Holmes

15 minutes ago, iNow said:

Sigh. I didn’t think this was a hard concept, but I’ll try again. 

Even if I stipulate that one cannot use material laws to explain their own origin, this adds nothing to the conclusion toward which you’ve leapt, the conclusion that supernatural explanations are the only valid ones. That is a baseless nonsequitur that gains no weight EVEN IF I concede to your line of questioning. 

EDIT: Lol. I x-posted with studiot who also began with a sigh 😂 

So you accept that "one cannot use material laws to explain their own origin" very well, so do you then by extension admit that if there is an explanation it cannot be what we'd term a scientific explanation? it could not be based on laws?

Do you agree with that conclusion or not?

Incidentally, you said "this adds nothing to the conclusion toward which you’ve leapt, the conclusion that supernatural explanations are the only valid ones" but let me clarify.

It's not that supernatural explanations are the only valid ones, it is more that supernatural explanations is the name I use for explanations that are not scientific, not based on material or laws.

This is a definition - if you will - of what I mean by supernatural.

15 minutes ago, MigL said:

I know you are familiar with Richard Feynman, so you may be familiar with Feynman diagrams.
In Quantum Field Theoty all the connections in these diagrams represent possible interactions.
They are usually summed, then all the perturbative influences that give rise to infinities, are subtracted, by a process called re-normalization,to give the desired solution.

Gravity, on the other hand, is self interacting ( that means gravity gravitates ), and the resultant infinities from the perturbative summng gets out of control, such that they cannot be removed by re-normalization.

Any time infinities result in a solution, you have exceeded the bounds of applicability of your theory.
So, either perturbative quantum field theory or re-normalization are not applicable to gravity.
Therein lies the incompatibility.

Even more simply ...
In QFT, space-time is simply the stage on which events happen, and the events have no affect on the stage.
In GR, space-time is the field that governs how events unfold, but it is affected, and a participant, in those events.

Thanks, yes I've seen Feynman Diagrams (and often wondered what all the fuss was about them - but then read there was something quite profound going on) and read about renormalization (my mathematical knowledge is a serious limitation here).

But I was just reading this after reading your post:

and that is very very interesting, I've not really seen this problem or read much about it before.

34 minutes ago, studiot said:

First let me state quite clearly.

QM and GR are not necessarily incompatible.
Indeed they work quite well together in some cases.

But as you point out they are different systems of thought.

 

Now I digress a little to quote from your excellent thread in the science education section.

I do not know what you mean by technology, but if you mean IT then you may find my offering easier to follow.

 

Eddington's book S, T & G is an excellent book and you will find nothing actually incorrect in it.

But it is almost one hundred years old now, and predated modern QM by a couple of decades.

Up to the 1930s, work on QM was based exclusively on extending classical non-relativistic mechanics to derive mathematically the observed phenomenon of quantisation.
Then in 1928 and through the 1930s Dirac introduced  relativistic wave equations to replace the schrodinger equation.
Developments have gone on ever since.

 

Now quantisation arises quite naturally in the solution of energy equations like schrodinger, which ignores gravitational forces as small compared to the electrostatic ones operating inside the atom.
But there are no (known) relativistic equations operating under gravity alone that result in quantisation in their solution.

So the big question is

Is gravity quantised, which under GR is effectively asking are space and time quantised or to put it another way are they granular?

Moving on a hundred years form Eddington we are still asking this question.

And an interesting modern book edited by Professor Shahn Majid explores where we are with this question.
If you understood S, T & G you will be able to follow this.

On Space and Time

Shahn Majid

Cambridge University Press  2008

 

Now asked if you were in IT since they have moved from the classic mathematics of continuity (analog computers) to discrete systems (digital computers)
Which is a parallel change.

 

The other big difference between QM and GR is the introduction of probability.

GR is a totally deterministic system of 'continuous' mathematics, using all the apparatus of topological continuity.

QM has a (highly successful)  interpretation in terms of probability theory. although it is often misapplied.

There are no probabilities in GR

 

Does this help ?

If you need clarification of anything (in particular I assume you understand when I say quantisation), please ask.

 

Thank you for the reply.

Yes I understand that relativity is not a statistical theory but neither was Newtonian gravitation. On the other hand statistical mechanics (probabilistic models) predate quantum mechanics by at least fifty years, they were already around before the 1930s.

Because of this I don't understand why there's the view that GR and QM are fundamentally incompatible, we don't hear of statistical mechanics being incompatible with Newtonian mechanics for example.

I know there's a deep problem but I can't grasp it, can't see it - because of my very limited knowledge.

This paper seems to go there but won't be an easy read for me!

28 minutes ago, iNow said:

And yet I did. Amazing!
 

No, I am not. I am saying that neither the absence of some process nor the absence of possibility for a process are enough to make the logical leap you’re making toward a supernatural explanation. You need. It read anything more into it than that unless you are actively trying to misunderstand me?
 

Perhaps it’s not the answer you’d prefer, but it IS an answer. Please stop with the No True Scotsman fallacy (and related other fallacies you keep ignoring when pointed out). 
 

By watching you repeatedly ignore the obvious flaws in your reasoning being pointed out to you. You also stipulated it yourself when saying this: 

 

And this:

And this:

What you have is a preference, one that pleases you psychologically, and that’s okay, but you do not have a valid conclusion based on logic as you keep claiming, and definitely not from logic itself rooted in questionable premises. Hope that helps. 

This is all just your ongoing effort to avoid my question.

You said earlier that the question is "moot" for example, which is simply a dismissal of my question, you do not like the question.

Here's the question as a reminder:

How can one use material and laws to explain the origin of material and laws?

The answer - the honest answer - is of course that we cannot, it is a logical absurdity to cling to the belief that we can when it leads to a paradox.

What is wrong with postulating a different kind of explanation as we attempt to remove the paradox?

If the explanation cannot be - logically cannot be - natural then it is obvious, that if there is an explanation it must of necessity be not-natural.

So lets have less of the amateur psychiatry and dismissals please.

We should always be prepared to ditch beliefs that we can see are false, this is true of all of us.

19 minutes ago, studiot said:

Actually you did since you claimed simple 'the laws of Physics'.

Since you made no exceptions or distinctions it must include all laws, including the conservation laws.

A couple of years a go now I posted here a derivation of mechanical energy and momentum conservation laws based on the fact that we can arrive at an equation for an isolated system where these conserved quantities equal a constant.

This is not proof by induction.

If anyone can remember that that thread I would be grateful for a link.

Do theories in physics assume things?

The problem that's evident in this discussion recently is that science, the scientific method has hard limits on what it can do for us, what it can explain. 

Those here who have embraced scientism have trapped themselves, their devotion to, their belief in scientism (philosophical materialism) has trapped them, some are even objecting to the question how can one use material and laws to explain the origin of material and laws.

The question is proof that science is inapplicable to certain questions we can ask about reality, this is evident, the obvious paradox, contradiction revealed by the question (in bold above) is that proof.

So this is why so many here are struggling, they are committed to the view that everything that can be explained can be explained scientifically when it cannot.

Some here are not actually willing to face the music, not willing to be brutally honest with themselves, instead their position is "how can I answer these questions without abandoning my deeply held belief in philosophical materialism" - it is not truth they seek.

3 minutes ago, Alex Mercer said:

I was thinking about how cool it would be to have super human abilities like super strength or teleportation or flying etc. and it made me think well if I had it then what then? I have that now and I can do these cool things but after that short period of time of being excited of stuff you can do then it's going to become something you consider a norm about yourself. I guess you can apply the same for a utopia/a perfect world, people would just get bored of the norm and want more and more 

 

Idk, just random thought I had

Thoughts?

Compared to a blind quadriplegic most of us are endowed with superhuman powers in a relative sense.

I'm somewhat familiar with GR but not all aspects of it, I do understand how the non-Euclidean nature of the 4D geometry enables us to consolidate gravitation and acceleration and the coordinate transformations, I studied this in some depth (and began with Eddington's space time and gravitation and the fascinating section on Gaussian curvature) but I'm not a mathematician and my knowledge is rather gappy (and nowadays rusty).

As for QM I read about that too but nowhere near as much effort was put in and this was all in the late 1970s when I had time to indulge in these.

So, having said all that - what is the simplest way to explain the deep incompatibilities between these two systems of thought?

41 minutes ago, iNow said:

TBH, I find your question rather moot. You could point to a billion challenges or gaps in the scientific understanding or approach.

No, you cannot say that. You are confusing an absence of some process with the absence of the possibility for a process.

Not (yet) having an algorithm to run is very different from not having a way to run any algorithm, these are quite clearly very different problems.

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Not a single one of them would ever allow us to make a valid or logical jump to assuming supernatural cause. That’s nonsequitur, and IMO is a cop-out that should be below a mind as obviously sharp as yours. 

This is not an answer (and there is none that you can present) - quite obviously one cannot use material and laws to explain the origin of material and laws, why not simply admit this?

Once again, no answer, no real attempt to answer - I wonder why...

I replied directly to the OP, it was perhaps a little discourteous to not do so.

38 minutes ago, iNow said:

You seem to accept supernatural explanations for reasons of psychological comfort, not for reasons of logic. At least be honest with yourself and us about this. 

How did you reach that conclusion? what line of reasoning did you employ that leads to the conclusion "therefore he accepts this because it gives him psychological comfort"?

Are you a psychiatrist by the way? do you have some other kind of MD?

On 10/15/2020 at 7:30 PM, VenusPrincess said:

According to the Copenhagen interpretation a quantum system remains in superposition until it is observed. If God was omnipotent he would be all knowing, implying that he observes all.

Well "all knowing" means there's no need to "observe" surely?

On 10/15/2020 at 7:30 PM, VenusPrincess said:

However since the cat's state remains in superposition we can infer that it has not been observed, and therefore God is has no knowledge of the cat's state. That contradicts the initial assumption that God is omnipotent, but if God is not Omnipotent then he is not God at all, and therefore God does not exist.

But since there's no need to observe how does this argument carry any weight?

9 minutes ago, iNow said:

Nope. As should be clear to everyone including you, I was pointing out you were incorrect when describing the thread subject.

My apologies I did not realize that that post you just quoted was the OP! I last read the OP yesterday morning and paid no real attention to it once this debate got underway.

9 minutes ago, iNow said:

If you have such gaps in your thinking about the simple things like this, it's difficult to trust you don't have similar gaps when asserting supernatural causes, themselves reliant on special pleading. 

Lets stick to the question I've been asking (yet had no answer to yet) - how can one use material and laws to explain the origin of material and laws?

I don't think anyone here (other than MigL - "its always been here") has even begun to address this question or to admit the problems it presents when we cling to scientism, like nobody wants to go there, nobody wants to admit that this is a huge huge issue if we rely exclusively on science for our explanations of reality.

I'm happy to leave this discussion as-is if people want, I've stated my case, we've chatted back and forth and may have reached an impasse, if anyone wants to continue then fine, but if we end up repeating ourselves and saying nothing new or novel we might as well leave it at that, for now at least.

3 minutes ago, iNow said:

 

Actually, right there in the title: The Schrödinger's cat thought experiment proves there is no God

For someone so passionate about arguing on reason and logic, you sure seem to make a lot of remedial reasoning errors and overuse logical fallacies 

Are you seeking my opinion of VenusPrincess's post? I've never seen her post before, have no idea in what context it arose or what it has to do with anything I've said.

3 minutes ago, iNow said:

Since when are you the OP in this thread? Sloppy sloppy sloppy thinking abounds

Quite true, I meant to write "thesis" not "thread".

I must say there is a subtle weakness in the forum, it is very easy to accidentally click "Quote" at the bottom of post when one actually just wants to edit a post. I've done this a few times and it causes a small mess for me. Perhaps this has been a source of confusion...

21 minutes ago, studiot said:

As a matter of interest I always preach the gospel of cooperation over confrontation.

I try to practise it as well.

Nobody knows everything or is right all the time.

Clever people putting their heads together can demonstrate the old adage

Two heads are better than one.

I agree and strive to avoid that too, but surely your not seeing my comment about my perceived lack of a rebuttal as confrontational?

21 minutes ago, studiot said:

Since I started this you have added confrontational material to your last post.

I can be a smart ass too.

Well I apologize if that's the case, I agree that confrontation isn't desirable but I'm not quite sure what I said that's confrontational Studiot.

21 minutes ago, studiot said:

How is cooperation to be achieved between two people speaking different languages ?

Surely it is better they use the same 'dictionary'.
In the interests of a level playing field I recommend a 'standard' written by a third party.

I'm sorry I did explain and I thought, justify my use of the term "axiom", I do not consider it an abuse or misuse of language or a source of misunderstanding here.

Additionally as you mentioned, mathematics does have axioms and our theories in physics are mathematical and so must have axioms.

21 minutes ago, studiot said:

Since you make  unsupported claims to know the derivations of 'the laws of physics' I would be grateful if you would display or refer me to the derivations of the conservation laws for mechanical energy, linear and angular momentum.

I never claimed that conservation laws were "derived" Studiot, they are not, they are inferences, they arise from the use of inductive reasoning, I thought I already said this?

21 minutes ago, studiot said:

I have no idea of the relevance of the quote you append to your reply to me as it does not address anything I have said.

Science and certainly theoretical physics, rests upon axioms, the conservation laws are assumed and used to establish all kinds of mathematical relationships and consequences, I really do not see what's bothering you here.

2 hours ago, joigus said:

"God did it" looks more like the blank sheet of paper that you've shown before, @Holmes.

But is it not the case that we are left with a blank sheet of paper for our "theory of everything"? you say nothing of that, you seem only concerned with my use of the term "God".

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What god did it? Enki? Quetzalcoátl? How did he (or she, or it) do it? Why?

Start a thread on that if it interests you, this thread is about the inability of scientific inquiry to explain the origin of the universe, you seem reticent to focus on this.

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You're playing semantic games.

Translation - "I am unable to form a sound reasoned rebuttal so I'll be dismissive instead".

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We now know something very much like the inflaton field explains structure formation in the universe. Why that happened and what this inflaton field is, etc is unknown. It explains planar large-scale structure, horizons problem, absence of monopoles...

Yes, as I've said several times science is reductionist, it always explains the material in terms of the material - therefore it cannot possibly explain the origin of the material, this is the point you seem to be shying away from.

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According to your "explanation", did god hate monopoles?

The parametrics is by no means satisfactorily explained in the inflationary models. But,

It must have had a very gentle slope and a very long time to evolve previous to the inflationary epoch.

You are describing the evolution of the state of an existing system, why? we're discussing the origins of the system not how it fluctuates one it exists.

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It must have had a very steep slope, dominated by friction, during the inflationary era. It must have bounced back in so-called re-heating. Those assumptions pretty damn well explain structure formation.

Ditto.

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Problem is, you need to assume parameters (those are the assumptions (axioms) that seem to bother you so much when they involve numbers and mathematical structure).

No, that is not "the problem" at all Joigus, try again, what is my thread about?

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Arguably, all physical theories are parametrizations in a context that we have very good reasons to believe is what physics looks like (a quantum field theory.)

Did God like to play with scalar-field slopes? What's your explanation for planarity, horizon problem, and monopole absence?

Answer: blank piece of paper.

That's sarcasm.

You're not doing a very good of rebutting me.

8 minutes ago, Bufofrog said:

You are the one that has the 'new' idea, it is up to you to show evidence for your idea, we do not need to refute it.  You have not supplied anything close to compelling evidence, you have just made unsubstantiated pronouncements.

This is just paraphrasing, be specific, accurate, logical, quote my words, what exactly have I said that you seek evidence for and what would you like me to substantiate?

12 minutes ago, studiot said:

I must profoundly disagree with you here.

 

There are no axioms in Physics, theoretical or otherwise.

In Physics you will find Principles, eg 'The Principle of Relativity'

Principles are the nearest Physics gets to axioms.

But then Physics is quite different from Mathematics (and Logic) which have axioms.

Axioms cannot be derived or proved. The best one can do is to establish self consistency with other axioms and derived  lemmas and theorems.
That is how they work in Maths and Philosophy.

 

In Physics the equivalent of derived theorems are derived laws.

For instance 'Conservation of Mechancial Energy' can be derived from the Principles of Mechanics.
This derivation can be achieved in more than one way, not all of these ways having an equivalent in axiomatic systems like Maths.

 

The laws of physics are unproven and unprovable (science relies on inductive reasoning) therefore - like axioms in mathematics - they are assumed to be true, taken for granted, believed, I make no apology for labelling these as "axioms" it is a legitimate label epistemologically speaking.

15 hours ago, exchemist said:

I am not aware of any axioms in any theory of science. Axioms belong in logic and mathematics, surely? 

And I do not see the relevance of all this about laws and material quantities to the untestable hypothesis of a First Cause. 

The conservation laws are examples of axioms in theoretical physics, that the laws of physics are homogenous and isotropic are examples of axioms, need I go on?

15 hours ago, beecee said:

Despite of course being in the "religion" forum, and plenty of inferences to supernatural creation.

Characterizing my posting as "religious" is a strawman, I've made no mention of organized religions or belief systems.

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Why not just invalidate what I have said. Let me sum it up.

I just did, I've made no mention of organized religions, no part of my argument for "God" is based on anything other than reason and logic and inference the very same concepts we use in scientific inquiry.

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[1] Creationism/God/deities is an unscientific explantion.

Yes and that's intentional because - as I've shown and you've failed to rebut - a scientific explanation for the origin of the universe leads to a paradox (we cannot use the material to explain the origin of the material).

We can resolve the paradox in several ways, one is to postulate an explanation that is not scientific, another of course is to bury one's head in the sand or simply deny reality as you appear to be doing.

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[2] Ancient man saw "God"or magic everywhere as detailed.

Irrelevant and possibly and example of the genetic fallacy.

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[3] The reason why he/she saw God, was that no other explantion was available

See? the genetic fallacy, even if true, adopting a belief because there are no other viable options does not prove that that belief is false.

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[4] Science finally through the process of gathering knowledge and standing on the shoulders of giants, eliminated much of that myth. [the myth of God being the Sun, Moon etc.

Irrelevant, first the genetic fallacy is a fallacy so any reasoning based upon it is also fallacious, second none of the arguments I've put forward hinge in any way of myths.

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Ahh, one of my favourite videos. Actually what Feynman does is explain to a novice, the magnetic force, an detailed how that explanation depends largely on who he is explaining it to. I dare say we all have been in situations where an expert/professional maybe trying to explain a process to us, and we may ask him to dumb it down.

Your final remark about the need to reject all of science, does absolutely nothing for whatever you are trying to convey here. 

Which remark please? it always help to quote one's opponent accurately, avoid paraphrasing etc.

9 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Good. So we are doing metaphysics here, rather than science.

Science cannot be decoupled from metaphysics, that's the true take away here.

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It then comes down to individual preference whether one feels the need to try to force an explanation for which there is no  evidence, or whether one is content to say that where  the evidence stops, that's where I stop demanding answers. 

I asked already and nobody has ventured to answer - can you envisage a scientific theory that has no axioms? can you envisage a scientific theory that has no laws? that does not refer to material quantities?

5 minutes ago, MigL said:

Absolutely, scientism AND science, not rather than.
And being a scientist, I base that on the observation that Science has worked out a lot better for humanity than Religion.

This is unfortunate, I am not and have not been discussing religion, you're in danger of creating a strawman post so be careful, I'm sure its not deliberate but be vigilante.

7 minutes ago, beecee said:

Why would you want to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axiom

An axiom, postulate or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Greek axíōma (ἀξίωμα) 'that which is thought worthy or fit' or 'that which commends itself as evident.'[1][2]

The term has subtle differences in definition when used in the context of different fields of study. As defined in classic philosophy, an axiom is a statement that is so evident or well-established, that it is accepted without controversy or question.

 

The usual cop out nonsense. Ancient man saw and claimed deities in the Sun, Moon, Mountains, etc, and probably in some situations, still do today. But voila! then science came along and explained such wonders via natural means, rather then the continuing raising of unscientific mythical fairy tales. Invoking God is unscientific in the extreme, much like ghosts, goblins and Bigfoot.

Shall I respond in kind? is that how you want to "debate" the usual atheist vacuous nonsense? is this how you want to speak to me and me to you?

I'm quite capable of debating at that primitive emotional level if that's what suits you.

7 minutes ago, iNow said:

 

Did I stutter again?

It means you haven’t vanished the deep questions. You’ve merely displaced them 

And so? show me an explanation in science that does not refer at some level to things that are not themselves explained.

Science is reductionist, things are reduced to other things and no matter what it is we are dealing with there are always things yet to be explained.

This is exactly what Feynman explains here in the video I posted already, perhaps you missed it:

So if you are wont to reject explanations that raise further questions you might as well reject all of science my friend.

6 minutes ago, MigL said:

No, invoking the 'supernatural' relinquishes all hope of ever understanding.
But, we may someday understand how, or why, the universe has always been there. A valid quantum Gravity theory will get us much closer to knowing what happened in the first instants of time.

And I really don't expect the equations to plot out the face of God.

The explanation for origins cannot have equations because equations express relationships between things that already exist you cannot have equations, laws until something exists, the universe needs to exist before scientific theories can exist.

God is the means by which we explain what cannot be otherwise scientifically explained, it is inescapable, it is logic and it is not complex to understand.

There are some here, perhaps you, who are actually adherents of scientism rather than science, this is the source of much confusion.

49 minutes ago, exchemist said:

I think this clarifies things greatly.

What you are doing is trying to find an answer to a question that science cannot answer, due to the lack of any relevant observations to test any hypothesis. So, by proposing God as a First Cause, what you are doing is jumping out of science into metaphysics.

I stated this early on when I said that the explanation for the presence of the universe is not and cannot be, scientific.

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You can do that if you like. Many people, including many respected scientists, do so, on aesthetic or cultural grounds or out of personal conviction due to religious experience.

I'm doing so out of a respect for logic.

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But what you can't do is expect people with a science training to agree that it is a scientific idea. "Explaining" something by means of an untestable hypothesis is not an explanation at all, scientifically speaking. 

Once again I have made it clear that this is not a scientific explanation, hoping, dreaming, believing that there is a scientific explanation is a delusion, it is hopeless for the reasons I've labored to bring to your attention.

It is the impossibility of a scientific explanation that leads to the suggestion it was a supernatural event, not random, not subject to law but the ultimate source of law.

I asked already and nobody has ventured to answer - can you envisage a scientific theory that has no axioms? can you envisage a scientific theory that has no laws? that does not refer to material quantities?

Here is the only form that a scientific theory of origins can take:

This is what your left with when you are forced to scientifically explain what exists without relying on what already exists.

46 minutes ago, MigL said:

A 'supernatural' solution guarantees we will never have answers to these questions.
The 'always been there' solution holds out hope that, eventually, we might.

Seems contradictory to me, how can you say its always been there and then at the same time hold out for the prospect that it hasn't?

46 minutes ago, MigL said:

The latter option seems scientific to me, the former, not so much.

There's nothing scientific about being unable to explain something scientifically. If a theory cannot be penned to explain something then by definition we don't have a scientific explanation.

God, creation is not a scientific explanation as I pointed out earlier, the explanation for the universe can never be scientific.

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Neither is suggesting a supernatural agent 

Except for, where did god come from?

What do you mean "except"? since when does the presence of new questions invalidate an explanation?

9 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I think a big part of it is how schooling might have changed. It in class I noticed that kids are more focused on getting the right answer rather than understanding the why. And despite the fact that MigL has a point, I think there is genuine qualitative change that is associated with how media are consumed.

I think there are several connected things that play into it and one of them is the way how media are presented and consumed. Reading papers in class was something I have done for a long time, but in the last 5 years or so, as part of student evaluations it has been consistently criticized as being far too much work. Students are now very uncomfortable when it comes to applying knowledge, they are obsessed with right and wrong answers. Much of it is due to schooling. I am not sure how common it is, but I was told recently that in school students would regularly get question catalogues and all exams would need to be on the list. Consequently, students are really unhappy when the task in an exam is now to apply things and so on. It is not everybody, of course. However, the proportion of folks struggling with this kind of tasks have been increased and curving has become more and more extreme.

That being said, there is of course the argument to be made that because folks are consuming media differently, we should teach differently, too (and the question catalogue is presumably one such measure). But honestly, I am a bit at a loss, if reading and synthesizing scientific literature is becoming harder and harder to teach. And at least in my field of expertise I cannot compress information into one interesting tweet.

Yep, I heard recently about this emphasis on getting the right answers, its easy to mark someone work on that basis I guess and we all know that teachers are over worked and under paid as it is.

Plus we have the growth of "edutainment" where it seems to be felt that "fun" needs to be injected into a subject when in reality a truly interested student will already find the subject itself fun.

The internet carries the risk of reducing attention span too, it is inherently distracting anyway not to mention endless pop-ups, overly flashy presentation, the temptation to browse this or that without effort.

Having said all that when I want facts or details or history I can find them fast on the internet whereas before then it was time consuming.

31 minutes ago, MigL said:

Well, a much simpler explanation than invoking the 'supernatural' ( as you have posited ) might be to suppose that it has always existed, albeit in different forms.

Yes I agree, that too is a possibility. I reject it myself because it seems to actually be an admission that nothing can be explained, it just is and that doesn't satisfy me, it doesn't satisfy me in the same way it wouldn't satisfy my in other fields.

Its also not a scientific explanation, the "always existed" proposition is not a scientific explanation, so on that basis reaffirms my original point that the explanation for the universe cannot be a scientific one.

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No one suggests the universe sprang from a point source ( singularity ), but from a hot dense state. This state was present before the manifestation of geometry ( the 'field' of GR ) and, as such, the concepts of space and time simply do not apply.

But why? what could have led to such a state of affairs? something existed, it exists today but how could that hot dense state come to exist at all?

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That 'indeterminate' state could have 'always' existed; why suppose that it was brought into being by 'supernatural' forces/events ?

That's a fair question. In my own vague, subjective analysis I do not see postulating a supernatural agency as less justified than postulating an external existence that had no beginning.

The supernatural agency is a better answer I guess that's what I'm saying. Does it raise more questions? yes of course it does but all explanations in science do that already and we don't hold that against them.

The supernatural agency ("God" if you will) is a way out of the paradox, on that basis alone we should at least consider it, take it more seriously than some do.

I studied GR many years ago to quite some depth, I did well with the mathematics in some areas but not others (for example I can understand the non-Euclidean geometry, metric tensors, curvature, coordinate transformations and so on but could never derive a solution to the field equations).

Once I began to appreciate the profound relationship Einstein uncovered between space/time/gravitation etc I began to ask how that came to be, how these laws came to exist.

It became clear that all a scientist could ever do is find deeper laws connecting things in deeper ways but that this would always be an act of discovery, the question but why do these things exist could never be answered, it was in a sense an epiphany and my love of the subject took a large blow. 

The supernatural agency seems - to me anyway - to offer a deeper way to understand, I do not regard it as a religious concept (not at this level we're discussing things anyway) but as a way to explain what I see, it also allows me to seriously consider that there is a thing called "will" or "intent" and to view this not as some consequence of mechanism, not some side effect of a brain but as perhaps something very fundamental indeed, more fundamental than anything in physics.

So in a way there isn't really cause and effect, cause and effect are the product of will, intent, they are aspects of this created thing we call the universe, by positing God, and attributing will, intent, choice to that God many very deep problems simply vanish.

5 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I agree. Growing up working-class immigrant poor we initially could not afford books, imagine my joy when I found the public library! The town was small and so was the library but at that point it was like an infinite amount of free candy.

There is a lot I could lament about the internet experience, but I do feel that having too much info (and much of it of low quality and merely bite-sized) takes away from the desire (and enjoyment) to really dig into something. In the last 10-15 years or so, there is a noticeable shift in how kids experience learn and is heavily impacting their performance when it comes to more complex matters. It also has soundly refuted my assumptions regarding the role of technology in information gathering and learning that I had when I was young.

Oh god, we are old, aren't we?

 

 

Yes we are, perhaps age is part of this.

I get the impression though that youngsters who use the web to learn tend to focus on getting specific answers to questions rather than developing insights into area of knowledge that might allow them to develop an answer or derive it themselves.

My nephew some ten years ago (he was like fourteen) was starting to do this with electronics at home (he lived overseas and was on a visit) he would seek out very specific answers to very specific questions rather than study the subject. I was in a book store with him and offered to buy him a rather good book on electronics, a book I would have absolutely gone crazy over when I was fourteen had anybody offered.

He was quite disinterested, it seemed all too much, unnecessary, why read all those chapters when he can just ask this or that question on the web and get some answers back?

26 minutes ago, MigL said:

Spent whole days in local libraries, from the public one, the high school one, Brock U library ( where I attended ) and the much larger McMaster U library in nearby Hamilton.
The best time was March, when the yearly release of Janes: All the Worlds Aircraft came out.
I would spend the whole weekend in the library, because, even in the 80s, that book went for about $800.

I can understand that remark about Jane's, libraries were good for that, stuff beyond our reach was accessible.

I recall finding part of the Liverpool library that held periodicals, what a thorough and huge collection they had, I first encountered Byte magazine in fact in that library and was able to peruse many electronics and radio periodicals too, sometimes as far back as the 1920s or so.

10 minutes ago, iNow said:

Nobody’s talking about predicting the future. You’re either moving the goal posts, introducing strawmen, or failing to comprehend what others are saying. 

It’s not “your” thesis. It’s the first cause thesis which has already been shown to be rather lacking. 

I see you elected to not answer my rather valid and polite questions, yet feel justified in accusing me of making strawman arguments.

Are you aware of a scientific explanation that does not have that characteristic? 

Consider for a moment a mathematical theory that explains the origin of matter, energy, etc. what would its axioms be? what laws, equations might we find in such a theory? 

To which I can add:

What axioms might we use to formulate a theory that explains the presence of the universe?

Can one even have a theory that has no axioms?

So, if you know as much as you profess, if you have the insights that you profess to have - lets have some answers...