My mind's in a knot... (Re: Who/what created God?)

WTF does that mean? That is not even a rational response. The word "inherent" litteraly means "involved in the constitution or essential character of something" meaning that the "laws of physics" as onfire coherently stated are . Therefore these "laws" are part of the universe "construct" and vice versa. You cannot have one without the other. The universe makes no sense without these laws and these laws make no sense with a universe of matter and energy to act on.Is this a belief? Sure. Eveything in life is built on beliefs, either rational or irrational, substantiated or unsubstantiated. But this is a rational explanation based on logic, scientific theory and emperical evidence as well as the lack of any evidence saying the contrary. If you open it up to say that the "laws of physics" do not only apply to our universe than you also must logically concede that God being outside our universe is subject to these "laws" as well. And how would YOU define GOD? And what is your evidence that this supernatural entity exists (and no a 2000 year old contradictory, erronous book that says so does not count as credible evidence)? As is the question of asking what came before the universe? If time does not exist outside the universe than there is no need for a cause and thus no need for a God to create it. That's nice. I care because? And I should choose your beliefs over mine because? Um, this does not make any sense. So you are saying that we can only fully understand physics (a natural science) is outside of science (using our senses to observe; collect, interpret and test evidence and make a rational explanation using logic). If so than what you are talking about is is not physics but metaphysics (philosophy, theology, etc) which lies outside the realm of science. So what are you suggesting we use instead of logic? ESP? Crystals, etc.And who is pretending? I am trying to use science and logic to answer these questions. However, an unknown is an unknown. Why should I believe in God, why not the flying spaghetti monster, a purple unicorn, flying teapots around Jupiter, etc over the idea that the universe is all-inclusive and the supernatural does not exist. If you can prove to me that the supernatural realm exist, I will become a believer, otherwise I will rely on science and my 5 senses.What it seems you are suggesting is blind faith in some belief of a supernatural being/existence. So what are you using to substantiate this belief?Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

No it's completely rational. It's irrational to treat what you don't know as something that doesn't need an explanation. Even if you bury your head in the sand, the problem is still there - these laws didn't create themselves. It's a religious belief that the laws of physics somehow created themselves at the big bang. And it's also pretty absurd. What are you talking about? What are you talking about?? Is this the first time in your entire life that you hear that modern physicists are talking about god? May I ask in which world are you living? Because your certainty that there is no god is unwarranted. Maybe there is maybe there is not. But your total certainty conveys a religious dogma that has settled in your mind. This shows that you don't know what you are talking about.Scientists have been using equipment and technology to bypass the limits of our 5 senses for more than a century. And believe me, when someone uses an inferometer, that's not metaphysics. I merely said a new type of logic. If you insist on using crystals, be my guest. Yep, stick to your senses, they are all you need to understand the world. Altough they once convinced people that the Earth was flat. If you were at least partly interested in science and in physics in particular, you'd know that the expression "supernatural existence" is pretty undefined and meaningless per our current standard of knowledge.

The Big Bang was the beginning of spacetime thus it is illogical to ask what existed before spacetime began. In addition, cause and effect do not make sense without the dimension of time. I will explain.So what evidence do we have for why we believe the Big Bang occured in the first place. Here are several: First, nearly all galaxies (there are few relatively close galaxies that are blue shifted vice red shifted but there is an explanation for this which I will not go into right now) appear to be moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance. This movement is defined as "Hubble's Law," named after Edwin Hubble who discovered this phenomenon in 1929. This observation supports the expansion of the universe and therefore implies that the universe was once compacted. Second, if the universe was initially very hot as the Big Bang suggests, we should be able to find some remnant of this heat. We have discovered this "heat" in the form of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation no matter where we look in the sky. And thirdly, the model of the Big Bang predicts the universe to be composed of mostly hydrogen and helium, which it does as opposed to a very different composition predicted by the steady state theory and others.Therefore if space began from a singularity with the Big Bang than so to did time. Time and space are not seperate concepts but rather are an intricately linked four-dimensional construct (length, width, height and time) in which all matter and energy in the universe are contained. This concept is explained by Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.Time is not an abstract thought. Time can be measured much in the same way we can measure the distance between two points so can we measure the interval between two events. The difference of course between these two is that time only "flows" one way. However, this is only halfway true since at the subatomic level there is no distinction between past, present or future and thus no "arrow of time". I will not go into this right now as whole books have been written discussing spacetime, thermodynamics, entropy, and the "arrow of time".Read Hawkings "A Brief History of Time" or Brian Greens "The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality" which do a good job explaing Einstein's Theories of Relativity and the intrerelationship between space and time.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

You meant the Special Theory of Relativity, I hope.

Actually spacetime is explained in both Einstein's General and Special Theories of Relativity. His General Theory of Relativity takes his earlier Special Theory of Relativity and incorporates the force of gravity. His General Theory was published nearly 10 years later and was more through in his explanations of the characteristics of spacetime.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

When did I ever say that we should treat something we don't know as something that doesn't need an explanation? I never said this so stop sticking words in my mouth. I said why should why we believe/embrace this speculative explanation until we have evidence that it exists. These laws are a human derived concept of how the universe works, nothing more. There is no need for them to "create themselves". They are the universe we live in. One and the same. And again asking what existed before time began is an illogical question. Unless you can prove otherwise. A religious belief is a belief in a supernatural deity/deities/existence. I have no religious belief. I believe in what can be "proven" with emperical evidence. If you want to call this a religious belief so be it. I guess you would call me a defacto materialist until you could show me evidence showing the contrary. That is your opinion. BTW, I don't consider your position absurd or illogical, I just don't see any evidence that supports your position at this time. At best, I can deduce my position to the same amount of certainty as you can yours. If you say time i.e. cause and effect does exist prior to the Big Bang and thus something had to create the universe than again we would go back to the infinite regression of causalities by asking what caused the cause of the universe. This is pretty self-explanatory. What do you not understand about this statement? If a physicist is talking about God, it is usually in a non-scientific philisophical sense. And talking about God and providing evidence for the existence of God are two seperate things.BTW, you didn't answer my question. Again what is the evidence supporting the existence of a supernatural entity/reality? A natural one in which I see no evidence for the supernatural. Who said I had certainty? I am just stating that I don't see any evidence that he/she/it exists. That is why I consider myself an agnostic atheist. And no those are not mutually exclusive terms. Again, when did I ever say I had total certainty? I agree I would be an idiot or a religious fanatic (or both) to make this statement, which I never made. I am just pointing out that I have never seen an conclusive evidence pointing to the contrary. I had a feeling this would come up. It is evident that your interpretation of the 5 senses and mine are different. I would venture to guess that most scientists would interpret using the 5 senses as meaning everything that we can physically detect either directly or indirectly (as you pointed out). Yes we can detect radio waves, microwaves, siesmographs, etc. But they all have to through 1 or more of the 5 senses of the human body for us to interpret them i.e. looking at an seismograph displaying tremors on a paper drum etc.Regardless, are you saying that we can detect the supernatural directly or indirectly through scientific means? Can you define or describe this "new" logic? If not what good is it even speculating about it? LOL, it was also through observation and logical deduction (not some form of ESP) that they discovered it was round not flat.You have still yet to provide any evidence of your "new" logic, ESP, or the supernatural. Keep trying though. I am not going to go tit for tat with you on this one, as it is an obvious ad hominum attack. I agree with this statement, which is why I asked for evidence for it or any supernatural event/entity/whatever that exists our physical universe/reality.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

The Lord's Prayer: "Our Father who are in heaven....."Job 1 informs us that the sons of God came to present themselves before God and Satan was with them. They all exist in the heavens.Genesis 22:11 God called Abraham from heaven.I Kings 22:19 " I saw Jehovah sitting on his throne and all the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left."These are a few. There are others which are equally significant.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Hi, Buzz. I don't think I follow you. I'm not sure these scriptures specify that "heaven" must be inside this universe.I incidentally agree with you that God is part of this universe---Mormon scriptures refer to the "throne of God" as a place in the cosmos (by inference from a reference to its proximity to a specific star), as seen below:

quote:

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2. And I saw the stars, that they were very great, and that one of them was nearest unto the throne of God; and there were many great ones which were near unto it;
3. And the Lord said unto me: These are the governing ones; and the name of the great one is Kolob, because it is near unto me, for I am the Lord thy God: I have set this one to govern all those which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest.

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-Abraham 3: 2-3

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I've never found a biblical source that affirms this directly, though.----- So, who or what did create the universe?
Did the universe come into being on its own?
Or, has it always existed without being created?Edited by Mantis, : I attributed to post #56 what should have been attributed to post #58.

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I'm Bluejay.Darwin loves you.

Human-derived or not, they refer to something that is compatible with human logic and that introduces order. You are evading the question multiple times so i'll re-state it:Where did the laws of physics come from at T=10^-43 sec? At that time there was NO universe, there was only the total energy of the future universe plus the laws of physics. If you understand the question, let me know what you think. Where did those laws that shaped the universe and let it unfold to its current state 14 billion years later come from? That's a newtonian worldview that is outdated and wrong. Your materialist perspective comes from those 5 senses and beyond what they are telling you, you'll be hard pressed to present even a single shred of evidence that supports those notions(and not only about matter, but also about spatial and temporal differentiation). These are distinctions that nature does not make, they correspond to nothing in the real world and exist only in our heads. I would not agree about the science part - applying the cause and effect principle doesn't mean a non-scientific approach. It simply conveys a certainty in the applicability of human logic past certain limits. I am hesitant about the validity of this approach, so my position is that god is a good explanation only and if human logic and the cause and effect principle hold beyond the level of what we experience. Yes, your 5 senses don't sense anything "supernatural", that's normal and not out of the way. Probably not, but we can detect that what those 5 senses are feeding is wrong. I have to go now, but this a very very important and broad topic concerning the future theory of everything that will theoretically explain everything. I have something in mind, and if i don't get lost in my thoughts i may produce something that makes sense.

Stephen Hawking also made a metaphysical proposal of something he called "Imaginary Time" to deal with the problem of how the universe could explode into being from nothing.

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen.1:1)I think it is as clear as it is humanly possible for us to grasp the fact. The universe came into existence because of an act of will of Someone - God. This was the beginning of the universe.As far it is possible to grasp with our limited minds - it is clear, I think. I mean I believe we are encountering Someone with limitless knowledge and ability trying to communicate with us the most essential things about our existence and that on a level in which the greatest number of us can understand.I think God succeeded in informing of (if we want to listen) that in the beginning He created it all. This seems contradictory. First of all it says "the heavens AND THE EARTH"."In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."Without imposing any preconceived concept, I think you have to admit that "the heavens and the earth" stand for the universe. By implying that it only says "...God created the heavens" you are actually changing what is written there to agree with your concept. It doesn't work. That may be your kind of metaphysics. Maybe you have some special definition of the universe.However, the passage says that He created the heavens and the earth. Now if He could not exist except from within the heavens and the earth then He could not be able to create it. In that case He would not be there to do so.That makes no sense. So God and the WILL of God had to be first in place before HE could create the heavens and the earth.Now I may not be able to explain that. I will grant you that. But that doesn't break my heart because we are dealing with the Ultimate Divine Being.But at any rate "FIRST" He was there and "then" He created the heavens and the earth. And that is a realm into which He may freely interject Himself and His influence if He desires. For example, the incarnation of God as a man in Jesus Christ certainly was God entering freely into that heavens and earth which He created in the beginning.But the Bible shows God's plan, God's good pleasure, God's desire, and God's will as things which preceeded the existence of the universe. And as much as it may kill the modern man to do so, I think our response should be love and worship rather than complaining that God transcends our world in a way that we simply cannot comprehend.I mean, as I asked before - Do you really want to bear the heavy burden of understanding everything? I mean I am as curious as the next person. And I think we should study as much as we can. But do you really know what a crushing responsibility is it to have total knowledge of EVERTHING ?That we leave the total understanding of EVERYTHING up to God as His responsibility is not an offense to me.Got to give a kid a ride to school now. Latter.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.Edited by jaywill, : No reason given.

I am very short on time right now, but since this seems like an important topic and i am on my computer, i'll give it ago, and maybe someone will pick from there.The problems that plague our understanding of the world, as i have been asserting multiple times here, are very often related to infinities. I do feel that if we want to make sense of the world beyond pure speculation, circular reasoning and religious notions of gods, we'll have to find a way to make sense of infinities.One of the inherent problems of this is the reasoning we are using. I sometimes feel like crying out loud in hopelessness as we simply cannot test the laws of logic. If we want to test them, we have to use our inherent and derived logic. This is a circular reasoning that leads to infinite regression. We seem stuck with whatever we are provided by the ultimate reality(god/nature). It's painful and regardless if you are Einstein or Ed Witten, we cannot know anything with certainty about our logic which generally leads to "how do we know with certainty anything about anything"?It does seem like our reasoning is well suited to the classic world, and it falls apart beyond that. The quantum world and generally all bounderies of our existence all defy our reasoning and even abstract mathematics falls apart. The plank scale and below doesn't make sense, the beggining of the universe doesn't make sense, the size of the universe and it existence in non-existence don't make sense, objects travelling at the speed of light from their frame of reference defy our logic, etc. etc. Even Zeno's paradox defies human logic. IMO, all our theories break down at the fundamental borders of the world/reality for a reason.Either something or we ourselves are fooling ourselves about the nature of the world we live in. This is known to the brightest physicists of our time and is probably the most hardcore problem ever encountered by mankind. Quantum theory, correctly interpreted, is information theory. And when we've come to find that the quantum level is the fundamental level of our reality, then there is something very wrong with our long-cherished notions of reality.As Anton Zeilinger points out:
"We've now been working on the unification of gravitation and quantum physics for almost eighty years - there must be something wrong with our concepts. I'm convinced we can only succeed with an entirely new philosophical approach."There is a joke circulating the physics circles - that we can, after all, call our universe unique. Why? Because it is the only one that string theory cannot describe.From what i've been reading lately, the String Theory is in a sorry state and there is a growing discontent among physicists about the possibility that it may turn out to be the theory of everything.David Gross thinks we are missing something fundamental. We need a leap in understanding, though where it will come from is not clear.

Yes, if you are not a trained mathematician/physicist, it will fall apart. No, they don't. They completely defy common sense, and general expectations, but they certianly don't defy my reasoning, nor that of the world community of physicists and mathematicians working in this area. That doesn't mean we have all the answers - we have very few, but we gain more every day. But it is our very reasoning that has taken us into these bizarre worlds. Go into any mathematical/theroretical physics department and you will not see any scientists running around screaming "this is just so beyond our reasoning". You will see them hard at work, drinking coffee, and reasoning with each other, or with themselves. On the contrary, it is the abstract mathematics that generates the very weirdness of which you speak. Greta, it doesn't make sense to you. So what? How much of neuroscience makes sense to you? Or oganometallics? Spend twenty years of your life dedicated to making sense of the above, and then come back and complain if you still feel the same way. And how is this different from any other point in science in the past four thousand years?

Um, sort of but not quite. What Stephen Hawking wrote about in his book "A Brief History of Time" is that imaginary time is time that runs perpendicular to our normal "real" time line axis akin to the imaginary number scale which is used in mathematics. This is counterintuitive to a non-mathematician but imaginary numbers are a real mathematical concept used in higher math to describe a number line perpendicular to the "real number" axis. Here is a good primer for it: imaginary numbers. I am not a mathematician and only took up to college calculus so if there are any mathematicians that could fully explain this I would appreciate it.This is not soley a metaphysic (philosophical) proposal but rather is a theoretical physics/mathematic proposition. That is we should be able to back up this proposition of imaginary time with definitive math and physics not just philosophical ponderings. Not being a mathematician I am not sure how much of his proposal has been substantiated.I think his proposal for imaginary time is to get around the singularity paradox (spacetime reaches to infinity) caused by the Big Bang and which also occur in black holes. That is not only space would have no boundaries/edges (infinite plane) but so to would time. That is imaginary time would have no begginning or end even though ordinary time would begin with a singularity (only on the ordinary time scale) with the Big Bang. Asking what happened before the Big Bang would be akin to asking "What lies north of the North Pole?”. I will have to reread his "Brief History of Time" to confirm this but this was my understanding on first reading it.Thanks for bringing this up Jaywill, it is good to discuss all posibilities (including the existence of a supernatural being i.e. God) of course. However, until we can provide verifiable evidence, all of this pondering of the ultimate cause is relegated to the philosophical realm.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

I agree wholeheartedly with CaveDiver's assesmment of your post but here are a few answers from myself. There is nothing wrong with the mathematical concept of infinity on its own. As CaveDiver eloquantly expressed nobody is going around with the "sky is falling" attitude. Just to clarify, I assume you are talking about the infinite regression of cause and effect?, correct? If so read my post answering Jaywill about Stephen Hawkings proposal that answers the question of singularity before the Big Bang. I am not an expert in this, but maybe CaveDiver or someone else knowledgeable on this subject can expound on my explanation of imaginary time and how it avoids the singularity paradox (where did the singularity come from). Please educate us on the problem with our reasoning? Just saying that we have a problem with our reasoning does not do anything but beg the question of exactly what the problem is and how do we fix it. Being a pragmatist and being in the military, one of the axioms I daily use, is that if you see a problem, propose a solution otherwise you're useless. The laws of logic are the test! They are the criteria from which we use to build logical arguments that we can verify there validity and test using emperical evidence and observation. Asking how do we know if the laws of logic are correct is like asking why is blue, blue? How can we test logic against logic? Your statement is (in Spock's words) illogical. False. How do you think Newton, Mach, Einstein, Heisenberg, Hawkings, and other theoretical physicists figured out their scientific postulates? It was through sound reasoning and logic. In fact Einstein originally devised his Theories of Relativity (both the General and Special) using thought experiments and observation. It wasn't until years later that his proposals of the relative nature of spacetime, light, and gravity were "proven" true by verified observation and experimentation. No, this is how science works. Whenever we delve more deeply into the intricacies of the cosmos we end up with more questions than what we had before. That is the nature of science and the nature of our cosmos. If we had all the answers, we would not need science to help us answer the questions. Just because we don't have all the answers does not mean our method of reasoning and logic are incorrect. In fact we are no so much limited by our reasoning so much as by physical and economic limitations i.e. to physically test the string theory we would need a particle accelerator the size of the solar system which is both physically and economically impossible at this time. However, this does not mean we cannot mathematically and theoretically test these postulates to see if they make sense. Which is precisely what scientists have been and currently doing.Just saying "God did it", "it doesn't make sense", or "it defies logic", does absolutely zero to help science. It is just a cop out to
not continue what we are doing, answering questions about us as humans and the world around us.Also, concerning Zeno's paradox it seems that modern mathematics i.e. calculus, science and logical deduction have answered most (if not all) of Zeno's paradoxical problems as shown here: Zeno's Paradoxes[/url]. Even some follow-on Greek philosophers/scientists such as Aristotle and Archimedes answered many of Zeno's seemingly unanswerable puzzles so your premice that Zeno's paradox defy human logic is false. And how are you defining "information theory"? It seems everyone has there own take on what "information" means much less a coherent theory describing such. Also, there is no one "qunatum theory", what are you talking about? There are several dozen (I am being conservative) theories dealing with phenomena on the quantum level (subatomic) so which one in particular are you talking about? Or are you saying all of them?BTW, we have know for several decades of the "weirdness" of the quantum world i.e. heisenberg's uncertaintity principle, relativity, etc. It is only strange because it "seems" to defy the laws of physics in the macroscopic world, however the quantum
world" really does not, it just extends the laws of physics into previously unknown territory. Humans (especially non-scientific types) are not particularly fond of change and thus seem to hang onto there more traditional understanding of the world around them this is why it seems so strange to them (and to you). And how would he propose this new philosophical approach? How? By using the rules of logical argument, observation and verifiable evidence of course! Or do you propose something different? If so what? And this proves what? Scientists always joke about the unknown. It is a way to break the tention. That doesn't mean they don't think they the unknown could never become known. In fact to discover the unknown IS the main axiom of science, to discover the unknown or as Captain Kirk would state "to boldly go where no man had gone before!"String theory has been in and out of popularity with the physics community for the last 30 years. I am not a physicist and am not positive what it's current status is, though I thought that more physicsists were embracining it than in the past. Can you provide some evidence for your assertion? And what does this have to do with anything? I never brought up the string theory? BTW, the latest proposal is in the M-Theory which incorporates string theory as well as supergravity, multidimensions and other proposed quantum physics related theories. The question is can we provide verifiable evidence for these to accurately depict the quantum nature of our universe? We have yet to adequately answer this question but should we stop trying?Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan