Winning the Creation Debate

[DukeU]

False. Even if we learned everything about the beginning of the universe, anyone could just say "God did it!". One would still not be able to rule out creation.

That's the luxury of playing the magic card.

Come on dude, this is the science section.

That's the best you got?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Come on dude, this is the science section.

That's the best you got?

Too good for you to meet head on, apparently.

So, more than good enough. Maybe someone more capable will meet it head on.

No, science and reason cannot rule out magic. Not ever.

You can point at anything and everything and say God did it.

It adds nothing. It explains nothing. It yields no useful predictions.

It affects nothing at all.

 

[DukeU]

Too good for you to meet head on, apparently.

So, more than good enough. Maybe someone more capable will meet it head on.

No, science and reason cannot rule out magic. Not ever.

You can point at anything and everything and say God did it.

It adds nothing. It explains nothing. It yields no useful predictions.

It affects nothing at all.

It adds an answer where science has failed to explain.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

It adds an answer where science has failed to explain.

It adds no answer. It replaces a mystery with an even bigger mystery. It explains nothing. It yields no useful predictions.

 

[Yarddog]

*the best anyone has

Hers just a random thought, does consciousness depend on physical matter? is conciousness/ self awareness, simply a process of chemical reactions? or is it free of the physical realm?

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Hers just a random thought, does consciousness depend on physical matter? is conciousness/ self awareness, simply a process of chemical reactions? or is it free of the physical realm?

Matter and energy? Or are you deeming energy to be nonphysical, for this question?

Not a gotcha, just affects the question and the answer.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Hers just a random thought, does consciousness depend on physical matter? is conciousness/ self awareness, simply a process of chemical reactions? or is it free of the physical realm?

One problem with questions like this...

Anything that can affect the physical IS, itself physical. Pretty much by definition. Because we can measure its effect on the physical. Now we have a force to identify and name. A physical force, to add to our lexicon of the physical.

So consciousness as any kind of agent of the physical must itself be physical.

 

[Yarddog]

Matter and energy? Or are you deeming energy to be nonphysical, for this question?

Not a gotcha, just affects the question and the answer.

Im actually not deeming any outcome on this, but the question is just a curious one to me and I was just asking to see what is your opinion and thoughts. No Judgement on that.

But does thought and consciousness actually take energy? Im not sure. If consciousness is no different than simple microorganisms communicating through chemical codes as part of their survival mechanism, only much more advanced in humans.... then that would be one train of thought in the direction of pure evolution.

But on the other hand, if thought and conciousness was somehow free of the physical, then could thought have existed before the universe as we know it was creeated, or even before matter and the elements had taken form?

If that was the case then the train of thought shifts towards creation by intent of thought and then if there was thought... was there also language? as the one thing I do remember being mentioned in biblical creation was that it started with the "word"

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Im actually not deeming any outcome on this, but the question is just a curious one to me and I was just asking to see what is your opinion and thoughts. No Judgement on that.

But does thought and consciousness actually take energy? Im not sure. If consciousness is no different than simple microorganisms communicating through chemical codes as part of their survival mechanism, only much more advanced in humans.... then that would be one train of thought in the direction of pure evolution.

But on the other hand, if thought and conciousness was somehow free of the physical, then could thought have existed before the universe as we know it was creeated, or even before matter and the elements had taken form?

If that was the case then the train of thought shifts towards creation by intent of thought and then if there was thought... was there also language? as the one thing I do remember being mentioned in biblical creation was that it started with the "word"

What is a thought, other than the biochemical activities and bioelectrical potentials in your brain?

I think we just happen to have introspective self awareness. We can "think about our thoughts". And we describe them. We can describe the physical experience of having happy ones, sad ones, etc.

That doesn't change what they are.

 

[Yarddog]

What is a thought, other than the biochemical activities and bioelectrical potentials in your brain?

I think we just happen to have introspective self awareness. We can "think about our thoughts". And we describe them. We can describe the physical experience of having happy ones, sad ones, etc.

That doesn't change what they are.

Ok well another thought is, does the universe tend to fall into chaos? or does it fall into some sort of order? or is what we see as order in the universe actually chaos? The Mayans were able to set their civilization in accordance to some celestial observations.... that would hint towards order, yet in the grander scheme of the universe does science see it all as being random?

I see one attaching thread from the creation theory of the ancient Hebrews to what we may see as order in the universe or at least our solar system. I feel that their idea that Something and everything could be made from the "spoken" WORD ..as in the will of God, to be quite unique and advanced compared to other creation theories I've seen with other civilizations... and then if one was to assume the universe WAS brought into being by some all knowing conciousness..... wouldnt that thread extend into the fact that the universe as we know it runs like some very predictable clock? or does it?
And if it does, then how is it possible that order could simple happen all on its own? even to the very atoms and molecuels that lock enough energy to create a nuclear bomb.
It seems like the vast amount of energy that exists is just mind boggling when it cant be accounted for where it originated from.

 

[scruffy]

There's a big hole in the science when it comes to the origin of the universe eh?

Not really. Not a "hole". It's just that we can't see farther back than the Big Bang.

 

[scruffy]

It adds an answer where science has failed to explain.

It adds a CONJECTURE. Not an answer.

 

[scruffy]

Ok well another thought is, does the universe tend to fall into chaos? or does it fall into some sort of order? or is what we see as order in the universe actually chaos? The Mayans were able to set their civilization in accordance to some celestial observations.... that would hint towards order, yet in the grander scheme of the universe does science see it all as being random?

I see one attaching thread from the creation theory of the ancient Hebrews to what we may see as order in the universe or at least our solar system. I feel that their idea that Something and everything could be made from the "spoken" WORD ..as in the will of God, to be quite unique and advanced compared to other creation theories I've seen with other civilizations... and then if one was to assume the universe WAS brought into being by some all knowing conciousness..... wouldnt that thread extend into the fact that the universe as we know it runs like some very predictable clock? or does it?
And if it does, then how is it possible that order could simple happen all on its own? even to the very atoms and molecuels that lock enough energy to create a nuclear bomb.
It seems like the vast amount of energy that exists is just mind boggling when it cant be accounted for where it originated from.

Science doesn't have all the answers.

And sometimes it gets things wrong.

Because of SCALE, and SCOPE.

There is currently a testable hypothesis that says the universe expands because of entanglement. It'll be a while before it can be tested. Meanwhile, we can build up the math around each case.

The boundary conditions are the hardest to ascertain, because we can't see that far. We also can't see the lower bound, can't see inside a photon. Yet.

So meanwhile we do math and we look at ensembles, and develop methods like weak measurement.

The math is key. Certain symmetries exist, and others don't. We need to understand why. There are "invariances" that were preserved after the big bang, and there are claims that other invariances went away. Some of these claims are testable, they're very expensive to test, they require dangerous particle accelerators and etc

IMO we should focus on the immediate. Get out into space, we'll find a lot of answers there.

 

[Leo123]

Hers just a random thought, does consciousness depend on physical matter? is conciousness/ self awareness, simply a process of chemical reactions? or is it free of the physical realm?

IMO, consciousness exists because of a life force. We do not know where life came from or even how to quantify it. We do know that we can be conscious of our thinking as well as be conscious of exterior forces that our senses take in. The more we are immersed in just internal thinking the less conscious we are of the present. The fact we can shift from thinking to experiencing the 'now' leads me to believe that consciousness does not depend on physical matter.

I also can't help but go back to the double slit experiment (light) where light itself changed characteristics from wave to particle depending on outside observation.

 

[Fort Fun Indiana]

Ok well another thought is, does the universe tend to fall into chaos? or does it fall into some sort of order? or is what we see as order in the universe actually chaos? The Mayans were able to set their civilization in accordance to some celestial observations.... that would hint towards order, yet in the grander scheme of the universe does science see it all as being random?

I see one attaching thread from the creation theory of the ancient Hebrews to what we may see as order in the universe or at least our solar system. I feel that their idea that Something and everything could be made from the "spoken" WORD ..as in the will of God, to be quite unique and advanced compared to other creation theories I've seen with other civilizations... and then if one was to assume the universe WAS brought into being by some all knowing conciousness..... wouldnt that thread extend into the fact that the universe as we know it runs like some very predictable clock? or does it?
And if it does, then how is it possible that order could simple happen all on its own? even to the very atoms and molecuels that lock enough energy to create a nuclear bomb.
It seems like the vast amount of energy that exists is just mind boggling when it cant be accounted for where it originated from.

We do see more "order" than we expect, in the universe. Galaxies that are too old... congruous movement of groups of galaxies... but that's probably due to our own ignorance of what we should expect to see.

How does order happen on its own? At the expense of disorder, somewhere else.

How do we see such fine "order", in life on earth? At the expense of disorder. Novae explosions, radiation from our star as it marches toward its own death, etc.

Fusion and forces from novae have created heavier elements. These heavier elements (Heavier than Hydrogen and Helium) play with the Hydrogen in the universe. Their energy to do so lies within them and comes from their very creation, in these high pressure/high temperature environments.

When we gain energy by splitting atoms like uranium, we are accessing energy imbued into those atoms by those high temperature/high pressure environments, and thus by the events that caused them to exist. The atoms we split (fission) were all created by novae explosions or by decay from other atoms created in novae explosions. Every single one.

 

[scruffy]

We do see more "order" than we expect, in the universe. Galaxies that are too old... congruous movement of groups of galaxies... but that's probably due to our own ignorance of what we should expect to see.

How does order happen on its own? At the expense of disorder, somewhere else.

How do we see such fine "order", in life on earth? At the expense of disorder. Novae explosions, radiation from our star as it marches toward its own death, etc.

Fusion and forces from novae have created heavier elements. These heavier elements (Heavier than Hydrogen and Helium) play with the Hydrogen in the universe. Their energy to do so lies within them and comes from their very creation, in these high pressure/high temperature environments.

When we gain energy by splitting atoms like uranium, we are accessing energy imbued into those atoms by those high temperature/high pressure environments, and thus by the events that caused them to exist. The atoms we split (fission) were all created by novae explosions or by decay from other atoms created in novae explosions. Every single one.

Have you checked out the timeline of the early Big Bang?

It's really interesting. It happens at the Planck scale. My comments are in bold.

• Planck Era (10^-43 seconds): The earliest known time, where all forces are unified and the universe is incredibly dense and hot; considered the "beginning" of the Big Bang. here it is postulated that energies were too great to allow particle formation. In this "inflationary" model we depend on the FLRW metric which says distance between points = 0
• Grand Unified Theory (GUT) Era (10^-35 seconds): The strong nuclear force separates from the electroweak force. so that's 8 orders of magnitude, about 100 million Planck steps. Separation of forces is like "phase transitions". The inflationary model says fields change behavior during these transitions, because the symmetries are changing
• Inflationary Epoch (10^-35 to 10^-32 seconds): A rapid expansion of the universe, where it grows exponentially in size. So here we have at least two kinds of symmetry breaking. The inflationary model posits a universal gauge force which then splits into gravity and electrostrong. Electrostrong then breaks down into strong and electroweak. There is no actual evidence for any of this so far.
• Particle Era (10^-12 seconds): Fundamental particles like quarks and leptons form, and the universe cools rapidly. particles means stability, which means a well defined energy surface. For this part there is plenty of evidence. As soon as particles exist we get "thermalization" which means thermal equilibrium, it means heat flows freely through space.
• Electroweak Era (10^-12 to 1 second): The electroweak force separates into the electromagnetic and weak forces. more symmetry breaking. Electroweak symmetry breaking occurs at a temperature around 10^15 Kelvin. The highest temperature we've achieved so far is about 10^12 K in the large hadron collider. Before electroweak there is no mass from the Higgs mechanism
• Hadron Epoch (1 second to a few minutes): Quarks combine to form protons and neutrons. more stability. Before hadrons there is only a quark-gluon plasma and quarks can not combine. Once quarks combine we have baryogenesis which leads to protons and neutrons. This is an interesting piece because "as" this is occurring some of the baryon-antibaryon pairs recollapse into pairs of high energy photons, and there should be some entanglement evidence somewhere but there is a problem measuring it lol. Baryogenesis predicts 1 neutron for every 6 to 7 protons, which is about what we see. Also during this time we have neutrinos beginning to fly around, and they should still be flying.
• Nucleosynthesis (3 minutes): Protons and neutrons begin to fuse together, creating the first light elements like hydrogen and helium. anything heavier takes a few hundred thousand years, most of it is isotopes of hydrogen and helium with an occasional lithium. Early on they're unstable and short lived, later they become more stable
• Photon Epoch (several hundred thousand years): The universe is dominated by photons, and particles are constantly interacting with light. after baryogenesis most of the residual energy becomes pairs of photons. Radiatíon predominates before about 50,000 years, then matter
• Recombination (380,000 years): Electrons become bound to nuclei, forming the first atoms and allowing light to travel freely through space, marking the end of the "Dark Ages" none of this speaks to the development of the fields. It only speaks to the "results" of the interacting fields. To get to the fields, you have to assume that relativity breaks down and quantum effects predominate as we move backwards through time. Meaning, this is a linear time model that may or may not apply.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

This is the science section. If you have a point, just state it clearly without the trolling.

That accusation is uncalled for, ad-hominem, let him speak; if you want more clarity ask, do not attack the man, ridiculous.

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

It adds no answer. It replaces a mystery with an even bigger mystery. It explains nothing. It yields no useful predictions.

This is frankly naive. Science ALWAYS replaces mysteries with other mysteries, to actually believe it doesn't is beyond naive.

If we are to disqualify explanations that replace unknowns with different unknows then science would simply cease to be.

Years ago the mystery of what is a proton, what is a neutron was replaced with a new mystery. Those particles are now regarded as being composed of quarks as are all hadrons, and those quark particles are a new mystery.

No scientific explanation or theory EVER eliminates the unknown, they simply replaces one with another, that's what models are, built from human made abstractions and as we learn more the abstractions change over time.

A "What is science" introduction class should cover all this.

 

[Dante]

Have you checked out the timeline of the early Big Bang?

It's really interesting. It happens at the Planck scale. My comments are in bold.

• Planck Era (10^-43 seconds): The earliest known time, where all forces are unified and the universe is incredibly dense and hot; considered the "beginning" of the Big Bang. here it is postulated that energies were too great to allow particle formation. In this "inflationary" model we depend on the FLRW metric which says distance between points = 0
• Grand Unified Theory (GUT) Era (10^-35 seconds): The strong nuclear force separates from the electroweak force. so that's 8 orders of magnitude, about 100 million Planck steps. Separation of forces is like "phase transitions". The inflationary model says fields change behavior during these transitions, because the symmetries are changing
• Inflationary Epoch (10^-35 to 10^-32 seconds): A rapid expansion of the universe, where it grows exponentially in size. So here we have at least two kinds of symmetry breaking. The inflationary model posits a universal gauge force which then splits into gravity and electrostrong. Electrostrong then breaks down into strong and electroweak. There is no actual evidence for any of this so far.
• Particle Era (10^-12 seconds): Fundamental particles like quarks and leptons form, and the universe cools rapidly. particles means stability, which means a well defined energy surface. For this part there is plenty of evidence. As soon as particles exist we get "thermalization" which means thermal equilibrium, it means heat flows freely through space.
• Electroweak Era (10^-12 to 1 second): The electroweak force separates into the electromagnetic and weak forces. more symmetry breaking. Electroweak symmetry breaking occurs at a temperature around 10^15 Kelvin. The highest temperature we've achieved so far is about 10^12 K in the large hadron collider. Before electroweak there is no mass from the Higgs mechanism
• Hadron Epoch (1 second to a few minutes): Quarks combine to form protons and neutrons. more stability. Before hadrons there is only a quark-gluon plasma and quarks can not combine. Once quarks combine we have baryogenesis which leads to protons and neutrons. This is an interesting piece because "as" this is occurring some of the baryon-antibaryon pairs recollapse into pairs of high energy photons, and there should be some entanglement evidence somewhere but there is a problem measuring it lol. Baryogenesis predicts 1 neutron for every 6 to 7 protons, which is about what we see. Also during this time we have neutrinos beginning to fly around, and they should still be flying.
• Nucleosynthesis (3 minutes): Protons and neutrons begin to fuse together, creating the first light elements like hydrogen and helium. anything heavier takes a few hundred thousand years, most of it is isotopes of hydrogen and helium with an occasional lithium. Early on they're unstable and short lived, later they become more stable
• Photon Epoch (several hundred thousand years): The universe is dominated by photons, and particles are constantly interacting with light. after baryogenesis most of the residual energy becomes pairs of photons. Radiatíon predominates before about 50,000 years, then matter
• Recombination (380,000 years): Electrons become bound to nuclei, forming the first atoms and allowing light to travel freely through space, marking the end of the "Dark Ages" none of this speaks to the development of the fields. It only speaks to the "results" of the interacting fields. To get to the fields, you have to assume that relativity breaks down and quantum effects predominate as we move backwards through time. Meaning, this is a linear time model that may or may not apply.

Wow!

I mean, wow!

wtf is this?

 

[Sherlock Holmes]

One problem with questions like this...

Anything that can affect the physical IS, itself physical. Pretty much by definition.

What definition? My mind can affect the physical, my mind can make my brain produce signals that eventually get propagated to my hand and my coffee moves. My mind is not physical, my Id is not physical, "I" am a mind with free will.

Of course you can disagree but not on the basis of science.

Because we can measure its effect on the physical. Now we have a force to identify and name. A physical force, to add to our lexicon of the physical.

So consciousness as any kind of agent of the physical must itself be physical.

That's a philosophical claim not a scientific one, you keep telling people this is the "science forum" yet you yourself often post many non-scientific claims.