| Author |
Message |
|
Rob
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe?  Posted: Sat Jun 07, 2008 8:01 pm |
|
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:38 am
Posts: 742
Location: Califonia
|
sidelined wrote: Quote: Rob writes, "You call it a multiverse, I'll call it heaven". Call it what you will Rob. This does not mean the properties of the multiverse {if it does exist} are in any way applicable to whatever properties you would drag into the arguement concerning heaven. Why do you insist on bringing a concept of religious origin to the table as though ancient people had any better notion of what a multiverse/"heaven" would entail since , as the article points out, it has not been observed? Also the notion of "hints at" is not a concrete declaration of the validity of the ideas expressed in the article either.This is also not news as the notion of multiverse is many decades old nd for modern science goes back to Hugh Everett III http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Everett. Hey, nice to put a face with the name... I agree that the notion of another order beyond our own universe (such as the author indicates) does not necessarily mean my beliefs about it are true. I only find it striking that we are forced to posit such a thing in the sciences. You don't have to agree with me, I just personally find it very telling that modern science points to some other system of law (be it natural or not) that cannot be observed. And if it cannot be observed in the empirical sense, then it is not the realm of what most of you consider science to be. No matter how you slice it, something supernatural (beyond our understanding of natural) happened in the past. It is not 'unnatural' whatever it is. And if anything, what I am referring to as supernatural is really only supernatural to us.
_________________
Bambi grew up to have horns
|
|
  |
|
 |
|
Rob
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 4:59 am |
|
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:38 am
Posts: 742
Location: Califonia
|
My brother doesn't want to get caught up in this morass (I can't blame him) but I couldn't resist quoting what he said to me in a private email. Say what you want, I was laughing, and if you guys could laugh a little at yourselves, you would too. Ken (the rocket) Lockett wrote: Evolution has no direction, more or less complexity makes no
difference.
Entropy is a myth, the entire system which cannot be observed must not
be changing, even though every single part of it we've ever observed is
in an ever-changing state of entropy.
The universe was never any more or less ordered than it is now, never
mind my own dearly-held theories of the big bang and darwinian
evolution.
And, according to Ringo, you're a dummy 'cause I said so.
Did I miss something?
_________________
Bambi grew up to have horns
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Ringo
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:07 am |
|
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2008 2:58 am
Posts: 1642
Location: Saskatchewan
|
Rob wrote: Ken (the rocket) Lockett wrote: And, according to Ringo, you're a dummy 'cause I said so.
Did I miss something? Strictly speaking, it's more of a consensus. 
_________________
What we really need to do is fix the public.
-- Jon
|
|
| |
|
|
|
nwr
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:25 am |
|
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:44 am
Posts: 931
Location: Geneva, Illinois
|
Rob wrote: Say what you want, I was laughing, and if you guys could laugh a little at yourselves, you would too. Sure, I can laugh. In this case I am laughing about how badly garbled is your brother's summary. As just one example "it is plausible that" was somehow converted into "must".
_________________
Jesus was a liberal hippie
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Rob
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 5:41 am |
|
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:38 am
Posts: 742
Location: Califonia
|
|
_________________
Bambi grew up to have horns
|
|
| |
|
|
|
nwr
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2008 2:49 pm |
|
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:44 am
Posts: 931
Location: Geneva, Illinois
|
Rob wrote: Hey what do you know??? Entropy works on E Coli too! You seem to have gone way off topic by jumping to evolution in a cosmology thread. I'll simply comment that I don't find anything surprising or unexpected in the work Dembski is describing in your link. So let's get back to your topic. As best I can tell, you seem to think it is a problem if scientific laws are not exact descriptions of reality. However, from my perspective, scientific laws are not required to be exact descriptions. The laws are tools for scientists to use in their investigations, and it is more important that they be useful as tools than that they be exact descriptions. As an example, consider the gas laws. They basically say PV/T is constant for a given amount of a gas. Here P is the pressure, V is the volume, T is the temperature. This is false for any actual gas, and is well known to be false. Nevertheless, this is an important law. The literature often refers to "the ideal gas laws", and from that perspective an ideal gas is a gas which exactly satisfies the laws. There are no ideal gases. Real gases come close to obeying the law, but there are always discrepancies. What is true of the gas laws is actually true throughout science. Laws are not exact descriptions of reality. Philolosopher of science Nancy Cartwright has even written a book "How the Laws of Physics Lie" on this. If there is a university library nearby you might want to take a look, though the wiki page on Cartwright will probably tell you all you want to know about it.
_________________
Jesus was a liberal hippie
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Rob
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 3:25 am |
|
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:38 am
Posts: 742
Location: Califonia
|
Great article here at Discover (again brought to my attention by the Uncommon Descent folks) http://discovermagazine.com/2008/dec/10 ... nt-creatorTwo quotes from the article really help illustrate the same point I was trying to make with the Scientific American article and reveal the well known point of contention that you boys act as though scientists and scholars don't see. Quote: Call it a fluke, a mystery, a miracle. Or call it the biggest problem in physics. Short of invoking a benevolent creator, many physicists see only one possible explanation: Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. Most of those universes are barren, but some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life. Is it an empirical (material) explanation, or just a philosophical construct suggesting the possibiblity of one? Quote: The idea is controversial. Critics say it doesn’t even qualify as a scientific theory because the existence of other universes cannot be proved or disproved. Advocates argue that, like it or not, the multiverse may well be the only viable nonreligious explanation for what is often called the “fine-tuning problem”—the baffling observation that the laws of the universe seem custom-tailored to favor the emergence of life. Viable?What happened to scientific? What happened to empirical? What happened to the evidence that is demanded of the critics? Quote: Strikingly, the temperature of space is everywhere the same, just 2.7 degrees Celsius above absolute zero. How could different regions of the universe, separated by such enormous distances, all have the same temperature?
In the standard version of the Big Bang, they couldn’t. The universe as a whole has been cooling ever since it emerged from the fireball of the Big Bang. But there’s a problem: For all of it to reach the same temperature, different regions of the universe would have to exchange heat, just as ice cubes and hot tea have to meet to reach the uniform temperature of iced tea?. But as Einstein proved, nothing—including heat—can travel faster than the speed of light. In the conventional theory of the Big Bang, there simply hasn’t been enough time since the universe was born for every part of the cosmos to have connected with every other part and cooled to the same temperature. Pathetic!
_________________
Bambi grew up to have horns
|
|
| |
|
|
|
jar
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 3:49 am |
|
 |
| Site Admin |
 |
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:15 am
Posts: 2409
Location: Deep South Texas
|
|
There is no "fine tuning problem."
It really is that simple.
_________________
How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron - How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Rob
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 3:55 am |
|
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:38 am
Posts: 742
Location: Califonia
|
|
| |
|
|
|
jar
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 3:58 am |
|
|
| Site Admin |
|
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:15 am
Posts: 2409
Location: Deep South Texas
|
Rob wrote: jar wrote: There is no "fine tuning problem." It really is that simple. Really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuningReally!
_________________
How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron - How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Rob
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 4:05 am |
|
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:38 am
Posts: 742
Location: Califonia
|
jar wrote: Rob wrote: jar wrote: There is no "fine tuning problem." It really is that simple. Really? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuningReally! So lay on the counter-argument (link or whatever) so you can take all of the attention off the point made by the article.
_________________
Bambi grew up to have horns
|
|
| |
|
|
|
nwr
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 4:06 am |
|
Joined: Fri Feb 08, 2008 5:44 am
Posts: 931
Location: Geneva, Illinois
|
I suggest you spend less time reading Dembski's blog. I had a fine tuning debate with mike_the_wiz over at evcforum.
_________________
Jesus was a liberal hippie
|
|
| |
|
|
|
jar
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 4:14 am |
|
|
| Site Admin |
|
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:15 am
Posts: 2409
Location: Deep South Texas
|
Rob wrote: Oh yeah... really, really. So lay on the counter-argument (link or whatever) so you can take all of the attention off the point made by the article. There was no point made by the article, just more pea palming and nonsense. There are still many questions left to solve, but sticking in your fantasy god tells us nothing and like your fantasy god, is irrelevant and unimportant. As has been pointed out to you many times, "There is NEVER a reason to suggest super natural causation until and unless you can also place the super natural source on the lab table for examination."
_________________
How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron - How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Rob
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 4:15 am |
|
Joined: Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:38 am
Posts: 742
Location: Califonia
|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe wrote: The Multiverse hypothesis assumes the existence of many universes with different physical constants, some of which are hospitable to intelligent life. See The multiverse and the anthropic principle. Because we are intelligent beings, we are by definition in a hospitable one. This approach has led to considerable research into the anthropic principle and has been of particular interest to particle physicists because theories of everything do apparently generate large numbers of universes in which the physical constants vary widely. As of yet, there is no evidence for the existence of a multiverse, but some versions of the theory do make predictions which some researchers studying M-theory and gravity leaks hope to see some evidence of soon.[11]The existence of additional universes in a multiverse, other than the observable universe, is not falsifiable, thus some are reluctant to call the multiverse idea a "scientific" idea. UNC-Chapel Hill professor Laura Mersini-Houghton claims that the WMAP cold spot may provide testable empirical evidence for a parallel universe.
_________________
Bambi grew up to have horns
|
|
| |
|
|
|
jar
|
Post subject: Re: What's Wrong with the Universe? Posted: Tue Nov 11, 2008 4:17 am |
|
|
| Site Admin |
|
Joined: Tue Feb 05, 2008 2:15 am
Posts: 2409
Location: Deep South Texas
|
Rob wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-tuned_universe wrote: The Multiverse hypothesis assumes the existence of many universes with different physical constants, some of which are hospitable to intelligent life. See The multiverse and the anthropic principle. Because we are intelligent beings, we are by definition in a hospitable one. This approach has led to considerable research into the anthropic principle and has been of particular interest to particle physicists because theories of everything do apparently generate large numbers of universes in which the physical constants vary widely. As of yet, there is no evidence for the existence of a multiverse, but some versions of the theory do make predictions which some researchers studying M-theory and gravity leaks hope to see some evidence of soon.[11]The existence of additional universes in a multiverse, other than the observable universe, is not falsifiable, thus some are reluctant to call the multiverse idea a "scientific" idea. UNC-Chapel Hill professor Laura Mersini-Houghton claims that the WMAP cold spot may provide testable empirical evidence for a parallel universe.
Once again you provide a quote that simply does not support your position.
_________________
How pierceful grows the hazy yon! How myrtle petaled thou! For spring hath sprung the cyclotron - How high browse thou, brown cow? -- Churchy LaFemme, 1950
|
|
| |
|
|
|
