My mind's in a knot... (Re: Who/what created God?)

Ditto on Onfire's statement. Are you saying that your belief in God does not require any evidence to support it? If so than why not believe in the Greek Pantheon, the Viking religious structure of Thor and Vahalla, or the infamous cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster?Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : Self-removed off topic statements.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Hi Abogot, great debate btw.Just a few points, Since there is no current theory that combines both the macro and micro world, should we NOT try to confuse both realities - macro/micro?In the classical sense, which is how we view the world, how does non-locality affect us or how we experience reality? Or perhaps adjust our understanding of it - like the happy agreement between Einsteinian/Newtonian physics.We are limited in our means to fully understand QM by our current technology, what the future brings in that field is still unknown. This implies that there is a controler of said universes. Why...?You seem to just be describing reality; even with all of it's mysteries, it's still reality. But Abogot, most situations require the use of either QM or GR, but never both.

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

1. The term/word, universe, includes all that exists, i.e. everything; space, God and all.2. The texts have creatures coming and going from the presence of God, so God and the creatures are all in the cosmos of the universe.In answer to your question regarding who created the Universe, nobody created it. God, existing within the universe and God being eternal renders the universe eternal, including all existing energy in that all energy exists via God. The same goes for all matter. This all accommodates both the science 1LoT law and the Biblical record.

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BUZSAW B 4 U 2 C Y BUZ SAW.
The immeasurable present eternally extends the infinite past and infinitely consumes the eternal future.

Why? Are you saying a theory of everything is impossible? IMO we cannot cut off that part of our existence that we do not like. It doesn't sound like a good way to understand the conecpt of reality and what lies beneath it. How can we ever know if there is god or not, if we don't understand what we are experiencing? In our day to day experience non locality doesn't appear to play any role(there probably wouldn't be us otherwise, in the way we experience reality), but there is a joke in physics circles about the non-local nature of quantum mechanics(the way quantum objects "move"). It says if you are hungry and want a baked turkey, go to your kitchen and wait. There is a chance different to zero, that a turkey will appear in the oven. The bigger the turkey, the less the chance and for a big turkey you may wait several billion years. Now if the turkey had to be the size of an atom, i wouldn't ever bother going to restaurants and paying bills. Maybe it's incomplete but that's a small minority's view. And i don't see how it would change what's already been tested in experiments. Making sense of it is not the same as testing it. Although i am no physicist, i'd venture to say that it's highly unlikely that physicists will find solid balls of matter in QM or somehow disprove the wave/particle duality.
BTW, would you apply this incredulity to evolution theory and say that evolution might be overturned in the future as the explanation of how a wolf turned into a pekingese? I could come up with a variety of reasons but mainly because there is both a highly explicit and implict order in our experience and this consensual reality kind of puts us in the centre of everything. This doesn't necesarily imply that I am confident that human logic can be extended to this said ultimate reality(if there is one) and conclude that god exists(though this word is flaky), but if we fully trust our reasoning, the concept of god does make a great deal of sense. Are you sure? Is a beam of photons a quantum object(that moves as waves) or a relativity object(since it moves at the speed of light, which is a property of relativity)?You are touching some emotional strings - i've seen physicists on other forums ready to throw relativity out the window because of the implications of QM(figuratively speaking, they were using a metaphor, in the real world no one discards relativity as it describes what we observe, while QM shows what we cannot). Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

BTW Agobot,I have not forgotten our discussion. I am still reading through the 31 page "Mathematical Universe" paper in the link you sent me.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

I don't know if i should be saying this publicly(wish there was a PM option on the forum) but you can no longer think about your body as a fixed object comprised of a fixed number of atoms. This simply isn't true because not only elementary particles have this property of departing the classical object they are "entitled" to, but whole atoms. It's pretty fucked up but during your life time, a sizeable portion of the atoms of your body are simply not yours. When you look at yourself, you cannot speak of "my atoms", this is wrong. Some of the atoms you are seeing can be anywhere in space, including, well, part of my body. This is a property of their wavefunctions and the uncertainty principle. So QM not only challenges our notions of space and time, but of who and what we are.This is redefining the way we look at the world, and if someone feels bad about this, you can be sure that at the most fundamental level, something exists. This something IMO and in the opinion of the physicists i adhere to, is consciousness. I think it is the essence of everything and IMO it might be a good candidate for the role of "Ultimate fundamental realty". Are we the imagination of ourselves or are we someone's creation? Tough one. If you don't take seriously the experiments of Benjamin Libet, you should be fine.PS. I sometimes get emotional over this, but i find it so monumental(English being not my native language doesn't help me portray my emotions properly) that Einstein, the brightest physicist of All time and quite possibly the brightest man the Earth ever gave birth to, in 1954 sent a letter to the wife of one of his best friends that had just died. In it he said:"We physicists know, that the distinction between the past, present and future is a stubbornly persistent illusion"While Einstein was a realist and was fighting all his life against the findings of QM(calling QM silly), towards the end of his life in 1954(one year before he died), it appears that this brightest man and physicist of all time, was on his knees pleading defeat in the face of the mounting evidence against realism.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

I don't think I'm qualified in anyway to give that answer. From what I've read, a few seem to think it's not possible, a few seem to think that it is. I don't know what the general consensus amongs physicist is. I assume, like most people of science, to them nothing is impossible. You wil starve if you actually wait for that to occur - lol. I didn't say it is incomplete, I said it may need adjusting. Like take Newton and gravity. Newton explained how gravity functioned but did not know how it manifested. Einstein explains gravity to be the curvature of space, and now it is understood where it manifests from.And no, things that have proven themselves in experiments will stand. But, perhaps the means of measuring at sub-atomic scales will become more precise and a better understanding of whats going on at such small scales is rendered. Testing it is a great way to make sense of it, especially when predictions can be made. I never said QM would be overturned, nor would I say evolution will be overturned. But, I feel that both theories still have much to be discovered about them. I still don't see how a primitive belief in supernatural forces that work undetected in a different demention or "outside" the universe, or any other nook or cranny that people place him in, makes sense. As mysterious as sub-atomic scales are nothing about them is indicative of either a creator or the supernatural. It is obviously a wave in the micro world, when viewed in our macro world it is constrained by the finite speed of c. Then I will wait till they decide and write books about it, then I'll read it and try to understand it...I won't jump to philosophical conclusions about what any of this stuff signifies though. Edited by onifre, : No reason given.

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

The non-locality, wavefunction nature of matter at the quantum and macroscopic levels is generally accepted now by the majority of today's physicists and is accepted teaching in physics departments of most universities and colleges. It just hasn't quite filtered down to high-school physics and elementary school science yet and therefore it seems to defy the common sense factor of non college physics educated folks. As to the existence of a higher consciences or a "supernatural" sentient being, as George Bush infamously would say "the jury is still out to lunch" on this one. There is no conclusive evidence in my opinion (and to that of many scientists) that we can definitively point to, to say "see, because of xxxx there has to exist a supernatural being/higher consciences".I am still reading through the material you are providing me, but it seems this talk (even by highly acclaimed scientists and philosophers) about a higher consciencess/reality/entity is still just fanciful metaphysical conjecture without any conclusive empirical evidence. Not that this is bad in any way, it just needs to be substantiated like any other scientific hypothesis. Just my humble opinion. You seem to be putting more emotion into these assertions than necessary. I highly doubt Einstein was down on his knees pleading defeat (unless you could provide proof of this or are you meaning this in a non-literal metaphorical way?). He did remark that one of his greatest blunders was not acknowledging the Big Bang as a viable theory over the Steady State Theory. Einstein was human(though a very intelligent one) and just like everyone else was prone to mistakes, emotional outbursts, frustration, etc.Modern theoretical physicists such as Brian Green, Michio Kaku, Stephen Hawkin and others have taken on Einstein, Heisenberg ax Planck, Niels Bohr and Schrdinger's mantle and hopefully new discoveries and more powerful tools such as CERN can give us more insight the fundamental nature of reality whether it be a hyperspace of higher dimensions and M-Theory or something else entirely.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Actually this is not true. M-theory (and some other quantum gravity theories) attempt to answer how the force of gravity fits into quantum mechanics as well as the General Theory of Relativity. In essence there should be no dichotomy between the two. Just like evolution, why should the forces at the micro level not be the same forces that operate at the macro level? There really is no differentiation between micro and macro (it is litterally a differentiation only in our heads). What we view the world as human beings at our everyday level of detail, is very different than what we observe at the quantum level. This is only because of our prejudice, preconcieved, culturally transmited, tradition bound way in which we attempt to understand reality. Even religion can affect our perception of reality. Do Buddhists or Hindu's view the universe in the same way that Christian's do? No. So if even humans cannot agree on a common way of viewing reality on the macro scale, how much less when we start peering into the previously unknown clockwork of the universe' inner quantum mechanics. I agree we are too early in our discoveries and knowledge of this realm to try to say this or that theory is correct. Sometimes I think we get too ahead of ourselves in science, and scientists get there feelings hurt when they spend years pushing a particular theory, investing alot of both emotional and cognitive energy, and then finding out they have hit a scientific dead end. Einstein did this with his unified field theory as well as many other highly intelligent scientific minds. I agree with Agobot, just because we havn't always used the two together at the same time, doesn't mean we shouldn't. They are two sides to the same coin. Now we have to find what this coin is composed of.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

As I understand it though, there would still need to be a unifying theory of all the known forces, right?QFT does merge SR with quantum concepts, so they're almost there - lol. I think you meant SR, right?I make statements in the form of a question because I'm often not sure. Hope this doesn't bother. I just started class again so I'm trying to brush up on GR and SR, EvC is the place for that. Wasn't able to finish school for financial reasons, and of course my job. I'm bitting the bullet and staying off the road for a while to please my mother and finally get a degree, should take another 4 years, lol. I believe they are. I haven't stated otherwise. My point was that we experience the world, or rather, reality, on the macro scale. The mysteries(limited by our means of measuring) at quantum scales should not affect the way we perceive reality, nor do they require a creator or the supernatural.However, I would like to point out that you used the word forces at the micro level, as in plural. Wouldn't a unifying theory explain it down to 1 force? I am not saying that logic is not out the fuckin window when trying to understand QM, believe me, I can't wrap my head around this stuff anymore than Abogot, even though I believe he has a better understanding of QM than I do. But, and I believe you can agree with me here, just as when viewing the macro word, and noticing unexplainable phenomena should not require one to invoke God, neither should the mysteries of QM. That they are complex and hard to fully comprehend is not the problem of QM, it's the problem of humans and our limited understanding of it.What Abogot seems to be doing is looking at a solar eclipes and saying that God has to be the cause because it's too strange, only he's doing it with QM. We, as in us in our day to day lives, I don't see how we can. If you mean theoretical physicist, I believe thats what a unifying theory will do. In fact, I was talking to one of the post-grads in the physics dept. doing work on blackholes and he was explaining to me how they use QM and GR to properly understand them, so of course they're both used.In that nature I believe you are right, both are required, but in our day to day experiences I'd be curious as to how both can be used to percieve things...?But, again, my only point is that the mystries about QM doesn't require us to invoke the supernatural.Then again, I could be completely wrong. - OniEdited by onifre, : No reason given.

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

M-Theory if "proven" true, would unify these forces; from my understanding on reading about it in theoretical physicist Brian Green's book 'The Elegant Universe' and Stephen Hawkins new revised 'The Illustrated Brief History of Time'(Michio Kaku has also written about it but I have not read his latest books since his 'Hyperspace' book). M-Theory is still in its infancy stage and in fact M-theory is really a super theory or conglomeration of several other smaller component theories i.e. supergravity, superstring theory, holographic principle, 11-dimensions, and others. Of course that is what the M means (in my own words)- Mother of All Fucking Theories!I agree, they are almost there but still waiting for more conclusive proof. The mathematical models make sense, but they (physicists) are still filling in missing pieces of the puzzle. Hopefully if they can get CERN up and running again this summer they will find the Higgs "God" particle (the missing particle which would help explain why matter exists in the first place) and other missing pieces. Of course there is no way to prove the existence of strings directly as they exist at or below Plank's length, and we would need a supercollider the size of the solar system (or larger) to detect them. TSR is a subset of Einstein's GTR. His GTR explains how gravity fits in with relativity. That is gravity is the interaction of spacetime with high density wells of matter. I am a armchair physicist myself. I have an Associates in Computer Studies, though I have been going to college nearly 15 years now. However, I am active-duty Navy so have very little time between balancing my work, hobbies such as this and my home life with my wife and 4 year old daughter. I have also taken college Calculus, Biology, Chemistry, Anthropology, Humanities etc but have not taken any formal college Physics courses. I educate myself through the internet, library, books on tape (Great Courses is awesome) and books by the likes of Hawkins, Green, Kaku, Dawkins and others. I agree. Sounds like we are of like minds. We would still have the four fundamental forces even with a unifying theory. We would just be able to understand how these 4 forces interrelate and originate. An analogy I like to use is that these four forces are like four sides to the same shape i.e. a four sided tetrahedron. The question is what is this interior of this four sided shape composed of? In other words what is used to unify these four sides into one? Many theoretical physicists like Kaku and Green believe that these four forces which exist in our 4 dimensional universe (3 spatial dimensions + 1 temporal dimension) are unified in the higher dimensions. That is one reason (among others) that these extra dimensions are proposed. In other words, higher dimensions (the latest count is 11 I believe) allow all the forces of nature as well as quantum mechanics and relativity to make sense mathematically (and removes the problem renormalization, which I won't get into here).In fact, at the very beginning (approx 10 to the -43 seconds) after the commencement of the Big Bang it is believed by cosmologists/astrophysicists that all four fundamental forces (weak, strong, electromagnetic, and gravity) were one force. As the universe super-rapidly inflated and the temperature of the universe cooled, this one force broke down into four independent forces we know of today. Sounds like we are all in the same boat, metaphorically speaking. I whole-heartedly agree with you on this. I again agree with you on this. Though I am sure Agobot would disagree with this assessment. However, if only the physical theorists understand it, than practical application will be near nill. If we could harness this understanding of the fundamental nature of reality, imagine the endless possibilities of what humans could do? Wormholes, teleportation, a near endless source of energy to everyone on the planet. Of course, with much power is the possibility for much destruction as seen in Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the nuclear arms race and the need for a higher call to responsible use of this potentially catastrophic knowledge and power. Yes, they are both used. They are just very counter-intuitive and very difficult to visualize concepts. It depends on how you are defining the supernatural. Do higher dimensions constitute the supernatural?Again we have to define terms before we off handedly dismiss a point of view. I think that is what is missing here in the discussion between you, Agobot and myself.If we all are saying that a higher reality (higher dimensions, etc) may exist, I think very few of us would disagree that this is a possibility (even if enough evidence is lacking to fully support this at this time). However, if we are talking about the malevolent, blood thirsty, anthropomorphic, morally and logically inconsistent, Zeus like deity of the Bible; that is a different story all together.BTW, excuse my spelling mistakes here, I have a four year old little girl in pajamas asleep on my lap as I type this on my laptop with one hand.Good night and peaceful slumber to all. And good night Opus and good night moon. Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : No reason given.Edited by DevilsAdvocate, : Corrected spelling & grammer.

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For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Dr. Carl Sagan

Hi, Buzsaw.This is going to be a long conversation if we continue at this reply rate! I think I understand what you're saying. But, I'd like to dig a bit deeper before I proceed too far.Exclude God from the definition of "universe," just for the sake of this paragraph. Is the universe still eternal, even if the term "universe" does not include God? In other words, was there ever a point when only God existed, and nothing else?

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I'm Bluejay.Darwin loves you.

No, no... that's completely wrong. You fail to understand that I am not advocating the concept of God. I am merely advocating the most radical change/departure of old concepts the human kind has ever witnessed. I posit that QM says something very radical about our "existence", that we are as virtual as the particles that give the energy to the Hamiltonian operator. I will very briefly discuss this here now and will return to it later as i have to go out in a few minutes(provided we don't get kicked out of this thread for departing the what created god question).So I posit that there is space, all the space of the universe. Let's for a moment imagine it's a real, objectively existent space(imagine that Bell's inequalities were not violated by QM). I will try in layman's terms to describe what QM says about the functioning of our world(what we experience, generally referred to in physics as "outcomes").We basically we have this:SPACEHamiltonian -- Wavefunction -- Outcome(particle-like entity)The Hamiltonian derives its potential energy from, well, the future. As cavediver said, this had been known for nearly 40 years in quantum chromodynamics. Then you have the mathematical probability distribution of the future outcome(derived by the time-dependent Schroedinger equation) spread out throughout space(the wavefunction). Then something(this is uncharted territory in physics) causes the state vector reduction and a particle-like entity to appear. But this particle-like entity, whose exactly the same peers constitute the whole world, derives its energy from the future, it's an energy that is simply not there in "space". This is very counter-intuitive, but your wife and children also appear to be deriving their mass/energy content of their haha "physical" bodies also from the future. If virtual processes are all there is to matter(the world), you have to ask - what if Bell's theorem holds?(it's been holding for 40 years now).You'll have a pretty decent picture of our physical world - "physical" matter that derives its energy/mass from the future(energy is an abstract mathematical entity, you cannot picture it), in a non-local(think of it as non-existent) space.Then we have a very BIG question? WTF is it that causes the sensation of a "world" out there, with all of its orderliness, cause-effect logic, evolution, its comprehensible history, its meaning and logic, your relatives, all the people on the planet? It could be some mad scientists from the future, but if anyone wants to at least somewhat logical, you cannot approach this topic with "why do we have to bring up the supernatural?". This is burying your head in the sand, for fear that the basic tenets of atheism may not hold to thourough scrutiny. There is simply no Supernatural anymore, there is simply the Unknown.If we don't bring up this Unknown, we will never find out the Truth. Isn't it why we are all here on EvC? Is there another reason people have been flocking here?Should we stick our heads in the sand?I vote - No with both my hands.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.

Hi Abogot, As I said, this is a very likely possibility - lol.I am not as familiar with QM as you are Abogot, I will make an effort to research this as much as I can, going as far as I can comprehend. Perhaps you can help me along. What do you mean by the future...?

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"I smoke pot. If this bothers anyone, I suggest you look around at the world in which we live and shut your mouth."--Bill Hicks"I never knew there was another option other than to question everything"--Noam Chomsky

This is how matter gets its energy/mass content - by means of virtual particles that borrow energy from the future for a very short time, without breaking the 1st LOT, then they annihilate. And there is not a very clear border between virtual and "real" particles, they are both excitations of the respective quantum field(if you treat the concept in this way).Here is a good question for a philosophical discussion that portrays very closely our situation:Do the icons on your desktop exist? If they do, where do they exist and what are they?(wish i could make the spelling mistake it-bit ). Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.Edited by Agobot, : No reason given.