Thermodynamics Suggests Creation

[theQuincunx5]

The reality of creation does not necessarily imply God as we understand Him in the Christian faith. It simply means that the material was brought into existence by something outside of the material.

What does one do with this information?

You will note that based on a lack of information humanity has, indeed, created hundreds if not thousands of conceptions of god and gods and things outside of the material.

Why is ONE of them so much more likely than any others? They are all working with the unknown. And note how often the stuff "outside of the material" has so many, many human features. Wrath, Mercy, Justice, Anger, killing, etc.

This is usually where the argument of the "first uncaused cause" breaks down.

The LACK of information does NOT mean we are free to make stuff up and then assume our assumption is ipso facto valid simply because it cannot be disproven.

 

[FireDragon76]

What does one do with this information?

You will note that based on a lack of information humanity has, indeed, created hundreds if not thousands of conceptions of god and gods and things outside of the material.

Why is ONE of them so much more likely than any others? They are all working with the unknown. And note how often the stuff "outside of the material" has so many, many human features. Wrath, Mercy, Justice, Anger, killing, etc.

This is usually where the argument of the "first uncaused cause" breaks down..

Not really. You're creating more of a straw man here than taking Christian theology seriously. Biblical language uses anthropomorphisms to describe the reality of God. It is implicit in most of western theism, in fact, to understand that language about God is more like analogy rather than strictly, literally true.

 

[Tree of Life]

What does one do with this information?

One becomes open to the possibility of God.

You will note that based on a lack of information humanity has, indeed, created hundreds if not thousands of conceptions of god and gods and things outside of the material.

I'm not sure that the proliferation of gods is due to a lack of information. It is rather due to the universal human tendency to worship and to seek the divine, but also the universal human tendency to imagine gods after our own image.

Why is ONE of them so much more likely than any others? They are all working with the unknown. And note how often the stuff "outside of the material" has so many, many human features. Wrath, Mercy, Justice, Anger, killing, etc.

The God who has revealed himself in history is the one I am going with. Is it God who has human features or is it humans who have divine features? Why is "justice" a human thing and not a divine thing?

The LACK of information does NOT mean we are free to make stuff up and then assume our assumption is ipso facto valid simply because it cannot be disproven.

I agree. I'm not saying that thermodynamics proves the Christian God. I'm saying that it suggests creation.

 

[theQuincunx5]

...

 

[theQuincunx5]

Not really. You're creating more of a straw man here than taking Christian theology seriously. Biblical language uses anthropomorphisms to describe the reality of God. It is implicit in most of western theism, in fact, to understand that language about God is more like analogy rather than strictly, literally true.

I don't see as you were actually addressing my points per se but you did quote it.

Now, if allegorically you wish to claim that Christians do NOT believe in a literal GOD or even a real Jesus then perhaps there is a point here that relates to my post. But I am highly doubtful that that is the case (just based on my formerly being a Christian and having a large number of Christian friends).

My point was that there is no data to support any particular conception of God and given that humans have come up with countless conceptions, none of which have actual evidence making one more likely than another it appears more to be the product of a LACK of information (just based on the "first uncaused cause" argument).

 

[Justatruthseeker]

What does one do with this information?

You will note that based on a lack of information humanity has, indeed, created hundreds if not thousands of conceptions of god and gods and things outside of the material.

Why is ONE of them so much more likely than any others? They are all working with the unknown. And note how often the stuff "outside of the material" has so many, many human features. Wrath, Mercy, Justice, Anger, killing, etc.

This is usually where the argument of the "first uncaused cause" breaks down.

The LACK of information does NOT mean we are free to make stuff up and then assume our assumption is ipso facto valid simply because it cannot be disproven.

Sure it does. We got expanding nothing taken as ipso facto, because it can never be disproven because it only happens way-out-that-a-way.... never close by where we could measure it.

In fact a theory shown to be 98.8% correct right here in the solar system needs none of these epicycles of Fairie Dust to be correct.... Until you go past the boundaries of the solar system to a universe 99.9% plasma....... then suddenly what was just 99.8% correct needs 96% Fairie Dust added to it.

 

[theQuincunx5]

Sure it does. We got expanding nothing taken as ipso facto, because it can never be disproven because it only happens way-out-that-a-way.... never close by where we could measure it.

In fact a theory shown to be 98.8% correct right here in the solar system needs none of these epicycles of Fairie Dust to be correct.... Until you go past the boundaries of the solar system to a universe 99.9% plasma....... then suddenly what was just 99.8% correct needs 96% Fairie Dust added to it.

Are we an Electric Universe person?

That's nice. But of course I don't see what that has to do with the universe having a possible beginning and its implications on faith.

But you DID get to invoke PLASMA, so kudos!

 

[SkyWriting]

I may be posting this in the wrong place. I don't know if it belongs here or in Christian Apologetics. Either way, I believe the subject is both scientific and apologetical.

Let me first say that I am not a physicist nor a scientist. I'm a theologian. So I'm very much a pedestrian when it comes to scientific matters. But from what I understand of thermodynamics (which is not a lot), it appears to me to suggest creation.

By "creation", I mean the idea that the material world had a beginning and that matter and energy are not eternal. Philosophically speaking, either the material world had a beginning and something outside of the material brought it into being (creation) OR the material world is eternal (materialism).

The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transferred.

The second law of thermodynamics is basically the notion of entropy - that the physical universe is tending toward a heat sameness and will ultimately result in a heat death. Currently, energy is concentrated in particular locales in the universe (stars, for example). But the trend is toward this energy being dispersed equivocally to every locale, resulting in a "heat death".

So if new energy cannot be created and all energy is currently being dispersed, the material world cannot be eternal. If it were eternal, then "heat death" would have occurred a long time ago. This suggests that the material world had a beginning, which is the same thing as suggesting creation.

All true. And I continuously ask the "Natural" people
what laws of nature suggest that life should form
and they draw blanks every single time.

The same with the creation of matter.
They just walk away mumbling, cursing
their grade school teachers for not covering
this very important subject.

 

[SkyWriting]

If matter and energy are not eternal, then creation must be true. The material exists now but it has not always existed. It therefore arose from something non-material.

Heisenberg's principle is what saves them. It's pretty compelling.
Generally it states that even the most unlikely of events get alloted
a certain amount of time in the grand scheme.

So if you have a "perfect void" it remains a "perfect void" most of the time
but the closer you examine it, you find it refuses to remain that way 100%
of the time.

Like "time" and "predictability" are on a see-saw and as the time side
goes down, the unpredictability side goes up.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I may be posting this in the wrong place. I don't know if it belongs here or in Christian Apologetics. Either way, I believe the subject is both scientific and apologetical.

Let me first say that I am not a physicist nor a scientist. I'm a theologian. So I'm very much a pedestrian when it comes to scientific matters. But from what I understand of thermodynamics (which is not a lot), it appears to me to suggest creation.

By "creation", I mean the idea that the material world had a beginning and that matter and energy are not eternal. Philosophically speaking, either the material world had a beginning and something outside of the material brought it into being (creation) OR the material world is eternal (materialism).

The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only transferred.

The second law of thermodynamics is basically the notion of entropy - that the physical universe is tending toward a heat sameness and will ultimately result in a heat death. Currently, energy is concentrated in particular locales in the universe (stars, for example). But the trend is toward this energy being dispersed equivocally to every locale, resulting in a "heat death".

So if new energy cannot be created and all energy is currently being dispersed, the material world cannot be eternal. If it were eternal, then "heat death" would have occurred a long time ago. This suggests that the material world had a beginning, which is the same thing as suggesting creation.

The laws of thermodynamics are explained by statistical mechanics, because it's based on the bulk activity of atoms and moelcules. Consequently, like most physical models, its applicability is constrained within certain contexts or limits.

When considering the universe as a whole, it's a fallacy of composition to expect the whole to exhibit the properties of its component parts; even at cosmological scales, energy is not necessarily conserved, as the necessary time-translation invariance (i.e. classical static spacetime) doesn't exist under General Relativity - both space and time are dynamic. So when particles move through dynamic space, their energy is not conserved - although if you also consider the energy of the curvature of spacetime, i.e. gravitational field energy; total energy is conserved (and, gravitational energy being counted as negative, the total energy is zero).

It's this property, described by General Relativity, that allows the big bang to begin with 'inflation', where a tiny blob of substance, smaller and lighter than an atom, doubles in size ~274 times (i.e. exponential growth) in 10^-35 of a second, and by keeping the same effective density, produces all the mass in the observable universe. The additional mass arises from the energy needed to expand the substance, where a doubling of volume takes sufficient energy to double the mass.

Where this initial blob came from is unknown - there are numerous hypotheses consistent with the underlying physical models that describe our universe. The 'singularity' produced by extrapolating back to the start indicates that GR alone is not sufficient to describe this state - we need to integrate it with quantum mechanics (a complete quantum theory of gravity). It doesn't mean the universe came from nothing, but that we can't yet describe it earlier than those moments.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

What does one do with this information?

What one does with all information.....

You will note that based on a lack of information humanity has, indeed, created hundreds if not thousands of conceptions of god and gods and things outside of the material.

You will also note that based on a lack of information humanity has, indeed, created hundreds if not thousands of conceptions of how material things came to be, leading to the here and now to a theory where all the laws of physics break down and so one is left with no physical laws in which to describe any physical explanation from it. Proposed by a priest, but we won't push that part.....

Why is ONE of them so much more likely than any others? They are all working with the unknown. And note how often the stuff "outside of the material" has so many, many human features. Wrath, Mercy, Justice, Anger, killing, etc.

Why is one theory of how the universe came into being so much more likely than the other, since all the laws of physics break down, any is valid at that point.....????

This is usually where the argument of the "first uncaused cause" breaks down.

No, it is where the first caused cause breaks down, not the first uncaused cause which is supported by the fact that the laws of physics DO break down, which leaves only the metaphysical....

The LACK of information does NOT mean we are free to make stuff up and then assume our assumption is ipso facto valid simply because it cannot be disproven.

Why not? They don't mind making stuff up about multiple universes or dimensions because they can't get past the fact that all the laws of physics break down at the beginning..... Anything can be believed as long as we don't have to consider the metaphysical, right?

 

[theQuincunx5]

You will also note that based on a lack of information humanity has, indeed, created hundreds if not thousands of conceptions of how material things came to be, leading to the here and now to a theory where all the laws of physics break down and so one is left with no physical laws in which to describe any physical explanation from it. Proposed by a priest, but we won't push that part.....


Why is one theory of how the universe came into being so much more likely than the other, since all the laws of physics break down, any is valid at that point.....????


No, it is where the first caused cause breaks down, not the first uncaused cause which is supported by the fact that the laws of physics DO break down, which leaves only the metaphysical....



Why not? They don't mind making stuff up about multiple universes or dimensions because they can't get past the fact that all the laws of physics break down at the beginning..... Anything can be believed as long as we don't have to consider the metaphysical, right?

I would like to make a reply to this but I fear it will be wasted. But I'll do it anyway.

I'm not particularly interested in getting into an "Electric Universe" debate or whatever rabbit hole you wish to go down with this, but I will make this point which is the essence my post to begin with:

Lacking any information one cannot assume that simply because one imagines it that it must be true.

Your attempts to corral in cosmology are noted and since that wasn't my point and not my area of expertise I will leave it be. I will, however, note that most cosmological concepts are largely conceptual. Many of them are predicated on the math, but evenso I don't recall anyone saying that they know with any certainty what happened before the Big Bang. Just that there appears to have BEEN a big bang based on the available data. Beyond that from what I understand it's all just guesses.

I'm not interested in your cosmology. Not even a teeny tiny bit. Nope. Sorry! Not gonna happen. I'm a geochemist by training and experience so it's not my thing.

Try getting someone else to follow you down the rabbit hole as you wish.

But rememeber: just because one has NO DATA to support something it does not mean that whatever they imagine is ipso facto "correct". That's just the way logic works. Sorry!

 

[Justatruthseeker]

The laws of thermodynamics are explained by statistical mechanics, because it's based on the bulk activity of atoms and moelcules. Consequently, like most physical models, its applicability is constrained within certain contexts or limits.

When considering the universe as a whole, it's a fallacy of composition to expect the whole to exhibit the properties of its component parts; even at cosmological scales, energy is not necessarily conserved, as the necessary time-translation invariance (i.e. classical static spacetime) doesn't exist under General Relativity - both space and time are dynamic. So when particles move through dynamic space, their energy is not conserved - although if you also consider the energy of the curvature of spacetime, i.e. gravitational field energy; total energy is conserved (and, gravitational energy being counted as negative, the total energy is zero).

It's this property, described by General Relativity, that allows the big bang to begin with 'inflation', where a tiny blob of substance, smaller and lighter than an atom, doubles in size ~274 times (i.e. exponential growth) in 10^-35 of a second, and by keeping the same effective density, produces all the mass in the observable universe. The additional mass arises from the energy needed to expand the substance, where a doubling of volume takes sufficient energy to double the mass.

Where this initial blob came from is unknown - there are numerous hypotheses consistent with the underlying physical models that describe our universe. The 'singularity' produced by extrapolating back to the start indicates that GR alone is not sufficient to describe this state - we need to integrate it with quantum mechanics (a complete quantum theory of gravity). It doesn't mean the universe came from nothing, but that we can't yet describe it earlier than those moments.

Why does everyone keep invoking Einstein's name and theory to something he never accepted as even having a reality apart from the math????

http://www.cscamm.umd.edu/tiglio/GR2012/Syllabus_files/EinsteinSchwarzschild.pdf

"The problem quite naturally leads to the question, answered by this paper in the negative, as to whether physical models are capable of exhibiting such a singularity."

Einstein understood that mathmatical singularities simply meant that the theory was incomplete and missing vital information.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity

"Physicists are undecided whether the prediction of singularities means that they actually exist (or existed at the start of the Big Bang), or that current knowledge is insufficient to describe what happens at such extreme densities......

Many theories in physics have mathematical singularities of one kind or another. Equations for these physical theories predict that the ball of mass of some quantity becomes infinite or increases without limit. This is generally a sign for a missing piece in the theory, as in the Ultraviolet Catastrophe, re-normalization, and instability of a hydrogen atom predicted by the Larmor formula."

Einstein tried to tell them he wasn't ready to apply it to the rest of the universe and continued to try to fix his theory until the day he died.....

 

[durangodawood]

.....This suggests that the material world had a beginning, which is the same thing as suggesting creation.

Why couldnt this beginning be a "sprout" off another universe, in an eternal "series" of universe births?

 

[Justatruthseeker]

I would like to make a reply to this but I fear it will be wasted. But I'll do it anyway.

I'm not particularly interested in getting into an "Electric Universe" debate or whatever rabbit hole you wish to go down with this, but I will make this point which is the essence my post to begin with:

Lacking any information one cannot assume that simply because one imagines it that it must be true.

Your attempts to corral in cosmology are noted and since that wasn't my point and not my area of expertise I will leave it be. I will, however, note that most cosmological concepts are largely conceptual. Many of them are predicated on the math, but evenso I don't recall anyone saying that they know with any certainty what happened before the Big Bang. Just that there appears to have BEEN a big bang based on the available data. Beyond that from what I understand it's all just guesses.

I'm not interested in your cosmology. Not even a teeny tiny bit. Nope. Sorry! Not gonna happen. I'm a geochemist by training and experience so it's not my thing.

Try getting someone else to follow you down the rabbit hole as you wish.

But rememeber: just because one has NO DATA to support something it does not mean that whatever they imagine is ipso facto "correct". That's just the way logic works. Sorry!

I don't believe I said a single solitary word about my cosmology. We were discussing God I believe and why we should accept Him as a possibility. You just went all sidetrack is all because I guess you felt threatened by a cosmology that makes more sense, even if it wasn't mentioned at all. Good try at avoiding the subject tho.

If all the laws of physics break down (notice I am not inserting my cosmology, it's is theirs that break down, not mine) does not mean, in your own words, that what they imagine is ipso facto "correct" in that there is no God. All their math's break down, every single one of them. This points to a possibility of God better than I could ever attempt on my own to justify. If no physical laws can describe the existence, then only the metaphysical can.... There in fact would exist no physical laws to even base a probability of randomness upon......

 

[Justatruthseeker]

Why couldnt this beginning be a "sprout" off another universe, in an eternal "series" of universe births?

So anything imaginable is a possibility as long as we don't consider God?

I believe I already alluded to that in a previous post.

"Why not? They don't mind making stuff up about multiple universes or dimensions because they can't get past the fact that all the laws of physics break down at the beginning..... Anything can be believed as long as we don't have to consider the metaphysical, right?"

If all the physical laws of nature break down at this beginning, then there are no physical laws to base any assumption upon for any other universes.... As I alluded to in another previous post.....

"All their math's break down, every single one of them. This points to a possibility of God better than I could ever attempt on my own to justify. If no physical laws can describe the existence, then only the metaphysical can.... There in fact would exist no physical laws to even base a probability of randomness upon......"

 

[durangodawood]

Way too many grandiose certainty-claims here about super distant events.

 

[durangodawood]

So anything imaginable is a possibility as long as we don't consider God?...

No no no. Its fine to consider a creator God as one of a number of possibilities.

The problem I have is that at least we know there's a material realm, so its less of a leap to suppose the universe originates from another material realm than from some other type of realm for which we lack any evidence at all.

 

[Tree of Life]

Why couldnt this beginning be a "sprout" off another universe, in an eternal "series" of universe births?

This would fall under the idea of matter being eternal.

 

[Justatruthseeker]

No no no. Its fine to consider a creator God as one of a number of possibilities.

The problem I have is that at least we know there's a material realm, so its less of a leap to suppose the universe originates from another material realm than from some other type of realm for which we lack any evidence at all.

Apparently there's more than just the material, else we would have no need of the invisible fact of energy, from which all material things came. And which even science understands can neither be created nor destroyed, so must simply always have existed. And it is energy that makes you capable of thought. So why reject an invisible being of energy (thought) creating everything from Himself and residing in everything, exactly as the Bible tells you happened?

What other realm? All the laws of physics break down, you have no physical laws existing to base any assumption on, just the laws of physics that says energy can neither be created nor destroyed - the Laws of thermodynamics.....

We do have one, and only one physical law that predicts that one and only one thing could have existed previously......

But its that lack of evidence everyone always insists as to why God doesn't exist, but now its ok to believe despite lack of evidence as long as it's not God? We also have scientific proof that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but only transformed. So again, why reject a being of pure energy or thought existing "Before" One who then transformed part of Himself to make the universe?