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God did not create the Universe
- Thread starter Skeptisch
- Start date
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
No, everyone who can understand it agrees. But only mathematicians and their ilk can understand it.
Primordial Annihilator
Well-Known Member
No one understands anything completely..and anyone that pretends to is an idiot.
Try M theory for complex mathematics...you wont have a clue.
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
Or R^11 depending on your chirality.
Anyway, in response to a bunch of these previous posts:
Hawking asserts that time began in the BBE because the geodesics used have a finite cut-off. Why? Because the geodesics used are finite. You said so yourself that physics are approximations, so of course we'll end up with finite time if we're using discrete geodesics.
Right now we don't have a background independent M-theory. We're still calculating strings perturbatively (i.e. we get answers in infinite, discrete sums). On a side note, string theories aren't as finite as the popular media has asserted (only the first few terms are proven finite, and starting at the fourth and fifth terms there are physically possible instances which could "blow up" into infinities).
There are no indications whatsoever that the BBE was the ontological beginning of the universe (by definition, all that exists). We can only assert that it was the beginning of the current state of the observable universe.
Nobody is claiming that we know what occurred before the BBE (or if the term "before" the BBE makes sense). It's entirely possible that time as we know it did start with the BBE but that wouldn't make it the beginning of ontological existence; as there could be another dimension of time or a higher dimensional metatime.
The point is that nobody can assert the universe began. There's no evidence for it, it's an unwarranted assumption. The only thing that can be asserted is that this state of the universe began.
Anyway, in response to a bunch of these previous posts:
Hawking asserts that time began in the BBE because the geodesics used have a finite cut-off. Why? Because the geodesics used are finite. You said so yourself that physics are approximations, so of course we'll end up with finite time if we're using discrete geodesics.
Right now we don't have a background independent M-theory. We're still calculating strings perturbatively (i.e. we get answers in infinite, discrete sums). On a side note, string theories aren't as finite as the popular media has asserted (only the first few terms are proven finite, and starting at the fourth and fifth terms there are physically possible instances which could "blow up" into infinities).
There are no indications whatsoever that the BBE was the ontological beginning of the universe (by definition, all that exists). We can only assert that it was the beginning of the current state of the observable universe.
Nobody is claiming that we know what occurred before the BBE (or if the term "before" the BBE makes sense). It's entirely possible that time as we know it did start with the BBE but that wouldn't make it the beginning of ontological existence; as there could be another dimension of time or a higher dimensional metatime.
The point is that nobody can assert the universe began. There's no evidence for it, it's an unwarranted assumption. The only thing that can be asserted is that this state of the universe began.
Let me first say MM, I really do admire your knowledge. I love science, but I have no where near the knowledge base you have, so I have to look things up you talk about and so on...
Anyway, do you think someone could agree with what you said and simply believe the Universe and it's laws have a conscience, an intellegence and therefore be God? I also would like to ask if you think faith has to replace science? In other words, if one believes in God,can they not believe what we learn about the universe?
InvestigateTruth
Veteran Member
If the universe had no beginning, it doesn't necessarily indicate that God does not exist. Does it?
It could have been that, the creation had always existed with the creator.
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PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
I know this wasn't addressed to me, but I have an opinion!
Personally, I find the idea of the universe's laws having a consciousness very silly. Physical laws can be reduced to a set of equations that describe how the universe evolves over time, so I don't think it makes sense to say that they have a consciousness.
As Polyhedral stated, I find this notion strange as well. Nothing about the laws of the universe (not just what we call the "laws of physics," which are approximations -- I mean the actual laws of the universe, whatever they are) suggests that they are conscious.
Consider one known law of the universe, identity: A = A, or anything that exists is itself and not something else. This is incorrigibly true, impossible to be false. But nothing about it suggests that it has any consciousness. We can't examine identity and say "Aha, this is a conscious thing" just from examining it.
In another post I used an analogy of dogs and collars. If I look at a dog on the street, I can tell just from examining it if it has a collar that it belongs to someone or recently belonged to someone: it's right there, I just have to examine its properties to deduce it.
Saying that the laws of the universe are an aspect of God or "are" God though is like looking at a dog without a collar. Nothing about examining it indicates that it's conscious or "part of" a conscious being -- so why believe that it is?
Maybe it is in some unknown way, but what I'm saying is we have no business making assertions without justification. Sure, that includes the fact that we can't say "God doesn't exist" (though we can say so if God is defined as something contradictory, like a square-circle)... but we can't just willy-nilly say one DOES exist either.
We must always ask ourselves: what do I think I know, and more importantly, HOW do I know it?
Yes that's possible. It's also possible that the universe did begin. I'm just saying that there are several possibilities and no way to distinguish which one is true, so we shouldn't be making any assertions about them until (if ever) evidence is forthcoming.
Taking a bunch of possible things for which we don't know the probabilities of them being true or not and just "picking" one is no different from choosing what to believe on a dice roll or a dart toss. It's irrational. So I'm arguing to everyone, "don't pick one." Just stick with the only thing any rational human can assert at this point in time: "I don't know."
I getcha. I guess it really is not something provable to anyone not receptive in either camp. I do really appreciate your courage to say that your belief, although you feel confident is not provable as well. Outside of my own family I don't know a whole lot of atheists that don't get insulting. Makes it easier to talk. Are you an academic, or just well researched?
InvestigateTruth
Veteran Member
I %100 agree. But there is a Truth. and many people think that they know the truth and others don't. They could be right, or wrong. That Truth can be any thing. it can be that there is a God or Gods or no God. It can be that the religions came from God or not. Even if there is a God, it is possible that He just gave us brain, and left us to ourselves. So, it could be that the religions are not true. or some true some are not. or all true, etc...
Now, let's say for the sake of argument, that, there is a person that lived somewhere on the earth, who was never exposed to any beliefs, neither through the parants or what so ever. then She/he comes to our society for the first time and he hears so many different beliefs, and everybody thinks he is right and others are wrong. My question is, what should be a proper approach for him/her to investigate fairly and justly? What set of requirement are there to accept or reject if something is truth or not?
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The thing is, though, that I don't have a belief on the matter. I don't form beliefs which I can't support.
I am an atheist, but not a "strong atheist." I use the definition of atheism that means simply that I'm without belief that god(s) exist. That's not the same as believing god(s) don't exist -- a lack of belief is not the same as a belief in lack, so to say. I'm just unconvinced god(s) exist.
I also don't believe the universe always existed. I'm only arguing that as far as we know, it could have; and that therefore statements like "The universe began to exist" are unjustified assumptions. I hang back and say "I don't know." I do lean towards the possibility that it might have always existed by extrapolating from the conservation of energy that energy has maybe always existed, but I don't actively believe it -- just acknowledge that it's possible. I also acknowledge that it's possible the universe did begin, even if I find it unlikely subjectively.
I'm not sure what you mean by an academic. I just started grad school for foundational cosmology. It's more mathematics and metaphysics than physics, really. Foundational cosmology is all about how to describe a universe that we're unable to look at from outside, which is mostly a bunch of esoteric mathematics like topos theory, noncommutative geometry, etc. It's also a lot of metaphysics.
I agree there is a truth. There must be one thing that is true, and we've only seen glimpses that we know absolutely are true (such as identity, and that we ourselves exist through cogito ergo sum). As far as we know though everything else we think we know could be wrong, but that doesn't stop us from trying to approach truth as earnestly as we can.
As for your analogy of the tabla rasa person, the "blank slate," I love that analogy and use it often. "What do we know and how do we know it," that's exactly what that person will be asking.
What that person can do is investigate epistemology, the study of knowledge, for themselves and first learn how to think before they learn what to think.
Epistemology takes volumes of books and years to learn; also it's a blanket term for many different ideas and concepts (it isn't just one field or thing), so I can't post here on RF what this person would need to do specifically.
But they just need to learn some basic things: such as how to identify a fallacy, and why a particular fallacy doesn't lead to truth. Argumentum ad hominem doesn't lead to truth because whether or not a person beats their wife has nothing to do with whether or not their theory of gravity is legitimate, for instance: these are the types of rules they need to learn.
They need to learn that to know something, that belief must be justified: that knowledge is justified true belief. I can toss a dart at a spinning wheel and ask "What is the capitol of Missouri," and it's possible the dart will land by chance on "Jefferson City." They need to realize why this method doesn't give knowledge: I now have a true belief (that Jefferson City is the capitol of Missouri), but because my method of learning doesn't produce knowledge, I don't know that the capitol of Missouri is Jefferson City, even if my belief is true.
I can believe something that's true by chance or by a false method, but I can't know that it's true unless my method is justified.
Knowledge implies our ability to know why we know it, and some things: coin flipping, dart tossing, unjustified faith -- do not lead to knowledge. Only certain things lead to knowledge, and those are what this person needs to learn.
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Primordial Annihilator
Well-Known Member
The universe did have a beginning...and also has an end...eternal expansion and the eventual decay of all matter into energy, leaving an absolute space.
According to the BB theory.
The universe started at a point locale with no linear dimensions and expanded rapidy, the metric expansion of space thus had a point of origin.
About 10-34 seconds after the Big Bang event the universe entered its inflationary phase whereby the univere metrically expanded it's volume by a factor of about 10 ^78
The universe's current state had a beginning. There is no reason to suppose that the universe didn't exist before the Big Bang Event in some other state. Some physicists assert that time itself began with the BBE, but the key to this assertion is understanding its assumptions. The reason Hawking says time had a beginning is because the geodesics currently used to examine the history of the BB assume spacetime is continuous and uses discrete geodesics to describe it.
Now, what happens if we try to describe something continuous with something discrete? There gets to be a point where the discrete measuring stick stops and can't go any further. So, no wonder our current models of physics suggest a "beginning" of time, right? Discrete geodesics require that there be a zero and then a one. It's a consequence of the paradigms and the models being used, not some deeply insightful statement about the nature of reality and the universe. Furthermore, we know that the current paradigms and models (on which Hawking's assertion is based) are incomplete: we don't have a working model of quantum gravity, and Hawking's geodesics could be incomplete for any number of reasons.
His assumptions break down if:
1) Spacetime isn't continuous. As an interesting sidenote, so far three(!) independent models of quantum gravity, though themselves incomplete, suggest that spacetime may be discrete, not continuous. Loop quantum gravity, string theory, and general approaches from black hole thermodynamics ALL suggest finite, discrete spacetime. This is sort of like walking into a room with three different clocks that run on different principles that all agree on the same time -- not likely to be a coincidence.
2) Quantum gravity doesn't end up using finite geodesics.
Etc.
Also, the fact remains that time has no real ontology for itself. Space and time are like sentences; they are defined only by a collection of things in certain orders and paradigms. It makes no sense to speak of a sentence without words or just one word just as it makes no sense to speak of time without objects or with just one object.
The nature of time is also the issue here. Even if time begins, that doesn't mean the beginning of ontological existence (i.e. beginning of the universe). There are many ways in which the beginning of time wouldn't mean the beginning of existence.
1) There could be multiple dimensions of time, which is indeed the case in some string theories.
2) Time may flow in both directions from an entropic minimum. This possibility is interesting because it would mean there is another universe on the "other side" of the Big Bang timeline that, if we could see it, would be running in backwards time (and to any inhabitants of that universe, our universe would be running in backwards time). It could even be our universe "on the other side" such as in some cycling universe ideas.
This is also interesting because we wouldn't describe backwards time as -t. For instance, moving forward in space but backwards in time can't be typed as -v, because v = s/t (my school had us use "s" for distance), and -v would = -s/t, which would be interpreted as moving backwards in space but still forwards in time. No, to describe moving forwards in space but backwards through time we must type vi, and similarly if just speaking of time we must type it ti and treat backwards time on an imaginary plane. In physics there's something called CPT symmetry (or PCT, or TPC, have seen all combos) which stands for charge-parity-time symmetry. For instance the "CP mirror" of matter is called antimatter because it's reversed in charge and parity but not in time (though Feynman suggested antimatter could be reverse-time matter). The "P mirror" of levo-amino acids are dextro-amino acids, or just your reflection in a mirror. You get the idea. Well, so far we haven't discovered solid proof that there is a "T mirror," or reverse time...
...but that brings me back to why I mentioned having to type backwards time with imaginary qualifiers. As it so happens, every time we solve Schroedinger's equation to determine the wave-function for a particular thing, it gives us two results -- a real and an imaginary answer. Scientists just throw the imaginary answer away as an artifact of the mathematics, but some physicists are wondering whether or not the imaginary answer is telling us information about the T mirror... anyway, that's all unrelated but interesting, so I thought I'd post it.
3) There could be a more encompassing metatime. This is best described graphically, with dashes being metatime and plus signs being finite existences of what we call "time" right now:
<---------+++++++-----------+++++++-----------+++(current universe)+++------>
If metatime exists, then "time" can indeed begin and end but there is still a more encompassing metatime between finite spurts of "time."
To summarize, this isn't an easy issue in any respect, and it doesn't help that people are running around with bold (yet unjustified) assumptions.
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InvestigateTruth
Veteran Member
If God exists, God would be an unknowable Essence. An Essence that no one has access to Him. and there is no science and knowledge among people that can lead us to Him. There is no science that once we study, then we can discover God and go and find where God is.
Therefore any current knowledge among people in this case cannot help, and has never helped.
Do you know anybody that after studying certain things, he discovered God?
I wasn't saying that science is the only way to know, though -- in fact, it most certainly isn't. Science is how we can grow to know things about the empirical, physical universe -- it's the best method there -- but the universe is so much more than just that. Science is really just a corner of reality, and while it should be respected for being so successful at that corner of reality (materialism) that isn't the whole of existence.
Metaphysics are also valid ways to know things. We didn't come to know that we ourselves exist through science, but through metaphysics -- "I think, therefore I am," the cogito ergo sum, is a good example of knowledge we've attained that didn't come through science.
If God is unknowable, then nobody should be claiming knowledge of God. If God has no justification, then nobody should be claiming belief in God.
However that might not be the case. We don't have to know 100% about something to rationally believe it exists. Consider your computer -- you probably don't have any better idea than I do how it works, but you believe it does work, and that belief is rational even though you don't know the specifics. Why? Because you have rational justification that it exists and does what it's supposed to. You could, if you wanted, open up a text file and predict that if you typed a string of letters that they would appear there in a clear cause-effect relationship. There's no guesswork involved that your computer works, or that it exists, even if you don't know exactly how it works.
It may be possible that God can be rationally believed in a similar way: for instance, Robert Maydole has an argument that God exists by the nature of necessity, Alvin Plantinga has an argument that God exists because God is ontologically necessary, and so on -- the justification doesn't have to be physical/empirical/scientific, but it must be a valid justification.
If there is no valid justification for belief that god(s) exist then the belief shouldn't be held any more than we should "believe in" slithey toves or frumnious bandersnatches -- and for the same reason, because belief in the unknowable is nonsense because you don't even know what's believed in. If belief in God is to be rational then at least part of God should be knowable.
Etritonakin
Well-Known Member
A post of mine from a similar thread....
I see it as quite logical to conclude that the because both "will" and "stuff" NOW exist -(intent and something upon which to exert intent) -it is more likely that both have always existed rather than one without the other -or that will is simply an accident/random occurrence.
If it is true that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, then life, human will, creativity, etc... are not accidental or random, but the result of a "mold", if you will -a casting, negative image, etc...
...and I see it as at least far more likely that what we call the "big bang" was initiated by will -to achieve what has come to pass. I believe it is absolutely necessarily so -but for the sake of argument, I'll say more likely.
We once thought individual cells to be rather simple, but we have found that they are extremely ordered and complex.
The following is rather simplistic, but the point is valid... If you have a being with "will" -amidst a bunch of "stuff", it is at least far more likely than not for the "stuff" to become ordered (especially arranged into complex systems -even with specific functions) due to that being exerting its will.
We see this by our own example.
Not considering for a moment whether or not the universe was designed -think of the planet Mars -and let's assume there is no life -or remnants thereof -on Mars. Is it more likely that Mars becomes inhabited by life forms by our doing nothing and waiting to see if it happens -or by our making it happen?
I see it as quite logical to conclude that the because both "will" and "stuff" NOW exist -(intent and something upon which to exert intent) -it is more likely that both have always existed rather than one without the other -or that will is simply an accident/random occurrence.
If it is true that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, then life, human will, creativity, etc... are not accidental or random, but the result of a "mold", if you will -a casting, negative image, etc...
...and I see it as at least far more likely that what we call the "big bang" was initiated by will -to achieve what has come to pass. I believe it is absolutely necessarily so -but for the sake of argument, I'll say more likely.
We once thought individual cells to be rather simple, but we have found that they are extremely ordered and complex.
The following is rather simplistic, but the point is valid... If you have a being with "will" -amidst a bunch of "stuff", it is at least far more likely than not for the "stuff" to become ordered (especially arranged into complex systems -even with specific functions) due to that being exerting its will.
We see this by our own example.
Not considering for a moment whether or not the universe was designed -think of the planet Mars -and let's assume there is no life -or remnants thereof -on Mars. Is it more likely that Mars becomes inhabited by life forms by our doing nothing and waiting to see if it happens -or by our making it happen?
Hello IT
Some of us would differ (and I will also point at your name here). It is said that the truth eludes uncontemplatives. Blind faith is an hindrance, IMO. Some atheists similar as some theists have actually similar faith -- closed and shut faith in their notions. Proper listening with an open stance (acknowledging that even I may be wrong) and contemplating is a valid path. But, I agree that mental knowledge is like pointers used in software programs and not the actual destination/location.
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