The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything

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Originally Posted by trish

There is no edge of the expansion. The key concept is non-euclidean geometry. Maybe the toy model I describe in post #149 can help. http://www.hungangels.com/vboard/sho...&postcount=249

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I have trouble accepting theorems as definitive proof, as you say it is a concept, and ideas regarding certain bigger picture subject matters are forever changing, due to the complexity of such topics, which often throw up previously unforseen curve balls.

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Originally Posted by trish

It is a mistake to think of the Big Bang as an explanation of how the universe came to be. It is simply a model of the expansion. The models were an unexpected benefit of Einstein's theory of gravity. After Schwarzchild found a solution to the Einstein equations that describe the gravitational effects around a spherical star (confirming Einstein's cruder calculation of the advance of the perihelion of Mercury and the bending of star light by the Sun), Friedman and Lemaitre discovered solutions that seems to describe expanding or contracting universes. At about the same time Hubble was collecting evidence that on average the galaxies of the universe were racing away from each other at rates that increased somewhat linearly with their distances from one another. This fit exactly with the expanding solutions found by the theorists. As Martin so neatly demonstrated, expansion entails a finite age. The models are mathematically insistent on it. Gamow and his student Alpher used the work of Friedman, Lemaitre, Hubble and others to calculate the rate of production of light elements in the early universe. Their predicted table of abundances was later confirmed. They also predicted the residual cosmic microwave background radiation of a temperature of around three degrees Kelvin. That too was later discovered. The spectrum of the background was found to fit exactly the predictions of Gamow and Alpher. Gamow was something of a practical joker and he thought it would be funny to include Hans Bethe as a co-author of his paper with Alpher. So the paper appeared as authored by Alpher, Betha, Gamow. Back to the point: None of the originators of the big bang theory attempted to explain the origin or the existence or the creation of the universe. What they discovered and described was that the universe had a finite age and was expanding. These results are reasonably definitive.

There are people today who do write theoretical papers which modify the big bang equations and make stabs at explaining the existence of the universe. It is a project so far without a consensus. They will tell you up front that results are tenuous, speculative, fun to think about but not definitive.

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I do not think of the Big bang as the be all and end all, I was using that as general example, I believe in a way bigger picture beyond, and beyond the beyond infinity if you will:lol:

To me it is the only true logic, space creating models are not logical when you look at what we know of the laws governing the inside of this universe, show me a sum of 10 parts and make another 10 parts from nothing, and prove to me beyond doubt that you made them from nothing:confused: and I will believe what you say here.

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Originally Posted by LondonLadyboys

LOL..... Sometimes I feel like his advocate!!! something quite sexy about being naughty, or so I have been told anyway!? xxx

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Hmmm have I told you how I have a thing for she-devils xxx

Hrmm...

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Originally Posted by joeninety

I have trouble accepting theorems as definitive proof, ...

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So do I. Theorems are only as unassailable as the assumptions upon which they are based. That's why we endeavor to found our assumptions in evidence and observation.

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I do not think of the Big bang as the be all and end all, I was using that as general example, I believe in a way bigger picture beyond, and beyond the beyond infinity if you will

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We agree then (with cosmologists) that the theory of cosmic expansion is not a theory of origins.

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To me it is the only true logic, space creating models are not logical when you look at what we know of the laws governing the inside of this universe, show me a sum of 10 parts and make another 10 parts from nothing, and prove to me beyond doubt that you made them from nothing and I will believe what you say here.

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One way of thinking about the expansion is to imagine the spacetime metric (written in the coordinate frame of the fundamental observers) is simply time dependent. This is akin to thinking of time dilation as a frame dependent phenomenon rather than the metaphysical creation or stretching of time. It may be mind bending, but no rules of logic are in jeopardy.

I am always very impressed with the level of intelligence and knowledge of this debate. (Trish, in particular, you are so amazingly bright, lady!). I do feel for Jamie Michelle: one really has to be desperate to seek God in such theoretical constructions! To me, Kant has said it all when he showed in the XVIIIth century that all the proofs in God’s existence were based on a confusion between logical levels: you can’t possibly prove something as abstract and detached as a God through the chain of physical causes or by using matter as a base. These are simply realities of two different natures. If God is a creator of this world and look over it as some kind of a gardian, it means that he’s outside of it and therefore of the abstract nature I was talking about. If you integrate it to the world and you think the world as being dominated by laws, you submit God to determinism and therefore he is not “God”, at best only some kind of demiurge or a principle in a mechanical system, and the interest in searching such a “reality” outside of physics and to talk about it in other terms than pure physics is pretty futile. Every time we think about God, whether it’s on the moral level or the physical level, we come up upon such aporia. Camus put it very simply, in his magnificent manner, in such a way that should resolve the whole question from the human standpoint: Either God is all powerful, but then he is responsible for evil, or either he is not responsible for it, but is not all mighty. It should be enough not to believe, knowing the world and history even just a little.
Here’s another one of these memes I love…

Good points Dan. I guess a person's view would depend on:

When an individual believes in God (in the conventional way), does he believe God created "everything",meaning he (she,it...although if you believe this, then use of a pronoun would be inappropriate) was, is and always will be beyond any natural,or metaphysical laws - truly omnipotent.

or..

God is, like everything else, part of the universe but did create this world...or at least life on this planet.There would still have to be a belief that God created mankind to evolve into something different after death...assuming we followed some type of laws in conduct and thought in order to qualify.

or..

God (perhaps with a small "g") is just a higher being, perhaps a group of higher beings...out there somewhere. Beings that occasionally interact, or have interacted with us in the past. Perhaps even created us on a biological level...but that's where it ends. There would,of course be an argument whether or not such beings, or gods would qualify as God.

or..

well...the list can go on depending on that individual's personal belief..but I think most fundamentalists would argue the first example. Interestingly enough however, when they speak or think of "Him"...they will still anthropomorphize God...giving him human characteristics...which, of course,seems silly on a spiritual level.

anyway...I forgot where I was going with this.

Oh, and you're right about Trish - she's pretty awesome. I learned (and managed to retain...lol) a lot of information and understanding from her. (*whispering now*...but don't mention it too often...wouldn't want her head expanding like the universe...;) :D )

Dan, I think I am surprised that you find it hard to believe that people with intellectual abilities believe in God -perhaps the real issue that divides people is not so much a belief in God but the uses to which this belief is put, and comes close to the second part of your quote from Camus. Jamie can certainly answer for herself, but what I have objected to is the way she unites her interest in physics and her belief in God in order to claim (with distorted 'scholarship') that one is the proof of the other, and to argue further than unless one accepts her argument as being based on 'the known laws of physics' which have the status of divine statements, then one is somehow living in an illogical or, as Jamie once put it (in reference to me) illiterate world.

As your quote from Camus postulated, it could be that God created everything but doesn't control it, he might have suggested God created everything then went off to something else forgetting he had made an entire universe. Many people who believe in an all-powerful God use the basis of this claim to influence daily life on earth, and derive their authority from a belief that a few individuals have had a 'special relationship' with God that has resulted in the creation of religious systems, and laws which by definition are 'God given' even though they were written by men. I don't know why God has on a few occasions singled out one individual for a 'special relationship' rather than all of us as the person to talk to- in fact I would suggest it is a relationship formed the other way round, and that a genuine charisma helps if you want to found a new religion and can convince people 'this one person' has special qualities.

Jesus and Buddha are both men who seemed to have had charisma, who attracted followers impressed with the modesty of their life-style, their ability to deal patiently with people who were upset, perhaps above all a gift with words. Muhammad was known for his diplomatic tact and, off the battlefield, of calm and that 'inner peace' which often seems to draw people. By contrast, and notwithstanding the fictional basis of Scientology, 'Lt' Ron Hubbard lacks charisma and credibility. The 'Noble Elijah Muhammad' who took over the Lost-Found Nation of Islam from Walid Far'd, was a businessman without scruples who used a distorted version of one religion to create a popular movement whose practical benefit may have massaged his ego, it certainly gave him a fortune.

I think it gets harder if you encounter people who live in what we would call primitive, or pre-literate cultures. What is the point of telling an Aborigine that there are no spirits, no dreamtime, no creator -or telling an Ancient Egyptian there is no heaven. For people who make no distinction between heaven and earth, past present and future but see all life and all time as one seamless envelope of meaning in which they exist, rational thinking is destructive, and absurd -it poses the alternative view: how can you live and not believe? That is what puzzles them; and science for all its practical benefits, cannot answer this without denying precisely what they believe, even though I am sure you would not want to destroy lives, and even though this has been one devastating consequence of 'civilisation', 'imperialism' and in some specific places, alcohol. In both cases, the act of believing (in something) exists, indeed it is a conscious process without which we cannot live.

Nice post, Fred! Yes, I think you’re on the money. In the end, either God is viewed as a personal God, which you can pray and interact with, but once again, in such a case, he’s responsible of Evil, and you have to ask yourself if it’s a credible cosmosophy, which I think it isn’t. Or, in the other cases you mentioned, we’re talking about a Being which would either be integrated to his “creation”, a creation we know is ruled by laws, and therefore who would be bound by his own laws, and then irrelevant as God in itself, for us, and only relevant as a law or a principle; or we’re talking about a Being whom having created the world is absent from it anymore, so then why would we care about him (Epicurio is thinking in such a way: if there is gods, it’s obvious by watching the world that they are indifferent to it; so why bother with them?). :)
Stavros, I hope I won’t deform or disfigure what you are saying to me. Don’t over estimate my capacity to understand English. You know it’s not my mother tongue and not my usual language of expression, and I’m not at all on your very educated and eloquent level. If you mean to say that we need to “believe” in general, of course no one can disagree. But we can’t confuse, in my opinion, the common concept of believing with the belief in a supreme being. I think it’s a good example of a concept which has a subtlety of meaning which can create misunderstanding in a conversation. I invoke here the principle of identity, which is always violated in a normal conversation as meanings of the same concepts changes. Banal beliefs, we all have. Belief in a God is something else. Yes, you’re right, the people we call “animists” can not understand that we wouldn’t “believe” in invisible forces. The question here is very complex, but mainly lye on conscience, on the apprehension one has of him/herself. You know that conscience has a history in our culture (and surely others, of course). Conscience is not the same for Homer’s characters, for instance; they believe that “forces” are what animate objects, any objects including they, themselves. What is animated is what has an anima, a force which moves it (inside and out). These forces are independent from their objects. A river, the sky, etc., are so animated. Forces that move us are the same. When Homer refers to love, he sees the immediate action of Aphrodite; when Achilles for instance, at the beginning of the Iliad, has his conflict with Aggamemnon and feel the urge to draw his sword, it’s Athena herself, the voice of reason, who hold his elbow to stop him. And similarly, he doesn’t run fast, it’s his feet that are light, etc. etc. Conscience has since then changed considerably. The internalisation of motives, the sense of a intimacy (self-intimacy) were developed slowly and are at the very foundation of our culture; without them, for instance, no justice as we have is possible, no individual rights, no democracy, no artist as an author, etc. etc. they wouldn’t even make sense –the major turning point for us having been the Renaissance etc. (you know all of that). Now it is always difficult today to evaluate what it has to do with people from other cultures who are still animists. I think for some of them, who share the same sense of self, animism is at a stage of superstition rather than this way of perceiving and sensing the world Achilles had, and therefore no more an absolute “need” for them, no more a way of living.
I do share your idea though, that we are “religious” being. I worked as a research assistant, when I was doing my MA, with a teacher who was working on a philosophical anthropology which was redefining human through religious manifestations and expressions of every kind. It was fascinating. There is no doubt in my mind that religious beliefs are the expression of a phylogenetically acquired mechanism which is useful to the survival of our specie. Of which nature? That would be very difficult to determine, of course. But for us to believe in a God as a supreme being who is watching over us is really silly, it’s really absurd! The very mythology of it, besides the fact that you can easily follow it’s evolution through history, and therefore deconstruct it completely, the very mythology of a father who punishes and reward us, who creates an “us and them” type of world based on the flattering of his ego, and the credibility given to the institutions that are defending such constructs and imposes rites and taboos have to be set aside once and for all before they do more harm that they already have caused, imo.
A type of deist belief could be defended, but here intervenes my Camus quote. On a simple “moral” ground (and I use “moral” in a very broad sense, here), the idea of an interventionist God should render the belief useless. Once again, “either God is all powerful, but then he is responsible for evil, so why give a cult for such a God, or either he is not responsible for it, but is not all mighty, and then why would we even care?
(As I'm rereading myself, I realize once again how poor my expression is. I'm sorry, my friend).