The existence of the universe requires a god

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The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #1

Post by JoeyKnothead »

From Post 136 here:
EarthScienceguy wrote: ...
The universe could not exist in the form that it is in unless there was an omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient God.
...
For debate:

Please offer some means to confirm the referenced claim is true and factual.
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Re: The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #31

Post by EarthScienceguy »

[Replying to Kenisaw in post #27]
You haven't answered the questions, and you haven't solved the contradiction. How does the god know it exists everywhere and at all times? How does any being know that there isn't anything left to know?
No, you are not understanding information theory. Information has to exist somewhere therefore there is no such information. Where is it that God could not exist or does not exist? So when you can find a place where God is not get back with me.

This nothing more than a straw man redundant argument. You claiming that God is not present in this universe. You cannot prove that so now you are trying to prove that God is not present somewhere that does not exist and that God does not know about. Saying that God does not exist somewhere that is not known is the same as saying that God is not beside you right now. It is the same argument. You have already stated that you do not believe there is a God so all you are saying in this argument is that you do not believe there is a God in a place that is not knowable. Wow, you already said that you did not believe there was a God. And now you are saying that you do not believe He is in a place that is not knowable.

I bet you also do not believe that God is around UY Scuti, or IC 1101. Ok you don't believe there is a God and you believe that God is somewhere that is not knowable good for you it proves nothing.
I never said time. You have not understood what I wrote if that is how you took it. I ask that you re-read it, and then comment on it. Since you still haven't answered the question about how you know that a god exists outside of space and time, you might want to cover that first. Then you can explain why my math doesn't show that living in the now means no existence at all.
What? That is what the whole infinity discussion was about.

You said:
Eternal: If a being is eternal it can never get to the point in it's existence where it creates a universe. It would take an eternity before it did that, and of course there is no end to eternity.
I exist. You exist (I think). Therefore something has to be eternal. Since we exist something has to have always had to exist something had to be the first cause of everything. In Sean Carroll's universe, it is a "mother" universe in which entropy moves in both directions. For Christians the first eternal cause is God. The discussion is not whether something is eternal or not. The question that everyone has to answer for themselves is what has existed eternally.

What eternal first cause do you believe that created this universe?
So why pray then? If we don't actually have free will (which we clearly don't if the future is already determined) then there is zero point to prayer. If a MGB is all knowing then free will is impossible. You were going to heaven or hell before you were born. You might want to explain the claims of miracles then too by the way, and also why prayers are sometimes answered. If prayer is to align our desires with the god, why do they sometimes work according to the claims of believers?
The block universe theory states: the universe is a giant block of all the things that ever happen at any time and at any place. On this view, the past, present and future all exist — and are equally real.

So the universe when the universe was created every point in space and every time in space was created at the same time. If nature created this block universe then there would be no such thing as free will. The only possible way for free will to exist is if there was a conscious being present at every point of time and space at the instant, it was created moving all the points simultaneously. So if you believe that there is such thing as free will you have to believe that God created the universe otherwise you bound to a randomly created universe.
What are you talking about? Where did I say that the past present and future do not all exist? I was pointing out that your claim about what Einstein said was false.
Kenisaw said:
Einstein did not say that. Here is where people get that from, in a letter he wrote to someone about the death of someone close (Michele Besso). “Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future only has the meaning of an illusion, though a persistent one.” He was not stating that the past, present, and future all exist at the same time. Einstein proved that time is relative, so that it can be experienced at different rates by different people, relative to each other. Each person would still experience time the same way, but it would appear that others were experiencing it either faster or slower. Everyone would still experience it though, and experience it in a certain direction. If it were possible for a person to travel at light speed then time would stop for that person, relative to others, but the trip (no matter how long) would be over the instant it began. At no point, however, do you experience BEFORE the trip at the same time AS the trip. Einstein knew this all too well since he figured out relativity.

EarthScienceguy said:

The Bible says that God is unchanging. Which would also be a natural result of being omnipresent? He does know the future. To God, the future is happening at the same time the present and the past are happening. And why would He change the future when He created the future at the same time He created the past and the present. This is why it has to be because Einstein's theory of relativity says that the past, present, and future all exist simultaneously.

So what did I say that was incorrect about Einstein's theory of relativity?

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Re: The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #32

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to JoeyKnothead in post #29]
I'm curious to know how you would consider this in terms of information.

I was thinking it's only really information on the perceiving, but William says or implies the information is there whether we perceive it or not.
I'm too much of a naturalist/reductionist to look at things too far outside of those boundaries. If a packet of photons or sound waves are traveling through space then they exist as those things indpendent of whether any eyes or ears happen to get in their way and intercept them for conversion into "information."

Light from the sun continuously hits Earth, but most of it goes elsewhere (Earth receives only about one one-billionth of it). Some of this light hits eyeballs indirectly (hopefully) via reflection and scattering, and in that case the photons can turn into information by ultimately creating electrical signals processed by the visual cortex to create the perception of an image. Some of the light may hit the leaves of plants providing a different kind of "information" as it is absorbed and participates in photosynthesis.

In both cases the energy contained in the original photons is converted into something else that is no longer a photon, but is produced from the energy contained in the photons. Whether this energy can be called "information" I'm not sure. I look at it as just a travelling EM wave (or as photon packets), that can interact with anything capable of absorbing light, scatter or reflect it, etc. If nothing gets in the way of the photons they will just keep going, carrying whatever "information" they contain along with them.

I would argue that "information" (to a human) is only created when the photons are processed by the apparatus of the eye, retina, optic nerve and visual cortex to create the perception of an image in the brain. Without that mechanism the photons are just photons as described by physics, and don't contain any "information" themselves (or maybe they could be said to contain "potential" information?).
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Re: The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #33

Post by William »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #28]
There are major differences between light and sound in terms of their mechanisms and how we perceive them.
Yes. Otherwise they would be called 'light' or 'sound' rather than light and sound.
Light can behave like a particle in some instances (eg. the photoelectric effect for which Einstein's explanation won him the Nobel Prize in 1921) and like a wave in others (eg. diffraction and refraction). Unlike sound, light needs no medium to travel in and is happy to propagate in a vacuum.
Light can be "happy"?
Vacuum is a medium.
Photons and vibration, both "happily" traverse the vacuum...there are no trees on the moon...

What they are in terms of how they are perceived as being 'completely different' does not take away the fact that they are information. I was arguing that, not saying they were completely the same thing...although in reality, everything in this universe is 'the same' thing...we are just examining parts of the same thing and calling those parts 'different'.

Different information about the same thing.

Things unheard can still be felt.

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Re: The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #34

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #32]
What eternal first cause do you believe that created this universe?
The definitive mechanism for how this universe came into existence has yet to be found. It is an unsolved problem, therefore any explanation involving a god being (of any description) is just another hypothesis waiting to be substantiated (or not). Ditto for the "Big Bang" and other ideas derived from modern physics and observations, although these at least have some observational support (unlike god beings). There is no proof that an "eternal first cause" is necessary.
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Re: The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #35

Post by William »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #33]
If a packet of photons or sound waves are traveling through space then they exist as those things indpendent of whether any eyes or ears happen to get in their way and intercept them for conversion into "information."
Nope. It is already information.
I would argue that "information" (to a human) is only created when the photons are processed by the apparatus of the eye, retina, optic nerve and visual cortex to create the perception of an image in the brain. Without that mechanism the photons are just photons as described by physics, and don't contain any "information" themselves (or maybe they could be said to contain "potential" information?).
Nope. Rather it is information which is then processed decoded understood. Otherwise you are arguing that it is not information until it is made into [created into] information.

Rather, the information of the various elementals [light and vibration] is that which creates...and created lifeforms on this planet which then were able to process said information and indeed - are still processing that information.

But it has always been information... In Formation.

Image

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Re: The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #36

Post by EarthScienceguy »

DrNoGods wrote: Tue May 18, 2021 1:06 pm [Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #32]
There is no proof that an "eternal first cause" is necessary.
How is this even a logical statement? If the universe had a beginning then something had to cause the existence of the universe. Unless you believe in some sort of static universe theory.

Open questions in science do not mean that we know nothing of the answer. We know the parameters that the open questions have to fall in, by observations that we can make.

According to Einstein's theory of relativity, there can be no such thing as free will without a creator God.

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Re: The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #37

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to William in post #36]
Nope. It is already information.


That depends on your definition of the word "information." A photon travels as an electromagnetic wave where the energy is continuously oscillating between electric and magnetic fields. It has certain characteristics such as an energy (E = h*v where v is frequency and h is Planck's constant), a speed in vacuum (c = 2.99792458e10 cm/s), and a speed in a material with an index of refraction n (c2 = c/n). What "information" does this represent for the "bare" photon.

Photons may carry information such as in the modern optical fiber based telecom system, but without the necesssary modulation and demodulation schemes, multiplexing, etc. the information provided by the system (eg. transmission of a photo) would not exist solely in the photons themselves. So a very different kind of "information" is formed by processing of the photons, whether it be the eye to visual cortex path in a human or the source to detector path (and all the associated electronics and optics handling) in a telecom system. What "information" exists in a single photon, by itself?
Nope. Rather it is information which is then processed decoded understood. Otherwise you are arguing that it is not information until it is made into [created into] information.
How do you then distinguish betweem "information" in a bare, single photon with the "information" that results from the processing of many photons (or even a single photon in some cases)? The perception of an image in the brain is information that results from a chain of physical processing steps between capturing light by the eye and the visual cortex creating the image perception. This perception of an image is not present in the photons when they entered the eye ... they have no "knowledge" of this potential image being produced so cannot be associated with that information (the image). They are simply the feedstock that the eye/brain path uses to ultimately create the perception of the image in the brain.
But it has always been information... In Formation.
Is this your definition of information then? That sounds like a completely generic definition where virtually anything that physically exists can be described as "information", if it can be used in any way to create other types of information. Not a particularly useful definition of information.
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Re: The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #38

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to EarthScienceguy in post #37]
How is this even a logical statement? If the universe had a beginning then something had to cause the existence of the universe.
How do you know the universe had a beginning?
Open questions in science do not mean that we know nothing of the answer. We know the parameters that the open questions have to fall in, by observations that we can make.
Exactly my point. There is some observational and theoretical support for a hypothesis like the Big Bang, whereas there is nothing of the sort for the hypothesis that a god being created the universe (or exists at all).
According to Einstein's theory of relativity, there can be no such thing as free will without a creator God.
What? How is that even a logical statement (to steal your phrase)? The TOR (Special or General) says nothing about free will, or creator gods.
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Re: The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #39

Post by William »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #38]
Nope. It is already information.
That depends on your definition of the word "information."
Nope. Definitions are simply ways in which the information is decoded. Definitions produce further information but the information defined might be incorrect.

So the correct thing to sound is "That depends on whether your definition of the information is the correct interpretation."

The "word" I N F O R M A T I O N is a sound which is then made into a symbolset, and as such the word "information" describes itself only as "Information" but not what the information is about.

1.
facts provided or learned about something or someone.
"a vital piece of information"
2.
what is conveyed or represented by a particular arrangement or sequence of things.


The universe is that which conveys the information at the same time as it is being the information.

The following is also information; - and factual information at that, as it can be verified through peer review. [Those whomake the effort]

The Human Brain
The Tree of Life
Information
Breakthrough
Incorporate
Insignificant
Encounters
To Accomplish
Do a Word Search
One Nine Two
Homo Sapiens
Unprecedented
Calculate a word's value
A photon travels as an electromagnetic wave where the energy is continuously oscillating between electric and magnetic fields. It has certain characteristics such as an energy (E = h*v where v is frequency and h is Planck's constant), a speed in vacuum (c = 2.99792458e10 cm/s), and a speed in a material with an index of refraction n (c2 = c/n). What "information" does this represent for the "bare" photon....
...What "information" exists in a single photon, by itself?
I often wondered how a scientists mind works and have discovered through that, that they focus on the things of the thing, rather than the thing Itself.
A photon travels
Yes and we have information through that. We observe that it travels. Thus we can say that it is propelled by some force to do so.
The force appears to be a vibration - and the vibration caused a shock wave which we can identify with as being "sound" for we would hear it if we could... for that matter we could also consciously feel it - again - if we could.

Here is a picture of such an event - curtesy of HubbleScope.

Image

And here is an image of a group of similar events.

Image

The common denominator appears to be what we 'see' as a background...and when we delve into the guts of the background we find information such as a "bare" photon...delve deeper and we find more information - until perhaps we discover the very first information to be formed from the source vibration.

This is why this was created.

Image

Something Makes Particles Accelerate so information is behind the information, but it is hidden information. We know what it does but we don't know what it is that is doing it.

We lack that information.

But we know that it produces vibration, which in turn, produces light as a consequence of the quantum field which is being vibrated upon.

Image

Some information has to be drummed into that which perceives [is capable of perceiving] said information...but a vibration that size will eventually get its way...

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Re: The existence of the universe requires a god

Post #40

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to William in post #40]
The universe is that which conveys the information at the same time as it is being the information.
So the universe is the information it is conveying? How does such a definition help in any way to understand what "information" actually is? It suggests that virtually everything in the universe is information, making the meaning of the word ambiguous.

Reminds me of the joke asking how many existentialists it takes to change a light bulb (Two. One to change the lightbulb and one to observe how the lightbulb symbolizes an incandescent beacon of subjectivity in a netherworld of cosmic nothingness). There are countless examples of such light bulb jokes, but when you have to answer the question for any particular entity doing the changing there is usually a simple answer that is not so ambiguous. I think your definition for the word information may be too loose to be useful when it comes to quantifying nature.

http://consc.net/misc/lightbulb.html
In human affairs the sources of success are ever to be found in the fountains of quick resolve and swift stroke; and it seems to be a law, inflexible and inexorable, that he who will not risk cannot win.
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