I cannot be sure that they do not give rise to consciousness, can you?
No, which is why I don't affirm that they don't. But neither do I affirm that they do - you're making the claim, not me.
Exactly what type of 'evidence' might you accept, assuming I'm correct, yet not personally able to "control" that being?
I'm not sure any evidence is even possible, at least at this stage in human affairs. Nonetheless, you believe in it, so you presumably
do have evidence.
Well, for starters, we've learned that circuitry is in fact involved in "awareness" in virtually all living things. It's definitely found in all higher life forms. Pantheism would tend to predict that similar types of "circuitry" in space would also tend to point us toward a "conscious" universe. It's a "prediction" of pantheism.
Perhaps, but it's by no means proven that 'circuits' in space do anything like the circuits in a human brain - at best, they both carry an electric charge. By that prediction, my computer, with its fantastic array of circuitry, constitutes part of the brain of God, no?
Well, for starters, it defies the laws of physics as we understand them as it relates to density/volume. Apparently Guth endowed his entity with "supernatural" density defying properties that allow it to grow exponentially (many many times) yet experience virtually no loss of density, unlike light and the EM field and every other KNOWN force of nature. Talk about putting your faith in "supernatural" entities! Empirical strike one.
You're referring to the energy density of the universe, which remained largely constant due to spacetime expanding faster than the energy could expand into it - during the inflationary period, there wasn't enough time for energy to 'spread out' and lower its density, and the inflaton field itself decayed into yet more excess energy, contributing to a constant energy density.
Imagine someone walking along and sprinkling salt behind them. Even though their path length is getting longer and longer, the salt density stays the same - because, in increasing their path length, they also lay down more salt. Similarly, it is hypothesised that the inflaton field 'lays down' more matter and energy as it decayed, keeping the energy density constant.
Lastly and most amusingly, his original theory was actually falsified, but "replaced" with a "new and improved" supernatural entity.
Now there are apparently almost as many unique "flavors' of inflation to choose from as the are stars in the heavens.
Strike three.
Why is this a 'strike'? If Guth's original theory has been disproven and replaced by a better theory (akin to Classical Mechanics being replaced with Quantum and Relativistic Mechanics), surely that constitutes an
improvement of the theory? Darwin's original hypothesis has ostensibly been disproven, but so what? We don't use Darwin's original idea, we use the modern synthesis. Similarly, if inflation has been improved upon, we should use and criticise the most up-to-date version. For instance, Guth hypothesised that the Higgs field caused inflation, but we now know this is not the case.
Notice how you expect me to 'disprove' inflation, you don't expect them to empirically verify anything? Suppose we turn that around and say billions of years have gone by and none have been able to disprove God. Would you find that statement to be a "convincing empirical argument" in favor of God?
Yes,
if falsification tests had been performed and had routinely come out in favour of God. They haven't. Inflation, on the other hand, has been routinely vindicated by falsification tests: it has been consistently
vindicated, and not one test has ever
disproven it.
That's how science works. We seek to disprove things.
I don't believe it's possible to do that.
So you don't believe it is possible to disprove inflation. Marvellous. Why, then, do you denounce it as false, when here you say there's no possible way to prove that it is indeed false?
"Invisible entities"? Really? Why put your faith in one invisible entity and not another? Just because they tell you to?
No. Because, while I'm not as smart as eminent cosmologists, I can analyse the same evidence and I've come to the same conclusion.
We evidently now KNOW that they simply 'botched' the mass estimation of galaxies because they failed to account for the dust properly, and they failed to estimate the correct number of smaller stars compared to the larger ones that we can actually observe in telescopes.
Source?
God lights up my sky every single day and night. He's certainly not "invisible", and he has a material effect on me here on Earth, unlike Guth's dead inflation deity.
Again, you seem to be worshipping the Sun - how do you know the Sun is not just a ball of incandescent hydrogen? What makes you think it is, in fact,
God? The sheer fact that it is involved in some electrical phenomena?
