Use of 'nothing' in origin of the universe talk = absurdity

[MrMongoose]

Actually, there is evidence against that theory. As we go back in time, that's when we get to the Big Bang. As I said, even time comes into existence at the Big Bang. So your "continuously to infinity in both directions of time" doesn't work. "Before" the Big Bang, there is no time.

 

[/Quote]

 

What evidence is there that there of a single discontinuity before which time does not exist?

[iNow]

Big Bang theory only attempts to describe the universe physically to the actual event and no further. Anything farther requires further theory.

This is a good point. I think it would be worth while to, instead of calling it Big Bang Theory, call it the t₀ of the inflationary model.

 

 

 

Creationism has never shown to be wrong.

 

Actually, it has, on several (and I'm being kind, as it is actually most) accounts.

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/

[MrMongoose]

Surely if the big bang waas a single event, the universe would have no reason to expand. I've always thought of the big bang as an ongoing process at the centre of the universe.

[iNow]

I've always thought of the big bang as an ongoing process at the centre of the universe.

 

As was shown above, there is no such thing.

[mooeypoo]

It is a vacuum; vacuum has more than one definition, and the one that generally gets used in physics is "a region with significantly lower pressure than one atmosphere." You run into a problem when people want to use the definition of absolute vacuum, "a region that is completely empty" without acknowledging that they are using that definition.

 

You're absolutely right, I stand corrected.

 

However - that actually supports my point that the fact we use terms in a specific way, don't mean science "behaves" according to our language...

 

 

~moo

[Fred56]

Can you prove all of that?

 

You mean, all of this? (slightly expanded):

"There was no 'time' before the Big Bang, there was no 'before', either. The "Big Bang" wasn't an "explosion" like a bomb going off in empty space, because there was no 'empty space'. There was absolutely nothing (something we have to give a label, because we're simply unable to conceive 'nothing' -it has to be "something" so we can 'picture' it). There was no 'where', or 'how' either.

 

There's some radiation "out there" (the CMB), which we can't explain other than as the remnant of the condensation of lots of energy into mass, the formation of nucleons and hydrogen atoms, some helium, and a bit of antimatter. These all released lots of photons of energy, which we see as a very "stretched out" form of radiation because the cosmos has been expanding for ~15b yrs." [/me]

 

Sure, all you have to do is reverse the expansion by reversing the direction of time (entropy), and winding the clock back. Wait for ~15b years, and everything should go back to "where" it was before, eventually disappearing (along with time and everything else), up its own spout; and Bob's your uncle (or auntie, as the case may be).

 

Alternatively, you could try a "short-cut" by going to the nearest black hole (the one at the galactic centre should do the job), and flying your spaceship past the event horizon; you will observe the universe shrink to the size of roughly a dinner-plate, and eventually a small dot, just about when the tidal forces from the singularity rip you and your spaceship apart, and time stops altogether.

 

Piece of cake.

[iNow]

Piece of cake.

It certainly was fluffy, but it wasn't "proof."

[Fred56]

It's a set of instructions (a method), which should work, according to what we understand. If he followed the instructions, the universe and time would disappear.

I'll jump to the conclusion here that you've never read anything about this particular kind of "thought experiment" before.

[iNow]

It's a set of instructions (a method), which should work, according to what we understand. If he followed the instructions, the universe and time would disappear.

You can "jump" anywhere you want. You need to replace the word "would" above with the word "might."

[doG]

You mean, all of this? (slightly expanded):....

 

Piece of cake.

 

A simple "No, I can't support my position" would have been sufficient.

[revprez]

This is a good point. I think it would be worth while to, instead of calling it Big Bang Theory, call it the t₀ of the inflationary model.

 

The Big Bang isn't "t_0" of cosmic inflation, the namesake event takes place some 10^-35 s before the inflationary period.

 

Actually, it has, on several (and I'm being kind, as it is actually most) accounts.

 

http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/

 

This is a list of arguments defending prevailing science from creationist attack. The last three sections which actually deal with positive creationist claims do not attempt to falsify them, but point out their inconsistency with prevailing theory and or find defect in their claim to scientific credulity. On several occasions, the authors decide to substitute their own strawmen in place of creationist criticisms and claims.

[jedaisoul]

Then you need to learn to use logic. Your conclusion would be that there cannot be an effect. Hence, your conclusion is that the universe cannot have started (since the change from non-existent to existent is an effect).

My logic is not faulty (nor yours); we are starting from different assumptions. You are defining the universe coming into being as a change from non-existent to existent, which you regard as an effect. If that is correct, then of course you are right. But if, before the universe came into existence, there was nothing, there was nothing to change. So I would maintain that the coming into existence of the universe is not a "change" as such. Change began once the universe came into existence.

 

Also, you are putting words in my mouth. I did not say that the universe "cannot have started". I say that its beginning was not necessarily caused by any prior entity or event. That is a very different claim.

 

Strawman. I said nothing about men in monkey suits.

That was not a strawman, I did not attribute the "man in a monkey suit" to you. It was merely an example. But if you or others take it as a strawman, then I would apologise. That was not my intention.

 

To hold the view that the universe came from nothing is the most likely explanation, you would have to prove that that is more likely than from it to have come from the flying spaghetti monster, invisible pink unicorn, collision of branes, and anything and everything else I could think of.

I have done.

 

But that is your assumption. If there is something before (as the conservation laws might imply), then there could be causes and effects.

 

a) That is your interpretation of the conservation laws. I would suggest that:

i. The law of conservation of matter is only an approximation.

ii. The "mainstream" view is that the law of conservation of energy does not apply before the universe came into existence. The big bang theory does not define what (if anything) existed prior to the big bang, nor is it contingent on there being anything to cause it.

 

b) I have acknowledged that there could be cause and effect in the coming into existence of the universe. I just don't think that it is the most likely explanation, and I have explained why. We are going round in circles here.

 

How about you jump off a cliff? After all, the laws of gravity are nothing more than mental abstractions that describe the behaviour of this universe, no more real than the law of cause and effect.

You are using the term "real" in a different way than I am. I am defining "real" in what I understand to be the accepted scientific usage, i.e. it describes something that physically exists in the universe. As such laws and theories do not exist. They are mental abstractions that describe expected or observed behaviour of real entities. Thus the behaviour of objects that we attribute to "gravity" is real, and jumping off a cliff would likely be hazardous, but the law of gravity is just a codification of that behaviour pattern. I would suggest that you are equating abstract concepts to the physical behaviour they describe.

 

How about this: if a prime number never became prime, than it would not be prime. What is wrong with the concept of "it has always existed"?

There are two flaws in this statement:

a) A prime number did not "become" prime. To become prime would suggest that at some prior time it was not prime.

b) As with "laws of nature", it may be common parlance to speak of prime numbers as "existing", but scientifically speaking, they do not exist. Therefore, they cannot have "always existed".

 

However, I would assure you that you are not alone in regarding abstract concepts as somehow "existing". No less a man that Carl Gustav Jung believed that archetypes actually existed. For example, he believed that there was an "archetypal" horse somewhere that defined "horseness". It is by comparing an actual horse to this archetype that we recognise it as a horse. That is not accepted today as being scientifically, or philosophically, valid.

 

I hope that explains my thinking.

[THoR]

You're demanding that it always be the simple logic that you can comprehend, and frankly, that's crap. Nature is not compelled to behave in a way that you understand or find logical.

 

If I interpret something in nature that infers 1+1=3 it must be a matter of misinterpretation. It is my contention that the contemporary wisdom is based on misinterpretation...a.k.a. faulty reasoning. I can make a rabbit appear from a hat before your very eyes...what conclusion would you draw from that? Nature does not make mistakes, but she is a great deceiver.

 

Originally Posted by THoR

To think the miniscule corner of the universe we can detect with our puny technology is all there is to the cosmos is silly.

 

 

Irrelevant! What matters is what is supported by the observable evidence. All that's supported is the fact that "we don't know", nothing more, nothing less. To presume that there is or is not more to the cosmos than our universe is not science.

Sans the use of simple logic science would not exist. If the universe were finite then for any point in it there would exist another point within a finite distance at which movement in any direction would not increase the distance between the two.

 

Do you adhere to that concept? If so, then sail ye not too far into the Universe lest thou fallest from the edge.

 

 

 

Originally Posted by THoR

So, 'i' (sqrt -1) is LOGICAL?

 

Yes. That you may not find it logical is not the proper metric. There are rules to math; it's not arbitrary.

 

Show me one.

[swansont]

Show me one.

 

Addition commutes.

 

Creationism has never shown to be wrong. Only to be in the most prevailing cases unscientific. Creationism touches on subjects that can't be falsified by observation or experience, and the availability of a competing, more successful theory is not a measure of incorrectness.

 

This is off-topic in many ways.

 

We are not going to continue discussing this.

[Fred56]

“From Plato to Popper, philosophers have sought to identify those epistemic features which mark off science from other sorts of beliefs and activity. Nonetheless, it seems pretty clear that philosophy has largely failed to deliver the relevant goods. Whatever the specific strengths and deficiencies of the numerous well-known efforts at demarcation . . . it is probably fair to say that there is no demarcation line between science and non-science, or between science and pseudo-science, which would win assent from a majority of philosophers.”

 

(Larry Laudan, Beyond Positivism and Relativism (Westview Press, 1996), pg 210)

Is this where it isn't meant to be going?

“Falsification, for example, ... seems an especially problematic standard to apply to origins theories. So does prediction. Origins theories must necessarily offer ex post facto reconstructions. They therefore do not make predictions in any strong sense. The somewhat artificial "predictions" that origins theories do make about, for example, what evidence one ought to find if a given theory is true are singularly difficult to falsify since, as evolutionary paleontologists often explain, "the absence of evidence is no evidence of absence."

(The Scientific Status of Intelligent Design: The Methodological Equivalence of Naturalistic and Non-Naturalistic Origins Theories)

 

[revprez]

We are not going to continue discussing this.

 

Ask nicely, lil'man.

 

Is this where it isn't meant to be going?

 

Put crudely, the philosophical foundation of science, a system that is so overwhelmingly useful when applied in present with results tangible to most everyone, is less convincing when applied to matters in the unobservable (i.e., distant) past and future. Folks tend to grow suspect when others ferociously cling to an extrapolated glidepath based on theory that fits a limited data in an infinitesimally small time-gate compared to the larger epoch. I believe this was the motivation for parsimony in the first place.

[swansont]

Ask nicely, lil'man.

 

No, I don't think I will. Creationism is off-topic.

[revprez]

No, I don't think I will.

 

I didn't think so.

 

Creationism is off-topic.

 

The hell it is. Surely in a discussion in the Pseudoscience forum that went to "first causes" by the second post, creationism is the elephant in the room. Try again, buddy.

[Mr Skeptic]

The hell it is. Surely in a discussion in the Pseudoscience forum that went to "first causes" by the second post, creationism is the elephant in the room. Try again, buddy.

 

Unless you care to show how it is impossible for the world to have been created by anything other than a sentient being, nobody is going to listen to you. If we turn this into a discussion of creationism, nobody will listen to the other side and nothing useful will come of it.

[swansont]

Even though it's the pseudoscience and speculation forum, it's still supposed to be science-based speculation and debunking of pseudoscience. If you don't like it, you may go elsewhere and discuss creationism.

[elas]

Nothing can be defined as a Zero Point – no mass, no charge, no dimensions. But a Zero Point can have the force of absolute vacuum,

 

That would mean that ‘something’ cannot exist until the Zero pint divides into points of lesser vacuum force. This could be where the Big Bang comes in. In order to separate the Zero Points, something (matter) has to be created in the space between Zero Points.

 

Infinity can never be devoid of matter because infinity has (infinite) dimensions. However ZPs can be drawn together by vortex action to create a super ZP that would repeat the Big Bang process. this is Steady state theory on a super cosmic scale, where the creation of galaxies in Hubble's Steady State theory, is replaced with the creation of universes.

[revprez]

Even though it's the pseudoscience and speculation forum, it's still supposed to be science-based speculation and debunking of pseudoscience.

 

Exactly. I'm debunking a Dawkinism, and after all how is this thread unrelated to the 747 gambit and everything gushing from it?

 

If you don't like it, you may go elsewhere and discuss creationism.

 

I very much like it, thank you.

 

Unless you care to show how it is impossible for the world to have been created by anything other than a sentient being, nobody is going to listen to you.

 

I have no intentions of validating creationism. If you prefer to be guilty of the same behavior Dawkins assigns his critics in theology, that's your look out. My point is simply that luc has not ruled out hypothesis 3. Nor has anyone else.

 

If we turn this into a discussion of creationism, nobody will listen to the other side and nothing useful will come of it.

 

Considering it's a discussion between mostly atheists, that says something about our intellect...doesn't it?

[lucaspa]

When the INTERPRETATION of experimental results by contemporary science flies in the face of that which is obvious to any sentient being, I tend to challenge the 'unconventional wisdom'.

 

THoR, our "conventional wisdom" is severly limited by our evolution. We have evolved to perceive and have "common sense" about a very narrow range of the universe: that which involved the survival of our ancestors.

 

In science we test all of our ideas, even "conventional wisdom", against what the universe really is. You want to violate that principle: you want to impose your interpretation of what you think the universe ought to be -- "conventional wisdom" -- on the universe. This isn't looking for truth, it is trying to impose your prejudices on truth.

 

You interpret what you see to be a particle - like a photon - but it is also a wave...well....sort of...well...or maybe not...see what I mean.

 

This isn't interpretation. It's conclusion from the data. The reasoning is: if a photon is a particle, then it will behave in a particular manner in particular circumstances. We see that the photon does so behave in those circumstances. If a photon is a wave, then it will behave in a particular manner in other circumstances. The photon does behave as a wave in those circumstances. Therefore, conclusion: the photon is both a particle and a wave.

 

The same phenomenon can be easily explained IF instead of intuitively assuming (interpreting) you are observing a particle you understand that what you see is just the simple propagation of change (energy if you wish) through space

 

Expand on that. What is a "simple propagation of change through space"? Chane from what to what?

 

Most phenomena can be interpreted MANY ways. Only one is correct. And it is usually the one which corresponds to the precepts of simple common sense and logic.

 

That's often not the case. Again, our "common sense" is evolved for objects about our size and speed. Phenomenon that operate outside that very narrow range of our unaided perception logically do not have to correspond to our precepts evolved for that range.

 

The appearance that clusters of material within our tiny suburb of the cosmos seem to be fleeing some epicenter does not mean the universe, itself, is expanding.

 

But it is NOT "our tiny suburb". It's the entire visible universe, which is 50 billion light years or more across.

 

It is also quite possible that the Universe is an infinity of enormous cosmic engines which alternately collapse and explode when they reach critical mass - forever mingling material with other adjacent engines.

 

That one won't work because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It also doesn't work because our universe doesn't have enough matter to collapse. True statements cannot have false consequences, and your statement has false consequences. Sorry.

 

I think this is a misrepresentation. My understanding of the big bang theory is that it does not define what existed before the big bang as being "nothing".

 

I said "nothing = no spacetime, no matter, no energy." That's a very limited definition of "nothing". Don't expand on that and try to make "nothing" anything more in this context. And yes, BB does say that in regard to our universe. Our universe started with the BB. IF anything existed "before", it was not our universe.

 

People who do talk about "before" the BB have entities other than spacetime/matter-energy. They all concede that spacetime and matter/energy came into existence at the BB. For instance, Bojowald with Loop Quantum Cosmology has a complete other universe "before" the BB. It's not our spacetime or matter/energy.

 

lucaspa: "Yrrg, Big Bang states that the universe has a beginning. That "before" that beginning there was nothing. In this context, nothing = no spacetime, no matter, no energy. All that came into existence at the Big Bang."

Big Bang theory says nothing of the sort, nor does it even attempt to. It is only concerned with the nature of the event that gave rise to the universe today. Period.

 

I refer you to Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and this article:

Lineweaver CH and Davis TM Misconceptions about the Big Bang, Scientific American 36-45 March 2005. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=0009F0CA-C523-1213-852383414B7F0147

 

The "nature of the event" is that spacetime and matter/energy all came into existence within Planck time = 10^-35 sec.

 

 

Kaku is simply pointing out that the universe may have begun from a slight perturbation in a false vacuum; basically, the ground gave out underneath a thermodynamically stagnant region of space-time. Before that happens, it is entirely reasonable to say that the universe is in thermal equilibrium and, consequently, there is no free energy to flow as heat or work.

 

I disagree that Kaku was saying anyting of the sort. The problem with perturbation in a false vacuum is that the vacuum is already in a spacetime. With BB you have to get spacetime too. That is not to say that BB is not the result of quantum fluctuation, but it cannot be the result of the quantum fluctuation you describe.

 

Creationism has never shown to be wrong. Only to be in the most prevailing cases unscientific.

 

No, creationism has been shown to be wrong. That happened in the period 1800-1865. Modern creationism is also falsified. What happened in court was something different -- making a legal determination of creationism. A court decided that creationism was not science. However, in reality creationism is a scientific theory (see below) and one that has been falsified by the data.

 

Creationism touches on subjects that can't be falsified by observation or experience, and the availability of a competing, more successful theory is not a measure of incorrectness.

 

Again, creation deals with subjects that can't be falsified by observation. But creationism is about areas that specifically can be, and has been, falsified by observation and experience.

 

"There is another way to be a Creationist. One might offer Creationism as a scientific theory: Life did not evolve over millions of years; rather all forms were created at one time by a particular Creator. Although pure versions of Creationism were no longer in vogue among scientists by the end of the eighteenth century, they had flourished earlier (in the writings of Thomas Bumet, William Whiston, and others). Moreover, variants of Creationism were supported by a number of eminent nineteenth-century scientists-William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick, and Louis Agassiz, for example. These Creationists trusted that their theories would accord with the Bible, interpreted in what they saw as a correct way. However, that fact does not affect the scientific status of those theories. Even postulating an unobserved Creator need be no more unscientific than postulating unobservable particles. What matters is the character of the proposals and the ways in which they are articulated and defended. The great scientific Creationists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries offered problem-solving strategies for many of the questions addressed by evolutionary theory. They struggled hard to explain the observed distribution of fossils. Sedgwick, Buckland, and others practiced genuine science. They stuck their necks out and volunteered information about the catastrophes that they invoked to explain biological and geological findings. Because their theories offered definite proposals, those theories were refutable. Indeed, the theories actually achieved refutation. In 1831, in his presidential address to the Geological Society, Adam Sedgwick publicly announced that his own variant of Creationism had been refuted:" Philip Kitcher, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism pp125-126.

 

"There is a more interesting-if equally significant confusion running through much of Ruse's discussion, a confusion revealing a further failure to come to terms with the case I was propounding in "Science at the Bar." I refer to his (and Overton's) continual slide between assessing doctrines and assessing those who hold the doctrines. Ruse reminds us (and this loomed large in the McLean opinion as well) that many advocates of creation-science tend to be dogmatic, slow to learn from experience, and willing to resort to all manner of ad hoc strategies so as to hold onto their beliefs in the face of counter evidence. For the sake of argument, let all that be granted; let us assume that the creationists exhibit precisely those traits of intellectual dishonesty which the friends of science scrupulously and unerringly avoid. Ruse believes (and Judge Overton appears to concur) that, if we once establish these traits to be true of creationists, then we can conclude that Creationism is untestable and unfalsifiable (and "therefore unscientific").

This just will not do. Knowing something about the idiosyncratic mindset of various creationists may have a bearing on certain practical issues (such as "Would you want your daughter to marry one?"). But we learned a long time ago that there is a difference between ad hominem and ad argumentum. Creationists make assertions about the world. Once made, those assertions take on a life of their own. Because they do, we can assess the merits or demerits of creationist theory without having to speculate about the unsavoriness of the mental habits of creationists. What we do, of course, is to examine the empirical evidence relevant to the creationist claims about earth history. If those claims are discredited by the available evidence (and by "discredited" I mean impugned by the use of rules of reasoning which legal and philosophical experts on the nature of evidence have articulated), then Creationism can safely be put on the scrap heap of unjustified theories.

But, intone Ruse and Overton, what if the creationists still do not change their minds, even when presented with what most people regard as thoroughly compelling refutations of their theories? Well, that tells us something interesting about the psychology of creationists, but it has no bearing whatever on an assessment of their doctrines. After all, when confronted by comparable problems in other walks of life, we proceed exactly as I am proposing, that is, by distinguishing beliefs from believers. When, for instance, several experi-ments turn out contrary to the predictions of a certain theory, we do not care whether the scientist who invented the theory is prepared to change his mind. WA do not say that his theory cannot be tested, simply because he refuses to accept the results of the test. Similarly, ajury may reach the conclusion, in light of the appropriate rules of evidence, that a defendant who pleaded innocent is, in fact, guilty. Do we say that the defendant's assertion "I am innocent" can be tested only if the defendant himself is prepared to admit his guilt when finally confronted with the coup de grace?

In just the same way, the soundness of creation-science can and must be separated from all questions about the dogmatism of creationists. Once we make that rudimentary separation, we discover both (a) that creation-science is testable and falsifiable, and (b) that creation-science has been tested and falsified-insofar as any theory can be said to be falsified. But, as I pointed out in the earlier essay, that damning indictment cannot be drawn so long as we confuse Creationism and creationists to such an extent that we take the creationists' mental intransigence to entail the immunity of creationist theory from empirical confrontation." Larry Laudan, "More on Creationism", Chapter 24 in But Is It Science? Edited by M Ruse pp 363-366

 

Perhaps Swansout will let us start a new thread going over the scientific data that falsifies creationism.

 

BTW, we can deal with the past in the same manner. Remember, the present is the way it is because the past was the way it was. Unless, of course, you wish to deny cause and effect. However, you might also consider that nearly all scientific experiments happen in the past. The very recent past, but the past. For instance, I am doing an experiment where I am looking at adult stem cells healing a bone gap in rats. However, I am not "looking at" it directly. I am putting the stem cells in the gap and waiting 8 weeks. When I euthanize the rats and look at the bone, the bone gap is gone. I didn't see this happen directly. It happened sometime in the past 8 weeks. But the present -- the condition of the gap -- is what it is now because of what happened in the past (those 8 weeks).

 

Unless you are videotaping animal behavior or something similar, then all fo science deals with past events and the inferences that we make of what happened in the past.

[revprez]

I refer you to Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time and this article:

Lineweaver CH and Davis TM Misconceptions about the Big Bang, Scientific American 36-45 March 2005. http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=0009F0CA-C523-1213-852383414B7F0147

 

The "nature of the event" is that spacetime and matter/energy all came into existence within Planck time = 10^-35 sec.

 

Neither your article or Hawking's popular text supports this conclusion in anyway. And one Planck time unit is 5.391 x 10^-43 seconds, a nearly a full eight orders of magnitude larger.

 

I disagree that Kaku was saying anyting of the sort.

 

It's precisely what he's saying, whether you agree or not.

 

The problem with perturbation in a false vacuum is that the vacuum is already in a spacetime. With BB you have to get spacetime too.

 

Once again, Big Bang theory says nothing of the sort--the nature of events prior to one Planck time unit after the event lie entirely outside of the theories scope. Furthermore, not even the singularity theorems derived from carrying general relativity back to t_0 do away with a manifold's dimensionality or differentiability; it simply shows that curvature goes to infinity as you get closer to t_0.

 

That is not to say that BB is not the result of quantum fluctuation, but it cannot be the result of the quantum fluctuation you describe.

 

Says who?

 

No, creationism has been shown to be wrong. That happened in the period 1800-1865. Modern creationism is also falsified.

 

Various creationist claims in biology and geology were falsified and criticisms rebutted in the 19th and 20th centuries, none of them bearing directly on the creation hypothesis. Until that is done, Creationism has not been falsified, let alone shown to be wrong.

 

What happened in court was something different -- making a legal determination of creationism. A court decided that creationism was not science.

 

I've already pointed out that the supernatural term in the hypothesis renders is untestable and therefore unscientific. That has nothing to do with whether or not it's wrong or whether the hypothesis has been falsified.

 

However, in reality creationism is a scientific theory (see below) and one that has been falsified by the data.

 

Creationism is most certainly not a scientific theory or hypothesis. Intelligent design, however, is--there is no explicit supernatural term and in principle the matter can be tested. It still may fail the test of parsimony, but even that would not amount to falsification--it merely means a simpler hypothesis explaining the relevant evidence exists.

 

Again, creation deals with subjects that can't be falsified by observation. But creationism is about areas that specifically can be, and has been, falsified by observation and experience.

 

This redefinition of terms you introduce has no history in either science or law. I can do the same thing, too, and redefine evolution to refer to the whole of a whimsical set of all personal definitions of the term.

 

Perhaps Swansout will let us start a new thread going over the scientific data that falsifies creationism.

 

You're free to start one.

 

BTW, we can deal with the past in the same manner.

 

I have no idea what inspired this tangent or where you're going with it.

[THoR]

THoR, our "conventional wisdom" is severly limited by our evolution. We have evolved to perceive and have "common sense" about a very narrow range of the universe: that which involved the survival of our ancestors.

 

In science we test all of our ideas, even "conventional wisdom", against what the universe really is. You want to violate that principle: you want to impose your interpretation of what you think the universe ought to be -- "conventional wisdom" -- on the universe. This isn't looking for truth, it is trying to impose your prejudices on truth.

 

 

This isn't interpretation. It's conclusion from the data. The reasoning is: if a photon is a particle, then it will behave in a particular manner in particular circumstances. We see that the photon does so behave in those circumstances. If a photon is a wave, then it will behave in a particular manner in other circumstances. The photon does behave as a wave in those circumstances. Therefore, conclusion: the photon is both a particle and a wave.

All conclusions are drawn from the interpretation of observations.

The conventional wisdom used to be that the world was flat.

The scholars of the day misinterpreted what they observed.

That continues today.

Expand on that. What is a "simple propagation of change through space"? Chane from what to what?

There are two basic phenomenon.

1) existence

2) change

Change is derived from existence (something must exist in order to change or be changed). Something can change in relative position or the relative sub-qualities of an existence can rearrange to a different state of being. Change is caused by differentials. Stimulus can be internal or external. When something changes, that change affects its neighbor. The change cascades down the chain of existence. It can be nullified by absorbtion. It can be diluted by distance in an inverse square proportion.

 

That's often not the case. Again, our "common sense" is evolved for objects about our size and speed. Phenomenon that operate outside that very narrow range of our unaided perception logically do not have to correspond to our precepts evolved for that range.

 

 

That one won't work because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It also doesn't work because our universe doesn't have enough matter to collapse. True statements cannot have false consequences, and your statement has false consequences. Sorry.

 

By definition, if the universe were finite then for each point in it there would exist another point within a finite distance at which motion in any direction would not increase the distance between the two. The DEFAULT assumption should be that the cosmos is INFINITE. Any other assumption requires substantiation. Today's scholarly pundits have it bass ackwards.

But it is NOT "our tiny suburb". It's the entire visible universe, which is 50 billion light years or more across.

(see above) The universe is infinite. There is no ALL. There is no ENTIRE. There is ALWAYS more. The largest integer you can imaging divided into infinity yields a quotient of Ø. Actually that doesn't mean anything really. Just like sqrt -1 has no meaning. What is 2blue^slow X apple?