SECOND law of TD
Posted on: May 24, 2007 - 7:56am
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SECOND law of TD
On TV you conveniently neglected to mention the SECOND law of thermo dynamics, which states that all matter and energy is changing in ONE direction, from a state of order to a state of chaos. So the sun will eventually expend itself and all the stars will expend themselves, and there will be nothing to put them back together (unless something put them together in the first place). If this LAW is true the universe cannot be infinitely old, because everything would have been in a state of complete chaos infinitely long ago.
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THIS universe has a beginning so it is not infinitely old. If you accept the possibilityof multi-verses then it is also possible that these other universes don't obey the 2nd law. But these other universes are 'off limits' to us.
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This has been dealt with repeatedly. You are misunderstanding what people are saying when they refer to an eternal universe.
The idea is that the energy which makes up the universe has existed forever. However, it has not necessarily always existed in this universe, under our set of laws. The start of our universe may more accurately be thought of as a change in state of the eternal matter and energy that existed before in which it condensed into a singularity, then burst out again into a new primordial energy ball. The Big Bang theory describes how the new universe expanded and developed the physical forces and matter/energy states that we see today.
So while we can observe no violation of the 2nd Law in our present universe, we cannot know what conditions might have prevailed in the universe that preceded it. Maybe it was entirely possible for order to spontaneously emerge in a closed system in that universe.
Another possibility is that it is simply inaccurate and invalid to talk about anything being older than the start of the universe. The initial singularity may have bent spacetime so much that all the arrows of time pointed forward. So asking what came before the universe might just be nonsense, like asking the exact value of Pi.
Yet another possibility is that the universe is not in fact a closed system and that energy from other universes, perhaps universes with higher levels of order, is somehow being added to this universe.
So there are a number of speculative theories that don't violate any observations which might allow for an eternal universe. This makes it a prefered theory to the theory of an eternal God, which requires that we add an element for which we have no evidence or theoretical support whatsoever.
The final answer, of course, is that we simply don't know, which does not in itself suggest any particular answer, especially God.
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
That is because other universes may have different laws of physics, the velocity of our big bang may well be why gravity has the strength that it does in this universe, and why our laws of physics are the way they are. I'm no physicist but I see your misconception. No scientist has ever said the universe is infinite in time. It has a beginning about 13-14 billion years ago. Or at least that is the beginning as we know it. We know that at one point all matter was concentrated into an unimaginably small space. It then expanded. We do not know where matter came from, nor whether or not it existed before the big bang. So it is not that the universe has an infinte history but that time might well be (whether or not time is a dimension in itself or simply the passing of events in all existence (I think the latter but am quite sure of the limited nature of my brain to conceptualise such things, I am human after all)).
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So there is a universe outside this universe(but it's really all still the universe, what?), but which acts upon this universe in mysterious ways. This is hard to separate in my mind from superstition, which is the feeling that we don't know the laws of the cosmos and that those laws may be contrary to what we call order. It's dangerously close to the basis of the darker and more immediately practical forms of supernaturalism.
Here are the basic assumptions of free thought. They are accepted at least pragmatically by all sane men and are unproven and unprovable:
1)The world around me is real and not a dream or delusion.
2)The world matters. It is wrong to see a child drowning and go on walking leisurely. That I have a responsibility to help or improve things I didn't make is unproven and unprovable.
3)Not one inch of my brain matter is the same as ten years ago, yet I feel pride for things well done and shame for things ill done. That there is an ego that exists and maintains through time is undemonstrable.
4)I have a responsibility for action.
I wonder if we can all assert where we stand with these assumptions. It's difficult to debate with skeptics that are skeptical at different points along the line of the dissolution of skepticism.
What no one knows, what no one has ever known, what no one will ever know scientifically is how something comes from nothing.
My amusement over the "debate" about the universe following the comment on nightline about the universe led me to compile this thread: (btw I am a scientist, albeit not a cosmologist, although I do enjoy it),
http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/miscellanous_forums/6990
"Physical reality” isn’t some arbitrary demarcation. It is defined in terms of what we can systematically investigate, directly or not, by means of our senses. It is preposterous to assert that the process of systematic scientific reasoning arbitrarily excludes “non-physical explanations” because the very notion of “non-physical explanation” is contradictory.
-Me
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1) This is based on quite simple reasoning. I experience therefore the experience exists. We do not assert that it is not a dream only this, it is the only world we know that we are ever likely to know, we treat it as real because it is real to our perceptions. If we all lived in The Matrix, that doesn't make the Matrix unreal, the Matrix would be real to us, we would treat it as real, the experience is in effect real.
2) Well yes, that is quite simple morality. It would be wrong. Right and Wrong are human inventions, they can perhaps be more clearly defined than they are by many people today (my task as an ethicist is to work out what harms and what creates enjoyment) but they are human creations and are desirable for our survival and living in society, evolution gave us the ability to reason morally because it is desirable that we do. Those of our ancestry that didn't have that ability died out through natural selection.
3) This is proven scientifically. However it is not the matter itself that holds memories. I can remember things from when I was very young, but very little of the matter then was the same as it is today, perhaps even none of it. It is the links in our brain that holds memories, when we think we create new links between various parts of our brain, these links do not disappear, when we replace cells we replace them as they were, nothing gets destroyed.
As far as I was aware it was more around 18-20 years though.
4) I'm not sure exactly what you mean here. Is this going back to the moral question? Well yes, I have responsibility for my actions, this is because I am human, we are communal creatures, if I do something wrong that jeopardises the group or someone in it then it is my fault, I should face whatever consequences that I may be justly subjected to.
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Jacob:
1)You are on the threshold of saying the world and the things and people around you are definitely not a dream. It seems you live this way. I wonder why you don't step over.
2)You speak of evolution as if it were a god on the mountaintop. How did evolution give you morality? Is the prospect of punishment the only thing stopping you from killing your worst enemy this very day? If so, there is nothing to make you save the drowning child if no one is around to see.
More later...I'm in Japan and going to bed. Have a good one.
No. Multiverse theory postulates multiple different universes outside this universe. The other universes are quite different, distinct entities. If you want to talk about the whole including all the different universes, we need a different word like "cosmos."
This is speculative and only one way to resolve the idea of an eternal cosmos. We have certainly never observed energy entering our universe from another one.
These theories differ from supernaturalism in that they are falsifiable and therefore science will eventually be able to choose between them. For instance, if we are ever able to find evidence that the primordial singularity was once not a singularity, we will have eliminated the theory that there was no time prior to that event and that theory will no longer be valid. Supernatural claims, on the other hand, are by definition unfalsifiable and unverifiable. Look up some of Todangst's threads for more on this.
1. Agree. It is certainly necessary in pragmatism to assume that the world is real. Otherwise our actions tend to lead to our deaths.
2. We feel this way and it is probably a universal law of human morality, but the moral value has no effect outside our species community. We can even observe other animals that don't share this moral view.
3. There are scientific, neurological explanations for this. No soul is implied or required.
4. Don't really get this one. Who's business is it but yours if you just want to sit around?
Lazy is a word we use when someone isn't doing what we want them to do.
- Dr. Joy Brown
1) I was using that as a justification of why we treat the world as if it is real, I accept pretty much that it is, it would be undesirable to do otherwise.
2) Moral reasoning is an asset the human race gained through evolution. Evolution is not a god type figure, evolution is how we came about, the process of natural selection. We are naturally moral whether we have a God or not, the difference is we atheists are moral because we are good people, many theists are only moral because they believe they will go to hell otherwise. So it is fear of punishment that stops many theists from being moral. It is also a twisted sense of heroism that makes some theists want to kill those that differ, committing immoral acts and justifying them by saying they'll go to heaven.
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Except that people generally do not hold to this type of hypothesis as dogmatic truth. I doubt anyone here would say that such a hypothesis is the way it is. They only say it is possible that it is the way it is and much less cumbersome than an infinite eternal omni-max sentience. i don't know is stillthe only real answer to a question of the origin of the nuniverse, if such a concept as the origin of 'everything that has ever been' even makes sense.
There is a universe. We know this. To require that the universe needs a pre-state is in itself an unfounded assumption. We have no real reason to assume anything other than that the universe simply is, has been for all of time, and speaking of before the universe or a cause for 'everything that is and has always been' is anything other than an absurdity.
From an individual's perspective this is a necessary belief, not an assumption. One can not reasonably believe otherwise. To believe that I exist in no environment is impossible. I have no way to understand the concept of existing nowhere so I must believe I exist somewhere. From that point to dismiss what I sense as the environment in which I live leaves me with nothing to know as the environment in which I exist and causes what I know as a necessity, my existence, to fall into incoherence.
And not a necessary concept at all. This is very much perspective reliant. There is no reason to think that from any viewpoint but that of those who experience the world in the same way I do, through sense organs and a similar data processor, that there is any such thing as responsibility or a concept that anything 'matters'.
From the viewpoint of the affected entity, however, it is easy to see why the world matters is a necessary concept. It is a societal necessity. Entities living in groups must have some mechanism by which they can co-exist. If evolution is true, that we have the concept that the world matters is completely understandable.
But is a necessity if I am to say I exist as my concept of existence requires the passage of time. To exist for no time makes no sense, thus if I am to accept that I exist, which I must, it is necessary that I exist for some amount of time. The mechanism by which this happens is puzzling to me, probably much more so than it is to a neurologist, but this does not mean that I simply assume I exist as who I am across time. I have no way to know existence except as existing across time.
How does this differ from 2.)?
“Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek" -- Tom Robbins