quote:

Originally posted by ballyboneman:

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To infer that the laws predate matter is beyond ludicrous.

Please show how it is ludicrous

I have already. You are not paying attention. What we call the laws of science are human constructs. They exist because a number of scientists have observed the regularities in the way the universe behaves and expressed them in the form of mathematical equations. The laws are simply human ways of describing how the universe behaves.

originally posted by Milan K

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I have already. You are not paying attention. What we call the laws of science are human constructs. They exist because a number of scientists have observed the regularities in the way the universe behaves and expressed them in the form of mathematical equations. The laws are simply human ways of describing how the universe behaves.

So if the scientists weren't watching, the universe might behave in a different way?

Another article by the always sharp and articulate PZ Myers, shredding Paul Davies's tiresome deistic babble to pieces:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/faith_is_not_a_prerequisite_fo.php

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Originally posted by greenbelt:
originally posted by Milan K

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I have already. You are not paying attention. What we call the laws of science are human constructs. They exist because a number of scientists have observed the regularities in the way the universe behaves and expressed them in the form of mathematical equations. The laws are simply human ways of describing how the universe behaves.

So if the scientists weren't watching, the universe might behave in a different way?

The universe would behave as it behaves. According to its nature. As usual. The universe knows not about "laws". It does what it does. Laws exist only as epistemic entities. As human constructs. You seem to have trouble getting this point.

Originally posted by Milan K:

quote:

Another article by the always sharp and articulate PZ Myers, shredding Paul Davies's tiresome deistic babble to pieces:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/11/faith_is_not_a_prerequisite_fo.php

I've just read the link. It doesn't even address Paul Davies' arguments properly let alone shred them. Sharp and articulate in a "prejudicial film critic" kind of way but his argument doesn't stand to up to much scrutiny.

Originally posted by Milan K

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The universe would behave as it behaves. According to its nature. As usual. The universe knows not about "laws". It does what it does. Laws exist only as epistemic entities. As human constructs. You seem to have trouble getting this point.

What do you think you mean by the phrase "according to its nature" ? It's "nature" is exactly what we are talking about and what we describe in terms of physical laws and constants. So.. are we measuring something objective or not when we describe these laws? If "yes" then you have conceeded that these laws have an independent reality, if "no" then we might as well give up on science completely and go home because we're all just floundering around in a postmodern soup!

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Originally posted by greenbelt:
Originally posted by Milan K

quote:

The universe would behave as it behaves. According to its nature. As usual. The universe knows not about "laws". It does what it does. Laws exist only as epistemic entities. As human constructs. You seem to have trouble getting this point.

What do you think you mean by the phrase "according to its nature" ? It's "nature" is exactly what we are talking about and what we describe in terms of physical laws and constants. So.. are we measuring something objective or not when we describe these laws? If "yes" then you have conceeded that these laws have an independent reality, if "no" then we might as well give up on science completely and go home because we're all just floundering around in a postmodern soup!

When you measure your height, does your height have an "independent reality" from you? Or would you say that your height is a property of you?

Matter is the way that it is. Certain substances have certain atoms distributed in a certain way and the properties of such atoms determine the way in which substances behave and react with other substances, and so on and so forth.

The physical nature of things determines their properties and the way in which they behave. Things are not obeying "laws", they are behaving according to their nature. And this behaviour -which tends to be regular- is what scientists observe, study and summarize in what we call "laws" or "models".

To say that "laws" exist in some imaginary Platonic realm and determine the way things behave is plainly absurd. Laws are descriptions of the way the universe operates. They are descriptive, not normative.

Milan K - we're going around in circles here.
The "nature" of matter is surely to obey laws ?. Are you arguing that those laws are only a human construct with no independent basis in reality? If so then would an alien life form describe different laws to us? They may call the laws different names and they may have different units of measurement but their scientific investigations would reveal the same weak and strong nuclear forces, gravity e.t.c Mathematics is being considered as an intrinsic informational system in the universe rather than a human construct and why Karl Sagan postulates a radio transmission containing prime numbers as an example of evidence for alien life.
Information can be transmitted from one mind to another with no transfer of matter. I have a thought, I type it onto the internet, you read it and the thought is now in your head. Matter carries information but information is not synonymous with matter.

quote:

Originally posted by greenbelt:
Milan K - we're going around in circles here.
The "nature" of matter is surely to obey laws ?. Are you arguing that those laws are only a human construct with no independent basis in reality? If so then would an alien life form describe different laws to us? They may call the laws different names and they may have different units of measurement but their scientific investigations would reveal the same weak and strong nuclear forces, gravity e.t.c Mathematics is being considered as an intrinsic informational system in the universe rather than a human construct and why Karl Sagan postulates a radio transmission containing prime numbers as an example of evidence for alien life.
Information can be transmitted from one mind to another with no transfer of matter. I have a thought, I type it onto the internet, you read it and the thought is now in your head. Matter carries information but information is not synonymous with matter.

Please read what I wrote. When did I say that laws have no basis in reality? I said that the laws are our descriptions of ***the way things behave***.

And the nature of matter is not "to obey laws". Matter is not aware of any laws. The nature of matter makes it behave in the way it behave. We observe this behaviour and summarize it in laws.

I have no idea what the relevance is of your story about Sagan and prime numbers etc etc.

I have repeated this 3 times already and you seem to be able to misinterpret and miscontrue it in ever more creative ways. This is the last time I'm repeating it.

Regards

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Originally posted by ballyboneman:

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Originally posted by free_thinker:
This is an interesting point, but the most this gets us to is deism, if that.

There is hope for you yet

Not according to wolfy.

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It is possible that an almost infinite number of other combinations of physical constants produced an almost infinite number of big phutts before a big bang happened.
It is also possible that the physical constant are in some way locked together.
It is also possible that if one were to change other would change to accommodate it.
I'm sure there are many other possibilities that would explain this.
With only this universe to study it's really difficult to know.

Even if all your examples were true it still brings you back to 'why'. Why should they be that way? what or who provides the impetus? why should there be anything at all? why should matter conform to any set of 'laws'?

Put simply, a 'why' question presupposes a purpose and/or a guiding intelligence.
Science does not answer 'why' questions, indeed in the most general of sense, it considers the question invalid.

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I think the whole concept of a 'multiverse' is a non-starter.

I can't say I'm into the multiverse concept.

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Originally posted by greenbelt:
Originally posted by Freethinker:

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This is an interesting point, but the most this gets us to is deism, if that.

That's quite a concession on this forum

I have conceded that if you could show conclusively that there was "anthropic fine tuning" then the most you have is an Einsteinian deist 'god' that has nothing to do with bible god.

If you think that is a significant concession then you are really desperate.

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It is also possible that the physical constant are in some way locked together.
It is also possible that if one were to change other would change to accommodate it.

wouldn't these findings also support anthropic fine tuning?

No they don't.
If they are locked together, there is not tuning.
If when one changes another automatically changes, again there is no tuning.

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Originally posted by greenbelt:
Originally posted by Freethinker:

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Whatever, a statistical analysis of something that has already happened is looking at it with the wrong end of the telescope.

Isn't that exactly what we are doing with big bang theory.....and evolution

Oh, no exactly not. That is what creationists do.
Unless by 'we', you mean creationists.

Maybe I wasn't clear. What I mean by 'statistical analysis' is looking at where we are now, and working out how improbable it is that we got to here. Then concluding that because it is so unlikely, it cannot be by chance and must be guided.

There was a link here earlier to dawkins.net. I'm trying to find the link myself.
Thanks to whoever posted it, any idea why it has gone?

Third time lucky: http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg19626311.400

quote:

Originally posted by free_thinker:
There was a link here earlier to dawkins.net. I'm trying to find the link myself.
Thanks to whoever posted it, any idea why it has gone?

Some links seem to be allowed while others are not for no readily discernable reason.

The Mods move in mysterious ways

[QUOTE]Originally posted by smokeAndMirrors:
Third time lucky: [\QUOTE]

Just in case they drop the link:

'IN AUGUST, radio astronomers announced that they had found an enormous hole in the universe. Nearly a billion light years across, the void lies in the constellation Eridanus and has far fewer stars, gas and galaxies than usual. It is bigger than anyone imagined possible and is beyond the present understanding of cosmology. What could cause such a gaping hole? One team of physicists has a breathtaking explanation: "It is the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own," says Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

It is a staggering claim. If Mersini-Houghton's team is right, the giant void is the first experimental evidence for another universe. It would also vindicate string theory, our most promising understanding of how the universe works at its most fundamental level. And it would do away with the anthropic arguments that have plagued string theorists in recent years because they say we are the reason the cosmos is the way it is. The hole in the universe is a big deal.'

Occam's Razor anyone?

quote:

Originally posted by ballyboneman:

Occam's Razor anyone?

You miss the point. Here we have something that was erstwhile impossible - the detection of universes outside of our own (and a validation of String Theories to boot). It moves it from the domain of speculation to the domain of the testable.

Notice also that if true, it makes the number of universes equal to 2, whereas it is currently 1. That hardly gets Occam out of bed, let alone think about shaving - if 1, why not 2? The thing that would have William slicing himself would be "if 0, why not 1?" Eg god.

I’m with Millan K on this one…”existence” as in all that is…simply is…there is nothing more or less to understand about the state of “existence” other than to say nothing can be said to exist outside of “existence”…

IMO information as we know and use it has little to do with “existence” as in – “all that is”…and in no way shape or form can information nor matter be said to exist in the same sense as the universe that is or reality as we live it…

We cannot engage “existence” as in all that is in any direct sense like we do reality and so I find it delusional to believe in religious doctrine and determinism because they both attempt to posit and engage “all that is” via self referential reality which plain logic tells us cannot ever be the same thing…

The real magnificence of life as we live it is being born with the innate capacity we have to change not really to marvel over chance which isn’t chance at all because it happened. The further we have advanced as a species the more we change because we consciously want to not because information and the manifest world might.

Being conscious we have the ability to test things and thus decide whether to change and or what to change that we can in our reality…”existence” or “all that is never comes into the field of real possibility and so taking reality into consideration it makes little sense to suggest we can test the entire universe let alone logically posit that there might be another one, two or three…etc…

quote:

Originally posted by ballyboneman:
The Mods move in mysterious ways

Its a sort of quantum uncertainty, as opposed to a deistic caprice.....

Does the finding of “Quantum none locality” suggest that the debate is a bit mute?

Causality, the idea that one thing precedes another and causes another sort of falls down doesn’t it?

If energy is so correlated as to produce the none locality effect then the language of description becomes the barrier and the chicken and egg conundrum merely about our lack of theoretical and conceptual tools to do justice to the description.

Being so correlated they bring about each others existence because in reality it is our language which gives the illusion of separation when no such separation actually exists.

Philosophy stumbling over it’s incomplete perception adding to the problem by mistaking conceptual for actual, and dividing, dare I say it metaphysical and existential implications of such phenomena shape our ability to convey it’s nature.

quote:

Originally posted by Rowan22:

Causality, the idea that one thing precedes another and causes another sort of falls down doesn’t it?

So why are you typing this? Presumably if cause and effect are baloney then there's no way anyone could hope to understand these symbols.

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Originally posted by smokeAndMirrors:

quote:

Originally posted by Rowan22:

Causality, the idea that one thing precedes another and causes another sort of falls down doesn’t it?

So why are you typing this? Presumably if cause and effect are baloney then there's no way anyone could hope to understand these symbols.

I'm assuming the archbishop is talking about the singularity at the big bang?