What is the difference between God and the Theory of Everything?
A proof for the existence of God
[Quote=Theologian]?TheMadFool
Don't forget: the OP is talking about God as not only infinite, but as completelyunlimited.
Harking back to my previous post, I would say that only that which is limited in at least some respect is capable of offering any explanation at all. That which is completely unlimited can seemingly explain literally anything. It's the absolute antithesis of falsifiable.
So by being equally capable of explaining literally anything, your theory predicts nothing. It has literally no ability to tell you why any particular thing happens, as opposed to any other particular thing.
Why does the sun continue to shine in the sky rather than waft gently down to Earth, offer you a Vienna coffee, and begin discussing logical positivism? The completely unlimited can't tell you.
Zero explanation.
To choose my words a little more carefully so as to avoid the apparent paradox inherent in my previous formulation, in its superficially apparentability to explain literally anything, the completely unlimited actually explains nothing.[/quote]
@Theologian
The holy grail of science is the The Theory of Everything (ToE) and it's supposed to be a single theory that completely explains all physical phenomena in the universe. Ok.
A very common criticism Theism faces is that it explains everything and that somehow actually explains nothing.
So, what's the difference between the ToE and God?
[Quote=Theologian]?TheMadFool
Don't forget: the OP is talking about God as not only infinite, but as completelyunlimited.
Harking back to my previous post, I would say that only that which is limited in at least some respect is capable of offering any explanation at all. That which is completely unlimited can seemingly explain literally anything. It's the absolute antithesis of falsifiable.
So by being equally capable of explaining literally anything, your theory predicts nothing. It has literally no ability to tell you why any particular thing happens, as opposed to any other particular thing.
Why does the sun continue to shine in the sky rather than waft gently down to Earth, offer you a Vienna coffee, and begin discussing logical positivism? The completely unlimited can't tell you.
Zero explanation.
To choose my words a little more carefully so as to avoid the apparent paradox inherent in my previous formulation, in its superficially apparentability to explain literally anything, the completely unlimited actually explains nothing.[/quote]
@Theologian
The holy grail of science is the The Theory of Everything (ToE) and it's supposed to be a single theory that completely explains all physical phenomena in the universe. Ok.
A very common criticism Theism faces is that it explains everything and that somehow actually explains nothing.
So, what's the difference between the ToE and God?
Comments (51)
First, for anyone reading this, the post TheMadFool quotes above went through a bunch of edits, the final of which went through after I was quoted. Any discrepancies should be minor, but are, I admit, solely due to my own ongoing tinkering.
To address the question actually asked:
Quoting TheMadFool
The answer is simple: a scientifically valid ToE makes concrete predictions about what will happen. It successfully explains everything only so long as those predictions are never proven wrong.
I'm reminded of Popper's contrasting of Einstein's theory of relativity with Freud's psychoanalysis. What renders relativity impressive (and scientific) is that it says exactly what will happen. If something different ever happens, the theory will have been proven wrong. Psychoanalysis, by contrast, seems capable of telling some kind of story about events no matter what happens.
The same problem exists with God. Or at least, with many formulations of God.
That's the story scientists tell themselves, but that's not how it is. Popper didn't say a theory is proven wrong, but that it is falsified. And even if he didn't realize it at the time, falsified doesn't mean proven wrong, roughly it just means scientists agree to stop working on it.
At first glance what you say seems reasonable, if a prediction of the theory doesn't match what is observed, then the theory is wrong. But a theory has variables, degrees of freedom, there is a very wide range of observations that are consistent with a theory (actually strictly speaking all observations can be made consistent with a theory). So it is with Einstein's general relativity, there are plenty of observations that do not match the theory's predictions when we take into account the known and inferred matter-energy in the universe (galaxies, black holes, stars, planets, dust ...).
At that point the theory could have been considered falsified, but scientists chose to save the theory by assuming that there is invisible matter and energy that makes up most of the universe, not invisible because it is hard to see like interstellar dust but because it doesn't emit any light, because it doesn't interact electromagnetically, that invisible matter could be right next to you or going through you and you wouldn't detect it. And there is no independent evidence for it, it was just made up to fill the gap between the theory's predictions and observations. No matter the observations we can adapt the dark matter and dark energy distributions so that the theory fits what we see.
So Einstein's general relativity tells a story all the same. It does make predictions that fit observations without always having to tweak the variables, but these predictions could be integrated in a theory of God and we could say that the regularities we find in the universe are God's will.
The Holy Grail would be a theory that explains everything in the simplest way without having to constantly tweak variables as we make new observations. But even then we can ask ourselves, why would a simpler theory be more true than a more complex one if they make the same predictions? Presumably if the theory claims to explain everything, it would have to explain why it is the correct one rather than all the other ones that make the same predictions. Or each of these theories could be said to be one way of looking at things, and that there are always a multiplicity of points of view.
So then what's the difference between a scientific Theory of Everything where scientists decide arbitrarily what doesn't require an explanation, and a theory of God where people decide that a lot of things do not require an explanation because it's God's will? Both could be said to not explain everything.
So it isn't clear that we could ever get a scientific Theory of Everything in the sense that everyone agrees it explains everything. The only advantage such a theory would have over a basic theory of God is that it makes predictions that turn out to be observed, but again even these predictions could be integrated into a theory of God.
So I see the ToE and God as two different points of view, and people simply pick the one they want, or even another one because as I said multiple ToE's could be formulated, depending on how the theory explains things and on what is assumed to not require an explanation.
Most people would not then say that we have a theory that "completely explains all physical phenomena in the universe."
Or in other words, "theory of everything" is more a "term of art" in physics that is about a particular issue where some aspects of some of the most fundamental theories seem incompatible. The desire is to make them compatible.
Maybe it's just included as a courtesy to folks who don't think that there are only physical phenomena? Well, and then it just starts to sound normal, so it tends to get repeated without thinking about it as a possible redundancy.
The trouble with this place is that it can eat up literally all the time and energy you have. Sometimes I struggle with my forum-life balance! :gasp:
Don't loose sight of the fact that religions are ultimately about 'how to live'. They're not, or shouldn't be, theories of anything in the modern scientific sense. That is why liturgy, ritual and religious practices are central to them. This is easily lost sight of in modern Western culture which is so thoroughly embedded in words and images - but if you spend any time with a real religious culture, you will understand that hardly anyone thinks about 'the theory'. Yes, I suppose the practitioners pray to their gods for good fortune, favourable outcomes, and so on, but at the end of the day, the key point is relationship, or rather, relatedness, with the divine.
[quote=Karen Armstrong][i]Stories of heroes descending to the underworld were not regarded as primarily factual but taught people how to negotiate the obscure regions of the psyche. In the same way, the purpose of a creation myth was therapeutic; before the modern period no sensible person ever thought it gave an accurate account of the origins of life. A cosmology was recited at times of crisis or sickness, when people needed a symbolic influx of the creative energy that had brought something out of nothing. Thus the Genesis myth, a polemic against Babylonian religion, was balm to the bruised spirits of the Israelites who had been defeated and deported by the armies of Nebuchadnezzar during the sixth century BCE. Nobody was required to "believe" it; like most peoples, the Israelites had a number of other mutually-exclusive creation stories and as late as the 16th century, Jews thought nothing of making up a new creation myth that bore no relation to Genesis but spoke more directly to their tragic circumstances at that time.
Above all, myth was a programme of action. When a mythical narrative was symbolically re-enacted, it brought to light within the practitioner something "true" about human life and the way our humanity worked, even if its insights, like those of art, could not be proven rationally. If you did not act upon it, it would remain as incomprehensible and abstract – like the rules of a board game, which seem impossibly convoluted, dull and meaningless until you start to play.
Religious truth is, therefore, a species of practical knowledge. Like swimming, we cannot learn it in the abstract; we have to plunge into the pool and acquire the knack by dedicated practice. Religious doctrines are a product of ritual and ethical observance, and make no sense unless they are accompanied by such spiritual exercises as yoga, prayer, liturgy and a consistently compassionate lifestyle. Skilled practice in these disciplines can lead to intimations of the transcendence we call God, Nirvana, Brahman or Dao. Without such dedicated practice, these concepts remain incoherent, incredible and even absurd [sup] 1.[/i][/sup][/quote]
I suppose I could add, that according to the voluminous literature of the various religious traditions, there are accounts of individuals, thought of as 'sages' or 'heroes', who do indeed attain an insight into the 'first principle' or 'ground of being'. Many of these accounts are intermingled with the literature and myth of the various traditions in which they're found, and indeed not all of them are what we would now regard as being religious (for instance, the mystical philosophy of neoplatonism, in which mathematical, philosophical and symbolic literature can be found.) That, I think, is the origin of the sense that religion reveals the 'source of being', but then, the argument can be made that those same traditions are also at the origin of science itself.
Quoting Theologian
Scientific predictions have a left-hand side - the equation or prediction - and a right-hand side - the observation or result. Plainly the methods of natural science are practically universal in scope - but they always omit something, leave something out. Of course, if we try and explain exactly what, then we get into a tangle! But their focus is nearly always instrumental, focused on outcomes and successful prediction. And, philosophically speaking, the 'everything' or the 'nothing' that scientifically-inclined intellectuals are inclined to talk about, really means 'everything that science can discover' or 'nothing, as understood by science'. But they, and we, are so embedded in that worldview, that we lose sight of the philosophical ramifications of such pronouncements.
But one thing to consider is that the 'everything' that a Theory of Everything is to explain includes us! And this leads to strange and paradoxical consequences, as explained here by Andrei Linde in a Closer to Truth interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn. (Andrei Linde, for those who don't know, 'is a Russian-American theoretical physicist and the Harald Trap Friis Professor of Physics at Stanford University. Linde is one of the main authors of the inflationary universe theory, as well as the theory of eternal inflation and inflationary multiverse'. So if you're talking ToE, then Linde is a good place to start, and his CTT interviews are very interesting.)
If it is ever acheived, a ToE will be a theory that describes the most fundamental structure of material reality and how higher levels of structure (e.g. the standard model of particle physics) emerge from that fundamental level.
The "God hypothesis" simply asserts that God is the most fundamental level, but provides no insight into how physical structures emerge at ANY level.
A ToE could presumably explain the contents spacetime, but what about God and the wider universe? It is possible that God is made of similar stuff to us so a ToE could govern God too? Pre-Big Bang physics seems to make assumptions along these lines (about the wider universe).
Or God is maybe made of different stuff - but there could still be a ToE that explains God and the wider universe too?
God must be bound by some rules. God must be information of some form. Anything, be it material or non-material is information (else it is nothing), so we can adopt related axioms when dealing with God. Also common sense axioms should apply. So for example:
- Information cannot be destroyed, only transformed.
- Information is finite (my axiom)
- The whole is greater than the parts
- Great minds think alike (more of a guideline)
Bearing in mind God may not be part of time, I am not sure that causality, entropy and equilibrium belong in the list.
Maybe it is possible that a ToE will be at the level of pure information and as such it will tells us about God too?
An alternative approach is to say that God is not bound by any rules at all. That leads nowhere apart from spiritualism... nullifies all axioms... so nothing about God could be deduced.
There's a difference between "God did it" and "using this collection of mathematical models we can correctly predict the behaviour of all physical phenomena".
What if mathematical models point to the universe being a creation? That's the way the BB looks at the moment. If this stays the case, we just give up on science and cosmology? Or do we try to use science to investigate the creator?
We have at the moment, a ludicrous situation in cosmology; people are jumping though hoops to find away around the fine tuning argument - far fetched models like multiple universes that flaunt Occam's Razor, common sense, causality etc...
Science should address reality even if it is a reality that atheist scientists find unpalatable.
Muslims believe that the divine destiny is when God wrote down in the Preserved Tablet ("al-lawh al-mahfooz") (several other spellings are used for this in English) all that has happened and will happen, which will come to pass as written.
Quran, Sura 57, ayat 22. No calamity befalls on the earth or in yourselves but is inscribed in the Book of Decrees (al-lawh al-mahfooz), before We bring it into existence. Verily, that is easy for Allah.
The Preserved Tablet is a device that contains the decrees, i.e. the finitary set of axiomatic rules that perfectly predict the future. Therefore, the Preserved Tablet is the Theory of Everything (ToE). The Quran insists that God has a copy of it.
Leading scientists have ALWAYS addressed issues that had been unpalatable.
Starting with Socrates, whom the town elders and other judges condemned to death on the charge of his being an atheist; continuing with Galileo, who was promised extreme and excrutiating pain by Church officials and suffering a slow and very paingful death unless he withdrew his teachings; continuing to Darwin and the environmentalists, who are despised by the American religious.
What if mathematical models point to the universe as being a creation? That model has not been established, advocated or believed in, other than the exterme fundamental religion-followers. So it's a big "WHAT-IF", so big, that it's not worth considering (but only by the religious who are rooting for god.)
BB does not look what DEVANS claims it looks; only uneducated, ignorant, scientifically not educated religious people would agree with his claim of BB's looks.
I think it does. Several incredibly stupid insights: the Earth is 6000 years old, give or take a thousand years. Man ate from the tree of knowledge so he was condemned to have sex. Man has free will. Bad things are attributed to Satan, who was created by god, but somehow or other it's not god's fault ETC.
I grant that (in principle) God could have created the universe 6000 years ago (or 6 seconds ago, for that matter) but this historical explanation doesn't provide a physical explanation of the fundamental structure of material reality: are quantum fields fundamental? Is string theory true? Is there are quantum basis for gravity? It's not enough to "know" that God is the cause of it all - we would like to know exactly what he caused.
The facts of the BB are: unnaturally low entropy and an unnatural expansion of space itself. That the expansion is speeding up rather than slowing also seems unnatural. It is also an unnatural singleton (natural events come always come in pluralities - the BB is a suspicious looking singleton). Nature if left to itself finds its way to equilibrium. The BB is the polar opposite of equilibrium. The expansion of space seems engineered to keep us out of a gravitational equilibrium.
Or alternatively, if you wish to ignore the above evidence, probability says that there is a 50/50 chance that the universe is a creation (its a boolean question). Is cosmology investing 50% of its collective effort into theories that are compatible with a creation? No it is not. So we have an unhealthy balance of effort focusing on one side of the coin to the exclusion of the other side. IMO that is foolish and unscientific.
It's for him to know, and for us to find out. Hehe. If he handed it to us on a silver platter, a lot of research scientists could no longer drive a Porsche. And we don't want that, do we.
Whatever. It happened. And it's unnatural to call natural events unnatural.
I told my religious uncle, who is a very smart Jew, before the Hadron collider spit the tiny amount of matter out of our three-dimensional universe, won't this destroy the universe altogether? He replied something to the fact, that no worries, nothing that hasn't already happened can happen.
I gave you evidence for the BB being unnatural. Your response is to claim it is natural without offering any evidence. That is hardly convincing.
All the matter/energy in the universe, packed into a single point in space. What exactly is natural about that? How could the universe get into such a state? All I can think of is gravitational collapse, but that would result in a black hole and black holes do not explode (nothing can escape a black hole). So I think there is no obvious, natural explanation.
I have an idea that it could have been some sort of astrophysical device/bomb that caused the BB. Something computed the requirements for a life supporting universe and designed a device that would achieve that. IMO this is no more far fetched than multiple universes, CCC and the rest of the stuff that passes for cosmology.
You call BB unnatural because you know very little about it, and what you know is not factual, but imaginary fantasy. All the matter in the universe was not packed into a single point. All the matter in the KNOWN universe was packed into a thimble-sized volume. This is possible and not unnatural.
And by definition anything that happens in nature is natural. Calling events in nature unnatural, I maintain, is an unnatural response. By definition, by reason.
You know very little about physics, I gleaned that from your posts.
And again, calling a natural process unnatural is plain silly.
Quoting Devans99
It could have been anything. We don't know what happened there. Scientists tell you what they know. They can't tell you something they don't know. Only the religious, those who believe in the supernatural, those who practice Voodoo, and those who are superstitious can tell you what they don't know, and they are quite eager to do so at any given time.
Your comparison of psychoanalysis and science is very illuminating. The former is much like a self-sealing theory, resisting falsification while the latter can be disproved with observation.
I wonder where Theism falls. Is it like psychoanalysis, able to shape-shift to accodmmodate any counter-evidence or is it like science, subject to rational criticism?
I think Theism has a foot in both domains. There are people who believe without any evidence and there are others who want to prove God.Quoting leo
You make a good point. Theism is an overarching belief and has probably subsumed all other points of view, including science; Newton is supposed to have claimed he was understanding God's work.
Science however has no such support. It attempts to stand on reason alone and that's a good thing I suppose. After all isn't the fact that theists desire proof an indication of this very basic need for belief justification?
Quoting god must be atheist
That is is idiotic - the BB created nature it did not happen in nature. You can't just define reality as 100% natural - you have to demonstrate that with logic or evidence - this is a philosophy forum.
I will give you a better definition. Something that is natural has a greater than 0% chance of occurring naturally - yes? Then if time is infinite and the BB is natural, by that definition, there should be an infinite number of BBs at each point in space. There is only one BB. The following conclusions are therefore unescapable:
- The BB is not natural
Or
- Time has a start
Either way points to a non-natural creation of the universe.
Quoting god must be atheist
I am not religious.
There is nothing left to say. If someone says nature behaves unnaturally, AND he insists it's true, then there is nothing left that you can say to him.
I am sorry, but that's precisely what you said. Over and over again. There is no denying it -- the entire conversation is there to stand witness to it.
I was able and willing to engage with your arguments, until you insisted on nature being unnatural. There is no point in going on with this, since you so vehemently kept on defending your thesis of nature being unnatural.
I wholly agree that this conversation was a complete waste of time for both of us.
You’re assuming here that ‘natural’ is the current state of the universe as we understand it, when in fact ‘natural’ is the entire process of the unfolding universe - including the BB - whether we understand it or not.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/304398
I'm cool with it. I'm just making people aware of the reason for any apparent mismatch.
I have been on fora where trolls would quite intentionally post inflammatory stuff then drastically tone it down after people reacted to it, thus making the reaction seem ridiculously overblown. Obviously I'm not doing that - I'm just an obsessive self editor. But such experiences have left me aware for the potential for abuse when people get to edit their own posts after they've been responded to. Hence I thought it important to flag what actually happened.
Back to the matter at hand, I think the issues raised by @leo's posts are quite complex. I do think there is some validity to his (given the moniker, I assume it's a "him") points, so I suppose I have to cop to the fact that my first post on this thread was perhaps simplistic.
That said, I also think the theoretical perspective he appears to be arguing for can be taken too far. It's in finding the middle ground that things get complicated -- but also, I have some hope, extremely productive. That's why I would like to write a more serious reply. Hopefully sometime in the next week I will.
I might as well admit that in real life I suffer from this:
https://www.cdc.gov/me-cfs/about/
So as much as I enjoy playing here, I'm still figuring out how much of the tiny little bit of energy I have I can afford to spend on this site. :meh:
So far as theism goes, whether it's falsifiable or not, or indeed actually falsified, depends on your definitions. Much like psychoanalysis, you can have a simple, straightforward version of the theory that's testable -- and which very quickly ends up being debunked. The omnigod favored by Western philosophy is clearly grossly incompatible with even the most cursory inspection of the world we live in. It's not only falsifyable: it's clearly falsified. But with theism as with psychoanalysis, you can always salvage the theory at the expense of its falsifyability.
And, as I have said elsewhere, the theology of Lovecraft is not only unfalsified, but fundamentally disturbingly plausible. Though human nature being what it is, it's probably important to stress that I do not mean that Cthulhu is literally there to be found at the bottom of the Pacific ocean! I just mean that entities along the general lines suggested by Lovecraft are... plausible. Under what definitions a belief in such creatures would qualify as theism or deism I leave for others to discuss.
Here's a musical interlude!
No. You cannot claim to have such a comprehensive understanding of nature for you to conclude beyond all doubt that the BB does not have a greater than 0% chance of occurring naturally. Plus your suggestion that ‘time has a start’ shows a lack of necessary understanding of the nature of time in relation to physics. Read Carlo Rovelli’s ‘The Order of Time’.
There are many argument that time has a start. One is that the existence of anything at all in the universe requires a brute fact - IE something uncaused. Brute facts can only exist outside of time (they exist without tense - they just 'ARE' - they have no cause because they are beyond time and thus beyond causality).
There are no valid arguments for time without a start - that would imply things exist 'forever' in time which is impossible - 'forever' has no start and if something has no start, it cannot exist.
I happen to believe that the perspective I presented can't be taken too far, that it goes all the way, that any theory is ultimately a story we tell ourselves, that if we so wish any theory can be never verified nor falsified. This may lead one to feel dizzy and lost at first, without anything concrete to hang onto, but on the contrary I believe that perspective is liberating: we create our own stories, we create the world we live in, and we can hang on to our stories.
But if you do happen to find a middle ground that puts a limit to that perspective, I would be happy to hear it, because it would mean there is something I haven't taken into account, and I see finding the limits to one's view as the fertile ground for subsequent discoveries and breakthroughs. Take your time though, no rush :)
The usual view is that there is an objective distinction between scientific and non-scientific theories, that there are objective criteria that can demarcate between the two, but finding the limits to that view lies in realizing that it is people's subjective desires that determine whether a theory is classified as scientific or not, rather than there being an objective demarcation between science and non-science. This is known as the demarcation problem, but that problem disappears when we stop assuming that such a demarcation exists independently of us creating it.
Then without that distinction in mind there aren't scientific and non-scientific theories, there are only theories. Theories that tell a story, about what we are, where we come from, where we are going, what's possible and what's not possible, what's going to happen. Stories that shape what we see, how we feel, what we think, what we create. What one story interprets as hallucination, or delusion, or imagination, another would interpret as something concrete, something meaningful. When one story interprets the outer world as primary and the inner world as a byproduct, another story interprets the inner world as primary and the outer world as a byproduct. There are stories that do not care about creating more powerful technology, about sending space vessels to lifeless places, about controlling others and nature, they find relevance and meaning elsewhere.
In one story there is the idea that an asteroid could wipe us out, that the Sun will die, and in that story only more powerful technology could save us, more accurate predictions, but in another story it is that powerful technology that will destroy us because we are not ready to use it, and in that story if we evolved spiritually the asteroid and the Sun would not be a threat anymore.
There is the sense that we do not only create, we also discover. But maybe what we discover is what others have created?
Yes, that's pretty much where I thought you were coming from. I'll try to get back to you in the not too distant future.
This is very deep and disturbing. Deep because why then should we favor one theory over the other since the criteria for discrimination can't be truth. Why reject God for instance?
Disturbing because it undermines the foundation of all knowledge. Do we really know anything at all?
I agree with what you said. I was only commenting on a very common criticism leveled by opponents of religion against Theism being so comprehensive in explanatory power, that too without providing detailed descriptions, as to be useless.
Thanks :smile:
I think ultimately it is our will that determines what theory we favor. And that because our will shapes what we know then our knowledge is impermanent, what we will also is impermanent, but that doesn't have to be disturbing, we can see ourselves as creators of knowledge, as shapers of the world, rather than as passive meaningless slaves obeying to unchanging laws. Many claim to adhere to the Cogito, and yet the rest of the time they behave and think as if they know other things, even if there is no foundation to support them besides their will.
I don’t follow this. Are you suggesting that unique events cannot occur naturally? That because I am unique, for instance, I cannot claim to be natural?
I think your use of natural/unnatural as a dichotomy here is unhelpful. Natural implies either innate, instinctive, expected or not man-made. What is the purpose of declaring the BB to be not natural? Are you suggesting a metaphysical aspect? A supernatural one?
Quoting Devans99
I happen to agree that ‘time’ is finite - I just don’t agree that this points to a non-natural creation of the universe. I also think that for something to exist ‘outside of time’ or ‘beyond causality’ does not make it ‘unnatural’.
I would argue that you are a human and therefore not unique in the sense you are a class of human (your DNA maybe unique but you are still an instance of human). In the same way, a supernova is a natural event - they are all slightly different but fall under the same class and there are multiple instances of such events - so they have the signature of a natural event.
My argument is if an event is unique (the only representative of its class) then we cannot assume it is a natural event because every class of natural event that we know about comes in multiple instances.
So I agree that the unitary nature of the BB is not sufficient to prove it is unnatural, but it is different from all other natural events which is a reason to suspect it as unnatural.
If the BB was natural, I would expect many instances of it - galaxies all receding in different directions at different speeds instead of the uniform relationship between distance and redshift that is observed due to a single BB.
Quoting Possibility
My opinion is that creation of a dimension is a discontinuous process so it looks unnatural. I find it hard to fathom a natural explanation for the creation of time. Again that is not evidence enough in itself for a creator, but it adds to the weight of evidence. Other considerations:
- Nature always tends to equilibrium if left alone. We are not in equilibrium. It suggest to me that some sort of intelligence must exist which is the reason why we are not in equilibrium.
- I believe the fine tuning argument is basically sound and points to an intelligent fine tuner.
- The classical cosmological arguments point to the first cause being a self-driven agent, which seems to me to require intelligence.
So I believe there is an intelligent agent as the creator of the universe - on weight of evidence.
I am not religious and the agent is not some sort of perfect being with the 3Os.
To say that an event is ‘natural’ because there are multiple instances of such events in the same ‘class’ has a certain meaning for you. But it has no objective meaning - these are your evaluations based on your relationship to the meaning of these terms, not traits inherent to the events themselves. That’s fine, unless you’re using these terms to make statements which you believe to be objective.
This is why I asked you clarify whether by ‘unnatural’ you meant supernatural or metaphysical. I don’t find that your use of ‘natural/unnatural’ reliably communicates what you mean in this context. To me, it comes across as an arbitrary evaluation based on what ‘natural’ means to you. Likewise, the ‘class of human’ is not something inherent to me as an event, but a meaning attributed to the event by other ‘humans’. They are not objectively definable terms.
If you’re going to discuss cosmological events in relation to what exists ‘beyond time’, you need to get a clearer picture of the multi-dimensional structure you’re referring to, and how you fit into it. In my view, for instance, I am attempting to navigate at least six dimensions that I’m aware of. In this perspective, ‘beyond time’ is not located outside the universe for me.
Quoting Devans99
I think perhaps you’re looking at it wrong. Consider how one might move from ‘Flatland’ to 3-dimensional space, for instance. It’s not a matter of an intelligent agent ‘creating’ another dimension, but of first interacting with something beyond what we understand, and then gradually developing awareness of it despite the lack of understanding. This is how I believe time ‘started’.
Quoting Devans99
What do you mean by ‘intelligent’? This is another one of those words that appears to have the same meaning for everyone, but on closer inspection the conceptual space it occupies can be very different, depending on how you understand and evaluate, in this case, ‘the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills’.
I believe the fine tuning argument points to a level of intelligence (or at least a capacity to develop intelligence) inherent in all matter. And I believe the classical cosmological arguments point to this inherent capacity. In my opinion there is no need to venture beyond what is ‘natural’ for your ‘intelligent agent’ - on weight of evidence.
- Natural is something that has a greater than 0% probability of occurring naturally.
- Unnatural is something that has a 0% probability of occurring naturally.
Something that is unnatural - not of nature - I guess is synonymous with supernatural.
The BB, if it were a natural event and time were infinite, would have occurred an infinite number of times at each point in space.
I'm glad you agree that time is finite. Still, one instance only of BBs over the last 14 billion years seem to place it firmly in the unnatural camp (using the above definitions).
Another way to define it is nature is spacetime. Spacetime must of been created by something beyond space time. Something unnatural.
Quoting Possibility
That suggests to me that the additional dimension of time was discovered rather than created?
Quoting Possibility
I guess I just mean capable of rational thought and resulting independent actions.
Quoting Possibility
The creation (or discovery) of time, the FTA, etc... seem to imply a timeless intelligence external to spacetime. I would define that as an unnatural intelligence.
No, it doesn’t. Your definition says ‘greater than 0% probability’. That means you only need ONE instance to place it above 0% probability. A probability of 0.000000000000000000001% is still greater than 0%.
Quoting Devans99
Yes, it was discovered - by humans. But all animals (and many chemical reactions) have at least been aware of it to some degree.
Quoting Devans99
I’m not sure what ‘the FTA’ refers to, but this ‘unnatural intelligence’ you’re talking about is human intelligence. We have the capacity to interact with the universe beyond what you refer to as ‘nature’. We can integrate information acquired from beyond our capacity to physically interact with the universe: from the far reaches of space to billions of years before we even existed. You can’t tell me that’s not at least a capacity for timeless intelligence external to spacetime.
OK but is stands out like a sore thumb compared to all the other natural events (that happen multiple times) - sufficient to be very suspicious about labelling it natural.
Quoting Possibility
I believe time is a creation. Causality requires the minimum of one uncaused, brute fact to act as the tip of the causal pyramid and cause everything else. It is only possible to exist as an uncaused brute fact if you exist outside time; existing 'forever' inside time is logically impossible (cannot exist with no temporal start).
That implies timeless thing(s) exist. The timeless thing(s) must have caused the creation of time.
The BB seems to support this view - it looks a lot like the start of time what with time slowing down due to the intense gravitational field.
Quoting Possibility
Fine Tuning Argument.
If you want an ‘uncaused brute fact’, then in my view what you’re looking for is potential. You might name it ‘God’, the source, a ‘timeless thing’ or whatever you want, but the way I see it, potential is all that exists beyond space, time, value and meaning. It’s surprising how well suited it is to the role, though, when you think about it.
Quoting Devans99
Slowing down relative to what and where? I don’t see what time dilation due to a gravitational field has to do with the apparent ‘creation’ of time.
:rofl: :rofl: