnetism weaker, stars would be small and burn up before biological evolution.
- If the nuclear force had been weaker or electromagnetism stronger, few gases beyond hydrogen would have formed.
- If the nuclear force had been stronger or electromagnetism weaker, all of the hydrogen would have become helium.
- If the ratio of up & down quarks was off or if the weak nuclear force was weaker, there would have been more neutrons and no hydrogen, which stars use to recreate heavy elements. If there was less neutrons, starts would have collapsed.
What are the odds of all fifteen constraints being correct so that a life-sustaining universe is formed?
1 out of 6 quintillion. If six thousand football fields were filled with piles of salt 60’ high, we’d have a greater probability of selecting the correct grain of salt than there is of the universe hitting all the correct numbers.
What are the 2 plausible alternatives for the creation of the universe?
- There is an infinite number of universes and ours hit the right numbers within the first 2 minutes of creation.
- The universe was designed by one or more masters of mathematics, physics, and biology.
Why not Intelligent Design?
Because if science later proves the phenominia, that removes the need for a creator/ Bio Logos
