The Sudden Dawn of the Cosmos and the Constancy of Physical Laws

Instead of discussing and engaging with the feedback you've received, you're just ignoring it and restating your ideas in a slightly different way. You're ignoring what Son Goku said about laws emerging from the equations that model our universe. You're ignoring what Stile and others said about the constancy of laws being only what we've observed so far in the tiny portion of the universe observable by us. The evidence we have so far indicates that they are, but you're also ignoring what Son Goku said about not knowing what came before the pea-sized universe. Since you left things out of the "if" portion of your statement, the "then" portion is not necessarily a valid conclusion. What's more, even if the "if" portion were accurate and complete, the then" portion still doesn't seem to be a valid conclusion from it. Since we do not know what preceded the Big Bang, we do not know if it was nothing. Even if it was, you have not explained how a sudden birth implies a sudden death. Why not a slow death, or why not no death at all - you don't say. It's worth mentioning that dark energy hints that the universe will end in a "big rip." No one here is arguing for or against an eternal universe. Current evidence is not conclusive. This is not so different from saying, "Because science doesn't know everything it therefore doesn't know anything."The collection of opinions you're offering is easily shown wrong. Some of them are self-evidently wrong.--Percy

You're replying to a 4-year-old message. The OT or the NT God? He seemed to change a great deal between the OT and the NT. The OT God was exceptionally capricious, and the NT God was not without his capricious moments. Yeah, but that OT again, more anger and retribution than glory. You could reasonably argue that people of the OT received his justice, less so his love. This is a bald declaration without evidence. This declaration is based upon the prior bald declaration and therefore has no support.--Percy

You are again replying to a 4-year-old message. Can you think of a law of physics so subtle that we wouldn't notice were it to change? How can you ask this after a) Stile explained that we look at them to see if they changed; and b) Stile used extremely tentative phrasing throughout to indicate the uncertain nature of our knowledge, never stating that we "know the laws of physics never changed"? You're declaring that we have to believe in something. If by "faith" you mean a religious faith, then no, we don't have to have faith in something. We can simply take the world as it is rather than as believers in fantastical unseeable things say it is.--Percy

And you probably think that if a particle pair like a positron and an electron flitted into existence that there must have been a cause. But there was no cause. They're appearance as virtual particles is just a quantum fluctuation of the sort that happen everywhere throughout space and time, as far as we know, and could be any equal/opposite particle pair. We already know of one phenomenon with no cause, virtual particles, and so there is no requirement that the beginning of the universe had a cause. This is an odd way of saying it, if you mean what I think you do. The way I would say it is that we have not as of this writing observed natural physical laws being one way in one time/place, and another way in a different time/place. Since we don't know what, if anything, caused the cosmos, I suppose it's not impossible that the same thing that caused it could also destroy it. One idea for the end of the universe that many cosmologists are willing to consider as a possibility is that dark energy could cause the demise in a "big rip," but no one's yet thought of a role for dark energy in the creation of the universe. For the big rip, there are various estimates. One is about 22 billion years from now. You're declaring as true without evidence things you couldn't possibly know.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Typo.

Edited by Percy, : Grammar.

What's makes you think this? We know of no causal event for the Big Bang, for virtual particles, or for the time when a radioactive atom decays. Our observations of the natural world reveal some phenomena with causes and some without. This is either nonsense or poorly expressed. Are you trying to say that outside our universe the laws of physics don't exist? If that's what you're saying, how would you know that? Again, this is either nonsense or poorly expressed. Our universe began at the Big Bang, but whether there was something prior to that is unknown. There's no way to know what you mean by the external existence of space. If you're including photons and quantum probability equations as part of "physical" then you might want to choose a better word. Perhaps you meant to say that as far as we can tell the laws of physics apply throughout the universe. I'm not even going to try to decipher this. I think the main reason I can't figure out what you mean is that you have no idea what you mean, either. Your entire paragraph is a mostly unintelligible word salad, as if you're just stringing together jargon that you don't understand into unsupported declarations. That's nice. How does that relate to the origin of the universe and the constancy of physical laws? Copious observational evidence indicates an average background temperature for the universe of around 5°K, which is 451°F below zero. The facts say the universe is cold. That's nice. How does that relate to the origin of the universe and the constancy of physical laws? We accept that for which there is evidence, and there's no evidence for an existence after death. Your answer is nonsense. You first said we can't know the cause of the universe (you called it "unobservable" and "unpredictable"), and AZPaul3 agreed with you, also pointing out that your "speculative what-ifs" (such as that there must be a cause) are unwarranted. But you then go off the deep end saying that if we don't know the cause then we don't know that the universe won't suddenly change into an elephant.You keep repeating the mistake of thinking that because there's something science doesn't know that therefore science doesn't know anything. And you don't have evidence for anything you say, just a bunch of words strung together into what looks like nonsense. No large group is homogenous, so your generalization is of course false. Those with an empirical world view cannot be said to possess a faith anything like a religious faith. Certainly all the trappings of anything resembling religion are absent.You yourself accept empiricism, but you wouldn't say you have faith in empiricism, right? You would say that your faith is in God. Nonetheless, empiricism says that you must breath, that you must eat, and that you mustn't jump in front of speeding cars. You accept all these empirical facts and many others, just like us.--Percy

Strange way of phrasing your question, hard to know what you're really asking. If you're asking why the laws of physics seem to be the same across all time and space, then the answer is, "We don't know." Religious people throughout history and prehistory have often taken deep questions whose answer is "we don't know" and replaced it with "God did it." Why seasons, why phases of the moon, why tides, why the weather, why thunder and lightning, etc., religious people throughout history have replaced "we don't know" with "God did it." You're not doing anything different from cavemen marveling at the awesome power of their gods to light up the sky during a storm.Science doesn't know what caused the Big Bang or caused the laws of nature to be constant across time and space. Neither do you, and it chokes off discussion for you to repeatedly insist without evidence that God did it. What does it mean for the universe to move? Is English a second language for you, or are you just expressing yourself unclearly so no one can tell what you're saying and therefore can't argue with it.If you just mean motion of matter within the universe then say so. If you mean something else then say so. But at least string words together in an intelligible way. What does "the universe moves itself" mean? Not sure what you're trying to say here, but it is certainly true that within science there is no certainty. It's called tentativity. Our scientific knowledge is not certain but tentative, yet it *is* knowledge. For example we know that the gravitational constant is 6.674×10⁻¹¹ m³⋅kg⁻¹⋅s⁻², but only to four significant digits. We don't *know* it's actual exact value. Our knowledge of it is tentative, in this case meaning in an inexact or imprecise sense. Yet our tentative knowledge of its value is sufficient to guide rockets into space and to distant planets. Though our knowledge isn't certain or perfect, it is still knowledge. "Truth" isn't really a scientific concept. It isn't possible to know what you're trying to say. "The truth of the world"? "Something that upholds the world"? Who knows what "truth of the world means," but whatever it is you're trying to say, we certainly possess a great deal of scientific knowledge about the world. Maybe you should become a mystic.--Percy

There is no evidence of any cause of virtual particles or of the time of nuclear decay or of what state an entangled particle will take up once observed.Why are you offering useless evidence-free declarations of what you wish were true? It appears that you claim everything has a cause simply because you think it supports other things you believe true without evidence, so you simple declare, over and over again without support or rationale, that everything has a cause.Everything does not have a cause, so far as we can tell.--Percy

Yes, we have observed the core of Mars. For just one example, Mars’s core has been measured — and it’s surprisingly large.You seem unaware of how insipid your argument is. Everywhere we've looked throughout the universe the laws of nature appear the same, yet you're hoping that the places we haven't yet looked could contain different laws. Good luck with that. The one who's demonstrated the least knowledge is you. You never seem able to muster an argument of the form, "The world is this way because..." The best you can do is, "The world is this way because I say so."So how did you arrive at this truth? Evidence-based arguments only, please, if you don't mind.--Percy

Your "this is all a dream" argument would invalidate your own position and says you don't believe that, so why would you say it?You're obviously avoiding the topic. Stile explained that we can see natural laws being followed everywhere we look, and his phrasing was tentative, so why would you ask, "How do you know the laws of physics never changed?" when he very carefully explained our knowledge is consistent with observation yet still tentative.You're also responding to detailed arguments with single sentences that tend toward the cryptic. Please stop approaching the discussion this way and participate in good faith. There are people here interested in discussing the topic, but you seem to be trying your best to stymie them. Will you discuss in good faith or just prove you're still the same messed up kid inside?--Percy

And you believe this why? What is your evidence that God didn't change? Giving something a label isn't evidence. The OT God or the NT God? For the OT God I think Job all by himself is a sufficient example. For the NT God there's the cursed fig tree and the death of Ananias and Sapphira. It's all in the Bible, as you like to say as if it settles anything. Oh, I guess those poor OT people deserved the anger and retribution, had it coming. Too bad they didn't live in the NT era of greater love and compassion. Ah, so much love. That's as good an argument as, "It's in The Hobbit." Your argument that "there is no possibility that God in caprice would violate nature's Laws" is still a bald declaration without evidence. You don't even have evidence that God exists, yet you're claiming he's the cause of everything.--Percy

You appear to have lost the thread of your own argument. You argued that everything has a cause. My language that you're pointing to only indicates that we have no evidence of any cause for certain things. Therefore, how do you know they have a cause? You don't say. So all you're saying is that things that don't exist also have no physical laws. How is that relevant to whatever point you're making? I don't believe there's anything to understand. It's that you don't understand that your internal religious mumbo jumbo is nonsense to others. That was very clarifying in showing hopelessly confused you are. No, the laws of physics are not constrained by logic and math. Logic and math are human constructs. They are used to model reality and can in no way constrain it. Many of our mathematical models are highly accurate and can be used to predict what will happen, such as the time and affected area of an eclipse, but they don't control reality. You're confused again. It was AZPaul3 who called you a pessimist, when you said that whatever caused the cosmos might also cause its destruction. How is "I believe in a loving God" in any way a response about the universe's eventual demise, which you yourself postulated. It seems that in your thinking there's both physical reality and non-physical reality. If that's correct then how could we inhabitants of physical reality become aware of things in non-physical reality? Please describe this process in detail. Not impossible, I suppose, but you're way out on a speculative limb, and to what purpose? The sun could go nova tomorrow and wipe us all out, but how is that speculation an argument for anything? Nobody here has said anything that would support this conclusion. You say this not because you have any support for it but because your religious mindset needs it to be true. It's based upon nothing.What people have actually said is that we accept that for which we have evidence. Provide the evidence that caused you to accept what you think true about reality and we might accept it, too, depending upon the quality of the evidence. "The Bible says so," is not evidence. True. Are you implying that unlike us you *have* made observations of non-physical reality? No one here has provided any support for this statement. Where we lack knowledge we say we don't know. Saying that all evidence we have supports the constancy of physical laws across time and space is not the same thing as saying that we know physical laws are constant across time and space. We're saying the former, not the latter, and you are continually confusing the two. Since your premise was wrong, so are your conclusions. What we've observed of you so far is that you reject evidence from "the physical world, which this God has created," when it conflicts with your personal beliefs about God.--Percy

You had a couple replies to this already, but I'm a sucker for nonsense posts and can't resist. Your original statement was, "Nothing can begin without a cause; the beginning of something is not in itself, therefore an outside being or object began it."? Jar called this nonsense, and in response you argue that your God has no beginning and no end. How is that even relevant, let alone a rebuttal? We accept that the universe had a beginning because the evidence tells us it had a beginning, not because it is animate. Until Hubble's evidence of an expanding universe it was thought eternal. You're using "non-physical reality" in two different ways. Sometimes you use it to refer to God and his realm, and other times, like now, you use it to refer to conceptual ideas like logic and math. God and heaven are not the same kind of thing as logic and math. I don't think you should use the same term for both. Do you think you maybe left out a few steps of logic and argument there? You're just declaring things true without evidence. You're preaching, not discussing. We are not congregants in your church but equals in a discussion. You keep forgetting that and revert to making baseless declarations in the manner of fanatical street corner preacher. This is word salad, signifying nothing. If you think that was logic then you are very confused.--Percy

God, over and over. Christian, no, the universe is not limited by logic and math. Claiming it is over and over and over again will not change that.Your post is the same nonsense word salad you've been repeating for a while now. People have tried to explain that it is filled with gaps in reasoning and logic and isn't based on anything we actually know, but you ignore all that and just say it again. Would you please stop repeating yourself and attempt to engage with what people are telling you?--Percy

This thread accelerated since I posted yesterday afternoon and I don't think I'll be replying to most posts, but this caught my attention: You're like a chess player who can't see more than one move ahead. When a response demands that you recall the conversation back more than one post, you get lost. How is the universe limited by logic and math? Please tell us. The world wants to know.In other words, your answer (and many of your answers) completely misses the point.--Percy

You're following the dictum, "Always change a losing strategy," which is one of the few signs of rational thought you've demonstrated in this thread. But abandoning irrational declarations to instead engage in misrepresentations of what people say probably isn't advisable. Go back to irrational declarations until you can think of something better.AZPaul3 never said minds are not required for the universe to make sense. He said the universe exists regardless whether our minds are present or not. "It was here before us. It will be here after us." That's pretty clear.I don't understand why you persist in arguing. It isn't that we disagree with you. It's that you're not even making any sense. You've expressed no rational position that people can assess, especially given your preference for bald declarations lacking any evidence. You have made a number of statements that can clearly be identified as wrong, but that's about it.--Percy