The Seven Types of Atheism

[RJM]

Only in Euclidean geometry.

Gravity and acceleration, however, require non-Euclidean geometry to describe them sufficiently.

I'll shut up now.

No need to shut-up. Your points throughout have been valid and interesting. I understand.

You are quite correct. By disproving the first premise, you have destroyed the argument. Yes, of course it only applies to triangles on a flat plane.

Of course that may be added to the first premise? And of course it was used as an illustration of logical deduction or whatever it's called. But it's a fair cop lol.

 

[wil]

It seems to this uneducated lout. That your triangle argument and Kalam argument are both incomplete. They both contain assumptions not discussed in the problem.

In the triangle case you are assuming we are only speaking of two dimensions, plane geometry, xy axis, not in 3d ,xyz, not on a sphere and who knows what all not else.

In the kalam argument I am also not smart enough to know what assumptions are being made...but I can see it pertains to 3 dimensions, not more, it pertains to this universe not a multiverse, it pertains to what we know, not what we don't know. Again I am not a quantum physicist, don't play one on TV, don't claim to know all the answers or all the questions.

And no, I don't follow your logic or assumptions.

 

[wil]

Lol, I should have read the rest of the posts, and I would not have had to answer at all!

 

[RJM]

It seems to this uneducated lout. That your triangle argument and Kalam argument are both incomplete. They both contain assumptions not discussed in the problem.

In the triangle case you are assuming we are only speaking of two dimensions, plane geometry, xy axis, not in 3d ,xyz, not on a sphere and who knows what all not else.

In the kalam argument I am also not smart enough to know what assumptions are being made...but I can see it pertains to 3 dimensions, not more, it pertains to this universe not a multiverse, it pertains to what we know, not what we don't know. Again I am not a quantum physicist, don't play one on TV, don't claim to know all the answers or all the questions.

And no, I don't follow your logic or assumptions.

Oh! Now he decides to address the subject! At last. After three days ...

Yes. @Cino picked up the triangles problem. It could be solved by adding 'on a flat plane' to the first premise.

Nothing comes from nothing. Disprove it?

It has nothing to do with education. Unless you reply to that first premise, I have no interest in what you say to try to wiggle out of answering.

EDIT: It's this universe we're talking about. Nature. Multiverse has nothing to do with anything.

 

[RJM]

At risk of labouring the point to death: only once it is established that nature could not have come from nothing, then what it came from can be opened up for discussion.

 

[wil]

EDIT: It's this universe we're talking about. Nature. Multiverse has nothing to do with anything.

What if this verse came from a previous verse?

Yes. @Cino picked up the triangles problem.

Lol, I should have read the rest of the posts, and I would not have had to answer at all!

The subject is now exhausted, imo.
Toodles, Alexandrei ...

 

[RJM]

What if this verse came from a previous verse?

What if?

Apart from the fact it's just kicking the can down the road? There is no way to ever know. It's not like one day we'll find out. It is beyond the point of the BB singularity. We can never know.

I assume that by again jumping ahead to the conclusion, it means you do accept the Kalam Argument?

The cause could be bubbling, branching, fractal multiverses of 10^500 that we will never be able to prove or in any way communicate with. It could be that we're in a virtual universe projected by higher aliens. Maybe we're dreaming it all and we'll wake up somewhere else ... ad infinitum.

Seems pretty desperate, to me.

It could also be:

I look at nature: how the sun and rain draw the tiny green shoot upward from the earth into the air, finally to become an oak tree. I look at the incredible complexity of life. The life-giving sun.

I look at this full-stop. I consider that it contains 20 million atoms, each of which consists of a nucleus the size of a pea in the middle of a football field with pin-prick electrons clouding it -- all the different types of atoms, and the incredible laws and forces that maintain them. That make up all the world and all the universe.

I look up and see the stars of our milky way galaxy: 100 billion stars. I look at the beautiful Hubble images of the cosmos -- incredible supernovae, creating the atoms of the elements. I look at the Hubble deep-field image, of galaxies receding into infinity, beyond where the light from others can ever reach us.

At least 100 billion galaxies visible, each containing at least 100 billion stars. And other galaxies, who knows how many -- forever expanding outward -- that we will never be able to see.

I consider the Big Bang, from which time and space and all the energy and all the forces that govern energy were born, from a point infinitely smaller than an atomic nucleus.

I consider the power of the human mind, science capable of detecting gravity waves generated by supermassive black holes combining zillions of light years away, with instruments measuring the equivalent change in spacetime of a feather falling onto an oil tanker. Unravelling the laws of the infinite cosmos.

And I know there is a God.

I know you HATE the idea of God. But there it is. Full circle, neatly tied up with string.

The subject IS now exhausted, imo.

EDIT: Thanks guys, for a brilliant and educational discussion ...

 

[wil]

He is being very disingenuous.

What a lot of twaddle ...

Just because we don't know an answer doesn't ran the answer is God

never said the answer has to be God.

I know you HATE the idea of God. But there it is. Full circle, neatly tied up with string.

Would have saved a few pages if you didn't deny this was all about proving God.

Again, we can all believe what we choose, I don't expect the entire world to believe as me. Or even my children for that matter.

 

[RJM]

Would have saved a few pages if you didn't deny this was all about proving God.

Again, we can all believe what we choose, I don't expect the entire world to believe as me. Or even my children for that matter.

This is the last reply you will get out of me. I stated my case right at the beginning. I said that when I honestly contemplate everything, I know there is a God.

I wasn't being dishonest or trying to conceal my motives.

Your response was to say I believed in silly magic and to quickly google up the first article you could find -- about Sean Carroll's latest book, which on actually reading the article, said exactly the opposite of what you thought it did.

Point is you deliberately misunderstand: the Kalam Argument reasons the universe has a CAUSE.

Once that's agreed, the nature of the cause is open to reasonable adult discussion.

Make of it what you will. And stop quoting me out of context. You're being dishonest again.

Check the context of the extracts from my comments that you've pulled out in your post, above. Other readers please do. I can't keep repeating myself.

I will not respond to you any more on this thread.

 

[RJM]

The first massive something pushed into nothing to become itself here creating the first big bang and forming the first universe.

Yes.

Each star in this universe in the end of it's life would collapse also pushing into nothing again to form the second layer of universes in another timeline ...

I know, it's a tempting idea.

But not all stars collapse into black hole singularities? There are dead stars, white dwarves, neutron stars, exploding supernovae?

And even the most massive black hole contains only a tiny fraction of the energy needed to power even a small galaxy, let alone a universe?

The universe itself is predicted not to collapse back in on itself, but to keep on expanding until all the heat is gone? Dead cinders of galaxies expanding away forever, the distance between them forever increasing ...

 

[RJM]

Roger Penrose has his own ideas, as usual:

 

[wil]

Its turtles all the way down!

Agreement number 2!

 

[A Cup Of Tea]

Pretty much. Yes. Nothing comes from nothing. Therefore everything/nature comes from something. I don't have trouble following it?

Just feels so strange to assume anything about the event that caused time and space as we know it. Applying any properties to an event when we can't say anything, scientific, about the state that comes before it. The argument doesn't do anything for me.

 

[RJM]

Brahma breathes out and the universe comes into being. Brahma breathes in and the universe returns again to
non-being. Eternally.
-- from The First Upanishad

 

[Thomas]

Apparently, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time counts among those books which 'everybody' bought, but which 'nobody' read.

Well I bought it, and I read it ... but did I understand it? No.

(My completing the book is probably as much due to the discipline of having to read books as part of my degree course, as much as anything. Another such book is Proust's "À la recherche du temps perdu" which we have on our bookshelves, and which I've never got passed the first paragraph. Can't read Dickens, either ...)

But the one thing I did like was the idea that we envisage the start, the BB, the singularity, as a kind of infinitely small 'nanodot' (my word, not his) which blossoms out into the cosmos. So if you look at an 'X', then the BB/singularity is where the two lines cross. Hawkings suggested not an X but a U, and the idea that the moment of emergence, dare one say genesis, the whole shebang is there, not something expanding out, pushing back the boundary of nothingness, but the whole time/space thingy ...

But the more you try and wrap your brain around it, the more it eludes.

Science can push the trace of that event further and further back towards the BB, but of course there comes a point when there's noi time, no space, no physics.

And multiverses, the turtles all the way down? Yes, I too think that's a nice way of kicking the can down the road, of circumventing the problem.

Indeed, we have enough trouble explaining this one universe we know. To suggest the solution is in an infinite number (and really the number of other universes grows exponentially and ridiculously ever onward) of universes sounds disingenuous and somewhat clunky. It's a bit like the exasperated parents cry of 'because it is' in response to the millionth time the kiddie asked why ...

 

[RJM]

Just feels so strange to assume anything about the event that caused time and space as we know it. Applying any properties to an event when we can't say anything, scientific, about the state that comes before it. The argument doesn't do anything for me.

Well, you have acknowledged that the universe as we know it, has a cause. That's all there is to follow.

Then it becomes reasonable not to assume, but to speculate, on what that cause might be, because that's human nature.

The reason I posted the You Tube video is because Roger Penrose proposes a solution, for which there might actually be evidence already captured by the LIGO gravity wave detectors.

It's cutting edge stuff by a highly respected physicist, made understandable for ordinary non-scientific folks such as myself.

 

[RJM]

Well I bought it, and I read it ... but did I understand it? No.

(My completing the book is probably as much due to the discipline of having to read books as part of my degree course, as much as anything. Another such book is Proust's "À la recherche du temps perdu" which we have on our bookshelves, and which I've never got passed the first paragraph.

I think there's a difference between a basic understanding of quantum type physics, and being able to visualise the ideas -- which is impossible.

Things have come a long way since A Brief History came out.

I just found Prout too boring to keep my interest, lol.

EDIT:

Can't read Dickens, either ...)

I don't like Dickens much either. But I like Anthony Trollope: the Barchester Chronicles.

 

[Thomas]

As an aside, and without taking sides, I think the Wil/Corbet discussion is, in small, the problem people have with the New Atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, etc. in debate with religion.

Simply, subjective prejudice against religion does not suffice as a sufficient or cogent argument in response to the objective scientific points made.

 

[A Cup Of Tea]

Well, you have acknowledged that the universe as we know it, has a cause.

I think that's sophistry, I don't have an understanding of the event/process, never-mind the words to express it.

As an aside, and without taking sides, I think the Wil/Corbet discussion is, in small, the problem people have with the New Atheism of Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, etc. in debate with religion.

I don't think that's an entirely unfair statement.

due to the discipline of having to read books as part of my degree course

Can't read Dickens

I have zero such discipline, I need to understand and be interested in what I'm reading. But I didn't need it for 'A Tale of Two Cities', I read it while backpacking through Europe. Not the UK though, sorry...

 

[powessy]

Yes.

I know, it's a tempting idea.

But not all stars collapse into black hole singularities? There are dead stars, white dwarves, neutron stars, exploding supernovae?

And even the most massive black hole contains only a tiny fraction of the energy needed to power even a small galaxy, let alone a universe?

The universe itself is predicted not to collapse back in on itself, but to keep on expanding until all the heat is gone? Dead cinders of galaxies expanding away forever, the distance between them forever increasing ...

I was referring to the first layer of stars and even second layer of stars that would have collapse to form universes similar to ours.

There are none of the original stars still present in this universe at this time, they have all collapsed into galaxies. If you were to watch a galaxy waltz/collision you would see that the entanglement goes much further down then the black hole itself it is like two much larger forces working then just the black hole itself. If you were to travel into the black hole in the center of the milky way galaxy you would be pulled into a much smaller universe one that is in another timeline then this one.

When the star that formed this galaxy pushed down into nothing its mass pushed it down to a point that it exploded into the fabric of space half the materiel would be inside of nothing and the rest remaining here in something or our universe, this would account for the missing matter. If you were to study the size of galaxies, I believe you would find that the amount of matter that is seen would also reflect the amount of matter that pushed down into nothing giving a complete mass to the original star.

I believe this universe will continue to expand until the matter above us (something there) has all been consumed by that black hole forming this universe and will then stop expanding. this universe will end the same way, it will keep becoming nothing here as it is pulled into nothing inside of it.

Edit:
Just want to also add that once everything has been consumed into nothingness the universe can then become something again from nothing.


Powessy