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To: Alamo-Girl
To the contrary, God is not "in" time or space. Time and space are not properties of God. Neither therefore can the term "physical causation" or any other physical terms, e.g. physical laws, operate as restrictions on God.

Just because aspects of God are outside of time and space doesn't mean that others are not in time and space. Certainly the Son and the Holy Ghost have physical and temporal qualities, but I digress. I agree that your concept of God is eternal and uncaused and outside of time and space. This is a theological statement and a belief based on faith. It cannot therefore be argued.

Philosophically and scientifically, however, it is encumbent upon you to show why one class of object, let's call it the "supernatural" can exist outside of space-time and cause events inside of space-time, but other classes of objects may not.

Tegmark and Plato may be right or they may be wrong about mathematical constructs existing outside of space-time. Clearly this is another form of the koan: "tree falling in forest with no one to hear".

It is also the core of my cosmology. Interestingly, in "Timothy" you birdies mention Dawkins repeatedly, but I have yet to see references to the memes that he invented. (I'm only half way through (I read Gatsby in 2 hours which says something about Timothy)).

There is no doubt thgat Bethoven's fifth exists in space-time. It was created in space-time by a creature of space-time. And yet it doesn't exist anymore than the Pythagorean theorem absent some medium. It moved from a mind to written music to another mind to a wax disc to vinyl to tape to cd and it will exist as long as some form of memory exists.

If you listen carefully, you will learn that you too are just a signal in the fabric of space-time. All that exists is space-time and unique peices of information contained in discrete wave packets of space-time. That includes you and me and God and Satan and ducks and pencils and all other nouns and pronouns. I forget the word used for a discrete wave packet that behaves like a wave. It was discovered in Edinburgh in the 19th century near Heriot Watt University.

Dawkins didn't get it with his memes. He thought they were physical structures in brains, but they are your theoretical information outside (but really inside) of space-time.

151 posted on 11/19/2008 11:17:25 AM PST by PasorBob
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To: PasorBob

John Scott Russell and the solitary wave
Over one hundred and fifty years ago, while conducting experiments to determine the most efficient design for canal boats, a young Scottish engineer named John Scott Russell (1808-1882) made a remarkable scientific discovery. As he described it in his “Report on Waves”: (Report of the fourteenth meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, York, September 1844 (London 1845), pp 311-390, Plates XLVII-LVII).

``I was observing the motion of a boat which was rapidly drawn along a narrow channel by a pair of horses, when the boat suddenly stopped - not so the mass of water in the channel which it had put in motion; it accumulated round the prow of the vessel in a state of violent agitation, then suddenly leaving it behind, rolled forward with great velocity, assuming the form of a large solitary elevation, a rounded, smooth and well-defined heap of water, which continued its course along the channel apparently without change of form or diminution of speed. I followed it on horseback, and overtook it still rolling on at a rate of some eight or nine miles an hour, preserving its original figure some thirty feet long and a foot to a foot and a half in height. Its height gradually diminished, and after a chase of one or two miles I lost it in the windings of the channel. Such, in the month of August 1834, was my first chance interview with that singular and beautiful phenomenon which I have called the Wave of Translation’’.
(Cet passage en francais)
This event took place on the Union Canal at Hermiston, very close to the Riccarton campus of Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.
For a more detailed and technical account of the solitary wave, see for example R K Bullough, “The Wave” “par excellence”, the solitary, progressive great wave of equilibrium of the fluid - an early history of the solitary wave, in Solitons, ed. M Lakshmanan, Springer Series in Nonlinear Dynamics, 1988, 150-281


152 posted on 11/19/2008 11:24:44 AM PST by PasorBob
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To: PasorBob; betty boop
I'm glad to hear you are about halfway through "Timothy!"

If you listen carefully, you will learn that you too are just a signal in the fabric of space-time. All that exists is space-time and unique peices of information contained in discrete wave packets of space-time.

When you get into the "What is Life?" section around page 91, you may find yourself on familiar ground (information theory and molecular biology.)

Even so, since you self-identify as a frog and define reality as finite or more specifically, that which is contained within the boundaries of space/time (which is finite) - and betty boop and I self-identify as birds, there is no way we can "make" you see what we see.

The frog view is that mathematical structures exist "in" space/time. The mathematician invents the geometry like the composer invents the music, etc.

The bird view is that mathematical structures confirm Platonic forms by the mere presence of variables in the equations. For instance, pi is the same regardless of the size of the circle or its location anywhere in space/time. The mathematician doesn't invent the geometry, he discovers it.

In my view, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is like God's copyright notice on the cosmos.

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork. Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. [There is] no speech nor language, [where] their voice is not heard. - Psalms 19:1-3

Indeed, wave phenomena are part of that creative speech. Interestingly, the sound or pressure waves at the moment photons decoupled from electrons, protons and neutrons are recorded in the cosmic microwave background radiation.

And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. – Genesis 1:3

But to the frog, God must exist "in" space/time because that is the boundary of his reality In the frog view, God must be finite because space/time is finite, physically existing, physically caused, subject to physical laws, e.g. entropy, etc.

In other words, there can be no God in frog-world, only an anthropomorphism of God, a “god” the frog can comprehend in his reality.

All that exists is space-time and unique peices of information contained in discrete wave packets of space-time. That includes you and me and God and Satan and ducks and pencils and all other nouns and pronouns.

Our irreconcilable differences notwithstading, we may find some agreement with reference to quantum field theory. To me, a particle is like a placemarker in a wave. Indeed, apparent mass may be merely a shadow of extra-dimensional dynamics.

And as you will see on page 91 forward in “Timothy” – we assert that the difference between life v. non-life/death in nature is the presence verse absence of information (successful communication) - not the message (e.g. DNA) but the successful communication of the message.

157 posted on 11/19/2008 10:18:37 PM PST by Alamo-Girl
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