jayriginal:

When you ask me if I observe something, and I do, I say yes. If you then take it to mean that such a thing extends to what I cannot observe and what I know you could not have possibly observed, then I must ask you how you acquired your knowledge.

As far as cause and effect and a material universe is concerned, there are things to consider.

Much like the early man would have been reasonable to suppose gravity is a universal law, we know better now. So also your precious cause and effect. Theres nothing currently to show that it applies Universally. That is as I say, a compositional fallacy, wherein you infer the whole from a part.

You must then show that at the singularity from whence the Universe was said to commence in present form, and the same point when physicists agree that our laws of physics as we know it were broken down/did not apply, at this very point, you have to show that this natural law of cause and effect was applicable then.

All, before you show that it was god that did it.

A daunting task, I think.

jayriginal:

Cheers. Good ribbing.

Deep Sight: You have every reason to support the notion I lay out - - ->

- - - > because it is illogical to speak of something happening [an event: the expansion] to a body [the singularity] if that body does not already exist!

Do phenomena occur to non-existent things?

No: they occur only to things that ALREADY exist - in one form or the other.

And in this alone rests the entire matter! Awfully SIMPLE!

This is so simple it is boring having to repeat it over and over: and that was why I referred you to all those threads and posts, but it seems you drew nothing therefrom.

(Please do note that this also covers a scenario - which you suggest - whereby expansion occurs at the same moment of the said singulatrity coming to exist: as it could not "come to exist" from nothingness: it must needs have still come to exist from something already existing: since it is not intangible or self existent.)

That is for you and I: FINITE beings living in a material world.

Note also: that you say: "can only be measured." Note the word - "measure". It applies only to the finite. Measurement is not the issue here: existence is. Not all that exists can be measured: only the finite can.

Please try using a measuring tape to measure the decreasing decimals of space between atomic or sub-atomic particles. You cannot measure such. Does that mean that such infinite space does not exist?

That sorts your issue here.

Deep Sight:

Can you tell me if it is an assumption or a compositional fallacy to state that all planets in the universe will have some gravitational pull about them.

Can you tell me whether we have observed all planets in the universe.

If I say to you that planets have a gravitational pull about them - is that an assumption, or is it a valid statement arising from what we have seen about planets?

(Reuters) - An odd planet the size of Neptune, made mostly of hot, solid water, has been discovered orbiting a nearby star and offers evidence that other planets may be covered with oceans, European astronomers reported on Wednesday.

Called GJ 436b, the planet orbits quickly around a cool, red star some 30 light-years away, the team at the Geneva Observatory said.

"It's not a very welcoming planet," Frederic Pont, an astronomer who helped make the discovery, said in a telephone interview. The planet is hot because it is near its star and under high pressure because of its mass.

"The water is frozen by the pressure but it's hot. It's a bit strange -- we are used to water changing conditions because of temperature, but in fact water can also be solidified by pressure," Pont said.

The planet is also likely blanketed by hydrogen, the researchers said -- conditions hardly conducive to life. But if there is water, there could be water on other planets in other solar systems and thus life as we know it.

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2007/05/16/science-space-planet-dc-idUKN1621607620070516

Following from the example of planets and gravity above, so long as the singularity is matter, we can draw the same valid statements regarding causality. Remember I have explained severally how matter can not ever be said to be self existent as well. This also shows why the singularity cannot be self existent and as such is subject to cause and effect.

Particularly, the event of the expansion underlines this fact.

Not so really. Recall we have also discussed this. I have said to you and others severally that matter, necessarily not being self existent must be caused. Nothing is its own cause and as such matter cannot be caused by matter and thus it must be caused by an immaterial element. Which is what God is described as.

The desciption of GOD is key here. We are not talking Santa Claus, Zeus or Yahweh. We are talking an element we describe as the compound of necessary self-existent components.

PhysicsQED:


I simply don't see why if there was no existence, there would need to be time.

Anyway, the discussion we had was interesting. Later.

Deep Sight:


Just answer this question: Do phenomena occur to non existent things?

jayriginal:

Because planets have mass, they should have gravity. That is a reasonable statement to make, but one should be wary when making exclusive statements. While it is unlikely that one will find a planet without any gravitational pull, strange things have been known to happen in science.

Deep Sight:

It appears our very logical friends are unable to answer this question!

Deep Sight:

As regards Cause and effect, I honestly don't know where to start with you. Everything you have written about solid water speaks NOTHING. Solid water will be caused under a variety of causes. Cold could be one, pressure could be another, there could be others. All of these simply disclose causes and causality for phenomena. It just beats me silly that anyone can dare to question causality in material phenomena. It is the most ridiculous notion ever: far more ridiculous than any religious supposition: and as far as I am concerned it emanates from a pathetic desire to ape scientific Joneses. A desire to seem to be on the side of modern nonsensicalities.

Cause and effect is far too intrinsic to reality for the sort of notions you have been bandying about to be taken seriously. Sometimes I wonder if you really understand the implications of what you are advancing. That things may just exist - - - > magically, without cause - when these things are material finite things. I honestly cannot see how u want me to argue against such nonsense. I sit back and wonder if you are really contemplating what you are saying carefully.

Overall: this statement: you are yet to contemplate: "Anything that BEGINS to exist has a cause".

My friend; something that begins must be triggered. This is so obvious i actually feel sick having to say it.

Enjoy.

mkmyers45:

I have question Deep Sight....

The term 'the uncaused' cause how plausible is it? Is such a cause's existence immemorial?

Deep Sight:

Does eternity exist? What caused it?

Deep Sight:

As regards Cause and effect, I honestly don't know where to start with you. Everything you have written about solid water speaks NOTHING. Solid water will be caused under a variety of causes. Cold could be one, pressure could be another, there could be others. All of these simply disclose causes and causality for phenomena.

It just beats me silly that anyone can dare to question causality in material phenomena. It is the most ridiculous notion ever: far more ridiculous than any religious supposition: and as far as I am concerned it emanates from a pathetic desire to ape scientific Joneses. A desire to seem to be on the side of modern nonsensicalities.

Cause and effect is far too intrinsic to reality for the sort of notions you have been bandying about to be taken seriously. Sometimes I wonder if you really understand the implications of what you are advancing. That things may just exist - - - > magically, without cause - when these things are material finite things. I honestly cannot see how u want me to argue against such nonsense. I sit back and wonder if you are really contemplating what you are saying carefully.

Overall: this statement: you are yet to contemplate: "Anything that BEGINS to exist has a cause".

My friend; something that begins must be triggered. This is so obvious i actually feel sick having to say it.

Enjoy.

jayriginal:

Oh yeah. As a sophist, it may speak nothing. Be aware though that I sought to show disparity with the norm.

(By the way, I might as well make a caveat:

Im not in the habit of announcing my intake of strong waters, but even I saw the evidence in my last posts. I borrow a leaf from my mentor Deep Sight and hic . . . my way through this.

NOTE to Deep Sight:
thou shalt surely burn to cinders for this . . hic . )


No friend, its apt. Until you have seen a universe begin. And even after that. . .

As far as scientific Jones' are concerned, I dont need 'em. Whichever way science swings, I rely on me. I'm cocky like that. At the very least, I take excessive pride in my deep humility .


I advance nothing. I ask simple questions.

How do you know that your beloved cause and effect is of UNIVERSAL application. How do you know that it applies where physicists agree that it shouldnt ?


Its obvious to you, because your mind is limited. Not to me. I have contemplated the statement before our first headlock, and it does not ring true as of yet.
Open your mind.

jayriginal: Nice read Martian, though the article only differentiates between two schools of thought.

truthislight:
actually, it seems it is you that needs to open your mind.
Even simple natural laws are desroyed by you.
What really have you said?
Educate me.
Cus i have learnt noting from you.
NGash!
(whom the Gods want to kill they first make them man)

Martian:

Yes, it's only two but I think the neccesitarian view contributes to some people's opinion about the "neccessity" of things happening in certain ways .

Martian:

Is english your first language?

truthislight:

actually, it seems it is you that needs to open your mind.

Even simple natural laws are desroyed by you.

What really have you said?

Educate me.

Cus i have learnt noting from you.

NGash!
(whom the Gods want to kill they first made them mad)

jayriginal:

Interesting. The whole "laws of nature" issue persuades some to insist that there must be a "law giver".

Leads to some pretty flawed reasoning.

PhysicsQED:

You seem to have misread me. What I was saying by "if there was no existence, there would not need to be time" is simply that the idea of time being necessary independent of the singularity's existence doesn't make sense to me; as I have already stated repeatedly, I don't believe in that absolute external Newtonian timeline that you believe in. I thought that the meaning would be clear from the context in which I made the statement. Our positions on time seem irreconcilable so, once again, later.

Deep Sight:

I should also say how sad I find it that some people imagine that "Newtonian" is now a term for archaic or false or disproved laws or science.

And this, when the Quantum Physics in question is and remains, so far, at best sketchy speculation around ill-understood precepts.

PhysicsQED:

You seem to have misread me. What I was saying by "if there was no existence, there would not need to be time" is simply that the idea of time being necessary independent of the singularity's existence doesn't make sense to me; as I have already stated repeatedly, I don't believe in that absolute external Newtonian timeline that you believe in. I thought that the meaning would be clear from the context in which I made the statement. Our positions on time seem irreconcilable so, once again, later.

jayriginal:

No, Newtonian is physics on one scale and quantum physics is on another scale.

mkmyers45:

What do you think?

Eternity is a tricky topic to handle as i believe time as being perceived hence we could be in an eternal cycle but we perceive it not to be so...

Deep Sight:

The question is if there is a barrier from which time begins and a barrier at which it ends.\

That is inconceivable.

This means that yes, somethings are indeed uncaused: intangible self-existents such as time.

jayriginal:

No, Newtonian is physics on one scale and quantum physics is on another scale.

Deep Sight:
It is worse because th "Quantum Physics", which is the new beautiful bride is anything but confirmed or understood as yet, and it in fact presents many illogicalities so far - as advanced by many current physicists. There is just no way it is time yet to begin to discard well known laws (e.g: material cause and effect) in favour of imaginary Quantum voodoo. Not there yet.

Quantum mechanics is the body of scientific principles that explains the behavior of matter and its interactions with energy on the scale of atoms and atomic particles.

Classical physics explains matter and energy at the macroscopic level of the scale familiar to human experience, including the behavior of astronomical bodies. It remains the key to measurement for much of modern science and technology; but at the end of the 19th Century observers discovered phenomena in both the large (macro) and the small (micro) worlds that classical physics could not explain. Coming to terms with these limitations led to the development of quantum mechanics, a major revolution in physics.

Some aspects of quantum mechanics can seem counter-intuitive, because they describe behavior quite different than that seen at larger length scales, where classical physics is an excellent approximation. In the words of Richard Feynman, quantum mechanics deals with "nature as She is — absurd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_quantum_mechanics

Quantum mechanics (QM – also known as quantum physics, or quantum theory) is a branch of physics dealing with physical phenomena at microscopic scales, where the action is on the order of the Planck constant. Quantum mechanics departs from classical mechanics primarily at the quantum realm of atomic and subatomic length scales. QM provides a mathematical description of much of the dual particle-like and wave-like behavior and interactions of energy and matter.


Quantum mechanics and classical physics

Predictions of quantum mechanics have been verified experimentally to an extremely high degree of accuracy. According to the correspondence principle between classical and quantum mechanics, all objects obey the laws of quantum mechanics , and classical mechanics is just an approximation for large systems of objects (or a statistical quantum mechanics of a large collection of particles). The laws of classical mechanics thus follow from the laws of quantum mechanics as a statistical average at the limit of large systems or large quantum numbers

Since its inception, the many counter-intuitive aspects and results of quantum mechanics have provoked strong philosophical debates and many interpretations.

The Copenhagen interpretation - due largely to the Danish theoretical physicist Niels Bohr - remains the quantum mechanical formalism that is currently most widely accepted amongst physicists, some 75 years after its enunciation. According to this interpretation, the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics is not a temporary feature which will eventually be replaced by a deterministic theory, but instead must be considered a final renunciation of the classical idea of "causality". It is also believed therein that any well-defined application of the quantum mechanical formalism must always make reference to the experimental arrangement, due to the complementarity nature of evidence obtained under different experimental situations.

Albert Einstein, himself one of the founders of quantum theory, disliked this loss of determinism in measurement. Einstein held that there should be a local hidden variable theory underlying quantum mechanics and, consequently, that the present theory was incomplete. He produced a series of objections to the theory, the most famous of which has become known as the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox. John Bell showed that this "EPR" paradox led to experimentally testable differences between quantum mechanics and local realistic theories. Experiments have been performed confirming the accuracy of quantum mechanics, thereby demonstrating that the physical world cannot be described by any local realistic theory. The Bohr-Einstein debates provide a vibrant critique of the Copenhagen Interpretation from an epistemological point of view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics#Philosophical_implications

The Copenhagen interpretation is an attempt to explain the mathematical formulations of quantum mechanics and the corresponding experimental results. Early twentieth-century experiments on the physics of very small-scale phenomena led to the discovery of phenomena which could not be predicted on the basis of classical physics, and to the development of new models (theories) that described and predicted very accurately these micro-scale phenomena. These models could not easily be reconciled with the way objects are observed to behave on the macro scale of everyday life. The predictions they offered often appeared counter-intuitive and caused much consternation among the physicists—often including their discoverers.

Many physicists and philosophers have objected to the Copenhagen interpretation, both on the grounds that it is non-deterministic and that it includes an undefined measurement process that converts probability functions into non-probabilistic measurements. Einstein's comments "I, at any rate, am convinced that He (God) does not throw dice." and "Do you really think the moon isn't there if you aren't looking at it?" exemplify this. Bohr, in response, said "Einstein, don't tell God what to do"

Steven Weinberg in "Einstein's Mistakes", Physics Today, November 2005, page 31, said:

All this familiar story is true, but it leaves out an irony. Bohr's version of quantum mechanics was deeply flawed, but not for the reason Einstein thought. The Copenhagen interpretation describes what happens when an observer makes a measurement, but the observer and the act of measurement are themselves treated classically. This is surely wrong: Physicists and their apparatus must be governed by the same quantum mechanical rules that govern everything else in the universe. But these rules are expressed in terms of a wave function (or, more precisely, a state vector) that evolves in a perfectly deterministic way. So where do the probabilistic rules of the Copenhagen interpretation come from? Considerable progress has been made in recent years toward the resolution of the problem, which I cannot go into here. It is enough to say that neither Bohr nor Einstein had focused on the real problem with quantum mechanics. The Copenhagen rules clearly work, so they have to be accepted. But this leaves the task of explaining them by applying the deterministic equation for the evolution of the wave function, the Schrödinger equation, to observers and their apparatus

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Interpretation