Posted on 08/01/2011 3:29:32 PM PDT by cakid1
They call themselves 'Backyard Skeptics.'
One of their ads, includes the saying ' Out of the Closet Atheists.."
They're spending thousands of dollars to put-up 30 bus-shelter ads from Anaheim to Mission Viejo. Their message:
“Have Doubts? So Do We”
"The campaign is aimed at letting other nonbelievers know “there is a community of non-theists who share the idea that we can be good without God,” The Orange County Register quoted Backyard Skeptics director Bruce Gleason as saying."
"The ads are offending commuter, the newspaper noted. “If they don’t want to believe in God then they should just be quiet about it,” an Anaheim resident, Melinda Holt, was quoted as saying. “Why do they have to buy a poster and put it in public view? I’m a Christian and to see the Holy Bible in an ad that questions its worth – that’s just not OK.”
So, if you believe God to be under time (albeit a “different” time), then time is the entity that gives meaning to God (only time ensures God is the “uncaused” cause, and provides meaning to sequences), and that diminishes God to become subservient to time. In such an arrangement, God cannot be God.
Also, due to the implications of Relativity, two initially synced clocks, one flown at high velocity compared to the other, will produce out-of-sync times, in effect creating a “new” time flow for the clock that underwent relative motion.
I didn't say it had no effect. I said it was just unseen matter. Quite unlike dark energy which is something new. Since Einstein we have known matter curves the universe. So obviously it has an effect.
However, the consequences of trying to pretend time doesn't exist raises the unsolvable paradox - of the loss of sequence.
What loss of sequence paradox? It is only a sequence because time is invoked. For instance, time is of no consequence to the pattern in the double slit experiment. The pattern is formed randomly with respect to time.
Without time, God and "Creation" both exist simultaneously. Only time can separate God's "uncausedness" from God's "act of creating".
To put it plainly, without time, God cannot act.
Without time makes simultaneous(at the same time) meaningless. Your second statement is an assertion which I do not accept. And your conclusion which is based upon the other two statements is therefore non sequitur.
If everything is special then nothing is special.
"Just unseen" matter is somewhat belittling it. And the article I linked to, which speaks of Dark Matter and Dark Energy as 'two sides of the same coin', debars one from dismissing Dark Matter as if it were not involved in the mechanics of the Universe.
What loss of sequence paradox? It is only a sequence because time is invoked. For instance, time is of no consequence to the pattern in the double slit experiment. The pattern is formed randomly with respect to time.
Loss of sequence which supports the meaningfulness of actions - such as the grandfather "being created" before the grandson is, or ensuring that the cause always precedes the effect. As for the double-slit experiment, you need to elaborate more. What do you exactly mean when you say that "pattern is formed randomly with respect to time"? Time is crucial in ensuring the meaningfulness of the experiment. For instance, could the patterns form before the electrons are emitted? That sort of thing. Can God "create" the Universe, and then plan how to go about "beginning to create" the Universe? Those sorts of phase changes require time to give them meaning. Or else, God does actions where the cause precedes the effect. Time prevents this. God is outside time. Therefore one of them is meaningless.
Without time makes simultaneous(at the same time) meaningless. Your second statement is an assertion which I do not accept. And your conclusion which is based upon the other two statements is therefore non sequitur.
Okay, take it this way: How would cause and effect maintain their meaning without time? Certainly you believe your deity initiates the causes which result in effects. What gives meaning to cause and effect, other than time? Or are you forced to conclude that this deity cannot be responsible for any causes?
If everything is special then nothing is special.
But then everything still is special.
You've gotta be kidding me! I hurt its feelings? Look, the simplest working solution is that dark matter is simply matter whose gravitational effects are only those effects that we can presently measure. It is dark. It is still matter. Dark energy is a completely different "animal".
Loss of sequence which supports the meaningfulness of actions - such as the grandfather "being created" before the grandson is, or ensuring that the cause always precedes the effect.
Again you are using time to require time. You are grasping at entropy but the cyclic universe throws that away.
For instance, could the patterns form before the electrons are emitted? That sort of thing.
Look up delayed choice quantum eraser.
How would cause and effect maintain their meaning without time?
Cause and effect for events in this universe lie within this universe. The cause for this universe lies outside this universe.
But then everything still is special.
And everything is then not special. But then you seem to be confusing unique with special, because of the way you answered my question on gravity. Which was, "What is special about gravity?"
You make assumptions about what a god can be. I'm not intersted in those assumptions. I'm only addressing the faulty argument that time in our universe could not have a begining, or could not have been created.
I'm not even claiming it was created. I'm only pointing out how the argument doesn't work.
"Also, due to the implications of Relativity, two initially synced clocks, one flown at high velocity compared to the other, will produce out-of-sync times, in effect creating a “new” time flow for the clock that underwent relative motion."
The effects of Relativity have nothing to do with this discussion.
Only a little bit. *Sniff*!
Look, the simplest working solution is that dark matter is simply matter whose gravitational effects are only those effects that we can presently measure. It is dark. It is still matter. Dark energy is a completely different "animal".
Again:
Dark Fluid: Dark Matter And Dark Energy May Be Two Faces Of Same Coin
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080131094056.htm
Look up delayed choice quantum eraser.
Look up Causality, the impossibility of violating Causality and then see Retrocausality. Also look back upthread, where, IIRC, you posted an article on Einstein's Causality being inviolable.
See, the problem here is mathematics not agreeing with reality. I remember a take on this on one of the physics boards, and it went like this:
"Mathematics, when used in physics as a language to describe the observed is not a magic formula to change reality. For example, -5 and +5 are both real numbers, but while I can have +5 apples in my lunch-box, eating -5 apples is not a reliable way to lose weight."
This is what I had said:
"So, if you believe God to be under time (albeit a “different” time), then time is the entity that gives meaning to God (only time ensures God is the “uncaused” cause, and provides meaning to sequences), and that diminishes God to become subservient to time. In such an arrangement, God cannot be God."
Let's break this down to see where exactly you see a violation or assumption made:
Do you believe God is under time, a "different" time, at least?
If God is under time, is not time under the control of God's sequencing of events? Time PREVENTS God from doing two contradictory things at the same instant. Do you agree with this?
"I'm only addressing the faulty argument that time in our universe could not have a begining, or could not have been created."
I am not talking about "our universe" but time in general as as something that allows events to occur. Without time, how can anything be begun? If time "had a beginning", then what could have allowed the timeless phase prior to "time having a beginning", to change? Without time, change is impossible. Without time, God cannot change the timeless phase to a time -based one, because even this transition (change) requires time.
Yes, and we may all be a simulation on a giant quantum computer. Wishing does not make it so. At present, dark energy is an explanation for the measured accelerating expansion of the universe. And dark matter explains some anomalous measurements having to do with gravity.
Look up Causality, the impossibility of violating Causality and then see Retrocausality
Read the delayed choice quantum eraser.
Yes, he is making hidden assumptions. He's assuming that God is a created being (aka "sequential"), and then argues that, since God cannot be a created being, God does not exist. That's all there is to it.
More than that, he is making contradictory statements. No time means no time, not reverse time, not convoluted time, nor same time. It means no time. So when he states that without time, an effect can precede its cause, he is contradicting himself, since time cannot exist and no such relationship can be established. That appears to be what non-locality exhibits.
Yes, and we may all be a simulation on a giant quantum computer. Wishing does not make it so. At present, dark energy is an explanation for the measured accelerating expansion of the universe. And dark matter explains some anomalous measurements having to do with gravity.
And beyond. Not "just that". You're seeing black or white when it's all grey.
Read the delayed choice quantum eraser.
A very nice insight from PhysicsForum:
An effect preceding its cause is analytically illogical. Causes and effects are obviously temporal distinctions, with the cause being a priori. Of course, determining causal relations depends not just on the phenomena, but the observer. This means that I can certainly observe an effect prior to observing its cause: I hear my wife's voice prior to seeing her person... I see the ball smash the window prior to seeing who kicked it... etc. But determining who caused the vocal sounds and who kicked the ball is necessitated by my being able to relate two observations/events. That is, I have a notion that my wife spoke, and that the ball was kicked. My wife and the ball kicker must precede the speech act and the smashed window.
Without a notion that someone-kicked-the-ball-which-caused-the-window-to-smash occuring in that temporal order, then on what grounds would I have for asserting the one necessarily preceded the other? To say that the smashing of the window as an event occured before the ball kicking event is illogical IF the window was indeed smashed by the kicked ball. Again, this is because our concept of causality is based on linear temporal events: this, then that. Our concept of causality is also based on observed phenomena:
State of affairs 'X', then state of affairs 'Y'. I dont think I have ever seen a window smash ('X') then seen the window-smashing-ball kicked at it ('Y'). As far as 'X' is concerned, the window is currently smashed. But as far as 'Y' is concerned, the window is yet to be smashed. How can a smashed window precede its being smashed?
One has to be very careful when discussing "effect" and "cause" in quantum mechanics. We have, for example, the delayed choice quantum eraser where it might appear that the behavior of photons is being influenced by what happens at a later time.
The simple definition - "cause comes before effect" - clearly is insufficient to capture the nuances of what happens in QM because we don't really know what the "cause" is of any quantum event. On the other hand, we know that outcomes cannot be determined prior to measurement and still give us the results we see. Thus, if there is a "cause" it must come at the time of measurement or later.
Perhaps in QM the cause does precede effect, but the effect is not actually manifested until much later than we think - i.e., in an entanglement experiment, perhaps the "effect" is not the detection, but the comparison of the two detections.
And there is also difficulty in defining the term "cause" itself. Does cause mean that but for an event, the other would not happen? Well, no - one can still cause someone's death by shooting them even if they would've had a heart attack moments later. Does cause mean that you have altered the odds of an event? No - again, death might have been certain in both cases.
So we can't really have the discussion - can cause precede effect - until we know exactly what it means to cause an event. We see correlations all over the place - and they need not be in any temporal sequence. But causation is difficult to identify and even harder to define.
Yes, he is making hidden assumptions. He's assuming that God is a created being (aka "sequential"), and then argues that, since God cannot be a created being, God does not exist. That's all there is to it.
Nonsense, if not blatant lies.
The "sequential" part is God's actions - they are "outside time" and hence have to occur simultaneously since time separation is invalid in the timeless domain. The rest of your argument is meaningless because I never made such a claim. I said it is impossible to perform sequence-based acts in a timeless domain. Going from not-yet-conceived-the-thought to conceived-the-thought on to not-yet-created to finished-creating, is a sequence and I hope you are capable of recognising that (if not, prove why not). For God to be able to do it, God HAS to be under time. You have been completely incapable of refuting this basic fact of change and time all through the exchange.
No, I'm seeing what is the present claim and not an unsubstantiated guess of 3 years ago which has not been supported by anything I can find.
An effect preceding its cause is analytically illogical.
It is illogical because it is defined that way.(what does precede mean?) You admit that in your next statement.
The simple definition - "cause comes before effect" - clearly is insufficient to capture the nuances of what happens in QM because we don't really know what the "cause" is of any quantum event.
And why do you suppose that is? Hint - your definition fails.
We see correlations all over the place - and they need not be in any temporal sequence. But causation is difficult to identify and even harder to define.
But you have made the claim that it is impossible to violate and without time nothing can happen. Clearly something happens and in a spacelike manner(non local) not a timelike manner.
The rest of your argument is meaningless because I never made such a claim. I said it is impossible to perform sequence-based acts in a timeless domain.
Again this is your assertion and it was stronger that just sequence-based. It was that any change was impossible.
You have been completely incapable of refuting this basic fact of change and time all through the exchange.
I just did and you "agreed" with it. Your lame excuse of causality being difficult to define is nothing but a copout. You assert that without time change is impossible. Quantum effects are part of this universe and measurable. One aspect of QM which troubles(d) many people, including Einstein, is the non-local nature of entanglement. In short two separate particles which are entangled demonstrate that change can occur "without" time. IOW plotting two entangled particles in a spacelike manner(outside of each others light cone), their wave equation collapses without respect to time.
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