Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I'll chime in here with respect to the issue of falsification with two points:
First, if people around at the time of Christs crucifixion wanted to falsify the resurrection all they had to do was find the body and hang it in the public square.
Second, there is this really old thick book known as the Bible - which literally screams out daring people to falsify it. Non-believers and various detractors have literally been scratching and digging for such evidence for hundreds of years. It's a really thick book - one would expect that it would be quite easy to falsify.
Much of it has been falsified. Even you probably do not believe that absolutely everything in that book is literal truth.
Good but the point was I was correcting the misinterpretation of what Dawkins was saying. When he said "serious" he did not say it as "Good, valid, convincing, credible" or any of that. He meant "serious" in the sense of "not stupid and ludicrous".
A "Serious" case can indeed be made for god. It appears such a case is invalid, does not hold under strutiny, and is not credible. It is however "serious" as in it does not sound like a total joke.
What dawkins was contrasting this to was the opposite of "serious" as in the sheer comic ludicrousness of thinking gathering sticks on the Sabbath is important enough to upset a supremely powerful entity, that such an entity cares who you have sex with or in what position, or that saying Latin over crackers turns them magic, or that magic angels dictated words to an illiterate paedophile suffering from Cynophobia in the middle east.
No "serious" case can be made for those things it seems.
Quote:
Originally Posted by KingDavid8
I'm simply talking about God as an origin for the universe.
Oh I know what you are talking about alright. I have few doubts about that. I think I know generally what you believe. The issue is not that. The issue is that there appears to be no reason on offer TO believe it. You just say it is so and that is about it. I do not need to be convinced much further as to what you believe at all. The problem I have is there appears to be no evidence, arguments, data or reasons which substantiate your beliefs or afford them even a modicum of credibility.
You're right. It's more a "strawman argument" than a red herring. "Rainbows are naturally caused, therefore the entire universe is naturally caused" is a pretty good example of such an argument.
I think he was actually using an argument from induction (though with a specific premise in metaphor of the existence of lots of observations). not a strawman or a red herring. red-herring is a distraction from what is actually being discussed (using red-herring's stink to distract dogs from killing the hunted rabbit to smithereens/catching runaway criminals). strawman is an evasion maneuver, where you fake your opponents argument and then destroy it, then pretend you won so you don't have to fight anymore (fighting a straw-man so that people think you won the battle).
The atheist was using neither a red-herring nor a straw-man, but an argument from limited observation to proclaim a reasonable prediction (Argument from Induction).
To fight a red-herring you say: "this has nothing to do with the issue"
To fight a straw-man you say: "that was not my argument"
To fight induction you say: "there are more observations that you are not taking into account"
Even if, hypothetically, we could, how would this prove that our current universe had a naturalistic origin? If you're talking about the ability of purposeful beings (in this case, scientists) taking steps to cause a universe to exist, how would this, in any way, say that our current universe wasn't created by any sort of purposeful being? So, again, how can we test and falsify the idea that our universe had a naturalistic origin?
[...].
The thing is "universe" used to mean "everything that exists objectively"
meaning without our need to think it into existence.
your body would be a part of the universe. but the manifest function of your brain wouldn't. thought would be assumed to be a part of the universe, as thoughts seem to exist objective... "even if I think you are not thinking, in objective reality you are probably thinking".
Although your thinking does exist objectively, it is not necessarily measurable except by your actions that seem to model those of a thinking thing... the observer.
Your actual individual thoughts, on the other hand, would not have been a part of the universe.. for example, fake characters within your mind need you tho think them into existence, but the Sun doesn't.
These days, universe means something along the lines of "a vastly closed-system/place where objective things exist"
If a system is closed, then we couldn't be able to observe it. So if new natural universes existed in of themselves, we wouldn't be able to observe them without ceasing to exist in this one.
The vague meaning of the word "universe" is actually what makes the conversation difficult.
Doesn't this statement sound a lot like my hypothesis? In my theory, the electron doesn't physically exist until observed. In yours it becomes "denatured" whatever that means. How is that different?
And perhaps more importantly, how does a single electron, which is not alive and has no power to think or observe, make a "choice" to behave differently under different observational environments?
I'm sorry, you and I built a straw-man for my argument.
by "denatured" I meant that they do not hold their observable (natural) state ~ particles.
I'm not sure if wave-states(Mystic's Music hypothesis for universal consciousness) can be observed except by their effects (usually on particles), particle states OTOH, seem to be observable by themselves (particles effects on particles)... without our need to study their effects on wave-states/energies.
I don't know what word to use instead of "denatured"... perhaps "freed" or perhaps a new word? like "physicalized" ?
So the electron DOES exist objectively... WITHOUT the need to be "observed"... its just that around protons and such it must "chose" its particle state over its wave state. In the same way that atoms "chose" their least energy configurations instead of homogeneously mixing into a equally-distributed-charge sphere. Kinda like photons also share "Wave-particle duality" and light can "choose" between an energy equivalent state of wave or particle, depending on surrounding circumstances. The reason photons travel with a "c-limit" velocity is because they have no "true" mass, in that if they are at rest they do not exhibit mass. This is because Einstein predicted that all things with rest mass must increase their mass to the size of the universe to go at the speed of light... also he predicted that light NOT AT REST has mass and will be affected by gravitational forces.
Einstein seems to us like he was truly a prophet, and we can all also be if we try hard enough with an Agnostic mind like Einstein's.
The "choice" electrons make is independent of observation but only dependent on internal and environmental conditions. In essence, electrons would be "choosing" to become particles when they near protons whether we observed them or not.
I'm curious, have any of you actually taken quantum physics?
I haven't so I want to know from an expert.
That is patently untrue. Most of the universe is harsh and inhospitable, devoid of life, and would kill you in an instant
Indeed, Science teaches that the Universe has a propensity to destroy life in that it has a propensity to achieve complete entropy (disorder... or the fulfillment of the maximum minimum-energy equivalent ways of organizing/existing.).
by "denatured" I meant that they do not hold their observable (natural) state ~ particles.
I'm not sure if wave-states(Mystic's Music hypothesis for universal consciousness) can be observed except by their effects (usually on particles), particle states OTOH, seem to be observable by themselves (particles effects on particles)... without our need to study their effects on wave-states/energies.
I don't know what word to use instead of "denatured"... perhaps "freed" or perhaps a new word? like "physicalized" ?
So the electron DOES exist objectively... WITHOUT the need to be "observed"...
Your statements seem contradictory, at least if I'm understanding you properly.
First you opine that when not under observation particles revert(?) to wave states (probability waves?), and then you go on to state they exist objectively. How can both things be true?
Remember my hypothesis. Behavior in our reality is not actually happening, rather it's being calculated and rendered. That fits the data. Objective existence does not.
Quote:
The reason photons travel with a "c-limit" velocity is because they have no "true" mass, in that if they are at rest they do not exhibit mass. This is because Einstein predicted that all things with rest mass must increase their mass to the size of the universe to go at the speed of light... also he predicted that light NOT AT REST has mass and will be affected by gravitational forces.
Why would such a thing make sense? If reality and mass objectively exist, how can the passage of time vary based upon velocity? How can mass vary? A kilogram is a kilogram, except when it's not?
When you realize the universe has a finite frame rate, (google Planck Time for more on that) it actually makes sense. When time becomes granular, and the laws of causality dictate that a photon must move only one "pixel" per delta-t, a speed limit in VR becomes a logical conclusion.
PS... This doesn't change even if the recent nutrinos exceeding C event actually happened, it just means we got the actual speed limit wrong.
Quote:
Einstein seems to us like he was truly a prophet, and we can all also be if we try hard enough with an Agnostic mind like Einstein's.
Einstein also famously said "Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one." He lacked the reference to think about a digital virtual reality, as such things didn't even exist in theory. But he was on the right track.
Quote:
The "choice" electrons make is independent of observation but only dependent on internal and environmental conditions. In essence, electrons would be "choosing" to become particles when they near protons whether we observed them or not.
Except that's not what happens. If the which slit information isn't measured, you get behavior consistent with calculated behavior. If it is measured, you collapse the p-wave and the interference pattern disappears. But, if it's measured but the data is not recorded, the interference pattern reemerges.
That's inconsistent with objective physical reality. But very consistent with a virtual, calculated one.
Quote:
I'm curious, have any of you actually taken quantum physics?
I haven't so I want to know from an expert.
Nothing formal. Just a nerd with an above average IQ and a propensity to read.
Your statements seem contradictory, at least if I'm understanding you properly.
First you opine that when not under observation particles revert(?) to wave states (probability waves?), and then you go on to state they exist objectively. How can both things be true?
Remember my hypothesis. Behavior in our reality is not actually happening, rather it's being calculated and rendered. That fits the data. Objective existence does not.
Why would such a thing make sense? If reality and mass objectively exist, how can the passage of time vary based upon velocity? How can mass vary? A kilogram is a kilogram, except when it's not?
When you realize the universe has a finite frame rate, (google Planck Time for more on that) it actually makes sense. When time becomes granular, and the laws of causality dictate that a photon must move only one "pixel" per delta-t, a speed limit in VR becomes a logical conclusion.
PS... This doesn't change even if the recent nutrinos exceeding C event actually happened, it just means we got the actual speed limit wrong.
Einstein also famously said "Reality is an illusion, albeit a persistent one." He lacked the reference to think about a digital virtual reality, as such things didn't even exist in theory. But he was on the right track.
Except that's not what happens. If the which slit information isn't measured, you get behavior consistent with calculated behavior. If it is measured, you collapse the p-wave and the interference pattern disappears. But, if it's measured but the data is not recorded, the interference pattern reemerges.
That's inconsistent with objective physical reality. But very consistent with a virtual, calculated one.
If the data is not recorded how can you know that you observed it?
By the way, the unvalidated and OLD neutrino hypothesis states that photons are MADE UP OF a neutrino anti-neutrino pair.
quantum physics is all very understandable to me as an objective reality.
The universal projection idea has been around for a long while, I'm not sure how that is relevant unless we can use the knowledge that its a projection to conquer it or leave it to the "real" objective reality... I hope no one is going to wait for the aliens to take them. Doesn't seem to me like physicists think there is much legitimacy or need for the projection hypothesis to be believed, why do you?
Anyway, I'd mostly would like you to explain how can know something is being measured if it is not recorded... and how that relates to virtual realities.
Einstein's Theory of wave-particle duality for photons actually helped us develop lazers. What will your theory of observation dependent duality help us predict or understand or create?
Like some have joked before, this universe could be the effect of the gods having a party and one of the gods blowing up a balloon to see when it will pop... that is a very reasonable and possible hypothesis, but why should I believe it? Is it going to give me eternal life if I believe it? is it at least going to give me the HOPE or self-assurance of eternal blissful life? I mean, if your going to start selling snake oil you might as well do a good job of it. Maybe then the snake oil will work like an opiate or a placebo. what is the point if this is just a virtual reality? what should I do now? should I refrain from eating pork? what will be different now that I know this? What are its implications?
Last edited by LuminousTruth; 10-09-2011 at 11:13 PM..
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
