Whats the reason for this belief?

[Scrotum]

We all know that the majority of the worlds population is ´stupid´, to simplify. But how come so many educated people, with capacity to think, still believe in gods?

Instead of talking about gods specifically , i would like to use the Tooth Fairy as a substitute, as there is no difference, and shows the ridicule of the whole thing.

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Both John/Harvey & Otsent believe in the Tooth Fairy. Otsent believes in a specific Tooth Fairy, together with John, whom is more of a fundamentalist, Whiles Harvey is more close to a Different Tooth Fairy.

None of these people have any proof or logical based evidence for the existence of their Tooth Fairy. None at all. They simply state he or she exist, and thats the end of story.
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Why?
Personally, i always presumed the contemporary belief of a Tooth Fairy to be because of fear. Death is a scary thought for most people (remember, the general population is ignorant, and ignorance brings fear), and also the fact that you would be forced to take responsobility for your life,which the existence of the Tooth Fairy removes.


Whats your view?
Why do you think people believe in such things? Is there other reasons then fear and plain ignorance?

[harvey1]

Although I was hypothesising the 15D Universe without explanation I was not simply asking you to accept it popped into existence as a brute fact, I was making no mention as to how this 15D manifold came into being.

Sorry for my confusion! I thought that your reference to the 15D Universe went back to my comment about a contingent 15D Universe was atheistic if it is taken to be a brute fact. In the case that you just presented, the 15D Universe could be atheistic or theistic depending on the reason on how it is said to exist in the first place. "Just is" without explanation is atheistic, and "God did it" is of course theistic (just as an example).

My point is that you suggest that you are epistemically justified in saying how the Universe came to be, whereas I do not feel justified in saying how the Universe came into existence.

I'm justified in believing rational accounts versus irrational accounts of the world, regardless of when and under what circumstances those rational accounts and irrational accounts encounter each other. It has nothing to do with whether something is true or not, although my assumption is that rational accounts are much more likely to be true than irrational accounts, it's just that irrational accounts do not have a justifiable quality about them, so they are to be ignored if a rational account can be provided.

I reject that on the grounds that I want to know why everything exists

I've never really understood this question. Asking why the Universe exists pre-assumes that there is a reason for it, as if it were a machine to serve a purpose.

A question with the word "Why?" can have several meanings, including whether there was any intention included in the reason. However, that's not how I meant that question. I want to trace the cause of something to the point to where every element of that cause can be explained in terms of some rational account. If I'm told at some point that no rational account can be given because the Universe is irrational, then I'm not satisfied with that answer because it makes an assumption that I'm not willing to make, nor do I feel justified in making of the Universe.

I find it distasteful that I'm being requested to believe that some complex features of the world do not have a scientific, or at least mathematical, explanation.

I am not you to accept brute facts nor suggesting that the the Universe is explained by a non mathematical nor scientific process. I am merely saying that I do not feel it is justifiable to provide an explanation as to how the Universe came into being and how the physical constants came to be the values they are until we have a greater understanding or a better proveable hypothesis as to the natural laws.

I think this statement here confuses a general notion of the Universe as an explanandum with a specific notion of the Universe as an explanandum. Sure, there are many specific details that are lacking in our understanding of the Universe, perhaps many of those things we will never know. However, as a general notion we can and must address what kind of explanans are required in order to provide a rational account of the Universe as an explanandum. Explanans that depend largely on seeing this explanandum as irrational (or holding an agnostic position because of this conceivability) are not acceptable because they are not valid epistemic positions one ought to take when confronted with a problem.

Imagine if I said that I am not sure if there are space aliens that stuffed Florida ballot boxes which allowed George Bush to win in 2000, and that I said that we ought to be epistemically open to that conceivability. Would I be holding a justified position? I hope you agree that I would not be. So, what changes in our epistemic stance with regard to the Universe as an explanandum?

[QED]

Okay, I realize we hold different philosophical positions on this, and in order to make progress on this, let's get back to the issue on how this independence can come to exist. In this case, the baby universe has behavior that is fully dependent on the metauniverse, and if there are no necessitated laws that dictate the behavior of the metauniverse (just brute fact behavior), then how can there be independence from this general brute fact behavior of the metauniverse? It is like saying, in my opinion, that if the behavior of our universe suddenly changed, our galaxy would not experience these changes because our galaxy is independent from the larger universe. That seems absurd to me because our galaxy is part of the universe, just like our universe must be part of a metauniverse. If the whole system changes, then this affects the individual parts too.

Obviously there are many causal connections between Galaxies and the universe they inhabit. What causal connections exist at singularities though?

[harvey1]

Obviously there are many causal connections between Galaxies and the universe they inhabit. What causal connections exist at singularities though?

I'm not sure if a singularity is a physical reality or just some conceivable outcome of having an incomplete knowledge of the laws of physics. However, assuming that a singularity actually existed, then wouldn't this rule out our universe as originating as a baby universe? Afterall, a singularity is the state where the laws of physics breakdown. In that case, our universe is not independent from the Universe.

[QED]

I'm not sure if a singularity is a physical reality or just some conceivable outcome of having an incomplete knowledge of the laws of physics. However, assuming that a singularity actually existed, then wouldn't this rule out our universe as originating as a baby universe? Afterall, a singularity is the state where the laws of physics breakdown. In that case, our universe is not independent from the Universe.

I think you'll find Quentin Smith takes this up here . Sorry I can't elaborate right now, I'm supposed to be elsewhere (as usual )

[harvey1]

I think you'll find Quentin Smith takes this up here . Sorry I can't elaborate right now, I'm supposed to be elsewhere (as usual)

Okay, let's assume Quentin's proposal that a Kerr vacuum black hole singularity really isn't a complete breakdown of natural laws, then to answer your question: "What causal connections exist at singularities though?" the causal connection in this case is:

Quantum gravity ideas are inherently sketchy and imcomplete. Which shall we choose? I will select the Euclidean quantum gravity approach of Hartle and Hawking, since this theory, by virtue of Hawking's application of it to black holes, will allow us to have the theory we have been seeking.

And, as we know from Quentin's other article:

This requires a sort of "platonic realism," but such a realism is required by quantum-gravity cosmologies in any case (as most popular books by physicists on these cosmologies have recognized). Further, Michael Tooley31 has given good arguments that a Platonic-realist theory of laws of nature is required by science in general... As I mentioned, some writers of popular physics books are aware that quantum-gravity cosmology requires a Platonic-realist theory of probabilistic laws of nature... Pagels poetically grasps the need for a Platonic-realist theory of natural laws in the Hartle-Hawking model (and the early Vilenkin model) in this passage... Apart from the usage of "void," the last three sentences convey with a relative poetic clearness the fact that Vilenkin's, and Hartle and Hawking's, cosmologies require a Platonic-realist theory of laws of nature, since the wave function of the universe is a functional law of nature.

So, how can there be this independence of which you speak of?

[QED]

Okay, let's assume Quentin's proposal that a Kerr vacuum black hole singularity really isn't a complete breakdown of natural laws, then to answer your question: "What causal connections exist at singularities though?" the causal connection in this case is:

Where does he propose this?

This Kerr vacuum black hole is not to be confused with the popularly discussed Einstein-Rosen bridge that connects two pre-existing universes [Smith, 1990: 41]; such a bridge invovles two Schwarschild vacuum black hole singularities in two asympotically flat regions of a Minkowski spacetime that connect and form a transient worm-hole between the two spacetime regions. This familiar idea will not help us, since it presupposes rather than explains the existence of the two spactimes that are connected by the wormhole.

The Kerr vacuum black hol gives us a basis to work from, since neither [Smith, 1990] nor [Smolin, 1997] ever explained how a theory of a black hole exploding as a big bang can be mathematically described by a solution to Einstein's equation. For example, Smith [1990: 41] says the major problem with his theory is that "there is no known solution of the equations of GTR that shows a singularity of one of these sorts [i.e. a black hole singularity] to also be a singularity of the other sort [i.e. a big bang singularity]" Smith [1990] is right in only one respect; the Kerr vacuum black hole solution to the Einstein equation does not require that the disk is in fact extended into another spacetime. It implies merely that it is extendible, i.e. that it is physically or nomologically possible for it to be extended

A little further on

When Hawking discusses black holes in his 1996 book with Penrose, he applies Euclidean quantum gravity to the event horizon of black holes and believes that there are black hole singularities, where r = 0, where there is a "breakdown of structure at a singularity" [Hawking and Penrose, 1996: 76]

But we need not posit the singularity as an existent point attached to the manifold, in opposition to the refutations of the b-boundary and g-boundary constructions of singularities as existent points. Talk of singularities is now talk of an inextendible manifold, with its inextendibility being due to the "missing point" that would otherwise have been postulated as the point that exists on the edge of the manifold. We recognize singularities by the existence of incomplete geodesics that cannot be extended to infinite values of the affine parameter. [Haking and Penrose, 1996: 15]

This is precisely what we need for our Black Hole Origination Cosmology. Since the Euclidean metric is defined on the event horizon of black holes, there are wave functions which are probability amplitudes for black holes. The break down of structure within the event horizon implies that the elementary particles and the four forces break down, i.e. become undefined (which, ontologically, means they cease to exist). We do not need an existent singular point that is forbidden by the failure of the b-boundary and g-boundary constructions. Rather, the breakdown of structure implies there is no metric and thus no gravitational force at the breakdown phase. Since the metric is the curvature of spacetime, there is no spacetime and thus no elementary particles and no electromagnetic force, no weak force, no strong force and no gravitational force. There remains merely a differential manifold with topological properties and a tangent vector field. The breakdown applies to the metric ("the metric becomes ill-defined"), not to the tangent vector field and underlying topology of the differential manifold. This unmetricated manifold (a manifold without spatial and temporal intervals or well-defined distances in space or time) is topologically connected to the big bang explosion, at which the manifold has a metric. The existence of this new spacetime brings with it elementary particles and forces that have randomly selected values.

Which to me implies independence between universes.

[harvey1]

Okay, let's assume Quentin's proposal that a Kerr vacuum black hole singularity really isn't a complete breakdown of natural laws, then to answer your question: "What causal connections exist at singularities though?" the causal connection in this case is:

Where does he propose this?

Right here:

Talk of singularities is now talk of an inextendible manifold, with its inextendibility being due to the "missing point" that would otherwise have been postulated as the point that exists on the edge of the manifold. We recognize singularities by the existence of incomplete geodesics that cannot be extended to infinite values of the affine parameter. [Haking and Penrose, 1996: 15] This is precisely what we need for our Black Hole Origination Cosmology...The breakdown applies to the metric ("the metric becomes ill-defined"), not to the tangent vector field and underlying topology of the differential manifold. This unmetricated manifold (a manifold without spatial and temporal intervals or well-defined distances in space or time) is topologically connected to the big bang explosion, at which the manifold has a metric. The existence of this new spacetime brings with it elementary particles and forces that have randomly selected values.

Which to me implies independence between universes.

I don't see how. If the universe is topologically connected to the underlying topology of the differential manifold, and this all assumes a platonist interpretation of the H-H wavefunction, then if there are no laws this whole scenario could not exist since the H-H wavefuction is a metaphysical law.

[QED]

Well we're both reading the same paragraph and from your reply your objection seems to be other than just holding an opposing interpretation...

If the universe is topologically connected to the underlying topology of the differential manifold, and this all assumes a platonist interpretation of the H-H wavefunction, then if there are no laws this whole scenario could not exist since the H-H wavefuction is a metaphysical law.

I'm afraid I'm having great trouble making any sense of this. Why does all this assume a Platonist interpretation? What does it mean for the H-H wave-function to be a metaphysical law and why couldn't it be a function of some unknown physical constraint?

[harvey1]

If the universe is topologically connected to the underlying topology of the differential manifold, and this all assumes a platonist interpretation of the H-H wavefunction, then if there are no laws this whole scenario could not exist since the H-H wavefuction is a metaphysical law.

I'm afraid I'm having great trouble making any sense of this. Why does all this assume a Platonist interpretation?

Quentin says the following:

Since the metric is the curvature of spacetime, there is no spacetime and thus no elementary particles and no electromagnetic force, no weak force, no strong force and no gravitational force. There remains merely a differential manifold with topological properties and a tangent vector field.

What the hell is no spacetime, no elementary particles, no forces? That's physically nothing. If all you have is mathematical properties for topological space (e.g., differential manifold and a tangent vector field), then you are referring to mathematical existent entities: platonism.

What does it mean for the H-H wave-function to be a metaphysical law and why couldn't it be a function of some unknown physical constraint?

Well, as you know, the H-H wave function is a sum over all possible histories using Feynman's path integral formulation of QM, and therefore it would have to be a law.

[QED]

What the hell is no spacetime, no elementary particles, no forces? That's physically nothing.

That much is clear enough, and is why I felt we were looking at a physical independence.

If all you have is mathematical properties for topological space (e.g., differential manifold and a tangent vector field), then you are referring to mathematical existent entities: platonism.

OK, but bear in mind that I've never seen a convincing argument for the existence of this invisible, massless, chargless, platonic realm.

What does it mean for the H-H wave-function to be a metaphysical law and why couldn't it be a function of some unknown physical constraint?

Well, as you know, the H-H wave function is a sum over all possible histories using Feynman's path integral formulation of QM, and therefore it would have to be a law.

But this conclusion is based on one of many QM interpretations. To my eye the path integral formulation looks very much like a mathematical device used to describe something as yet unknown. To say that it must therefore be mathematical in nature could easily be confusing the abstract with the concrete. You probably see me as being an obstinate material realist when I argue like this, but I've yet to see an unequivocal proof that the world is essentially dualistic.