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What actually do JREF religious believers believe?

HansMustermann said:
Ok, so there was some word, in the dictionary sense, that God spoke before finally getting to work on the big bang. I assume it's as good a start as any.

So, did this word play any particular role? Or was just God saying some irrelevant word, like, say, stubbing his toe in the dark before he created light and going, "<bleep>!"? :p

Does the universe respond to voice commands? Can we do it too?

For that matter, given that the universe didn't even exist yet, how does it take commands before existing?

What form or nature would this word have? Not only there isn't any medium in which sound would propagate yet, but there wasn't even space and time in which that would take place. So how did God speak there?

For that matter, since there was no time and space, where was God? He couldn't have been IN this universe before he created said universe. Is there a bigger universe where God is? Who created that one then? Is there a bigger god over all gods? Is it turtles... err... gods all the way down?

Etc.

You were saying before you wanted to see some mixed discipline of science and theology. But the science part wouldn't even be able to start doing anything, unless the hypotheses and premises are clearly defined.
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Not sure how serious your question is- but there is a possibility that if universes do start when a black hole is created in another universe, followed by Guth-style inflation, then it may actually be rather easy to create universes, given something a few orders of magnitude more powerful than the LHC to manufacture quantum black holes.
The word would then probably be the local equivalent of "On!"

Only problem is that the Creator would have no way (that we know of) to inspect his baby universe , unless he can see through a black hole wormhole, which sounds improbable -( Clarke's novel "Light of Other Days" is based on the premise that you can, though he uses it differently.)

Thing is, while an interesting possibility, it's hard to see what one gains by believing that some 16-legged critter in a Calabi-Yau white lab coat started the whole universe by flipping a switch. It's an intriguing possibility, but it don't pay the heating bills.
Belief is a neurological phenomenon. For me, that's where we need to start.


ETA. So far, the most important concept (for me) to emerge from this thread is the idea of a Ceiling Cat, which is as scary a notion as I ever heard.
 
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punshhh said:
In my small way through this gift I have improved the lot of life and over eons these gifts will accumulate until the perfect day.
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Are you saying that you are immortal? There never will be a perfect day. One day the Sun will expand into a red giant and if there are still any humans around the day will be less than perfect for them.
 
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HansMustermann said:
Err, no. You made a claim, YOU get the burden of proof to support it. Sorry, Google may be my friend, but that's not reversing the rules of elementary logic. You don't get to just make something up and be right unless someone else does the work of disproving it.



Again, it's not my job to sort it out for you. It's your claim, your burden of proof. YOU google it and provide the exact link to a peer-reviewed science paper that actually says that.

Still, I'm a nice enough guy I did make the effort to look there myself, and the only thing worth noting is an article by VICTOR J. STENGER published in the Skeptic magazine, which, needless to say, is not a peer-reviewed physics journal. And it's clear that it's just his personal speculations and interpretations, not something that he actually has any evidence for. In fact, he flat out says:

I must comment that while these experiments have received much media
attention, most physicists have generally been underwhelmed. The results always come
out in perfect agreement with quantum mechanics, which has been around now for 75
years.​

I.e., you don't need time travel to explain any of that data. And it's not something "quantum physics says", as something which he tells you up front that most physicists have been underwhelmed with.

Also;:

The continuing
debates over quantum mechanics that one reads about concern its philosophical or
even metaphysical interpretation, not its ability as a mathematical theory to describe
the data. So, speaking metaphysically, to the undoubted disgust of most of my
colleagues​

Read: the existing theory without time travel already describes everything perfectly well, he's only talking metaphysics about it. and (he guesses right) most of his coleagues would be disgusted with his talking metaphysics there. And quite rightfully so, since science is the polar opposite of just making up metaphysics. I.e., again, it's not something science or QM says, but one guy's own speculations that he even tells you it's metaphysics and something most scientists would be disgusted with.

Also, since you mention Feynman:

However, Feynman never pushed the idea
of time reversibility and most physicists preferred the less economical, though
admittedly equivalent, view that two kinds of matter exist, both going forward in time,
rather than one kind that can go either way.​

Yep, Feynman toyed with that idea, but he and most physicists never went with that version that conflicts with the rest of known physics.

So, no, QM as it is accepted in the real science doesn't say time can go both ways, it's just some people's personal confabulations.

Also, to keep it short, I can see how you took the entropy idea from the same article too, and how it confused you. The "cosmological arrow" that he talks is strictly about entropy increasing over time, not about time needing entropy. It's like, dunno, if I said that the number of grey hairs on my head is increasing in time. It does not mean that the time axis is dependent on my having grey hairs.



Patience is a virtue indeed, but that still isn't a blank check to reverse the burden of proof. No matter how much you're willing to wait, you don't get to just postulate something and be right until someone disproves it. The time you wait instead of supporting your claim, is just time when you're by default wrong.

But if you want a better summary here it is: you've read something that is not a science paper, and didn't understand jack. Nor were you qualified to understand, judging by the way you made a hash out of it. (See entropy vs time again.) That's all that happened there.

Next time you want to talk physics, dunno, learn some physics first. Especially if you want to talk QM or GR (a lot of cosmology is GR), which are hard stuff. As John Wheeler once said, "If you are not completely confused by quantum mechanics, you do not understand it." So, you know, it's hard stuff even for the experts in the field. it's not something where you can know by just skimming an article in a non-science magazine and imagining the rest. You have to actually put some study into it. Just an idea.
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Well, you certainly made fun of my ideas Hans, including an idea I did not propose; time travel. I said the arrow of time goes both ways and quantum physics works well in either direction. Still, I notice you gave no definition or summary of time yourself. Here is an article where a prominent physicist attempts just that.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/02/what-is-time/
 
dafydd said:
Even if time did go both ways why would it prove the existence of Rose's sky daddy and not, say, Vishnu?
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I believe my proposal was that God exists outside the boundaries of time. God also existed at that moment of flux or rest and at a state of zero entropy. If you notice in that article I just linked to, even that physicist talks about new universes just popping up at a similar but not exactly the same state of entropy.

And where does this other stuff that makes the other universes pop up come from?
 
punshhh said:
Hi Rose, your comments have a calming depth and grace. They effortlessly cut a swathe through the skeptical white noise on these boards. Don't worry about this QM haze. I will truss up Hans in strings later if it doesn't clear.


I will give a third answer; a gift.

Humanity has reached a pinnacle in evolutionary development from which it can view the (metaphorical/causal) horizon and perceive some of the reality and truth in nature on our globe.

With this hindsight humanity is in a position to improve the lot of life or diminish it. To improve it is a gift and religions are systems of teaching this gift.

I cannot say through intellect that a god exists or not. But it is a gift from me to act as though one does. Pascals gift, not wager.

In my small way through this gift I have improved the lot of life and over eons these gifts will accumulate until the perfect day.
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Thank you for your gift in your participation here. I stand by my statement that time is a tricky subject. There are many various views about time among physicists. I linked to one, here is some of what Hawking has to say. Is he shooting an imaginary arrow at an imaginary deity? One way to fight fire with fire, I suppose.


http://sqentropy.dyndns.org/ebook/Stephen Hawking - A brief history of time/h.html

Or maybe he is fighting fire with Hawking Radiation? Got to have faith in something.
 
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I like Hawking even though he takes the position of non-belief, the reason is he is not afraid to propose theories when others just say I don't know. It's like this Hawking radiation. Quantum physics says something must come out of Black holes. It is not something we can observe (like God), it has so far not been measured (like God), it is something that hasn't been proven (like God), so it in essence requires a faith to believe in it despite the fact that logic says nothing escapes from black holes. Hmmmm. Maybe Hawking radiation is God? I can't wait for scientists to prove it exists.
 
RoseMontague said:
I like Hawking even though he takes the position of non-belief, the reason is he is not afraid to propose theories when others just say I don't know. It's like this Hawking radiation. Quantum physics says something must come out of Black holes. It is not something we can observe (like God), it has so far not been measured (like God), it is something that hasn't been proven (like God), so it in essence requires a faith to believe in it despite the fact that logic says nothing escapes from black holes. Hmmmm. Maybe Hawking radiation is God? I can't wait for scientists to prove it exists.
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God of the black holes. Like god of the gaps, but different.
 
RoseMontague said:
I like Hawking even though he takes the position of non-belief, the reason is he is not afraid to propose theories when others just say I don't know. It's like this Hawking radiation. Quantum physics says something must come out of Black holes. It is not something we can observe (like God), it has so far not been measured (like God), it is something that hasn't been proven (like God), so it in essence requires a faith to believe in it despite the fact that logic says nothing escapes from black holes. Hmmmm. Maybe Hawking radiation is God? I can't wait for scientists to prove it exists.
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Hawking radiation has nothing to do with your imaginary god. You are taking clutching at straws a little too far.
 
dafydd said:
No, Science requires knowledge, research, experimentation and proof. All these things are anathema to religious believers who only have blind faith.
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This is where we disagree. I think science will eventually prove there is a God. The wiki article on Hawking radiation is a good one and efforts to prove it are getting close. My personal opinion is that the more we find out about the universe the closer we get to finding God.
 
RoseMontague said:
This is where we disagree. I think science will eventually prove there is a God. The wiki article on Hawking radiation is a good one and efforts to prove it are getting close. My personal opinion is that the more we find out about the universe the closer we get to finding God.
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This would be something of a reversal, as scientific progress so far has reduced the gaps in which God(s) used to hide.
 
dafydd said:
Which one would that be? Krishna, Vishnu, Allah, Yahweh, Zeus, Odin, Mbombo, Atum......
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These names are tied to different human beliefs and ideas of spirituality and worship. I don't know the true name of God, just that she exists.
 
RoseMontague said:
These names are tied to different human beliefs and ideas of spirituality and worship. I don't know the true name of God, just that she exists.
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This she . . . well, now you're claiming to know something about its nature. And the next question would be how you could know such a thing?
 
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