Is science inherently atheistic?

[Jorghnassen]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

While I love that cartoon and find sometimes it couldn't be more true, I actually find it beneficial to refine my arguments and beliefs and occasionally learn new things in these otherwise useless discussions.


OTOH, there are some forum members it is more useless than not to engage.

I'm just trying to, at least temporarily, kill the discussion. Just to have the same 4-6 people leave it be for a few days and maybe come up with a new approach. If not, stopping it now is the same as stopping it any time.

I don't think I have anyone on my ignore list, except perhaps for the really annoying crackpots (and I do mean crackpots, not just people I disagree with who also happen to be, shall I say, not curteous).

[Last of the Fraggles]

Originally Posted by westprog

Your error is in assuming that a methodological stance equates to a metaphysical belief. It doesn't.

Call it what you want. Science excludes gods. That's good enough for me.

You won't arrive at a god hypothesis if you consistently apply a scientific approach to the world.

If it makes you feel better to not use the word atheistic then feel free.

[laca]

Originally Posted by westprog

No. I mean that it is impossible to make any decision based on science alone.

I see. You're of course utterly wrong. Or it could be that you're playing some silly word-game. Which is wrong also. Either way, you're wrong.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by laca

I see. You're of course utterly wrong. Or it could be that you're playing some silly word-game. Which is wrong also. Either way, you're wrong.

Well, it's very easy to prove it. Just give me a single example of a decision made on the basis of science alone. One will do. Or you could just repeat how wrong I am.

[laca]

Originally Posted by westprog

Well, it's very easy to prove it. Just give me a single example of a decision made on the basis of science alone. One will do. Or you could just repeat how wrong I am.

Silly word games it is then.

Kid is walking through the neighborhood. Sees a dog behind a fence. "I'd like to pet that dog, but I'm not sure it's friendly. Let's see.." Tosses a doll to the dog. Doll gets shredded to pieces. Kid's decision, based on a hypothesis and empirical evidence: not going to pet the dog.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by laca

Silly word games it is then.

Because silly word games are all they have.

Ted: 2+2=4.
Bob: Well yeah that's the answer... but what's the truth?
Ted: Whhh... what?
Bob: You've given me the answer to 2+2=4... now I want to know... *pause for dramatic effect*.... the truth.
Ted: The truth is 2+2=4.
Bob: Ah I see. So if that's the answer and the truth.... then what is the reality?
Ted: What?
Bob: The reality of 2+2?
Ted: That would be 4 as well.
Bob: Ah I see. Then what is the.... (20 GOTO 10)

[westprog]

Originally Posted by laca

Silly word games it is then.

Kid is walking through the neighborhood. Sees a dog behind a fence. "I'd like to pet that dog, but I'm not sure it's friendly. Let's see.." Tosses a doll to the dog. Doll gets shredded to pieces. Kid's decision, based on a hypothesis and empirical evidence: not going to pet the dog.

OK. What is scientific about "I'd like to pet that dog"? Where does the science come in? He wants to pet the dog. No wanting, no decision.

As far as science goes, it doesn't care if the boy pets the dog, gets mauled, whatever. Leave it to science alone, and nothing gets done.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by IanS

Originally Posted by IanS
Quote:


I did not say I did Know. I said "perhaps" that is the case. But, if you insist on arguing about it, then you can just tell us ...

... what experience do you have in science research?

I'm not saying because it's not relevant. If my arguments are wrong, feel free to point it out.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by IanS

Dear me, come on let’s have some real honesty here - what I wrote above is not remotely any kind of “kop out” at all … if you expect serious physicists, chemists and mathematicians etc., to write genuine research papres bothering to add a sentence telling their scientific research readership, that their paper which never mentions God and which finds absolutely no evidence of the claimed “supernatural”, is “ an explanation which contradicts claims of a supernatural miraculous Biblical God” then you must be incredibly naïve (sorry about that) about what serious science researchers and their journals are publishing - they are absolutely not going to waste words diverting sentences into utterly irrelevant and self-evident remarks like that about ancient ignorant religious belief in supernatural gods, devils, and miracles etc.

I do, in fact think that given the vast amount of material published as philosophy on this particular subject - given the importance of the subject in human affairs - in my opinion, yes, if some scientist somewhere had scientific evidence relating to supernatural matters, he would publish it.

The fact that even in strongly pro-atheist regimes, such material, AFAIAA, is not published is because it has nothing to do with science.

Naturally, when a scientist thinks his work has some metaphysical overlap or implication, he's free to publish his philosophical thoughts along with or separately to his scientific work. He will not try to smuggle it into his published papers.

Hence the examples given from cosmology. The scientists concerned may well think that the revelations about the Big Bang have metaphysical implications. Such implications are essentially trivial.

The way that science works is to make successive approximations as to reality, and to adjust as new data comes in. It's known that there is no final "answer", no certain truth - just a succession of models which predict nature more accurately.

If religion allows itself to be tied to closely to any given model, it risks tying itself to an inevitably outdated view of the physical universe. This is the error of fundamentalism. Naturally as science adjusts its view, the view of religion must change also. Where religion insists on its own view taking precedence, it looks foolish and dishonest.

However, in the case of the Big Bang, no religion AFAIAA made a huge deal about it being the moment of creation. There might have been some informal speculation along those lines, but it was never an essential part of anyone's belief. The fundamentalists were already wedded to a far more primitive world-view. If the Big Bang is no longer an official startpoint, that matters to anyone who strongly believed it was. As to the possibility or otherwise of a created universe, it doesn't matter at all. The fundamental question of why there is something rather than nothing remains, and will be answered on a philosophical, not a scientific basis.

[laca]

Originally Posted by westprog

OK. What is scientific about "I'd like to pet that dog"? Where does the science come in? He wants to pet the dog. No wanting, no decision.

As far as science goes, it doesn't care if the boy pets the dog, gets mauled, whatever. Leave it to science alone, and nothing gets done.

Well, I did say it's going to be silly word games, but this was a doozy anyway.

First of all, you moved the goalposts so far they're not on the same planet anymore. Who said anything about the motivation? It's just about the decision, and nothing more.

Secondly, we already established that science cannot care, it's a methodology, not a person. The boy, however, is a person, needed to make a decision, and made it using the scientific methodology. You could accept that I've given you a perfectly valid example of a decision being made based on (and not made by) science alone. Or, you could keep on playing your silly word game, moving the goalposts and generally equivocating the hell out of something being made based on science or by science and keep making yourself look more and more lost. Your choice.

[Last of the Fraggles]

Originally Posted by westprog

The fundamental question of why there is something rather than nothing remains, and will be answered on a philosophical, not a scientific basis.

I'm genuinely interested as to how you think philosophy will answer a question such as that.

[IanS]

Originally Posted by westprog

What does it mean to say that the stars and planets are "real"? Exactly what does science mean when it predicts what they will do?

OK, so you are now reduced to arguing about what words mean? Word's merely printed in old unscientific paper dictionaries?

What do YOU think the word "reality" means?

You have absolutely nothing worthwhile to add in this thread, and you are now trying to waste everyone’s time arguing the semantics of dictionary definitions of printed words.

The bottom line is that you are faced with same problem that I have already posed here a dozen times without any answer -


- if you claim science is not measuring “reality”, then produce the evidence to support your claim.


Same bottom line question to Mijopaalmc and others trying to argue that science does not measure “reality -


- produce valid evidence to support your claim. Where is your evidence?




Ps. I notice Westprog never did answer the question as to what experience he actually does have in genuine research level science, so I think we can safely conclude that the answer is probably, None

[IanS]

Originally Posted by westprog Quote:-

The fundamental question of why there is something rather than nothing remains, and will be answered on a philosophical, not a scientific basis.

Originally Posted by Last of the Fraggles

I'm genuinely interested as to how you think philosophy will answer a question such as that.

That actually has now been answered by science in respect of the most recent Big Bang models I described earlier from Vilenkin, Hawking, Linde and others -

- the answer is that the old dictionary definition of the word "Nothing", meaning the complete absence of everything, is wrong and physically not possible. That is - it now seems that it is impossible ever to remove absolutely all energy fields from any region of space ... whatever you try to do, various fundamental energy interactions will always remain, because they are intrinsic to the existence of the "space " itself.

What we should properly mean by "nothing", according to models and calculations from Vilenkin, Hawking, Linde, Allan Guth etc., is a fundamentally inescapable set of interacting energy fields which cancel one another completely to zero, so that until the Big bang process begins, all that exists is a "nothingness" composed of that so-called "Initial Energy Density" of the primordial interacting and mutually cancelling energy fields ...

... if you regress the time components in GR, so that we trace back in time to the point of the Big Bang, at which stage you also then need to include QM effects which begin to dominate more and more as the mass of the universe is compressed towards, but never reaching a so-called "singularity", then space and time ("spacetime") are progressively converted into components of the various energy fields. All that is left is, no space, no time, no particles etc, but only that Initial energy Density composed of the various interacting fields which actually cancel one another to precisely zero ...

... so that overall, you do not even have any energy interaction either! There is literally what we should truly call "Nothing".

But that "Nothing" is not in fact the complete absence of everything. Because although the fields are mutually cancelling one-anther to zero overall outcome, their individual components of direction, sign, magnitude etc. are still actively subject to inescapable random fluctuations at the so-called "Plank Level" (roughly from memory 10*-35 metres for the Plank length and 6x10*-44 sec for the Plank time) ...

... because those fluctuations are random, they exhibit a range of different extremes in size and time etc, so that at some instances the fluctuations become large enough to interact with one another producing what is in effect the momentary appearance of a microscopic level "big bang" with monetary production of space and time etc, ie an embryonic "bubble" universe. But because that is occurring in a bath of surrounding opposing field fluctuations, the emerging embryo universe is almost always cancelled back to zero very quickly (ie lasting for only slightly longer than the Plank time) ... but ...

... because those random fluctuations events are occurring constantly in vast numbers, one or more such fluctuations must inevitably appear as a much larger event producing a much bigger interaction with the opposing field components. At some certain critical size, any fluctuation beyond that critical magnitude will produce and unstoppable chain reaction of the emergence of an embryo universe, ie an unstoppable rapid appearance of spacetime, which is then too big to be instantly cancelled by the surrounding field interactions ... that is the state referred to in Guth’s original paper describing the Inflationary stage of the Big Bang in which what we call our universe very suddenly appears with a huge expansion of spacetime from the "nothingness" of the null Initial Field Density ...

... after that very brief instantaneous massive Inflation producing Space and Time, you then have the Big Bang event proper, in which the energy of Spacetime is being rapidly converted into the first exotic short lived "particles".

OK, so without describing that process any further, since it's all well known and fully described and experimentally verified from that point of about 100th sec. after the Big Bang, the model is explaining how the universe must in fact appear as an inevitability from what we should really mean by the concept of absolutely "Nothing"....

... the "Nothing" consists of no space, no time, no particles or matter, and no overall energy either (zero overall energy). But to repeat - the individual field components themselves are non-zero and must obey the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle at values around the Plank scale ... and that inevitably means a Big Bang universe must appear due to innescapable interactions arising from random quantum-level fluctuations of the field components ...

... that is the answer to the question "why do we have something rather than Nothing" ...

... the answer is that "nothing" does not really ever exist in that dictionary defined sense of complete absence of everything. Physically that would be impossible.

Think about that for a moment - why should there ever be something called literally "Nothing"? What would that be?

Look all around us - what we find is always "Something", but never "Nothing".

The whole idea of "nothing" is simply a conceptual error of the philosophical kind, arising from the fact that people once thought the air around them was actually "nothing", ie an "empty space", because they could not see anything in that air. Later, chemists showed that the air was filled with invisible gases.

But people then thought it was possible to pump out all of those gases from a region of space, eg in a vacuum tube, to leave a vacuum of absolutely nothing. But then its was found that no matter what you do, that "vacuum" is always still filled with all sorts of different energy fields which are actually impossible ever to remove due to GR and QM effects ... "empty space" cannot ever exist ...

... that is why we have something rather than "nothing", because a literal "nothing" does not, never did, and absolutely cannot exist. And that is a direct result of fairly recent QM and GR calculations in cosmological Big Bang theory.

The same inescapable result also appears in a slightly different form if you use String Theory instead of combining GR with increasing QM as you condense our present expanded spacetime back towards the Big Bang. A singularity in that density is never actually reached, because approaching the Plank scale, QM effects take over and dominate ...

... instead you get an effect that Vilenkin has described as a QM tunnelling into that chaotic "foam" of randomly fluctuating spacetime which is appearing from the fluctuating components of the massively compressed Initial Energy Density.

You can read all of that and more in the small, and extremely clear book by Alex Vilenkin, which is in effect an explanation in laymen’s non-mathematical terms of his 2003 paper in Phys. Rev. Lett with Allan Guth and Arvind Borde.

Models like this are of course not absolute certainties. Even Big Bang itself is not actually yet at the status of a "theory", although it must now be very close due to increasingly accurate experimental evidence now being discovered.

But this sort of model of the "Universe from Nothing" does appear to be our best current explanation which fits very nicely with all known physics and all known calculations form QM and GR. So it now seems very likely that this will be pretty close to our final picture of how & why our universe actually exists (it's a "real" universe by the way! … its’ not an imaginary figment of a philosophers interest in the semantics of arguing about words defined in outdated paper dictionaries).

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by Last of the Fraggles

I'm genuinely interested as to how you think philosophy will answer a question such as that.

Because a lot of people throw the word "philosophy" around to mean "Silly semantic games that I think mean I can make crap up."

[Gawdzilla]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

Because a lot of people throw the word "philosophy" around to mean "Silly semantic games that I think mean I can make crap up."

Very. Amateur fauxlosophers give philosophy a bad name.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by Gawdzilla

Very. Amateur fauxlosophers give philosophy a bad name.

Indeed. I mentioned earlier, in either this thread or one of the others they are all sorta running together at this point, that I honestly need to try hard to differentiate this sorta of sad little childish navel gazing semantic woo excusing stupidity from real philosophy, because honestly I this point I'm starting to shudder every time I even see a response with the word "philosophy" in it.

I still have a lot of respect for real philosophy. I'm just rapidly loosing patience with this "If I just throw out the word philosophy I can make up crap" game that gets played here by the Woo Slingers as pretty much their sole defensive strategy.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by laca

Well, I did say it's going to be silly word games, but this was a doozy anyway.

First of all, you moved the goalposts so far they're not on the same planet anymore. Who said anything about the motivation? It's just about the decision, and nothing more.

Secondly, we already established that science cannot care, it's a methodology, not a person. The boy, however, is a person, needed to make a decision, and made it using the scientific methodology. You could accept that I've given you a perfectly valid example of a decision being made based on (and not made by) science alone. Or, you could keep on playing your silly word game, moving the goalposts and generally equivocating the hell out of something being made based on science or by science and keep making yourself look more and more lost. Your choice.

The fact remains that the scientific methodology cannot produce a choice, because it doesn't have a preference. In order to produce a decision, a preference must be selected.

I've noticed that any tendency towards rigour is greeted as "silly word games" but I can't help that.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by Last of the Fraggles

I'm genuinely interested as to how you think philosophy will answer a question such as that.

I don't expect answers from philosophy. It's good at providing lists of unanswered questions.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by IanS

Ps. I notice Westprog never did answer the question as to what experience he actually does have in genuine research level science, so I think we can safely conclude that the answer is probably, None

Yes, I've noticed a tendency to reason like that. Play the man, not the ball.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by westprog

I don't expect answers from philosophy. It's good at providing lists of unanswered questions.

And you just neatly summed up what is wrong with "Philosophy."

You seem to place an unwarranted value on coming up with unanswered questions. Not every unanswered question is a universe alternating revelation in waiting. Most questions don't have answers because they are stupid pointless questions. And little pro-tip if the question you're asking is just the question that was just answered reworded into a more obtuse form, it's practically always stupid and pointless.

"How much would a plum pay for a lap dance from the color blue?" doesn't have an answer, but asking it doesn't make you the Wise Old Man on the Mountain.

This idea that Navel Gazers have that asking questions no one can answer automatically turns you into Obi Wan Kenobi is something they really need to get over.

This is what differentiates real philosophy from this woo defending, anti-intellectual horse piddle we see here. Real philosophy is not about asking silly semantic trap questions and then sitting back and folding your arms as if you just said something profound.

There's an XKCD comic that said "Communicating badly and acting smug when you are not understood is not cleverness." To this I would add "Asking a pointless question doesn't make you a sage just because no one can answer it."

And yet again this all academic. The ulterior motives of the Navel Gazers are perfectly clear. It's not about philosophy. Philosophy is just a word that Woo Slingers hide behind when they want to avoid intellectual standards.

[Last of the Fraggles]

Originally Posted by westprog

I don't expect answers from philosophy. It's good at providing lists of unanswered questions.

So why did you say they would be answered then?

How do you expect them to be answered using a philosophical basis and not a scientific one?

How would you even begin to address the question of why there is something instead of nothing using tools other than science and not simply be making **** up?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by westprog

I don't expect answers from philosophy. It's good at providing lists of unanswered questions.

One can use the scientific process to accurately collect the data on human moral behavior, describe it fully, and philosophers sit around dreaming up questions about the meaning of said moral thought.

I see no contribution in the latter that observations of the outcomes observed when moral behavior is exercised doesn't offer.

Science is very good at generating hypotheses. Would You Kill One Person to Save Five? New Research on a Classic Debate

Quote:

In the Michigan State study, led by psychologist David Navarette, the 147 participants made their choice while wearing a head-mounted virtual-reality device that projected avatars of those who could die. (Watch a simulation here.) One chilling factor of the test: the potential victims were screaming as the boxcar approached.

The 147 subjects also had electrodes attached to their skin in order to measure their autonomic responses, the involuntary nervous-system responses that can spike when we are faced with stress. Navarette and his team found that, once again, 90% of us would kill the one to save the five. Among the 147 participants, 133 pulled the switch.

The results match other scientific research surveys.


Using the old 'humans are special' paradigm, a philosopher might ask, what is the meaning of the results?

Using the new 'humans are not special' paradigm a scientist might ask any number of questions from, what differs between the 10% and the 90%, to how does the moral choice affect real life situations like say a corporate CEO's decision to hire Nigerian soldiers to protect an oil platform knowing the Nigerian army is likely to kill unarmed protestors?

[laca]

Originally Posted by westprog

The fact remains that the scientific methodology cannot produce a choice, because it doesn't have a preference. In order to produce a decision, a preference must be selected.

Yeah, that's just a red herring. Science was never meant to provide preferences. Everyone's got a lot of preferences. Science is meant to help in pursuing those preferences. Even dating fits the bill perfectly. You see a woman, you like her. You don't just run off and marry her. You go on dates. You gather evidence. Only after you find the evidence satisfactory will you go ahead and pop the question.

Originally Posted by westprog

I've noticed that any tendency towards rigour is greeted as "silly word games" but I can't help that.

Actually, you could. But you probably won't, seeing that you don't have anything else to lean on than silly word games.

[IanS]

Originally Posted by westprog

Originally Posted by IanS

Ps. I notice Westprog never did answer the question as to what experience he actually does have in genuine research level science, so I think we can safely conclude that the answer is probably, None

Yes, I've noticed a tendency to reason like that. Play the man, not the ball.

OK, so we have in fact established by default (no thanks to any honest admission from you), that you have NO such qualifications at all.

Right so, cut the crap and answer the only relevant question here (13th time of asking) -

- produce the evidence which shows that science is not measuring "reality"

- where is your evidence please.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by laca

Yeah, that's just a red herring. Science was never meant to provide preferences.

Yes. That's what I said.

Quote:

Everyone's got a lot of preferences. Science is meant to help in pursuing those preferences.

Yes. That's what I said.

Quote:

Even dating fits the bill perfectly. You see a woman, you like her. You don't just run off and marry her. You go on dates. You gather evidence. Only after you find the evidence satisfactory will you go ahead and pop the question.



Actually, you could. But you probably won't, seeing that you don't have anything else to lean on than silly word games.

So you've contradicted me by basically saying that I'm right but it's just "word games".

The reason that this distinction is important is that it's a common tactic to assert that science promotes a particular course of action. Of course science never, by itself, promotes a particular course of action. There is always some aim involved. People who make such claims have an agenda which they like to keep hidden behind a smokescreen of science.

Science is an essential help in decision making. It's always one half of the process.

[punshhh]

Originally Posted by IanS

Originally Posted by westprog Quote:-

The fundamental question of why there is something rather than nothing remains, and will be answered on a philosophical, not a scientific basis.

The answer is simple and its philosophy which provides a clue as to the answer. The clue is;

We have something, therefore we don't have nothing. Indeed if there was nothing we would not know it, or exist, nothing would exist.

Unfortunately when it comes to existence why questions cannot be answered.

IanS it looks as though you have me rather than Westprog. I note you didn't answer my questions.

Quote:

What we should properly mean by "nothing", according to models and calculations from Vilenkin, Hawking, Linde, Allan Guth etc., is a fundamentally inescapable set of interacting energy fields which cancel one another completely to zero, so that until the Big bang process begins, all that exists is a "nothingness" composed of that so-called "Initial Energy Density" of the primordial interacting and mutually cancelling energy fields ...

Is there a singularity in what you describe? I notice you do not mention it.

Quote:

... if you regress the time components in GR, so that we trace back in time to the point of the Big Bang, at which stage you also then need to include QM effects which begin to dominate more and more as the mass of the universe is compressed towards, but never reaching a so-called "singularity", then space and time ("spacetime") are progressively converted into components of the various energy fields. All that is left is, no space, no time, no particles etc, but only that Initial energy Density composed of the various interacting fields which actually cancel one another to precisely zero ...

I appreciate the reference to symmetry breaking here. Is this "Zero" nothing? or something, if its something what is it?

Quote:

... so that overall, you do not even have any energy interaction either! There is literally what we should truly call "Nothing".

You realise you are contradicting yourself here. It doesn't sound like nothing to me.

Quote:

But that "Nothing" is not in fact the complete absence of everything. Because although the fields are mutually cancelling one-anther to zero overall outcome, their individual components of direction, sign, magnitude etc. are still actively subject to inescapable random fluctuations at the so-called "Plank Level" (roughly from memory 10*-35 metres for the Plank length and 6x10*-44 sec for the Plank time) ...

... because those fluctuations are random, they exhibit a range of different extremes in size and time etc, so that at some instances the fluctuations become large enough to interact with one another producing what is in effect the momentary appearance of a microscopic level "big bang" with monetary production of space and time etc, ie an embryonic "bubble" universe. But because that is occurring in a bath of surrounding opposing field fluctuations, the emerging embryo universe is almost always cancelled back to zero very quickly (ie lasting for only slightly longer than the Plank time) ... but ...

... because those random fluctuations events are occurring constantly in vast numbers, one or more such fluctuations must inevitably appear as a much larger event producing a much bigger interaction with the opposing field components. At some certain critical size, any fluctuation beyond that critical magnitude will produce and unstoppable chain reaction of the emergence of an embryo universe, ie an unstoppable rapid appearance of spacetime, which is then too big to be instantly cancelled by the surrounding field interactions ... that is the state referred to in Guth’s original paper describing the Inflationary stage of the Big Bang in which what we call our universe very suddenly appears with a huge expansion of spacetime from the "nothingness" of the null Initial Field Density ...

Yes I am familiar with this idea, again are you proposing a singularity and in what form is the information of spacetime etc held or conveyed in the "nothingness"

Quote:

... after that very brief instantaneous massive Inflation producing Space and Time, you then have the Big Bang event proper, in which the energy of Spacetime is being rapidly converted into the first exotic short lived "particles".

OK, so without describing that process any further, since it's all well known and fully described and experimentally verified from that point of about 100th sec. after the Big Bang, the model is explaining how the universe must in fact appear as an inevitability from what we should really mean by the concept of absolutely "Nothing"....

... the "Nothing" consists of no space, no time, no particles or matter, and no overall energy either (zero overall energy). But to repeat - the individual field components themselves are non-zero and must obey the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle at values around the Plank scale ... and that inevitably means a Big Bang universe must appear due to innescapable interactions arising from random quantum-level fluctuations of the field components ...

Fine, you still have not defined the impetus behind this process, if you have no time and no energy, how do you have the change or movement necessary to escape the Plank Epoc

Quote:

... that is the answer to the question "why do we have something rather than Nothing" ...

Sorry I see no answer here. Only a description of the changes in the something.

Quote:

... the answer is that "nothing" does not really ever exist in that dictionary defined sense of complete absence of everything. Physically that would be impossible.

We are getting a bit philosophical here. In what sense is it impossible?

Quote:

Think about that for a moment - why should there ever be something called literally "Nothing"? What would that be?

It is a human construct.

Quote:

Look all around us - what we find is always "Something", but never "Nothing".

Quite.

Quote:

The whole idea of "nothing" is simply a conceptual error of the philosophical kind, arising from the fact that people once thought the air around them was actually "nothing", ie an "empty space", because they could not see anything in that air. Later, chemists showed that the air was filled with invisible gases.

But people then thought it was possible to pump out all of those gases from a region of space, eg in a vacuum tube, to leave a vacuum of absolutely nothing. But then its was found that no matter what you do, that "vacuum" is always still filled with all sorts of different energy fields which are actually impossible ever to remove due to GR and QM effects ... "empty space" cannot ever exist ...

I am sure folk invented the concept of nothing at a much earlier stage.

Quote:

... that is why we have something rather than "nothing", because a literal "nothing" does not, never did, and absolutely cannot exist. And that is a direct result of fairly recent QM and GR calculations in cosmological Big Bang theory.

How does this follow?

Quote:

The same inescapable result also appears in a slightly different form if you use String Theory instead of combining GR with increasing QM as you condense our present expanded spacetime back towards the Big Bang. A singularity in that density is never actually reached, because approaching the Plank scale, QM effects take over and dominate ...

... instead you get an effect that Vilenkin has described as a QM tunnelling into that chaotic "foam" of randomly fluctuating spacetime which is appearing from the fluctuating components of the massively compressed Initial Energy Density.

In what sense is it massively compressed energy? whe're getting back to the impetus here aren't we?

Quote:

Models like this are of course not absolute certainties. Even Big Bang itself is not actually yet at the status of a "theory", although it must now be very close due to increasingly accurate experimental evidence now being discovered.

Of course and which bit is atheistic?

Quote:

But this sort of model of the "Universe from Nothing" does appear to be our best current explanation which fits very nicely with all known physics and all known calculations form QM and GR. So it now seems very likely that this will be pretty close to our final picture of how & why our universe actually exists (it's a "real" universe by the way! … its’ not an imaginary figment of a philosophers interest in the semantics of arguing about words defined in outdated paper dictionaries).

So you are claiming that something did not come out of nothing, so is it eternally something (endless or infinite in the temporal dimension)?

[Skeptic Ginger]

Originally Posted by punshhh

...when it comes to existence why questions cannot be answered....

Westprog already admitted the answer to the question Mijo refuses to answer, what does philosophy have to offer:

Originally Posted by westprog[/quote

I don't expect answers from philosophy.

He went on to say philosophy adds more questions.

So, given we are unable to answer how did it start, was there always something or did something arise from nothing (before the Big Bang)? And given neither philosophy, science currently, nor adding a meaningless god layer (God did it only leads to the same question, was god always there or did said god arise from nothing?) can answer said unanswerable question. What about that fact makes either philosophy or god beliefs of any use?

[westprog]

Originally Posted by Skeptic Ginger

Westprog already admitted the answer to the question Mijo refuses to answer, what does philosophy have to offer:

Quote:

I don't expect answers from philosophy.

He went on to say philosophy adds more questions.

So, given we are unable to answer how did it start, was there always something or did something arise from nothing (before the Big Bang)? And given neither philosophy, science currently, nor adding a meaningless god layer (God did it only leads to the same question, was god always there or did said god arise from nothing?) can answer said unanswerable question. What about that fact makes either philosophy or god beliefs of any use?

If you continue to pretend that you can make decisions based on science alone, you'll never see any use in philosophy.

[JoeBentley]

Originally Posted by westprog

If you continue to pretend that you can make decisions based on science alone, you'll never see any use in philosophy.

You're not talking science and philosophy, you're just using the words.

Decision making isn't divided into "science" and "completely divorced from reality evidence-less malarkey."

Human behaviors and desires, even for subjective concepts, isn't the unscientific wasteland you're pretending it is.

And by your own admission philosophy doesn't give answers, it just creates new questions.

So basically "Philosophy" is just a magic word for you, one that means anything you want it to, invoked when you don't want to explain a position or stance.

[IanS]

Originally Posted by punshhh

The answer is simple and its philosophy which provides a clue as to the answer. The clue is;

We have something, therefore we don't have nothing. Indeed if there was nothing we would not know it, or exist, nothing would exist.

Unfortunately when it comes to existence why questions cannot be answered.

IanS it looks as though you have me rather than Westprog. I note you didn't answer my questions.


Is there a singularity in what you describe? I notice you do not mention it.

I appreciate the reference to symmetry breaking here. Is this "Zero" nothing? or something, if its something what is it?

You realise you are contradicting yourself here. It doesn't sound like nothing to me.
Yes I am familiar with this idea, again are you proposing a singularity and in what form is the information of spacetime etc held or conveyed in the "nothingness"
Fine, you still have not defined the impetus behind this process, if you have no time and no energy, how do you have the change or movement necessary to escape the Plank Epoc

Sorry I see no answer here. Only a description of the changes in the something.

We are getting a bit philosophical here. In what sense is it impossible?

It is a human construct.

Quite.

I am sure folk invented the concept of nothing at a much earlier stage.

How does this follow?

In what sense is it massively compressed energy? whe're getting back to the impetus here aren't we?

Of course and which bit is atheistic?

So you are claiming that something did not come out of nothing, so is it eternally something (endless or infinite in the temporal dimension)?

Sorry, I can't be bothered to explain it all over & over again for you ... try reading it all again, and do it propely and carefully this time! (the singularity "problem" is explained there by the way, several times!).

[westprog]

Originally Posted by IanS

Sorry, I can't be bothered to explain it all over & over again for you ... try reading it all again, and do it propely and carefully this time! (the singularity "problem" is explained there by the way, several times!).

Punssh, I don't think that the precise details of the theory are important in a religious or philosophical sense. It may well be that an earlier understanding of the universe had it being created at a given moment and continuing on with no maintenance needed, but religion and philosophy has no more need to be attached to that idea than science was. The idea of a created universe is no more debunked by the new ideas in physics than it was by Copernicus or Darwin.

[IanS]

Originally Posted by westprog

Punssh, I don't think that the precise details of the theory are important in a religious or philosophical sense. It may well be that an earlier understanding of the universe had it being created at a given moment and continuing on with no maintenance needed, but religion and philosophy has no more need to be attached to that idea than science was. The idea of a created universe is no more debunked by the new ideas in physics than it was by Copernicus or Darwin.

The universe is not "created at a given moment" ... time itself did not exist until it was produced as "spacetime" in the initial inflationary stage of the Big bang ...

... "time" and "space" are products of the Big Bang.

[westprog]

Originally Posted by IanS

The universe is not "created at a given moment"

That's why I said it was an earlier idea. The concept of a god existing outside of time and space has been around for a long time now.

[Last of the Fraggles]

Originally Posted by westprog

If you continue to pretend that you can make decisions based on science alone, you'll never see any use in philosophy.

Science bad therefore philosophy? No need to demonstrate how philosophy works better it just wins by default because its not science?

Why philosophy and not astrology, tealeaf reading or just making **** up?

[laca]

Originally Posted by westprog

Yes. That's what I said.





Yes. That's what I said.

No, the starting point of this discussion was your claim that no decision could be made based on science alone. I said you're wrong, you asked for an example and I've given you one. Then you started moving the goalpost by bringing preference into the discussion. Then I said that it's just a red herring. And here we are, you're trying to twist and turn out of admitting that there are in fact a lot of decisions that can be made based on science alone. Someone with a bit of rigor would have retracted their statement by now. Oh wait, no, it's intellectual honesty that's required.

Originally Posted by westprog

So you've contradicted me by basically saying that I'm right but it's just "word games".

The reason that this distinction is important is that it's a common tactic to assert that science promotes a particular course of action. Of course science never, by itself, promotes a particular course of action. There is always some aim involved. People who make such claims have an agenda which they like to keep hidden behind a smokescreen of science.

Given the same preference, science does indeed promote a particular course of action. If your preference is reality, it fits like a glove. If, on the other hand, your preference is cozy delusion, then you're heading for disaster. Science tends to dispel delusions.

Originally Posted by westprog

Science is an essential help in decision making. It's always one half of the process.

What's the other half?

[mijopaalmc]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

Because silly word games are all they have.

Ted: 2+2=4.
Bob: Well yeah that's the answer... but what's the truth?
Ted: Whhh... what?
Bob: You've given me the answer to 2+2=4... now I want to know... *pause for dramatic effect*.... the truth.
Ted: The truth is 2+2=4.
Bob: Ah I see. So if that's the answer and the truth.... then what is the reality?
Ted: What?
Bob: The reality of 2+2?
Ted: That would be 4 as well.
Bob: Ah I see. Then what is the.... (20 GOTO 10)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No matter how many times people use this analogy, its application to whatever topic is at hand demobstrates more about the assumptions of the persons using it than the acutal argument the analogy is being used to parody.

It implies that:

1. the terms in the discussion at hand are as rigoroulsy defined as "2", "+", "=", and "4"
2. the intuitive concepts of "2", "+", "=", and "4" can be substituted for their rigorous definitions without destroying the utility of the analogy itself.

[JoeBentley]

*Shrugs* Fine. Keep trying to rewrite the language until you find some word that means "I get to make crap up." That's all you're doing.

No matter how much you want it to be philosophy will never mean "Reword things until you get the answer you want."

[mijopaalmc]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

*Shrugs* Fine. Keep trying to rewrite the language until you find some word that means "I get to make crap up." That's all you're doing.

No matter how much you want it to be philosophy will never mean "Reword things until you get the answer you want."

*Yawn*

Show me a definition of "science" that a plurality of scientists agrees on, and then, maybe just then, you'll you have a position that comes close to approximating a statement that might conceivably be construed as implying that you have a semi-well-reasoned argument. Until then, you are merely asserting that "science" is as rigoriusly defined by scientists as the natural numbers are defined by mathematicians.

[JoeBentley]

Science as a concept has a hell of lot more stability then Woo.

So what because science has some internal conflict and divisions we should all run to Woo?

Science might not have consensus, but at least it has standards.

[mijopaalmc]

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

Slecience as a concept has a hell of lot more stability then Woo.

Really? Where is your plurality definition of "science"?

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

So what because science has some internal conflict and divisions we should all run to Woo?

*sigh*

You were the one who was making an analogy between science and the natural number. It's unreasonable for me to ask you where you have seen science defined as rigorously and clearly as the natural numbers are definies within set theory.

Originally Posted by JoeBentley

Science might not have consensus, but at least it has standards.

*sigh*

We're talking about your analogy, not woo. You are trying to shift subjects midstream.