Philosophy Now Forum

Godfree wrote:Sob lets imagine Arising is a religious fundamentalist , and his job here is the spoiler ,
to get you off subject , dragged down into a bitch slapping contest , ...

Nope, lets imagine that I'm someone who's read philosophy and is just pointing out a stoners error in thinking Aristotelian metaphysics can get any answers at all with respect to the ontology of the universe. A thought I base upon the history of Philosophy and Physics. And SOB just suffers from a white-knight complex.

SpheresOfBalance wrote:... Electromagnetic Radiation is either reflected, scattered, absorbed, refracted, or emitted, It does not just hang around static for 13 billion years, waiting for some clowns at bell labs to find it. I think they may have been better at sweeping bird poo, than anything else.

Its not been hanging around statically, its been cooling all this time and in the far future won't be detectable at all, which is why it wasn't detectable until we found a hiss in our radio telescopes and why what we are detecting is actually way back in the 'past' and not actually in the 'present'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ImvlS8PLIo

Godfree wrote:Sob lets imagine Arising is a religious fundamentalist , and his job here is the spoiler ,
to get you off subject , dragged down into a bitch slapping contest ,
so who's the winner there sob ,??
have you won by slapping back ,
or has Arising won by stopping you from making sense ,getting points across ,
challenging some of these common assumptions ,
those posts are no loner educational for the readers ,
dating sites and face book do that sort of shit , so please ,
regain your dignity and educate us some more ,
regardless of what Arising throws up as a distraction ,,!!!!!

Imagining things is harmless enough, physicists imagine spacetime, theists imagine evil and Godfree imagines that everyone that doesn't reject the Big Bang theory outright is a religious fundamentalist. Not everyone is all that good at remembering that it is something they have imagined though, some start to believe that their imagination reflects reality. This can become self perpetuating with the believer imaging more and more things to support their narrative. The story becomes unfalsifiable, the effect being that the believers grip on reality loosens and in some cases becomes totally unhinged, as is the case with religious nutters, conspiracy theorists even some physicists; Newton believed quite a lot of stuff which was utter bollocks, for instance; Fredkins ideas are at least two steps removed from observation.
If you, Godfree, are going to insist on the truth of your imaginings, you risk losing your marbles, I suggest you get a grip.

Arising_uk wrote:

Godfree wrote:... Logic tells me the universe is infinite in size and age ,

How does logic tell you this?

the same logic tells me a infinite universe does not go bang ,

How?

Personally I think your logic is actually your political views upon religion causing you to seek answers like this.

imagine the universe is a big net and you are pulling gathering in the net to create a "point of singularity"
how long do you think you will have to pull before the net stops coming ,,??
so you see it is impossible for a infinite universe to become a point of singularity ,
I can easily dismiss the bbt as being illogical nonsense ..!!!

The BBT theory says nothing about the Universe becoming a singularity, that was the time reversible functions of Einstein combined with the idea that gravity and the mass of the universe might end us up in a big crunch. Theory and experiment now say thats its an endless heat death for the lot of us.

We will never agree on anything , if we can't speak the same language ,
please excuse my limited knowledge on how many versions of the bbt there are ,
but I thought one of the common accepted beliefs ,
was that before the bb , the expansion of the universe ,
all of the known universe was collected in a " point of singularity" ,
and the universe , time and space , did not exist yet ,
which I think is laughable ,
Logic , how do I draw conclusion by simply using logic ,
the most probable ,
of all the images of the universe , or models , pictures ,
I have yet to hear of a finite universe description that makes any sense to me,
so it is an easy decision , is the universe finite or infinite ,
finite is impossible , insane , illogical nonsense, rubbish,
if you disagree , give me now your explanation of how the universe stops ,
what stops it , how is it stopped ,
my English tells me that no space , is a solid , if there are no gaps or empty bits,
it's a solid , so don't say there is universe and then nothing , thats a cop-out ,
meaningless dribble ,
your explanation of how the universe could be limited in size PLEASE ,,,

tillingborn wrote:

Godfree wrote:Sob lets imagine Arising is a religious fundamentalist , and his job here is the spoiler ,
to get you off subject , dragged down into a bitch slapping contest ,
so who's the winner there sob ,??
have you won by slapping back ,
or has Arising won by stopping you from making sense ,getting points across ,
challenging some of these common assumptions ,
those posts are no loner educational for the readers ,
dating sites and face book do that sort of shit , so please ,
regain your dignity and educate us some more ,
regardless of what Arising throws up as a distraction ,,!!!!!

Imagining things is harmless enough, physicists imagine spacetime, theists imagine evil and Godfree imagines that everyone that doesn't reject the Big Bang theory outright is a religious fundamentalist. Not everyone is all that good at remembering that it is something they have imagined though, some start to believe that their imagination reflects reality. This can become self perpetuating with the believer imaging more and more things to support their narrative. The story becomes unfalsifiable, the effect being that the believers grip on reality loosens and in some cases becomes totally unhinged, as is the case with religious nutters, conspiracy theorists even some physicists; Newton believed quite a lot of stuff which was utter bollocks, for instance; Fredkins ideas are at least two steps removed from observation.
If you, Godfree, are going to insist on the truth of your imaginings, you risk losing your marbles, I suggest you get a grip.

I think I make my point , if I wanted to try and attack Arisings belief system then I would have done so ,
I was using their current hissy fit , as an example of how one can be diverted and distracted from what they were saying , I enjoy Sobs contributions , but with Arising on full attack mode , Sob was just exchanging insults ,
and not the interesting contributions from just a few posts before ,
I do take every chance I get to have a dig at religion ,
But don't think there aren't spies amongst us ,
NZ is supposed to be the most trusted and honest country in the world , Democratic , Secular ,
and parliament starts with a prayer , the government funds religion ,
and refuses to fund Atheism ,, paranoid , me ,, naahhhh ,,,,

Godfree wrote:We will never agree on anything , if we can't speak the same language ,
please excuse my limited knowledge on how many versions of the bbt there are ,
but I thought one of the common accepted beliefs ,
was that before the bb , the expansion of the universe ,
all of the known universe was collected in a " point of singularity" ,
and the universe , time and space , did not exist yet ,
which I think is laughable , ...

Fair enough, I stand corrected.

Why do you think this laughable? As logically its a deduction of an expansion back along its 'path' to its origin. That they call it a 'point of singularity and the universe and time and space did not exist yet' would be because its here where the models they use break down as its not describable from their methods, So questions like "What was before? etc" are meaningless in their epistemology. They also don't have this universe and time and space, just spacetime which is their universe.

Logic , how do I draw conclusion by simply using logic ,
the most probable , of all the images of the universe , or models , pictures , ...

As I keep telling you, the history of philosophy shows that Aristotelian metaphysics does not appear to get the results in this situation.

I have yet to hear of a finite universe description that makes any sense to me,
so it is an easy decision , is the universe finite or infinite ,
finite is impossible , insane , illogical nonsense, rubbish,
if you disagree , give me now your explanation of how the universe stops ,
what stops it , how is it stopped , ...

Finite is pretty much everywhere, whereas infinite is pretty much nowhere. But I agree that both are pretty much meaningless when applied to such thoughts.

I told you, I have no thoughts about how the universe stops, if I did I'd become an astrophysicist or cosmologist and try and prove them. But I do have a thought about what the current crop of physicists say and they say its not going to stop, just our part of it, i.e. matter, is going to end in a heat death.

my English tells me that no space , is a solid , if there are no gaps or empty bits,
it's a solid , so don't say there is universe and then nothing , thats a cop-out ,
meaningless dribble , ...

In English I pretty much guess it is but like I said, some physicists say they have a mathematical model of an infinite bounded space. I don't say there is a universe and then nothing, just that there is a universe.

How do you explain that, according to Physics, solids are pretty much empty space?

your explanation of how the universe could be limited in size PLEASE ,,,

I told you, if I had one I'd be an astrophysicist or cosmologist and if I could do the maths I'd be a Nobel prizewinner to boot.

My looney metaphysical take would be that it's a sim running on a planck bit cellular automata and from the inside it looks infinite.

Godfree wrote:...
I think I make my point , if I wanted to try and attack Arisings belief system then I would have done so , ...

What belief system is it that you think I have?

...

NZ is supposed to be the most trusted and honest country in the world , Democratic , Secular ,
and parliament starts with a prayer , the government funds religion ,
and refuses to fund Atheism ,, paranoid , me ,, naahhhh ,,,,

Have you tried to start your 'atheist religion' and get funding from the govt?

tillingborn wrote:... Fredkins ideas are at least two steps removed from observation.
...

Hmm... but his idea is that Quantum Mechanics is correct so why don't we work from the position that the universe is made from discrete particles? Much like some old Greeks I'd have thought. He ties in with Zuse, et al, in that the calculations that physicists have to use to get results at this level are the discrete methods and not analogue even if they think the world is(at least this is the best I can understand).

I guess it'd also be possible to tie in some form of Leibniz's Monads into this model, as they'd be the planck bits or at least whatever is the 'particle' above that they calculate.

Arising_uk wrote:

Godfree wrote:We will never agree on anything , if we can't speak the same language ,
please excuse my limited knowledge on how many versions of the bbt there are ,
but I thought one of the common accepted beliefs ,
was that before the bb , the expansion of the universe ,
all of the known universe was collected in a " point of singularity" ,
and the universe , time and space , did not exist yet ,
which I think is laughable , ...

Fair enough, I stand corrected.


I told you, I have no thoughts about how the universe stops, if I did I'd become an astrophysicist or cosmologist and try and prove them. But I do have a thought about what the current crop of physicists say and they say its not going to stop, just our part of it, i.e. matter, is going to end in a heat death.

my English tells me that no space , is a solid , if there are no gaps or empty bits,
it's a solid , so don't say there is universe and then nothing , thats a cop-out ,
meaningless dribble , ...

In English I pretty much guess it is but like I said, some physicists say they have a mathematical model of an infinite bounded space. I don't say there is a universe and then nothing, just that there is a universe.

I'll put it plainly and simply so theres no confusion ,
the reason you or anybody else doesn't have a rational explanation for how the universe stops ,
is because one doesn't exist , there is no rational/sane model of the universe that is so big ,
and then nothing , thats just not possible ,
thats why you or anybody else can't find a rational explanation of finite ,
because one doesn't exist ,,!!!!

Godfree wrote:...
I'll put it plainly and simply so theres no confusion ,
the reason you or anybody else doesn't have a rational explanation for how the universe stops ,
is because one doesn't exist , there is no rational/sane model of the universe that is so big ,
and then nothing , thats just not possible ,
thats why you or anybody else can't find a rational explanation of finite ,
because one doesn't exist ,,!!!!

You can believe what you like and what you believe is pretty much not postulated by the physicists. They say you just can't talk about it, all you can talk about is what we can see thats there, but you appear to insist upon doing so. What they do say is they have at least one mathematical model that has an infinite bounded space, whether it applies to ours is something that won't be made true or false until they can think up an experiment to test the idea. To understand what they say would mean having to understand the language they use to describe such stuff, i.e. maths, and until then I think you just blowing hot air due to your own personal bug-bear with religion. Personally I think your thoughts are a waste of your time and effort if you think you're going to be getting anywhere with them, as has been shown by the fate of such metaphysics and epistemology in philosophy. But I accept one has to get there jollies where one can but think you ought to give up the puff and become an astrophysicist or cosmologist if you truly think what you say is true.

tillingborn wrote:

attofishpi wrote:

tillingborn wrote:If you shine a torch, it is true that the battery will eventually run down. However, the evidence is that the photons it emits will keep going until they hit something.

And then what happens to these 'photons'?

That rather depends. One of the few things we can say with any confidence about photons is that they are not like ping-pong balls. It's not even clear that they are a form of energy, as Godfree appears to suggest, rather they transfer energy from one body to another. From what I can gather, they do this in a way that in some respects is similar to waves on water, but as Kuznetzova has pointed out in another thread, all efforts to detect the medium, the luminiferous aether, have failed.
Anyway, what actually happens to things you don't fully understand is hard to tell, but it seems that if they have the right energy to kick an electron into another orbit they get absorbed, which is what happens in the cones and rods in our retinas. The amount of energy needed to do this is very specific to elements and even molecules. In most collisions the photons simply bounce off; which is just as well, otherwise those cones and rods would be useless.

Thankyou tillingborn...

Arising_uk wrote:

Godfree wrote:...
I'll put it plainly and simply so theres no confusion ,
the reason you or anybody else doesn't have a rational explanation for how the universe stops ,
is because one doesn't exist , there is no rational/sane model of the universe that is so big ,
and then nothing , thats just not possible ,
thats why you or anybody else can't find a rational explanation of finite ,
because one doesn't exist ,,!!!!

You can believe what you like and what you believe is pretty much not postulated by the physicists. They say you just can't talk about it, all you can talk about is what we can see thats there, but you appear to insist upon doing so. What they do say is they have at least one mathematical model that has an infinite bounded space, whether it applies to ours is something that won't be made true or false until they can think up an experiment to test the idea. To understand what they say would mean having to understand the language they use to describe such stuff, i.e. maths, and until then I think you just blowing hot air due to your own personal bug-bear with religion. Personally I think your thoughts are a waste of your time and effort if you think you're going to be getting anywhere with them, as has been shown by the fate of such metaphysics and epistemology in philosophy. But I accept one has to get there jollies where one can but think you ought to give up the puff and become an astrophysicist or cosmologist if you truly think what you say is true.

Aside from the incumbrance that atheism is extremely short sighted and entirely wrong.

attofishpi wrote:Aside from the incumbrance that atheism is extremely short sighted and entirely wrong.

Thats that settled then.

Arising_uk wrote:

attofishpi wrote:Aside from the incumbrance that atheism is extremely short sighted and entirely wrong.

Thats that settled then.

Good. ...and about time..emit...

Atheism is not an incumbrance its a freedom from tyranny.

Although I'll give you its sight is relatively short as it views up to ones death and no further.