What or who created the universe?

[Bu]

I was reading a chapter in manuscript, which touched briefly on multiverses, too 

Holst wrote The Planets, Dr. Karl, and if String and M theory are true, I think a musical composition for Cosmic Space Bubbles will be necessary. 

[drogulus]

    An eternal Universe may not be what I'm describing. I'm proposing that all observable laws remain inviolate until new evidence suggests they are different from what we thought. In the case of relativity Einstein showed that new unforseen conclusions could be obtained simply by following features of known law to their logical conclusions. Then it was confirmed experimentally.

    The comparison with the worm isn't good. Worms don't have the equipment to ask questions or answer them, and we do. As for not being wired correctly, that's not true either. Though we aren't Turing machines the way he described them, our brains have become universal processors. What we lack is information to process, and over time we get that, too.

   

Something must be the ultimate explanation that is the basis for everything else.

     This is an argument for sticking with a bad explanation. If what you're trying to do is explain everything there's no "else" by definition. Either the explanation comes from the investigation of the properties and behavior of what we can see or there isn't one.

     The trick is to understand that explanations aren't absolute, and ultimate explanations will always tend to be fictional because of that. We don't have absolute knowledge, so everything is based on what we do have. We shouldn't just content ourselves with that, we should prefer it, because absolute claims are phony. I don't know why people who complain about partial knowledge want to jump to absolute claims. Reliable but incomplete knowledge is much better even if it doesn't give us everything we want.

     All real knowledge is incremental, built up from the bottom, tied into the web of previous discoveries. That's why the bogus tends to leave clues to its bogosity. It just sits there blinking in the sunlight, unconnected to anything else. All the magic, secret, esoteric crap is like this, and the jump to the absolute is like this, too. If we never get answers by the incremental route, the absolutes won't help us either. So I'm in favor of getting what we can and not worrying too much about what we can't get.

[Andante]

Yes, sir, I post here too.

I don't have all the "credentials"/technical know-how to judge what is happening at the forefront of theoretical physics,

Oh, BTW, I haven't come across the idea of two time dimensions. Do you have a link or something?

I do not have required credentials either just a fascination with cosmology, I will check out your links, the link re 2 time dimensions etc  By Tom Siegfried
http://www.physorg.com/news98468776.html

[greg]

Is it possible that the universe actually wraps around on itself, sort of like an Escher print? This would eliminate the "what's past the universe" question, after all.......

[arkiv]

Then, is it possible to travel through time?

[drogulus]

Is it possible that the universe actually wraps around on itself, sort of like an Escher print? This would eliminate the "what's past the universe" question, after all.......

     Yes, either in this way or some other we don't understand yet. If space and matter are not infinite they must have some kind of borderless continuity, like a balloon.

[Andante]

Then, is it possible to travel through time?

Depends upon what you mean?  I would think that you would not be able to go into the future because it has not happened yet we are in the present which is the [front???] of time, and if you could go into the past, then this would alter the present and throw up all sorts of anomalies, but some one will say yes

[Andante]

There is no such concept of proof in science.  You have evidence that supports or falsifies assertions, no more, no less.  What do you mean by educated or informed?  You can't use appeal to authority in science, either you have supporting evidence or you do not.  Even the greatest minds of science will not have their opinions taken on good faith.

By educated or informed, I meant based on accepted facts that are used to form an opinion or theory,  but you will no doubt rubbish that idea, when you say there is no concept of proof in science I assume that you mean although an event has been observed to happen as predicted every time,  does not mean that the next time will be the same ?

[greg]

Depends upon what you mean?  I would think that you would not be able to go into the future because it has not happened yet we are in the present which is the [front???] of time, and if you could go into the past, then this would alter the present and throw up all sorts of anomalies, but some one will say yes

Wouldn't you disintegrate going that fast, though?

[karlhenning]

Ubloobideega.

[Homo Aestheticus]

AND I AM AN ATHEIST!

Please remember that  Plato  himself made references to the gods, or the god and the 'divine'.

[karlhenning]

Ah, yes. I remember a long time ago when there were a lot of this kind of threads on GMG.

Invariably they wound up getting locked, due to acrimony.

Why anyone would want to discuss this on a music forum is anyone´s guess.

Happily, these threads are generally fewer these days.

[karlhenning]

Are we sure it wasn't karlhenning?

I wasn't available at the time.

[springrite]

I wasn't available at the time.

But they DID find your glove there.

[Homo Aestheticus]

The unmoved mover is an argument only fit for children and naive simpletons.

Naive simpletons ? Really ?

Personally, I will take the thoughts of Plato and Arisotle over yours anyday...

Quote:

While Plato assumes God exists as the ultimately good (but not omnipotent) being, Aristotle questions God's active role in the universe and claims that nature depends upon an immaterial Supreme Being. For example, he cites natural genesis and the perpetuity of movement as evidence of God's immaterial existence, and he implies that God is a self-sufficient, compelling force for both nature and man.

[Harry]

The question really is, should I send in the Firemen?

[DavidW]

Pinkie, do you want me to more precisely and politely express my opinion, okay--

After thousands of years of deep thinking from great minds, only a simpleton in this day and age would still think that the archaic unmoved mover argument was logically valid or clever.  After all great minds used to think that the heavens revolved around the Earth, but certainly only a simpleton would believe that would still be the case just because great minds of the past had seemingly good arguments why.

A child could pierce the flaw in the logic, and all of the great names trotted up for defense can not save such a silly idea.

And keep in mind that I have no problem with theists, I have problems with theists making facile, pseudo-logical arguments to support their beliefs.

[Homo Aestheticus]

And keep in mind that I have no problem with theists, I have problems with theists making facile, pseudo-logical arguments to support their beliefs.

Yes, like the totally sick and abhorrent practice of infant circumcision by orthodox Jews.

As someone who believes in the existence of a supernatural being (though NOT in the Judao/Christian one), I found the results of this Oxford researcher several weeks ago a bit comforting:

Why is belief in supernatural beings so common? Because of the design of human minds. Human minds, under normal developmental conditions, have a strong receptivity to belief in gods, in the afterlife, in moral absolutes, and in other ideas commonly associated with 'religion' ... In a real sense, religiousness is the natural state of affairs and children generate religious ideas quite naturally, as a result of the way our brains have evolved....

Unbelief is relatively unusual and unnatural... You have to indoctrinate someone into being an atheist.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2008/nov/26/religion-psychology-barrett

[Bulldog]

Yes, like the totally sick and abhorrent practice of infant circumcision by orthodox Jews.

Where did you get the notion that only orthodox jews practice infant circumcision?  Not only don't you know your facts, you also show a whimp-like attitude about the practice. 

[drogulus]

      There's no reason to prefer the ancients to modern thinkers. Our thought is based on theirs and extends beyond it. Otherwise you're just treating them as authorities. No one is an authority in that way.

     

Unbelief is relatively unusual and unnatural... You have to indoctrinate someone into being an atheist.

      This is wrong. In different cultures beliefs without rational/empirical foundation tend to predominate among the uneducated and taper off as you go up the scale, though you have to get close to the top to find a predominance of pure naturalism. Even there you find many believers.

      Indoctrination plays a tiny, inconsequential role in the phenomenon of unbelief in most societies. Most atheists/agnostics grow up in families with conventional beliefs, and a smaller number in families where religion is not practiced. In the latter case the absence of conditioning certainly has an impact.* Yet it seems clear to me that what happens in late childhood or early adolescence often occurs whether conditioning is present or not. It's likely that several factors are working together here: High intelligence, absent or unusually ineffective conditioning, and some form of genetic predisposition related to suggestibility. There are probably different pathways to get there.

     The very different Communist-inspired atheism probably is fated to fade with the rest of the ideology, and I expect unbelief in formerly Communist countries to follow a pattern more like what's found elsewhere. The Communist model has not produced a single atheist/agnostic thinker of note. I conclude that the model that predominates in religious or Communist communities and families can't replicate what happens to a young person who discovers a natural worldview.

    _{* The biggest impact is the lack of trauma. When you say you're an atheist no one is shocked, though they might be puzzled, since most non-belief takes the form of not going to the races if you don't bet on horses.}