Is Christianity compatible with Determinism?

[Immanuel Can]

However even the most scientifically illiterate should at some stage have heard of the first law of thermodynamics and if you haven't you should look it up.

Try the second law of thermodynamics instead. Entropy is about the best attested scientific fact we have, and it's just one of the things that conclusively shows that the universe had a beginning....and will have an end.

But hey, if you want to operate with the old Aristotelian scheme, who am I to fight you on it? You can do as you wish.

[Obvious Leo]

Try the second law of thermodynamics instead. Entropy is about the best attested scientific fact we have, and it's just one of the things that conclusively shows that the universe had a beginning....and will have an end.

The only problem with the second law of thermodynamics is that it only applies to sub-systems of the universe and not to the universe as a whole. Entropy is most certainly the best attested scientific fact we have and furthermore we have 13.8 billion years worth of evidence which shows that the overall entropy of the universe is DECREASING, and NOT increasing as the 2nd law would seem to suggest. Clearly on the cosmological scale the 2nd law is trumped by the first and the fact that you and I are having this conversation at all is a complete and adequate testimony to that.

[thedoc]

The Universe is a closed system, so according to the laws of thermodynamics the entropy of the Universe is increasing. The Earth is an open system and is receiving energy from the Sun so entropy can decrease on the Earth. All this is being thrown into question by Quantum mechanics where it has been discovered that matter and energy can come into existence or disappear from existence.

[Obvious Leo]

The Universe is a closed system, so according to the laws of thermodynamics the entropy of the Universe is increasing. The Earth is an open system and is receiving energy from the Sun so entropy can decrease on the Earth. All this is being thrown into question by Quantum mechanics where it has been discovered that matter and energy can come into existence or disappear from existence.

So you would define the big bang as a low entropy state of the universe, would you doc?

[attofishpi]

This is all very well Leo, but what form of 'determinism' is Hobbes postulating? And for that matter Hobbes, when are you going to state your definition of "Christianity"?

....as the rest of Xity do not seem bothered and prefer to live in sycophantic confusion, or just ignore the problem, of them I have nothing to say.
They can keep their delusion of free-will, because the great thing about delusions is that you can have a number of incompatible ones without any difficulty.
For me - I prefer to do philosophy

Therefore..what are you claiming are the attributes of Christianity, i feel its important to get that addressed for further discourse upon this philosophy forum.

or was it merely a rhetorical question re Christianity?

[Hobbes' Choice]

This is all very well Leo, but what form of 'determinism' is Hobbes postulating? And for that matter Hobbes, when are you going to state your definition of "Christianity"?

....as the rest of Xity do not seem bothered and prefer to live in sycophantic confusion, or just ignore the problem, of them I have nothing to say.
They can keep their delusion of free-will, because the great thing about delusions is that you can have a number of incompatible ones without any difficulty.
For me - I prefer to do philosophy

Therefore..what are you claiming are the attributes of Christianity, i feel its important to get that addressed for further discourse upon this philosophy forum.

or was it merely a rhetorical question re Christianity?

I was referring to, throughout, those that impinged upon the doctrine of determinism, obviously. Calvin's attempt to reconcile it due the the rest of Christianity failing miserably to attend to the contradictions, as you will have observed when you followed the thread.

[Obvious Leo]

Calvin's understanding of determinism was the same as Newton's, in that determinism and pre-determinism should be regarded as synonymous notions. Once this Platonist assumption is regarded as implicit then transcendent cause is a perfectly logical conclusion from it, but unfortunately for the theists, (and the physicists), this assumption is bollocks. Darwin proved it false, although the pre-Socratics had already done so some millennia earlier.

[uwot]

Try the second law of thermodynamics instead. Entropy is about the best attested scientific fact we have, and it's just one of the things that conclusively shows that the universe had a beginning....and will have an end.

The only problem with the second law of thermodynamics is that it only applies to sub-systems of the universe and not to the universe as a whole. Entropy is most certainly the best attested scientific fact we have and furthermore we have 13.8 billion years worth of evidence which shows that the overall entropy of the universe is DECREASING, and NOT increasing as the 2nd law would seem to suggest. Clearly on the cosmological scale the 2nd law is trumped by the first and the fact that you and I are having this conversation at all is a complete and adequate testimony to that.

Leo, the cosmic background radiation is a couple of degrees above absolute zero. When people look at it they are surprised by how smooth it is, how ordered the big bang was. As the universe expands, that temperature will decrease even further, and the relatively small hot spots which are galaxies will run out of fuel and gradually decay, until, in several trillion years, the temperature will be so close to absolute zero, that there will be no usable energy anywhere. That at least is one scenario, although of course, we cannot rule out some day of judgement, or whatever ill informed tripe Immanuel Can is peddling.

[Obvious Leo]

uwot. Your scenario ignores the relativistic motion of galaxies because no model of physics exists which can explain why the galaxies are merging with each other.

Furthermore to my knowledge nobody disputes the fact that in the first instances following the big bang the universe was in a state of almost uniform isotropy, and it was fiendishly bloody HOT. These are the signature features of a state of MAXIMUM entropy, not minimum.

[Dubious]

Interesting article...not taking it as an absolute given though for sure it won't make any difference to humans or anything else living in this universe.

https://ca.news.yahoo.com/dont-panic-bu ... 20670.html

[uwot]

uwot. Your scenario ignores the relativistic motion of galaxies because no model of physics exists which can explain why the galaxies are merging with each other.

It is quite true that galaxies within clusters do merge, you have mentioned that Andromeda will eventually merge with the Milky Way. That is fairly uncontroversially explained by gravity and predicated on Andromeda's blue shift as seen from Earth. Of the other several hundred billion galaxies, the overwhelming majority appear red shifted. The best explanation for this is the stretching of their wavelength due to the Doppler effect.

Furthermore to my knowledge nobody disputes the fact that in the first instances following the big bang the universe was in a state of almost uniform isotropy, and it was fiendishly bloody HOT. These are the signature features of a state of MAXIMUM entropy, not minimum.

Entropy, at least as I understand it, is the tendency towards thermal equilibrium, ie a system, will eventually reach the same temperature as its environment. As I said, the universe is bloody COLD, as it expands, it will become even colder, just as when you decrease pressure, you lower the heat.

[Obvious Leo]

It is quite true that galaxies within clusters do merge, you have mentioned that Andromeda will eventually merge with the Milky Way. That is fairly uncontroversially explained by gravity and predicated on Andromeda's blue shift as seen from Earth. Of the other several hundred billion galaxies, the overwhelming majority appear red shifted. The best explanation for this is the stretching of their wavelength due to the Doppler effect.

The universe is but an infant, uwot. Indeed the evidence shows that most of the galaxies are moving away from US but that doesn't mean that they're all moving away from EACH OTHER. Galaxies form into clusters, and clusters of clusters, and clusters of clusters of clusters, and clusters of clusters of clusters of clusters, etc. This has been going on ever since galaxies began to form but the chaotic dance driven by gravity means that Humpty Dumpty must inevitably put itself back together again. The Milky Way and Andromeda are both spiral galaxies on a collision course, but when they merge they will form an elliptical galaxy with a combined mass which will then attract less massive galaxies to join the brotherhood. No doubt this extended brotherhood of galaxies will ultimately merge with another super-galaxy because that's simply what gravity mandates. There is every valid reason to suppose that this is happening everywhere in the universe and that eventually all the matter and energy in the universe will get together again for the
FINAL CRUNCH and then start the process all over again. It's too simple not to be true and every shred of physical evidence available to us supports it.

Gravity is the key to the arrow of entropy in the cosmos. It is gravity alone which caused order to arise from the almost infinitely disordered state of the big bang and when a system in such a highly disordered state evolves progressively more ordered sub-systems within itself for 13.8 billion years, as the evidence clearly shows, then we can see that the statistical model of thermodynamics derived from QM has got the arrow of entropy back to front. This is hardly surprising because gravity is completely ignored in QM and the reason for this is that gravity is completely ignored in SR, upon which QM is entirely predicated. It's no bloody wonder that these models are incompatible with GR and it's even more unsurprising that they make no bloody sense. The universe is becoming more complex, not less complex.

[uwot]

The universe is but an infant, uwot. Indeed the evidence shows that most of the galaxies are moving away from US but that doesn't mean that they're all moving away from EACH OTHER.

Leo, if you look to the east, galaxies are red shifted. The same if you look west. And North. And South. Up and down and all the directions in between. A galaxy moving eastward from us is not getting any closer to a galaxy that is moving westward.

There is every valid reason to suppose that this is happening everywhere in the universe and that eventually all the matter and energy in the universe will get together again for the
FINAL CRUNCH and then start the process all over again. It's too simple not to be true and every shred of physical evidence available to us supports it.

The best physical evidence for the motion of galaxies is the Doppler effect. The red shift of distant galaxies implies that, far from slowing down and forming clusters, the recession of galaxies is accelerating.

Gravity is the key to the arrow of entropy in the cosmos. It is gravity alone which caused order to arise from the almost infinitely disordered state of the big bang and when a system in such a highly disordered state evolves progressively more ordered sub-systems within itself for 13.8 billion years, as the evidence clearly shows, then we can see that the statistical model of thermodynamics derived from QM has got the arrow of entropy back to front. This is hardly surprising because gravity is completely ignored in QM and the reason for this is that gravity is completely ignored in SR, upon which QM is entirely predicated. It's no bloody wonder that these models are incompatible with GR and it's even more unsurprising that they make no bloody sense. The universe is becoming more complex, not less complex.

Gravity draws together clouds of dust and gas. If enough hydrogen is gathered at the centre, it will get so hot it starts fusing hydrogen into helium and you have a star and the pressure created is enough to stop the star collapsing under gravity. If the dust in the accretion disc is pulled together by gravity to form planets, you get a solar system, all held together by the gravity generated by the star in the middle. For the next several billion years,(the bigger the star, the hotter and quicker it burns) the colossal energy put out by the star in the form of electromagnetic radiation, combined with the chemistry on the planets can be used to do all sorts of interesting things, creating sentient beings with laptops for instance. Apart from keeping the whole thing together, the role of gravity in chemical and biological processes is so negligible that it can be safely ignored. The next big role for gravity is when the star, having swelled to a red giant and toasted all the beings with laptops, burns all its useable fuel and collapses catastrophically and blows up, turning everything in its way to dust, just as thermodynamics predicts.

[Obvious Leo]

The best physical evidence for the motion of galaxies is the Doppler effect. The red shift of distant galaxies implies that, far from slowing down and forming clusters, the recession of galaxies is accelerating.

I'm not disputing the evidence but only the explanation. We know from GR that time passes more quickly between galaxies than it does within them and this not only accounts for the redshift but ALSO accounts for the fact that more distant galaxies appear to be accelerating away from the observer. So much for dark energy. The same simple FACT that time passes more quickly between galaxies than within them is also a complete and adequate explanation for gravitational lensing. So much for "curved space".

Leo, if you look to the east, galaxies are red shifted. The same if you look west. And North. And South. Up and down and all the directions in between. A galaxy moving eastward from us is not getting any closer to a galaxy that is moving westward.

Don't be silly. North, South, East and West have no meaning in cosmology.

Gravity draws together clouds of dust and gas. If enough hydrogen is gathered at the centre, it will get so hot it starts fusing hydrogen into helium and you have a star and the pressure created is enough to stop the star collapsing under gravity. If the dust in the accretion disc is pulled together by gravity to form planets, you get a solar system, all held together by the gravity generated by the star in the middle. For the next several billion years,(the bigger the star, the hotter and quicker it burns) the colossal energy put out by the star in the form of electromagnetic radiation, combined with the chemistry on the planets can be used to do all sorts of interesting things, creating sentient beings with laptops for instance. Apart from keeping the whole thing together, the role of gravity in chemical and biological processes is so negligible that it can be safely ignored. The next big role for gravity is when the star, having swelled to a red giant and toasted all the beings with laptops, burns all its useable fuel and collapses catastrophically and blows up, turning everything in its way to dust, just as thermodynamics predicts.

And after it has all turned to dust the thinking philosopher turns to Anaximander. The dust re-accretes under the influence of gravity and forms itself into yet more complex structures. Chemistry has come a long way in 13.8 billion years via exactly this mechanism and you and I are the living proof.

[uwot]

I'm not disputing the evidence but only the explanation.

That is entirely your prerogative, we're all trying to make sense of the phenomena.

We know from GR that time passes more quickly between galaxies than it does within them and this not only accounts for the redshift but ALSO accounts for the fact that more distant galaxies appear to be accelerating away from the observer. So much for dark energy. The same simple FACT that time passes more quickly between galaxies than within them is also a complete and adequate explanation for gravitational lensing. So much for "curved space".

You mean the curved space on which GR is predicated and which you cite in support of your initial premise?

Don't be silly. North, South, East and West have no meaning in cosmology.

True enough. The point is though that whichever way you point a telescope, all the galaxies beyond the local cluster are red shifted. Still, if colour shift is not due to Doppler, what makes you think Andromeda is coming towards us?

And after it has all turned to dust the thinking philosopher turns to Anaximander. The dust re-accretes under the influence of gravity and forms itself into yet more complex structures.

Anaximander's apeiron was a plenum, sounds more like Democritus. Anyway, nah. What happens is that every time a star goes nova, it fuses lighter elements into heavier ones, which could be construed as more complex structures, but a lot of the interesting chemistry is dependent on lighter elements. Heavy elements are great if a universe of hammers and fishing weights is what you're after, but since all the hydrogen will have been fused into iron and lead, there won't be any water to fish.

Chemistry has come a long way in 13.8 billion years via exactly this mechanism and you and I are the living proof.

Make the most of it, chemistry that results in life, at least as we know it, has a limited shelf life. Why do you cite 13.8 billion years? If you attribute the red shift to gravity, how big do you think the universe was, and how big do you think it is now?