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Message: | composed: 04-03-2022 08:24 Go to the top of this page Zum Ende der Seite springen
aubergine

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My memory of inflation theory is very vague - unless it is just the theory that the universe is getting larger - in which case it doesn't really have a bearing on what I'm talking about.

Essentially this whole universe would exist as it's own thing on it's own plane, and other universes could exist on their own entirely separate ones, any of which can be infinite in size and scope. When I mentioned a fraction 1/infinity in a sense it is a joke, a fraction of infinity can in fact be infinite itself, but it does provide an opportunity to label definite items within that endless range - eg "Me", "my house", "the human race" "the entire universe", "a bowl of fruit with 5 pieces in it" each of which is equal to 1/infinity.

You can't mathematically work with the stuff, but you can think about it for fun. Which is why I don't think it will ever result in a new kind of bomb.


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Message: | composed: 05-03-2022 20:07 Go to the top of this page Zum Ende der Seite springen
Thanatloc Thanatloc is a male

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quote:
Originally posted by aubergine
My memory of inflation theory is very vague - unless it is just the theory that the universe is getting larger - in which case it doesn't really have a bearing on what I'm talking about.

Essentially this whole universe would exist as it's own thing on it's own plane, and other universes could exist on their own entirely separate ones, any of which can be infinite in size and scope.


The fact that our observable universe is expanding is the major success of the inflation theory, you're right. But the inflation theory is not just that.

Thus, Alan Guth (the inventor of the inflation theory) has described the inflationary universe as the "ultimate free lunch": new universes, similar to our own, are continually produced in a vast inflating background. ->This is an important complement for the second quoted sentence.

Then, imo, that is what could check your idea about the existence which always existed and is the sum of our universe and an infinite number of others.

Moreover, components (the universes) of the existence can 'come forward' and 'pass on' through the vast inflating background (that does not mean the existence comes from nothing, beware.)

For those who are interested, there is a wiki page (Cosmic Inflation) where one can find more information and many links.

If you read with attention, you will see that the discussions we all had in this thread reflect essentially the ones existing within the scientific community.

The theory is still controversial because of entropy increase questions. And this is why I think the theory isn't completely exposed to students in general.
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Message: | composed: 06-03-2022 03:25 Go to the top of this page Zum Ende der Seite springen
aubergine

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Perhaps the major difference is that what I'm talking about is not trying to describe in any way what exists, but rather look at why it has to. Because I believe that people get bogged down in deciphering the precise nature of what exists (which includes whether it inflates or not, virtually anything that can be described about it) and that relating observable features to some kind of creation theory is fallacious, hence I don't think gravity, relativity and so on are remotely related, in this context they are a distraction . "what exists" and "why does it exist" are totally separate studies. This is in disagreement with quite a few people of course, but it continues to add up in my mind.

It's also convenient because I got sick of reading about physics and theories a long time ago. I just don't think there's any end to it, like that story Asimov quoted about a woman at a conference who challenged the speaker, saying that the world rests on the back of a turtle. When the speaker asked what was holding the turtle up, she apparently said "You think you're clever; it's turtles all the way down!" This idea of reality being propped up on infinite turtles is actually very much like how I started to feel about aspects of physics - eg what if there are ever-smaller particles of atoms - atoms of atoms, and their atoms - which would leave looking to atoms for answers as following an infinite trail of breadcrumbs - there's no end to it.

The why of existence is a philosophical question I think, not a physical one, though logic and (through logic) mathematics have to play a part, given that you can't structure an argument without them.

Another point required I guess is that while observable science does not contain the answer to the "why" question, it can disprove an answer to it, or aspects of an answer. If you consider that the account of Creation in Genesis is actually rather remarkable, and it hasn't really been so long that science has shown the theory to be incorrect. Logic could have disproven it much sooner, but I expect that before the protective distance of the Internet most anti-creationist speakers probably had short lifespans.


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Message: | composed: 06-03-2022 17:04 Go to the top of this page Zum Ende der Seite springen
Thanatloc Thanatloc is a male

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Well, I agree with almost everything.

But, first, I must say that my proposition of the inflation theory was just to show that there is, at least, one scientifical theory that supports your philosophical answer. As many people tried to invalidate your demonstration by scientifical arguments, I thought it was good to give more to think about this to everyone.

Second, at first the "what exists" and "why does it exist" questions could be treated separately, that makes sense. But even with logic and philosophy, one must be carefull not to lose himself into sophism (imo, the exemple of creationism is there to warn us one more time.) Thus, when an answer is given, as you pointed, the science becomes usefull to invalidate or support it (and talking about creationism, in its most elaborate expression, it is not so easy to invalidate and science is really helpfull here to refute it.) But then, we see that we must also have some knowledge of "what exists" if we want to make experiments.

Finally, I'd like to say that even if it appairs there could be an infinite number of particule, recent research supports that only a few kind of inner interaction is needed for the whole thing to work: I may propose the good exemples of the emergence of life and of intelligence where a few simple rules and many body can give rise to complexity (with generated new rules and bodies.) One of the main purposes of science is to give us an idea of "what exists" the simplest way possible. Thus, you should not be sick of science anymore , only of bad books Wink

This post has been edited 6 time(s), it was last edited by Thanatloc: 06-03-2022 17:16.

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aubergine

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Just to make sure; I'm not remotely anti-science - that stuff is great! I grew up reading Asimov's essays, and in fact one of the earliest books I can remember reading was his "How did we Find out about Germs?" which is where the reference to "Spontaneous Generation" I used earlier came from.

I do love irony however, irony like a fundamentalist anti-science group which has a website promoting Creationism.

Someone on another site had a sig which read "Don't pray in my school and I won't think in your church." I think that's a pretty good line, but also that stuff like that and some of what I read in the Skeptics Magazine often doesn't help itself by being smug.


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Message: | composed: 29-03-2022 05:56 Go to the top of this page Zum Ende der Seite springen
wtf_dragon wtf_dragon is a male

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quote:
If you consider that the account of Creation in Genesis is actually rather remarkable, and it hasn't really been so long that science has shown the theory to be incorrect. Logic could have disproven it much sooner, but I expect that before the protective distance of the Internet most anti-creationist speakers probably had short lifespans.


Doubtful. There's not a lengthy historical record that I can recall regarding the persecution of anti-Creationists...and I've studied much of the history and theology behind this particular debate.

Of course, the whole "science vs. religion" debate isn't really a debate at all as much as it is two sides (both of which are wrong in some way) talking past each other whilst a third group with a better handle on the truth sits unnoticed in the middle.

If you need an example of this, read some of the encyclicals of Pope John Paul II that deal with the nature of the relationship between science and religion.

You are right that Genesis is rather remarkable, and equally right that it is incorrect...at least when taken literally. This is especially true since the creation accounts in Genesis were never meant to be taken literally -- they're a poetic accommodation by the Spirit to the uneducated audience to which the teachings were first addressed. Modern, learned folk ought not to read the passages as being a literal history of creation, but as a teaching tool that uses imagery and metaphor to communicate a deeper truth behind the rote text.

Francis Bacon, two books, and all that*.

I don't have much else to add to this otherwise stimulating discussion, but I wanted to make a commentary about the last page and the discourse that briefly touched on the existence of God.

It's always precarious to attempt to apply human understandings of existence to God, for the simple reason that human understanding of existence is necessarily limited by our own experience of existence; it is finite.

Existence, as we understand it, is simply a rather large container category. Everything that does exist, according to whichever criteria we happen to acknowledge as being valid proof(s) of the existence of something, is placed into this category, and from there is sub-categorized accordingly based on whichever other criteria we happen to prefer (living/non-living, solid/liquid/gas/plasma, etc.).

A first question we might ask, when considering whether God "exists", is whether our notional understanding of "existence" is sufficient to describe the subject being considered. I would submit, here and now, that it is not.

Existence, as we have seen in this discussion, can be regarded subjectively even when it is essentially an objective thing. Five oranges in a line are still five oranges, but someone who insists on adopting a depthless perspective on the oranges in profile will indeed only regard one orange. To that person, then, only one orange seems to exist, even though five oranges do in fact exist.

I'm reminded of the Book of Exodus when discussions like this arise concerning, even indirectly, the "existence" of God, because the question is indirectly dealt with in Moses' first conversation with God. Specifically, Moses at one point asks God's name, so that he might have a name to give to the people of Israel as he attempts to free them from slavery. God's reply translates in English to "I am", and this rather cumbersome and yet succinct statement reveals quite well the inadequacy of describing God's being as a state of "existence".

Moses is essentially attempting, in the relevant passage, to classify God according to a category that he himself can use in understanding that God "exists" -- he wants a name. Names are powerful things, as I am sure we all know, and classically it is held that to know a name of a thing is to have power over that thing, or at least a stake in its state of being.

God doesn't refuse to answer the question, but neither does He choose to answer it in the way Moses is hoping and expecting. God instead makes a self-referential statement -- I am -- that both answers Moses' spoken question and refutes his unspoken desire. God is not going to be shoehorned into Moses' categorical definition of "existent", but is not going to leave him empty-handed either.

The statement "I am" is significant in that God explicitly defines His state in relation to the rest of Creation, the rest of things that "exist": other things exist...God is. That which exists -- existence itself -- is a subset of God's transcendent reality, and engaging in discussion of whether or not God "exists" according to human categories is essentially pointless, because those categories are insufficient -- being of human origin -- to describe the subject being discussed.

Picture how hard it would be to use a single 8-bit register to reference the highest byte of memory in 4 GB of RAM. That's a fraction of how difficult it would be to describe God's state of being using any empirical or philosophical category of "existence".

The closest we come to understanding God to "exist" is when we look at the Gospels and the life of Christ. Christ being God (sorry, Thepal), He presented unto humanity the clearest picture of God's being. But even there we do not see the whole picture -- St. Paul notes rather poignantly in his letter to the Philipians that we understand this mystery only in part, and see only in part, as through a mirror, darkly. This again is because of our finiteness, our human limits, limits which necessarily must apply to our ability to understand God's state of being through the categories of "existence" that we possess to use. As an 8-bit register lacks the necessary scale with which to describe 4 GB worth of byte-length memory locations, so too do we lack in our finite human capacity for understanding the necessary scale to describe those things which transcend and fully encompass as a mere subset all that we can in fact perceive to "exist".

We can understand, for example, that Christ existed -- this is reasonably well-attested, more so than some historical figures. We can perhaps accept, even if we are not necessarily Christian, that the person who was Christ may have done some, most, or all of the things attributed to him. We can perhaps even accept, even if we are not Christian, that whoever this Christ person was, he met his end in the not atypical manner of many a prisoner of the Romans in that day and age -- crucifixion. But we cannot fully comprehend, using categories of "existence", the possibility of a man fully human and yet fully God, like us in all things but sin. And we will never be able to fully comprehend that, because it is a thing beyond the human ability to comprehend using our finite categories and empiricism.

There are other reasons as well, but for this reason especially there will always be non-Christians in the world, because not everyone can accept something which all human categorizations and measurements cannot even strive to describe in part.

That's not to knock any of those categories, or to say that empiricism is worthless, mind you. Indeed, our ability to measure and classify is invaluable as we attempt to gain further understanding of our world, our Universe, and how it is that we exist. But we will never have all the answers regarding even our own existence, so how do we suppose that any of our methods even approach being adequate in describing any aspect of God's being?

A shoe "exists". This planet "exists". The Universe *exists*. God is.

When we envision God, it is pointless -- bordering on foolish -- to do so in a manner that frames His being in the limited categories by which humanity defines what "exists", because God's being is not one of mere existence. Eternity and existence are, in a certain sense, mutually exclusive concepts, for while things that exist have a finite duration and some manner of origin, things that are eternal never were not. They simply were, are, and will continue to be, even as the rest of this fragile moment in time in which we exist originates, propagates, and terminates.

Smile WtFD





* if you don't know what I mean by "two books", ask and I shall attempt to explain.


Withstand the Fury Dragon
-=(UDIC)=-

This post has been edited 2 time(s), it was last edited by wtf_dragon: 29-03-2022 06:00.

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