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| Author | Topic: Can science say anything about a Creator God? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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GDR Member  Posts: 4368 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: |
First off I agree that what saying is highly speculative. I've read a few books on time and and cosmology and of course we all agree that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. In putting together some of the theories that I have read about I put this out for consideration. It seems to me conceivable that our universe is an emergent property of a greater reality. We do have a universe where particles pop in and out of existence - where particles don't become what they are to become until they're observed - where it seems that only 4.5% or so of what exists is normally perceivable to us - where something that seems so solid is actually all, or nearly all empty space and so on. If we are actually part of a greater reality that is all around us, but not perceivable to us, then at this point in our understanding of things we have no knowledge of the dimensions of space and time that might be possible in the greater reality from which we are split off. It is Biblical consistent to suggest that there is God's heavenly dimension and our Earthly one and that there is no spatial difference between the two, and that we are limited to perceiving this universe with the limitations of our 5 senses. The Bible tells us that at the end of time heaven and earth will be one so my understanding from all that would be that at some point our universe will be meshed back in to the greater reality. I don't think that this is exactly how it is but it does seem to me to be an answer that satisfies the Christian faith and is consistent with some of the more speculative theories of science. He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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GDR Member Posts: 4368 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: |
I'm not sure you understood what I was trying to say. I'm not saying that we could experience a non-entropic life here. I am saying that by the mathematics it is conceivable that there could exist a universe that is non-entropic but not perceivable by us.
 He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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NoNukes Member  Posts: 10470 From: Central NC USA Joined: Member Rating: 2.0 |
I understand that you are describing a SETI type investigation. None of the signals you describe would indicate intelligence to me, but perhaps if you were also to add some modulation that might distinguish the signal from naturally occurring phenomena, then maybe you'd be on to something. Something ordinary but not Creator good level super ordinary. And that's the topic of the thread. Simply finding intelligence outside the galaxy would be exciting.
The above however is just the same CSI ID nonsense I've seen pushed a dozen times. It does not extend from SETI. I don't need to identify an intended receiver to recognize that I have no natural explanation for a signal bearing, say a long repeated sequence of prime numbers in descending order. If a signal like that shows up, then the source is worth investigating further. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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Straggler Member (Idle past 125 days)  Posts: 10198 From: London England Joined: |
Does intelligence require an intelligent creator? Or not? You spoke at some length (quite possibly wrongly - but that is by the by) about the time reversible nature of our universe - Unless you are suggesting this intelligent creator exists within the time component of our universe (which began at T=0) what relevance does this have? Now you seem to be suggesting to Percy that this intelligent creator exists in an alternate physical universe. But what are you suggesting created the alternate universe in which this intelligence resides? I still don't get where exactly you are suggesting this entity exists - Can you clarify? At the moment it sounds like a god of the gaps where even the gaps are ambiguous......
When we talk about extra dimensions within our universe (string theory and suchlike) we are talking about spatial dimensions which didn't expand in the Big Bang. Are you suggesting god dwells there?
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PaulK Member Posts: 13756 Joined: Member Rating: 2.3 |
quote: An intellectually honest person would at least admit that they had no answer and accept that it had a serious impact in the plausibility of their view. quote: Even if that is true it isn't relevant it's more an argument against the idea that our universe requires a cause.
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Son Goku Member  Posts: 1102 From: Ireland Joined: Member Rating: 3.2
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The problem in a way stems from the fact that, in a sense, entropy isn't "real" and is not part of the fundamental laws of physics. (I'll just include an explanation of Entropy, sorry to bore anybody who knows this stuff.) Essentially all of the fundamental laws are time reversible. Newton's laws will tell you how an object falls from space down on to the Earth, but it will also tell you how an object on the Earth will rise up into space, as time goes backwards. It doesn't seem to pick out either direction as the natural arrow of time. Same with General Relativity and most Quantum Field theories. Of course the difficult thing about applying the laws in reverse in the actual universe is that future states are more generic in real life. So if I have two rocks sitting on the ground, and if one fell from space and the other didn't, there won't really be much difference between them. I'll have to scrutinize the two rocks to see if I can detect traces of falling through an atmosphere on one of them. Only then can I apply the laws in reverse successfully and have the correct one rise into space. Imagine this experiment was done on a planet with a very thin atmosphere, so that the only difference between the rocks was some micrometer scale friction burns on one of them. This means I'd have to measure the rocks to a good degree of accuracy to reverse time. Compare this to the forward time description. One rock starts in space, the other on the ground, it's obvious what will happen as time flows forward. I don't need micrometer scale information about the rocks. Now take the extreme of the Sun. Try to reverse time there, it would be almost impossible to know which random atoms in the Sun should unmelt and reform into a comet that hit the Sun in the Devonian period. You'd need atomic level detail of the entire Sun! Again compare this with the forward time evolution, you start with a comet pointed at the Sun, it's easy to guess what will happen. The point being the difference between the two states, where the was Sun hit by a comet and the state where it was not, is at the atomic scale. They are very difficult to tell apart. The general point is that later in time states all tend to be difficult to tell apart. They are more generic. Entropy is just a measure of this generic-ness. This increase of generic-ness is what marks one direction of time from another in the real universe. However there are two problems with this:
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NoNukes Member Posts: 10470 From: Central NC USA Joined: Member Rating: 2.0 |
This is pretty much the same explanation Greene uses. Just as well done, in fact. Surely there's a book in you somewhere?
But it isn't just the Big Bang that allows us to tell the direction of time. Every time we drop an egg, open a bottle of soda, or kick dust on other runners on a track field, we find the same direction for the arrow of time. Perhaps I'm quibbling over the definition for fundamental, but entropy sure seems universal. Second law of Thermodynamics not one of the laws of physics? In a sense? Still seems like cheating to me. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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GDR Member Posts: 4368 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: |
I'm suggesting that this intelligence is part of some greater reality that is interlocked with our universe in ways that we don't perceive with our 5 senses, and that our universe is an emergent property of that greater reality. I'm only proposing that possibly this greater reality would have more than one dimension of time and as a result is infinite in time, so it would allow infinite movement in time the same way that we can move infinitely around in our 3 spatial dimensions.
It isn't a god of the gaps as there isn't a gap to fill. I am firmly convinced that we should view science as a natural theology and so I am trying to allow the little science I know, (little being the key word there), to inform my theological and philosophical beliefs. As to the ambiguous part, I have to agree but I might add god of the very speculative.
It does seem to me that as science uncovers the mysteries of the universe it keeps finding that the universe is more mysterious than ever. Edited by GDR, : No reason given. He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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Just being real Member (Idle past 1676 days)  Posts: 369 Joined: |
So you're saying that SETI is wasting all their time and money looking for what Jill Tarter (SETI Director) tells us is exactly what they are looking for to detect intelligent life?
Yes I understand what the topic of this thread is. But we have to be on the same page here first. I'm trying to discern exactly what in your eyes qualifies as evidence for intelligence. Because if you hold to some higher standard than do SETI scientists and marine biologists then this conversation is doomed before it starts.
I know you may think so but I would point out that that CSI "nonsense" that you have heard, does in fact make a very fatal flaw. Complexity does not equate to intelligence. A snow flake can be very complex and yet formed completely by natural laws of physics. So complex information can not be used to detect intelligence. If you drop a hand full of marbles off a tall building onto a typewriter below, the information it produces would be very complex and the odds of reproducing it would be beyond astronomical. What I am talking about here is detecting information that has intent or purpose. Not merely complex. That is what I am pointing out is exactly what SETI looks for to detect ET and what marine biologists look for in dolphins.
Well now you are implying that ET might be insane. Because only insane people would go to the trouble to transmit a signal with absolutely no intended receiver. Even a message in a bottle tossed into the ocean is done so with the hope of eventually making its way into the hands of someone to receive it. Again if we detected such a signal then we might actually be the intended receiver as well as the observer.
Exactly! Specified information is worth investigating.
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bluegenes Member (Idle past 218 days)  Posts: 3119 From: U.K. Joined: |
I asked you some questions relating to your idea of "specified information" in Message 405. Why are the things you list below "specified information".
Any answers?
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Percy Member  Posts: 16964 From: New Hampshire Joined: Member Rating: 2.1 |
SETI looks for narrow bandwidth signals because of the unlikelihood they would occur naturally. --Percy
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Son Goku Member Posts: 1102 From: Ireland Joined: Member Rating: 3.2
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The only problem is that from the point of view of the fundamental laws, there is no reason for the states in one direction of time to have lower entropy than the states in the other direction. The reason we can tell the direction of time via the events you describe is because the low entropy states always come first. The fact that low entropy states come first and that we can use this to tell the arrow of time has the immediate implication that states have lower and lower entropy as we go further and further back in time. Ultimately the state of the Big Bang had extremely low entropy. If the universe had began as a homogeneous soup of matter (which is "more likely", i.e. more generic/higher entropy), then the states in the past and the future would have similar amounts of entropy and neither direction would be distinguished. Without the Big Bang having low entropy, you wouldn't be able to use the methods you described above.
Basically, the universe (down to a very fine scale) is the result of the interactions of quantum fields and spacetime. Those fields and spacetime itself do not have entropy as a property. It's a derived quantity, useful for discussing large scale objects, but as fundamentally real as temperature or tensile strength. In other words, entropy is an emergent quantity and since you use entropy to tell the direction of time, the arrow of time is itself an emergent property. Forwards or backwards in time, the fundamental quantum fields don't care, they literally can't tell the difference. However large scale objects built out of the fields do prefer one direction, for the reason that the large scale objects were in a very specific (non-generic) state at the big bang. Edited by Son Goku, : Typos
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NoNukes Member Posts: 10470 From: Central NC USA Joined: Member Rating: 2.0 |
The signals need not be transmitted for the purpose of reception. They might be a bi-product of some energy use. Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison. Thoreau: Civil Disobedience (1846) I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree; ‘That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes.’ Galileo Galilei 1615. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. Frederick Douglass
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Straggler Member (Idle past 125 days) Posts: 10198 From: London England Joined: |
Is this correct?
Why the qualification of "our universe"?
Mystery. Gap. Tomato. Tomahto.
That is different to saying that it is inherently empirically imperceptible. If we are going off into wild speculation then there is nothing in the laws of physics which prohibits the creation of wormholes or blackholes as bridges between universes in a multiverse. If this is the case and we combine it with your suggestion then meeting god (or establishing his existence) would be a matter of engineering and technology (type 3 civilisation) rather than spirituality.
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GDR Member Posts: 4368 From: Sidney, BC, Canada Joined: |
Yes except I would take out the part of your quote I put in brackets {in time}
Because we did have a point where T=0. In a universe where T= infinity there is no need for a first cause as it just always existed.
If I had to write that sentence of mine over I would add the words "as of today" at the end of it. I do believe that we do interact with God's universe or dimension in some spiritual sense, but I don't rule out the possibility that at some point in the future science may very well be able to connect or discover that universe and/or other universes. I believe that human reason is a gift of God and so I have confidence that through that reason we will be able to discover things that are unimaginable to us today. He has told you, O man, what is good ; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God. Micah 6:8
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