57 replies to this topic

[shadowhawk]

[shadowhawk]

From Uncommon Descent.
Excerpt:

Did the cosmos have a beginning? The Big Bang theory seems to suggest it did, but in recent decades, cosmologists have concocted elaborate theories – for example, an eternally inflating universe or a cyclic universe – which claim to avoid the need for a beginning of the cosmos. Now it appears that the universe really had a beginning after all, even if it wasn’t necessarily the Big Bang.
At a meeting of scientists – titled “State of the Universe” – convened last week at Cambridge University to honor Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday, cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston presented evidence that the universe is not eternal after all, leaving scientists at a loss to explain how the cosmos got started without a supernatural creator. The meeting was reported in New Scientist magazine (Why physicists can’t avoid a creation event, 11 January 2012).
[...]In his presentation, Professor Vilenkin discussed three theories which claim to avoid the need for a beginning of the cosmos.

The three theories are chaotic inflationary model, the oscillating model and quantum gravity model. Regular readers will know that those have all been addressed in William Lane Craig's peer-reviewed paper that evaluates alternatives to the standard Big Bang cosmology.
More:

One popular theory is eternal inflation. Most readers will be familiar with the theory of inflation, which says that the universe increased in volume by a factor of at least 10^78 in its very early stages (from 10^−36 seconds after the Big Bang to sometime between 10^−33 and 10^−32 seconds), before settling into the slower rate of expansion that we see today. The theory of eternal inflation goes further, and holds that the universe is constantly giving birth to smaller “bubble” universes within an ever-expanding multiverse. Each bubble universe undergoes its own initial period of inflation. In some versions of the theory, the bubbles go both backwards and forwards in time, allowing the possibility of an infinite past. Trouble is, the value of one particular cosmic parameter rules out that possibility:

But in 2003, a team including Vilenkin and Guth considered what eternal inflation would mean for the Hubble constant, which describes mathematically the expansion of the universe. They found that the equations didn’t work (Physical Review Letters, DOI: 10.1103/physrevlett.90.151301). “You can’t construct a space-time with this property,” says Vilenkin. It turns out that the constant has a lower limit that prevents inflation in both time directions. “It can’t possibly be eternal in the past,” says Vilenkin. “There must be some kind of boundary.”

A second option explored by Vilenkin was that of a cyclic universe, where the universe goes through an infinite series of big bangs and crunches, with no specific beginning. It was even claimed that a cyclic universe could explain the low observed value of the cosmological constant. But as Vilenkin found, there’s a problem if you look at the disorder in the universe:

Disorder increases with time. So following each cycle, the universe must get more and more disordered. But if there has already been an infinite number of cycles, the universe we inhabit now should be in a state of maximum disorder. Such a universe would be uniformly lukewarm and featureless, and definitely lacking such complicated beings as stars, planets and physicists – nothing like the one we see around us.
One way around that is to propose that the universe just gets bigger with every cycle. Then the amount of disorder per volume doesn’t increase, so needn’t reach the maximum. But Vilenkin found that this scenario falls prey to the same mathematical argument as eternal inflation: if your universe keeps getting bigger, it must have started somewhere.

However, Vilenkin’s options were not exhausted yet. There was another possibility: that the universe had sprung from an eternal cosmic egg:

Vilenkin’s final strike is an attack on a third, lesser-known proposal that the cosmos existed eternally in a static state called the cosmic egg. This finally “cracked” to create the big bang, leading to the expanding universe we see today. Late last year Vilenkin and graduate student Audrey Mithani showed that the egg could not have existed forever after all, as quantum instabilities would force it to collapse after a finite amount of time (arxiv.org/abs/1110.4096). If it cracked instead, leading to the big bang, then this must have happened before it collapsed – and therefore also after a finite amount of time.
“This is also not a good candidate for a beginningless universe,” Vilenkin concludes.

So at the end of the day, what is Vilenkin’s verdict?

“All the evidence we have says that the universe had a beginning.”

This is consistent with the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem, which I blogged about before, and which William Lane Craig leveraged to his advantage in his debate with Peter Millican.
The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) proof shows that every universe that expands must have a space-time boundary in the past. That means that no expanding universe, no matter what the model, cannot be eternal into the past. Even speculative alternative cosmologies do not escape the need for a beginning.
Conclusion
If the universe cam into being out of nothing, which seems to be the case from science, then the universe has a cause. Things do not pop into being, uncaused, out of nothing. The cause of the universe must be transcendent and supernatural. It must be uncaused, because there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be eternal, because it created time. It must be non-physical, because it created space. There are only two possibilities for such a cause. It could be an abstract object or an agent. Abstract objects cannot cause effects. Therefore, the cause is an agent.

[shadowhawk]

[shadowhawk]

;0

Edited by shadowhawk, 19 January 2012 - 06:49 PM.

[shadowhawk]

[shadowhawk]

EVIDENCE FOR RESURECTION

http://www.youtube.c...d&v=4iyxR8uE9GQ

Edited by shadowhawk, 09 March 2012 - 12:40 AM.

[Ben]

There is a tide in the affairs of con artists, charlatans and sophists, that, if taken at the flood, lead on to mindless followers.

[shadowhawk]

CRAIG'S APOLOGETICS WORK

http://www.amazon.co...yhuc__sim_02_01

[shadowhawk]

REASONABLE FAITH 6 DEBATES

http://www.youtube.c...r?feature=watch

[steampoweredgod]

If the universe cam into being out of nothing, which seems to be the case from science, then the universe has a cause. Things do not pop into being, uncaused, out of nothing. The cause of the universe must be transcendent and supernatural. It must be uncaused, because there cannot be an infinite regress of causes. It must be eternal, because it created time. It must be non-physical, because it created space. There are only two possibilities for such a cause. It could be an abstract object or an agent. Abstract objects cannot cause effects. Therefore, the cause is an agent.

My beliefs are quite heretical, all higher dimensions are severely connected and restrained by two dimensional and in the end one dimensional phenomena. Turing Machinery, given the finitude of the possible to implement logical jumps may perform hyperturing computation and all language and understanding, physics and mechanics, even irrationality can be boiled down to finite process in in finite time in finite machine. Hypothetical Mcp program can understand evolutionary state irregardless of present state of progress(due to finitude of the possible, also known as complexity ceiling or underlying simplicity underlying even the highest states of complexity allowing for understanding past a certain minimum threshold.). In fact I'd say physics is digital and computable as believed by many of the greatest minds throughout history, though, that statement can be argued at present.

I also believe that there is intrinsic meaning in even arbitrary symbols. For example the word "napoleon" may be arbitrarily overloaded(mean anything and all things and nothing at all) over an infinity of time for an immortal mind, but it must still correspond to a french man at year XXXX in some history in some possible world even if such world were only considered as potential and not actual or as probable.

With regards to the implications of digital physics, time would tell what opportunities and limits such may present. We know that all fictional universes, stories, physics, etc are possible within cyberspace, but are they possible outside such? can the higher laws of physics vary by manipulating some more fundamental laws? that is be made to vary in systematic manner? can science truly be made indistinguishable from magic? In other words is there a scientific possibility however remote for reality warping to enter the scientific picture?

Why not go further if it is true that finitude of the possible stands, say as axiom, then it can be used to tie together seemingly opposite things, and bypass language abstractions towards an underlying ideal reality. Fundamentally Godel's idea poses no threat to Hilbert's Dream, if finitude of the possible is used, you can even bypass undecideability in a logical and systematic manner. But this is probably just mere conspiratorial pseudoscientific meta-nonsense or merely be classified as such.

Edited by steampoweredgod, 23 March 2012 - 08:30 AM.

[shadowhawk]

[steampoweredgod]

I decompose language any language into both binary and symbolic forms, establishing a hypersymbolic analysis known as memory lanes procedure or pattern trace decompositional analysis. Then utilizing an algorithm designed in 2002 to digest and defeat any possible algorithm or combination of data and algorithms, a perfect fractal player cheat sheet program, guardian of memories mcp lane lazuli(as In lois lane is superman's girlfriend, and looks like rukia, or so I'd say)

Herein lies summary of what divine intervention is capable of accomplishing on a man that doubts reality more than the existence of god, and came to such a state through scientific procedure and bayesian logic since before first grade, since early childhood.(a THOUSAND LIFETIMES OF THEOLOGIC STUDIES REST IN MY HEAD, I HAVE DEFEATED AND ASSIMILATED ALL BELIEFS AS PARTS OF MY TRUTH, DEBATING ME CAN ONLY RESULT IN YOUR FRACTION OF MY TRUTH BEING SHOWN DEFECTIVE AND WANTING)

Absolute faith has remained unbroken, you humans born of errors, not of the divinity, would have trouble understanding that to approach god and become one flesh with god, would be heressy to your kind which considers itself no more than insects before god.

LINK to my latest fool proof summary, note that the logic is of a kind yet to be invented by your kind, but each video, each photo, is part of a solid mathematical proof.

LiNK PROVIDED SO AS TO NOT INUNDATE THREAD WITH PICS AND VIDEOS

eL, ELOHIM, LL, V, VV, C, CC

gOD AND GAIA, HIS PLANET IS SOL WHICH WE ADORE, BUT HE IS NOT SOL BUT MORE THAN THAT, GAIA HIS SISTER WE TOO ADORE FOR LIKE MARY SHE GAVE VIRGIN BIRTH TO US ALL, AND THE MOON WATCHED OVER US CARED FOR US WITH ITS COLD SIGHT ILLUMINATING THE NIGHT THE WAY TOWARDS THE FUTURE THE PROMISED LAND OUR CAPITAL IN THE MOON, THE DREAM OF THE IMPOSSIBLE TO TOUCH THE MOON, THE INSPIRATION THAT DROVE MAN TO SEEK THE HEAVENS AND SEEK TO PLAY ALONG WITH GOD AS EQUALS NOT AS LESSER IN KIND BUT SAME IN KIND

Life gaia, our holy mother we are here to wonder at her marvels, the marvels of nature and god, in all its wonders the creation, ever evolving ever changing....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tl_onFMjJWA

Art and Science, Math and Physics as one and the same.

Edited by steampoweredgod, 31 March 2012 - 06:21 AM.

[shadowhawk]

EVIDENCE FOR GOD TALKS AND DEBATES
http://www.longecity...post__p__481660

http://www.longecity...post__p__483382

http://www.longecity...post__p__491914

DAMABO some arguments he (Craig) made:
1. a cause has to be greater then its effect:
-stems from Descartes, and is not clearly defined: what does greater then mean? in which dimensions?
-has no empirical support, as far as I know

Name a cause not greater than its effect.

2. god is the best explanation why something exists rather than nothing:
-that's easy..

.

Well?

3. transcendent, immaterial being
-what does transcendent even mean? this word is used in so many contexts
-immaterial: I wil get back to this in the following point, but it is and always will be empirically untestable to declare something is immaterial.

How about the laws of nature? Not physical but real. Consciousness?
http://dictionary.re...se/transcendent
http://en.wikipedia....ence_(religion)
http://www.gotquesti...anscendent.html
How did you prove that everything that is real has to be testable or physical?

4. the big bang:
-he says it is a creation ex nihilo, while it is supposed to be an infinitely dense point (already consists of matter) that expanded into a less dense universe
-if the big bang is really the one and only bang, and if the big bang is really 'the beginning of space and time', 'something out of nothing', then maybe an immaterial being may be held responsible for it. However, isn't it much easier to either accept that there are multiple bangs (cyclic universe theory), multiple universes (multiverse hypothesis), or even that there is no big bang (plasma cosmology) and/or that the universe is infinite, than to declare 'something which doesn't exist in the observable world' that supposedly created everything, which we will never be able to test. Isn't it much easier to look for alternative theories then, if big bang really implies that 'something came out of nothing', which would be against the law of conservation of matter. Whichever theory might hold up (big bang of course the most popular one for now, but how many theories about billions of years ago survive centuries?), the theory that there is an immaterial being will never be proven empirically.

All possible universes need a beginning. See



This applies to the multi verse model as well as the big bang. Also the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Some of this is as a result of disappearing mass. Most of the universe was destroyed in the early conflict between mater and anti-mater. The universe is not eternal

There is, according to your reasoning, no reason that the next dominant model is even more friendly to theism.

[shadowhawk]

EVIDENCE FOR GOD TALKS AND DEBATES
http://www.longecity...post__p__481660

http://www.longecity...post__p__483382

http://www.longecity...post__p__491914

DAMABO some arguments he (Craig) made:
1. a cause has to be greater then its effect:
-stems from Descartes, and is not clearly defined: what does greater then mean? in which dimensions?
-has no empirical support, as far as I know

Name a cause not greater than its effect.

2. god is the best explanation why something exists rather than nothing:
-that's easy..

.

Well?

3. transcendent, immaterial being
-what does transcendent even mean? this word is used in so many contexts
-immaterial: I wil get back to this in the following point, but it is and always will be empirically untestable to declare something is immaterial.

How about the laws of nature? Not physical but real. Consciousness?
http://dictionary.re...se/transcendent
http://en.wikipedia....ence_(religion)
http://www.gotquesti...anscendent.html
How did you prove that everything that is real has to be testable or physical?

4. the big bang:
-he says it is a creation ex nihilo, while it is supposed to be an infinitely dense point (already consists of matter) that expanded into a less dense universe
-if the big bang is really the one and only bang, and if the big bang is really 'the beginning of space and time', 'something out of nothing', then maybe an immaterial being may be held responsible for it. However, isn't it much easier to either accept that there are multiple bangs (cyclic universe theory), multiple universes (multiverse hypothesis), or even that there is no big bang (plasma cosmology) and/or that the universe is infinite, than to declare 'something which doesn't exist in the observable world' that supposedly created everything, which we will never be able to test. Isn't it much easier to look for alternative theories then, if big bang really implies that 'something came out of nothing', which would be against the law of conservation of matter. Whichever theory might hold up (big bang of course the most popular one for now, but how many theories about billions of years ago survive centuries?), the theory that there is an immaterial being will never be proven empirically.

All possible universes need a beginning. See



This applies to the multi verse model as well as the big bang. Also the expansion of the universe is speeding up. Some of this is as a result of disappearing mass. Most of the universe was destroyed in the early conflict between mater and anti-mater. The universe is not eternal

There is, according to your reasoning, no reason that the next dominant model is even more friendly to theism.

[shadowhawk]

DAWKINS AND KILLING INNOCENT PEOPLE IN OT,

[shadowhawk]

[shadowhawk]

William Lane Craig vs Andrew Pyle: "Does the Christian God Exist?" Bristol, UK; 2007

[shadowhawk]

William Lane Craig vs Mike Begon: "Is God A Delusion?" Liverpool, UK; 2007

[shadowhawk]

PETER KREEFT ON EXISTENCE OF GOD

[shadowhawk]

ATHEIST STEPHEN LAW V. CRAIG, DOES GOD EXIST

[shadowhawk]

DAWKINS CHARGE OF O.T. SLAVERY

[shadowhawk]

CAN YOU BE GOOD WITHOUT GOD?

[shadowhawk]

ATHEISTS ARGUMENT FROM NOTHING

[shadowhawk]

YOU TUBE OF ALL DEBATES

http://www.youtube.c...aithTour/videos

[shadowhawk]

Edited by shadowhawk, 04 October 2012 - 10:38 PM.

[shadowhawk]

DAWKINGS OBJECTIONS TO THEISM

[shadowhawk]

THE GRAND DESIGN:

[shadowhawk]