Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Lagayascienza]

Yes, rather than "god dunnit", I'd prefer the story that the vacuum energy has always existed and that there has never been absolute zero and never absolutely nothing. At least we have evidence that the vacuum energy exists, and so physicists have something to work with, or work backwards from in trying to make sense of how everything got to be the way it is now. But to merely say that god dunnit, is just a thought stopper.

Maybe something like Hagelins unified field theory will turn out to be true. There's nothing wrong with speculation. It's fun. And if we don't have much in the way of maths speculation is all folks like me are in a position to do. And I think a lot of physics has started with speculation. The question "What if ..." leads to promising hypotheses and ideas about how to test them. There have been many such "light bulb moments" in science.

[Sy Borg]

I'm just glad that scientists have gotten past "it does not make sense to ask what came before the BB because that's when time began", and "To ask what came before the BBis as meaningless as asking what's north of the North Pole", which I always found a foolish, lazy viewpoint. After all, what is north of the North Pole? Radiation, Magnetic fields. Dust. Space. Not to mention the Oort Cloud, and various stars, planets, galaxies, galactic clusters and whatnot may pass through that hypothetical zone from time to time.

What's before the BB? Almost certainly vacuum energy. Maybe earlier universes. Maybe something else we know nothing about. Low on the list would be a creative intelligence of some sort, but we don't know enough to strike it from the list completely. I'd probably rate God ahead of gamesters programming up simulations, although some quite serious people have unreasonable confidence in the simulation hypothesis.

[Lagayascienza]

The question of what is north of the north pole has been used by physicists as a 2D analogy to illustrate the point that, in a 4D universe with closed curvature, one could travel the universe endlessly without reaching an edge. It is not meant literally. I think it is a good analogy. The maths seem to tell us that a universe with closed curvature is a physical possibility. Such a universe would be finite but unbounded. If the Big Bang theory is correct, and if the universe's curvature is closed, and if such a universe contains all of space and time (as it must) then beyond it, there would be no space-time in which vacuum energy could exist.

However, at this point, it appears that the universe is very nearly flat and it may turn out to be completely flat once we can measure its curvature more accurately. If that is so then space goes on forever and so the vacuum energy would go on forever. In which case analgously posed questions such as what is north of the north pole would be superflous.

We don't know enough to say how the whole thing began. The simulation hypothesis is a possibility - the whole shebang might be a put-up job. I think that has about the same chance of being true as the creative intelligence hypothesis. Indeed, they seem to amount to more or less the same thing. Maybe Big Bangs are a cyclic phenomenon. Or maybe we live in a multiverse with bubble universes budding off from time to time. Maybe the universe has always existed in some form, in which case, asking what came before would be pointeless.

[Sy Borg]

My guess is that the universe is not flat, but is so much larger than the observable universe that it appears to be flat.

[Lagayascienza]

Yes, that is a possibility. And even if the curvature of the universe were anything but closed, then the universe would still be unbouded. In other words, if the curvature is a parabolic, then space-time and the quantum foam and vacuum energy would extend out to the cosmic horizon. We don't know how far it extends because light from beyond the cosmic horizon will not yet have had time to reach us.

[Sy Borg]

I am leery at the idea of the universe being flat or negatively curved. If there was any kind of big bang/infa, then it must logically be positively curved. Given that it looks flat to use for all 46 billion light years to the cosmic horizon, the universe must be quite large :)

We might point to the flatness of spiral galaxies, but galaxies always end up becoming elliptical.

If God is involved, then it must have evolved in a prior universe (or billions of them). After all, what are the chances that ours was the first ever Big Bang? It could have been the tenth or trillionth iteration, in which case, who can imagine what might have evolved over the trillions of years that a universe contains burning stars? Maybe entities keep on solving survival challenges until they can exist simply in vacuum energy? So there could be billions of Gods, or they might aggregate.

I only discount the existence of an anthropomorphic deity or deities. I see Greg's ideas as more solid than that of many believers because he's not adding imaginative layers to his conceptions. Religions make the most sense to me when they don't invent fine details about the nature of their deity.

[Lagayascienza]

Agreed. We cannot completely discount the possibility of a deity. And it's only when theists start adding details that it starts to become ridiculous. When Joe's god says one thing and Mustfa's god says another and they will kill each other over it, then we're in la la land. But to think that there may be some creative intelligence behind the whole shebang is not an unreasonable philosophical position. The main difficulty with it is that the only evidence for it is the brute fact of the existence of the universe, the fact that there is something rather than nothing. But that is something. And it is something that science has not explained and so the god hypothesis must still on the table.

[Sy Borg]

The only major issue I have with Greg's conception is the idea that God placed us on Earth. As you know, I see the idea that we are living on the Earth rather than internal structures of the Earth that are within it, is a very common, almost ubiquitous, misconception of our existential situation.

Given that my guess is that God, if it exists, is emergent, I would see the something v nothing dichotomy as independent of the God issue. If there are any brute facts of reality - stuff that simply is - my guess is that it would be vacuum energy.

[Lagayascienza]

The only major issue I have with Greg's conception is the idea that God placed us on Earth. As you know, I see the idea that we are living on the Earth rather than internal structures of the Earth that are within it, is a very common, almost ubiquitous, misconception of our existential situation.

Given that my guess is that God, if it exists, is emergent, I would see the something v nothing dichotomy as independent of the God issue. If there are any brute facts of reality - stuff that simply is - my guess is that it would be vacuum energy.

Yes, all of that is still on the table. And I, too, see life and intelligent beings as a physical outgrowths of a particular planet with particular conditions which, in turn, was the outgrowth of a particular type of star in a universe with trillions of galaxies containing trillions upon trillions of stars of different types that live out their lives and die. And as far as we can tell, the universe as a whole emerged from a Big Bang. All that we see is emergent. If there is some sort of deity, then it does not seem to interfere with these physical processes.

And if, as you say, the deity, too, is emergent, then the something-versus-nothing dichotomy would need a different, more fundamental explanation. It may just be a brute fact that space-time and the vacuum energy emerge as a result of cyclic Big Bangs and Big Crunches - a process that has always existed, and from which a deity may have emerged. If that is so, then vacuum energy may exist as a brute fact in any such universe and everything else, including any deity, might have emerged from that. But all this is conjecture because, with cosmology, we are at the current boundary of human ability to understand the universe.

As I understand it, Greg is a Christian and sees Christianity as the “true” religion which worships the “true” god. He says that he believes in the Christian god but not the Christian Trinity.

The pagans believed in human-like gods. By using a human-like form (Jesus) as an image of the true God, the pagans could transfer their thinking from the pagan gods to the true God.

This may be so, but it is theology and not cosmology. I see theology as the study of the conceptions of gods that humans have invented and not as the study of actual gods, of whose existence there is no evidence apart from the brute fact that there is something rather than nothing. If there is any deity behind the whole shebang, it does not appear to interfere in the physical processes of the universe and we are completely ignorant of the deity’s properties or origin.

[Sy Borg]

Cannot write much ATM but there may come a time when theology and cosmology dovetail

[Lagayascienza]

That's an interesting thought. I'm imagining the scientists and atheists discovering some creative intelligence behind the universe, and the theologians and religious believers discovering that the intelligence dicovered is nothing like their imaginary gods. In otherwords, everyone gets a reality check.

[Sculptor1]

That's an interesting thought. I'm imagining the scientists and atheists discovering some creative intelligence behind the universe, and the theologians and religious believers discovering that the intelligence dicovered is nothing like their imaginary gods. In otherwords, everyone gets a reality check.

I think science is possibly doing that in every step it takes. Except that what we think of as "intelligent" is not what we think it is. The tendancy of all objects to attract all other objects, that is called "gravity", is a fundemental property. Yet we cannot explain why. We can only observe and describe, and it took humanity thousands of years to figure it out.
What if such automatic, deterministic properties are all that there are, including what we love to think of as our won intellgence? Wgat if our thinking and responding is just another such property - inexplicable - a thing we can only ever describe, and when I press each key of the keyboard it is of no more significance than a ball of lead and another of wood dropped off the tower of Pisa to fall to the ground at the same time?

[Sculptor1]

Cannot write much ATM but there may come a time when theology and cosmology dovetail

That used to be the case. But smarter minds sundered the two things as the earth centred universe was no longer sustainable.

[Tegularius]

Cannot write much ATM but there may come a time when theology and cosmology dovetail

Not likely. That which has divorced itself so completely should never again be rejoined. The only thing which separates theology from myth is that the former has consistently been believed in while the latter has, through the ages, renounced itself into stories which are among the best ever told.

[Lagayascienza]

Science is always a work in progress - it is the means by which our modern understanding of the universe has been, and is being constructed.

Theology, on the other hand, studies imaginary, pre-scientific constructs, religions, which belong to the infancy of our species and which, since the rise of science, have been undergoing deconstruction. Whether anything useful will be left of them remains to be seen.

The only evidence that there is anything but imagination underpinning religion, in all its nonsensical variety, is that there is something rather than nothing.

However, an explanation for the existence of the universe is something science is working on. Religion asserts that it already has an explanation whose name is God. Thus, they have no work to do and no way to do it other than by further imaginings.

There have been many attempts to marry science and religion/mysticism, all of them nonsense - Teillhard de Chadin's is an example. Ken Wilbur's is another. And all of the New Age writings by people like Depak Chopra are pseudo-science at best.

So, it remains to be seen whether there will be any dovetailing of science and religion. It's not looking good. But, who knows.