Multiverse - Higgs boson - String - Anthropic Principle

[Deleted member 848]

You know what puzzles me about believers? It is the fact that their gods must remain within the restraints of the believer's mind.

Even when I was a Muslim, I never once tried to distort this scientific theory or that, in order to shape it into my mold of god. The Quran proclaims that the pursuit of science is among the most noble of causes, because even if humanity was to spend eternity unraveling the works of Allah, they would only be able to extract a single grain of sand out of the mountain that is all knowledge.

But when I became an atheist, I was surprised to see that I was in the minority, even as a believer. People's gods can only create things whole. It cannot create life through biological evolution. Or maybe it set up the natural mechanisms that allow evolution, but they did not set the up any natural processes for abiogensis. And when people's god's are grand enough to have done that, surely they only used natural processes up to the point of the big bang.

How can anyone be contended in a god that only created most things through mechanistic know-how, but a few things through unknowable magic. Why can't god be truly grand? Why couldn't he have created the universe in an infinite multiverse. Why can't that multiverse be but a sliver of something even more magnificent. Why bother putting chains on your gods at all?

Intwesting points, particularly the bolded part.

 

[The Midnight]

You know what puzzles me about believers? It is the fact that their gods must remain within the restraints of the believer's mind.

Even when I was a Muslim, I never once tried to distort this scientific theory or that, in order to shape it into my mold of god. The Quran proclaims that the pursuit of science is among the most noble of causes, because even if humanity was to spend eternity unraveling the works of Allah, they would only be able to extract a single grain of sand out of the mountain that is all knowledge.

But when I became an atheist, I was surprised to see that I was in the minority, even as a believer. People's gods can only create things whole. It cannot create life through biological evolution. Or maybe it set up the natural mechanisms that allow evolution, but they did not set the up any natural processes for abiogensis. And when people's god's are grand enough to have done that, surely they only used natural processes up to the point of the big bang.

How can anyone be contended in a god that only created most things through mechanistic know-how, but a few things through unknowable magic. Why can't god be truly grand? Why couldn't he have created the universe in an infinite multiverse. Why can't that multiverse be but a sliver of something even more magnificent. Why bother putting chains on your gods at all?

Wow.. OK I didn't know you had a Muslim background/upbringing. That's good to know, appreciate you telling us that.

I don't think I've ever said we're contend with God being constrained in any way. Nobody here is dismissing the multiverse as being impossible - simply because nobody knows how "God" created it all. I'm simply saying - be cautious in how you use what we know of this Universe, to make inferences/predictions about what was here before matter, space & time began.

I also agree with what you said about Allah in the highlighted part above.

 

[One Brow]

Something about humans I don't think One Brow has an answer for. . . . . but let's see. . . . .

Anything that I have every answer for is a small field indeed.

 

[One Brow]

Humans living because of fine tuned universe requires no explanation. The universe being fine tuned still does.

I don't know that the universe is fine-tuned. For all I know, the various dimensionless physical constants of our universe (fine structure constant, coupling constant, etc.) are the only possible, mutually consistent values for these constants. So, before you can demand an explanation for fine-tuning, you must first prove fine-tuning is an actual phenomenon, as opposed to a hypothesis.

 

[One Brow]

The cosmological constant. If it was 1 part in 10^120 off one way or the other the universe would not even exist. The big bang would have collapsed on itself one way and the other way the universe would have expanded too fast the other way. 10^120 is a number so large that if you were to add up every single atom in the entire universe it would not even come close.

Please provide evidence that either variation is a physical possibility.

 

[Stoked]

You know what puzzles me about believers? It is the fact that their gods must remain within the restraints of the believer's mind.

Even when I was a Muslim, I never once tried to distort this scientific theory or that, in order to shape it into my mold of god. The Quran proclaims that the pursuit of science is among the most noble of causes, because even if humanity was to spend eternity unraveling the works of Allah, they would only be able to extract a single grain of sand out of the mountain that is all knowledge.

But when I became an atheist, I was surprised to see that I was in the minority, even as a believer. People's gods can only create things whole. It cannot create life through biological evolution. Or maybe it set up the natural mechanisms that allow evolution, but they did not set the up any natural processes for abiogensis. And when people's god's are grand enough to have done that, surely they only used natural processes up to the point of the big bang.

How can anyone be contended in a god that only created most things through mechanistic know-how, but a few things through unknowable magic. Why can't god be truly grand? Why couldn't he have created the universe in an infinite multiverse. Why can't that multiverse be but a sliver of something even more magnificent. Why bother putting chains on your gods at all?

This is hardly true of all believers. I do not pretend to know how or why God does things. "Believers" is a huge group of people and as I am sure you can imagine their opinions and thoughts on a higher power, and anything else, range from on extreme to another and cover everything in between.

 

[One Brow]

our current crop of atheistic believers in science do have faith in their perception and measurements and logical principles as a set they ferverntly believe to be "science". I'd say it's a kind of "blind" faith that disallows any other possibilities. . . . .

Only to the degree that such perceptions and measurements are independently repeatable, and that such principles provide results that can be tested. However, I completely agree that a decision to to limit reality to such phenomena is a philosophical position. It's not a position of faith, though, but one of the absence of faith. Every person takes a philosophical position on what types of knowledge can be trusted. Not all of those positions accept faith as a source.

 

[Stoked]

Only to the degree that such perceptions and measurements are independently repeatable, and that such principles provide results that can be tested. However, I completely agree that a decision to to limit reality to such phenomena is a philosophical position. It's not a position of faith, though, but one of the absence of faith. Every person takes a philosophical position on what types of knowledge can be trusted. Not all of those positions accept faith as a source.

I see an athiests stance that there is not a higher power as a sign of faith. Faith that there isn't. Why you ask? Because they cannot prove there is not a higher power anymore than I can prove there is.

 

[One Brow]

OK I'm not a scientist or a philosopher, but I just want to point out something:

- What is Science? Is science not simply a set of theories and laws derived from our observation about the Universe? (i.e., we know that the gravitational pull on earth is constant because each time we measure it, the number remains the same).

Ultimately, science is a process of learning more about nature/our universe.

- However, when one wants to understand the origin of the Universe, one has to investigate the conditions which "existed before the Universe".

- Is this then not where the limitations of Science is reached?

- How can we use our observations from this particular Universe to make inferences/theories/predictions about the conditions which existed before this Universe came to be?

That sounded like a big leap of faith if you ask me....

Some of the key philosophical position of science include homogeneity (the universe operates the same way everywhere) and isometry (measurements work the same everywhere). So, science speculates about the conditions before our universe by speculating that, in that previous existence, things worked basically as they do now. It's widely recognized as speculation, to my understanding.

 

[The Black Swordsman]

Please provide evidence that either variation is a physical possibility.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oO0QRUX4HGE

See video were Dawkins is exposed for his irrationality and irrational worldview.

The universe is fine tuned.

Steven Weinberg Nobel Prize in Physics even though an atheist admits this.

"Universe being fine tuned is clearly true"

 

[One Brow]

I see an athiests stance that there is not a higher power as a sign of faith. Faith that there isn't. Why you ask? Because they cannot prove there is not a higher power anymore than I can prove there is.

There are atheists who assert the notion of God is inherently contradictory/impossible, but they are a minority of atheists. I don't claim to have no evidence of the non-existence of God. I only say that, lacking evidence for God, I don't believe in God. No faith needed.

 

[One Brow]

See video were Dawkins is exposed for his irrationality and irrational worldview.

Nowhere in the video did it mention evidence that these universal constants can be different than they are. Being unable to prove they can't be different is not evidence they can be different. Where is your evidence they can be different?