immortal

This argument is not something new, the Nyaya school of philosophy existed around 2nd century and deals with logical reasoning. However, you cannot subscribe God as the first cause for the origin of the universe because the existence of God is not self-evident and hence doesn't constitute as a proof. There is only indirect evidence for God.

This is a clear indication of your lack of understanding on how evolution by NS works. Speciation happens due to reproductive isolation and wastage of gametes.

Thanks! I'll remember that. Being a layman I don't know how to judge his arguments. I'll wait for the theory and the results to get a clear picture.

You better do that you cannot set up something similar like SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) called as SDI (Search for Divine Intelligence). That's not the way to communicate with God. Is there a difference between testability and falsifiability? Of course you are not arguing for a way to falsify the Abraham God but you are making the claim that such a God is not untestable. Many theists believe that they should update their faith based assertions with the new discoveries of Modern Science, its silly to think that God used Big Bang and DNA to create the Universe and to design life, this is the reason I strongly criticize Intelligent design. Religion is a completely different magisteria there is no connection of religion with modern science.

In the mean time, yesterday I did further reading on this topic. Is this something to do with the Holographic principle? In the above article P.C.W Davies talks about the status of the Laws of Physics and the "the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the physical sciences" as it was said by Wigner. The traditional approach to view the laws of physics and matter is kind of like this. A. Laws of Physics --> matter --> Information. Here mathematics is viewed as "platonic forms existing in their own realm" and space-time is ontological. According to the Holographic principle, information is ontological and it is the basis of the universe. C. Information --> Laws of Physics --> Matter. So he goes on to say that with this approach the universe is self sufficient and self consistent because "universe computes with in the universe". What we call mathematics is nothing but information processing with in the cosmological system and hence the notion of mathematics exists in their own platonic realms is not required. This leads to an ontological problem of Information as to "what those bits are" and space-time originates as complex computational states and I don't know how this fits with the geometry of space-time. In the experiment they say that they are going to measure two signals from two interferometers and if all noise is eliminated and if they find that both the signals appear encoded or same then that will be the indication that 'space=time is digital' and again I don't see just by observing some correlations with signals how can you conclude that "universe computes with in the universe". Is the universe computable or non-computable? If it is computable then How can we see the truth value of Godel's statements while turing machines fail to do so. Thank You.

The scriptures should be understood through revelations and not through empirical testing, however I agree with your claim that the God of Abraham is falsifiable or testable and if he intervenes in human affairs then he might be irrelevant for science but not irrelevant in our fundamental reality. God was talking about the angels and they doesn't necessarily have to be made of the "light" of science, they could've been made of any other kind of stuff. Yes, I agree, he can be separate from science and yet exist in his own realm and also intervene in human affairs.

I think Pope Leo XIII is absolutely right, when God said "Let there be Light" he is definitely not talking about the 'photon' light which Einstein is talking about in his theories, there is no reason to assume that the scriptures are describing the natural observable world and start asserting that it contradicts science, that's not the way to falsify a religion.

If you have a new theory or an idea you have every right to start a separate thread in the speculation forum but you cannot do that in this thread.

If you are interested in further research you can take up higher studies but its sufficient for a graduate. Conventional symbols and signs are used to universally comprehend the concept in a simple language, theoretical physicists build and come up with ideas and engineers develop technologies to test those ideas and both are impeding constraints on each other physicists put constraints on engineers on what can be built and engineers put constriants on physics on what ideas can be tested and falsified. Its not much of a problem to think both like a physicist as well as an engineer. Its good to be optimistic even I am, but perhaps you should be aware that nature puts restriction on us as to what can be known, its the inherent nature of nature which is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle which leads to the measurement problem, that's a restriction on how much you can know with detail. Quantum decoherence is a problem for researchers in the field of quantum computing and in the design of quantum computers. I just passed by IISc and yes I am very much aware of that.

I took PCMB( Physics, Chem, Math and Bio) as my combination in my 12th standard and with in the first four semesters for computer or information science courses you will be taken through a basic course on Physics and on electronic circuits ( MOSFET's, CMOS and other electronic devices) and in the fourth semester the 8086 microprocessor architecture is introduced. Hardware education is quite good in India.

In quantum physics everything is quantized or discrete(digital), I don't know on what basis you are saying its improbable. Anyways I don't want any personal speculations or your own theories in this thread, I've already heard enough of that, I just want to hear what is the consensus by the current physicist community on this one. How feasible is such an idea? Does it have the potential to solve the puzzles in physics?

I read this interesting article on Scientific American from the RSS feed of my blog. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-space-digital Can any physicist give me a picture of how the results of that experiment is going the change the way we think about what fundamental reality is and what will be the consequences or the new physics and possibilities that is going to emerge if space is indeed found to be digital? I read the article and the comments and I am not really getting any picture at all and it has confused me even more. Thanks.

From a practical point of view Metaphysics is a place to dump your unfalsifiable notions, ideas, concepts and theories. It neither means those concepts are correct and real nor it means they are incorrect and unreal. Metaphysical concepts don't always remain unfalsifiable and as time passes they become falsifiable and useful.

Its disturbing that at one point they say that its incorrect to apply probabilistic models to the origin of life since we don't know all the factors and the various degrees of freedom and they themselves apply probability and say that the origin of life is not so improbable. What Yockey's arguments indicates is that "If natural selection was not acting from the point of origin of life up until now then origin of life is unsolvable for current science because natural selection is one of the major natural force which can accumulate new information and for this nature needed a self-replicator in the first place. This was the whole point of the discussion in this thread, isn't it, there is a clear distinction between saying "First walk on water and then I will listen to your explanation" and saying "First walk on water and then I will give merit to your explanation". It seems most of the arguments of members here(including your arguments) are of former type and there is really no point in even to have a philosophical discussion with these members. Conflicts do arises in such a case for example- When someone asks in a religion forum about "What is Perfection? Has anyone had thoughts about this before?" The answer to that question is Yes, there were great thinkers all along human history who had pondered over such questions and if I introduce how different philosophical schools thought about Perfection from the below set of categories. Philosophical_schools_and_traditions Category:Ancient_philosophical_schools_and_traditions and then members like you conclude fore hand and put a constraint on such thoughts just because those thoughts doesn't fit with natural sciences, this is the scientific attitude and its appropriate to display such an attitude in the scientific speculation forums but its not appropriate to display the same attitude while discussing in philosophy and religion forums where one is arguing about metaphysical concepts which cannot be falsified through the scientific method and therefore any arguments against such metaphysical concepts will not be scientific arguments instead those arguments are personal opinions. If some members are not interested in philosophy and metaphysics and if members think it is just a waste of time and no useful knowledge comes out of metaphysics then its just fine, you can criticize such schools but you need to know that those are your personal opinions and beliefs and even your arguments have no merit what so ever while discussing metaphysical issues. This is my whole point. Karl Popper said the metaphysics of this century might very well be the science of next century. Its about Intellectual honesty, one should be honest about as to what science can answer and what it can not and how much it claims to explain nature.

Of course this is the reason why most of Biology is not an exact science, just because we cannot imagine what selection pressures were acting at the time of pre-biotic earth it doesn't mean that life couldn't have originated through natural processes, however Hubert Yockey is arguing from the point of physics and mathematics and I find his arguments quite compelling and its enough to look for alternative methods to exactly know how life originated rather than simply writing a story of speculation which looks similar to any other creation story in all evolution books written by evolutionary biologists. That's my personal endeavor, you can happily admit that the scientific method cannot answer some of the important philosophical questions, you might say its irrelevant and its not required but that doesn't satisfy my intellect, for example:- If you are a physicist you can not be in peace with out explaining how quantum entanglement works, i.e with out explaining how and why such correlations arise in nature, this was just a small example which I gave to you and this is what quantum physicists like Bernard d Espagnat criticize the positivism of science. When western scholars like Max Muller and Griffith started investigating ancient eastern schools of philosophy they lacked revelations and the practical knowledge which is required to understand and interpret those ancient texts but local Brahmins both had revelations and the practical knowledge and if these local Indian scholars are right then we have a new school of philosophical thought with its own methodologies. 1. The epistemological commitment will be that one is able to observe his own mind and this would be the commitment to the beilief that what you are investigating is the noumenon of the world and not the world which appears to us through the sense organs which Kant calls the phenomenon. 2. The metaphysical commitment will be that there is an objective physical world which is the actual external world as it is really out there and scientific realism will reduce to a state of mind and turns out to be false. So whether this is a waste of time or not depends on whether the ideas of these scholars are indeed true or not and that is something which needs to be investigated. I would be rather be happy if science could answer and comprehend nature in a complete and in a consistent way rather than wasting my time in some kind of new philosophical thought but at this point I think such an investigation is worth it. Why don't you apply the same flow of logic that you applied for defending origin of life through natural processes, just because you cannot imagine the possibility of how miracles can happen it doesn't mean it cannot happen and reject it out right, of course with in a fore night I cannot start walking on water. You can always criticize and question my beliefs, that's the whole point of a religious forum but you cannot ridicule and reject my beliefs with out allowing me to discuss about it because you need to understand that your arguments are based on belief too and its not a scientific fact. The examples which you have mentioned here requires explanations, that's why I brought it up, you can not pretend as though there is no problem at all. Real altruism, qualia, ontology, moment of origin, life, conscious thought are real genuine problems for any school of current philosophical thought.

I meant that we are not in the age of Enlightenment. The world has not changed much from that span of time.

The main objection of Hubert Yockey is the origin of meaningful prescriptive information which is a common attribute of a Genome through any known natural processes. This is the reason he thinks that the origin of Genome is an unsolvable problem for current science is concerned. According to Landauer any information represented in a physical form (for example:- DNA in the Genome and Transistors in Computers) is constrained to the laws of statistical mechanics and hence any logical irreversible operations has to emit waste heat and there by account for increase in entropy. This is true. In computer science erasure of information = = storage of information. There is no difference between the two processes, its just we place "Null" for erasure or deletion of information or we place a definite value for any new information. As you can see there is no violation of any law so as to why this process can't be done spontaneously in nature or by extracting free energy. This is also true but such a process cannot generate meaningful prescriptive information required in Genomes which couples with their specificity to generate stable functional proteins. Hence Hubert Yockey says a stochastic natural process which is not in any way concerned with the meaning of the information that it is erasing couldn't have led to the origin of Genome which contains meaningful information as its common attribute. The problem is with the origin of meaningful information and once Genome got originated there is nothing in physical law which prevents the genome from proliferating or losing its fidelity. At this point of human history neither science nor religion has any authority to make any positive assertions about metaphysics, we need a new metaphysical and epistemological commitment along with new methods to address metaphysical statements, if ideas like "platonic values exist in their own realm" still exist from the time of Plato up until today in the 21st century and there are other metaphysical ideas much older than Plato I just don't see any point in arguing about metaphysics and metaphysical concepts like God. This was the whole point of Copenhagen interpretation that any statements about the nature of the physical system is at best a meaningless statement because such a physical or metaphysical system could be anything, it doesn't necessarily have to be God and just because our wavefunctions have a high predictive accuracy its wrong to conclude about such a physical system either. This was definitely not the intention of Newton and Galileo when they first started the scientific endevour they thought that science could give a mechanical description of the universe but the aim of science seem to have reduced to a positivist approach and claims that ontology is irrelevant to science and therefore at this stage the aim of religious and philosophy forums should be to criticize those who misrepresent or strawman science and not make any positive assertions about metaphysics and metaphysical concepts like God.

Don't expect that I will change my mind and will be a part of your universal man made metaphysical religion worshiping dummy idol gods. I would rather study mystical traditions of the world and try to have revelations about them before believing in any of the Gods.

Irrespective of who taught what, the idea of merging other Gods and other religions and then merging it with modern science is simply a nutcase.

It might sound like a total waste of time to New Atheists but not for theologians, theology or any philosophy starts with dialectic and it is through dialectic we understand a philosophical doctrine, theology falsifies its statements through revelations and then through empiricism. If New Atheists are allowed to make any assertions about God then even I should be allowed to make theological or metaphysical assertions about God. There are alternate schools of philosophical thought which claims to address metaphysical questions which science cannot answer and I want to investigate them and not conclude things fore hand.

This is highly controversial, the origin of indus valley civilizations, origin of aryan and vedic traditions, origin of indo-iranian and indo-european languages and the creation of the world as dated in the Holy Bible don't harmonize well with each other, without reading good scholarly works its highly inappropriate even to start discussing these issues.

You neither get science right nor you get theology right, what can I give for someone like you, I'm not interested in your OP crap.

God is a metaphysical concept and the scientific method is ill equipped to falsify such a concept, there is nothing in scientific models which contradicts the existence of God where as theology is best suited to address metaphysical statements through the form of faith and revelations. Theology says "The light which is stimulating my mind is the same light which stimulates other minds". This is purely a metaphysical statement, the light which they are talking about is not the light coming from the sun, its a different light and its ridiculous to apply scientific methods to falsify theological claims. If theology is right you don't have authority over your own thoughts be rest assured as to what it can do.

Next time come up with something more interesting.

What's the purpose of this thread?