BTS: My QM example was just about testing the definition of 'cause', to get back on the track: Could you perhaps elaborate a bit on why God does not need to have a cause? (and i agree, much more fun than climate change)
Posts by bohm
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140The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
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140
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
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bohm
BTS: Just to set something straight, i have been throwing the word 'causality' around in the loose sence because i understood it here as also meaning that 'every effect has a cause'. My QM(/relativity) examples are NOT about a future event causing a past event (in the 'information back in time/ftl' kind of sence).
My QM example is about some events, ie. the creation of virtual particles, not having a 'cause' in the way i understand the word: they just seem to happend. That is, i think the idea of an 'unbroken' cause-event chain is one that needs more investigation and a very good definition of 'cause'.
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NEW GENERATION DEFINED -- April 15, 2010 Watchtower
by Ultimate Reality infrom jw.org, here is the new definition of the generation from the april 15, 2010 watchtower.. .
article: holy spirits role in the outworking of jehovahs purpose.
13 third, holy spirit is at work in bringing bible.
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bohm
FAIL!!!!
And i bet the next 'light' will be all about hinting that each of the two overlapping 'parts' of the generation is about 50-60 years, making all the dubs think the big A will come within a decade, max two.
IDIOTS! (the GB).
man i feel like swearing...
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140
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
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bohm
BTS: General relativity shows that gravity an acceleration has the same effect. Infact you could take it as a defining property of GR. Look it up if you think im full of it.
Special relativity put a limit to what velocities can be archived by acceleration, namely c. but if you go through the details you will see this does not affect the spacecraft, since its velocity will only approach c.
If you compare bobs experience with what an astronaut will experience when he fall into a black hole, the example is not so artificial... The schwarzchild solutions is the first thing you will see in GR, but its very, very strange stuff. i dont really understand it.
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140
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
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bohm
BTS: The exact fallout of Gödels incompleteness theorem in the case of physical systems and the mind is hard to gauge - Gödel only worked with a special types of formal systems he very carefully defined and i have only read the mathematics and not much about the rest. But if it applies in a way you describe - it also applies to the meta-system(s), and ultimately to 'God'. Thus i believe this line of reasoning leads to a positive answer to a kind of 'can God create a rock that is to hard to lift' type of question. :-).
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140
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
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bohm
BTS: hm. Let me try to make myself more clear: Your argument (as i understand it) relies on the following proposition(s): "The chain of causality cannot extend backwards infinitely. This would create a paradox. If there was an infinite chain of cause/effects, then it would take an infinite amount of time to arrive at the present". 10 years ago i would have bought that argument as 'common sence'. the problem is that physics often collide with common sence, let me give you two examples why i think it *may* have problems (and at least need to be specified).
First off, imagine Acme Spacecraft X. (ASX). ASX is radio controlled and can go as fast as you want it to (but less than light speed!) around a track with the push of a button. We put Bob on ASX and let Alice (who stand along the track) control the speed. ASX start out with speed x, but every time one time unit elapse (in alices frame) it increase its speed such that the clocks in ASX takes twice as long (in alices time) to measure out the next unit of time.
That is, from alices point of view, the time on bobs clock at time n will be:
1/1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 ... + 1/2^n
Notice that the sum of this is 2. The implications is the following: At the time bobs clock measure 2, an INFINITE amount of ticks on alices clock will have passed. Will bob say that Alices chain of causality extend backwards infinitely? my point is that one needs to define these things *very* carefully, taking into account different reference frames and so on.
Second example is good old quantum mechanics: A electron-positron pair is created in the middle of empty space because of zero-point oscilations. What were the cause?
The real issue here is that the big bang was the BEGINNING of space and time -- how can you define events without space and time? Can you then talk about a cause/effect relationship? this is such a weird thing that i just dont think its prudent to throw in an intelligent creator in the middle of it.
But lets put the physical objections asside and focus on the argument itself. You seem to assume that all things in the universe has a cause effect relationship, even though quantum mechanics may make it hard to see what it is. Why is the 'first cause' any different? why does he not have a cause, if everything else has? Is that a definition or what?
UPDATE: ASX ofcourse start out with speed x=1 :-).
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JW Apologists please tell me where your God was when .....
by wobble induring the dark days of the second world war , the monsters that ran a concentration camp decided to hang a child.. they hung the poor little chap so that it took half an hour for him to die, all the while making the other inmates look into the face of the child.. where was your god then ?
was he not strong enough to do anything or did he just not care ?.
if the first then he is a very weak god, if the second then,.
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bohm
An interesting question to the hard-liners: "What would God do that would make you think 'jez what a dick, that was pretty shitty thing to do.'". Genocide? Muder of childrens? Ordering rapes? allowing slavery? Punishing the grandchildren of those who do evil?
Perhaps another way to phrase the question: "Do you judge Gods actions with the same scrutiny that you would judge another mans?"
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140
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
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bohm
I first began posting on this thread because certain 'God proofs/arguments' was being thrown around that seemed to rely on faulty assumptions and poor logic - i didnt set out to disprove a God!
WOBBLE: The nature of God - first off, when i use 'God' i use it in the sence of Einstein (as do many in science): I would for example say "So God made the big bang and then..." when you want to communicate is: "I dont have any idea of why this is so and i happily admit that, but here we are so lets begin to study its properties and see where we end". There is nothing else in it :-). So i read your question as why mathematics is true - I think the underlying question is if it is possible to imagine a universe where different matematical truths were truths than in ours, perhaps an universe where modus ponens where not true, or where DD's argument was entirely logical. Its a deep question, you may wish to read up on Tarski (mathematican around Gödels time) for some interesting truths about the nature of 'Truth' that will really boil your noodle.
JUSTHUMAN14, QUIETLYLEAVING: The problem here is a lot of things are mixed together, so i will only talk about evolution and the 'intelligent designer' here.
It is clear that evolution could have gone any number of ways; for example (if i remember correctly) mammals are only here because a virus spliced itself with reptilian DNA so the imune system could be suppressed instead of attacking the embryos. So exactly what specific species are here today is totally random and chaotic in the sence that very small perturbation of initial conditions would lead to a completely different ecosystem. it is impossible to know if that process was guided if God wanted to be subtle about it (which seem to be the case).
Nevertheless, i think an important question to ask is why stop there? If we have made one scientific theory 'guided', why not others? How about 'guided' gravity, where it seems like its just physical laws at work (like in the case of evolution), but God is there, 'guiding' it all to make sure it turns out just the way he want it. Or 'guided' quantum mechanics, quantum mechanics appear to be totally random, but what if all decoherence phenomena are really guided by god so they turn out just the way he wants them to turn out?
If i began to write long books about guided gravity, i would have a pretty strong case.
The problems we attribute to dark matter/energy (95% of the universe is made of dark matter/dark energy. It has never been observed, we just think its there because otherwise gravity makes no sence) is just Gods guiding hand and work, and all the problems with singularies in black holes could be an argument that it required Gods guiding hand to set things straight.
But nobody does that, and i think the reason are twofold: a) Evolution is in conflict with a litteral reading of genesis and thus have a large 'tradition' of denial around it and b) it would sound pretty silly. -
140
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
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bohm
PSacramento: Im not sure i understand your definition of faith. Is it 'faith' in medicine to say that AIDS will properly be cureable within the next century? Is it 'faith' in technology to say new high-tc superconductors will be synthezised within the next century which will be more usefull than what we currently have? Is it faith in biology to say that we will properly have a pretty good idea of how the cell works in a century or two?
I thought faith was connected to the belief in God?
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140
The Probabilty of there being an Intelligent Designer
by cantleave ini have been thinking a great deal about where i stand at this moment in time in terms of a belief in a creator verses a belief in an evolutionary process.
i think the best way to describe it is an exploratory path.
i look at what is around me and i acknowledge it is remarkable.
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bohm
PSacramento: Yes, indeed - what is the nature of consciousness? Is there a grand unified theory of space, time and the fundamental forces? Is there a fundamental reference frame in space? What is dark matter? Are we alone in the universe? Is there a God? Is time travel possible? -- some of these questions can only be answered possitive, but i hope and think many of them will be answered in the next century. Many of these questions will lead to new ones i cannot think of now, and there might be a dark horse like Gödels theorem that will answer a question i didnt even know you could ask, even less actually answer.
But i very much doubt science will ever be able to answer if red is prettier than green.