501. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118976 by Kardashovel on January 31, 2008 at 8:28 am

There is no reason to suppose that time is dilated in the early universe.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation

502. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118971 by Kardashovel on January 31, 2008 at 8:24 am

If the xtian god were to come down tomorrow and tell me I was going to hell then my position as an atheist would be completely changed to that of a theist - that's called evidence. My emotions however would remain exactly the same - that god would still be a cunt.

What if that God spoke to you and reassured you that the religions of Abraham had been entirely hijacked, and that actually He loves you very much and needs you for His plan?

Then you would have evidence, and the joyous knowledge that God is not a cunt!

That would be awesome. Now if only you could hear the voice... I wonder why you cannot?

503. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118969 by Kardashovel on January 31, 2008 at 8:20 am

Time may be meaningless below a certain inverval

Actually, I was referring to t=0 as the big bang, the fact that time would be intensely dilated in the early universe, and that time does not make a lot of sense "before" the big bang.

If one is not careful, it is easy to move from pushing the limits of physics to talking nonsense.

True that. I'm glad to see that your tone has changed. Perhaps we can be friends after all.

504. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118963 by Kardashovel on January 31, 2008 at 8:14 am

What's the matter, Steve? Cat got your tongue? Are you in a superposition of states of belief?

505. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118962 by Kardashovel on January 31, 2008 at 8:13 am

what does being a "betty" have to do with anything?

It was just an observation... not unprecedented in this thread.

As for relevance, it gets back to emotion being a motivator. You are attractive. That attracts attention. That affects conversations, particularly conversations about personal anecdotes or other cuddly topics. If you want to discuss quantum field theory, I promise I won't look at your avatar.

506. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118960 by Kardashovel on January 31, 2008 at 8:09 am

many atheists see this image of a totalitarian bigot and cunt of a god that xtians and muslims follow

Emotion motivates belief. We cannot function as entirely rational beings, measuring each of our actions against science and reason. We'd never get out of bed.

So, while you may have another reason for being an atheist, NaughtyBoy, I suspect that you are influenced more than a little by the type of emotion that produced the quote above.

507. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118955 by Kardashovel on January 31, 2008 at 8:02 am

The question is, how does god know he wasn't created last Wednesday?

Because He knows "when" he did it.

More seriously, in the concept of God that I am discussing in this thread, the process of Creation never stops, and is cyclical in the sense that the end determines the beginning. Since time as we perceive it is meaningless for small or negative values of t, I don't think that "when" is a question that has an answer.

508. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118949 by Kardashovel on January 31, 2008 at 7:56 am

Hi AnnaBanana! It's true what they say... you're definitely a betty.

No, I have not conducted any studies... nor did I claim to have done so. I'm speaking from personal experience with conversations that I have had over the course of my life.

But without leaving this thread I can find at least three examples of what I am talking about. Shall I?

509. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118943 by Kardashovel on January 31, 2008 at 7:46 am

To LorienRyan

God created himself? Now that's getting desperate.

:) If I am to believe in God, the root of all causes, then it would be weak to avoid the question of the cause of God. I have offered an answer, and a mechanism; I admit that it is speculation, but I don't think that it is desperate. I will survive just the same if I am wrong.


Why not let go of the concept of God altogether? And learn to appreciate things as they really are.

Once God has you, it's difficult to escape. I was raised as an atheist, by parents that were raised atheist. I did not even entertain the idea of God seriously until grad school.

Many atheists that I have met are recoiling from a very ugly picture of God that reflects the fear and loathing that his unrighteous "followers" loan to the unscrupulous "leaders" that hypocritically seek only power.

I understand the sentiment, but since I was shielded from the hellfire morons for my entire upbringing, I don't have the visceral distaste for religion that seems prevalent around here.

I am sorry that I went to sleep when I did. I though that you had gone, so I missed the opportunity to persuade you before post #666. Forgive me. I did give it a try.

510. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118932 by Kardashovel on January 31, 2008 at 7:27 am

someone thinks they know a lot more about science than they actually do.

That's ok Steve. I don't hold it against you because I like to see you have some fun with speculation.
~~~

No, as we don't think they could actually happen by themselves at a reasonable size.

Who is this "we" that you speak of? Are you a cosmologist, Steve? Do all of your cosmologist friends believe that wormholes are impossible? A generation ago, the consensus among cosmologists was that black holes we just a pretty solution to the field equations, but could not be real. Now we are taking pictures of stars as they are swallowed by what the current consensus says are giant black holes at the center of galaxies. Sorry Steve, but even if you are a cosmologist, you don't get any points for this flippant "nah-uh" answer.
~~~

It isn't to do with the energy density, so much as the energy distribution. Energy would have to be arranged in clumps.

Do you mean clumps like the ones that are responsible for the (super)structure of the known universe? Or does it take a double-secret antitheist clump theory to generate wormholes?

And, by the way, it is both. The energy density of the clumps would need to be profound, as it was in the early universe. Try again, Mr. Wizard.
~~~

Actually, it is the strongest, as the ends of the wormhole would have to be moving relative to each other through space. Being carried along by inflation is not moving through space.

Now you are either being deceptive or you enjoy the taste of your sneakers. There is this theory that you and your cosmologist buddies came up with called the Big Bang. Among other phenomena, it explains why the objects that we can see at the furthest reaches of the known universe are moving away at relativistic velocities, Steve. And it explains why objects at the edge of our light cone are receding from us at close to the speed of light.

Now while your fan-club here might swallow such shallow dodges without any critical examination, you are fortunate enough to have met me and offered up personal insults. Oops!

511. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118750 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 11:16 pm

Comment number 625 by LorianRyan seems to indicate that this is old hat here. But I see now what that means… and it does not mean that you feel any responsibility to come up with your own explanation, but rather that you find it satisfying to dismiss other people's theories and just move on.

For my part, I cannot resist making theories to explain such a bizarre and exceedingly unlikely occurrence such as our universe. It's not that I don't see the value of skepticism, it's just that I normally employ skepticism as a method to seek out a better answer, whereas you seem content to see skepticism as its own sport. Is there no room in you for speculation? Can you conceive of a materialist explanation for the fine-tuning problem? I can, but it does not satisfy me. Anyway, enough about you and me and our styles of grappling with truth…

~~~

It's called honesty.

Well, I will grant you that, and I praise it. Thanks.

Now, for your numbered conditions:
1) While I obviously am a believer that our understanding of physics will improve over time, one thing I have noticed about physics is that if a phenomena can happen, it will happen; if it doesn't happen, that means that you need to figure out why it can't happen, and new physical theories will result. So if we put a premium on our current understanding of physics, then odds are that wormholes are not only possible, but real.
2) Considering the energy density necessary to produce a worm hole, can you think of a time in the universe where they would be more abundant than shortly after the big bang?
3) This is a tough one, I'd admit. Of course, it is not necessary that they all be stable, and if they were sufficiently abundant, perhaps some will remain into the current and future universe. My gods would only need to find one to be God.
4) This one is easy to conceive, since every point in space was moving apart at speeds vastly faster than the speed of light during inflation, and points outside of the known universe will continue to recede from us now at light speed. This is the weakest objection, given the topic.

So, I don't know how unlikely this is, really. Now you sarcastically assert that it is "somewhat unlikely"… Personally, I can't come up with an argument that it isn't even odds. And you will note that I am not postulating new physics for the existence of such an object… It would require new physics to take advantage of such an object, but what kind of odds do you want to give me that we'll find out some new physics in the future, Steve?

~~~
…you would already need a Universe finely tuned enough to allow intelligent aliens to exist.

THERE IT IS. The principle objection to this line of thought. I salute you.

Rather than retreat to "God moves in mysterious ways…" I'll take a stab at this before I go to sleep. My question is, why are the structure constants for the physical laws what they are (fine tuned, or tuned at all)? Why are the particle masses what they are? Nobody knows, and this is a great unsolved problem in physics. We don't really have the tools to even approach this question yet, in any intelligent way.

So I will simply take a shot in the dark. Perhaps the constants are what they are because they are the result of a conscious measurement, which "collapsed" them to certain values. Physicists are generally agnostic about what happens to a system upon measurement that makes the wave function "collapse"; the ones that had the balls to talk publically about these things did so before funding of science turned into a stock market. Some prominent physicists (Neumann, Wigner, and Pauli being notable examples) believed that wave function collapse was due to interaction with a conscious observer. Others believe that decoherence is at play (consensus alternate view), and still others postulated additional forces (Bohm) or variables (Einstein). For mostly gut-instinct reasons, I side with the conscious observer crowd. Any choice leads to paradoxes (or in the case of hidden variables outright contradictions with experiment).

The potential interaction of conscious mind with physical reality is fraught with strange possibilities. Go ahead and make fun of me being a ghost buster, and whatnot. But the big question is what happens at the largest scales of consciousness… if Schrodinger's cat dies in the forest and you observe it, but you die before you can report it to the rest of us, is the cat still in a superposition of states? At the largest scales what makes reality one way instead of another? Do we earthlings get to observe and set conditions on the goings on at Zeta Reticuli? What level of being would be necessary to observe and collapse the "wave functions" that set the fundamental constants, across time? The type of being that could only evolve if they were collapsed to a nicely tuned value, that's who.

Very hand-waiving, I know. It's speculation. But it dispatches the question of how God was created (counter-first-cause argument). He created Himself.

512. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118738 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 10:21 pm

I don't know what your motivation is for assuming intelligent beings could go back and fiddle with the Big Bang

Oh yes you do. I haven't hidden my argument. It is in black and white above.

Not only does the approach I've spelled out provide a potential explanation for the Goldilocks Universe, but it also sheds light on how something complex could have arisin from something much simpler; albeit with evolution, souped up with time travel and intelligent manipulators.

513. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118737 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 10:18 pm

I am still a bit amazed at the certainty with which you declare these things, Steve.

At the beginning of the universe, everything was moving at or greater than the speed of light, and the energy density was such that many strange phenomena undoubtedly occured. We can't even unite GR with QM, much less fully explain dark matter... yet you assert that it is impossible that a future advanced civilization could harness a naturally occuring primordial wormhole.

Now, if you said, as other have, that "this is just silly and who can know?", then I would get it. But now you're using words like "exceedingly unlikely" to describe your objection to my little thought tour...

BTW, speaking of exceedingly unlikely occurances, can someone explain to me why the Goldilocks Universe problem is a non-starter around here? Did y'all figure out and nobody told the world, or am I just living under a rock?

514. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118732 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 10:06 pm

You would have to assume that there was a civilization advanced enough to create or control wormholes, and move one end at relativistic speed, and that civilization was already in existence... at the Big Bang.

So Steve... then you are saying that there is no such thing as a naturally occuring worm hole (or other such mechanism).

515. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118728 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 10:01 pm

As I have explained, that is impossible.

Actually Steve, as my post above shows, you have failed to explain that my general thesis is impossible.

Moreover, you have admitted that it is possible that we could witness a "grandfather paradox", unless you wish to assert that there are no wormholes older than your grandfather.

516. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118723 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 9:57 pm

Because time machines (if they are possible) that match our understanding of physics involve distorting spacetime so as to make a loop. (Examples are wormholes where one end has been moved at relativistic speeds, or carefully positioned cosmic strings)


You are talking about our current understanding of physics. I am talking about a future society that harnesses energy at the scale of galaxies, and has a deeper understanding of physical laws than we can fathom... a much sharper contrast than the difference between your advanced modern physical understanding and that of some primitive Hebrew, I'd say.

But I'll play along... lets say that the loop was set up at the big bang, or perhaps during inflation. Are you suggesting that there are no wormholes near or at the beginning of time? Why would you make such an assertion? Where does your air of certainty about the matter come from?

517. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118716 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 9:46 pm

Grandfather paradox? You go back in time and kill your granddaddy before your daddy was conceived. That would put a fly in the ointment. Or you go back further in time and change the time line so that you don't ever exist.


Quite. That's what makes time travel a lot more tricky than nukes or genetic engineering. Screw it up bad, and you not only erase your extant universe, but you could also make it take much longer to evolve to the point of time travel the "next time" around.

In contrast, if "they" were good at it, they would manipulate the past in such a way that their sacrifice would yield an even quicker rebirth (discovery of time travel) in the changed universe.

You have stated a difficultly with the concept of time travel into the past. This does not mean that it cannot happen, just because it offends your common sense of causality. We can discuss areas of current physical theory which will offend your common sense without postulating future time travellers, if you would like.

518. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118707 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 9:32 pm

Even if time machines could be created, you can only go back in time to the point at which the time machine was made. So there is no chance to go back to change anything about "creation".

Interesting assertion. You seem so sure. Why is that?

If you are correct, then of course so is your other assertion that I am speaking nonsense. But I'm afraid that you have no rational grouds to make the statement above. Please show me I'm wrong?

519. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118703 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 9:26 pm

No, space and time are not two different things, they are are the same thing. One cannot exist without the other. Why do you question this?

Well, superficially, because I perceive them differently. I don't doubt that they are part of the same thing, and both necessary for any action to take place... but they are treated differently in each of the two strongest physical theories.

In GR, the metric includes only one time axis, which is a negative square in contrast to the spatial dimensions. In QM, there is a (fundamental) uncertainty relation between position and momentum, and a (derived) uncertainty relation between time and energy. They just seem differnt, don't you think?

And please don't bother to just say "no". If you know otherwise, please explain it, if you are able.

520. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118695 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 9:16 pm

LorienRyan, here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2393412,00.html

BAEOZ, I am not suggesting that humans will exist in a billion years.

Perhaps our descendants will evolve to the point that they make/made this into a Goldilocks Universe...

And maybe not! Maybe we'll just nuke ourselves into oblivion this year, right? But we aren't the only planet, at the only star, in the only galaxy, in the known universe. There are as many chances as you have doubts about our chances.

Somewhere, somehow, somebody in some galaxy is gonna do it... survive and evolve to include a being or collective that can manipulate its own creation... all of our creation.

You can doubt this, but you cannot reject this; that's quite like you feel about God. But consider that doubt carefully…

Consider how far we (as an ecosystem) have changed our understanding and abilities in just the last few hundred years. Consider that we are past the threshold of making natural selection play second fiddle to direct engineering of our genotypes. Consider that in spite of our formidable understanding of physics and mathematics, there are still gaping holes. Knowledge is an island, and as it grows, so does the circumference of our ignorance. And finally consider that we are now learning that planets, including earth like planets, are commonplace (which we should already have assumed due to the aforementioned Principle of Uniformity). So we are hardly the only chance that 'gods' have to evolve... And finally, come up with a better explanation for the Goldilocks Universe.

521. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118682 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 8:48 pm

The question was: Do you think that these future 'gods' (to parry Baeoz's incorrect assertion) will also live in a Goldilocks Universe?

522. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118678 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 8:42 pm

I'm with you, LorienRyan. By that time you will be a theist, albeit without a theory.

523. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118674 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 8:35 pm

Why not?

524. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118672 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 8:31 pm

I am wrong at least once a day, BTA.

That did not look like any space-time metric with which I am familiar. Then again, I've always had a suspicion that the GR way of understanding time is flawed, and that this is a major impediment to our understanding of how to unify the forces.

So. Please do elaborate, and I'll try not to make any assumptions about what you are saying. To be fair, please don't assume I'm a Mormon (I'm not).

525. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118669 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 8:24 pm

Do you think that the situation of the Goldilocks Universe is something that is unique in our time, or will it continue to be the case, one billion years from now, that the universe will have arranged itself so beautifully for our convenient existence?

Careful here... if you say yes, you give up the Principle of Uniformity, the law of conservation of energy, and a host of ideas you probably hold quite dear...

526. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118660 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 8:15 pm

I once read the book of Mormon, they believe something like that.

Indeed. But I am not asking if anyone here believes that it is so. I am asking if they reject the possibility.

I doubt it. After all, no one here would categorically deny the possibility of God as a creator, would they?
They simply refuse to believe, much less seek God, until after they see the evidence. That is not denial. Amiright? Perhaps not about everyone here...

527. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118653 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 8:02 pm

BTA, I assume that you mean that there are six dimensions to space-time. Although I see past present and future as all aligning on a single time axis, there are certainly a number of theories that postulate multiple time axes as well as additional space axes to which we currently have no recourse, except within the boxes of our own heads.

It strikes me that more than a few of the commenters here rather enjoy making a box out of their heads. Not that there is anything wrong with that, mind you.

528. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118637 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 7:57 pm

Would you further accept the possibility that our distant descendants would develop other spectacular, even "god-like" capabilities? Arbitrary space/time travel, ability to deftly manipulate energy on the scale of galaxies, and the wisdom to use these tools without self annihilation?

Would you rule it out, in say, a billion years?

529. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118624 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 7:47 pm

How rude, LorienRyan. Fortunately I know you don't mean it.

I take it, then, that you do not rule out the possibility of time travel at the whim of our descendants, say a million years from now?

530. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118612 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 7:40 pm

I would put my question to you, Becomethearrow.

Do you rule out time travel, based on your understanding of physical theory?

531. 'Irrational Atheist' trounces God-deniers

Comment #118600 by Kardashovel on January 30, 2008 at 7:33 pm

Does anyone here categorically reject the possibility that our distant descendants will master time travel, including the ability to travel to the past?