In a sense they are right
Posted on: March 12, 2011 - 7:10pm
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In a sense they are right
So they say "god" created everything but we know god is them and they are us and we are part of this universe so in a sense they are correct after all.
They were right the whole time /forehead slap
el oh el
Faith is the word but next to that snugged up closely "lie's" the want.
"By simple common sense I don't believe in god, in none."-Charlie Chaplin
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The point is moot.
The End
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
Nah.
God is part of existence, if he exists, therefore he cannot have created existence.
"Existence' either exists, or not. There is either Something or Nothing.
Clearly, there is Something.
BTW, 'Time' is not necessarily more than our perspective on one of the dimensions of Reality.
So the idea of "What caused existence to begin to exist?" doesn't necessarily make sense.
So there is no real sense to 'creation' of existence itself.
God is indeed in just the same position as us, if he exists at all. He cannot create himself, any more than we could.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
The part they conveniently leave out, is by which mechanism could something outside this existence, interface with this one, while remaining outside of it.
Kinda like messing about with the stuff in one room, while you never left the other room.
Awwww fuck, I hope no one is going to pull out some maths to attempt to logically prove that...
Yup. We cannot be sure of anything outside of what we could possibly perceive.
Agreed.
I don't understand why there could not have 'always' been particles and forces.
Why is this answer necessarily false?
Why?
If there was such a thing. Even though these people think they have all the bases covered with their 'attributes' of a god not being self defeating, I can see many self refuting claims about him, the more I think about it...
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
Wave–particle duality postulates that all matter exhibits both wave and particle properties. A central concept of quantum mechanics, this duality addresses the inability of classical concepts like "particle" and "wave" to fully describe the behavior of quantum-scale objects. Standard interpretations of quantum mechanics explain this paradox as a fundamental property of the Universe, while alternative interpretations explain the duality as an emergent, second-order consequence of various limitations of the observer.
Treatment in modern quantum mechanics
Wave–particle duality is deeply embedded into the foundations of quantum mechanics, so well that modern practitioners rarely discuss it as such. In the formalism of the theory, all the information about a particle is encoded in its wave function, a complex valued function roughly analogous to the amplitude of a wave at each point in space. This function evolves according to a differential equation (generically called the Schrödinger equation), and this equation gives rise[clarification needed] to wave-like phenomena such as interference and diffraction.
The particle-like behavior is most evident due to phenomena associated with measurement in quantum mechanics. Upon measuring the location of the particle, the wave-function will randomly "collapse," or rather, "decoheres" to a sharply peaked function at some location, with the likelihood of any particular location equal to the squared amplitude of the wave-function there. The measurement will return a well-defined position, (subject to uncertainty), a property traditionally associated with particles.
Although this picture is somewhat simplified (to the non-relativistic case), it is adequate to capture the essence of current thinking on the phenomena historically called "wave–particle duality".
Principles
1. A system is completely described by a wave function ψ, representing an observer's subjective knowledge of the system. (Heisenberg)
2. The description of nature is essentially probabilistic, with the probability of an event related to the square of the amplitude of the wave function related to it. (The Born rule, after Max Born)
3. It is not possible to know the value of all the properties of the system at the same time; those properties that are not known with precision must be described by probabilities. (Heisenberg's uncertainty principle)
4. Matter exhibits a wave–particle duality. An experiment can show the particle-like properties of matter, or the wave-like properties; in some experiments both of these complementary viewpoints must be invoked to explain the results, according to the complementarity principle of Niels Bohr.
5. Measuring devices are essentially classical devices, and measure only classical properties such as position and momentum.
6. The quantum mechanical description of large systems will closely approximate the classical description. (The correspondence principle of Bohr and Heisenberg.)
The very idea of particle seems to be based upon our behavior : measurement. Whether we are dealing with interference waves that we measure as particles or they particulate is another question. To me it still seems up for grabs... Alternative views:
Particle-only view
which will direct them to areas of constructive interference in preference to areas of destructive interference. This idea is held by a significant minority within the physics community.[25]
The pilot wave model, originally developed by Louis de Broglie and further developed by David Bohm into the hidden variable theory proposes that there is no duality, but rather particles are guided, in a deterministic fashion, by a pilot wave (or "quantum potential"
At least one physicist considers the “wave-duality” a misnomer, as L. Ballentine, Quantum Mechanics, A Modern Development, p. 4, explains:
When first discovered, particle diffraction was a source of great puzzlement. Are "particles" really "waves?" In the early experiments, the diffraction patterns were detected holistically by means of a photographic plate, which could not detect individual particles. As a result, the notion grew that particle and wave properties were mutually incompatible, or complementary, in the sense that different measurement apparatuses would be required to observe them. That idea, however, was only an unfortunate generalization from a technological limitation. Today it is possible to detect the arrival of individual electrons, and to see the diffraction pattern emerge as a statistical pattern made up of many small spots (Tonomura et al., 1989). Evidently, quantum particles are indeed particles, but whose behaviour is very different from classical physics would have us to expect.
Afshar's[26] experiment (2007) has demonstrated that it is possible to simultaneously observe both wave and particle properties of photons. Biddulph (2010)[27] has explained this by applying techniques from deterministic chaos to non-chaotic systems, in particular a computable version of Palmer's Universal Invariant Set proposition[28] (2009), which allows the apparent weirdness of quantum phenomena to be explained as artefacts of the quantum apparatus not a fundamental property of nature. Waves are shown to be the only means of describing motion, since smooth motion on a continuum is impossible. If a particle visits every point on its trajectory then the motion is an algorithm for each point. Turing[29] has shown that almost all numbers are non-computable, which means that there is no possible algorithm, so the set of points on a trajectory is sparse. This implies that motion is either jerky or wave-like. By removing the need to load the particle with the properties of space and time, a fully deterministic, local and causal description of quantum phenomena is possible by use of a simple dynamical operator on a Universal Invariant Set.
[edit] Wave-only view
At least one scientist proposes that the duality can be replaced by a "wave-only" view. Carver Mead's Collective Electrodynamics: Quantum Foundations of Electromagnetism (2000) analyzes the behavior of electrons and photons purely in terms of electron wave functions, and attributes the apparent particle-like behavior to quantization effects and eigenstates. According to reviewer David Haddon:[30]
Mead has cut the Gordian knot of quantum complementarity. He claims that atoms, with their neutrons, protons, and electrons, are not particles at all but pure waves of matter. Mead cites as the gross evidence of the exclusively wave nature of both light and matter the discovery between 1933 and 1996 of ten examples of pure wave phenomena, including the ubiquitous laser of CD players, the self-propagating electrical currents of superconductors, and the Bose–Einstein condensate of atoms.
Albert Einstein, who, in his search for a Unified Field Theory, did not accept wave-particle duality, wrote:[31]
This double nature of radiation (and of material corpuscles)...has been interpreted by quantum-mechanics in an ingenious and amazingly successful fashion. This interpretation...appears to me as only a temporary way out...
And theoretical physicist Mendel Sachs, who completed Einstein's unified field theory, writes:[32]
Instead, one has a single, holistic continuum, wherein what were formerly called discrete, separable particles of matter are instead the infinite number of distinguishable, though correlated manifestations of this continuum, that in principle is the universe. Hence, wave-particle dualism, which is foundational for the quantum theory, is replaced by wave (continuous field) monism.
The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is sometimes presented as a waves-only theory, including by its originator, Hugh Everett who referred to MWI as "the wave interpretation".[33]
The Three Wave Hypothesis of R. Horodecki relates the particle to wave.[34][35] The hypothesis implies that a massive particle is an intrinsically spatially as well as temporary extended wave phenomenon by a nonlinear law. According to M. I. Sanduk this hypothesis is related to a hypothetical bevel gear model.[36] Then both concepts of particle and wave may be attributed to an observation problem of the gear.[37]
[edit] Relational approach to wave–particle duality
Relational quantum mechanics is developed which regards the detection event as establishing a relationship between the quantized field and the detector. The inherent ambiguity associated with applying Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and thus wave–particle duality is subsequently avoided.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
You've probably read more about this than I, TG.
However, as an engineer, a lot of the base fundamentals of particle physics, and quantum theory, are things that are very analogous to me.
The concept of a the origins of space/time, emerging from a 2 dimensional plane of particles and forces, is very simple, and logical.
Waves can be looked at, as multi dimensional, and inherent to their characteristics, can produce limitless potentials, and enormously complex interactions, as science shows.
A single sine wave (off the top of my head) exhibit, polarity, phase, frequency, wavelength, amplitude, modulation.
When you combine simple since waves, then things rapidly progress to more complex interactions, like intermodulation, cancellations, peaks, nulls, non linearities, sympathetic waves, harmonics, enharmonics, dissonance, hysteresis, loops, radiation, radiation patterns.
Then you get complex systems where you get loops, feedback, regenerations, transmission lines, group delays through particles...
Some of these (byproduct) phenomenon could be very well be considered and classified as 'random creation'.
Then you get even more complex waveforms like sawtooth and triangle, and sinusoidal functions and 'transforms', and you can spend a lifetime just studying the base characteristics and constants surrounding them.
I'm sure BobSpence1 can chime in here, with more knowledge of EE. It's not my field.
Now......combine those phenomena, with particles and other forces....
And virtually anything seems possible.
Complexity emerging 'randomly' not only becomes more probable, it almost becomes impossible for it to not have occurred, which combined with chemistry, make the possiblity of primitive 'life' forms, hardly difficult to imagine, during the lifespan of this universe.
I'm *cough* sure Aristotle and his buddies factored all the sh1t in, in their conjecture, speculations and 'logics'. Just as I'm sure that every theist does...
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
I don't have a problem with either a wave or a particle but it sure seems to me we simply are applying the needed mathematics depending on whether we need behavior as a wave or behavior as a particle. No wonder a whole school of physics requires measurement or consciousness to collapse a probability field into actuality!!!!??? I would point to virtual particles. Rather than seeing these as real entities they seem to be mathematical constructs to explain an energy field. Again we are talking about the distinction of materialism from physicalism. It would seem to me that the mathematics as a whole satisfy the dilemma of location and momentum being mutually exclusive. The mathematical result is a conceptual extension of wave-like or field fluctuation with localization accommodated by particularization (whether virtual or real particle in the scenario). If so then there is a distinction in the conceptual logic from the actual or absolute state in question.
AS you say I certainly agree that order, structure are often random creation. One question I have for you since you have a good focus on waves is do you really need have particles for a nexus of interference... would wave flux or interference not give structure and so particualrization as emergent and secondary????? Or is it that a particle so interfers with timespace that the wave aspect is an extension of its existence? Both you and Bob have been very helpful in this type dialogue for me. Again the idea though of a virtual particle if more than a mathematical construct itself speaks of the idea of potentiality limiting and defining what actualizes as existent. The virtual particle after all does not exist it is only potential. To much to wrap my neocortex around....
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
Hmmm,.....I'm not sure if I'm interpreting your inquiries correctly?
Are you asking if particles are necessary for waves to propagate? Based on my understanding, the answer would be, yes.
From my understanding, everything with a specific gravity, or specific density, has a resonant frequency.
The 'vibrations' could be due to gravity, or fluctuations in gravity, or electro magnetism.....I don't know.
BobSpence1 might know.
I'm not sure anyone can answer those, with absolute certainty.
What I think CERN scientists are trying to determine, is that there could be other dimensions, that have forces or particles, on the other side of a 'membrane', or something of that nature.
If, during the full speed collision of particles in the LCH, they measure a loss of energy after the collision, it will point to that energy having transversed from our 'system' into another 'system'.
Since it appears that we cannot create, nor destroy matter/energy, it appears that it will have escaped from our 'closed loop'.
For many people, that will be more than sufficient to completely debunk the gods theory.
Space exploration could do that as well. If they find one other world where there was intelligent life, either past/present, the whole gods theory will go 'poof' as well for millions.
Time, will tell.
Just a weeeeeee bit of patience.
The 'truth' always comes out in the end...
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
The holographic principle is a property of quantum gravity and string theories which states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a boundary to the region—preferably a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerard 't Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind[1] who combined his ideas with previous ones of 't Hooft and Charles Thorn.[2] In fact, as pointed out by Bousso [3], Thorn observed in 1978 that string theory admits a lower dimensional description in which gravity emerges from it in what would now be called a holographic way.
In a larger and more speculative sense, the theory suggests that the entire universe can be seen as a two-dimensional information structure "painted" on the cosmological horizon, such that the three dimensions we observe are only an effective description at macroscopic scales and at low energies. Cosmological holography has not been made mathematically precise, partly because the cosmological horizon has a finite area and grows with time.[4][5]
The holographic principle was inspired by black hole thermodynamics, which implies that the maximal entropy in any region scales with the radius squared, and not cubed as might be expected. In the case of a black hole, the insight was that the description of all the objects which have fallen into the hole, can be entirely contained in surface fluctuations of the event horizon. The holographic principle resolves the black hole information paradox within the framework of string theory.[6]
http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/04/dark-energy-holographic-principle-and.html
The link claims we live in a blackhole and the three dimensional aspect of it is illusion and a mere projection of a 2 dimensional reality.
http://plus.maths.org/content/illusory-universe
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
In a sense... they are fail
Whoa!
That's heavy!
But, I guess if space/time is warped, and gravity can bend light......
I haven't had enough tequila for that kinda ch1t.
I can't quite do the mental gymnastics that Susskind theories seem to require from me, to visualize.
I think I'll wait for the movie...
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
Apart from the 'wave-particle' duality bit, a fundamental aspect of QM is the Uncertainty Principle, which I read as pointing to something I actually find very intuitive, personally, namely that Reality does not have infinite precision, which would require infinite information density.
The confusion/conflation between our clearly limited ability to measure precisely quantum scale events and elements, and the inherent uncertainty implied by the finite information density continues to annoy me. We do have ways to distinguish such effects to a useful degree.
Of course, my thoughts and understanding of these things continue to adjust and, hopefully, actually 'grow'.
Regarding the God thing:
I will stick to my position that the transparent misdirections of positing that God is either in his own ''reality" or alternatively is the 'ground' of our reality, are just semantic nonsense, word games, precisely the sort of thing that most philosophers spend most of their time indulging in. Theologians I do not take in any way as worth listening to, theology is an intellectually bankrupt study - I am very much with Sam Harris on that.
If God is the 'ground of being', that just amounts to saying God is a label for whatever fundamental regularity or Ultimate 'Law' defines Reality. It does not imply any of the other omni- attributes, and especially not anything associated with morality or 'goodness', that would allow anyone to honestly identify such a concept with the God of Abraham.
Lack of constraints, such as formally described by the Laws of Physics, and at another level, the Laws of Logic, would seem to me to imply pure chaos.
I keep coming back to referring to the totality of what is, which cannot exist as a consequence, 'temporal' or otherwise, of any part of itself, which God most assuredly is, by definition, if he exists.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I think the wave/particle duality is the right theory. It predicted/explains superposition, why light both interferes with itself and the photo-electric effect.
What I don't understand though, is the bending space thing about gravity. In those nice picture where you see that space, which was first a line, has now become a circle, so the particle will circle around the heavy object.
The particle is moving forward, but the space is bend so far that it's actually moving in a circle. How can you bend such a long line into a circle? And the bowling ball on a trampoline parable doesn't make sense either. The bowling ball is bending the trampoline because of gravity...
And why does something with mass get more influenced by something else with mass, when all mass does is bend space? A particle with mass is more influenced by the bend space than a massless particle? Doesn't make sense to me...
And since I'm already asking questions
How come you need a virtual particle to 'hit' a particle for it to have an effect. Why does it have to be adjacent to interact? Can't it just influence something from a distance?
God obviously cannot exit. Whitehead and various process philosophers show the result of such attempt to have a god as existent. That is why it left only the idea of being as a potentiality field in contemporary philosophy. But as you point out that at the most if you assume a transcendent ultimate law is only a bod6y of law and not a god. I think as far a discussion, debate and resolution with theism these topics that we have discussed need be addressed. It is not so much the TAG argument but the definition and idea of transcendence which you intuitively shiver, go yuk or whatever that is really the only avenue gap in cosmology that theism tries to exploit. The other is consciousness and the combining of QM with consciousness exploiting the weird stuff of each. This is rampant in New Age publishings like Depepak Chopra, Greg Braden and the like. And the disconcerting part of it is these type books outsell good science books.
Do think that it is as you say pure chaos, a false vacuum or that they are the same. What is the final state of our expanding entropic universe. Could that flat ending be the same as the beginning ( false vacuum with quantum tunneling)????
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
I definitely agree with you on the classic 'trampoline' picture, it is very misleading. For something to go in a circle purely due to the geometry of space, it needs to be the analogue of a cylindrical surface, not a dip in the surface as shown in that 'explanation'.
What further complicates it is that 'time' is involved, so that the 'shape' of space, really space-time, that a particle sees depends on its velocity. Or really, its momentum, mass x velocity, which is why different masses are deflected differently.
The apparent attraction between two masses cannot be explained by mere geometry, AFAICS, which is why physics proposes a particle, the graviton, to mediate the effects of gravity, just as other 'force' particles are associated with the other 'forces', electromagnetism, mediated by photons, and the 'strong' and 'weak' nuclear forces. Again, I personally can't quite 'see' how 'force' particles going back and forth between 'matter' particles (electrons, protons, and neutrons, etc) actually 'explain' the attraction or repulsion. I can only imagine I'd have to dig into physics even more deeply than I have time to.
A force particle has to actually directly 'hit' the matter particle because it is the 'carrier' of the apparent 'force at a distance'. If it could exert a force from a distance, it would need another particle to 'carry' that force...
The math 'works', but as with even more counter-intuitive stuff like Quantum Mechanics, conceptualizing it is very difficult, if possible at all, even for scientists, as is apparent by the different interpretations of QM.
So, don't feel bad or inadequate that you don't 'get it'.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
I was just making a funny twisted point really.
It always goes back to a zero.
TG, it does seem to come back to the old question they keep throwing at us, "Why is there Something rather than Nothing?".
Is it some fundamental structure or order that entails that 'something' exist? And how would that resolve it - why does that principle 'exist', or apply? And how could a God 'explain' that any better?
At some point, you have to simply accept that something just IS. Otherwise you are either in an endless loop, or a non-convergent infinite regress. Even a convergent infinite regress is troublesome - just what is the difference between infinitesimal and zero? Or something that 'approaches zero' in the limit? Shades of Zeno. Again, the Math is consistent and coherent, but WTF does it 'mean'?
BTW, I do see an interesting and somewhat complementary 'chemistry' between yourself, me, and redneF, coming at this stuff from different angles and backgrounds.
Aaarrgghh - my head hurts, must get back to something 'easy', my Javascript web programming...
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
Thanks for answering in a very understandable manner
I can change a div in HTML with a javascript script, now! It's really simple
And it looks very sexy, too.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
Hehe, I like how these threads always turn into some deep thought regarding our very existence. It's one of the reasons I like this forum so much.
TG, I also have a strictly philosophical understanding of those concepts ( particle/wave duality, uncertainty principle, even the holographic principle, dark matter/energy). I'm not sure why it should be so difficult to explain those concepts intuitively. I think a lot of it comes from our overinterpretation of the limited data, and our less than perfect instruments. I understand that those concepts make sense mathematically, but you can't help but wonder if we're missing something here. The picture is just incomplete, much like everyone thought the Ether was the answer prior to the theory of relativity. The Higgins Boson would be a good start, but if discovered I'm sure it will raise a lot more questions, conversely, not finding it would prompt some furious head scratching.
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
If that's the case, the next leading apologetic theory would make god as the singularity... ya, I'm not sure humans can wrap their head around the holographic principle in its totality. We can imagine what a blackhole may 'look' like, or rather the event horizon with some absence of light in the center, and we can grasp what a hologram looks like and it's fractal property, but the whole concept from a real world analogy is most likely beyond our limited imaginations outside mathematics. I remember watching a show on the holographic principle, it seemed logical when presented eloquently in a dumbed down simplified version. When you try to really comprehend it though, you realize the implications and you can hear your head go POP! as your mind is blown
"Don't seek these laws to understand. Only the mad can comprehend..." -- George Cosbuc
Yeah I know Theists will say God has just always been there, but that does not answer the question at all. What is it about Reality that entails that God exist?
There are (at least) two versions of multiple BB's. The earliest one was the cyclic one which assumed expansion would eventually slow and reverse into a Big Crunch, which would bounce back as a new Big Bang.
Or the variation you suggest, that the ultimate minimal energy, maximal entropy state of the expanded Universe becomes the 'quantum foam' that can, by quantum uncertainty, have a finite probability of momentarily being in the right state to initiate a new BB.
A more recent one I came across, suggested by the observation that the expansion seems to be accelerating is that as the fragments of matter left by the Big Rip reach a certain degree of fragmentation, IOW as the effect of Dark Energy becomes ever stronger, some of them can can initiate new Big Bangs. I really should refresh my understanding of this, but that is roughly the idea.
Favorite oxymorons: Gospel Truth, Rational Supernaturalist, Business Ethics, Christian Morality
"Theology is now little more than a branch of human ignorance. Indeed, it is ignorance with wings." - Sam Harris
The path to Truth lies via careful study of reality, not the dreams of our fallible minds - me
From the sublime to the ridiculous: Science -> Philosophy -> Theology
http://www.universetoday.com/22382/no-big-rip-in-our-future-chandra-provides-insights-into-dark-energy/
I like the statement of Peter O'Toole in the movie creator. One day a scientist will be looking through a microscope into the very eye of god. The first one who blinks will loose a testicle.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
The problem with human understanding and modeling of 'reality' is that there are too many 'subsets', and too many 'byproducts', and too much 'framework', for any 1 human mind to extrapolate and computate.
Just when one person thinks they already have too much 'data' to juggle, there is someone in a lab across the street, or in another postal code, who has as much, if not more, that you do, of 'other' things to 'factor' in to the equation.
Super computers are the only solution. The one and 'only' solution, to not only modeling, but inventing 'circuit diagrams', and doing virtual simulations of all the maths, to see if it's 'workable'.
IIRC, there have been a number of electronic circuits that have been 'wholly' conceptualized and designed by AI (artificial intelligence). Exactly what the circumstances were, I don't remember.
All these *cough" arguments, like the OA, the KCA, et al......are completely new to me. I'm an atheist of the highest order. I've lived in a virtual 'vacuum' from all this 'drivel'.
It's only in the months that I've been on here, that they've hit my radar.
To the theist, this might seem like it's an ' aha! Gotcha!', 'You don't know understand, which is why you don't believe', 'We know why 'logically' god exists'.
But, in
reality.... It's their 'thinking' that was always the 'problem'.
They are 'delusional' in every strong sense of the word, if they think those arguments are 'valid', let alone, workable.
It's really sad to see someone so convinced they actually think they know what they're talking about.
There are 2 problems with all of those 'arguments'.
1- Ignorance
2- Hubris
Those 2 problems plague all the 'philosophical' arguments. And I've pointed out how 'logic' is counterproductive to modeling forward, by using the classic "What goes up, MUST come down" illustration.
It's ONLY an utter fool, who thinks they've covered all the bases, and that their 'argument' is a robust, mechanically comprehensive, parallel analog of 'reality'.
It's an intellectually lazy person who says (a) is an apple, and (b) is an orange, and 'neglects' to factor in that there are more than 1 type of apple, and there are no 2 fucking apples are the same, within the same species of apple.
To make an analogy using apples and oranges, and then saying 'see??', it works as 'logically' as that.
I proved my 'logic' using the apples and oranges, ergo.....
Ergo NOTHING
Their 'formulas' always require 'hubris', to 'work'. One must 'agree' with 'oneself' that it is 'workable' for it to 'work'. A purely circular 'reasoning'.
It's like a magic trick. You see the coin disappear, and since you cannot 'imagine' how it could possibly disappear, the base human instinct is to 'reconcile' that somehow.
That is a 'reflex'.
Part of our base instinct for survival. We 'model' outcomes, and have to reconcile whether they are a threat to our well being. As such, we are 'junkies', to 'resolve' and 'quell' any 'emotional' byproducts of not having a 'satisfying' comprehension, of things.
Just as we now are fully aware of the complexities of 'time', being 'relative', and how that 'maps' onto the enormity of reality, we must also understand that 'reality' might be very 'distorted' and 'warped', to our HUMAN minds, which are incredibly reliant on our 'eyes'.
Our 'Mind's Eye'.
Imagine if the human species never evolved to have 'eyes'.
Imagine how impossible it would be to understand just a fraction of what we currently know. We would be completely 'boxed' into thinking that the earth was a limitless flat plane. One that extends infinitely. One that we could walk, and walk, and walk for all eternity, and never get to the 'end' of it.
And 'logically' this would be 'true'.
But, is this an accurate model, that reflects 'reality'?????
Not even close.
Yet, some *cough* philosophers, would argue endlessly that 'because it is logical, it is this way, and CANNOT be any other way than what is 'logical'....'that is logical, of course, or it would be NOT logical, and 'we' know that cannot be the case' 'Therefore, it must be logical'
You can 'use' this reasoning to prove any a priori assumption (that we use human biased PRECONDITIONED premises for), based on the 'constraints' of a posteriori, because if it is a PAST event, it necessarily follows if the 'premises are true' that it is a pure reflection of reality.
Well fuckin' Duhhh!!!!
It's a perfect circular reasoning.
It is true, if the premise is true.
If the premise (of x) is true, then it necessarily follows that it (x) must be true.
A 'true' cannot be 'true' and 'not true' at the same time.
Therefore, if something is 'true' it can only be 'true' , and not 'not true'.
Duhhh...
So, there is ALWAYS a naked assertion in ANY a priori 'guesstimate'.
You cannot 'logically' or 'realistically', or 'relativistically' get AHEAD of yourself, and distinguish 'true' from 'not true', in order to 'certify' the 'truth' of the 'truth nature' of the premises, that 'ouputs' the 'truth' conclusion.
You CANNOT.
Soooooo....the obvious way to overcome this problem, is to nakedly assert that the 'truth' trancends time/space, because it comes from the 'creator' of the absolute truths.
Which *cough* 'we' say is God himself.
'He' is the origin of 'truth', and while *cough' 'we' cannot get ahead of ourselves, 'He' does not have those limitations, therefore, that is how *cough* 'we' know the 'truth'.
By 'knowing' God, is knowing the 'truth'.
The obvious problem is that there are no books WRITTEN by GOD. There are NO words written by GOD.
None.
Zip.
Nadda.
There are ONLY words written by 'we', that are 'rumoured' to come from words 'spoken' by God.
Not a single religion on the planet has words written by God.
Not one.
This is ABSOLUTELY true.
The 1 question that will always point to the 'truth' of reality, is 'According to what?'
If someone tries to 'sidestep' this question, it is because you have found the falsification to their 'theory', and their theory collapses, and is NOT 'truly' workable, and as such, proves NOTHING in reality, because it is NOT a 'true' reflection of reality.
'We' cannot get ahead of ourselves.
All these arguments FAIL before they BEGIN.
Case Closed.
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
As for truth let me try this out on you.
Truth entails honest reporting or proposition. Fact entails truth. Existence entails fact. Being entails existence. Something must be in existence to be factual. Truth is the ethical communication of those facts as experienced. You can be wrong and not lying. But if you intentionally misrepresent the facts then you lie like a dog. You can be honest and truthful but wrong. Truth ultimately can only express the actual state of the conveyors perception. That perception may or may not correspond to reality. But if someone presents his perception as other than he experienced it he lies.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
Here's one for you....
Ignorance is both a blessing, and a curse. Both literally, and figuratively. Ignorance makes both not true/true, and true/not true. Ignorance both creates/destroys true. Ignorance lives after death. This is true. : redneF
How many contradictions are present, that should 'logically' self negate 'Ignorance' as being true, but, instead, increase it's veracity, and workability?...
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
The formulas we know as 'logic' are composed of 'narratives', that are 'facsimiles' authored by intelligent ignorants we recognize as 'ourselves', in an effort to 'agree with ourselves'.
The symbols (that represent those self authored narratives) are not 'evidence', or 'actuality'.
They are 'representative' substitutions for 'actual truths'.
Some of us (ourselves) will agree and certify our own narratives as absolutely true, without knowing the veracity of those truths. Making ourselves believers out of our disbeliefs.
Making ourselves delusional.
Self contradicting.
Self correcting.
Self serving.
Self defeating.
Self aggrandizing,
Self adopting.
Self loving.
Self hating.
Self destructive.
Self helping.
Self righteous.
Self centered.
Self indulgent.
Sadists and Masochists.
This is human.
This is all we are.
This is true...
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism
And you and I come full circle, my friend...
"Bartender! Another round for me and my new friend!......He's the devil, you know..."
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
Or we could go all Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey and create the beginning of our Universe a few moments before our existence isn't viable any more. Like we use all the energy that is in the universe, and twelve billion year old science to create the big bang that would make our universe, in the past.
You know what I think. If you want to travel back in time, you have to move faster than the speed of lights. In this way you make sure you can't get back to the place you originally were, thus unable to prevent yourself from time travelling: feedback problem solved!
OT: I think we need to make one huge mind of the entire earth (with some resources from other planets/asteroids) before we can contemplate the universe. It's going to be a huge network of quantum computers, with one huge neuron brain in the centre so it's conscious and can contemplate
Then we will not be individuals any more, but one collective force. Communism! But without the greed and emotions and everything that made it fail.
I like this particular post, and I want to challenge it.
This will clearly demonstrate to theists, how skeptics don't simply drink the koolaid, and question everything, in order to test the validity of a theory, but I digress...
Bob, on the topic of infinite information density....I don't see that being a 'problem' (sic). I feel it's just one of those 'It is what it is', things.
Like pi. It's a seemingly infinite density. I don't see any reason why this would be a problem to 'reality'.
I think in some ways, the 'white noise' of logical fallacies, has some residual effect on even those who are free thinkers, and we somewhat can get 'boxed in'.
During the discourses over the past few weeks, I've really modeled, in my mind, a lot of the things that we've talked about and argued.
I believe your point of immaterial actually being the most limiting constraint, is completely, and utterly irrefutable.
Particles, by their very nature, embody forces.
Forces are what create everything in our natural world.
When I started to informally study particle physics, the way I modeled it in my mind initially was incorrect, I believe. I was modeling 'solids', or ''physically encased' entities.
The way I model it now, is that they smallest sub atomic particle (for lack of a better term) , at it's core, is simply a collection of forces, that interact in a certain way, that develop it's 'interface' (with other smallest sub atomic particles), which acts like a 'skin', in the way of a 'force field', in relation to other 'collections'.
Put more simply, if you were able to shrink yourself down to a sub atomic level, and walk into one of these assemblies, it would be like smashing your face up against a sheet of glass, except, there's no actual 'physical' surface, it's just that you 'hit' (sic) the apex (metaphorical brick wall) of the repelling nature of that 'collection of forces'.
So, the 'skin' is simply a metaphorical 'idea'. A narrative for how we 'abbreviate' the mechanics, and 'nature' (interface) of these 'collectives of forces', in relation to one another.
Kind of like how some fluids do not mix. The 'difference' in 'collections of forces' between those 2, would be a 'weak' difference. The 'surface' tension differential, is strong enough to keep them 'repelled', but not weak enough, to make them both solute.
If this is true....
Immaterial, (by definition) means that there is the absence of any forces whatsoever (because by definition, only 'matter' is made of *stuff*), which in turn, means there is nothing to interface with the particles in this universe!
Ipso facto, there is NOTHING to it.
Nothing, is the absence of anything.
There's nothing that nothing can do.
Literally!
Because it has no 'means'.
Immaterial is the pinnacle of limitations!
It's useless.
It's an invalid.
God (by definition) is invalid
I keep asking myself " Are they just playin' stupid, or are they just plain stupid?..."
"To explain the unknown by the known is a logical procedure; to explain the known by the unknown is a form of theological lunacy" : David Brooks
" Only on the subject of God can smart people still imagine that they reap the fruits of human intelligence even as they plow them under." : Sam Harris
the uncertainty principle which is itself a mathematical construct to accommodate probability for lack of certain conclusion. I certainly have no problem with fundamental reality having a general fuzziness ( I have to wear glasses anyway) but it still seems to me that particles are secondary to force. A flat timespace has virtual particles granted virtual perhaps because of our subjective grounding in time. But I would tend to think that they come into existence from a potential inherent in the field which I certainly would call physical. But then to analyse my bias psychologically I would have to grant that I come from a philosophical background where there are a multitude of presuppositions about being and existence and matter as informed fields /forces. So I tend to follow physicist with information theory underpinnings. Ya know my fondness for the holographic principle.
"You can't write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say sometimes, so you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whip cream."--Frank Zappa
http://atheisticgod.blogspot.com/ Books on atheism