Is anyone up on BB cosmology?

[metacrock]

I don't know if this is the right board for this. I have never been on this board before.

I used to have a really good cosmology argument and I was really up on it. But I haven't argued it in some time. I've been ignoring that area for a couple of years. Now I find the atheist response has just gotten so out of hand, they believe all kinds of myths and silly possibilities. If one guy says something to their advantage well that's just as good as a fact. Even if there is no evdience for it at all.

two major issues:

(1) they seem to claim that the singularity is just a hopeless old fashioned idea. I suppose a paradigm shift is underway.

(2) the Multiverse. that' s suppossed to answer everything. matter is eternal and no need for a creator because there's a multiverse the fact that there is no evidence for it at all just doesn't matter.

when I was in touch with this stuff these ideas were considered possiblities by some but far fetched by others, they were not mainstream and the consensus was still with singularity But now they seem to be so totally accepted by physicists as well.

does anyone feel well versed in this area?

[Al Moritz]

Oct 4, 2008 3:06:33 GMT metacrock said:

Now I find the atheist response has just gotten so out of hand, they believe all kinds of myths and silly possibilities.

Indeed.

Eternal matter

An essential demand on eternal matter would have to be that it does not have to obey the second law of thermodynamics (by the way, this demand also holds for the “re-set” of a potential cyclic universe upon each bounce). Otherwise, what use would be eternal matter if it had all run down into an undifferentiated mush that would not have the thermal/motional energy anymore to produce universes? In the ekpyrotic model (or one may think of equivalent other options if string theory, upon which it is based, will be refuted), for example, we have the birth of our universe from a collision of membranes (branes) in multi-dimensional space.

Where does the energy of collision come from if the second law of thermodynamics holds in an eternal universe? It could never self-renew, and if it cannot, it would eventually run down into thermal randomness, and one would be forced to ask the question: where did it come from in its original “fresh” state?

If the postulated eternal matter once had to be in an original “fresh” state, it cannot be self-sufficient and eternal after all, certainly not in a state that eternally can produce universes. Thus it would beg the question for an originator of this matter anyway.

Of course, energy is equivalent to matter, but analysis shows that this does not solve the "moving" problem: the universe becomes less and less capable of converting matter to energy (one can see this by analyzing the issue of star formation and star burning).

Certainly, one may believe in the magic of a wider universe where the second law of thermodynamics does not hold, but I find this unlikely (we know how matter behaves *)) and we probably can never observe this, given the absolute observational limits in cosmology (the visible horizon and the particle horizon). Here, blind faith needs to replace observational evidence.

*) Yes, we know that all matter moves at all times on the microscopic particle level, but this is different from eternal movement with always fresh kinetic energy on the macroscopic level. And a universe (a large closed system of spacetime and matter) for which the second law of thermodynamics holds will become cooler and cooler over time, restricting also microscopic movement more and more.

Eternal field

An alternative to eternal matter would be an eternal field. Think of the quantum vacuum.

We know that quantum vacua can produce virtual particles and anti-particles that, however, eliminate each other in the tiniest fractions of milliseconds. Some extrapolate in wild speculation that the universe could have arisen in a similar manner from a quantum vacuum, from almost nothing. However, we do not have any theoretical, and even less experimental, evidence that would make a link between such hugely different events like the humble appearance of a tiny virtual particle and an event of such unbelievable magnitude of energy as the Big Bang (the universe was 10E32 Kelvin hot a miniscule fraction of a second after its the beginning, that is “10 with 32 zeros behind it” Kelvin, or billions of billions of billions and more Kelvin). It is pure, wild speculation that has little to do with science – and all with fantasy run amok.

If this kind of events could happen “just like that”, why haven’t we observed the birth of another universe within the 15 billion years time that ours exist? (Yeah, it is argued that it creates its own spacetime and thus vanishes into other dimensions, but it is hard to believe that the event would leave no trace.) Certainly, there will be those that say that in eternal fields anything can happen at some point, unlikely as it may seem, but this is the ultimate “just-so” story that you can tell a senile grandma but not me. Embarrassingly, atheists seem to seriously consider such “just-so” stories.

Eternal matter that does not obey the second law of thermodynamics, and eternal fields that can produce sudden high-energy events from “nowhere”? All those “scientific” scenarios are not scientific at all, they are modern fairytales dressed up in the language of science. Atheists, however, would never concede that they believe in fairytales, they just accuse believers of doing so.

[rfmoo]

Dear Almoritz,

Masterful.

In a few lucid, authoritative and absolutely convincing paragraphs you document what I had strongly suspected, that the metaphysics of modern speculative cosmology reduces to a very crude form of magic in which imaginary rabbits pull themselves out of imaginary hats ad infinitum, or, alternatively, like an immortal energizer bunny, keep going and going and going on the same dead batteries.

And to think that these lunatic magi ridicule theists!

Kudos.

Best,

Richard Moorton

[metacrock]

but they quote Newtonian law saying engery can't be created or destoryed, they take to mean its eternal.

I know that gravitational field is syonoimous with space/time, if they reject the singularity would they still have field?

[jim_s]

Newton's law, and any physical law for that matter, is a description of natural processes. It says that energy cannot be created or destroyed by natural processes. Since the theist's claim is that matter and energy were created by supernatural processes, any law describing natural limitations simply does not apply.

As for the multiverse, my understanding is that no model has been able to come up with a multiverse that didn't have a beginning itself. So even with a multiverse, you're still stuck with an absolute beginning and all the implications that follow.

As for the singularity, I'm not sure what they're saying. I've never heard anyone question whether there was a singularity. Stephen Hawking wrote that virtually everyone accepts that the universe began in a singularity. Perhaps they mean that the singularity is a limit that is approached as you go back further and further, but is never actually reached -- as such, the singularity itself never actually existed. It's logically and physically impossible for three-dimensional space to exist in an infinitely small point, since such a point precludes space by definition. But I'm just guessing. What exactly do they say, and on what grounds?

[humphreyclarke]

Ah, I love the multiverse fantasy. You can find some of our musings in this thread.

jameshannam.proboards83.com/index.cgi?board=science&action=display&thread=4

Can I direct you to the physics/cosmology section of this site. You can get the cosmologist's view of multiverse theories there. I paticularly reccomend George Ellis's talk.

www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Multimedia.php

You will note that, in order to solve the 'fine tuning' problem, these multiverses are usually infinite. Unfortunatly, in such a multiverse, everything that can exist does exist, Including multiple copies of Richard Dawkins; one of which will be a fellow of the Discovery Institute who writes books attempting to debunk evolution. There will also be a multiplicity of gods. Thus the theistic cosmological interpretation can only really be refuted by turning reality into a sick joke.

[Al Moritz]

Richard,

Thank you.

You know from the "Origin of Life" thread and probably from other comments of mine that I am a die-hard naturalist when it comes to the self-development of the physical world once it started to exist -- on this point I agree with atheists. However, when it comes to the very origin of the existence of the physical world there is enough room to absolutely refute the atheist view, a view that leaves us utterly unconvinced (I am also unconvinced by the alleged physicalism of the human mind, as I have pointed out before). When you say

"the metaphysics of modern speculative cosmology reduces to a very crude form of magic in which imaginary rabbits pull themselves out of imaginary hats ad infinitum, or, alternatively, like an immortal energizer bunny, keep going and going and going on the same dead batteries,"

that sums up nicely all the absurdities.

"And to think that these lunatic magi ridicule theists!"

Exactly. I am, in fact, appalled by the combination of intellectual weakness and ignorant arrogance found in atheism.

Al Moritz

[Al Moritz]

Oct 5, 2008 3:29:58 GMT humphreyclarke said:

Ah, Can I direct you to the physics/cosmology section of this site. You can get the cosmologist's view of multiverse theories there. I paticularly reccomend George Ellis's talk.

www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Multimedia.php

You will note that, in order to solve the 'fine tuning' problem, these multiverses are usually infinite. Unfortunatly, in such a multiverse, everything that can exist does exist, Including multiple copies of Richard Dawkins; one of which will be a fellow of the Discovery Institute who writes books attempting to debunk evolution. There will also be a multiplicity of gods. Thus the theistic cosmological interpretation can only really be refuted by turning reality into a sick joke.

Thanks for the link.

I like the argument of Ellis: "Why this multiverse and not any other?" In that sense, the multiverse does not solve the designer problem at all. Along similar lines:

Unlikely as the multiverse is, atheists make another mistake against common sense with its assumption: a truly random distribution of physical constants among the members of the multiverse (in order to solve the 'fine-tuning' problem) could only be achieved by careful design of the underlying multiverse generator. Conversely, if the distribution of physical constants were not truly random, the question would again arise as to who or what made the choices. Instead of solving the designer problem, the multiverse theory just pushes it back one step, and thus accomplishes nothing.

See also:
home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/finetune/anth.htm.htm

heading" "Theistic Responses to Many-Universe Generator Scenario"

Dawkins once said that evolution for the first time allows one to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Yet in my view the discovery of the apparent fine-tuning of the laws of nature, an incredibly tight selection of the physical constants without which evolution (physical evolution of the universe, chemical evolution up the beginning of life and biological evolution) would not be possible at all in the first place, has made atheism now even more unbelievable and intellectually strained than before the discovery of evolution.

The multiverse does not work to solve the design problem, and equally, a necessity of the laws of nature ("they could not be any other way") cannot be logically sustained. Thus, the atheist would have to fall back on the "brute chance" argument, were he to think things through properly and were he intellectually honest. Yet the laws of nature being as they are by chance is another ultimate "just-so" story, which thus can be easily dismissed as literally incredible.

[metacrock]

Oct 4, 2008 20:25:53 GMT jim_s said:

Newton's law, and any physical law for that matter, is a description of natural processes. It says that energy cannot be created or destroyed by natural processes. Since the theist's claim is that matter and energy were created by supernatural processes, any law describing natural limitations simply does not apply.

As for the multiverse, my understanding is that no model has been able to come up with a multiverse that didn't have a beginning itself. So even with a multiverse, you're still stuck with an absolute beginning and all the implications that follow.

As for the singularity, I'm not sure what they're saying. I've never heard anyone question whether there was a singularity. Stephen Hawking wrote that virtually everyone accepts that the universe began in a singularity. Perhaps they mean that the singularity is a limit that is approached as you go back further and further, but is never actually reached -- as such, the singularity itself never actually existed. It's logically and physically impossible for three-dimensional space to exist in an infinitely small point, since such a point precludes space by definition. But I'm just guessing. What exactly do they say, and on what grounds?

that doesn't answer their argument. they are not interested in supernatural answers. they have to assume a natural universe and in that natural universe energy is eternal.

[metacrock]

Oct 4, 2008 18:26:36 GMT Al Moritz said:

Oct 4, 2008 3:06:33 GMT metacrock said:

Now I find the atheist response has just gotten so out of hand, they believe all kinds of myths and silly possibilities.

Indeed.

Eternal matter

An essential demand on eternal matter would have to be that it does not have to obey the second law of thermodynamics (by the way, this demand also holds for the “re-set” of a potential cyclic universe upon each bounce). Otherwise, what use would be eternal matter if it had all run down into an undifferentiated mush that would not have the thermal/motional energy anymore to produce universes? In the ekpyrotic model (or one may think of equivalent other options if string theory, upon which it is based, will be refuted), for example, we have the birth of our universe from a collision of membranes (branes) in multi-dimensional space.

Where does the energy of collision come from if the second law of thermodynamics holds in an eternal universe? It could never self-renew, and if it cannot, it would eventually run down into thermal randomness, and one would be forced to ask the question: where did it come from in its original “fresh” state?

If the postulated eternal matter once had to be in an original “fresh” state, it cannot be self-sufficient and eternal after all, certainly not in a state that eternally can produce universes. Thus it would beg the question for an originator of this matter anyway.

Of course, energy is equivalent to matter, but analysis shows that this does not solve the "moving" problem: the universe becomes less and less capable of converting matter to energy (one can see this by analyzing the issue of star formation and star burning).

Certainly, one may believe in the magic of a wider universe where the second law of thermodynamics does not hold, but I find this unlikely (we know how matter behaves *)) and we probably can never observe this, given the absolute observational limits in cosmology (the visible horizon and the particle horizon). Here, blind faith needs to replace observational evidence.

*) Yes, we know that all matter moves at all times on the microscopic particle level, but this is different from eternal movement with always fresh kinetic energy on the macroscopic level. And a universe (a large closed system of spacetime and matter) for which the second law of thermodynamics holds will become cooler and cooler over time, restricting also microscopic movement more and more.

Eternal field

An alternative to eternal matter would be an eternal field. Think of the quantum vacuum.

We know that quantum vacua can produce virtual particles and anti-particles that, however, eliminate each other in the tiniest fractions of milliseconds. Some extrapolate in wild speculation that the universe could have arisen in a similar manner from a quantum vacuum, from almost nothing. However, we do not have any theoretical, and even less experimental, evidence that would make a link between such hugely different events like the humble appearance of a tiny virtual particle and an event of such unbelievable magnitude of energy as the Big Bang (the universe was 10E32 Kelvin hot a miniscule fraction of a second after its the beginning, that is “10 with 32 zeros behind it” Kelvin, or billions of billions of billions and more Kelvin). It is pure, wild speculation that has little to do with science – and all with fantasy run amok.

If this kind of events could happen “just like that”, why haven’t we observed the birth of another universe within the 15 billion years time that ours exist? (Yeah, it is argued that it creates its own spacetime and thus vanishes into other dimensions, but it is hard to believe that the event would leave no trace.) Certainly, there will be those that say that in eternal fields anything can happen at some point, unlikely as it may seem, but this is the ultimate “just-so” story that you can tell a senile grandma but not me. Embarrassingly, atheists seem to seriously consider such “just-so” stories.

Eternal matter that does not obey the second law of thermodynamics, and eternal fields that can produce sudden high-energy events from “nowhere”? All those “scientific” scenarios are not scientific at all, they are modern fairytales dressed up in the language of science. Atheists, however, would never concede that they believe in fairytales, they just accuse believers of doing so.

the main guy is a physics student. he's pushing some theory his prof has. That says that time runs eternally, there is no begining. the universe doesn't have a beginning.

He has lots of arguments against the bb. Now I'm sure they are not main stream but it's clearly the beginning a paradigm nuts. it's opposing the old paradigm with a new one. Being a Kuhnian I can see that they are not going to give up their world view, which is based upon the new paradigm. anything we can say is just absorbed into their paradigm as an anomaly.

for that guy no first moment (although he contradicted himself on that) no beginning of the universe. I't similar to the Hawking thing but the didn't bring up Hawking.

[humphreyclarke]

Oct 16, 2008 2:45:52 GMT metacrock said:

Oct 4, 2008 18:26:36 GMT Al Moritz said:

Indeed.

Eternal matter

An essential demand on eternal matter would have to be that it does not have to obey the second law of thermodynamics (by the way, this demand also holds for the “re-set” of a potential cyclic universe upon each bounce). Otherwise, what use would be eternal matter if it had all run down into an undifferentiated mush that would not have the thermal/motional energy anymore to produce universes? In the ekpyrotic model (or one may think of equivalent other options if string theory, upon which it is based, will be refuted), for example, we have the birth of our universe from a collision of membranes (branes) in multi-dimensional space.

Where does the energy of collision come from if the second law of thermodynamics holds in an eternal universe? It could never self-renew, and if it cannot, it would eventually run down into thermal randomness, and one would be forced to ask the question: where did it come from in its original “fresh” state?

If the postulated eternal matter once had to be in an original “fresh” state, it cannot be self-sufficient and eternal after all, certainly not in a state that eternally can produce universes. Thus it would beg the question for an originator of this matter anyway.

Of course, energy is equivalent to matter, but analysis shows that this does not solve the "moving" problem: the universe becomes less and less capable of converting matter to energy (one can see this by analyzing the issue of star formation and star burning).

Certainly, one may believe in the magic of a wider universe where the second law of thermodynamics does not hold, but I find this unlikely (we know how matter behaves *)) and we probably can never observe this, given the absolute observational limits in cosmology (the visible horizon and the particle horizon). Here, blind faith needs to replace observational evidence.

*) Yes, we know that all matter moves at all times on the microscopic particle level, but this is different from eternal movement with always fresh kinetic energy on the macroscopic level. And a universe (a large closed system of spacetime and matter) for which the second law of thermodynamics holds will become cooler and cooler over time, restricting also microscopic movement more and more.

Eternal field

An alternative to eternal matter would be an eternal field. Think of the quantum vacuum.

We know that quantum vacua can produce virtual particles and anti-particles that, however, eliminate each other in the tiniest fractions of milliseconds. Some extrapolate in wild speculation that the universe could have arisen in a similar manner from a quantum vacuum, from almost nothing. However, we do not have any theoretical, and even less experimental, evidence that would make a link between such hugely different events like the humble appearance of a tiny virtual particle and an event of such unbelievable magnitude of energy as the Big Bang (the universe was 10E32 Kelvin hot a miniscule fraction of a second after its the beginning, that is “10 with 32 zeros behind it” Kelvin, or billions of billions of billions and more Kelvin). It is pure, wild speculation that has little to do with science – and all with fantasy run amok.

If this kind of events could happen “just like that”, why haven’t we observed the birth of another universe within the 15 billion years time that ours exist? (Yeah, it is argued that it creates its own spacetime and thus vanishes into other dimensions, but it is hard to believe that the event would leave no trace.) Certainly, there will be those that say that in eternal fields anything can happen at some point, unlikely as it may seem, but this is the ultimate “just-so” story that you can tell a senile grandma but not me. Embarrassingly, atheists seem to seriously consider such “just-so” stories.

Eternal matter that does not obey the second law of thermodynamics, and eternal fields that can produce sudden high-energy events from “nowhere”? All those “scientific” scenarios are not scientific at all, they are modern fairytales dressed up in the language of science. Atheists, however, would never concede that they believe in fairytales, they just accuse believers of doing so.

the main guy is a physics student. he's pushing some theory his prof has. That says that time runs eternally, there is no begining. the universe doesn't have a beginning.

He has lots of arguments against the bb. Now I'm sure they are not main stream but it's clearly the beginning a paradigm nuts. it's opposing the old paradigm with a new one. Being a Kuhnian I can see that they are not going to give up their world view, which is based upon the new paradigm. anything we can say is just absorbed into their paradigm as an anomaly.

for that guy no first moment (although he contradicted himself on that) no beginning of the universe. I't similar to the Hawking thing but the didn't bring up Hawking.

It sounds like the Hawking-Hartle no-boundary proposal, which seems to me to be a thought experiment of not that much interest. The theory is a mathematical construct that has no unique empirical support, it makes no verifiable scientific predictions that were not achieved earlier with simpler models and the theory generates no significant research agenda. It is also still faced with all the fine tuning issues of other theories which can only be overcome by expanding the possibility space exponentially (i.e multiverse).

I did see a recent model by Hawking which avoids this by saying that the Big Bang created every possible universe at the same time
www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/26/scihawking126.xml (a bit like many worlds theorem). I call this 'everything but the kitchen sink' theory for obvious reasons.

Physics gives "no idea of what breathes fire into the equations and makes there a world for us to describe"

Stephen Hawking

[metacrock]

Oct 16, 2008 10:45:54 GMT humphreyclarke said:

Oct 16, 2008 2:45:52 GMT metacrock said:

the main guy is a physics student. he's pushing some theory his prof has. That says that time runs eternally, there is no begining. the universe doesn't have a beginning.

He has lots of arguments against the bb. Now I'm sure they are not main stream but it's clearly the beginning a paradigm nuts. it's opposing the old paradigm with a new one. Being a Kuhnian I can see that they are not going to give up their world view, which is based upon the new paradigm. anything we can say is just absorbed into their paradigm as an anomaly.

for that guy no first moment (although he contradicted himself on that) no beginning of the universe. I't similar to the Hawking thing but the didn't bring up Hawking.

It sounds like the Hawking-Hartle no-boundary proposal, which seems to me to be a thought experiment of not that much interest. The theory is a mathematical construct that has no unique empirical support, it makes no verifiable scientific predictions that were not achieved earlier with simpler models and the theory generates no significant research agenda. It is also still faced with all the fine tuning issues of other theories which can only be overcome by expanding the possibility space exponentially (i.e multiverse).

I did see a recent model by Hawking which avoids this by saying that the Big Bang created every possible universe at the same time
www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/06/26/scihawking126.xml (a bit like many worlds theorem). I call this 'everything but the kitchen sink' theory for obvious reasons.

Physics gives "no idea of what breathes fire into the equations and makes there a world for us to describe"

Stephen Hawking

yea that everything deal really does feel like cheating doesn't it?

But then you can use Planginga's possible worlds argument.

[jim_s]

that doesn't answer their argument. they are not interested in supernatural answers. they have to assume a natural universe and in that natural universe energy is eternal.

Well, it does answer their question, they just don't like it. They're saying, "Natural law dictates that matter cannot be created." No theist need dispute that; we're not claiming that matter came into being according to natural law. If they want to go a step further and say, "And if it can't happen by natural law, it can't happen at all," then fine, but that's not a scientific claim, it's a philosophical claim, and it's not obviously true, so they'll have to defend it. But saying that natural law somehow refutes a position that has never based itself on natural law is a little disingenuous.