The Supernatural Big Bang

General Academics Religion and Philosophy
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Split from This is why we don’t need religion

But do you know of any religion, no matter how obscure, that does not do so? Even scientology embraces supernatural elements such as reincarnation and souls. If you don't know of any, can we then agree, at least provisionally and subject to possible revision later on, to say that "all religions address at least something that is supernatural?" If you disagree, please give a reason why.
So science doesn’t? How would you explain big bang??? Secondly it is utter folly to use natural science in an attempt to explain the SUPERnatural???
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Science doesn’t what? Invoke the supernatural? No, it doesn’t – if you think otherwise, best you start putting forward some examples of where it does so.

Are you suggesting that the Big Bang is supernatural? If so, you might want to read up on it a little before vomiting up the half-digested remains of some two-minute sound bites you heard on TV.

In much the same way, I suppose, as it is folly to attempt using sense to dispel nonsense. Two things here: first, you have to establish that the “SUPERnatural” indeed has any reality because whenever science turns its beady eye on the “SUPERnatural,” the “SUPER” soon evaporates into nothingness, and second, science has explained a multitude of “SUPERnatural” phenomena, e.g. diseases, seasons, celestial motions, lightning, tides, etc. So how do you decide where the dividing line is between the two?

'Luthon64

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Anacoluthon64 Wrote

Science doesn't what? Invoke the supernatural? No, it doesn't – if you think otherwise, best you start putting forward some examples of where it does so.
[b]Speculative physics beyond the Big Bang[/b]

A graphical representation of the expansion of the universe with the inflationary epoch represented as the dramatic expansion of the metric seen on the left. Image from WMAP press release, 2006. (Detail)While the Big Bang model is well established in cosmology, it is likely to be refined in the future. Little is known about the earliest moments of the universe’s history. The Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems[46] require the existence of a singularity at the beginning of cosmic time. :wink:


Anacoluthon64 Wrote

Are you suggesting that the Big Bang is supernatural? If so, you might want to read up on it a little before vomiting up the half-digested remains of some two-minute sound bites you heard on TV.
Post of the century! Big bang points to a supernatural creator! IE Out of this world or are you willing to put your credibility on the line and dispute this? 8)

Anacoluthon64 Wrote

In much the same way, I suppose, as it is folly to attempt using sense to dispel nonsense. Two things here: first, you have to establish that the "SUPERnatural" indeed has any reality because whenever science turns its beady eye on the "SUPERnatural," the "SUPER" soon evaporates into nothingness, and second, science has explained a multitude of "SUPERnatural" phenomena, e.g. diseases, seasons, celestial motions, lightning, tides, etc. So how do you decide where the dividing line is between the two?
Irony! How do[b] YOU[/b] decide based on the following?
There may also be parts of the universe well beyond what can be observed in principle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang Use your science to define this! Can you? Or do you find yourself in the same predicament as Christians?
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It would be good if you added some clarity because your meaning is obscure. Are you saying that the Big Bang theory invokes the supernatural – yes or no? If yes, why do you claim this?

No, it doesn’t. Nor does this follow from anything in the Wikipedia entry.

You seem unable to grasp the fact that at the cutting edge, all science is speculative. You also seem unable to grasp that such things as cannot in principle be observed (a) cannot have any effect of any kind on our world, and (b) fall outside science’s ambit because no meaningful statements can be made about such a thing. You also seem unable to grasp that our ignorance right now cannot be taken to mean that we cannot know at all. You also seem unable to read the whole of the source that you cite:

And no, I don’t find myself in the same predicament as christians: Occam’s razor gives a very close shave indeed.

'Luthon64

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Anacoluthon64 Wrote

It would be good if you added some clarity because your meaning is obscure. Are you saying that the Big Bang theory invokes the supernatural – yes or no? If yes, why do you claim this?
::) ::) Cosmology, physics and physical chemistry along with every piece of physical evidence from cosmology all indicate the cause of this universe transcends material, space and time and is by definition supernatural (outside of nature). Any ad hominem attacks on your part to circumvent this? ;D

Anacoluthon64 Wrote

No, it doesn't. Nor does this follow from anything in the Wikipedia entry.
::) ::) I thought I had seen the depths one is willing to sink to with regards to self deception but that was trully inspiring!
You seem unable to grasp the fact that at the cutting edge, all science is speculative. You also seem unable to grasp that such things as cannot in principle be observed (a) cannot have any effect of any kind on our world, and (b) fall outside science's ambit because no meaningful statements can be made about such a thing. You also seem unable to grasp that our ignorance right now cannot be taken to mean that we cannot know at all. You also seem unable to read the whole of the source that you cite:
You on the other hand my friend suffer from the arrogance of ignorance! You call me ignorant for addressing a key point in the theory, ie a singular creator, ie god! Superlolz! Your logic is in error because it relys on the false presupposition that there is no evidence for a creator.

Anacoluthon64 Wrote

And no, I don't find myself in the same predicament as christians: Occam's razor gives a very close shave indeed.
I think i am done here! Disregarding another claim does not add evidence for materialism. You are still left with nothing to show for your effort.
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If by “cause of this universe” you mean the Big Bang then I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken. It is not necessary that the Big Bang was “caused” by anything in an analogous way to which there are Quantum Mechanical effects that don’t have a “cause” (in the sense of “this event caused that event”), e.g. radiation, virtual particles, Hawking Radiation, etc. Moreover, if there is actually such a “cause” to the Big Bang, it is beyond our current science anyway (as the Wikipedia entry made clear), and therefore it is eminently bogus to accuse science of invoking the supernatural in relation to the Big Bang. Science is simply silent on any cause (or otherwise) of the Big Bang and will remain so until someone is able to shed more light on the matter, e.g. via one or more of the proposals cited in the Wikipedia article. In addition, the “cause” may turn out to be an ontological problem, which can only be informed but not as such solved by science, in which case it will remain forever a matter of speculation for which the simpler answer must be given preference.

Touchy, touchy, eh? It wasn’t an ad hominem; it was a sincere and earnest request for some clarity in respect of your position. But you’re welcome to have it your way if you wish – just don’t expect to be taken seriously.

The Big Bang doesn’t necessarily imply a creator because you can’t simply extrapolate (in any case limited) human experience within the universe to conditions, if any, that are beyond it, either spatially or temporally or both. Any claim of this kind is suspect: just how did you come by your privileged position where you can apprehend and know the universe from outside when you can’t get outside it?

No, the arrogance is plainly yours. You are arguing from ignorance and calling it truth, saying that the idea of a creator and/or the supernatural is inherent in the Big Bang. It isn’t, and I formally challenge you to put forward a credible reference (a paper in a peer reviewed science journal, or a university science textbook, say) that asserts this.

It doesn’t seem to occur to you that it might be you who is in error. Where is this evidence you write of?

That’s entirely up to you. More of that touchiness, eh?

I’ve addressed your claim that scientists invoke the supernatural from a variety of different angles, showing that such an inference is not warranted. Therefore, it is hard to see how I have “[disregarded] another claim.” As for having “nothing to show for [my] effort,” the individual reader is left to decide that. You, however, seem to be given to becoming ratty and dismissing out of hand anything that doesn’t meet your preconceptions.

'Luthon64

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Anacoluthon64 Wrote

It is not necessary that the Big Bang was "caused" by anything in an analogous way to which there are Quantum Mechanical effects that don't have a "cause" (in the sense of "this event caused that event"), e.g. radiation, virtual particles, Hawking Radiation, etc.
Since you have no evidence that material is capable of spontaneously making itself (a quantum vacuum requires a standing energy wave), your evidence amounts to nothing more than a circular argument. Surely that isn't enough to satisfy your critical mind.

Anacoluthon64 Wrote

Touchy, touchy, eh? It wasn't an ad hominem; it was a sincere and earnest request for some clarity in respect of your position. But you're welcome to have it your way if you wish – just don't expect to be taken seriously.
Evidence that favors a creator has been offered. A transcending cause for the beginning of this Universe. Does this event have a materialistic explanation? ::) ::)

Anacoluthon64 Wrote

The Big Bang doesn't necessarily imply a creator because you can't simply extrapolate (in any case limited) human experience within the universe to conditions, if any, that are beyond it, either spatially or temporally or both. Any claim of this kind is suspect: just how did you come by your privileged position where you can apprehend and know the universe from outside when you can't get outside it?
Where is the evidence that material mechanisms made matter, space, time and energy? Where is the evidence that material mechanisms made life from non-life? Where is the evidence to support your [b]FAITH[/b] in materialism?

Anacoluthon64 Wrote

No, the arrogance is plainly yours. You are arguing from ignorance and calling it truth, saying that the idea of a creator and/or the supernatural is inherent in the Big Bang. It isn't, and I formally challenge you to put forward a credible reference (a paper in a peer reviewed science journal, or a university science textbook, say) that asserts this.
By this logic nearly every scientific explanation becomes an argument from ignorance. Anacoluthon64 asks why his hand won’t pass through the table and I answer because of the repulsive force of electrons in proximity. Anacoluthon64 asks how this repulsive force is generated and after drilling down into QM a few more levels I finally answer that I don’t know at which point Anacoluthon64 proclaims that I am making an argument from ignorance.

The conclusion of a transcending cause is also based on a drill down through General Relativity, QM and Thermodynamics that ultimately ends with a singularity. A transcending cause is the best information we have at this time just like electron repulsion is the best information we have for electromotive force.

Anacoluthon64 Wrote

It doesn't seem to occur to you that it might be you who is in error. Where is this evidence you write of?
Where is yours to state that god does not exist?

Anacoluthon64 Wrote

I've addressed your claim that scientists invoke the supernatural from a variety of different angles, showing that such an inference is not warranted. Therefore, it is hard to see how I have "[disregarded] another claim." As for having "nothing to show for [my] effort," the individual reader is left to decide that. You, however, seem to be given to becoming ratty and dismissing out of hand anything that doesn't meet your preconceptions.
Big bang cosmology including The General Theory of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Thermodynamics together with every observation of our universe all point strongly to a transcending cause. :o You seem to have some preconceived notion about how you think a creator should require life to intermingle. Superlolz!
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I would like to remind you of the forum rules. Especially this one:
Back up arguments with evidence. No idea is safe from discussion, but you have to use solid reasoning for anyone to take you serious.
Arguing in circles will only get this thread closed.

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I would like to remind you of the forum rules. Especially this one: [b]Back up arguments with evidence[/b]. No idea is safe from discussion, [b]but you have to use solid reasoning for anyone to take you serious[/b]. Arguing in circles will only get this thread closed.
This forum is unbelievable! How does one provide evidence for the supernatural? ??? More importantly i have seen you starting many threads stating the non existenece of god. Where is your evidence for this? Where is your evidence for materialism? I thought this forum had promise, i was sorely mistaken. How does citing material itself provide evidence for it's cause???????? :o You may delete my account.
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As you wish, but as you leave, let me leave you with two points:

I doubt that I’ve ever stated that god does not exist. I won’t say that because I have no evidence for that statement. See how it works?

This is a statement you made without providing any support for your argument other than to cite a wikipedia article and asking Anacoluthon to disprove your statement. Hence my reminder of the forum rules.

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This is quite an interesting topic that creates controversy in every forum and debate I’ve participated in or listened to.

I must admit that I am a bit disappointed in this one, because it seems like we are entering into a pow-wow of egos with a slight hint of a debate, where both sides of the argument call for evidence to validate the other party’s statements.

This has a clear solution. The burden of proof lies upon the party making the claim. This is the case with every debate, but commonly not the case where a person’s personal belief system is in question.

If I claim that that there are Gnomes in my garden that water my plants each night, and you claim that it is not so, this does not mean that my statement has equal weight when compared to yours. I might offer evidence in the form of droplets on the leaves of my plants each morning, and you might claim that although the effect is clearly visible, it does not prove the cause of the droplets. This still does not make our respective arguments equal. The burden of proof lies solely on the person making the claim. In this case, it is up to me to prove that: (1) Gnomes exist. (2) There are gnomes in my garden. (3) The gnomes water my plants and (4) there is no other natural cause for the water droplets on the leaves of my plants, and that the droplets on the leaves are the actual water from the gnomes. Only then can I invoke gnomes in future arguments and not because the rest of the sheeple believe in gnomes. If my grandmother believes in gnomes, and her grandmother before her, and she has written a book on gnomes, I cannot enter that as proof.

When “The Creator” is invoked in debates, proof for the existence of a creator must be presented immediately, and not the effect of such “creator’s” actions or supposed creations. This is because conclusive evidence to substantiate this claim has never been produced before. When the opposing party offers a speculation as to alternative possible causes for the effect, this does not make the two arguments equal. The burden of proof lies upon the person invoking the supernatural as the cause for the natural.

Alchemy Wrote:

“Evidence that favors a creator has been offered. A transcending cause for the beginning of this Universe.”
Please could you share this conclusive evidence with me? Something primitive, deep in my heart, really wants to believe this, but my cognitive functions are performed by my brain.

“The Creator” is a concept conceived by primitive man and penned or chiselled by iron-age man. “The Big Bang” illustrates a possible origin for the universe, contrary to the popular belief of a creator. It is a speculative theory that compels scientists to seek more evidence to support the idea, and who knows, maybe one day, they will be successful.

Until then we have to be rational and believe what we have conclusive evidence for, failing which, what seems to be the most probable.

Sentinel – Gnome-ing no more…

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It is true that I have no evidence that “material … spontaneously [makes] itself;” but your inference that I am suggesting something like that is erroneous and misguided. On a technical point, your knowledge of QM is also deficient: a vacuum does not “require a standing energy wave;” it requires, according to our current understanding, that we cannot know its energy state beyond certain precisely defined limits. But back to your question: what I do have is the following two things: (a) Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, and (b) a Universe whose Ω-value is so close to 1 that the question still has not been definitively settled (although the current preponderance is that Ω > 1, though only very slightly so), even after more than 50 years of research (and both models – (a) and (b) – have amassed considerable evidence supporting them). What this (Ω ≈ 1) means is that the total energy content of the universe would be very, very close to zero, and that matter can spring spontaneously into existence as long as the limits of the Uncertainty Principle are not transgressed. In short, the universe may be the ultimate free lunch that simply happened because it did.

So how, exactly, is this argument circular?

And now you are changing the argument: at first, your claim seemed to be that science and scientists appeal to the supernatural in relation to the Big Bang, whereas now you talk of a “creator.” But what evidence has in fact been advanced? Your experience and conception of the world do not constitute a legitimate basis on which to explain its origin, and nor is mine. If you don’t accept my counterarguments, Google is a decent companion in times of cognitive crisis, and is more than capable of locating germane information if my word won’t do it for you. You are welcome to consult it in order to put forward any arguments that support your contention of supernatural agency invoked by science or scientists, a task and challenge you have singularly failed thus far. As for a “transcending cause,” science doesn’t say anything about it at all. If you want to misconstrue speculative matters of science, that’s up to you, but you’ll find no favour with me or any other scientist by doing so.

This clearly is the part you don’t get: We don’t know yet, but positing a creator in response is, besides being a non-scientific copout, not therefore warranted because it raises a whole crop of new questions that are bigger than those it answers.

Or, how about your faith that your entire history isn’t one big constructed fake? It seems you want irrefutable, absolute and/or ultimate answers that no-one is equipped to give you, least of all me. For myself, the epistemology on which science and the scientific method is predicated seems, of all the current options, minimally prone to delusion because of its insistence on various norms. My faith in materialism rests on the fewest and least complex assumptions. More prosaically, how about more than two centuries of proven validity through useful results?

Continued …

'Luthon64

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Continued…

Science doesn’t pretend to address any ultimate whys. It seeks to establish reliable relationships among observable entities to make the world a little more understandable. That doesn’t prevent it from delivering answers or distinguishing the correct from the incorrect within the domain it addresses, which is the materialistic. Of course, you can ask an interminable regress of whys about anything! But it’s asking the right kind of whys that leads to greater understanding, not a fatalistic resignation (or, <> forbid, a facile but dubious supposition that ends all further questioning) to the flood of whys that seems to engulf and threaten to stifle you.

This insistence of yours on a “transcending cause” illustrates the core of your error. Science and scientists are mute, silent, quiet, taciturn, phlegmatic, undemonstrative, placid, impassive about any “transcending cause,” except perhaps in their private ruminations. Geddit? It is at present – and until someone advances new thoughts on the topic – a non-scientific question. That is another telling difference between religious faith and zeteticism; the latter is, at least in principle, aware of its limits.

Well, it’s not so much evidence of non-existence (which is anyway philosophically unsatisfactory outside of axiomatic formal systems) as it is evidence of redundancy: if this creator is deistic then s/he can’t possibly matter to anything concerning us other than our raison d’être; if theistic, s/he’s got some explaining to do, for example why prayer can’t restore an amputated limb or why so many foetuses and infants perish for no discernible reason.

No. Yet again you’re making the unwarranted assumption that common experience is a valid yardstick for gauging a “transcendent cause” that resides beyond the (currently) knowable. In other words, you claim to know of things nobody else does or even can, judged according to the current criteria for legitimate knowledge.

Again, your non sequiturs are showing.

'Luthon64

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Ah, yes. Evidence – something I tend to forget about when gobsmacked by blatant ignorance, especially when it is covered by a thin veneer of suitably hijacked terminology.

“The ultimate free lunch” universe: here, here (abstract only), and here (see “Quote” section). Peripherally, here too (see, in particular, the “Bibliography” section).

Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle (see “Energy-time uncertainty principle”). The idea of virtual particles is also relevant. For information about attempts to reconcile QM with traditional ideas about causality and determinism, see here and here (more technical).

Now, I am still waiting for that reference to where science or scientists appeal to the supernatural and/or a creator when theorising about the Big Bang. Additionally, I’d also like to see the Hamiltonian of the (assumed) system where “a quantum vacuum requires a standing energy wave.” Because that sounds like something that jumped out of a tatty hat.

'Luthon64