Tiberius
Well-Known Member
The gaps in our certainty.
As in, people invoking God to explain the things that we currently can't explain.
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Are there any good arguments for God?
- Thread starter Tiberius
- Start date
The gaps in our certainty.
As in, people invoking God to explain the things that we currently can't explain.
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
My experience as well.
If there is certainty, then it's not complete uncertainty.
As in people invoking objective reality to explain things that we currently can't account for.
allfoak
Alchemist
allfoak
Alchemist
How do you know?
Yet we find such timelessness independently of quantum physics. Those who argue for an ontological interpretation of spacetime (i.e., we actually live in a 4-D, non-Euclidean space) necessarily deny that time exist. This position is described will by proponents in e.g.,
Heller, M. (1990). The Ontology of Physical Objects. Four-Dimensional Hunks of Matter (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy). Cambridge University Press.
Petkov, V. (2005). Relativity and the Nature of Spacetime. Springer.
Sider, T. (2001). Four-Dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time. Oxford University Press.
True, relativity isn't the only way we get a block universe, but it is the central way even when we move into relativistic quantum physics or beyond into the branes and topologies of string theories (even in the TI, which I don't generally regard as proposing timelessness, the closest we get to it is with the spacetime of relativity). Non-relativistic quantum mechanics actually is better able to deal with time than classical mechanics.
True. But nonlocality simply implies instantaneous action at a distance. It makes timelessness more difficult, because in SR and GR simultaneity is absent globally and defined relativistically locally via light-cones or their generalized analogues. QM requires instantaneous interactions regardless of distance or reference frame. It brings simultaneity back into the global picture.
Infinite-dimensional spaces are so problematic that in quantum mechanics one of the most typical infinite-dimensional spaces is made to be finite-dimensional. The space is a Hilbert space, which is a pretty plain-Jane complex vector space with some additional structures (an inner product, which also serves as a norm, strong convergence, etc.). Finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces loose some of the power of their infinite-dimensional analogues, but in the finite case weak convergence gives you strong convergence, all inner product spaces that are finite-dimensional automatically qualify as Hilbert spaces, all operators on any finite-dimensional Hilbert spaces are necessarily bounded (extremely important in QM, where many operators are unbounded and special dense subspaces have to be constructed because otherwise these operators couldn't even be defined on the space) and compact, and finally (well, I could go on but I'm getting off track) and most importantly for any finite-dimensional Hilbert space H and given a self-adjoint operator A on that space, it is guaranteed that there will exist orthonormal basis of H of real eigenvectors (with real eigenvalues) for A.
In short, not only do things work better in the finite case, they often only work in the finite case. Also, quantum mechanics represented a historical shift in the development of mathematics. For centuries physicists and applied mathematicians worked on developing analysis (calculus) as the central mathematical tool for modeling systems, creating dynamical laws, etc. Then along came quantum mechanics and suddenly linear algebra, be it Heisenberg's matrix mechanics, Dirac's ket vectors and bra "vectors" that are really matrices, or just vector spaces, became the central tool. Much of the formalisms for quantum mechanics comes straight out of undergraduate level linear algebra. Unfortunately, many of the methods learned in such a course (such as how to find eigenvalues or determine the trace) don't work in the infinite-dimensional case. Also, much of the time it is impossible to work with quantum systems in infinite dimensional spaces (this is the case when one is dealing angular momentum or the spin state-vector).
I've found that many people tend to confuse the notion of "dimension" as it is used in physics and mathematics with more commonplace definitions. Most of the time, if you have 4, 10, or googol dimensions, they are all equal. Calling only one of them a "time" dimension and labeling the rest space will not "swamp" the time dimension. One of the reasons the mathematics of string theories is so difficult is because one needs to explain how extra dimensions aren't experienced, which means compactifying dimensions so that they closely approximate our 3+1D space (which in turn requires some creative mathematics, some of which was created just to do this, e.g., D-branes). The reason that the numbers of dimensions required by string theory are fixed is because all string theories have to make our classical world emerge radically fast at unimaginably tiny scales. Arbitrarily playing with dimensions doesn't allow this. Instead, 6-spatial dimensions are compatified into a special kind of manifold.
Basically, the only way to have extra dimensions is to make sure that time isn't "swamped by other dimensions", but the reverse.
I don't follow. Could you elaborate?
Locality concerns causality. Simply put, in order to causally influence something I must physically interact with it. If I see someone I know and want them to see me, I might call out their name from a distance, but this won't cause them to turn until the vibrations I've caused in the air with my voice reach their ear, triggering sensory neurons that send signals into their brain enabling them to "hear" me. In classical physics, the universe is fundamentally nonlocal, for more than in quantum physics. This is because of gravitation. According to classical mechanics, even extended to include special relativity, objects exert causal force on other objects instantaneously at-a-distance (nonlocality). So, for example, classical mechanics predicts that if the sun were to vanish, we would experience the release of its gravitational hold and go spinning off into the void despite the fact that we would still see the sun for several minutes.
Einstein fixed this strong nonlocality by explaining gravitation as spacetime curvature. He tried and failed to fix quantum nonlocality, which is considerably less problematic. So far as we can tell, quantum nonlocality doesn't allow for superluminal signaling and arguably doesn't pose an issue for causality (whether it does or not depends upon one's causal model and how one chooses to view the causal link between entangled systems).
Unlike in classical physics, where the dynamical laws show no time direction, time is intrinsic to quantum mechanics. It is inherently directional (asymmetric).
How so?
We've been able to take systems far larger than atoms, including molecules made up of hundreds of atoms, and cause them to be in a quantum superpositional state. I've attached a research paper published in nature communications detailing one such experiment.
If one considers the fundamental constants and laws as being essentially random (i.e., they were not designed but just happened to be the way they are and could have been otherwise), or if one holds that there are other parts to the universe (usually called other universes, whether "pocket" universes or "bubble" universes or whatever), then either the nature of these laws and values of these constants could be otherwise or actually are otherwise in other "universes". Most of the so-called "fine-tuned" parameters would not allow for any life anywhere and in some cases radically small changes would have meant the entire universe collapsed. This is not true of e.g., "fine-tuning" in chemistry, where the puddle of water turns out to take the shape it does and allow for life for that matter in part because of its incredibly special surface tension, its boiling and melting points, etc. Water is actually rather amazingly unique here (and in other ways, such as the decreased density of its solid from compared to liquid). And while it seems as if, had water possessed slightly different properties life might not have been possible, this to me isn't particularly impressive.
Rather, it is those finely-tuned cosmological parameters that all have to be just so such that slight differences would have made stars, the universe, planets, etc., but always also life (at least seemingly) completely impossible.
Neo Deist
Th.D. & D.Div. h.c.
I explained my position rather clearly. It's not my fault you have a personal vendetta against the term and are blinded by your bias. Welcome to the hyphenated club!
ThePainefulTruth
Romantic-Cynic
Because the lack of evidence is so perfect.
Not religious, only hopeful that there might be a Hereafter, after death.
ThePainefulTruth
Romantic-Cynic
Thus Sprach Zarathustra. The deist God is not cultural. In fact, it sprang up in spite of culture.
ThePainefulTruth
Romantic-Cynic
Ask those who seek religious control. God=Truth means to seek/pursue/worship the Truth. All else is hypocrisy. demagoguery and the frailties of human conduct.
I don't think God's existence is a matter to be evidenced at all. People will be theists or not as it fits their natural inclinations.
We should not make too much of it.
Nonsense. The deist God is the monotheist (typically Abrahamic) God, minus all the bits that have only shoddy support. The problem, though, is that what's left has no support at all.
Can this view be reconciled with the view that theism is factually true?
If not, aren't you really implying that theism is false?
Kueid
Avant-garde
I didn't understand what was your definition and forgot to write "if that is the case" at the end of the phrase. So, what you are saying?
You want ME to say WHY you should do something? Seriously? Pick whatever reason you want you don't need me for that.
Kueid
Avant-garde
For me it isn't. You want it to be meaningless? It's just a word.
And what challenge are you talking about?
I don't see how.
Only if I take the premise that theism must be either true or false. I do not take such a premise.
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
Well, since we know that reality exists, and we have used it to provide answers that are useful, why should we invoke anything other than reality when we are faced with something we don't know the answer to?
Or are you saying objective reality doesn't exist? If so, I'd love to see how you justify that claim.
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
We are the universe in miniature.
Anything you need to know, just ask yourself.
New age mumbo jumbo.
*Asks self what a proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is.*
*Can't answer.*
*Concludes that question is unanswerable.*
Yeah, that doesn't work.
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
What if the constants are connected?
For example, if we take a shape, such as a cube, and change it's size, there is a clear relationship between the change in volume and the change in surface area. If the constants of the universe are similarly connected, then their values would not be so random, would they?