A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Is there a God? If so, what is She like?

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thedoc
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by thedoc »

Belinda wrote:The Doc wrote:
No, I have my proof which is sufficient for me, you are denying the proof that is facing you, so who is lacking in understanding.
You, Doc, fail to understand that proof implies evidence. Your faith is based upon subjective symptoms of God which are unaccompanied by objectively verifiable signs of God.

Moreover, there are reasonable beliefs about about diseases as identifiable entities. What is the definable attribute which identifies God? There is none, except for those who accept the edict of popes and suchlike. Did you ever identify the attribute of God which underlies your faith? We have to guess what version of God you are talking about.
Yes you are correct proof implies evidence and I had what suited me, it was on an audio tape that I no longer have and I can't locate another copy, but I was present when the tape was made, and listened to it later.

FYI, I assume that I encountered the Judeo-Christian God but I don't know for sure, just that I saw evidence for the existence of God.
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Harbal
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by Harbal »

thedoc wrote:.

FYI, I assume that I encountered the Judeo-Christian God but I don't know for sure, just that I saw evidence for the existence of God.
I have often wondered why God, and the spirits of the deceased, for that matter, only seem to make themselves directly know to people who don't seem to be playing with a full deck.
thedoc
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by thedoc »

Harbal wrote:
thedoc wrote:.

FYI, I assume that I encountered the Judeo-Christian God but I don't know for sure, just that I saw evidence for the existence of God.
I have often wondered why God, and the spirits of the deceased, for that matter, only seem to make themselves directly know to people who don't seem to be playing with a full deck.
I have never, that I know of, seen a spirit of the deceased, so perhaps my deck is only half full, or half empty, it depends on how you look at it.
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Harbal
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by Harbal »

thedoc wrote:perhaps my deck is only half full, or half empty, it depends on how you look at it.
Either way, half is missing, doc.
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by bobevenson »

You're giving Doc way too much credit by granting him half.
Last edited by bobevenson on Sat Mar 25, 2017 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Hobbes' Choice
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by Hobbes' Choice »

thedoc wrote:
Hobbes' Choice wrote:
thedoc wrote:
Didn't science, at one time, believe that in the end everything would stop moving and the temperature would be absolute zero. I believe the theory was that everything would stop moving and motion is the expression of heat, therefore everything would be at absolute zero.
I think you have this wrong.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed.
The death of the universe comes when all the useful energy has turned into useless heat.
Energy is the ability to do work and if everything is at the same temperature there is no ability to do work and no energy. So where did the energy go?
Energy simply changes from one form to another. Heat is the final state in this instance. It's going no where.
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by thedoc »

bobevenson wrote:You're giving Doc way too much credit by granting him half.
It's still better than no credit at all, but I'll let that for you to report on.
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Harbal
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by Harbal »

bobevenson wrote:You're giving Doc way too much credit by granting him half.
I know but thedoc and I have a soft spot for one another so I don't like to be too harsh. :)
thedoc
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by thedoc »

Harbal wrote:
bobevenson wrote:You're giving Doc way too much credit by granting him half.
I know but thedoc and I have a soft spot for one another so I don't like to be too harsh. :)
Thankyou, I'll try to remember that.
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by bobevenson »

Harbal wrote:
bobevenson wrote:You're giving Doc way too much credit by granting him half.
I know but thedoc and I have a soft spot for one another so I don't like to be too harsh. :)
Doc has a number of soft spots, some of which require clinical evaluation.
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Harbal
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by Harbal »

bobevenson wrote: Doc has a number of soft spots, some of which require clinical evaluation.
But none of them appear to be working, I just don't seem to be able to get him fired up. I think he's getting wise to my tactics.
thedoc
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by thedoc »

Harbal wrote:
bobevenson wrote: Doc has a number of soft spots, some of which require clinical evaluation.
But none of them appear to be working, I just don't seem to be able to get him fired up. I think he's getting wise to my tactics.
No, I just don't care. It's a forum of strangers, and I'm as strange as I can get.
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by Noax »

ken wrote:I thought I already changed the above law to the one you implied science already actually acknowledges, that is 'every action is accompanied by a reaction'.

Can you think of any reaction that was or is not accompanied by an action?
Both are actions, and reactions to the other. Without the other, neither is a 'reaction'. There is no hierarchy of which is the action and the reaction, nor is there a requirement for there to be only two actions. The point is, the net change in momentum (It is a law of conservation of momentum, remember?) is zero. The law has no bearing on the topic of this thread, which is about causal regress, not momentum.
Noax wrote:Also, remember we're talking cosmology here, and Newtonian laws hardly apply on the scale of cosmology. Newtonian laws about causality only work when you average things out, and are shown to be false on discreet observations.
I do not care about human laws.
But you are making arguments by quoting them (incorrectly), and drawing incorrect conclusions from that misapplication.
If B is 'time cannot end', then what is A, and, why do you say, "but A is not true"?
Don't know. I'm not arguing for any A and I lay no claim that time began or that there is or is not an end to it.
If every cause-event causes/creates some effect-event, and, every effect-event when interacts with some other effect-event is a cause-event, then that, by itself, proves one eternal event, which by the way can be proved when combined with a couple of other things, namely that time is not a thing, in of itself, and that there really is only one ever-present NOW event happening. But how to express all of this succinctly takes "time".
Well, there's that 'If' in the front of all that. So nothing has been demonstrated. Your statement above seems to reduce to: "If <something demonstrated to be false> was true, then <some meaningless conclusion>".
YOUR "evidence" about a pile of rocks holding up your mailbox is NOT sound evidence. Your evidence looks from a very small or very narrow field of view of things, thus the reason why you are not seeing the big or whole picture of all things. There is NO 'top', 'bottom', 'up', nor, 'down' in the Universe. So to talk of such things as rocks going all the way "down" or holding things "up" is just non-sensical regarding issues involving the Universe Itself.

I have NOT turned a blind eye to your "evidence", I just do NOT see it as evidence, as just explained why I do not.
I noticed that.
Noax wrote:
At this very moment either action-reaction or cause-effect will suffice.
They're completely different things. Very confusing to interchange the words.
You have proposed them as as though they are completely different things, but that does NOT mean that they necessarily are.
OK, give me an example of action-reaction then, since I am completely unconvinced you know what it is talking about since you use it in the same context as cause and effect.
A fairly strong consideration considering there is a huge amount of the Universe that is unobservable to human beings. Therefore you have absolutely no idea 'what is out there' and how dense it is or not, but you will still make an assumption anyway.
Nonsense. Light arrives here from the CMB all the time, having hit nothing for 13B years. As the universe expands, the probability of hitting anything drops even further. We have a lot of idea 'what is out there', at least in terms of its ability to block light. It doesn't, else we'd have a limited sight distance. OK, there was a time (380000 years after big bang) before which things were so hot (about 2700C) and dense that light did hit things before getting significantly far. We can't see through that wall, but we can see the wall.
Why do you always seem to claim that people have "no idea of X" when X is something against some point you want to make? Again, this demonstrates dismissal of evidence against, which is a symptom of heavily biased thinking. Of course you will dismiss my evidence of your biased thinking, because you're even more biased about how unbiased you are.
Noax wrote:Gravity repels as well? News to me. Is this made up or can you back this claim with perhaps an example?
I can provide an example of what I observe and think. I just realized I should have used the word 'may' in between 'also' and 'repels' back there. Anyhow, the size of an object and what it is made up of causes a gravity-effect, which brings things, in range, towards the center. This may help in causing circular motion, which in turn may help in creating polar opposites on the object. With two opposites spinning within and/or around other spinning objects also with polar opposites 'may' be a reason why close Universal objects can appear to be "floating" in equilibrium. Relatively never really moving away from each other nor come much closer to each other. They appear to be in held position with and from each other. They obviously cause a drawing in effect on each other, as is shown by the planets being held towards the sun and by the oceans on earth being moved by the moon, but there must also be some sort of repelled motion also to keep things in what looks like to be a relatively 'held' position with and from each other.

I am not sure if that example could back up anything. I really do not know if I am just making it up or not either. I am just expressing what I see and observe.
Well as for things in free-fall (planets, asteroids, comets, whatever), the force is attracting, since all these things are in constant acceleration towards the gravity source (typically the sun), and the acceleration is always consistent the inverse-square law. Gravity exerts an attractive force between two objects, which results in acceleration of said objects in the absence of a counter-force. Acceleration is not defined as 'getting closer to'. It is defined as a change in velocity. If there was repulsion, objects would be pushed away never to be seen again. If there was no gravity force at all, they'd continue in a straight line and again, not linger in a solar system.

As for things not in free-fall, like water being held to Earth, the repulsion that prevents it all from collapsing to a point is electromagnetic, not gravity.

You may choose to not accept this simple model. It certainly is not the full story. But absent a model that makes equally good if not better predictions, we go with the assumption that the force of gravity explains basic orbital mechanics.
Noax wrote:My point was that using the logic of "everything on Earth needing to be held up by something under it" is the same logic being used in the cosmological argument. Earth must be turtles all the way down
In cosmology, to Me, there is no "down".
In cosmology, 'down' is earlier time. There is a center to that, and nowhere that is lower than it. I'm sorry that you don't understand the basic balloon-analogy model of the universe. Look it up. It is just an analogy, but understanding it lets you see why the holding-up of my mailbox makes the same point.
Noax wrote: Time is part of spacetime, so if spacetime does not exist, there is no place or time where it isn't existing.
But to suggest that spacetime did not always exist, ...
Cutting you off right there. The sentence already makes no sense. If existence is defined as having a temporal membership in spacetime, then things can be said to exist for a time, or always, or never, or whatever. Spacetime is not that category of existence, so it is an error to suggest it exists for some amount of time.

It doesn't mean I know the answer to the question, but the asking of the cosmological question should at least understand what is being asked. No, I do not believe there is time external to space, and that space thus might have been created at some point in time, and that the universe is something that 'began to happen'. There is zero evidence for that, and plenty to suggest (but not prove) that time and space are part of one structure. If the universe was something that was happening, there would be a 'current state' to the whole thing, and lack of any ability to determine that current state is strong evidence of its nonexistence.

You might disagree, but any argument put forth for a current state must always first presume it, making it a begging argument.
But human beings only made up the defining term "time zero" and say that there was no time "before time zero" because they are unable to see "before" a relatively big bang. Just because human beings can not, yet, see beyond a certain point, they began to assume that there was "no before",
Disagree. It is not because they can't see further, but because most models that accurately predict what we do see have no 'further'.
and from this assumption they then jumped to the conclusion that the big bang WAS the start of ALL existence.
I don't know of anybody who draws that conclusion from that assumption, except in that it would seem to just be a different definition of 'all existence'.
Making conclusions with NO evidence is some thing the "scientific" community allegedly frowns upon, I would have thought. But a lot of human beings in the scientific community insist that the Universe was created by big bang.
Created by the big bang? Where do you find that wording in the scientific community? The bang is part of the universe, not some act that caused it. Many science textbooks are not written by the scientific community. Hopefully they at least attempt to accurately represent the state of science. Mind you, the creation of the universe is a philosophical topic outside the realm of science, so any text suggesting an interpretation of why the universe exists is not representing science.
So you now say there is no "edge" to spacetime and/or the Universe, but continually in scientific literature there is talk about the edge of the Universe, as though It is finite, but expanding.
Really??? Please point me to it. Show me a scientific reference to the edge of it. Expanding, yes, but infinite things can still expand.
How do you define universe here?
I define 'Universe' as 'ALL there is' or 'Everything'.
Not how you've used the word in your post. I counted about 20 of them. Here's a typical one: "It is not that useful at all to look at some thing as big as the Universe It self only from a human perspective." You speak of its size here and it being something that humans look at. I really cannot parse any of your post if you mean the word a different way. "All there is" is not something with size or something that can be seen or that has coordinates. It is why I've for the most part attempted to avoid the word since you might misinterpret my meaning. What do you call the physical place of which you have a subjective view? You know, the thing that many other people call 'the universe', that is distinct from say a different 'universe' in what may be a multiverse for instance? What do you call this place? The thread is about the cosmological argument, and it argues that God created this thing which you don't call a universe. What is the name of the created thing in your vocabulary?
Noax wrote: I also think spacetime is infinite, in that there is nowhere you can be that is populated with objects only on one side. The picture I described above is consistent with that.
I am not sure what you mean by, 'there is nowhere you can be that is populated with objects only on one side'. Do you mean one side of the big bang for example, or do you mean some thing else?[/quote]I mean an edge to the thing you don't call a universe. If it was finite in size (and Euclidean mind you), there would be an edge to it, always growing larger of course. At that edge, there would be things to see on one side, and nothing on the other since the thing that is not a universe is all on one side. OK, if not Euclidean, it could be finite size at any any random curved time-slice under consideration, and like going West on the surface of Earth, one would just get the same stuff over and over again if you mapped it out far enough. There are a finite number of cities on Earth, but each of them has a more cities in all directions, no matter where you are. There's no edge to the map of Earth, yet it is finite. Astronomers seem to state that there's no such loop to space, and I won't defend that since I don't know the reasoning behind it.
Do you think spacetime is infinite, in the sense that roughly the big bang was when spacetime was created or came into existence, and because there was no thing whatsoever before that moment, that is like infinite?
No, I would never word my view in those conflicting terms. "Created" is an action that can be meaningfully applied within a construct that has elements that have a temporal relation with each other, not to the temporal construct itself. As for views I do hold, I do not present them as indisputable fact.
The picture that was being painted and I was getting from what you were describing above was as though the concept of "before" 'time zero' was invalid. I was taking that to mean spacetime was finite from your perspective. ('Time zero' being roughly around the moment of the big bang.)

Or, did you just make a typo and write 'infinite' instead of 'finite'?
Still infinite. A radial coordinate system has no boundaries anywhere even if one of the coordinates is always positive. There is no place in such a system that is out of reach of the coordinates.
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by Noax »

thedoc wrote:Energy is the ability to do work and if everything is at the same temperature there is no ability to do work and no energy. So where did the energy go?
Energy is conserved, but entropy is the amount of that energy not available to do work. Eventually it approaches maximum entropy, and none of the energy (all of which is still there) is available for work.
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Re: A Good Infinite Regress Step of Some Cosmological Arguments

Post by thedoc »

Noax wrote:
thedoc wrote:Energy is the ability to do work and if everything is at the same temperature there is no ability to do work and no energy. So where did the energy go?
Energy is conserved, but entropy is the amount of that energy not available to do work. Eventually it approaches maximum entropy, and none of the energy (all of which is still there) is available for work.
If everything settles to the same temperature and everything is even, there is no temperature differential to do any work. If everything stops and everything cools to absolute zero there is no energy at all. The conservation of energy works on Earth, but there is no reason to expect it to be in force on a universal scale. It could well be that energy will be dissipated at the universal level and the conservation of energy at the Earthly scale does not apply. Has anyone observed energy on the universal scale?
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