PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
A physical singularity is a red flag that says, "You're model is wrong." It should not be taken at face value.
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Scientific evidence / arguments for God
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Is the deep sleep state a physical singularitity? In my understanding, the singularity cannot be physical or spiritual or any other experience.
The point remains that we experience transition from timeless to time domain on daily basis. And IMO, science actually does not know how that happens.
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
We don't experience the transition, because we stop experiencing in sleep.
Good.
I of course meant this when I said "Is the deep sleep state a physical singularitity? In my understanding, the singularity cannot be physical or spiritual or any other experience." Yet there surely is a transition from one state to another. Are the states real or is that which transtions is real?
Do we exist in singularity of deep sleep or not? Kindly do not answer from the waking state perspective. Kindly ponder from the perspective of singular consciousness -- or whatever.
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Tautologies don't end. Besides, of those that have a desire to believe in God, why attempt to convince them otherwise?
1robin
Christian/Baptist
How would nature go about being multiplied by -1? I can multiply my checking account by a billion but that would never produce any money. The government attempts this continuously yet we we go deeper into dept every second. Even the omnipotent Obama can't make that work. -1 is an abstract concept and can't do anything. It represents the magnitude of an action and that action is what I wanted illustrated. Natural law is causally impotent. PolyHedral I have been maybe a little to critical of science today and I wanted to request you take nothing personal I just do not have enough faith (at least in this fantastic cosmology fantasy land) concerning science to be an atheist.
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
It's not a physical action. The point is that the laws of physics behave the same if you do it [and a bunch of similar bookkeeping to compensate] - that is, they work out precisely the same way whether you treat the Big Bang as the 'start' or 'end' of the universe. This can be proven in most theories, and is pretty obvious in Newtonian and Relativistic mechanics. (It's slightly more complicated in quantum.) Therefore, to claim the Big Bang is the universe's beginning implies that the Big Bang is, from a different but equal POV, the universe's end, which obviously causes problems for any gods you want to stick in the resulting gap.
Most of what I'm citing in this thread and the other one is actually pure maths. General Relativity tells us that energy and time do weird things in high density spaces, and the time-reversal thing is, as mentioned, reflected in the mathematics. The former has been evidenced extensively, and the second is just as true as "2+2=4"
I'm not sure I follow. Granting for a moment that a big bang cosmology is correct, we still don't get universal time symmetry (or local symmetry) for all but a few, special situations. Running a model backwards isn't the same as time symmetry, nor are either the same as relative simultaneity. There are physical reasons why time cannot, in general, be treated as running either backward or forward with no difference. The fact that this was possible mathematically in Newtonian mechanics was a problem, as it doesn't happen. An expanding universe is no more heading toward its beginning than is a spilt glass of milk heading back into the cup and onto a table. Violations of time symmetry enable causality. In general, time symmetry implies fundamental acausality. The big bang isn't the "end" of our universe.
Just about any mathematical model in which time is a variable (or parameter) can be run backwards mathematically. Most of the time on a calculator, but even many-dimensional differential equations can be run backwards using whatever modelling software you used to run your model to begin with (MATLAB, Maple, etc.). Take climate models: a lot of what makes up our understanding of future trends is running models of current and past trends backwards and forwards using various parameters, atmospheric gas concentrations, etc. But just because we can run a climate model consisting of numerous differential equations backwards doesn't mean anything about time. In the high density of the initial "bang", we have a lot of things going on that we don't understand, but expansion changes this and we quickly get a more comprehensive universe with known physical laws and continual expansion, cooling, etc. How is this also the "end"?
Good.
I of course meant this when I said "Is the deep sleep state a physical singularitity? In my understanding, the singularity cannot be physical or spiritual or any other experience." Yet there surely is a transition from one state to another. Are the states real or that which transtions is real?
Do we exist in singularity of deep sleep or not? Kindly do not answer from the waking state perspective. Kindly ponder from the perspective of singular consciousness -- or whatever.
The singularity is devoid of space-time and a starting or an ending is meaningless. It is without a beginning Thingy.
Eastern theists do believe that therein in that Thingy, the Being abides timelessly and sows the seeds of space-time containing designs for various dreams. The mind in the space-time domain has no way to know the being in the thingy, since the mind is a product.
Take it or throw it. Taking it, however, would mean that one can access the peace of the Seer who is not different from the one without a Thingy.
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1robin
Christian/Baptist
I have never read a paper, heard a debate, or seen a theory where the proponent suggests the Big Bang was anything other than the start. If time was not ticking off at all and then began to, then what other word but the beginning could be used to describe it? If -1 is not accomplished in reality by a known force then it is not actually doing anything concerning reality, it is simply more parlor tricks bored scientists waste time with. I think for some reason you are equating things that can be done with a slide rule and reality. I was told when younger that by physics a bumble bee should not be able to fly. That one may or may not be true but many things in nature do not behave like math suggests. That is why dark matter has appeared on the scene. I have never heard any other description of time in college or in research other than a linear model. There was the very first "second, so to speak" of time and then successive seconds until this one. Those seconds are not always a second (maybe some were a billion years long) but always in the same direction. Thermodynamics also locks time into a direction. If you think that what you can scratch out with a pencil makes time something else then we will just have to disagree. All this is covered in a book called the science of God by Schroeder and he lays out some very interesting things about time.
Can you find me a peer reviewed published paper where anyone has ever reversed time. It has always behaved asymptotically in the ones I read. You can slow or speed up the duration of time but it can never reach zero and therefore certainly never reverse. Even Einstein screwed these issues up. He simply made up the cosmological constant because he disapproved of a finite universe and said that was the biggest mistake of his career. Relativity is still an almost abstract concept and is far from being well quantified. I see scientists poking holes in aspects of it constantly. Even as old as it is it still lies in these fantastical lands where speculation rules and results are rare and very very few understand it fully. However the people doing modern cosmology know it as well as anyone and they are the ones saying the universe had a T=0 point and has been ticking in the same direction since then.
We certainly wouldn't presume that if scientists don't discuss something, that it isn't there.
The big bang is often (not always) treated as a start because if we rewind what the observable universe is doing, it appears
to have begun with the singularity. Using the laws of physics which we've discerned so far (which is an incomplete picture),
that's as far back as we can go with any confidence. What happened before the big bang? Scientists don't know, since our
models of the universe cannot address such conditions & we cannot observe them. There are many speculations about the
larger picture than we pitiful humans see with our limited vision & time frame...
What Came 'Before' the Big Bang? Leading Physicist Presents a Radical Theory (New VIDEO Weekend Feature)
I caution against treating physics as "truth", since it is very much subject to revision.
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The following -- which I do not know is a speculation or not but which is my considered belief -- is for record and for anyone who might be interested.
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But the goal is not to know but the goal is to be free, since knowing is creating multitude of worlds and bonadage.
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1robin
Christian/Baptist
I would in a way. Scientists seem willing to discuss anything no matter how absurd, unknowable, or ridiculous if it has the slightest chance to cast a shadow on theology or get $.50 of grant money. I was saying that if X is referred to as a likely theory why have I never heard of X from any scientist anywhere. It could be that I missed it and that is why I asked for an example. It seems that any hint at something to rectify the God suggesting reality we have is clung to like grim death and the simple logic used to arrive at a high likely hood for God is resisted like the plague. Do you disagree with this evaluation?
The reason I gave the Borde, Guth, and Vilenkins Past-Finite Universe reference is that it is the consensus (most adopted) view of modern cosmology. It was also designed to avoid entanglements with science fiction. It states very simply that any universe that is on average expanding has a finite past. That jumps and trumps any trivial squabbles along the way. Of course this is mighty inconvenient for some people so from time to time attempts to muddy the clarity of the water are all that is left. This is the thing I notice continuously: When I used to get bored I would go look at the 911 forums and laugh my head off at how desperate the people who denied the facts would go to in order to maintain the illusion. Their entire argument was an attempt to obscure simple observation and reason. To them the contention was so valuable that the slightest hint (wrong or right) was held on to for dear life. I see the exact same thing here, however atheists are much more intelligent and I think sincere, but no less dissonant. The theorem I gave is the best understanding by far of the cosmological history. It is robust and rigorous and arguments against it remind me of throwing rocks at a tiger tank. Why are you willing to dismiss the theorem I gave and hold out for the possibility of these wild guesses? There is everything to lose and nothing to gain but it is the act that baffles me. It appears to me but will leave the fact of the matter up to you as I have no direct access to it that if the only thing between faith and an atheist was the possibility that fairies were real creatures, it would be adopted as reasonable doubt (plausable denial) of God. That theorem is the best cosmology available and substantially points to God or a God like entity. It is logical to allow it to light the way until a better light is found, and illogical to hide in any shadow that presents itself to avoid what the light points towards. Please do not be offended by anything I said. I know you as an intelligent and sincere debater but can't help thinking you have made decisions by preference and in spite of science at times.
PolyHedral
Superabacus Mystic
The direction of increasing entropy being fixed puts no restriction on how that is represented. From the perspective of the usual ordering on reals, it is perfectly valid (albeit unconventional) to represent the universe as ending in a moment of lowest possible entropy, having got there from an infinite history of progressively less entropy. Importantly, this is not the direction of time thinking beings within the universe will experience - they will always experience from low to high entropy - but why should that make a difference?
(Also, CPT symmetry is universal, and the signs of charges don't matter for the argument.)
After all, God is supposed to be outside the universe and unbound by time.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
What are your credentials might I ask? You say ineffective or ambiguous things more elequently than anyone I have ever heard. If you are stuck with the equivalent of a (pig of a concept) I would wager you could turn it into a semantical Mona Lisa given time. I do not concur or should say have confidence in the abstract and almost fantastic claims of science but you do articulate them well. Maybe you could write battlefield earth 2.The direction of increasing entropy being fixed puts no restriction on how that is represented. From the perspective of the usual ordering on reals, it is perfectly valid (albeit unconventional) to represent the universe as ending in a moment of lowest possible entropy, having got there from an infinite history of progressively less entropy. Importantly, this is not the direction of time thinking beings within the universe will experience - they will always experience from low to high entropy - but why should that make a difference?
(Also, CPT symmetry is universal, and the signs of charges don't matter for the argument.)
After all, God is supposed to be outside the universe and unbound by time.
It seems too over the top to describe the general case of scientific endeavor.
I don't dismiss the theorem.....I just ignore it because I don't want to investigate (laziness) something which is irrelevant
to my point, ie, that we do not know the nature of what preceded & precipitated the big bang. Any reasoning based
upon our limited model of the universe we know of cannot yield certain results. I'd say that what they call the "universe"
is just an ephemeral special case of a larger & more complicated picture. Therein, you might find where God would
operate, while I would lean towards a natural explanation (one which I'll never grok).
Since you haven't called me a poopy head (yet), I take no offense. My preference for the scientific method (naturalistic view)
over magical thinking is simply because it is more useful, & consequently more interesting....& more profitable, since I was an
engineer. I don't believe that science leads to any absolute truths, nor can I tell you there is no God. I just see no reason to
believe in something unverifiable. Regarding the specifics of cosmology, I recommend that you talk with Meow Mix, since
cosmology is her field, & she is quite good at explaining her thoughts on the matter.
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Even without absolute time, I don't see how this is true (emphasis added; italics in original):
"In the big bang scenario, the beginning of the Universe is characterized by a past time-like curvature singularity (where time itself began). Penrose used this fact to postulate his Weyl tensor hypothesis on all past singularities, since this would allow only one of them: a uniform big bang. In the absence of an absolute direction of time, the past would then be distinguished from the future precisely and solely by this asymmetric boundary condition and its consequences" p. 139 of The Physical Basis for the Direction of Time (5th ed.); Springer, 2007.
"the theory of general relativity predicts a warping of space and time which is directly proportional to the energy density distributed in the matter sources. By applying this theory to our expanding Universe one then obtains a cosmological model in which the curvature of the Universe itself evolves with time, following the corresponding evolution of the energy density and temperature." from The Universe Before the Big Bang: Cosmology and String Theory (from the series Astronomer's Universe): Springer, 2008.
Even in cosmological models (e.g., those which use Desitter geometries) where the thermodynamic basis of time breaks down, either this is replaced or it is deemed a problem of the model (such as an issue with the cosmological constant) because this does not cohere with observations. Time doesn't run backward. "This result would be in a huge disagreement with observations. We do not observe a reversal of the arrow of time in our DeSitter universe, in time scales of the order of the age of our universe." p. 57 of Mersini-Houghton's "The arrow of time in a universe with a positive cosmological constant" in the edited volume Cosmic Update: Dark Puzzles. Arrow of Time. Future History from the series Multiversal Journeys.
but why should that make a difference?
Because virtually all models can be run backwards and forwards with respect to time, but unless this is meaningul for physical theory, the math doesn't matter.
As Bigi & Sanda put it in the opening of their book CP Violation (Cambridge Monographs on Particle Physics, Nuclear Physics, and Cosmology, vol. 28), the disparity between how we experience time and how it is described in physics could (we hoped), be "understood" if "microscopic T invariance" existed in such a way that the same invariance is "so unlikely to occur for a macroscopic system." However:
"It came as a great shock that microscopic T invariance is violated in nature, that ‘nature makes a difference between past and future’ even on the most fundamental level."
You'll have to take that up with God, unless of course God starts contributing to physics literature.After all, God is supposed to be outside the universe and unbound by time.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
It is. Applied science attracts people who want their claims to correspond with fact or utility. Theoretical scientists have a large portion that are egotistical, self-righteous, and have in a way made themselves God. That leads to a lot of faith based assumptions masquerading as science. They are the rebellious rock stars of academics. That is why Velankin said this when his theory conclusively showed the universe needs a cause.
It is said that an argument is what convinces reasonable men and a proof is what it takes to convince even an unreasonable man. With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning (pg. 176).
http://debunkingwlc.wordpress.com/2010/07/14/borde-guth-vilenkin/
Why does he say they were hiding from scientific truth? Maybe because of the theological implications or because truth is not the currency of their realm.
It is fairly certain that the nature of what preceded everything (matter, energy, light, time etc...) was nothing. I had no nature and so is causally impotent. However God is causally perfect and is the only candidate known. Of course it is far from proof but the resistance to the only candidate known or even theoretically possible at this time is not logical.
I do not think I have ever called anyone a poopy head. A seminerfious tublodial butt snoid maybe but not a poopy head. Your preference means that you have no capability beyond or outside of nature and so is not a sufficient scale to weigh God or most of the important issue of humanity with. Have you lost your childlike wonder? Chesterton said that is the greatest tragedy in life. He also said the lessons of fairy tales are not that dragons exist but that they can be slain. If him and Abraham Lincoln had a baby it would be linguistically omnipotent.
That is what I studied and what my entire family does. My dad was on Apollo 5 I think. My brother won the national merit scholarship in computer engineering and I work in engineering but am not allowed to post what I do. Ask yourself this when you are about to check out of this mortal coil or when a great tragedy occurs do you think it more useful to know Riemann or if God exists? We will be dead far longer than alive we should be less concerned about the best way to kill each other and more concerned with theological truth.
I believe science can find actual truth but often doesn't but claims it did anyway.
Then so in point of fact we can't verify that reality did not appear 5 seconds ago with the appearance of age and therefore by your logic nothing is true. You atheist's take rope faster than I can tie the nooses. Just kidding.
She has already challenged me to a 1 on 1 but then disappeared. I guess she could not bear the strain. Just kidding she will probably run circles around me and yet do no appreciable damage to my arguments concerning God. They come from an authority that has no challengers or so it seems.
1robin
Christian/Baptist
You mean greater than the most influencial book in history. A book that had a greater impact on humanity than anything Buddha, Muhammad,and Vishnu inspired put together have produced. This is quite absurd. If you wish to impune the Bible or God it will require more than merely asserting things. Prove what you said is true.
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