Kalam Cosmological argument

Ok, that's what I thought you were saying... and I dismissed it as nonsense EXCEPT you may have something There's no transfer as energy as what is energy in the virtual world? There may be no such concept. Energy is a physical phenomenon and as I expressed several posts ago, there is no necessary physical correlation between real and virtual worlds.BUT if we think of this in terms of information, then there is a "flow" of information from the programmer to the virtual world. We could describe this entropically, and there we would have your input... interesting.Sadly this would be unobservable from the POV of the inhabitants of the virtual world, i.e. us. But interesting all the same.

Obviously And check out msg 89 for an answer to your ponders on space-time and media.Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

No, it's not. From GR we do actually have a concept of medium or ether - it is the metric field - and it exists entirely separate from any concept of matter. The most "pure" GR solutions, such as black holes, have no matter at all.Our universe at our current level of understanding is a sandwich of layers: the metric field, the gauge fields, and the matter fields. The extent and topology of these fields define the extent and topology of the universe. The metric field provides a concept of structure and distance to the universe, and as such is reasonably described as a medium. However, to appreciate this fully, you also have to understand what we mean by matter... which certainly is not the common understanding (as potrayed throughout this sub-thread for example).

No it is not... but you refuse to engage me on this I don't bite, promise... The problem is that all three of you (you, Craig and Kalam ) do not understand General Relativity and cosmology to a sufficient degree to realise that the "argument" is out-of-date. Not that I can blame any of you as this is way beyond any undergraduate phsyics, never mind "The Universe in a Nutshell" and lesser books and articles. But I can blame you for continuing to try to push this argument when its inadequacies have been pointed out...Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

In our case, neither. We do require some physical substrate upon which to execute our algorithms, so there is an involement of electrons and photons in that substrate. But there is no requirement that an algorithm describes the regularities we find in this universe. As I said, they can be based upon whatever topos of mathematics you like... so far, only a subset of mathematics appears to be related to this universe (but there's an entire topic of discussion around that as well.)Back to that first point: although we construct the substrate from the physical means of this universe does not mean that the virtual world depends upon the nature of that physics. The whole point of an algorithm is that it is independent of the means of its execution. The virtual world has a set of elements and operations that are not affected in any way by the physical hardware... except when the hardware malfunctions or by direct intervention from the programmer.Edited by cavediver, : important "not" added

Well, I always recommend Brian Greene's book, not that I've read it. And Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell is good, but A Brief History of Time is better/deeper if you are willing to give it some thought.This post of mine is start: Message 200, and we can take that to a new thread if you are interested.

A trace in the virtual world, I assume you mean? It's a good and central question of course. If we say a valid world, W, obeys the constraint HW=0 where H is the operator that determines a valid world, then a trace-less miracle could be defined as a wholesale change of W to W', where HW'=0. However, that's not how we usually perceive miracles, as they are traceable: loaves and fishes weren't there, now they are. A traceless miracle would be "they were always there".Natural events such as Katrina or the tsunami are easy as any tinkering can be hidden within the chaotic dynamics. No one would ever know Similarly with perhaps influencing someone to do something. But something like loaves and fish, water to wine... that's more difficult becasue there are memories of the previous state (water, no food) to compare with the later state (wine, loaves and fish).

Oh N_J, it's only one-sided because you refuse to reply to my posts What's wrong? Is one ex-professional cosmologist too much of a danger to your side of the debate?I'm waiting...

I did, in posts Message 32, Message 47 ,and Message 90 but you have yet to reply. Yes, and would correct you in the way I am doing.Dr Craig knows little of relativity and cosmology. And unfortunately relativity and cosmology provide a downfall for his argument. There's not much to add by reading his site...

Hi Percy, I wouldn't be so dogmatic here. I don't usually regard your examples as uncaused. See my reply Message 40 to Ramoss earlier in the thread.

This is complete gibberish. There are aspects of our universe that may be infinite, ther are aspects that obviously are not infinite. This is a non issue. The real number line is infinitely long. Does that mean that the distance between any two points on the line is also infinite? No, of course not. Then why should the universe be any different? More gibberish. How on Earth do you get to "How can time exist without space?" from what I said? You need to slow down a bit and think. I repeat... THERE IS NO PROBLEM WITH INFINITE TIME. As in, there are effects in that region that are unique to that region. Simililarly on the Earth: we are used to the four compass directions of North, South, East and West. Close to the North Pole, East and West no longer seem to be at ninety degrees to North and South, and at the North Pole there is only South.In the standard Big Bang, close to the Big Bang itself, time does not behave in the way to which we are accustomed, and at T=0, the only direction is forward in time. There is no backwards in time, for there to have been a before.The universe is four dimensional and if God created the universe (and I believe he did) then he created all four dimensions as well. This means the whole universe came into existence, but not at any particular point in our time. The Big Bang, the Big Crunch, now, yesterday and next week, are all parts of that creation. If the universe is infinite in extent (spatially and/or temporally), then exactly the same idea holds. God brings the whole universe into being... You may just want to check your understanding of the physics that governs our Universe... it is a little lacking.

Why ever not? This is precisely the idea behind decoherence. You can sit behind a wall of ignorance and treat the "collapse" as something purely random and uninvestigatable, but we can do better than that.Or are you just being picky with me saying quantum fields, as opposed to, say, some prior state of the quantum fields being the "cause" of the current state of the quantum fields?[ABE]The virtual particles you mention are even worse, as they are never observed. Observations of the Casimir Effect do not measure a succession of pings every time a virtual particle pair pops (or fails to pop) into existence. Virtual particles don't exist, they are a way of accounting for vacuum fluctuations of the field. Edited by cavediver, : No reason given.

You mean in just the same way that when I toss a coin, there is nothing causing it to land head or tails? Which one is obeserved just happens Sorry, I've no idea. But then I'm not much good at predicting the coin either... or the height above mean sea level of the Atlantic at a specific lat, long and time.But I'm not sure that I'd go so far as to say that any of these things are uncaused...

Of course, it's what I do But perhaps a bit OT here, so can you open a thread in BB & Cosm and we can chat there. There are all sorts of interesting philosophical considerations concerning living in an infinte universe, so it could get interesting if people decide to dive in...

We have a theory of the space-time called General Relativity. It is an awesome theory in its predictive and explanatory power, and has been confirmed to amazing degrees of accuracy. It has absolutely no problem with infinite time and/or infinite space, and indeed most of its solutions (universes so to speak) are infinite to some extent or other.Craig's argument is nonsense and reveals little understanding. It is merely wrapping its ignorance in waffle. You keep saying "you can't add to the infinite" as if this is supposed to mean something. It is difficult to reply to because it makes no sense. If time is infinite in extent, who is asking you to add anything to it? Dimensions aren't added to!!! Let us say that the time dimension is finite in extent. Now, what does adding to it mean? Please explain and then I may be able to sort this mess out.