[G0atmaster]

Hey everyone, I know it's been, well, probably more than a year since my last post here. I honestly did plan to stay more active, and, well, I sorta moved off to college (as opposed to staying on the Community College spiral I had been stuck on for over 3 years), nearly lost one parent to a stroke, was disowned by the other, and have been very much caught up with trying to live life.

Anyway, while browsing on Facebook yesterday, I came across something so beautiful I felt I just had to share.

Some guy went out into the mountains and made a time-lapse video of the Milky Way, and some other stuff.  It came out amazing. Check it out:

http://vimeo.com/terjes/themountain

I found it on a blog site, located here:

http://shuttersalt.com/blog/most-amazing-time-lapse-video-milky-way-ever-made-seriously


Now seeing as, until a few moments ago, it was the day that I celebrate the fact that my God, who, despite everything I do that makes me unworthy of love, loved me anyway enough to come and die for me, rose again,  I just gotta point out that the one thing this video makes me think of is this:

"God saw all that he had made, and it was very good."

I realize this is the point where many of you lose all respect for this post and quit reading.  And that's okay.  But to the rest of you, I believe that everything about everything we know cries out a loud, resounding testimony of a Creator of astounding brilliance.  From the ennumerability of the periodic table to the vastness of the stars... I can't not see the hand of God in these things.  To say this is an accident with any degree of certainty is just... so unimaginable!


This video is perhaps the most breathtakingly beautiful footage of nature I have ever seen.  But if this is all unplanned, why should I have any reason to think so?  The brilliant yellow flowers on the green stalks.  The blues and grays of the fog, the brilliant starscape on the deep black void of space...  If my thoughts are merely electrochemical surges... from whence does such a concept as such beauty come from?  And if such a chemical process is random, accidental... how could I ever suppose it were so?

And even of the opposite: How could we possibly have any idea that anything is bad, or evil, without having some concept of what "right" is?  From whence has this come?

It may seem a stroke away from madness that such a video could move a man to such thoughts... or that I've come to such a conclusion. And I realize I'm probably beginning to ramble.

But tell me this:  What is love?  Why does it exist?  Sex is sufficient for procreation.  A herd instinct is enough for shelter and protection.  Why love? The best answer I can come up with is that love exists because God is love.  It, too, is a testimony to his character.  Hence the Crucifixion.


If you do not feel that I have wasted your time with such a post, please feel free to reply with your thoughts.  Oh, and regardless, do tell me what you think of the video

Happy Easter.

[JCDNWarrior]

Oh wow, and here I thought the Milky Way as we see it in WiH and other places was simply a beautiful artistic rendition. It truly looks this beautiful... That's awesome.

[G0atmaster]

Lol.  I thought the same!

[Black Wolf]

You couldn't have just posted a cool video instead of appending all the religious stuff which will inevitably end badly? Thread = watched.

[Herra Tohtori]

Well, there is some artistic lisence in how the milky way is shown in-game simply because computer monitors don't offer nearly the amount of dynamic contrast required to reproduce the appearance of the milky way.


I recently managed to improve the milky way's appearance quite a bit, so you'll likely get an upgraded version in next BP release.

[JCDNWarrior]

Definitely looking forward to that, Herra, thanks for sharing.

Man, I bet that when I would go into space myself, i'd bug my eyes out looking for every tiny detail, every star i can see.. followed by promptly putting a huge telescope out of the ship to find all the other galaxies

[Mikes]

I recently managed to improve the milky way's appearance quite a bit,...

:grins:

little things that make me smirk

[General Battuta]

Cool video, could have spared us all the creationist stuff - it gets painful explaining all these things again. Everything you see as proof of the existence of a God seems clear evidence for the principle of mediocrity and the fundamental insignificance of humanity in a vast, mechanistic, and mindless cosmos ruled by physical law. Love is an oxytocin and vasopressin-mediated bonding behavior that enhances evolutionary fitness for both elements of the pair (though that doesn't make it any less wonderful to experience.)

It's interesting that you'd go so wild over the beauty of the video when the beauty is actually a human creation. Color correction was used to enhance the visuals.

Sorry.

go play some freespace

[Nemesis6]

I wanna know the exposure times of the milky-way time lapse shots, so I've fired off a message to the creator of the compilation.

Also, goat, if you wondering about complexity you should watch this little part of a lecture by evolutionary biologist Kenneth Miller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_HVrjKcvrU

Part of the whole lecture which you can find here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVRsWAjvQSg&feature=related
It's almost two-hours-long, but it's well worth it if you think Creationism has any merit.

[Enigmatic Entity]

It all happens once and a million times, just we can't normally see the MilkyWay like that; imagine a world where the inhabitants could actually see stuff like that

[Shivan Hunter]

Those time-lapses are truly epic.

You know, g0atmaster, I could just as easily use the beauty of Earth and of the universe as justification for the statement "Tevs suck". And a lot of people would get angry and flame me about it because there's no reason to divide up the HLPopulation like that; we can appreciate the beauty of the universe whether or not we believe Tevs suck.

Personally, the video speaks to me in much the same way it does to you. We are a tiny fraction of a huge, deterministic, mechanical system that we can observe and predict. The fact that we can look at the universe and know, through observation and measurement, what it is we're looking at, is far more wondrous than looking at an opaque, unpredictable universe ruled by a sapient entity whose rules we may not even agree with. Some of us would find that latter possibility truly stifling.

There's no reason to exclude a portion of HLP (that is, the atheists) from the awe of the universe. We can experience it as much as you can.

[EDIT] I wouldn't actually want to live on that world Enigmatic Entity since it would likely have no atmosphere (unless it's a colony on, say, the moon, in which case hell yes)

[Rodo]

Loved the vid, thanks

[jr2]

Awesome vid, G0atmaster.  And a Happy Easter to you too.

He is risen! 

[Bobboau]

don't worry about us, we tend to go out and look at this ourselves. I have seen the milkyway with my own eyes, there are a few places about 30 miles out that if you go there in the summer you can see the milkyway clear as a bell, I tend to bike there, yes, in the middle of the night.

as for the unnecessary religiosity and the reaction thereafter, I suppose I'd have to ask Mr goat, if you were wrong would you want to know? I would. but if you don't then there really isn't much to discuss on the matter.

[Mongoose]

Y'know, by any measure, I find the ****ting on what G0atmaster expressed in the original post to be far more irritating than the original expression thereof.  Can't those of you who don't share his beliefs just do an "Ooh, pretty" and leave it at that, or do we have to turn this into GenDisc Craphole Part Whatever?

More on-topic, ooh, pretty!

[General Battuta]

Y'know, by any measure, I find the ****ting on what G0atmaster expressed in the original post to be far more irritating than the original expression thereof.  Can't those of you who don't share his beliefs just do an "Ooh, pretty" and leave it at that, or do we have to turn this into GenDisc Craphole Part Whatever?

More on-topic, ooh, pretty!

Yeah, it's really irritating if people express beliefs to the same extent as the OP. We should only allow one person to express a belief and then everybody else can just shut up because it's a first come first serve forum.

I don't think it works like that. I spend a good part of my posts trying to defend Christians from the stupid and then we get these threads full of Christians (well only two so far, not you) who make me want to go burn crosses because they're acting so silly. Easter in particular seems to bring out the stupid bull**** that makes me want to give up tolerance and sit down with some Dawkins.

[Astronomiya]

The Milky Way will never appear that way to the naked eye, though it is just as beautiful in reality to my eyes.  Instead, it looks like a silvery cloud that spans the sky.  Several of the nebulae and star clusters in it are naked-eye objects, but they appear as little fuzz-balls, with no color; they're just not bright enough to register on the eye's cones.  From a dark site (or even a not-so-dark one), the dark lanes are very prominent and detailed.  From a truly dark site, it will cast shadows.

Also, the Earth's atmosphere is almost entirely transparent to visible light, so the stars and Milky Way do not appear appreciably brighter from space, assuming a clear, moonless night far from artificial light sources.

[General Battuta]

Y'know, by any measure, I find the ****ting on what G0atmaster expressed in the original post to be far more irritating than the original expression thereof.

You know, let's dissect this a little more. Looking back through the thread I see no ****ting whatsoever. Let's review. Most of the posts are about how the sky is pretty with a nice digression from Herra about skyboxes.

The only three posts that could possibly qualify as ****ting are those from myself, DarthGeek, and Nemesis. Nemesis linked a disagreeing viewpoint in a polite fashion. DarthGeek politely presented his own take on it, making it quite explicit it was a personal statement. I expressed my own views on the night sky in symmetry to G0atmaster's, and did not do so in a particularly rude matter.

I suppose you could argue Bobbau got involved too but mostly just said 'if you don't want to debate about it, fine'.

So there was hardly an issue at all instead you felt the need to make one. That's pretty crappy, kind of self-defeating don't you think?

Can't those of you who don't share his beliefs just do an "Ooh, pretty" and leave it at that, or do we have to turn this into GenDisc Craphole Part Whatever?

Only people who agree with me have the right to express their beliefs? One side gets to say OH PRETTY HERE IS WHAT I THINK, the other side gets OH PRETTY?

Nice. I wouldn't stand for that if it were your side getting the short end, pretty hypocritical of you not to take the same stance.

[qazwsx]

Oh joy, more classic gendisc drama...

[General Battuta]

Well if your point is

Can't those of you who don't share his beliefs just do an "Ooh, pretty" and leave it at that

and it could be applied as well to the post you're defending as everything else, you've probably not really thought things through v0v