JGL53

A-M, you are obviously a highly intelligent, educated, and devout agnostic theist. Continuing to discuss ontology with the brainiacs on this BB is not going to help you shore up your tendency to magical thinking, though. In fact, it may very well have a horrifyingly opposite effect.

You are ONE STEP away from falling into the abyss of intellectually based agnostic (or weak) atheism. If you do, it is EXTREMELY difficult to crawl back out into the dark. You have been warned.

braces_for_impact

If complexity requires design, then this god must be very complex indeed to be able to create an entire universe. So where is his or her designer?

JGL53

Apparently, after the elephant, and then a couple of turtles, then it's gods all the way down from there.

Roland98

[standard apologetic answer]God is metaphysical--He has always been, and will always be, and is in no need of a creator or designer[/standard apologetic answer]

JGL53

(I'm not sure if this is the standard atheist reply, but.....)

So god, being DEFINED as existent and metaphysical, is allowed the priviledge of being eternal, but the universe, being merely physical and objectively existent (except for solipcists), is disallowed the right of eternality.

Fuck. Who makes up these rules to which we are all obliged to acquiesce? God?
(to paraphrase the Church Lady "How conVENient!".)

Anti-Materialist

All right you guys - time for mind bending concepts here. There is no way around it. I am sorry to do this to you all - as you guys are clearly the sort who prefer to take the easy way around things, but its gotta be done...

(that was in jest, btw...)


Time is not linear. Sorry - but it just can't be. Time has multiple dimensions. Our universe clearly operates under a single time stream. However, once you start thinking about the origin of the big bang, that is, the origin of this universe, with its system of time, then you have to ask yourself what caused this system of time to exist.

That causal link goes backwards in time - but, we are talking about what caused the time stream of this universe to exist. So, when we talking about a causal link that goes backwards in time, preceding the moment when time begain, then just what time are we talking about?

The answer is this - you have to have an inner and outer time stream. Multiple dimensions of time - one nested inside the other.

Allowing for multiple dimensions of time gives you all sorts of weird apparent paradoxes. Note that I said apparent - not real. To the observer inside the inner dimension of time, you would have what would look like non-causal events, such as the big bang just happening out of nothing.

You could also have time travel - that is, you could go back in time and kill your grandfather, and you would still continue to exist.

You would have one continuous unbroken chain of cause and effect, but that chain of cause and effect would stretch through multiple dimensions of time.

I have spent years thinking about time, and no matter how I cut it, I just cannot accept that time is linear. Or perhaps I should say that I cannot accept that time is one-dimensional. Something like that.

But, to make it really obnoxious - the question is whether or not you can have a looped chain of cause and effect. Note that I did not say a looped chain of time, because we have established that a chain of cause and effect could stretch across multiple dimensions of time.

If you can have a looped chain of cause and effect, then you can have a self creating entity. Call it God. Even it better, call it Frog - just remember that Frog has croaked for your sins.

Somewhere, in a system this complex, involving a looped chain of cause and effect, intelligence would arise, given enough time. We know this to be true, because we are here.

Given enough time, and enough dimensions of time, who is to say how intelligent that intelligence could grow? If it grows smart enough, it could even design universes that start with big bangs.

Jinto

Sorry, but asserting it does not make it so. I could say with equal validity that multiple time dimensions are impossible, because they just can't exist.

And then you realize that the answer is bloody obvious. nothing. At some point in any explanatory system, you are going to run into something that simply IS. In our case, it's just the universe at t0. In your case, you're proposing some multi-dimensional time that we have no evidence for. Your system is not grounded in mathematics or experience and offers no additional explanatory power. Given that you're just adding another unexplained phenomena without offering a coherent explanation for the universe itself, on what logical grounds do you suppose that we accept your belief over the simpler hypothesis that the universe is uncaused?

Or non-causal events could be exactly that. This is not unique. Other uncaused events, such as virtual particle pairs and radioactive decay, also happen all the time. And further, if you're going to hypothesize that there is a cause, then please offer evidence of this "multi-dimensional" time.

A single dimension of time does not rule that out either.

And if you're going to invoke closed timelike curves, then PLEASE keep them in this universe.

Actually no... I remember reading an article of Scientific American where one of the things essential to our universe was precisely it's dimensionality - if it had had multiple time dimensions and kept more than one of it's space dimensions, events would be completely unpredictable. In a universe where events are completely unpredictable, intelligence cannot possibly develop. In a way, intelligence is strong evidence that time IS linear.

Which doesn't show that one is responsible for this big bang, even assuming that they can be artificially generated.

Anti-Materialist

Ah ha - but it does offer extra explanatory power. It explains how reality could exist. All this stuff about something arising from nothing does not make sense, and thus does not explain how reality could exist.

Existence itself is the evidence for multiple dimensions of time.

One dimensional time just does not allow for anything to exist.

We exist - so time cannot be one dimensional.


You ask for evidence of other universes - and that is tricky tricky tricky.

1)
The fact that particles appear to pop into existence out of nowhere could be considered such evidence. Well - not necessarily evidence for other universes - but it could be considered evidence for having more than three spatial dimensions.

The next mathematically stable model up from three spatial dimesions is six spatial dimensions. That leaves room for all sorts of other 3-d universes. The laws of physics that would apply in this outer construct, in which our 3-D universe is defined, would be very different. Since we are stuck on the inside, it'd be hard to test. We shouldn't assume it would be impossible to test, because if we do that then we wont bother figuring out how to do it. But, it'll be really difficult figuring out how to do it, I am sure.


2)
When I leave my body, I am clearly not in this universe - I have proven that to myself repeatedly. Even though it looks like this universe, it isn't. Now, this could also be explained as a self-induced hallucination - thus it constitutes weak evidence, not non-existent evidence - but weak evidence.


3)
Spooky action at a distance - which has been demonstrated in lab experiments. Einstein calls for it. Quantum physics calls for it. However, it just doesn't make sense to a 3-D, this universe is all there is, worldview. When you allow for more than 3 dimesions, then it does make sense.


4)
Space is curved.

If I hold a flat two dimensional piece of paper, and then bend it, then I have an object that appears to be 2 dimensional, if you are an ant standing on the surface of the paper. However, it takes 3 dimensions to mathematically define that two dimensional object.

Well - we know that space in our universe is curved. There must be more than 3 spatial dimensions into which that 3-D space is curved. Basically, you cannot define curved 3D space with a 3 dimensional array. You have to have an array that contains more than three dimensions. From what I have read - even a four dimensional array would not be enough. The next mathematically consistent model would require a 6 dimensional cartesian coordinate system.


5)
Entropy has not already occurred. With linear time, eventually you will reach maximum entropy. If time stretches backwards forever, that is, if it goes back to a time before the big bang, then you have no starting point. If entropy exists, then eventually the system of repeated expansion and deflation should cease to function. If entropy exists, then at some point you have to reach maximum entropy.

With time going backwards forever, through a system of ongoing expansion and deflation (you know, repeated big bangs and big crunches), entropy should have already caused the system to fail - and thus we would not be here.

And yet - here we are.

Well, actually, here I am. I am about 99.999999% convinced that I exist. I am still not nearly so convinced that the rest of you exist, but I will pretend like you all exist because it makes life much easier if I do.


6)
Anomalous human/machine interaction, as exhibited by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Institute (PEAR institute), cannot be explained by a 3D, what we see is all there is, worldview. Some other labs have been able to reproduce these experiments, and some haven't. However, even some skeptics (Ray Hyman) admit that they cannot fully explain how the PEAR institute gets the results they get.


7)
The nasty rotting hyper evolved moldy thing in my fridge just cannot have come from this universe! I think it may be Satan made manifest, or something like that.



None of this is proof. I think proof, if it ever comes, will be centuries away. However, it is enough to make us go "Hmmmm..."

Chimp

Hello, this is a very interesting discussion!

We could say that increased dimensions of time and increased dimensions of space, give more degrees of freedom, or more "symmetry", yet we live in a universe with breaking symmetry. There now only appears to be one time dimension.

The brilliant mathematical genius Evariste Galois recognized the
symmetry of "groups" in his search for the solutions to certain
problems in algebra.

The genius "Einstein" recognized the symmetry of relativity and the invariance of the laws of physics for inertial reference frames.

Yes, of course, parity is violated and nature can somehow distinguish left from right. A difference from equilibrium.

We can denote parity by P , charge conjugation by C, and time reversal T.

Yes, nature also violates the combination CP with the weak interaction decay of the K meson.

There is a theorem that explains that parity, charge conjugation and time reversal may be violated to the heart's content, as one wishes, but one can never violate invariance under the combined operation CPT. This CPT theorem is one of the strangest and deepest theorems conceived-discovered-proved by the human mind

Reality could ultimately be perfectly symmetrical, but from our local
vantage we must conclude that a slight difference from equilibrium
condition holds. "Broken symmetry". Remember, matter dominates anti-matter, after the initial moments of the "big-bang".

The *laws* , are symmetry relations though.

Here is an *excellent* explanation of time symmetry by the genius
William James Sidis:

http://www.sidis.net/ANIMContents.htm


If it is discovered that a mathematical structure corresponds exactly to reality, what is the most basic aspect? Reality? The mathematical structure? The morphism between the two? The mathematical structure is mental or "of the mind". The reality that the mathematical structure corresponds *with* is equivalent TO the mind.

Max Tegmark's "Ensemble Theory".

http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/toe.html


It seems that the correspondence is more basic. The morphism relates the two.

An invariance principle.

Ultimately, reality is perfectly symmetrical, as the brilliant genius
William James Sidis realized. Thus what appears as the difference from equilibrium, is actually counterbalanced. John Archibald Wheeler's order from chaos, law from no law.


Very interesting

Yes, as a thought experiment, if we have an undisturbed(placid) pool of water, with no surface irregularities, it can be represented as a type of groundstate or homogeneous self cancellation.

(2^aleph) waves moving in opposed directions, 180 degrees out of phase, are "self cancelling".

---/\/\/\/\/\/\/\--->
<--\/\/\/\/\/\/\/---

A perfectly symmetrical groundstate?

(2^aleph) waves, in phase, moving in opposite directions are "re-enforced"

---/\/\/\/\/\/\/\--->
<--/\/\/\/\/\/\/\---

Standing wave resonance


Reality has asymmetric aspects, or it is a difference from equilibrium condition.

The question becomes, what exactly are waves? If waves have no real , complement, or could we say that waves form their own complement with other waves.

Something comes from "nothing" where nothing is defined? as an
infinite? homogeneous self cancellation. The infinitely symmetrical
"ground state" of existence?


The mathematician Roger Penrose investigated the enigmatic properties of "five-fold" symmetry. It seemed that in nature, two fold, three fold, four fold, or six fold symmetry could exist. Physicists and mathematicians knew this. Crystals grow by having the same figure repeated over again. It appeared to be impossible for a five fold symmetry lattice to be a growing "object", because the five fold shapes did not have the necessary congruence, i.e. they did not quite fit together.

Penrose discovered an interesting way to combine these five fold
symmetries such, that they don't overlap, and they could congruently "fit together". The patterns based on five fold symmetry that can grow without limit are called "quasi-fivefold lattice symmetry".

Then in 1982 physicists discovered that a crystal of
aluminum-manganese alloy had the quasi-fivefold symmetry. The symmetry is called "quasi" because the patterns do not exactly repeat.

The global structure of the whole pattern is more complex than the usual types of n-fold symmetries.

So the global pattern is somehow instantaneously communicated to the entire crystalline lattice!

Penrose's quasi-crystals points towards an idea of space-time, where all distant points are somehow directly connected, so that within each local region, there is somehow encoded, the "global" order.

Yes, very interesting, the universe could be type of a crystlline lattice structure .

My primitive diagrams are just a rough approximation, for a gistful interpretation Really, the waves don't move through a fixed background, they ARE their own background. The waves ARE space-time.

(2^aleph) space-time wavefunctions 180 degrees out of phase are "approximately" zero spatial extension, zero temporal duration.l i.e. quantum fluctuations. A homogeneous potential, free of physical law. No background metric. An infinite symmetry would mean zero constraint, because, increased symmetry gives more degrees of freedom.

There will be slight perturbations and fluctuations in this un-real form of non-distinctional groundstate. Brief flashes, or "sparks" of existence? ...interesting.

Are they crystallizations or *seeds* of informational potential? Mathematical structures that can, or cannot, sustain their own existence?

Yes, a non-linear time would be an accelerated process and need not be multidimensional. Time is rate of change.

emotional

Anti-Materialist is making the common theist mistake of looking for evidence or reasoned proof for God's existence.

Hey, A-M, have you perchance heard of something called FAITH? Yes, you can believe in God without any supporting reason or evidence! Just like I do. Reason is not the be-all and end-all of existence, you know; you can do without it sometimes.