Daganev #fundie

Daganev #fundie forums.lusternia.com

[Again - You still don't overcome [Occam's] Razor. "An entity created the Universe" postulates one more entity than "The Universe just exists." In the absence of positive evidence for said entity, it can be declared an unneeded phantasm and shaved off.]

Saying that "the universe just exists" postulates one more behaviour for the universe that has no positive evidence for it. It can be declared an unneeded behaviour and shaved off.

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old comment by JD

"Godidit" Requires the following:
1) Prove deity (actual, not circular, logic required here)
1a) prove actual omnipotence and/or omnicience
1b) account for logical inconsistencies in claiming anything is capable of both, when also faced with various contradictory statements to original hypothesis within original hypothesis itself, such as "but he could do nothing against them for they had chariots of iron", and several instances of surprise...

2) Prove deity existed prior to universe
2a) develop measurement and calculation methods that acount for lack of spacetime prior to universe
2b) using 2a, ensure pre-existing deity, if proven, is identical to that postulated in 1.

3) Prove deity from 2 was responsible for universe.
3a) Prove no other deities had hand in "creation".
3b) Prove no other deities spawned this deity, or created it in the first place.
3c) Prove such "creation" was willed, not accidental or incidental, and guided, not simply set in motion.
3d) Prove said entity is "outside" of known physical laws and parameters, and capable of modifying them so as to account for numerous "modifications", and physical errors such as "earth before stars".

of course, little problem there is that their only claim, is also being used as "evidence", and they're dead-set against ever actually looking anywhere else, which is really no different from worshipping Lucky, because the lucky charms box says he made the magical marshmallow shapes, and he says they're magically delicious.

old comment by HeathenAngel

To be fair.. as was pointed out on one of the House MD episodes.. Occam's Razor does have its flaws.. ie (example used in the show) If a baby shows up and one person tells you that a stork dropped it off and another tells you that two people got together, exchanged fluids and nine months later.. here's the baby.. which possibility fits the test of Occam's Razor best? One bird? or Two people+?

That being said, this idiot doesn't quite understand that by "creating a creator" to explain the "creation", he is actually adding and extra factor that now has to be accounted for and explained. So he isn't "shaving" anything off, he is in fact adding more to it.

But who knows.. maybe I've just not consumed enough coffee yet.

old comment by David B.

"To be fair.. as was pointed out on one of the House MD episodes.. Occam's Razor does have its flaws.. ie (example used in the show) If a baby shows up and one person tells you that a stork dropped it off and another tells you that two people got together, exchanged fluids and nine months later.. here's the baby.. which possibility fits the test of Occam's Razor best? One bird? or Two people+?"

The 'two people' one. In the stork scenario you still haven't explained where the baby came from, you've just introduced a stork. It's a fallacy called 'begging the question', with - in this case - the question being "Where does the stork get the baby from?"

old comment by Daganev

This quote was taken out of context.

The question was, does Occam's Razor say that you must believe in an entity outside of the space-time universe to create the first event, or do we say that you must beleive that the laws of nature did not exist at one point, and then did apply at another point for no reason other than "the universe just exists"

I was arguing that both conclusions are equally weighted and are made from ignorance, and that you can not say that Occam's Razor chooses one over the other.

The "uneeded behaviour" is in refrence to the non existance of known physical laws for a period of 10^-43 seconds up till 3 minutes.

It was a simple argument of equality. But that is what you get for taking quotes out of context for no apparent reason. The replies are very funny. Which is all the more surprising since a link was provided for the context.

old comment by David B.

@mitbulls:

1) Actually, much of the complexity and structure of the observable universe may have resulted from those 'microscopic exceptions'

http://www.arxiv.org/abs/0704.1154

2a) Also, that 'everything' has a cause would not prove that there is a first cause, just that there is a prior cause, so the question still stands.

2b) In fact, that everything has a cause would seem to invalidate the idea of a 'first cause' a priori; you have merely included a cause without a prior cause to eliminate infinite regress, not shown that it is necessary to do so.

2c) Several formulations of M-theory (specifically those where the total angular momentum of the universe is non-zero), allow for an endless circulation of our 4-dimensional spacetime in the Calabi-Yau manifold (I thought there was an arXiv reference to this, but can't find it at the moment). So current physics does not (at this time) necessitate an ultimate cause.

old comment by mitbulls

@David B

1) Fair enough. I wouldn't go so far as to say that those microscopic exceptions are unimportant, simply that drawing macroscopic conclusions from them, especially given how little we understand of quantum mechanics, is not warranted.

2a/b) In that thread, I explain my theory for why the Original Cause did not require an external cause, which does not resort to simply avoiding an infinite regression.

2c) I am far from being a physicist, so I'm not familiar with the findings you are talking about. All of the physics I've seen suggest that spacetime itself requires a beginning. There are also philosophical arguments beyond the physical to make the same case. The cyclical model, while relatively widely accepted, is (in my opinion, from what I have studied) even less intellectually satisfying than appealing to an external cause.

@Mr. Smith
That is actually not a reliable conclusion. There is no way to actually demonstrate that an event has no cause, the best you can say is that we do not know the cause. Also, perhaps there is something about the uncertainty principal that I just don't know (as I said above, I'm no scientist). From my understanding, the uncertainty principle merely says that we cannot determine certain properties, not that those properties do not exist.

old comment by David B.

"All of the physics I've seen suggest that spacetime itself requires a beginning."

Well you are certainly free to postulate any cause you wish, cosmologists certainly do. However, cosmologists look for causes sufficient to explain the observable universe and with a characteristic fingerprint detectable within it, they don't just guess wildly (well, most of 'em don't).

I know of no physics that says the universe must have a cause, nor is it somehow constrained to satisfy you intellectually. The nearest we get is the big-bang model from cosmology that suggests a very hot, dense early universe, nothing more.

If we understand 'too little' about QM (variously described as one of the most confirmed and productive theories science has ever produced) to warrant drawing macroscopic conclusions from it, then the by comparison minute understanding we have of the earliest moments of the universe do not warrant the drawing of conclusions about whether it has or needs a cause.

old comment by mitbulls

@David B
I am actually doing the same thing - using laws of science and logic to deduce that the Universe must have had a cause. I will be getting to the fingerprints of said cause in a subsequent thread, but the idea for now is to address the idea that the universe could have sprung up from nowhere. The Law of Causality says that every event requires a cause. It is now being questioned somewhat due to discoveries in QM, but even those cannot disprove causality. As I said above, the best we can say is that we do not know what causes these events - we cannot reliably demonstrate that they do not have causes. I agree completely with the Big Bang; however, it doesn't explain much of anything.

The best argument I have yet heard to avoid an external cause for the Universe is that the Law of Causality does not really apply. However, until we are willing to make that same application to other areas of our lives, it seems like a weak argument. When a watermelon falls from the sky and lands on your head and you just keep walking rather than looking for who threw it, then you might be able to make a case for macroscopic application of our understanding of QM.

I am also not drawing conclusions based on our understanding of the early Universe, but based on our understanding of all other events which have occurred throughout history.

I would encourage you (and anyone else who wants to) to read through the thread Verithrax linked and post your objections there. I started the thread for this exact kind of conversation, but I get too confused keeping up with two conversations at once.

old comment by David B.

@mitbulls:

Not to be offensive, but I doubt you mean the same thing by 'laws of science and logic' as cosmologists do. In science a law is a succinct summation of observations in mathematical form, it is not expected to be universally or eternally true. I strongly suspect that there is little or no mathematics involved in your deductions and, to a cosmologist, they are nothing more than speculation.

As to "the best we can say is that we do not know what causes these [QM] events", please learn and understand Bell's Theorem and the subsequent experimental confirmation of Bell's inequality.

The height of your argument appears to be that we should expect a universe so hot and dense that there is no matter and just one unified force to behave like the world around us, you even admit as much. I'm sorry, but is there much point in discussing gauge invariance with someone who will not go beyond classical mechanics?

Besides, as no-one has yet demonstrated that the universe has a beginning, hence requires a cause, and as 'all events throughout history' have occurred in a universe that already existed, why should we just begin assuming that there must be some event that 'caused' the universe? Seems like an almighty break with tradition to me!

old comment by mitbulls

@David B
1) I believe my understanding of natural laws is actually pretty similar to that of cosmologists. They are not necessarily meant to be absolute, but they are always assumed to apply unless there is an empirical reason to assume otherwise.

2) I have heard briefly of Bell's Theorum, but I'm not familiar with all of the details. From my understanding, it does not negate the possibility of causality by unexpected factors. As I understand it, "local hidden variables" describes only those variables that are shared between the measured particles; the theorem does not seem to make any assumptions based on possible external influences. Also, if your first statement is to be taken at face value, then no scientific law can be universally applicable, let alone a scientific theorem. It still stands that you cannot say absolutely that causality does not exist in these situations, the best you can say is that it does not seem to. That was my original point.

3) Maybe you can take this opportunity to teach me something. I'm not sure how gauge invariance can apply to the second law of thermodynamics, which is what I used to reach the assumption that matter should eventually be used up and left with only heat.

4) As I said above, I believe it is common practice in science to assume that all laws of nature apply to any given event unless there is an empirical reason to believe otherwise. You seem to be turning this around and saying we should assume the laws do not apply unless there is empirical reason to believe otherwise. I would argue that this sort of statement is a demonstration of beginning with the conclusion and then constructing your understanding of the event to match, rather than truly approaching the event of the beginning as you would any other scientific endeavor.

old comment by David B.

1) And does, for example, the law of gravitation operate in a universe without a distinct force of gravity?

2) Bell's theorem is a rather unique bit of physics. The derived inequality is a precise mathematical consequence of three assumptions, logic, causality and realism (the local realism limitation was a restriction only of technique, 'strong Bell's' accounts for non-local realism also). You might also like to ponder why special relativity demands local realism in the first place.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7138/abs/nature05677.html

Bell's inequality has been empirically shown not to be true, so we presume one of the three assumptions is wrong. Traditionally we like to believe the universe behaves logically and that effects never preceed causes, so we reject reality as the false assumption. Acausality is accepted so that causality and logic can abide.

Of course you don't have to accept that choice, you can instead reject causality and have a real, deterministic and logical universe, albeit one in which we see the effects of things that have not happened yet.

Or perhaps logic is not to your taste? We may then inhabit a universe where everything has a cause and causes never follow effects. And where if A is true or B is true then A and B are false.

There is acausality, there is no causality or the universe is fundementally illogical. That is a mathematical certainty. Not lightly has Bell's theorem been called "the most profound theorem in science".

3) General Relativity can be formulated as a gauge theory and usually is for matters of cosmology. Maybe you can explain to me how you demonstrated that the universe is a system from which neither matter nor energy enters or leaves? This being a precondition for the 2LOT to apply.

4) We have reasons to believe that the laws of physics of the universe today do not apply to the early universe, for a start not all of the forces or particles we know existed then. There are reasons why cosmologists don't just 'roll the clock back' beyond a certain point and say for sure that the universe began like so, it's because we don't know.

If you are really interested, "Physics of the Early Universe" - edited by J.A. Peacock, A.F. Heavens[*] , and A.T. Davies is available on Google Book Search. I believe it also has a section on basic gauge theory.

http://books.google.com

[* Surely not! :-)]

old comment by David B.

Actually, my wife (an ex-cosmologist[*] herself) recommended "The First Three Minutes" by Steven Weinberg. It's probably a bit out of date, but is a good read and a convenient starting point.

http://www.amazon.com/First-Three-Minutes-Modern-Universe/dp/0465024378/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-2999223-0750817

I should also clarify that I am not suggesting that you (or anyone) should not speculate about the beginning or the end of the universe. I'm just suggesting that you don't confuse speculation with science.

Occam's razor cannot apply to either party in the original post, because Occam warned against multiplying entities beyond necessity. A speculative argument is usually almost entirely beyond necessity, as necessity has to be shown and not just assumed. In this example, arguing about whether a natural or supernatural, internal or external cause for the universe is least necessary is a bit pointless if you've yet to show that any cause is necessary in the first place.

Occam's razor is the most widely misused principle in logic. If you ever see someone using it against you, a good first response is always to ask them to demonstrate the necessity of whatever they chose not to cut! Most-times it is used by someone wanting to dismiss another person's assumptions while ignoring their own.

[* Uh, my wife is an ex-atrophysicist, and not a wishy-washy, head-in-the-magellanic-clouds ex-cosmologist, as she explained to me painfully and at great length! Sheesh, touchy or what?!]

Daganev #fundie forums.lusternia.com

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