My argument against materialism

[Trent Wray]

As I said to punshhh it is a question ultimately without meaning. If we have a question "what is X?" and it had an answer "X is XX" then we would only have another question "what is XX?". If we had an answer "XX is XXX" then we would just have another question "what is XXXX?" and so on.

Ultimately there must be something that just is what it is.

If it was the case that God was at the bottom of it all then you would just have the question "What is God?".

Whatever the fundamental stuff is then we know the answer to what it is. It is whatever it is.

Word.

 

[Dancing David]

dlorde, you are discussing the building up of planets. I'm referring to what is commonly known in chemistry. Co-valent bonds via the electromagnetic force binds molecules together. You and I and the earth are made of molecules. What other reference do you need?

Then why is there an escape velocity?

 

[Dancing David]

I was rushed while doing the last post. Here is a better explanation.

dlorde, you are discussing the accretion of matter in the building of planets and what you say is basically correct. Gravity's action requires a lot of matter/mass to make a difference. I'm referring to what is currently holding or binding the planet's molecules. Co-valent bonds (commonly known in chemistry) via the electromagnetic force bind molecules together. Gravity on the molecular scale is minor. You and I and the earth are made of electromagnetically bound molecules. If you instantly canceled the molecular bound the planet would crumble and dissipate. Gravity is not holding our planet together in its current form. What other reference do you need?

Gravity is holding our planet together, along with the bindinge nergy, which is minor in scale.

What is escape vlocity, why is the earth round?

The planet would not dissippate, if you want we can take this to SMT and let the experts address it.

 

[Dancing David]

Dancing David ... the cause of the confusion is due to different terms for the nuclear forces. The strong force is called the strong nuclear force, the strong color force and sometimes simply as the strong nuclear interaction. This force holds quarks together. The residual nuclear force is also sometimes also referred to as the nuclear force or secondary nuclear force. It binds nucleons together such as protons and neutrons. However protons are positively charged and like charges repel. If a nucleus has two or more of them, what holds them together?

the strong nuclear force, did you even read the page?

The residual nuclear force over powers the electromagnetic repulsion. It also overpowers the electromagnetic pull via negatively charged electrons as they orbit positively charged protons in nuclei.

I wrote: Gravity is not primary in holding together planets and comets. Escape velocities including that of lava from erupting volcanoes do not have anything to do with what binds the planet together.

yes it does, we will see in SMT.

I wrote that: "energy is one of the most difficult things to define. etc." and this is so. Physicists have yet to come up with an all encompassing definition.

You wrote "everything is energy." This is a very vague statement, not even a definition.

Everything is energy, all properties of mattar are properties of wave forms.

Your rants have really made you look like a fool, but keep dancing. It's fun!

We will see who is the fool, see you in SMT

 

[kenkoskinen]

OK, but I need to clarify - despite the fact that gravity keeps our tenuous atmosphere in place, would you still maintain that:So if intermolecular forces disappeared, gravity would not hold the Earth in roughly the same spherical shape it has now, and it would become - what - an orbital ring around the sun?

dlorde If the electromagnetic force were instantly suspended on Earth all molecular things on the planet would crumble. The planet would lose volume but gravity could still hold the mass together. However the left-over planet would have lost some mass, since E = Mc2 and the deflated world's orbit would change. It would drift further away from the Sun until a new orbital equilibrium was reached. This means that both gravity and the electromagnetic force play a role in holding our world together. I have been commenting on the EM side of the debate as it is primary in maintaining the form of our present world.

To read more about this download my free pdf "Rainbows & Other Catastrophes" from my website http://antspub.com Click on the Downloads button at the top of any page and you will see the link. This essay is a scientific rebuttal of Noah's so-called worldwide flood. You might be wondering what the disappearance of the electromagnetic force has to do with this myth. Read it and find out the surprising answer.

 

[TmoonII]

Excuse me, burden of proof is on the one making the claim, there is no false parity here.

So you made soem claims about QM and consciousness,which you never supported, that is your burden to support, not ours to just not comment.

So what evidence is there that consciousness is needed to do anything with QM?

You want me to prove something I don't believe.

1. All empirical observations are dependent upon consciousness.


I disagree. Experiencing and experimenting exists within microorganisms lacking consciousness..

 

[dlorde]

dlorde If the electromagnetic force were instantly suspended ... gravity could still hold the mass together.

OK, so it wouldn't dissipate after all - we got there in the end

To read more about this download my free pdf "Rainbows & Other Catastrophes" from my website http://antspub.com Click on the Downloads button at the top of any page and you will see the link. This essay is a scientific rebuttal of Noah's so-called worldwide flood. You might be wondering what the disappearance of the electromagnetic force has to do with this myth. Read it and find out the surprising answer.

Another rebuttal of The Flood or Noah's Ark (or both)... thanks, I'll take a look.

 

[kenkoskinen]

Gravity is holding our planet together, along with the bindinge nergy, which is minor in scale.

What is escape vlocity, why is the earth round?

The planet would not dissippate, if you want we can take this to SMT and let the experts address it.

Dancing David See my post/comment to dlorde #1845. You're right the planet would probably not completely dissipate but the form of the left over mass would be puzzling since there could not be any charged particles. This means no more radioactivity since two of the three weak nuclear forces vector bosons are electrically charged. Even quarks which have fractional charges would lose a tiny bit of energy. Gravity and the EM force play a role in holding our planet together but EM maintains the much of the form of the planet. I suggest you read my essay mentioned in post #1845.

I don't know what SMT is but I assume it's another discussion with some science educated people. That would be fine with me. You would have to lead the way since I'm new on the forum.

 

[kenkoskinen]

Then why is there an escape velocity?

Dancing David,There is an escape velocity from any planet, (moon etc.) due to the force of gravity. A spaceship etc. has to overcome the pull of gravity to escape and this requires a minimum velocity. The velocity required to essentially leave the planet's gravitational field depends on its mass. I say essentially since gravitation is an infinitely ranged universal force. However, the EM force and gravity each play a role in holding planets (like Earth) consisting of molecules together. On gaseous planets like Jupiter gravity is the major player.

 

[dlorde]

The (lengthy) article on The Flood at your website http://antspub.com, made some reasonable points up to where I stopped reading.

However, I don't think the 12 page(!!) diversion about God's alleged 'Rainbow Covenant', including the physics of rainbows, the physiology & genetics of vision, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, stellar fusion, cosmology, black holes and quasars, Hawking radiation, dark matter, and more(!), was really necessary - the rainbow covenant isn't really relevant to the question of whether there was a flood (also, that biblical passage could simply be interpreted as God adopting the rainbow as a symbol of the covenant).

Criticising the numerology in the story, and the improbability (impossibility) of the quoted dates and times, isn't that difficult - biblical dates and times are notoriously unreliable and often symbolic - e.g. repeated mentions of '7 days' and - '40 days and nights' were generally not supposed to be taken literally; '40 days and nights' meant 'a long time' - the number 40 (for some reason) had great symbolic meaning.

Whether there was a removable cover on the ark, and whether Noah should have opened a window to spot land, also seem somewhat incidental to the rebuttal...

I ran out of time and patience at that point.

 

[dafydd]

The (lengthy) article on The Flood at your website http://antspub.com, made some reasonable points up to where I stopped reading.

However, I don't think the 12 page(!!) diversion about God's alleged 'Rainbow Covenant', including the physics of rainbows, the physiology & genetics of vision, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, stellar fusion, cosmology, black holes and quasars, Hawking radiation, dark matter, and more(!), was really necessary - the rainbow covenant isn't really relevant to the question of whether there was a flood (also, that biblical passage could simply be interpreted as God adopting the rainbow as a symbol of the covenant).

Criticising the numerology in the story, and the improbability (impossibility) of the quoted dates and times, isn't that difficult - biblical dates and times are notoriously unreliable and often symbolic - e.g. repeated mentions of '7 days' and - '40 days and nights' were generally not supposed to be taken literally; '40 days and nights' meant 'a long time' - the number 40 (for some reason) had great symbolic meaning.

Whether there was a removable cover on the ark, and whether Noah should have opened a window to spot land, also seem somewhat incidental to the rebuttal...

I ran out of time and patience at that point.

Fiction bores me after a while too.

 

[Dinwar]

Using this argument, can you then define faith please?

I'll let the theists speak for themselves: Faith is belief in things unseen. In other words, beleif in the absence of evidence, or in contradiction of the evidence.

Though really in my mind faith isn't about the evidence at all--it's about the conclusion, and the evidence is considered irrelevant to that conclusion. If a person has faith that, say, Jesus existed the evidence truly doesn't matter one way or another. The conclusion wasn't arived at via evidence, and while the theist will gladly use any evidence they find to persuade others their own belief is not influenced by it one way or another.

Deluge Geology is another great example. People come at this from exactly the wrong perspective from a scientific perspective: They arive at the conclusion that there was a great Flood prior to looking at the evidence, and in truth (despite what Creationists claim) the evidence is irrelevant to their arguments. You can see that in the fact that no Deluge Geology advocate provides examples of flood stratigraphy (there are many, many, many examples in geology--it's a rather common topic in sedimentology lectures, as they are specific, definite events on a human scale and therefore easy to analyze). However, show a hammer that's been mineralized by solute-rich groundwater and they'll present that as evidence for rapid fossilization. The evidence is irrelevant; at best it's window dressing, at worst it's ignored. They've already come to their conclusion.

So I think discussing criteria for accepting a concept and faith as two different aspects of the same concept is incorrect. Once you agree that there should be a certain criteria for accepting a concept (theory, hypothesis, argument, what have you) you've accepted that the proper mode of thinking is that the conclusion should be based on the evidence. Faith rejects that mode of thinking. These aren't two different points on the same graduated scale, but rather two different scales orthogonal to one another.

 

[punshhh]

Isn't that what I just said, in fact ?

So, really, every time you say "I understand" or something to that effect, in truth you don't ?



If you HAD understood the things you said you understood, you'd know that what you think is worthwhile adressing is IMPOSSIBLE. You CANNOT know, even in principle, what things ARE, unless you realise and admit that things ARE what they DO. It's really a simple concept.

Ok Ok I got the message, so our known universe is composed of activity and any kind of solid/substance/physical presence is an illusion/false.

This isn't quite what I expected a materialist to say.

How can activity occur in space and time, or is that also not what it seems?

 

[punshhh]

For what it is worth, here is my understanding of the matter/energy thing. Bear in mind that macro examples for micro concepts have the potential to be misleading.

Or I could just have it plain wrong.

But I think of a stretched elastic band. It has a certain amount of potential energy. But the energy is not some separate thing or stuff that gets stored in the elastic band.

Rather it is a fact about the properties and current state of the elastic band and the state is will assume when it is no longer held stretched.

So when we talk about matter and energy we are not talking about two things, we are talking about the same thing in different ways.

Thankyou for your analogy, I agree with Albell about the mass, I see this as the elastic.
So the energy stretch of the elastic is exchanged with other pieces of elastic via force.
Does the energy only have a presence as the extension of elastic?
and presumably the elastic is composed of a different form of energy, which forms the atom?

 

[kenkoskinen]

OK, so it wouldn't dissipate after all - we got there in the end


Another rebuttal of The Flood or Noah's Ark (or both)... thanks, I'll take a look.

dlorde Yes if the EM force suddenly vanished on Earth the planet would instantly lose volume. As it did, gravity would immediately pull its mass inwards and it would collide in the central region. The kinetic energy could hit a wall and cause a recoil and blow much of the mass into outer space i.e. if the new smaller planet's escape velocity were reached. This mass would be very fine since the EM force is gone and can't bind these particles together to form larger pieces. Some of it would get picked up and pushed along by the solar wind. Keep in mind the solar wind around the planet would be instantly stronger since the Earth's protective magnetic field would be immediately turned off. The Earth would lose a lot of mass but whatever was left gravity could capture. However the solar wind would keep picking off particles from the surface and over time the deflated would constantly lose mass. Of course this assumes there wasn't any accretions from outer space via meteorites etc. As the planet loses mass it would also move to orbits further away from the Sun. Over much time the planet would dissipate its mass and disappear. So it would happen but over a very long time.

 

[dlorde]

dlorde Yes if the EM force suddenly vanished on Earth ...Over much time the planet would dissipate its mass and disappear. So it would happen but over a very long time.

I have no argument with that. A magnetic field does protect against the solar wind.

Nevertheless, it seems clear that the original claim that it is not gravity but the electromagnetic force that primarily keeps large objects like planets held together (post 1771), is incorrect for gas planets, and somewhat misleading for solid planets like Earth.

 

[kenkoskinen]

When the EM force disappears

dlorde and others, we have been discussing what would happen if the electromagnetic force (EM) were to suddenly turn off on earth. This is in part a thought experiment to test whether gravity or EM holds our planet together. The answer is both are involved, especially in planets that consist of many molecules.

For info on EM there's an online video lecture: "What Holds Our World Together? Electric charges (Historical), Polarization, Electric Force, Coulomb's Law." The presenter is Walter Lewin and his lecture is one of a MIT series.

http://videolectures.net/mit802s02_lewin_lec01/

In my last reply to dlorde post #1855 I indicated that the volume of our planet would instantly shrink. I didn't realize how much. When the EM force turned off we have to try to imagine charged Standard Model particles: electrons, quarks & therefore protons, the weak forces W- & W+ vector bosons all suddenly losing their charges. Some would say this is crazy. I agree but follow along. When electrons lose their charge all of the space in the electron clouds get invaded by the new neutral electrons and other particles. This would cause the planet to shrink by many orders of magnitude. An atom's space encompassing the electron cloud is 10,000 times the volume of the nucleus. It is almost all space! So when I wrote that gravity would draw all the particles into a central area, this is no joke. The instant shrinkage in volume would cause a massive collision in the central area; followed by a huge rebound. Much of the matter would be ejected into outer space. Good bye Earth. Whatever survived would be a comparative miniscule ball but it would slowly dissipate, its particles being picked off by the solar wind.

The EM force is vital to holding Earth together!

 

[kenkoskinen]

I have no argument with that. A magnetic field does protect against the solar wind.

Nevertheless, it seems clear that the original claim that it is not gravity but the electromagnetic force that primarily keeps large objects like planets held together (post 1771), is incorrect for gas planets, and somewhat misleading for solid planets like Earth.

Yes, post 1771 contains error. Gravity plays the major role in gaseous planets, nebulae, stars and more. In Earth like planets (with lots of molecules being key) the EM force is just as important as gravity. See post #1857. I usually start by firing thoughts off the top of my head and later as I research and critique the data I make amendments, acknowledge err, learn and go onto the next station.

In conclusion, I erred but so did others ... it's not all about gravity.

 

[kenkoskinen]

The (lengthy) article on The Flood at your website http://antspub.com, made some reasonable points up to where I stopped reading.

However, I don't think the 12 page(!!) diversion about God's alleged 'Rainbow Covenant', including the physics of rainbows, the physiology & genetics of vision, quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, stellar fusion, cosmology, black holes and quasars, Hawking radiation, dark matter, and more(!), was really necessary - the rainbow covenant isn't really relevant to the question of whether there was a flood (also, that biblical passage could simply be interpreted as God adopting the rainbow as a symbol of the covenant).

Criticising the numerology in the story, and the improbability (impossibility) of the quoted dates and times, isn't that difficult - biblical dates and times are notoriously unreliable and often symbolic - e.g. repeated mentions of '7 days' and - '40 days and nights' were generally not supposed to be taken literally; '40 days and nights' meant 'a long time' - the number 40 (for some reason) had great symbolic meaning.

Whether there was a removable cover on the ark, and whether Noah should have opened a window to spot land, also seem somewhat incidental to the rebuttal...

I ran out of time and patience at that point.

dlorde My aim was to critique the entire narrative and not just the flood part of the stories per sec. I included the science because I wanted to. It's like Ricky Nelson's line "Garden Party."

'n' it's all right now, learned my lesson well
You see, ya can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself

 

[kenkoskinen]

I'll let the theists speak for themselves: Faith is belief in things unseen. In other words, beleif in the absence of evidence, or in contradiction of the evidence.

Though really in my mind faith isn't about the evidence at all--it's about the conclusion, and the evidence is considered irrelevant to that conclusion. If a person has faith that, say, Jesus existed the evidence truly doesn't matter one way or another. The conclusion wasn't arived at via evidence, and while the theist will gladly use any evidence they find to persuade others their own belief is not influenced by it one way or another.

Deluge Geology is another great example. People come at this from exactly the wrong perspective from a scientific perspective: They arive at the conclusion that there was a great Flood prior to looking at the evidence, and in truth (despite what Creationists claim) the evidence is irrelevant to their arguments. You can see that in the fact that no Deluge Geology advocate provides examples of flood stratigraphy (there are many, many, many examples in geology--it's a rather common topic in sedimentology lectures, as they are specific, definite events on a human scale and therefore easy to analyze). However, show a hammer that's been mineralized by solute-rich groundwater and they'll present that as evidence for rapid fossilization. The evidence is irrelevant; at best it's window dressing, at worst it's ignored. They've already come to their conclusion.

So I think discussing criteria for accepting a concept and faith as two different aspects of the same concept is incorrect. Once you agree that there should be a certain criteria for accepting a concept (theory, hypothesis, argument, what have you) you've accepted that the proper mode of thinking is that the conclusion should be based on the evidence. Faith rejects that mode of thinking. These aren't two different points on the same graduated scale, but rather two different scales orthogonal to one another.

Dinwar Good points but the two worlds do collide. Why do the believers feel the need to present their "scientific" evidence. They are also continuing to search for the best evidence and arguments to bolster their faith. Many of them change their arguments like some people do their socks. They also want to be viewed as "scientific." They call their stuff creation science & flood geology not creation faith and flood faith. This is often in response to what the scientific community is doing. For example it used to be a 7 day creation about 6,000 years ago. When dinosaur fossils/bones etc. were unearthed some began to speak of gaps of time or ages of creation in Genesis etc.

The creationists in turn also influence the scientific/skeptic community. We see this in political issues such as over the fight for social issues such as creationism/evolution being taught in science classes and prayer in schools, Christmas symbols on state property etc.

Unfortunately one has to keep their powder dry and fire when the time comes. You can only do that by being aware of issues and how things are being presented.