The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything

Just typical of God. Begins to lose the argument so starts shouting

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Originally Posted by danthepoetman

i am god

and you are not...

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Originally Posted by hippifried

What the hell are you people talking about?? Everybody knows that the Earth is a huge flat disc, set on the backs of 5 giant elephants, who are in turn standing on the back of a really huge turtle. All else is a hoax.

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I read that a famous phycisit - sadly can't remember who - was offered something like this view of existence during a public debate. I think it was several turtles at base.

He asked the lady what was beneath the turtles.

Her response "It's turtles all the way."

On Wittgenstein's limitations of language, I think Humpty Dumpty (in Through the Looking Glass) put it better.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

Science is about making observations of the world. It then tries to explain those observations and make predictions. It is the predictive power of science that is its real strength. It confirms these predictions through more experiments or observations. Religion can not predict - if something happens then it is God's will. Miracles have a "place" in religion but not in science. Returning to the Big Bang - so much evidence points to a singular beginning of the universe so let's us take it as accepted. We can not observe anything before this point (if indeed there was anything) so science starts explaining at this singularity. Is this a restriction of science? Is this somehow less than satisfying? It is, in a sense, the best we can do. Is it less satisfying than accepting that the universe always existed or that some being/force/whatever always existed? There are no observations or experiments that we can to to test the existence of this being. God and his plans are "revealed" to us. This does not satisfy me - but it does others. We can not make predictions with the concept of a divine being. If we can not predict then we lose the very essence of humanity

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Originally Posted by Stavros

Martin, thanks for the link, which both provides the explanation I was looking for, while failing to confirm that it is true - by which I mean absolutely true. As with the eloquent answer Trish supplied, these explanations are locked into a language which by its nature is not and never can be absolutely true. The key point (as I read it) that Hawking makes is this:

Since events before the Big Bang have no observational consequences, one may as well cut them out of the theory, and say that time began at the Big Bang. Events before the Big Bang, are simply not defined, because there's no way one could measure what happened at them.

The key concept which makes this argument vulnerable, is the idea of measurement, of the beginning of time -and indeed, time itself- as a measurable thing. In the 1930s Wittgenstein argued that language cannot describe anything absolutely, but that society agrees that the rules of grammar give what language is being used for its intelligibility, even if these rules, and words and meanings, are temporary:

But let's not forget that a word hasn't got a meaning given to it, as it were, by a power independent of us, so that there could be a scientific investigation into what the word really means. A word has the meaning someone has given to it. (Wittgenstein, 'The Blue Book', [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972: 28]).

In another discussion of time, Wittgenstein imagines logs floating down a river, and an observer noting when they bang into each other, and the way the observer appears to be measuring time to notice a difference in the frequency with which the logs bang into each other:

But if we say time passed more quickly between logs 1 and 100 than between logs 100 and 200, this is only an analogy; really nothing has passed more quickly. To say time passes more quickly, or that time flows, is to imagine something flowing. We then extend the simile and talk about the direction of time. When people talk of the direction of time, precisely the analogy of a river is before them. Of course a river can change its direction of flow, but one has a feeling of giddiness when one talks of time being reversed. The reason is that the notion of flowing, of something, and of the direction of the flow is embodied in our language.
http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/wittgenstein-and-river-of-time.html

Could it be that one reason why Hawking cannot -or does not- speculate on life before the measurable beginning of the universe is because he doesn't have the language to describe a condition without time -or rather, there is no agreed language to describe it, and the point of disagreement is that whereas science 'understands' infinity as literally impossible to measure, religious believers insist that this is precisely the point of understanding God, but who themselves commit what for science is the heresy of not asking questions of God but of merely submitting their silence as proof of their belief?

But why does science find it hard, or impossible to describe something that is not measurable, perhaps beyond mathematics?

The paradox of language is that we agree that words can mean something that can be verified, and something that cannot be verified. Wittgenstein would argue that it is entirely possible for someone to describe as a memory something that 'happened tomorrow': I do not know what will happen tomorrow, but I can argue that I remember on the 1st April that I expected an event to happen on the 2nd April that happened, because I remember it -in reality, once they have passed, there is no difference between the 1st or 2nd of April, I am therefore able to argue, linguistically, that I was able to remember an event that 'took place' in 'the future'. I think this is crucial in religious belief where the belief in eternity is a necessary component of the spiritual comfort that believers seek: that life has meaning and has always had meaning, that we never 'really die' but just move on to another condition. I once had a genial argument about the existence of God with a Muslim (to be specific, an Ahmadi) and he said, as I recall it: 'there has to be a God, otherwise life would be meaningless, and that would be unbearable'.

Or as Borges put it:

Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of a few metaphors.

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Actually it's quarks all the way. Back to Lewis Carroll

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Originally Posted by Prospero

I read that a famous phycisit - sadly can't remember who - was offered something like this view of existence during a public debate. I think it was several turtles at base.

He asked the lady what was beneath the turtles.

Her response "It's turtles all the way."

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The Hunting of the Quark? !!!

Actually its an infinity of multiverses and in several Jamie is pope and Dan doesn't drink... and I get to meet and marry Trish!

It's worse than this - in some parallel universe I get to meet you and we marry :(

Thus proving - in a very scientific way - that the idea of multiverses is pure tosh

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Originally Posted by martin48

On Wittgenstein's limitations of language, I think Humpty Dumpty (in Through the Looking Glass) put it better.

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

Science is about making observations of the world. It then tries to explain those observations and make predictions. It is the predictive power of science that is its real strength. It confirms these predictions through more experiments or observations. Religion can not predict - if something happens then it is God's will. Miracles have a "place" in religion but not in science. Returning to the Big Bang - so much evidence points to a singular beginning of the universe so let's us take it as accepted. We can not observe anything before this point (if indeed there was anything) so science starts explaining at this singularity. Is this a restriction of science? Is this somehow less than satisfying? It is, in a sense, the best we can do. Is it less satisfying than accepting that the universe always existed or that some being/force/whatever always existed? There are no observations or experiments that we can to to test the existence of this being. God and his plans are "revealed" to us. This does not satisfy me - but it does others. We can not make predictions with the concept of a divine being. If we can not predict then we lose the very essence of humanity

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Lewis Carroll misses the crucial point -because language works as a social instrument, for one person to 're-invent' or use a word as he or she wants to requires it being accepted by more than than one person, or incomprehension follows. Even if say, after an accident in which I banged my head, I am convinced you understand what I say it is not necessarily the case: if we go into a bar and you order a pint of bitter and I ask for (taking this from Sartre) Two horses of butter I would not be served but might receive a strange look: but if, to me, as a consequence of my accident, tonic water with ice and lemon becomes 'two horses of butter' I have in fact made an entirely reasonable request. For language to work we must agree on the rules. Carroll's poorly written fantasy is about a world where the rules in a dream world change and where absurdity is reality, and rationality challenged.

Although I agree with what you say about science, I will deal with an issue concerning infinity in my reply to Trish's post.

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Originally Posted by trish

It’s not that the infinite and the immeasurable are impossible to describe in mathematics.

Indeed, a major and well developed branch of mathematics known as set theory is devoted to the description of infinite cardinal and ordinal arithmetics. It includes countable infinities, uncountable infinities, inaccessible cardinals, Wooden cardinals and concepts pertaining to infinity whose contemplation would make Christ himself go cross-eyed.

Moreover, quantum theory is full of quantities that are immeasurable in principle.

The problem is nature herself and how we respect our own integrity when we endeavor to describe her. Do we fit nature to our most cherished beliefs? or our most ingenious ideas? or do we tailor our ideas to nature? Sure we can always carve out a niche for the gods. As long as the consequences of their shenanigans don’t conflict with observation or intrude upon the light of reasonably established knowledge, no scientist will pay them much in the way of professional attention (Tipler being a notable exception).

The classical cosmologies of Lemaitre, Friedman, Robertson and Walker are self-contained. For each of those models, time is internal...existing within the universe...not without. For these men, there was no time, nor space before the big bang.

Lemaitre took this to mean God existed timelessly and without extension. That He somehow is responsible for the existence of the universe, but that He didn’t create it by a process that took place in time...for that would require the prior existence of time.

Lamaitre’s idea a fine and noble, but baroque and unfunctional add-on to the cosmological understanding of those models. There is simply no need in science for hypothetical contortions that account for nothing. Whether or not they fill a “spiritual” need is not a public question. Whether or not they are metaphysically true, meet a higher truth etc. is not the business of science.

It is however, the business of every higher truth to be downward compatible with the lower levels of reasonably certain knowledge. When claimed scientific knowledge conflicts with claimed spiritual knowledge we have an epistemological problem that can only be settled by examining the scientific claim with the methods and ethics of science. Likewise when spiritual knowledge conflicts with the peaceful pursuit of life, freedom of belief etc., we have an even more serious problem. But when there are no conflicts, people can choose whatever higher knowledge meets their spiritual needs. Go hog wild.

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I am not trying to disprove the achievements of science or cosmology, as evidenced in yours and Martin's posts. What interests me is the possibility that infinity is not just a concept but present in the key instrument that science uses to measure: mathematics. It may be a problem of language, and is not practical, but consider the difference between 0 and 1, or between 0 inches and 1 inch. Is there nothing between 0 and 1? Because if so they must be the same thing, and they are not. But just as 1 can be subdivided, how many times is a dilemma. At some point in history, I don't precisely when, it was agreed that an inch is as long as we accept an inch to be, in the same way that we have developed language on the basis of social agreement of its rules. But in a pure sense, mathematics cannot measure an inch with absolute precision, because the space in which it is measured has no boundary, and we can only make a final judgement of an inch by agreeing it is 'this long' and comparing three or four or however many strips of cloth and ensuring they are the same length: we can then create machines and instruments: such as a ruler: to impose this length on space and time.
The truth is that as there are no boundaries to space that can be measured, time also has no boundaries: the languages that we use enclose us within a 'certain world' to comfort us. If you escape the prison-house of language, you are not necessarily free, and you might be lost; or become a rebel, or be diagnosed schizophrenic.

The point is that however many times you sub-divide a number, you can never exhaust its potential to get smaller: 1 never reaches zero: because we live in infinity. We lock ourselves into finite time and space to stop going mad, even though many ancient cultures believe that we live in an eternal world and that when we die we merely move on to another condition. Such cultures had a different conception of time from what we have, and it was more casual and elastic, and shaped more by the seasons than by clocks, which they would not have understood -even as recently as the 20th century people had to be told the meaning of an hour because it was incomprehensible. Some people who convert to Buddhism are attracted by the ability to lose 'the trapping of the modern world', without dying as a result.

The irony is that just as science cannot describe something that cannot be observed, so language cannot explain God to the satisfaction of its users, some of whom dispute that what we actually do see is the creation of God. Another example of language which we accept socially, being used to verify and deny individual choice.

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What interests me is the possibility that infinity is not just a concept but present in the key instrument that science uses to measure: mathematics.

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You are precisely right, “infinity” is not only “present” but nearly omnipresent in the mathematics that physicists typically apply to their professional endeavors. It is generally presumed that the “real number system,” (the one where you can represent quantities using infinite decimal expansions) is the system appropriate measurements of spatial and temporal intervals, temperatures, frequencies, probability amplitudes, etc. etc. The types of equations most frequently used to model physical phenomena (known a differential equations) are integrally entangled in the notion of limit and infinity.

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But in a pure sense, mathematics cannot measure an inch with absolute precision, because the space in which it is measured has no boundary, and we can only make a final judgement of an inch by agreeing it is 'this long' and comparing three or four or however many strips of cloth and ensuring they are the same length: we can then create machines and instruments: such as a ruler: to impose this length on space and time.

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Also true. Units of length or time (as well as other units of measure) are defined in a standardized way. But the very definition by use of a standard (in spite of so like the use of a vibrating cesium atom to definite a standard second) presumes a background of theory and concedes that no measurement will be exact. This is why the charts and graphs of physicists are sullied at every point with error bars. This is why no one worries whether or not the fine structure constant has a repeating decimal expansion or not.

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The truth is that as there are no boundaries to space that can be measured, time also has no boundaries: the languages that we use enclose us within a 'certain world' to comfort us.

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Here our agreement depends on which space or which space-time is under discussion. There are whole infinite classes of geometries that mathematicians study. Some have boundaries and some don’t. Most of what pure mathematicians study has no obvious application to cosmology. If, for the moment we restrict our attention to those space-time models of Lemaitre (which satisfy Einstein’s field equations) we find: 1) They are all boundless (there are no walls beyond which the universe doesn’t exist and there is no time beyond which the universe doesn’t exist). 2) They are continua (i.e. the interval between any two points or any two times is infinitely divisible). 3) At any given time they all have a finite age. This latter is not a human failing. Not a failing of human comprehension or mental ability. It would be easy enough for a mathematician to invent cosmological models of universes that never had a beginning...universes which at any given now would have an infinite age. But such models would simply not depict the universe we live in as we now understand it to be. Our universe has a finite age. This restriction is imposed by the Einstein field equations. (As Hawking points out, there are many other laws that impose the same restriction; e.g. the second law of thermodynamics).

There is a conceptual difficulty that very often trips up even agile laymen, “How can the universe be boundless but finite?” At the risk of boring you with an example of which you may already be aware I’ll make an attempt to explain: Imagine the surface of the sphere. Just the surface. Through away the three dimensional space in which it is embedded. We are only interested in the intrinsic geometry of a sphere. This geometry exists independently of the usual embedding. Spherical geometry is a two-dimensional geometry. It has it’s own interpretation of the word “line” and its own axioms. One can develop the theorems of spherical geometry picturing a sphere sitting within a three-dimensional environment, just as you can develop the theorems of Euclidean plane geometry without ever imaging a plane embedded in a three-dimensional surrounding. Embeddings help us picture geometries, but they are not essential to their definition or development. Keeping this independence in mind, go ahead and picture a sphere, because it’s easier to have the picture before you. Draw half a meridian going from the south pole to the north pole. Label the South Pole 0 years and label the North Pole 32 billion years. Label the point where the meridian passes the equator 16 billion years. Continue to subdivide and label the points on the median in this fashion. Think of this meridian as a time-axis. Now imagine the point on the time-axis that you labeled 16 billion years. Label the antipodal point 1 billion light years. Subdivide and label the equator so that the labels indicate this distance all the way around is 2 billion light years. Think of this calibrated equator as a spatial-axis. Now using this coordinate frame you can assign a pair of coordinates to any point on the surface of the sphere. Just look at where the meridian through the given point pass through the equator (that will be the spatial coordinate of the point) and look at where the latitude through the given point intersects the calibrate meridian (the time-axis) and that will be the point’s temporal coordinate. We just invented a two-dimensional space-time geometry. It models a universe that at time zero eases into an expanding phase, reaches it maximal size after 16 billion years and then enters a collapsing phase. After 32 billion years it collapses to a point and the whole show it over. The point of this toy model is to demonstrate that time was born with the universe and died with the universe. There is no time outside the universe. Space was born with the universe and died with the universe. There is no space (three-dimensional or otherwise) outside the universe (remember spherical geometry can developed independently of whether or not the sphere is embedded in another higher dimensional space).
(Disclaimer: This toy model isn’t very physical as it is not designed to satisfy the Einstein field equations. The spatial coordinates in the model shouldn’t be used to measure distances without employing a latitude dependent scaling factor...generally curvilinear coordinates and distances are not always the same things).

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The irony is that just as science cannot describe something that cannot be observed, so language cannot explain God to the satisfaction of its users, some of whom dispute that what we actually do see is the creation of God. Another example of language which we accept socially, being used to verify and deny individual choice.

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A: Science confirms that the universe had a beginning.

B: Oh so it might have been designed and created.

A: But science also demonstrates within reasonable tolerances that time and space also had a beginning.

B: Damn! Unfortunately that precludes actions such as design and creation that need to take place within the passage of time!

A: Indeed, it’s not that God can’t be observed, but that He has no place to stand and no time exist.

B: If God exists, He is timeless (not eternal but rather outside time) and without extension. He does not act, as actions take place in time. Yet He is responsible for our existence. These would be mysteries we can choose to believe, or not.

A: The question for Christians like Lemaitre would be, “Why those mysteries and not the ones cherished by other religions?” Why can’t we say, “The Hindu gods exist, timelessly and without extension and are responsible for our existence?” What test can be used to determine who is more likely correct?

B: If we had a test, it wouldn’t remain a mystery.

Let's agree that in this post the word "spider" shall mean a set of lines from a book, play or poem.

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"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

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This spider has always been one of my most favorite from Lewis Carrol. In part it captures so well what mathematicians actually do to create a precise jargon in which to converse about specific ideas. "Group", "ring", "function", "manifold" etc. are all words who have been shown the boss.

The use of "Infinity" in scientific theory, is just a convenient way of saying "I don't know" for scientists , and essentially a cop out. They should just flat out say, "here on earth we are trying to find smaller and smaller particles and what makes up our surroundings. But for the cosmos, they have no real clue, about age and extent of the universe. So , what they do say, is all theories, and are just as valid as a "god" theory.

For discussion's sake, I could just as well say GOD invented the universe
and of course someone will ask, "what was god floating in, before he invented the universe". "What is god, is he comprised of quarks, string or what is the physical description?"

fuck If I know. See, I'm honest. "Infinity" is another way of saying "fuck if I know".

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For discussion's sake, I could just as well say GOD invented the universe

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It wouldn't much of a conversation.

We say a set is infinite if it can be put into one-to-one correspondence with a proper subset of itself. For example, multiplication by two establishes a bijection from the set of integers onto the set of even integers. Hence the set of integers is infinite. Simple stuff really.

Trish, simply, they don't know and you don't know either. Infinity is a cop out. that's why they are called theories.

If I were to challenge any scientist , to show me proof (video) of the big bang or what the universe looked like back then, they could not because they simply do not know.

Just like a person that says GOD created the universe says:
When asked: "When did god create the universe in (integers) years?"
answer: god works in mysterious ways, and I don't know if it was 18,876,838,828 years 4 months, 5 days, and 32 seconds ago, or if it was 5,000 years ago.

No one can prove how old the universe is, just as no one can prove that god does or does not exist

You can't show me video of your father's sperm penetrating your mother's egg, but that doesn't mean there's no proof it didn't happen. Hmmmm what would count as reasonable proof?

The cosmic background radiation, it's exact spectrum, the atomic abundances, the expansion and it rate over time are the early examples of the big bang's theory's success. The further we gaze into the cosmos, the deeper we peer into time. The oldest galaxies that we now have pictures of are 13.3 billion years old. We can be confident that the universe itself is around 13.7 billion years old. (You'll have to explain sometime how your pet peeve concerning infinity actually fits into the picture here).

Well if it is all total crap to you - then fine, but here's an attempt to explain the best estimate that we have for the age of the universe.

We can measure the distance of galaxies, and how galaxies are moving. Galaxies are not staying still in space, nor are they moving randomly. Some galaxies are moving towards their neighbours, attracted by their mutual gravity. But the biggest pattern seen is that galaxies are moving apart from one another. This motion is not all at the same speed; instead it follows a pattern where galaxies that are further apart are moving more quickly.
This pattern indicates the whole universe is expanding. We can see every portion of the universe moving away from us from our view point on Earth. This does not make the centre of the expansion – there would be the same view from anyway in space
We detect a galaxy’s motion by looking at its light spectrum. When a galaxy is moving by the expansion of space, its light waves are stretched out, making it appear redder (the famous red shift). The change in the galaxy’s color is called the red shift, and can be used to calculate its velocity. From the measurements of many galaxies, we can accurately measure the expansion rate of the universe as a whole.
The age of universe can be determined by imagining what the universe looked like in the past, “rewinding” the expansion. In the past the galaxies must have been closer together, and in the very distant past they would have been packed together in a tiny point. If we assume that the expansion rate is constant over time, the age for the universe as a whole is about 10 billion years. However, astronomers have been working over the last 20 years to determine how the expansion rate changes with time. We now know that early in the universe the expansion slowed down, but now it is speeding up. Using careful measurements of this change in expansion rate, the age of the universe is now estimated to be 13.7 ± 0.13 billion years.



Not an infinity in sight.

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Originally Posted by my my my!

Trish, simply, they don't know and you don't know either. Infinity is a cop out. that's why they are called theories.

If I were to challenge any scientist , to show me proof (video) of the big bang or what the universe looked like back then, they could not because they simply do not know.

Just like a person that says GOD created the universe says:
When asked: "When did god create the universe in (integers) years?"
answer: god works in mysterious ways, and I don't know if it was 18,876,838,828 years 4 months, 5 days, and 32 seconds ago, or if it was 5,000 years ago.

No one can prove how old the universe is, just as no one can prove that god does or does not exist

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Originally Posted by martin48

Well if it is all total crap to you - then fine, but here's an attempt to explain the best estimate that we have for the age of the universe.

We can measure the distance of galaxies, and how galaxies are moving. Galaxies are not staying still in space, nor are they moving randomly. Some galaxies are moving towards their neighbours, attracted by their mutual gravity. But the biggest pattern seen is that galaxies are moving apart from one another. This motion is not all at the same speed; instead it follows a pattern where galaxies that are further apart are moving more quickly.
This pattern indicates the whole universe is expanding. We can see every portion of the universe moving away from us from our view point on Earth. This does not make the centre of the expansion – there would be the same view from anyway in space
We detect a galaxy’s motion by looking at its light spectrum. When a galaxy is moving by the expansion of space, its light waves are stretched out, making it appear redder (the famous red shift). The change in the galaxy’s color is called the red shift, and can be used to calculate its velocity. From the measurements of many galaxies, we can accurately measure the expansion rate of the universe as a whole.
The age of universe can be determined by imagining what the universe looked like in the past, “rewinding” the expansion. In the past the galaxies must have been closer together, and in the very distant past they would have been packed together in a tiny point. If we assume that the expansion rate is constant over time, the age for the universe as a whole is about 10 billion years. However, astronomers have been working over the last 20 years to determine how the expansion rate changes with time. We now know that early in the universe the expansion slowed down, but now it is speeding up. Using careful measurements of this change in expansion rate, the age of the universe is now estimated to be 13.7 ± 0.13 billion years.



Not an infinity in sight.

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Well, they're assuming the Universe is only so big, because that's all they can see.

What about the light that has not become visible yet? There could be another 13 billion years worth of light that has not come into their visible or recordable data.

The argument Martin presented makes no presumption about seeing to the beginning. Simply run the expansion backwards and calculate the time of collision. That's the Big Bang. You do know how to divide distance by rate to get time don't you?

No cosmologist at any point said, "I can't see any further back, so that's all there is to see." You're arguing against a straw man. Besides you're the one asking for video proof, not the cosmologists.

Indeed no one can see past the decoupling horizon of which I spoke in prior posts, yet the era of nucleosynthesis took place before the decoupling.

What about the light that has not become visible yet? There could be another 13 billion years worth of light that has not come into their visible or recordable data.

I'm no physicist, not even an armchair astronomist, but the little I've read on the topic indicates that they have seen light from galaxies moving away from us at speeds faster than the speed of light, where the light was emitted from a time long ago. So although we can conclude we'll never see light from such galaxies again, we can still calculate how fast these galaxies, now invisible to us, are moving away from us. Again, I only have a degree in engineering from "long ago", so my statistics is rather rusty, but I'm guessing you can take all of such galaxies and use some sort of extrapolation technique to determine what are the galaxies furthest away from us, and from that how big and old the universe is.

EDIT: or, what Trish says above. :)

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Originally Posted by trish

A: The question for Christians like Lemaitre would be, “Why those mysteries and not the ones cherished by other religions?” Why can’t we say, “The Hindu gods exist, timelessly and without extension and are responsible for our existence?” What test can be used to determine who is more likely correct?

B: If we had a test, it wouldn’t remain a mystery.

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The example of the Hindu gods is problematic because 'Hinduism' is not really a religion, but beliefs which are grouped together because they share some things in common. The gods in these belief systems identified with natural phenomena such as trees, rivers, animals and the climate serve a similar function as the Greek gods and are regarded by monotheism as primitive and even in a sense, juvenile. The irony is that the superiority complex of monotheism matches that of science as the source of knowledge about the creation of the world and the purpose of human life. Science, as I think you know, has often been claimed to have superseded religion as the primary source of knowledge, and it is beyond question that science in alliance with engineering and commerce has transformed the physical world we live in and given us longer lives and greater powers than existed before -although our ability to destroy our environment has been part of human history since the beginning and cannot be attributed to modernity, even if the capacity for damage is that much greater.

Science has practical, usable benefits that appear to trump religion; and yet, even the conceptual aspects of science can be as soothing to secular man as the comforts of eternal life are to a Christian, or the concept of paradise is to a Muslim. Even when those scientists are faced with problems they cannot solve. Indeed, science without problems is like Christianity without redemption, pointless. It may therefore be wrong for people with religion to consider secular mortals as spiritually arid, but it is probably just as wrong for the secular humans to regard people with faith as deluded. You often find people in both communities who love the music of JS Bach, who dedicated all his music to the glory of God.

Not a satisfactory conclusion, but it's the best I can do.

So, I'm confused, does God exist? :hide-1:

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Originally Posted by Jericho

So, I'm confused, does God exist? :hide-1:

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There are no peer reviewed papers in any respected journals (that I know of) claiming to demonstrate the non-existence of God. On the other hand, there are no such papers (that I know of published after the nineteenth century) claiming to use the hypothesis that God exists to explain a physical, chemical or biological phenomenon. On the third hand, there are quite a number of ordained reverends, priests, preachers, bishops etc. who professionally endorse the claim of God's existence and even talk to Him. On the fourth hand, many of them (despite the fact they they all talk to God) disagree about what God says, thinks and intends for us to do. If you actually have the four hands required to follow this nonsense, you're probably the god Kali. :Bowdown:

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It may therefore be wrong for people with religion to consider secular mortals as spiritually arid, but it is probably just as wrong for the secular humans to regard people with faith as deluded. You often find people in both communities who love the music of JS Bach, who dedicated all his music to the glory of God.

Not a satisfactory conclusion, but it's the best I can do.

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The best we can do and all we can do.

BTW have I told you recently, that I thoroughly enjoy our discussions. Thanks for being an intelligent man focused on understanding, discovery and their clear communication.

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Originally Posted by trish

There are no peer reviewed papers in any respected journals (that I know of) claiming to demonstrate the non-existence of God. On the other hand, there are no such papers (that I know of published after the nineteenth century) claiming to use the hypothesis that God exists to explain a physical, chemical or biological phenomenon. On the third hand, there are quite a number of ordained reverends, priests, preachers, bishops etc. who professionally endorse the claim of God's existence and even talk to Him. On the fourth hand, many of them (despite the fact they they all talk to God) disagree about what God says, thinks and intends for us to do. If you actually have the four hands required to follow this nonsense, you're probably the god Kali. :Bowdown:

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Oh...Thanks for clearing that up! :whistle:

I like a challenge especially one set by Trish. I found such a paper!

Scottish Journal of Theology

• Scottish Journal of Theology / Volume 58 / Issue 04 / November 2005, pp 468-484

Does ‘God’ exist?

A. N. Williams
Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge, CB2 1RH anw25@cam.ac.uk



Abstract

The essay considers the possible meanings of ‘God’ in Christian discourse, given its assertorial usage and in light of the doctrine of the Trinity. Examination of the grammar of analogous sentences highlights the problems of using ‘God’ as the subject of verbs of agency. In light of the enhypostasization of divine nature within the three persons of the Trinity, and in no other context, ‘God’ cannot designate any one person of the Trinity, nor the Three together, nor divine nature conceived anhypostatically and, given its propensity to mislead, use of ‘God’ in Christian discourse is called into question.



So it's all down to "examination of the grammar of analogous sentences" - so that's another mystery sorted.

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Originally Posted by trish

There are no peer reviewed papers in any respected journals (that I know of) claiming to demonstrate the non-existence of God. On the other hand, there are no such papers (that I know of published after the nineteenth century) claiming to use the hypothesis that God exists to explain a physical, chemical or biological phenomenon. On the third hand, there are quite a number of ordained reverends, priests, preachers, bishops etc. who professionally endorse the claim of God's existence and even talk to Him. On the fourth hand, many of them (despite the fact they they all talk to God) disagree about what God says, thinks and intends for us to do. If you actually have the four hands required to follow this nonsense, you're probably the god Kali. :Bowdown:

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That's what I get for not being specific...I meant "refereed scientific journals." Nevertheless, good find. A refereed paper in a professional journal of theology purporting ... purporting... what the fuck is it purporting?? Damn professional jargon and making words mean what you want them to mean!!

I have a very good friend and colleague who is in fact a theologian and she sometimes invites me to sit in on informal discussions with her colleagues. I give it a valiant effort but usually I have no idea what they're talking about.

[CENTER][SIZE="3"]It's a sad fuckin day when buttslinger is an authority on ANYTHING, but I saw God in the fifth grade. There was a STRAIGHT line heading FORWARD to GOD on the horizon. Below that line was a hazy area known as DESIRE.

So the answer is, God exists for me, but not you....you HEATHENS!!!

I've met phyicists and biologists and cosmologists and many other scientists who believe firmly in some sort of creative principle underluing order which can be called God. There are all manner of theories that can be constructed in support of thisf. The anthropic principle is one which many cosmologists seem to favour - that the universe is as it is and we are in it because it was conceived for us. If everything was even just one tiny bit different then life would not be possible. The British scientist John Barrow a cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician and winner of the Templeton prize a few years ago - has written vast volumes on this. I've debated it with senior clerics - Christian and Muslim. In the end all admit that there is and must be a leap of faith. There is and can never ben scientific proof. I cannot make such a leap... though I suppose on occasions I'm tempted by the Pascalian wager.

True enough. There are more believers among physicists than biologists, and they often lay out their reasons in books for laypersons, but very rarely if ever in refereed, scientific journals.

Fine tuning is indeed something that is discussed in professional papers and conferences. If the gravitational constant were a little smaller, matter would not have clumped into stars and galaxies. If the gravitational constant were bigger, the universe would have collapsed before life had time to evolve. The trouble is, all these exercises hold the other constants of nature at their known fixed values while fiddling with the one of interest. It has yet to be determined how large a domain of variation among all the constants together is tolerable to life as we know it (not to mention life as we don't know it). So we don't really know if there is a fine tuning problem. To know if there is or not we would first have to have a definitive calculation of how probable life is in a randomly chosen universe. We would have to specify chosen from what? Do we mean chosen from a prescribe set of models, or a real collection of multiverses? What do we mean by randomly chosen? What values of Planck's constant are possible choices and what distribution function applies? The basic physics is just not there to answers these questions and may never be there. Theoreticians and especially cosmologists do definitely do a lot of speculation in their professional papers...but they are usually honest about it and will warn you up front.

In almost everything people do there's a leap of faith. Scientific truth is not the same as 100% certainty. Indeed it knows better than to aim for certainty. It's content with approximations, refinements, revisions and muddling along.

Mathematicians on the other hand aspire to certainty. You gotta love 'em for the purity of their hearts. But even they make mistakes (oops...forgot to carry the one).

There is a faith that aspires to certainty, and a faith that is provisional and open to revision.

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Originally Posted by martin48

So it's all down to "examination of the grammar of analogous sentences" - so that's another mystery sorted.

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In a way, Martin, you draw attention to a core issue in communications that has been debated over the years, by Habermas, Rawls, and others: it isn't so much the epistemological question: how do we know what we know? but questions such as: how do we communicate with each other, and why does language not automatically solve differences once the rules of language have been agreed upon? The structural anthropology of Levi-Strauss, which owes a lot to the structural linguistics of Roman Jakobson, seeks a common language among peoples ancient and modern, north and south -because if we all share the same root modes of communicating what we mean by 'mother', 'hungry', 'good' and bad', the opportunity for peaceful co-existence as an intellectual idea seems solid.

What disrupts this congenial party, are modes of discourse which collide, not just in politics but also in religion. One of the issues which I doubt the arcane theologians in your link discuss, is the relationship of Christianity to the politics of democracy, and how western democracy has taken concepts of equality, justice, fairness, and particularly tolerance and obligation from Christianity which may not exist in other religious discourses. In these discourses, the meaning of, identification of, or proof of God is not as relevant as the practical application of what is claimed to be 'God's law' or 'God's will' or 'God's message'.

There was a time when the definition of such things was exclusively the preserve of priests, and for a long time the Catholic Church -indeed, most people, being illiterate had no other source of authority, which is an obvious reason why the Roman church treated literacy and the translation of religious texts from Latin into the vernacular as an heresy. In fact it was not heresy at all, but democratisation.

To cut a long argument short: secular humanists in the west have co-opted Christian ideals into many of their arguments on tolerance, equality and democracy. This doesn't make them closet Christians who should own up and admit their believe in God, but it does offer a more subtle relationship between believers and unbelievers.

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Originally Posted by Prospero

I've met phyicists and biologists and cosmologists and many other scientists who believe firmly in some sort of creative principle underluing order which can be called God.

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You sure those aren't just the stoners in the bunch? You have to get close to see if you smell Taco Bell on their breath....or tell-tale orange Cheez Doodle powder under their fingernails....:)

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Originally Posted by martin48

Well if it is all total crap to you - then fine, but here's an attempt to explain the best estimate that we have for the age of the universe.

We can measure the distance of galaxies, and how galaxies are moving. Galaxies are not staying still in space, nor are they moving randomly. Some galaxies are moving towards their neighbours, attracted by their mutual gravity. But the biggest pattern seen is that galaxies are moving apart from one another. This motion is not all at the same speed; instead it follows a pattern where galaxies that are further apart are moving more quickly.
This pattern indicates the whole universe is expanding. We can see every portion of the universe moving away from us from our view point on Earth. This does not make the centre of the expansion – there would be the same view from anyway in space
We detect a galaxy’s motion by looking at its light spectrum. When a galaxy is moving by the expansion of space, its light waves are stretched out, making it appear redder (the famous red shift). The change in the galaxy’s color is called the red shift, and can be used to calculate its velocity. From the measurements of many galaxies, we can accurately measure the expansion rate of the universe as a whole.
The age of universe can be determined by imagining what the universe looked like in the past, “rewinding” the expansion. In the past the galaxies must have been closer together, and in the very distant past they would have been packed together in a tiny point. If we assume that the expansion rate is constant over time, the age for the universe as a whole is about 10 billion years. However, astronomers have been working over the last 20 years to determine how the expansion rate changes with time. We now know that early in the universe the expansion slowed down, but now it is speeding up. Using careful measurements of this change in expansion rate, the age of the universe is now estimated to be 13.7 ± 0.13 billion years.



Not an infinity in sight.

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Riiiigght so what is beyond the edge of expansion?????

Come to think of it how do you create something from absolutely zilch, correct me if I am wrong is that then magic or is it simply impossible??????

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Originally Posted by my my my!

. Infinity is a cop out. that's why they are called theories.

No one can prove how old the universe is, just as no one can prove that god does or does not exist

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Are we not Gods in our own right to the life we create in laboratories, to the things we build whilst all other life on this planet fails to grasp or comprehend our capabilities.

As this is so, how arrogant it is to not see, that our view of an even bigger picture might be just as obscured

How do you explain the preciseness of this universe then.

How do you create something from absolutely zilch??????

Infinity is logical, the problem is getting your tongue to engage in tasting such a notion.
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Evie this bad boys just for you, and good luck with everything xxx

Oh I don't know! just when I think there is a god someone goes and write a bad bloody review! lol ;-)

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Originally Posted by trish

There are no peer reviewed papers in any respected journals (that I know of) claiming to demonstrate the non-existence of God. On the other hand, there are no such papers (that I know of published after the nineteenth century) claiming to use the hypothesis that God exists to explain a physical, chemical or biological phenomenon. On the third hand, there are quite a number of ordained reverends, priests, preachers, bishops etc. who professionally endorse the claim of God's existence and even talk to Him. On the fourth hand, many of them (despite the fact they they all talk to God) disagree about what God says, thinks and intends for us to do. If you actually have the four hands required to follow this nonsense, you're probably the god Kali. :Bowdown:

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Some physicists and mathematicians would quip that one would need four hands for all the "hand-waving" required in purported explanations for the existence of god.
Nicely laid out though ,Trish.
Martin also did a great job of succinctly explaining our current understanding or the history of the universe.
The level of intelligence and erudition found on this forum never ceases to astound me.
I'm an atheist and a Buddhist.
I'm currently watching "The God Delusion Debate" on DVD that a colleague lent me. The debate is between Richard Dawkins ,author of "The God Delusion" and John Lennox , a mathematician and cosmologist (and a Christian). Well done and worth watching.
http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php...-lennox-debate

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Originally Posted by LondonLadyboys

Oh I don't know! just when I think there is a god someone goes and write a bad bloody review! lol ;-)

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Don't lose faith Bella.......That was just the Devil making a brief appearance:hide-1:

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Originally Posted by sukumvit boy

Some physicists and mathematicians would quip that one would need four hands for all the "hand-waving" required in purported explanations for the existence of god.
Nicely laid out though ,Trish.
Martin also did a great job of succinctly explaining our current understanding or the history of the universe.
The level of intelligence and erudition found on this forum never ceases to astound me.
I'm an atheist and a Buddhist.
I'm currently watching "The God Delusion Debate" on DVD that a colleague lent me. The debate is between Richard Dawkins ,author of "The God Delusion" and John Lennox , a mathematician and cosmologist (and a Christian). Well done and worth watching.
http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php...-lennox-debate

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Dorkins is a plonk his God Delusion book is just that "his delusion" as he raps on about the Christians lack of proof about the existence of god not once does he actually provide evidence to the contrary, even though he claims he will.

Anyone who reveres this little man from no where and regards his twaddle as engrossing is sadly as deluded as he is, about the nature of this reality and our existence.


The religion of Aethism is as ridiculous as the rest of them.........Although I have to say I am partial to a bit of Buddism:pumped:

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In a way, Martin, you draw attention to a core issue in communications that has been debated over the years, by Habermas, Rawls, and others: it isn't so much the epistemological question: how do we know what we know? but questions such as: how do we communicate with each other, and why does language not automatically solve differences once the rules of language have been agreed upon?

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Somehow it doesn’t seem all that paradoxical that language doesn’t automatically solve differences. Language allows us to clearly describe alternative possibilities and express our disagreements. The fact that differences in knowledge claims flourish even among those who share a language seems at first blush to demonstrate that we weigh evidence differently, that we are not all aware of the same evidence, that we have learned different frameworks and backgrounds for processing and developing ideas etc. These seem to be epistemological issues.

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One of the issues which I doubt the arcane theologians in your link discuss, is the relationship of Christianity to the politics of democracy, and how western democracy has taken concepts of equality, justice, fairness, and particularly tolerance and obligation from Christianity which may not exist in other religious discourses. ... To cut a long argument short: secular humanists in the west have co-opted Christian ideals into many of their arguments on tolerance, equality and democracy. This doesn't make them closet Christians who should own up and admit their believe in God, but it does offer a more subtle relationship between believers and unbelievers.

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I think this is definitely right. I can testify anecdotally that many of the values I hold dear (compassion, charity, tolerance, caring...to name a few) are values that were earnestly taught to me and all the children who went to the Methodist Sunday School I attended. I’m an atheist today. I’m not saying I never would have never developed the values I have today without my early Sunday school exposure; but the fact of the matter is those experiences were in my case formative. (One thing that I find somewhat disheartening today is the rise of the warrior Christ image, who rides like Gandalf the wizard and wields the sword of righteousness. This image is absolutely foreign to the teachings I remember as a child.)

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I'm an atheist and a Buddhist.
I'm currently watching "The God Delusion Debate" on DVD that a colleague lent me. The debate is between Richard Dawkins ,author of "The God Delusion" and John Lennox , a mathematician and cosmologist (and a Christian). Well done and worth watching.
http://www.fixed-point.org/index.php...-lennox-debate

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Thanks for the recommendation. I can't remember in which thread, but I think I mentioned somewhere here at hungangels that I can sympathize with what I call Unicyclic Buddhism: 1) Instead of many reincarnations, there is only one cycle. 2) At the end we all achieve nothingness; i.e. freedom from existence. 3) Karma is just the tendency to reap the consequences of our past actions for good or ill.

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Originally Posted by joeninety

Riiiigght so what is beyond the edge of expansion?????

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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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Come to think of it how do you create something from absolutely zilch, correct me if I am wrong is that then magic or is it simply impossible??????

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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.

Always thought as an atheist to take a theology degree and just disagree with everything. Should be an easy course as they have just one set text.

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Originally Posted by trish

That's what I get for not being specific...I meant "refereed scientific journals." Nevertheless, good find. A refereed paper in a professional journal of theology purporting ... purporting... what the fuck is it purporting?? Damn professional jargon and making words mean what you want them to mean!!

I have a very good friend and colleague who is in fact a theologian and she sometimes invites me to sit in on informal discussions with her colleagues. I give it a valiant effort but usually I have no idea what they're talking about.

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