The Miracle of Evolution

JBJoe said:

Nonsense. Transcending space and time does not imply "uncaused", only "uncaused by anything in our universe." It definitely doesn't imply changeless nor enormously powerful (except perhaps relative to us).

Click to expand...

It doesn't matter, if the thing that "Transcends space and time" isn't uncaused, then it was caused itself, so we're back where we started, what caused that caused thing?

It's an infinite regress.

Basically, the problem is impossible to answer scientifically. That's not to say that religion is correct, just that science has it's limits.

The Cosmological Argument is nice and everything, but it assumes that the causal principle is true in cases where we have no reason to believe it's true.
Furthermore, once you admit of an exception to the principle, e.g. "God just exists," then it's perfectly rational to reply, "No, the universe just exists." (Thanks, Russell.)

Nathan45 said:

Eitherway, Although i'd take a scientific answer over an unscientific one any day of the week, it seems to me that with these questions, it's proved that there are things that are totally impossible to know scientifically. I think it's a cop out to say "Science will figure it out eventually", it seems to me that the cosmological problem is fundamentally unanswerable. You can't answer the question with any finality, it is an infinite regress.

Click to expand...

I completely agree that "Science will figure it out eventually" is a cop out. At the same time, I don't see any reason why these questions can not be answered by science. Universal positives are just as dangerous as universal negatives.

Also, theoretical physicsts are working on the problem as we speak. If it is impossible for science to figure these things out then someone should let these guys know.

Loudmouth said:

Also, theoretical physicsts are working on the problem as we speak. If it is impossible for science to figure these things out then someone should let these guys know.

Click to expand...

I'm not saying their work is useless, you can still learn a lot of interesting things related to the big bang and cosmology... but you just can't ever fundamentally answer the question "why does anything exist", because it's an infinite regress...

say you find out what "caused" the big bang: but the next thing you need to figure out is what caused whatever caused the big bang... and then what caused that... ad infinitum.

FishFace said:

The Cosmological Argument is nice and everything, but it assumes that the causal principle is true in cases where we have no reason to believe it's true.
Furthermore, once you admit of an exception to the principle, e.g. "God just exists," then it's perfectly rational to reply, "No, the universe just exists." (Thanks, Russell.)

Click to expand...

So maybe I should go pantheistic? lol.

anyways, I used to argue because the universe is natural/temporal it can't be uncaused, so you need something unnatural and outside time to start it up. It's sortof a pointless distinction, though, since you don't know anything about the "first uncaused cause" if there is one. It's not like either either pantheism, deism or atheism make different predictions from one another.

One interesting example of infinite regress actually being solved that I found was this:

1) Assume the earth is flat:
2) Things that would fall are held up by other things.
3) What holds up you? The ground
4) What holds up the ground? The underside of the earth
6) What holds up the underside of the earth? Pillars.
7) What holds up the pillars????
8) ???

Anyway it turns out that mass is attracted to mass and doesn't just travel strait down, if you knew this there'd be no problem. Yet, you still don't know what causes gravity, so is the infinite regress really finnished?

I wonder how/if this relates to other examples of infinite regress.

Nathan45 said:

So maybe I should go pantheistic? lol.

anyways, I used to argue because the universe is natural/temporal it can't be uncaused, so you need something unnatural and outside time to start it up.

Click to expand...

You'd better start off by telling us what exactly natural and unnatural mean here. Even then, something being natural and temporal doesn't mean it has to be caused, and how do we actually know that the universe as such is both of those?
In the end the CA is asking the question, "Why does something exist rather than nothing?" But answering that question in the form of "Due to some other thing which exists or which existed" is blatantly going to be problematic.

Nathan45 said:

I'm not saying their work is useless, you can still learn a lot of interesting things related to the big bang and cosmology... but you just can't ever fundamentally answer the question "why does anything exist", because it's an infinite regress...

say you find out what "caused" the big bang: but the next thing you need to figure out is what caused whatever caused the big bang... and then what caused that... ad infinitum.

Click to expand...

When you walk on the Earth you never hit the end of the Earth. Does this mean that the Earth is infinite? What if the production of universes is the same, a closed loop?

But I do agree that there are inherent problems. At some point you may hit the ultimate and completely unsatisfactory answer, "That's just the way it is".

Loudmouth said:

When you walk on the Earth you never hit the end of the Earth. Does this mean that the Earth is infinite? What if the production of universes is the same, a closed loop?

But I do agree that there are inherent problems. At some point you may hit the ultimate and completely unsatisfactory answer, "That's just the way it is".

Click to expand...

I always thought of the universe as a closed loop. Hopefully one day we will prove this by making a telescope so powerful that we will see our own universe.

Anyway, Its my thought that all the energy and matter in the universe always existed. The big bang was an event to recycle the energy and and matter. Some day all the matter and energy will collide again causing another big bang. Is this a possible explanation?

MoonLancer said:

Anyway, Its my thought that all the energy and matter in the universe always existed. The big bang was an event to recycle the energy and and matter. Some day all the matter and energy will collide again causing another big bang. Is this a possible explanation?

Click to expand...

From my understanding, sub-atomic particles will decay over time (protons, neutrons, electrons) and the universe will be devoid of all matter and energy. That is, if the current rate of accelerated expansion continues.

Loudmouth said:

From my understanding, sub-atomic particles will decay over time (protons, neutrons, electrons) and the universe will be devoid of all matter and energy. That is, if the current rate of accelerated expansion continues.

Click to expand...

This is my basic understanding of it as well. Expansion until both mass and energy density of the entire universe is zero.

SpyridonOCA said:

Creation and Big Bang Cosmology

Dr. William Lane Craig

I don't have enough faith to believe that something just so happened to arise from nothing, nor that the universe itself is eternal.

Click to expand...

The whole "just so happened to arise from nothing" is a canard. If the universe came "from nothing," then it did so by virtue of a physical law or laws that made it such that it essentially had to happen. This is perfectly reasonable, given what we know of quantum mechanics, but is by no means certain. The universe as a whole could easily have existed for eternity as well, but then there must similarly be some fundamental reason why the universe has always existed. One then must ask where this fundamental law or laws came from, and the only reasonable answer is that there exists a fundamental, obscenely simple principle (one that is hopefully obviously true, or at least that there are some strong suggestions that it might be true). God doesn't work here, because God is massively, massively complex (moreso than anything God explains), and therefore utterly fails as any sort of explanation.

SpyridonOCA said:

There is more to life than its raw materials. There is something unique about life, something beyond the physical.

Click to expand...

There is no reason whatsoever to believe that life is anything but fully natural. If you mean something like life is beautiful or wonderful or amazing or has some other such qualities, then, well, subjective determinations just don't have any bearing whatsoever upon the possible causes of life.

Chalnoth said:

One then must ask where this fundamental law or laws came from, and the only reasonable answer is that there exists a fundamental, obscenely simple principle (one that is hopefully obviously true, or at least that there are some strong suggestions that it might be true).

Click to expand...

But where did this principle come from?

This is what I was referring to with "the ultimate and completely unsatisfactory answer of 'that is just the way it is'".

It reminds me of a book I read about the advancement of physics in the 20th century. Just before the discovery of quantum mechanics many physicists thought that they were close to discovering all there was to know in physics. But what if there really is a bottom to the well of knowledge? It's a strange paradox. Perhaps science is not the search for the right answers but the search for the right questions.

MoonLancer said:

I always thought of the universe as a closed loop. Hopefully one day we will prove this by making a telescope so powerful that we will see our own Galaxy.

Click to expand...

*fixed*

MoonLancer said:

always thought of the universe as a closed loop. Hopefully one day we will prove this by making a telescope so powerful that we will see our own Galaxy.

*fixed*

Click to expand...

I would have used "bunghole", but that's just me.

Why does everybody except me have 100 quadrillion blessings?

Nathan45 said:

One interesting example of infinite regress actually being solved that I found was this:

1) Assume the earth is flat:
2) Things that would fall are held up by other things.
3) What holds up you? The ground
4) What holds up the ground? The underside of the earth
6) What holds up the underside of the earth? Pillars.
7) What holds up the pillars????
8) ???

Click to expand...

The obvious answer to this is turtles, all the way down.

Loudmouth said:

But where did this principle come from?

This is what I was referring to with "the ultimate and completely unsatisfactory answer of 'that is just the way it is'".

It reminds me of a book I read about the advancement of physics in the 20th century. Just before the discovery of quantum mechanics many physicists thought that they were close to discovering all there was to know in physics. But what if there really is a bottom to the well of knowledge? It's a strange paradox. Perhaps science is not the search for the right answers but the search for the right questions.

Click to expand...

Well, as I said, one might hope that the principle is self-explanatory. Max Tegmark's mathematical universe hypothesis is one such principle that serves as a candidate, as it's essentially a statement that everything that can exist does so, with a somewhat rigorous definition of what can exist. This sort of thinking seems to be right along the lines of where quantum mechanics is pointing, as in quantum mechanics if you take a look at what happens between points A and B where you take measurements, well, you find that everything that can happen between the two points does so.

MoonLancer said:

I always thought of the universe as a closed loop. Hopefully one day we will prove this by making a telescope so powerful that we will see our own universe.

Anyway, Its my thought that all the energy and matter in the universe always existed. The big bang was an event to recycle the energy and and matter. Some day all the matter and energy will collide again causing another big bang. Is this a possible explanation?

Click to expand...

It's one that a lot of people seem to like, but it really doesn't hold up. First of all, it takes quite a bit of fine tuning to construct a set of parameters that cause the universe we observe to recollapse. It looks like it's just going to expand forever and, eventually, become nothing but empty space. A number of the things we observe have to be wrong for it to recollapse on itself.

The second problem is one of entropy: the cyclic universe scenarios provide no explanation whatsoever as to why the entropy is so low in the early universe. They propose, without explanation, a universe where the entropy oscillates, which would mean that it encounters times of increasing entropy and decreasing entropy, with no explanation of how such a thing might ever actually occur. Remember, after all, that you don't just need to have the parameters of the universe such that it recollapses again, it has to recollapse just so that you end up with a new universe out the other end, something that is by no means certain. Simple recollapse just doesn't get you a reduction of entropy.