Big Bang Found

So a recap on the consensus of the main points?1. There probably is such a thing as uncaused.2. The Big Bang and some other quantum phenomenon could be examples of such.
(In the case of nuclear decay the propensity to decay is caused but not the actual decay which just happens for no damn reason.)3. The universe is determistic, except when it isn't.Such a interesting thread.

I think so, but I don't know if the implications are as significant as this discussion may have suggested. My personal belief is that trying to obtain evidence of the answer to important theological questions at the bottom of a test tube or by peering through a telescope are will always be futile.During this discussion, I argued for a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, and no one argued for any alternate interpretation. I myself am woefully under equipped to discuss them, but they did not come up. I'm guessing that some different area of physics than what we are discussing is actually kbertsche's speciality.In any event my negative comments about kbertche's abilities were unwarranted and unfair. I do believe my error resulted from an attempt to impose a sensible implication on an argument of his that made no sense. But that's no excuse for attributing my fabrication to him.Here is a link to some discussion. I'll admit that the link follows arguments very similar to my own position, but it does provided mention of places to find critics.Craig, Kalam, and Quantum Mechanics: Has Craig Defeated the Quantum Mechanics Objection to the Causal Principle? » Internet Infidels Maybe. Definitely for quantum phenomenon. I'm not even sure what you mean by this.

I meant that the universe principally operates deterministically.
However there are elements in the universe that do not. Such as random radioactive decay.

Hmm. As I see it, even deterministic behavior is often an aggregate of a much larger count of microscopic behavior. In one of the episodes of Cosmos, Dr. Tyson talks about the fact that the surfaces of objects are actually made of an aggregate of electric fields all generated by electrons which exist in a probabilistic cloud around their respective atoms/molecules. So even a ball bouncing off of a wall represents the aggregrate of a huge number of non deterministic interactions.Okay, perhaps that's a bit silly, but is it principally deterministic? Not by count anyway. And is the ball's path completely deterministic such that there is zero probability of it tunneling through the wall instead of bouncing off?

No, I responded to the text of TWO of your messages using the reply button on ONE of them. I don't understand your objection. The physics causes the decay probability (hence the half-life and expected life) to be what it is. The decay probability remains a constant, independent of the age of the nucleus, hence gives rise to a probabilistic Poisson distribution. As I've argued multiple times, using the term "uncaused" for nuclear decay is misleading and disingenuous. Is emission of a fluorescent photon "uncaused"? Is photon emission from an LED "uncaused"? These and many, many other physical processes rely on the probabilistic decay of an excited state. The exact lifetime of any particular atom/nucleus is finite, stochastic, and non-deterministic. Does this mean that its decay and results are "uncaused"? I'm probably not as familiar with WLC's arguments as you are, and I don't know whether or not you are characterizing him accurately. But as should be obvious to anyone with scientific training, most physical processes are not immediate, but have short, finite (and probabilistic) timing. If nuclear decay is called "uncaused", then to be consistent most other physical processes must also be called "uncaused". What about emission of a fluorescent photon? Emission of a photon from an LED? The molecular and solid state physics "only affects the probabilities" here, too.

It's one thing to disagree. It is quite another to simply dismiss an opposing argument. I see a couple of problems with your current question.1. First it has been asked and answered by three different people. There is a distinction between establishing the probability of an atom decaying and actually kicking out or otherwise allowing the alpha particle out of the nucleus at the time it leaves. Even assuming you don't think the distinction is relevant, it's pretty clear that at least PaulK, Son Goku, and I think it is. At this point it might be interesting to hear your explanation of why it is irrelevant.2. As Paul has explained twice, the thrust of your original question appeared to be that something there was a 'deeper' explanation for the distribution of large number of particles. I thought that as well. But assuming we were both wrong about your question, you've been told the cause of the objection at least twice by Paul.Here is your question: Surely the most controversial implication here in your statement is that uncaused events should not have a predictable deterministic behavior. You certainly have not shown that, and besides that the question has been answered. What we see is exactly what we expect for an uncaused event.Here is a different answer. You claimed that the decay of particles in a sample having 10^12 nuclei was highly predictable. But is that really correct? Can you tell me within 40% how many U238 decays would occur in such a sample during a 1 week period starting right now? I submit that neither you nor anybody else can do so.Just as studying the Poison distribution of messages at network node says nothing at all about the cause of any call, neither does the distribution of decays say anything about the cause of a decay. So your question just does not advance your argument. Admittedly it does not settle the argument against you. You do understand that an electron in an excited state can just stay that way, right? There is no difference between this example and a decaying nucleus.Son Goku inspired the following thought experiment. What causes an excited Hydrogen atom to produce a Balmer line? What is the reason for an excited H atom to transition to a n=2 state rather than a n=1 state? There is no cause. Nothing about the manner of creation, the fact of creation, or the application of the excitement generates a Balmer line.And then there is Dr. Adequate's point. If you climb to the top of a flight of stairs and the fall over a railing. Would you say that your cause for being at the bottom was your climb to the top, or the fact that you were pushed. Well excited atoms don't get a push. And neither does an alpha particle leaving a U238 nucleus.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

Here you are writing so fast that you've skipped over the point.In the case of the caller, an individual impetus spurs a call, and the aggregate behavior is a random distribution. In the case of the nucleus, we just do not have an equivalent for a man falling and breaking his leg and his wife reacting by calling in an emergency.Tritium decays more rapidly than u238 because the probabilities are different and not because some impetus to kick particles out of the nucleus exists and happens more often for tritium. Only the probabilities are tied to the structure. You are asking only about a question on which we agree.Looking at another example, a coin flip is random only because we cannot accurately know all of the variables, but the fall is determined by how it is thrown. If the coin were in thrown the same way, then it would always land the same way. But not so a decay. There is nothing structurally different between an atom that ends up decaying in five minutes, and one that fails to decay in 5 billion years.Plenty has been written on this subject. Why not take a peak at what others have to say about it.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

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No, I responded to the text of TWO of your messages using the reply button on ONE of them.

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The one explicitly labelled as a side point in the title. That's pretty obviously the wrong thing to do if you're answering the main thread of discussion.

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I don't understand your objection.

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Your statement did not imply that the probabilities were determined by physics, rather it implied that there was something more than probability affecting the aggregate results.

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The exact lifetime of any particular atom/nucleus is finite, stochastic, and non-deterministic. Does this mean that its decay and results are "uncaused"?

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This is evasion. The point being made is that the timing of the decay is uncaused. Do you disagree with that ?

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I'm probably not as familiar with WLC's arguments as you are, and I don't know whether or not you are characterizing him accurately. But as should be obvious to anyone with scientific training, most physical processes are not immediate, but have short, finite (and probabilistic) timing. If nuclear decay is called "uncaused", then to be consistent most other physical processes must also be called "uncaused".

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Defending arguments that you don't understand is probably a big mistake. Especially when you aren't even aware of the most important part of them.

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What about emission of a fluorescent photon? Emission of a photon from an LED? The molecular and solid state physics "only affects the probabilities" here, too.

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Is this relevant ? If so, why ?

So if we disagree with you we are untrained? Not a persuasive argument. Nor is simply calling a statement obvious even without the gratuitous slam.And your statement is incorrect. Most physical processes are immediate in the sense we are denying is the case for quantum processes. For macroscopic processes on systems, the delays that we might notice are periods when the states of systems are still changing as a direct result of the initial, and prior cause. That is, there is a complete trail between an action and an immediate consequence. When a wake up alarm clock goes off, it is not that there is no connection between the setting of the alarm and the sounding of the alarm. Instead there are a chain of state changes within the timer that connect the final sounding to the setting of the alarm. A counter changes state under impetus of a clock and counts down the time to alarming. The clock is driven by an oscillator that generates a waveform with voltage thresholds that change the clock state. So we can say that final alarming does have a cause in the sense you are claiming we cannot say such a thing.Not so for nuclear decay. You and I seem to agree that there is no link of changed states between the creation of nuclei and the emitting of a particle therefrom. Instead the atom seems to be unchained immediately prior to emitting the particle. At this point I am finding it difficult to appreciate that you don't even see a distinction.Why don't you provide some examples or indication of what you mean by 'most processes'? Maybe that will provide insight into your position.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

NoNukes hit the nail on the head:

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Kbersche's position is more of a semantic argument whose point is merely to establish that there are no exceptions to premise 1 of the Kalam cosmological argument.

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He's right, isn't he?

"Scientists working with the BICEP2 telescope have claimed to discover the first direct evidence of cosmic inflation, a process of radical expansion believed to have occurred after the theoretical Big Bang explosion. Based on data from the cosmic microwave background the team also claims to have confirmed the existence of gravitational waves "squeezing" intergalactic space. Physicist Wal Thornhill responds to these extravagant claims." Tremors of the big bang?

"Ever since Penzias and Wilson discovered that the Earth was surrounded by microwave energy, astronomers have been quick to postulate that the apparent ~3K signal represented the signature of the Big Bang. Yet long ago, Gustav Kirchhoff insisted that the setting of temperatures, using the laws of thermal emission, required enclosure. Clearly, the Big Bang can never meet this requirement. In this presentation, it will be demonstrated that the microwave fields, which surround the earth and have excited distant molecules, can be generated by the hydrogen bond within water in the condensed state. A review of the COBE and WMAP will be presented, revealing that the microwave anisotropy maps have no scientific validity. The data lack both signal to noise and reproducibility. Furthermore, the PLANCK satellite findings will be discussed. These data provide unambiguous evidence that powerful microwave fields do not exist at L2. Penzias and Wilson measured water on Earth. The correct assignment of this signal is vital to better understanding our own planet.Pierre-Marie Robitaille, PhD is a Professor of Radiology at The Ohio State University, with a joint appointment in Chemical Physics. He initially trained as a spectroscopist and has wide ranging knowledge of instrumentation in the radio and microwave bands. A recognized expert in image acquisition and analysis, Professor Robitaille was responsible for doubling the world record in Magnetic Resonance Imaging in 1998. In 2000, he turned his attention to thermodynamics and astrophysics, demonstrating that the universality advanced in Kirchhoff's Law of Thermal Emission is invalid. He has published extensively on the microwave background, highlighting that this signal arises from water on the Earth and has no relationship to cosmology and has recently published a paper on the Liquid Metallic Hydrogen Solar Model (LMHSM)." Pierre-Marie Robitaille: The Cosmic Microwave Background | EU2014

Perhaps claims that the Big Bang have been found are premature...Science | AAAS

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. And now a potential problem with the BICEP analysis has emerged, says Adam Falkowski, a theoretical particle physicist at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics of Orsay in France...

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To subtract the galactic foreground, BICEP researchers relied on a particular map of it generated by the European Space Agency's spacecraft Planck, which mapped the CMB across the entire sky from 2009 until last year. However, the BICEP team apparently interpreted the map as showing only the galactic emissions. In reality, it may also contain the largely unpolarized hazy glow from other galaxies, which has the effect of making the galactic microwaves coming from any particular point of the sky look less thoroughly polarized than they actually are. So using the map to strip out the galactic foreground may actually leave some of that foreground in the data where it could produce a spurious signal, Falkowski explains. "Apparently, there is something that needs to be corrected, so at this point the BICEP result cannot be taken at face value," he tells Science.

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Stay tuned

I'm having a bit of a problem with this explanation. If I understand what is being said, BICEP2 used the EU/Planck map data to subtract out the galactic foreground signals.But Dr. Falkowski says that data not only contained the galactic foreground but also contained unpolarized signals from other galaxies. In essence saying that the BICEP2 team stripped out more than just the galactic foreground? If I understand what was needed to get to the base CMB that extra-galactic stuff needed to come out anyway. Is he saying BICEP compensated for one but not the other?Then this appears: "So using the map to strip out the galactic foreground may actually leave some of that foreground in the data where it could produce a spurious signal," Falkowski explains. Say what?I am missing something. If the Planck data contained not just galactic foreground but also extra-galactic stuff then stripping out that data would more than strip out the galactic foreground, yes? No? Is he trying to say BICEP had its head up its ass and didn't know what they were looking at or is he the one who's cranium is in sphincter defilade?Did the universe just take a hard turn and I just didn't get the memo ... again? Could this be one of those "I are a scientifical reporter" thing? Could someone interpret for me, please. My french am none so good. Edited by AZPaul3, : tipoh

I take this to mean that a technique akin to noise cancellation was used, but the noise signal used for cancellation had data in it. The result would be data related artifacts in the processed signal. No. What he seems to be saying at most is that BICEP released data prematurely and that BICEPs own analysis which is not yet complete may confirm that. I thought the article was fairly balanced about what the possibilities are.