Post Any Evidence For God Here

[crispybits]

Quoting from my copy of Carroll and Ostlie's "Introduction to Modern Astrophysics" (which is the most commonly used senior undergraduate/graduate astrophysics textbook),

"Our current physical theories break down at times earlier than [the Planck time], and in fact the very notion of space and time as separate concepts dissolves before the Planck time. A quantum theory of gravity capable of describing this convoluted arena in which space and time have lost their familiar, separate identities has yet to be invented. After the Planck time, spacetime began to take on a more coherent structure as greater portions of it became causally connected. Exactly how time itself emerged from the Big Bang is a question to be pondered by physicists and philosophers alike."

So now you're saying that modern science says that the universe was in an acausal state in the planck time. This after arguing vehemently that we couldn't go from the acausal to the causal and this is why my theory was so flawed.

You couldn't make this stuff up

Edit

Just to make it crystal clear to you Mets - I have not claimed "there is definitely no God because there was definitely no causality", I am simply saying "there was not definitely causality, therefore there is not definitely a God because without definite causality there is no necessity for there to be a cause" (and I admit I did word earlier posts badly in some places, but this was a function of the thought experiment having to start from close to the theist position of ontological "proof", and this is why I was getting annoyed by your constant addition of "maybe this or that" - I can allow any possibilities you like into that argument and it holds - because none of them prove anything for sure and therefore do not provide a necessity for anything)

Perhaps if instead of jumping in to argue for the conclusion I was aiming to work towards through small, logical and easily understandable steps, if you'd allowed the theists to actually engage with the experiment you would have seen this. But you took it upon yourself to jump right to the end and ignore the purpose and struture of it, and then proclaim how you were right and I was wrong when in fact we were aiming for roughly the same idea, and then that I should engage when you were the one who blocked off my route to engagement.

[macbone]

Evidence: My wife. Thank you, God. =)

[TA1LGUNN3R]

John Lee Hooker says there's no heaven or burnin' hell. Therefore, there ain't no heaven or burnin' hell.

Checkmate theists.

-TG

[PLAYER57832]

Evidence: My wife. Thank you, God. =)

(Thank God.. but also be sure to thank her!!!)

[Gillipig]

Evidence: My wife. Thank you, God. =)

You're clearly not being objective here. What about the 3.5 billion men who doesn't have your wife for themselves? If there was a god we'd all have macbone's wife!

[crispybits]

Evidence: My wife. Thank you, God. =)

You're clearly not being objective here. What about the 3.5 billion men who doesn't have your wife for themselves? If there was a god we'd all have macbone's wife!

I thought we all have had macbone's wife?

(sorry macbone - nothing personal there, could have been anyone and purely meant as juvenile humour)

[Metsfanmax]

Quoting from my copy of Carroll and Ostlie's "Introduction to Modern Astrophysics" (which is the most commonly used senior undergraduate/graduate astrophysics textbook),

"Our current physical theories break down at times earlier than [the Planck time], and in fact the very notion of space and time as separate concepts dissolves before the Planck time. A quantum theory of gravity capable of describing this convoluted arena in which space and time have lost their familiar, separate identities has yet to be invented. After the Planck time, spacetime began to take on a more coherent structure as greater portions of it became causally connected. Exactly how time itself emerged from the Big Bang is a question to be pondered by physicists and philosophers alike."

So now you're saying that modern science says that the universe was in an acausal state in the planck time. This after arguing vehemently that we couldn't go from the acausal to the causal and this is why my theory was so flawed.

Perhaps you should read the paragraph directly under that quote, where I explain what they mean by "causally connected."

[crispybits]

And perhaps you should read the two paragraphs I wrote under mine, where I explain my position - again!

[Metsfanmax]

And perhaps you should read the two paragraphs I wrote under mine, where I explain my position - again!

I no longer care about your position. I'm only sticking around to offer commentary on the known science. If you would like me to clarify what we mean by causality in physics, and what the issues are there, I'll engage that.

[crispybits]

Sure thing then, you said "the fastest signal is the speed of light as far as we know", so you fall to your own arguments about assuming we can know these kinds of things for sure and making assumptions about putting things in concrete based on limited knowledge. I could easily imagine that some sort of signal could travel faster than the speed of light, and to me this seems more reasonable than "time outside of nature" or "rules without anything to regulate" or your submissions. So by your own arguments about assuming the unknowable, your own definition of causality that you introduce in this post fails. Seeing as this is the accepted view, would you say that science fails or that your objections of my premise earlier fail?

[tzor]

Sure thing then, you said "the fastest signal is the speed of light as far as we know", so you fall to your own arguments about assuming we can know these kinds of things for sure and making assumptions about putting things in concrete based on limited knowledge. I could easily imagine that some sort of signal could travel faster than the speed of light, and to me this seems more reasonable than "time outside of nature" or "rules without anything to regulate" or your submissions.

Lots of people can imagine lots of things; if they are ignorant enough. I can imagine both a TARDIS and a Flux Capacitor. Our imaginations both have the same effect. That part of relativity which has been verified places consequences on any information transformation faster than the speed of light (basically the actual constant that binds space and time together as dimensions). The result is the elimination of causality from the relativistic spacetime framework.

Simply put if objects can travel faster than light, then events could appear to be in one order to one observer and in the opposite order to another observer.

And since this whole conversation has been linked to the question of causality; that sort of puts us at square ZERO.

There once was a lady so bright,
She could travel much faster than light.
She took off, one day,
In a relative way,
And came back on the previous night.

[Metsfanmax]

Sure thing then, you said "the fastest signal is the speed of light as far as we know",

I figured I might get into trouble with that comment. A more precise thing to say is that the speed of light is the fastest possible signal speed, according to general relativity. Information cannot be propagated faster than this speed, according to conventional wisdom. Now, the whole issue with the Big Bang is that general relativity starts to break down at very high densities, so we can no longer really say whether this limit still holds at the earliest times in our universe, or whatever happened before the universe. But what's interesting is that we have already seen that quantum mechanics allows for an "action at a distance," of a sort, where in some sense you can act on a particle in one location and instantaneously affect what happens to a particle somewhere else, without any communication between the two particles. This is the type of causality that probably still holds in the earliest times of the universe -- particles are connected because their quantum wave-functions overlap. It's not the same thing as logically acausal, where there is simply no relationship governing what nearby particles do.

So, what Carroll and Ostlie meant in that sentence you underlined is that there are currently parts of the universe that cannot ever have exchanged information with each other, due to the finite speed of light. This is true today, and it was true in the Big Bang too. The universe is nevertheless locally causal, even if distant parts of it have never interacted with each other in the classical sense.

[tzor]

But what's interesting is that we have already seen that quantum mechanics allows for an "action at a distance," of a sort, where in some sense you can act on a particle in one location and instantaneously affect what happens to a particle somewhere else, without any communication between the two particles. This is the type of causality that probably still holds in the earliest times of the universe -- particles are connected because their quantum wave-functions overlap. It's not the same thing as logically acausal, where there is simply no relationship governing what nearby particles do.

This is true but there is an odd property of quantum mechanics; basically you can actually break the rules if you don't get caught. "Action at a distance" is one good example because even though a particle can effect a particle at what appears to be an information transfer at beyond the speed of light you can't actally prove the cause / effect relation (without a verification information transfer at the speed of light or below) because it is impossible to determine if the particle had a random state change or if the state change was the result of the other particle whose state is not known to the obsever at that point in time. In other words, we can get away with it because the information gets completely lost in the quantum noise.

Also note that technically speaking, on the particle level, time travel exists. One common explanation for an anti-particle is a particle traveling bckwards in time. So causality at the quantum level can, on occasion, vanish. I'm not sure if you can treat a boson in a similiar manner, going both fowarard and backward in time at the same time, but I'm pretty sure that is also a logical extension of the idea.

[Metsfanmax]

This is true but there is an odd property of quantum mechanics; basically you can actually break the rules if you don't get caught. "Action at a distance" is one good example because even though a particle can effect a particle at what appears to be an information transfer at beyond the speed of light you can't actally prove the cause / effect relation (without a verification information transfer at the speed of light or below) because it is impossible to determine if the particle had a random state change or if the state change was the result of the other particle whose state is not known to the obsever at that point in time. In other words, we can get away with it because the information gets completely lost in the quantum noise.

This may be true in practice, but it says nothing fundamental. If you could isolate your two particles in an entanglement experiment, then a measurement you make on one particle instantly informs what another person measuring the other particle would measure. The idea of a "verification information transfer" is a red herring, because you could simply agree beforehand what experiment you were doing, and at what time.

Also note that technically speaking, on the particle level, time travel exists. One common explanation for an anti-particle is a particle traveling bckwards in time. So causality at the quantum level can, on occasion, vanish. I'm not sure if you can treat a boson in a similiar manner, going both fowarard and backward in time at the same time, but I'm pretty sure that is also a logical extension of the idea.

That "explanation" for an anti-particle is a mathematical artifice used in calculations of scattering amplitudes and decay lifetimes; it is not an actual explanation of how an anti-particle travels. This is one of the pitfalls of taking Feynman diagrams too literally. Quantum theory has basically shown us that it is meaningless to think of macroscopic causality on the particle level. Time just means something different at small scales.

[tzor]

That "explanation" for an anti-particle is a mathematical artifice used in calculations of scattering amplitudes and decay lifetimes; it is not an actual explanation of how an anti-particle travels. This is one of the pitfalls of taking Feynman diagrams too literally. Quantum theory has basically shown us that it is meaningless to think of macroscopic causality on the particle level. Time just means something different at small scales.

I thought it was also key in understanding Hawkings radiation, although I could be wrong. (Antimatter does not radiate out of a black hole, but travels backwards in time into the black hole. Thus while the black hole looses mass over time, nothing techically "escaped" it and therefore it remains a pure information sink.)