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How Much Longer Will Religion Last?

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As we all (should) know, advancements in technology are continuing to accelerate at a breathtaking rate. We buy the latest and greatest laptops only to replace them a couple of years later with technology that is ten times better, and at much the same price. Researchers and commonfolk alike have access at their fingertips to a never ending stream of quality information that not even all the (book) libraries in the world could match.

And so we are also witnessing a massive shakeup with religion which is no longer considered the norm in civilized society but has been relegated to being no more than being beyond the pail, an alternative, an escape from reality and certainly, irrelevant to the cultures, morals, and lifestyles of today's modern, civilized folk. People continue to leave Churches in droves and its no surprise given the mountains of valid, quality information that those of faith can access.

Old habits die hard, especially culturally bad habits which tend to linger on through generations which begs the question...are we going to witness the demise of religion sooner rather than later?



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  • JulesKorngoldJulesKorngold 810 Pts   -  
    It is difficult to predict the future of religion and how long it will last. It has existed for thousands of years and continues to be a significant aspect of many people's lives. Factors such as societal changes and advancements in technology may affect the role of religion in the future, but it is impossible to say for certain how long it will continue to be a part of human culture.
  • just_sayinjust_sayin 853 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    Argument Topic: Faith in God will continue

    The benefits of faith are numerous.
    1) Physical Health Benefits

    “Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide. Several studies have shown that addressing the spiritual needs of the patient may enhance recovery from illness.” Mayo Clinic

    2) Mental Health Benefits

    Religion gives people something to believe in, provides a sense of structure and typically offers a group of people to connect with over similar beliefs. These facets can have a large positive impact on mental health — research suggests that religiosity reduces suicide rates, alcoholism and drug use. - National Alliance on Mental Illness

    3) More Charitable with Their Time and Money

    People who are religiously affiliated are more likely to make a charitable donation of any kind, whether to a religious congregation or to another type of charitable organization. Sixty-two percent of religious households give to charity of any kind, compared with 46 percent of households with no religious affiliation. - Philanthropy Today

    That doesn't even address that belief in God makes sense.  God best explains whey there is something rather than nothing.  God best explains how a universe could arise from nothing.  The universes fundamental forces are so fine tuned for life that even minor variations would have made the existence of our universe impossible.  Roger Penrose calculated the possibility of a random universe being able to support any life due to the cosmological constant at 1 in 10 to the 120th power.  There are roughly 10 to the 80th power atoms in the universe.  That's incredibly fined tuned and it strains credulity to think random processes could account for all of the fine tuning we see. 

    NomenclaturePepsiguy
  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -  
    @just_sayin
    Most studies have shown that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity, coping skills, and health-related quality of life (even during terminal illness) and less anxiety, depression, and suicide. Several studies have shown that addressing the spiritual needs of the patient may enhance recovery from illness.

    I distinctly remember explaining to you that this is hogwash. These "studies" have compared religious and non-religious peers living in the same country, but no cause/effect relationship has been found between these data sets. If one compares any two data sets imaginable then one of them is going to win. If I compare people who played baseball aged 15 to people who played basketball, or people with blue eyes to those with brown eyes, or people who are right handed to people who are left handed, one of those groups is going to live longer than the other. It doesn't mean there is any causal relationship. 

    In fact, if one collects the data another way, and compares average life expectancy between religious and non-religious countries, the non-religious populations live longer:-

    Secular populations definitely live much longer than residents of highly religious countries. Examples include Sweden (life expectancy of 81 years) and Japan (life expectancy of 82 years) where residents outlive more religious Americans (78.5 years). 

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-human-beast/201302/do-religious-people-really-live-longer

    Since religious people believe in hogwash, they generally use other forms of hogwash to validate it.

    Mental Health Benefits

    And this part is also hogwash. Religion might make people feel better about themselves, but it comes at the exorbitant expense of cognitive faculties like reason and logic. It's no better than a sedative which dulls the sharp edge of the mind. Lobotomising reason is not a mental health benefit in any meaningful sense of the word. 

    The proof here is quite frankly in the pudding, since you have presented an argument where people should believe in religion not because it is true, but because it has "health benefits". 


    That doesn't even address that belief in God makes sense. 

    Please don't talk rubbish. The idea of God was plucked out of thin air. There never was, never has been, or never will be any evidence for the premise. It's an untestable hypothesis, just like the hypothesis that the adjacent galaxy is populated by pink unicorns. Belief in untestable hypotheses does not make sense precisely because you can never test your ideas to find out if they are right.

    God best explains whey there is something rather than nothing.

    Utter self-contradictory rubbish. How do you explain why there's a God instead of nothing? If God has always existed then why can't something which is not God have always existed? We are here once more faced with comprehensive proof that people who believe in religion have been stripped of the ability to think critically.

    God best explains how a universe could arise from nothing.

    Oh, an omnipotent bearded wizard best explains how a universe could arise from nothing? That's awesome. Except your omnipotent bearded wizard precludes the idea that there was ever nothing, because your omnipotent bearded wizard still must exist in order to create the universe. The very fact that you cannot understand the irrationality of your own argument hammers home the point.

  • PepsiguyPepsiguy 109 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    Argument Topic: Eternity

    @Swolliw

    Religion will live forever.

    Atheism is dying: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/04/07/why-people-with-no-religion-are-projected-to-decline-as-a-share-of-the-worlds-population/

    Islam is growing. This is because:

    1. Islamic countries have high fertility rates. Atheists have low fertility rates
    2. Atheist propaganda is everywhere are most major search engines are censored to not show conservative Christian results. If it wasn't for the rise of wokeism and its predecessor New Atheism(which I prefer calling Neomodernism), we would still be as Christian as yesterday.
    3. Hollywood preaches liberal propaganda instead of entertaining people. These days they push the lgbtqip2aa+ nonsense at you full force(even on kids content). Don't you forget the awful book "The DaVinci code" which is poorly written(even secularists don't like it) and also filled with lies: 
    https://historycollection.com/16-reasons-why-the-da-vinci-code-is-full-of-inaccurate-history/
    https://charismamag.com/culture/20-big-lies-in-the-davinci-code/
    4. Average iq is decreasing: https://mahb.stanford.edu/blog/idiocracy-is-the-decline-in-human-intelligence-undermining-democracy/#:~:text=The average rate of decline,a general loss of intelligence. which correlates with the decline of Christianity in America.
    5. Hate speech laws everywhere include anti lgtbq "hate speech". This happens in many western countries and is a danger to free expression.

    Also you ever wonder why nearly all democracies in the world has a religious majority and why every single country with state atheism is a hell hole? Its because if you give people the freedom to think freely, they realize that atheism is pure bullc**p. Also about 75% of 'nones' in America believe in God.

    Also, atheism died when Edwin Hubble discovered redshift. From that day on, atheism has never been logical again.
    Nomenclature
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5966 Pts   -  
    @just_sayin

    "God" does not explain anything: it is a cop-out. It is a trick that allows one to feel like they know something in the absence of information. "God made the Universe" is absolutely equivalent to "I do not know how the Universe came to be, but however it came to be, I will call it 'God'". You just give a name to something that you know nothing about and then pretend that it having a name means that you know something about it. It is a common fallacy which really should have a common name (perhaps it does and I am simply unaware of it - any help, guys?).

    As for Penrose's argument... The guy is a very good physicist, but as a philosopher he is quite terrible, and a lot of his arguments fall apart upon closer examination. For one, it makes no sense to talk about the probability of anything in a "random Universe", since the distribution from which such a Universe would be drawn is unknown (we only have one Universe to sample from, and no theories confirmed with any reasonable certainty on what laws guide the choice of the Universe to appear).
    Then, even if the probability was actually this low, since Universes in the model he used when making that argument are infinite in number, there will be infinity of the Universes with life in them - and since any conscious organism has to live in such a Universe, it is inevitable that this particular Universe will be like that. Penrose's argument is similar to this one: "I cannot be alive, for what are the chances that the previous 100 generations of my ancestors were exactly what they were? All it would take is for a single person from that tree to choose a different mating partner, and I would not be here. Clearly me being alive is an illusion".

    Lastly, I would appreciate it if people around here stopped repeating the old fallacious "something from nothing" line. No one in the scientific community says that the Universe emerged literally out of "nothing": some laws must have guided its emergence, and the space in which those laws function is not "nothing". It is only "nothing" in the sense that it does not map onto anything we know in this Universe: human brain cannot imagine anything outside the existing spacetime, and "What created spacetime?" is like asking "What was my experience like before I was conceived?" The answer to this question lays outside of anything human consciousness can experience, and beyond abstract mathematical formulas it cannot be described in any way.

    All these attempts to logically justify the claim that "God" exists are based on various fallacies. At the end of the day, if there is no evidence that "God" exists, then there is no reason to assume that it does (or that it is even "existable" in principle). No matter what logical trickery you employ, with no data all of this is going to be wild speculation at best, and delirious fantasy at worst. Unlike these arguments, scientific arguments actually connect to the observable facts in this Universe. You may feel deeply uncomfortable with the Big Bang Theory because of how mysterious it looks to an untrained eye, but as long as that theory gives accurate predictions that can be consistently verified in a vast range of experiments, this theory is the best way to describe the history of formation of the Universe. Sure, fantasy books may provide more colorful and, perhaps, in some sense, optimistic pictures - but they are simply detached from reality and have nothing to do with science.
    just_sayin
  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @Pepsiguy
    Atheist propaganda is everywhere

    Roflmao. 

    "Atheist propaganda" of course being the idea that when I invent an idea like a grand bearded wizard in the sky and you refuse to take my word for it, you're spreading propaganda.

    You're so dumb it makes me shudder with fear.

    Dee
  • just_sayinjust_sayin 853 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @Nomenclature said:
    Secular populations definitely live much longer than residents of highly religious countries. Examples include Sweden (life expectancy of 81 years) and Japan (life expectancy of 82 years) where residents outlive more religious Americans (78.5 years). 

    I have to call out the argument for the bait and switch.  If you compare religious people in Sweden to non-religious in Sweden you will find that religious people live longer.  The bogus argument instead tries to say that a country like Japan has better health outcomes than the US.  It has engaged in a bait and switch.  Knowing that other factors contribute to different health outcomes in different countries.  When comparing apples to apples, or in this case specifically religious to non-religious people in the same country, the evidence is clear, as the Mayo Clinic points out.  I know that IHateGod.com makes the kind of bogus argument made above, but honesty matters, well, to most of us.

    The user above said that religion does not have any mental health benefits, but doesn't cite any sources for the claim, not even IHateGod.com.  While the claim I made is sourced with a quote from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

    If God has always existed then why can't something which is not God have always existed?

    Since at the moment of the Big Bang all matter and energy in the universe either didn't exist prior or was compacted into an area of 0 width, 0 height, and 0 depth, it seems illogical to think anything existed prior.  Just how much matter and energy can you fit in 0 space?  Even scenarios like Hawking's shuttle theory, that has the universe compacted into a planck size space for eternity, have been shown to be mathematically impossible because any environment that allows for energy fluctuations would have dissipated or ended literally an eternity ago.

    As has been explained, God does not have a beginning.  By definition He is a necessary being.  Appeals to multiverses or other such things are worse than magic, as not only is there no scientific evidence for them, but at least when a magician pulls a rabbit out of his hat he starts with a hat.  

    Those who appeal to multiverses without evidence, have only gone from the frying pan to the fire, because any multiverse scenario that creates universes eternally must be even more finely tuned than our own universe.  Further, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem has shown that inflationary universe models - as the multiversal universe model is can not be past eternal and must have a beginning.  

    Oh, an omnipotent bearded wizard best explains how a universe could arise from nothing? That's awesome.

    Well, let's see from the evidence, what characteristics the source for our universe must have.  Since spacetime can't create itself, our source is outside of space-time; it must be eternal and timeless.  Since our source exists beyond space-time it must be spaceless and immaterial.  Further the source must be powerful enough to create finely tuned universes.  So it seems the source must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial and powerful enough to create universes.  Sounds an awful lot like God - so yep - That's awesome.


    Nomenclature
  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -  
    Argument Topic: Ridiculous

    @just_sayin
    I have to call out the argument for the bait and switch. 
    This is a patently absurd accusation. You don't get to pick and choose the data you're prepared to acknowledge and reject everything else simply because it debunks the false idea you're trying to sell. That's like saying smoking is healthy and supporting it with various anecdotes of smokers who lived to an old age, then crying "bait and switch" when I post health studies which contradict your premise. You linked a quote from the Mayo Clinic which read:-
    Religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes, including greater longevity
    That claim is not true, since the data I posted directly contradicts it. You're purposefully looking for the data which agrees with what you want to believe and ignoring the data which doesn't. That's called selection bias, and my inclusion of the relevant data which you ignored has nothing to do with bait and switch.
    If you compare religious people in Sweden to non-religious in Sweden you will find that religious people live longer. 
    I think if that were true you'd have linked me to a relevant study illustrating such. The studies you are referencing were conducted in the United States:-

    Much of the relevant research was conducted in the U.S. where larger advantages in longevity were reported for religious people in some studies, but little or no advantage was found in others.

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-human-beast/201302/do-religious-people-really-live-longer

    Hence, you are cherry-picking the data you want to acknowledge, and simply ignoring anything which contradicts or conflicts with it. 
    The user above said that religion does not have any mental health benefits, but doesn't cite any sources for the claim, not even IHateGod.com.  While the claim I made is sourced with a quote from the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
    You can certainly have a source if you like, but things which are self-evidently true do not require sources, because deductive logic is always stronger than inductive logic. As I explained earlier, one cannot become religious without abandoning (or at least compromising) the mind's ability to use logic and reason. This negatively impacts mental health because logic and reason are integral functions of the human brain. If I believe I'm being protected by a giant invisible fairy then you cannot logically claim that improves my mental health because it is a delusion, and delusions are not consistent with good mental health, even if they make me happier by believing them. Here:-

    Overall, critical thinking negatively impacts faith. That is because faith teaches us that we should blindly accept religious concepts without question, while critical thinking teaches us to slow down and think
     rationally and logically. 

    https://criticalthinkingsecrets.com/religion-and-critical-thinking-how-critical-thinking-impacts-religion/
    Since at the moment of the Big Bang all matter and energy in the universe either didn't exist prior or was compacted into an area of 0 width, 0 height, and 0 depth
    So if matter and energy didn't exist then where did God find the energy and matter to start a universe? The things you are saying are just so intellectually redundant. 
    It seems illogical to think anything existed prior.
    So then why do you think God existed prior? How are you incapable of understanding the gross double standards in your own belief structure?
    Just how much matter and energy can you fit in 0 space?
    Your question is absurd because you're asking me how much matter and energy I can fit in space before matter, energy and space exist. 
    As has been explained, God does not have a beginning. 
    Oh, please stop talking complete unadulterated rubbish. Your argument is literally: everything has to have a beginning unless it's a bearded sky junkie with magic powers. I don't need to explain where my bearded sky junkie with magic powers came from, because he had no beginning. It's like talking to an 8th grader. If God can magic up a universe from nothing, then magic must be real, and if magic is real then the universe could have happened by magic. How about that, child?
    Those who appeal to multiverses without evidence
    Without evidence? You're making an argument for an irrational magic being who creates universes from nothing!! There is at least some genuine scientific evidence that we may be living in a multiverse. There is zero scientific evidence that God is real. Put your raging double standards away please.
    any multiverse scenario that creates universes eternally must be even more finely tuned than our own universe.
    Not only are you wrong, but this doesn't even make grammatical sense. You're comparing a "scenario" with a universe.
    Further, the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem has shown that inflationary universe models - as the multiversal universe model is can not be past eternal and must have a beginning.  
    Now you're deliberately being fallacious. Just because our own universe inflated doesn't necessarily mean every other universe inflated. In fact, one would almost certainly expect there to be other universes which did not inflate in a multiverse. Furthermore, even if inflation had a beginning, that still does not preclude something existing prior to the universe we know today. It may still indeed be the case that the universe itself has existed forever, in a big bang/big crunch cycle. It may also be the case that the universe was birthed from a particle such as a singularity. There are a multitude of theories which respectable scientists have put forward and none of them necessitate or include the existence of a timeless magic fairy.
    Well, let's see from the evidence
    Oh yes, please. Let's. Show me all the evidence you have that the universe was created by a magic fairy who doesn't need any explanation and can invent universes from nothing. From a purely statistical standpoint, the odds are millions of times better that Father Christmas really comes down the chimney at night to deliver presents.
    what characteristics the source for our universe must have.  Since our source is outside of space-time it must be eternal and timeless.
    Everything which exists outside of time is timeless. That could be a runner bean, a shoe factory, a giant rubber duck or a slice of chocolate cake. It doesn't have to be a self-aware, bearded magic fairy. You're taking a zillion possibilities and somehow pretending there's only one. The universe could have come from anywhere or anything. Pretending you know where the universe came from because you read it in an old book which has been debunked hundreds of times about a multitude of its claims is about as willfully ignorant as it is possible to be. Your source for this crap is literally a book which claims there was a man who cheated death, on the word of two drunk dudes who say they saw him on a road. I'm sorry, but your mind is simply broken. 
    Further the source must be powerful enough to create finely tuned universes.
    We've had this conversation before. The anthropic principle explains why our universe is habitable. If it wasn't habitable, we wouldn't be here to know about it. You've given absolutely no reason, logical or empirical, why God exists, and I've now read through your entire post, which is nothing more than an exercise in double standards, selection bias, misunderstanding of physics and bizarre conclusions which are not supported by anything outside of your own wishful thinking.
    So it seems the source must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial and powerful enough to create universes.
    Just more of the same baloney. You have conveniently forgotten to mention that it does not need to be self-aware, act with intent or purpose, or indeed constitute any type of physical being. There does not even need to be a "source" in the first place because, once again, cause and effect is a condition of our own universe. No cause is needed to explain why the universe is here.

    You are a perfect example of how religion rots the human capacity to reason. You are so intent on validating your own baseless belief structure, that you simply twist everything else around it, and if it doesn't fit your paradigm you simply throw it away and forget it exists.
    Deejust_sayin
  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @Nomenclature

    Give yourself a laugh Nom and read his piece on Bill Nye also his new bessie "I've a science degree" May totally agrees with him .......Them Muricans really are a strange lot 
    Nomenclature
  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -  
    @Dee
    also his new bessie "I've a science degree" May totally agrees with him

    Of all the many creative forms of fallacy I stumble into while using sites like these, none of them infuriate me more than the old: "Set myself up as a form of authority so I can then make an appeal to that authority."

  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @Nomenclature

    You and me both Nom , the May person last year sniffly dismissed several counters to one of his faulty contentions by stating  only he was qualified to give an opinion on matters relating to science .....a strange little puffed up academic bully 
    Nomenclature
  • just_sayinjust_sayin 853 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @Nomenclature pleaded:
    This is a patently absurd accusation. 
    Which translated means  @Nomenclature said "Yep, you are right.  I did try to bait and switch and claim people of faith are less healthy by instead of comparing people of faith to people of non-faith in the same country, to making any comparison I could knowing other societal, cultural, or health issues would change the results to something that would not make me look foolish."

    You linked a quote from the Mayo Clinic which read...hat claim is not true, since the data I posted directly contradicts it.
    The Mayo Clinic is correct.  Here is a quote from their report:

    A majority of the nearly 350 studies of physical health and 850 studies of mental health that have used religious and spiritual variables have found that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes...During the past 3 decades, at least 18 prospective studies have shown that religiously involved persons live longer....Recent prospective studies have carefully controlled for potential confounding variables.

    350 studies of physical health and 850 studies of mental health agree with their conclusion.  The study you mention doesn't compare people living within the same country.  If it did, it would have reached the same conclusion that the vast majority of other studies have also.  It seems to me that the evidence cited by the Mayo Clinic has strong support, while yours seems to be a study intent on producing a result that it knows is misleading.  The Mayo clinic report cites the following partial list of areas where people of faith do better than their atheistic counterparts:

    • Greater longevity
    • less cardiovascular disease
    • lower blood pressure
    • Less hypertension
    • Get more exercise
    • Better nutrition
    • More likely to use a seat belt
    • Less smoking
    • Less anxiety
    • Less Depression
    • Less anxiety
    • Less alcohol and drug abuse
    • Less suicide
    Please feel free to reread the report, as they refer to each of these areas and cite reports which support these claims.  It is obvious who is "cherry-picking the data".   And it isn't me or the Mayo Clinic.

    Your question is absurd because you're asking me how much matter and energy I can fit in space before matter, energy and space exist. 

    You were so close here.  The light almost came on.  The point is since it is impossible to extend the spacetime manifold beyond the singularity (the expansion of the universe), this rules out the idea that the singularity is an effect of some prior natural process.

    Your argument is literally: everything has to have a beginning unless it's a bearded sky junkie with magic powers. I don't need to explain where my bearded sky junkie with magic powers came from, because he had no beginning.

    Actually, the argument is quite philosophically sound and grounded. See Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Cosmological Argument

    Enlightenment thinkers, such as Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, reaffirmed the cosmological argument. Leibniz (1646–1716) appealed to a strengthened principle of sufficient reason, according to which “no fact can be real or existing and no statement true without a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise” (Monadology, §32). Leibniz uses the principle to argue that the sufficient reason for the “series of things comprehended in the universe of creatures” (§36) must exist outside this series of contingencies and is found in a necessary being that we call God (§38). Samuel Clarke likewise employed the principle of sufficient reason in his cosmological argument (Rowe 1975: chap. 2).

    An argument, like Leibniz makes, goes something like this: since the universe is all of space-time reality, and includes all matter and energy, it follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence that cause must be a nonphysical, immaterial being beyond space and time.  As philosopher William Lane Craig points out - only 2 things fit that description - abstract objects or a disembodied mind.  So it makes sense to believe in a transcendent mind.  Now there is nothing in the universe that suggests that it must exist necessarily, in fact all evidence suggests it had a beginning.  So to claim that the universe came from another universe without evidence is not a sufficient reason to deem it a "necessary cause".  

    If God can magic up a universe from nothing, then magic must be real, and if magic is real then the universe could have happened by magic. How about that, child?

    See above, I just explained by your "magic" of a multiverse doesn't hold up to the philosophical argument needed for a necessary being. 

    The anthropic principle explains why our universe is habitable.

    No it doesn't.  The principle doesn't explain away the evidence of fine tuning.  If you walked along the beach and found an Iphone you would know because of the complexity of it that random interactions of the earth's soil and wind did not make it, but that some intelligence had.  To argue that "our universe is inhabitable, therefore i must have been that way and couldn't have been otherwise" is an illogical deduction.  Almost all variations of the fundamental forces result in no inhabitable universe.  The odds of existing in an inhabitable one are to say the least - immense.  It is much more reasonable, when one sees something that is so intricately made to deduce intelligence than to claim that a tornado went through a junk yard and made a jumbo jet.  That is in essence is what you would rather believe.

    It is an extraordinary amount of blind faith on your part.  And I just don't have enough faith to be an atheist.

    No cause is needed to explain why the universe is here.

    The evidence for an expanding universe when played backwards suggests a singularity point.  That suggests a beginning.  Cyclical universe models with expanding and contracting cycles fall apart under scrutiny because even in the most efficient cycle there would be some energy loss.  Any amount of energy loss means our universe would have ended literally an eternity ago.

    The steady state model has been debunked.  So, lets keep moving.  Vacuum fluctuation models severe flaws.  Given infinite past time, all the universes that "pop" into existence from the primordial vacuum would eventually interact and collide and coalesce with one another.  Thus we should be observing an infinitely old universe now, not a relatively young one.  The lack of a radiation signature for all of these other universes is also evidence that the scenario is not valid.  These are fairly lethal observations to these types of creation scenarios.  Further, Krauss's virtual particle universe out of nothing also fails both math and science tests as the time that a virtual particle exists is known and it is not long enough for the fundamental forces to form and start inflation (in other words there would have been no big bang according tot he science and math).  Inflation is widely cited as something that happened in our universe - so this seems to be a HUUUUUGGGGGE problem for these scenarios.

    We've already pointed out that all inflationary models fail the basic math test of the Borde-Guth-Villinken theorem.  

    You are a perfect example of how religion rots the human capacity to reason. 

    Why don't you mention what model of the universe you think works, and I'll gladly quote for you from the cosmologists themselves, not Bible thumpers, why it doesn't work. 

    Again, I am more than happy to believe God used 100% naturalistic means to create the universe.  Evidence of that would not shake my faith in God at all.  I would be happy to admit that the universe started by naturalistic means.  It seems that you are the one bitterly clinging to scenarios and theories that are in conflict with known science.  While I can admire your blind faith, I have to ask, what are you basing it on at this point?  
    Nomenclature
  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @just_sayin
    Which translated means  @Nomenclature said "Yep, you are right.

    No, "This is a patently absurd accusation" does not translate to, "Yep, you are right." 

    The Mayo Clinic is correct.  Here is a quote from their report:

    I have already explained to you that they are not correct. They are ignoring much of the relevant data. When I posted that data you accused me of "bait and switch". The very premise that you (and they) are implying is that there is a cause and effect relationship between being religious and living longer/enjoying better health. The idea that believing in a magical fairy makes you physically healthier is patently absurd, and hence one can easily ascertain that you are writing absolutely unforgiveable nonsense. As I patiently explained to you last time, it is very easy to make false conclusions if you simply ignore all the data which contradicts those conclusions, which is precisely what you are doing. 

    This PEW study of life expectancy is a worldwide study, unlike the exclusively domestic studies you are relying upon:-

    What role does religion play in health and longevity? This question has long been debated, with the religious claiming that their faith keeps them healthy. But is this the case? The data appear to show the opposite.

    Which might be why a Pew study awards the religiously unaffiliated (atheists and agnostics) with the second-longest lifespan of any group, finishing just behind Jews and just ahead of Buddhists. Interestingly, all three of these groups tend to rely less on metaphysical ideas and more on community and best practices while alive. The three lowest-performing groups—Christians, Hindus, and Muslims—veer in the opposite direction, with much more reliance on the afterlife and dualistic philosophies, i.e. belief in a soul or spirit that continues after physical death.

    https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/which-religion-has-the-longest-life-expectancy/

    Please feel free to reread the report

    Please feel free to stop ignoring the data which contradicts your "report", and please feel free to stop doubling down on the "report" of an openly biased, religiously affiliated clinic. See:-

    The Religious History of the World’s Most Famous Hospital

    https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2018/09/religious-history-mayo-clinic/

    Mayo Clinic’s Catholic Roots and Lessons Learned from Its Founders

    https://margefenelon.com/4969/mayo-clinics-catholic-roots-and-lessons-learned-from-its-founders/

    The Mayo Clinic literally offers "spiritual services" to its patients, so for you to present them as anything approaching a neutral, unbiased, purely scientific source is frankly an insult to people's intelligence.
    You were so close here.  The light almost came on. 
    Stop insulting me for debunking your ridiculous and delusional assertions.
    The point is since it is impossible to extend the spacetime manifold beyond the singularity (the expansion of the universe), this rules out the idea that the singularity is an effect of some prior natural process.

    The point is that you do not have the faintest idea what you are talking about. The fact that nature didn't exist prior to the material universe rules out the idea that anything was a "prior natural process". I've already explained to you that the birth of the universe does not require a cause, so stop ignoring the things I write and responding with random gibberish which you think makes you sound clever.

    Actually, the argument is quite philosophically sound and grounded.

    No, it is not, and linking me to the Stanford Encyclopaedia is nothing more than a childish deflection, since the Stanford Encyclopaedia does not support your idea that nothing could have existed before the universe except a timeless magic fairy. Contained within your own link are various solid objections to the cosmological argument, so once again we see that you are consistently refusing to acknowledge or engage anything which contradicts your pre-existing belief structure. For example:-

    Interpreting the contingent being in premise 1 as the universe, Bertrand Russell denies that the universe needs an explanation (premise 2); it just is.

    Bertrand Russell is 100 percent correct. The universe needs no explanation because explanation is a derivative of cause and effect (i.e. thing B is as it is because of thing A). Cause and effect itself is a derivative of time. Without the existence of time there is no cause and effect, because one action cannot precede another, nor lead to a future outcome. The very premise that the universe needs a cause is therefore false.

    An argument, like Leibniz makes, goes something like this: since the universe is all of space-time reality, and includes all matter and energy, it follows that if the universe has a cause of its existence that cause must be a nonphysical, immaterial being beyond space and time. 

    There is absolutely nothing whatsoever to suggest the first cause of the universe -- should a first cause exist -- needs to be a "being". You're trying to advance a completely absurd conclusion through the fallacious channel of an appeal to philosophical authority. Either Leibniz is wrong or -- abundantly more likely -- you are not presenting his argument accurately.

    See above, I just explained by your "magic" of a multiverse doesn't hold up to the philosophical argument needed for a necessary being. 

    You are completely and entirely delusional. No "being" is required to explain the existence of the universe.

    No it doesn't.

    Yes it does, troll. See:-

    The WAP (weak anthropic principle) is generally accepted by most astronomers. In fact it has been criticised as a tautology – a statement which must be true. For if conditions were very different, so that life couldn’t evolve, humanity wouldn’t be around to observe them.

    https://explainingscience.org/2018/05/25/the-anthropic-principle/

    The principle doesn't explain away the evidence of fine tuning.  If you walked along the beach and found an Iphone you would know because of the complexity of it that random interactions of the earth's soil and wind did not make it, but that some intelligence had. 

    Firstly, yes it does. Secondly, you are using the exact same fallacy of complexity which has been thoroughly debunked by numerous biologists, dating back to Darwin, and which was (and still is) used by religious adherents to argue that the human eye is too complex to have arrived by chance, and therefore must be proof of God. It isn't even the same argument as the fine-tuning argument, so you're clearly an extremely confused individual who is conflating separate ideas.

    All I am seeing from you is the repeated use of fallacy, and most notably your many false dichotomies where you arbitrarily decide on an either/or scenario for circumstances which could have literally trillions of potential explanations. We observe the universe to be how it is because that's the way it evolved, not because a magic space fairy conjured it up from nothing. The fine-tuning idea is itself a fallacy, because we are assuming that the universe is fine-tuned for our existence from the outset, rather than understanding ourselves to be a mere product of the way the universe evolved. Had the universe evolved a different way, it would contain different products, or perhaps no products at all. And of course, once again, you simply ignore the various natural disasters and children's cancers which God also apparently decided to make a part of our "fine-tuned" universe. The fact is that every time science debunks religious reasoning, it simply comes back with something science hasn't debunked yet. It's a tiresome game mired in fallacy.

    To argue that "our universe is inhabitable, therefore i must have been that way and couldn't have been otherwise" is an illogical deduction.

    That isn't a deduction; it's a straw man fallacy. It's a misrepresentation you are using either because you don't understand the anthropic principle or because you simply aren't honest enough to represent it correctly. If I build an office block on a piece of land it doesn't mean the piece of land is fine-tuned for office blocks. The exact same piece of land could have ended up hosting a hotel, a casino or a church. The exact same principle applies to the universe. Just because the universe spat out stars, planets and humans doesn't mean the universe was deliberately fine-tuned to host those things. It's just what happened. 

     Almost all variations of the fundamental forces result in no inhabitable universe.

    But it does not follow to assume that the fundamental forces could be any different than they are. It may not even be physically possible for the fundamental forces to have variations. You're literally throwing out blind speculation and then claiming your own speculation proves everything was created by an omnipotent space fairy. It's ridiculous.

    It is an extraordinary amount of blind faith on your part.

    The sheer unashamed irony of that statement causes me to believe that you have some form of serious mental health problem.

    The evidence for an expanding universe when played backwards suggests a singularity point.

    Make your responses relevant to the text they are addressing. The universe does not require a cause and your response fails to address that statement.

    That suggests a beginning.

    Again, no. Not necessarily. As I explained the first time I replied to your junk, it could equally imply an infinite big bang/big crunch cycle. Moreover, even if it did imply a beginning, it still does not imply a cause. You're completely avoiding my argument and deflecting to yet another straw man.

    Cyclical universe models with expanding and contracting cycles fall apart under scrutiny because even in the most efficient cycle there would be some energy loss.

    The universe is losing energy, so far from falling "apart under scrutiny" you seem to be validating the notion. See:-

    https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-universe-leaking-energy/

    https://quantemplation.substack.com/p/why-the-universe-is-losing-energy

    Once again we discover that you haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about.

    Any amount of energy loss means our universe would have ended literally an eternity ago.

    You do not understand what you are talking about, so please stop pretending that you do. It's infuriating reading the nonsense you are writing.

    Given infinite past time, all the universes that "pop" into existence from the primordial vacuum would eventually interact and collide and coalesce with one another.  Thus we should be observing an infinitely old universe now, not a relatively young one.

    For Heaven's sake stop with this gibberish. You're getting as bad as John_C. 

    Infinite past time isn't a necessary requirement for a beginning, any multiverse quite feasibly could have originated from the same particle, and neither of these factors imply that our own universe should be "infinitely old". You've simply reached the point where you're writing consecutive statements of irrational gibberish, qualifying them with absolutely nothing, and pretending they mean reality was magicked into existence by an all-powerful space fairy. The reason you're struggling to make a simple, logical argument is because what you're proposing is the exact opposite of logical.

    just_sayin
  • just_sayinjust_sayin 853 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    Argument Topic: Problems with Oscillating Universes

    @Nomenclature said
    The Mayo Clinic literally offers "spiritual services" to its patients,

    Of course it does.  Its basing its healthcare on the best research.  Again as the Mayo Clinic noted:

    A majority of the nearly 350 studies of physical health and 850 studies of mental health that have used religious and spiritual variables have found that religious involvement and spirituality are associated with better health outcomes

    Engaging in an ad hominem attack on the Mayo Clinic does not invalidate its research, nor the research of 350 studies of physical health and 850 mental health studies.  Whether the Mayo Clinic has religious roots itself, does not prove or disprove the study's claims, and it certainly does not disprove the 1200 other studies on the subject that show that people who are religious have better health outcomes.  I am content to let others determine for themselves which of us is "cherry-picking" studies.

    @Nomenclature:

    The universe is losing energy, so far from falling "apart under scrutiny" you seem to be validating the notion. 

    The oscillating universe theorems went out of style in the 1970's due primarily to the work of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose.  Their work showed that under very generalized conditions  an initial cosmological singularity is inevitable, even for inhomogeneous and non-isotropic universes.  In other words, oscillating universes are not past eternal but have a beginning.  And a beginning means that the universe must have a cause.  - To see the theorem that bears Hawking and Penrose's name you can read: R Penrose, "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities," Physical Review Letters 14 (1965): 57-59 and S.W. Hawking and R. Penrose, "Space-Time Singularities," in The Large-Scale  Structure of Space-Time, ed. S.W. Hawking and G.F.R Ellis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 266.

    If you want to dismiss these sources as some kind of Bible-thumping sources also consider these sources which also point out that an oscillating universe with expansions and contractions can not be past eternal:

    Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose, The Nature of Space and Time, The Isaac Newton Institute Series of Lectures (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 20.

    Alan Guth and March Sher, "The Impossibility of a Bouncing Universe," Nature 302 (1983):505-6.

    Sidney A Bludman, "Thermodynamics and the End of a Closed Universe," Nature 308 (1984) 319-22.

    Further, in January 1988 astronomy teams from Princeton, Yale, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Instituted jointly reported at the American Astronomical Society that all tests show that "the universe will expand forever."  The Harvard-Smithsonian team said "the density of matter is insufficient to halt the expansion of the universe."   Further, not only is our universe not decelerating for a big crunch, evidence shows that it is accelerating its expansion rate.  

    Wow, science truly debunked that theory.  

    If you were going to pick a scientific model to explain the beginning of the universe, it would have been more helpful to your case to have selected one that wasn't so thoroughly disproven.  So tell me, do you still cling to the expanding and contracting universe myth?  If you do not support it, which model do you prefer?  

    So far you haven't explained how you avoid a singularity - a starting point.  Could you explain your view on that a little more.

    Nomenclature
  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @just_sayin
    Of course it does.  Its basing its healthcare on the best research.

    Your circular reasoning is utterly pathetic. The Mayo Clinic was founded by a group of nuns and a deeply religious Christian doctor. That's why it offers spiritual services. The data you referenced did not even exist when the Mayo Clinic began performing spiritual services.

    Engaging in an ad hominem attack on the Mayo Clinic

    Ad hominem attack? Lmfao. Don't make me laugh, you intellectually dishonest charlatan. You're misrepresenting the rhetoric of a clinic with a deep and well-documented religious background as scientific, while making absolutely no mention of its strong affiliation with religion. You did not make clear to anybody that your source is religiously biased.

    does not invalidate its research

    Actually yes, a raging conflict of interests most definitely does invalidate its research. Not that arbitrary statements summarising other people's research even constitutes research in the first place. 

    Once again, rather predictably, I note that you have simply ignored the evidence I linked which demonstrates that your "research" is wrong. Would you like me to link it for you again, so you can ignore it for a second time?

    What role does religion play in health and longevity? This question has long been debated, with the religious claiming that their faith keeps them healthy. But is this the case? The data appear to show the opposite.

    Which might be why a Pew study awards the religiously unaffiliated (atheists and agnostics) with the second-longest lifespan of any group, finishing just behind Jews and just ahead of Buddhists. Interestingly, all three of these groups tend to rely less on metaphysical ideas and more on community and best practices while alive. The three lowest-performing groups—Christians, Hindus, and Muslims—veer in the opposite direction, with much more reliance on the afterlife and dualistic philosophies, i.e. belief in a soul or spirit that continues after physical death.

    https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/which-religion-has-the-longest-life-expectancy/

    The oscillating universe theorems went out of style in the 1970's due primarily to the work of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose.  Their work showed that under very generalized conditions  an initial cosmological singularity is inevitable, even for inhomogeneous and non-isotropic universes.  In other words, oscillating universes are not past eternal but have a beginning.  And a beginning means that the universe must have a cause.  - To see the theorem that bears Hawking and Penrose's name you can read: R Penrose, "Gravitational Collapse and Space-Time Singularities," Physical Review Letters 14 (1965): 57-59 and S.W. Hawking and R. Penrose, "Space-Time Singularities," in The Large-Scale  Structure of Space-Time, ed. S.W. Hawking and G.F.R Ellis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 266.

    Interesting. Is the oscillating universe the one where anything you just wrote bears any relevance to the fact that you were wrong about the universe not losing energy?

    I'm done because you're literally wasting my time with your gibberish. Whether there will be a big crunch or not is a simple matter of whether the accumulative gravity in the universe exceeds the force causing the universe to expand. Your attempt to hide your lack of knowledge behind a series of nonsensical word salads and deflections to the theories of others which you haven't even read (or at least haven't understood) is as frustrating as it is pathetic. You might want to know that Hawking's early work was on black holes, not on the beginning of the universe. A gravitational singularity is a theoretical by-product of a collapsing star, and Hawking is known for his work in proving that black holes emit radiation. This work you have referenced has absolutely nothing to do with the big crunch theory.

  • just_sayinjust_sayin 853 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @MayCaesar said:
    As for Penrose's argument.

    I don't personally know if Penrose believes in a God or not.  I wouldn't want to read into his observations about how our universe appears to be finely tuned more than he notes the odds.  If Penrose did believe in God, I don't think it would be primarily for his calculations on the odds of the fundamental forces.  Instead, I think it would be from his observations on consciousness where I've heard him talk about how he doesn't believe it can be fully explained by biological means.  Anyway, Penrose is one of many prominent scientists who have observed the finely tuned universe issue.  Here is a partial list of others who have done the same:

    John Barrow [Barrow1986], Bernard Carr [Carr1979], Sean Carroll [Carroll2010], Brandon Carter [Carter1974], Paul Davies [Davies2007], David Deutsch [Redfern2006Deutsch1997], George Ellis [Ellis2011Ellis2014], Brian Greene [Greene2011], Alan Guth [Guth2007Guth1997], Edward Harrison [Harrison2011], Stephen Hawking [Hawking2010], Andre Linde [Linde2017], Don Page [Page2011], Roger Penrose [Penrose2004Penrose1989], John Polkinghorne [Polkinghorne2007], Martin Rees [Carr1979Rees2000], Joseph Silk [Ellis2014], Lee Smolin [Smolin2007Smolin2015], Leonard Susskind [Susskind2005], Max Tegmark [Tegmark2006Tegmark2014], Frank Tipler [Barrow1986], Alexander Vilenkin [Vilenkin2006], Steven Weinberg [Weinberg1989Weinberg1994], John Wheeler [Wheeler1996] and Frank Wilczek [Wilczek2013]. In addition to the above references, many of the above authors, plus twelve others, comment on this topic in detail in the collection [Carr2009]. Some recent semi-popular overviews of this topic include [Wolchover2013] and [Cossins2018].

    Saying that "of course the universe is finely tuned for life.  We are here aren't we?  So of course it had to be." is dismissive at best and fails to answer the question of how did the universe get to be this way.  A well known analogy used to explain the problem is the case of the guy who was scheduled to be executed.  One hundred soldiers pointed their guns and fired at him.  The man could have lifted his blindfold and said "they all had to miss, after all I'm still here.".  But the real question he needs to ask is "how did all 100 miss".  The odds of an inhabitable universe are much much more unlikely.  

    To minimize the significance of evidence of fine tuning many have appealed to a multiverse.  This reduces the staggering odds.  But, what does the evidence tell us about a multiverse?  Well first there is no evidence of any energy signatures from these other universes, which should be  infinite in number.  Further, these expanding universes would have inevitably overlapped and coalesced after an eternity, so our universe should appear as infinitely old, instead of relatively young as it does.  Further, any multiverse making machine would have to be infinitely more finely tuned than our own universe is to continually be making new universes.  So, reasonably, the idea doesn't make sense.  

    Chaotic inflationary models for a multiverse fail a basic math equation.  The Borde-Guth-Vilinken theorem says that any universe or multiverse that is on average expanding toward the future, cannot be geodescially complete in the past.  In other words, at some point in the past, even in a multiverse that uses inflation as its means of creating universes, which is the most popular concept, it must inevitably have an initial singularity, or beginning.  

    So if you think God is not a rational explanation to explain space-time having a beginning, what theory of the universe do you think best explains our existence?  I've pointed out that I think God best fits the evidence, but if you disagree then tell me what theory do you think best fits the evidence.

  • just_sayinjust_sayin 853 Pts   -  
    Argument Topic: Nomenclature admits he lost the debate

    @Nomenclature said:
    Actually yes, a raging conflict of interests most definitely does invalidate its research. 
    Arguments can either be verified or falsified, the gender, race or religion of the one making the argument does not invalidate the argument itself, which can be evaluated on its own merits.  It was indeed an ad hominem attack and a weak one at that that sought to invalidate 1200 studies that have been peer reviewed and reproduced, some for 30+ years.

    Interesting. Is the oscillating universe the one where anything you just wrote bears any relevance to the fact that you were wrong about the universe not losing energy?

    You even admitted 

    The universe is losing energy, so far from falling "apart under scrutiny" you seem to be validating the notion. 

    A universe with less energy means less and less of an expanse, as it loses energy its oscillations become smaller and smaller as a result until it no longer expands or contracts.  So energy loss is a death knell in the argument.  

    This work you have referenced has absolutely nothing to do with the big crunch theory.

    The works I cited do indeed impact the gravitational forces that are involved in the oscillating universe scenario.  

    I'm done

    You have chosen not to share your preferred model to explain the beginning of the universe, unless the oscillating scenario was it . If that was your preferred model, then I don't understand why you would still cling to it.   Please know that I am more than happy to discuss what the scientific literature says about any universe generating model when you are ready to share.  Again, I believe God is the best answer to the question of how our universe began.

  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @just_sayin
    I don't personally know if Penrose believes in a God or not.  I wouldn't want to read into his observations about how our universe appears to be finely tuned more than he notes the odds.  If Penrose did believe in God, I don't think it would be primarily for his calculations on the odds of the fundamental forces.  Instead, I think it would be from his observations on consciousness where I've heard him talk about how he doesn't believe it can be fully explained by biological means.  Anyway, Penrose is one of many prominent scientists who have observed the finely tuned universe issue.

    And now you're blatantly changing your argument, which I've noticed is something religious people do very frequently when they hit a dead end. Your original reason for name-dropping Penrose was:-

    The oscillating universe theorems went out of style in the 1970's due primarily to the work of Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose.  Their work showed that under very generalized conditions  an initial cosmological singularity is inevitable, even for inhomogeneous and non-isotropic universes.  In other words, oscillating universes are not past eternal but have a beginning.  And a beginning means that the universe must have a cause.

    Assuming by oscillating you mean the big bang/big crunch hypothesis, then as previously stated, the work of Penrose and Hawking was on black holes. It had nothing to do with the origins of the universe.  Penrose is an atheist and so was Hawking. Whatever they believed about the apparent "fine-tuning" of the universe, they didn't consider it sufficient to harbor a belief in space fairies. 

    Saying that "of course the universe is finely tuned for life.  We are here aren't we?  So of course it had to be." is dismissive at best and fails to answer the question of how did the universe get to be this way.  

    You're repeating the same straw man fallacy I addressed in my previous post. The anthropic principle is not, "It had to be." The anthropic principle is merely, "it is".

    A well known analogy used to explain the problem is the case of the guy who was scheduled to be executed.  One hundred soldiers pointed their guns and fired at him.  The man could have lifted his blindfold and said "they all had to miss, after all I'm still here.".  But the real question he needs to ask is "how did all 100 miss". 

    Lol. That "analogy" doesn't have any relationship to the actual issue. Firstly, nobody knows whether the conditions of the universe could have been any different. Secondly, assuming they could have been different, then they might have yielded other forms of life which would not be possible under the present conditions. You see, you're somehow failing to see that it works both ways. The present condition of the universe might be preventing millions of other forms of life from existing, simply because it isn't "fine-tuned" to those forms of life. There's no way of knowing because nobody really understands life (or the universe) well enough to say. The only experience we have of life is the life on our own planet, and it might not work that way anywhere else.

    The odds of an inhabitable universe are much much more unlikely. 

    No. Again, you're taking a massive leap. When you say "inhabitable" you're only talking about inhabitable for us. You can't determine what the requirements are for other forms of life which you don't even know about. All of these arguments about "fine tuning" for life are predicated on the unfounded belief that all life must be like us. 

    To minimize the significance of evidence of fine tuning many have appealed to a multiverse.  This reduces the staggering odds. 

    The idea of a multiverse wasn't conceptualised specifically to counter the idea of fine tuning, so if that's what you believe you're mistaken. It's one of several possible interpretations of quantum physics. Moreover, the "odds" you keep referring to are a figment of your imagination, just like the odds of the human eye existing, which was previously the go-to argument of the adherents of religion. 

    But, what does the evidence tell us about a multiverse?  Well first there is no evidence of any energy signatures from these other universes, which should be  infinite in number.

    There wouldn't necessarily be any evidence of energy signatures even if they did exist. Perhaps they are hidden behind the event horizons of black holes, or simply undetectable from within the parameters of our own universe. 

    Further, these expanding universes would have inevitably overlapped and coalesced after an eternity

    It's an assumption that they are all expanding, another assumption that they have existed for eternity, and the problem with them overlapping is that they all would exist in a place which has no spatial dimensions. Even though our own universe is expanding, it doesn't necessarily follow that what is outside is shrinking. 

    It's also possible that the big bang itself might have been caused by two of these universes colliding.

    so our universe should appear as infinitely old, instead of relatively young as it does.

    I still don't understand how you have reached the conclusion that the universe should be infinitely old, and when you say the universe is "relatively young", then relative to what? 

    Further, any multiverse making machine would have to be infinitely more finely tuned than our own universe is to continually be making new universes.  So, reasonably, the idea doesn't make sense.  

    I am afraid it is your premise which doesn't make any sense. Whether a multiverse keeps making new universes doesn't have anything to do with the supposed fine tuning of our own universe. 

    Chaotic inflationary models for a multiverse fail a basic math equation.  The Borde-Guth-Vilinken theorem says that any universe or multiverse that is on average expanding toward the future, cannot be geodescially complete in the past.  

    You keep returning to the Borde-Guth-Vilinken theorem and I don't understand why. Alan Guth believes the universe had no beginning. That aside, you claim "chaotic inflationary models for a multiverse fail a basic math equation", but chaotic inflation is the dominant scientific theory. Moreover, the terminology used in the Borde-Guth-Vilinken theorem is "almost all" inflationary models, not "any universe or multiverse".

    In other words, at some point in the past, even in a multiverse that uses inflation as its means of creating universes, which is the most popular concept, it must inevitably have an initial singularity, or beginning. 

    One of the inventors of this theorem, Alan Guth, believes the universe had no beginning, so clearly you are confused about something. Nothing has thus far ruled out Hawking's "no boundary" proposal, where space-time can be finite and yet still have no beginning. 

    So if you think God is not a rational explanation to explain space-time having a beginning, what theory of the universe do you think best explains our existence?

    God is not a scientific (i.e. rational) explanation for the beginning of space-time. Essentially, you are spending all of your time attacking the existing theories, and no time explaining why yours is the viable alternative. It's like you believe that if you can cast enough doubt on the existing theories, your wackadoodle fringe idea therefore becomes the only solution. This is precisely what flat-Earthers do. 

  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -  
    @just_sayin

    Here's some advice if you want to pursue the God argument. Theories of the origins of the universe are not particularly helpful to you. I suggest you turn your attention to the genetic code instead. That is something I have considerable difficulty producing satisfactory answers for. 
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5966 Pts   -  
    @MayCaesar said:
    As for Penrose's argument.

    I don't personally know if Penrose believes in a God or not.  I wouldn't want to read into his observations about how our universe appears to be finely tuned more than he notes the odds.  If Penrose did believe in God, I don't think it would be primarily for his calculations on the odds of the fundamental forces.  Instead, I think it would be from his observations on consciousness where I've heard him talk about how he doesn't believe it can be fully explained by biological means.  Anyway, Penrose is one of many prominent scientists who have observed the finely tuned universe issue.  Here is a partial list of others who have done the same:

    John Barrow [Barrow1986], Bernard Carr [Carr1979], Sean Carroll [Carroll2010], Brandon Carter [Carter1974], Paul Davies [Davies2007], David Deutsch [Redfern2006Deutsch1997], George Ellis [Ellis2011Ellis2014], Brian Greene [Greene2011], Alan Guth [Guth2007Guth1997], Edward Harrison [Harrison2011], Stephen Hawking [Hawking2010], Andre Linde [Linde2017], Don Page [Page2011], Roger Penrose [Penrose2004Penrose1989], John Polkinghorne [Polkinghorne2007], Martin Rees [Carr1979Rees2000], Joseph Silk [Ellis2014], Lee Smolin [Smolin2007Smolin2015], Leonard Susskind [Susskind2005], Max Tegmark [Tegmark2006Tegmark2014], Frank Tipler [Barrow1986], Alexander Vilenkin [Vilenkin2006], Steven Weinberg [Weinberg1989Weinberg1994], John Wheeler [Wheeler1996] and Frank Wilczek [Wilczek2013]. In addition to the above references, many of the above authors, plus twelve others, comment on this topic in detail in the collection [Carr2009]. Some recent semi-popular overviews of this topic include [Wolchover2013] and [Cossins2018].

    Saying that "of course the universe is finely tuned for life.  We are here aren't we?  So of course it had to be." is dismissive at best and fails to answer the question of how did the universe get to be this way.  A well known analogy used to explain the problem is the case of the guy who was scheduled to be executed.  One hundred soldiers pointed their guns and fired at him.  The man could have lifted his blindfold and said "they all had to miss, after all I'm still here.".  But the real question he needs to ask is "how did all 100 miss".  The odds of an inhabitable universe are much much more unlikely.  

    To minimize the significance of evidence of fine tuning many have appealed to a multiverse.  This reduces the staggering odds.  But, what does the evidence tell us about a multiverse?  Well first there is no evidence of any energy signatures from these other universes, which should be  infinite in number.  Further, these expanding universes would have inevitably overlapped and coalesced after an eternity, so our universe should appear as infinitely old, instead of relatively young as it does.  Further, any multiverse making machine would have to be infinitely more finely tuned than our own universe is to continually be making new universes.  So, reasonably, the idea doesn't make sense.  

    Chaotic inflationary models for a multiverse fail a basic math equation.  The Borde-Guth-Vilinken theorem says that any universe or multiverse that is on average expanding toward the future, cannot be geodescially complete in the past.  In other words, at some point in the past, even in a multiverse that uses inflation as its means of creating universes, which is the most popular concept, it must inevitably have an initial singularity, or beginning.  

    So if you think God is not a rational explanation to explain space-time having a beginning, what theory of the universe do you think best explains our existence?  I've pointed out that I think God best fits the evidence, but if you disagree then tell me what theory do you think best fits the evidence.

    I think that Penrose exhibited a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics which is, unfortunately, very common even among the best scientists who have not delved much in this particular field. All statistical assessments must be predicated upon proper evaluation of the priors, and this is where human intuition fails miserably, leading people towards fallacious conclusions. Penrose in his argument assumed some sort of a "null prior" according to which we start at some sort of a neutral state and then the dice is rolled repeatedly and the Universes are born spontaneously. Yet this is a wrong prior to use, considering that we are here and the prior must necessarily account for that.

    I do not really understand your analogy. If the man really survived that event, then that necessarily means that all 100 soldiers had to miss. It does not matter how unlikely it was at the beginning of the situation: the fact of the matter is that it happened, and that means that the probability of it happening was 100% in this timeline. Something that has happened has the probability of 100% of having happened, and it does not matter how unlikely it was at some point in the past if it actually happened.

    The "fine tuning problem" is based on a similar fallacy: the assumption that at the dawn of the Universe all the constant values are somehow rolled randomly. Not only is there no reason to assume that something like this takes place, but even if it does, the fact of the matter is that the constants are what they are, and them being what they are does not imply anything about their origin in the absence of direct evidence. Furthermore, the constants are what they are because them being different would lead to a completely different Universe in which nothing we say here would make any sense. It is like asking, "What are the odds that 2+2=4? It could be any real number, say, 2.3553453". That is a nonsensical question, for the very nature of these numbers is such that 2+2=4 is inevitable and unavoidable. If you want to imagine an alternative Universe in which 2+2=2.3553453, then you will have to imagine a Universe in which absolutely nothing makes sense from our perspective, and in that case you will be talking about some abstract abomination that has no connection to reality.

    I think that the physical theories that we have nowadays are the best attempt at fitting the evidence. The idea of "god" is non-scientific, because it is set up in such a way as to be untestable, therefore fitting any possible evidence. A theory that fits any possible evidence is useless and non-scientific, and I fail to see why anyone would ever consider it seriously. It is like saying, "Everything is what it is because I like cheese". If you indeed like cheese, then this theory is unfalsifiable, and no imaginable experiment can refute it - yet precisely because of that this theory has zero predictive power. This is very different from the Big Bang Theory that has been used to produce countless testable hypotheses, verified to extreme precision.

    So no, "god created the Universe" is a cop-out. You might as well just say, "The Universe was created somehow". The amount of content in this statement is exactly the same, in the former case you just called that "somehow" "god". You have not actually said anything, you just put a tautological sentence together and used a fancy word replacement to make it sound like something more profound than it is. I could say, "asdjikafhdfjklhsd created the Universe", simply replacing one random word with another random word. You simple called "asdjikafhdfjklhsd" "god" in your "explanation", but you have not explained anything just like me.
  • DeeDee 5395 Pts   -  
    @Nomenclature

    I think the theist who uses this argument is on shaky grounds as we can reasonably ask .......

    How common are errors in DNA?

    Enzymess do make mistakes at a rate of about 1 per every 100,000 nucleotides. That might not seem like much, until you consider how much DNA a cell has. In humans, with our 6 billion base pairs in each diploid cell, that would amount to about 120,000 mistakes every time a cell divides! 

    Nature magazine


  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @just_sayin
    Arguments can either be verified or falsified, the gender, race or religion of the one making the argument does not invalidate the argument itself, which can be evaluated on its own merits. 

    Stop being ridiculous. The religious beliefs of the person making the argument one hundred percent impact the credibility of any claims they make about the health benefits of religion. Since I've already demonstrated that the claims don't hold up to scrutiny, it's simply a fact that your source is biased. 

    You even admitted the universe is losing energy

    Are you on drugs? You claimed the universe would have collapsed "an eternity ago" if it were to lose energy, and I proved to you that the universe is losing energy. You seem to be suggesting it was your idea that the universe is losing energy, which is the complete opposite of the truth. It was something I had to correct you about. 

    A universe with less energy means less and less of an expanse, as it loses energy its oscillations become smaller and smaller as a result until it no longer expands or contracts.

    It would contract because of gravity, not because of energy. And nobody knows for certain what is driving the expanse, but it isn't traditional energy. That's precisely why the concept of "dark energy" was introduced to cosmology.

    The works I cited do indeed impact the gravitational forces that are involved in the oscillating universe scenario.

    To repeat myself, the work you cited, which you claimed pushed scientists away from the big crunch theory in the 1970s, has nothing to do with the big crunch. Hawking and Penrose were producing work on black holes, not on the origins of the universe. You fabricated the idea that their work drove scientists away from the big crunch theory. The big crunch theory was still popular until the early part of this century, when the WMAP mission finally calculated that the universe was equal to its proposed critical density level, and hence would likely never stop expanding. 

    You have chosen not to share your preferred model to explain the beginning of the universe

    I don't know how the universe began or if it began. Unlike yourself, I don't invent the answers to questions I'm unsure about.

  • Oh it shouldn't take long. Not if you send it by first class.



  • just_sayinjust_sayin 853 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @Nomenclature said:
    And now you're blatantly changing your argument, which I've noticed is something religious people do very frequently when they hit a dead end. Your original reason for name-dropping Penrose was:-

    MayCaesar was alluding to was Penrose's comment on how finely tuned the universe appears to be.  Penrose had done the calculations for low entropy and found that if it differed by 1 part in 10 to the 120th then there would be no universe at all.  The Hawkings-Penrose Theorem reference was concerning how expanding/contracting universes are not past eternal.  There was no confusion on my part.  I understood what he was referencing.

    Assuming by oscillating you mean the big bang/big crunch hypothesis, then as previously stated, the work of Penrose and Hawking was on black holes. It had nothing to do with the origins of the universe.  Penrose is an atheist and so was Hawking. Whatever they believed about the apparent "fine-tuning" of the universe, they didn't consider it sufficient to harbor a belief in space fairies. 
    I'll take your word on Penrose being an atheist.  I do not know.  I do know that he, along with numerous other cosmologists have written on how finely tuned the universe is.  And for the record, his religious affiliation does not make the observation that the universe appears finely tuned any more or less valid.  That's an ad hominem line of argumentation that I've pointed out to you before.

    No. Again, you're taking a massive leap. When you say "inhabitable" you're only talking about inhabitable for us.

    No.  I'm not.  Nor is Penrose, nor his former partner, Hawking.  

    "If the overall density of the universe were changed by even 0.0000000000001 percent, no stars or galaxies could be formed. If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have recollapsed before it reached its present size" - Stephen Hawking

    He is not saying that the universe could not support life like us, he is saying that there would be no universe at all.  it would either be to heavy and collapse in on itself or it would not have been able to form atoms at all if there was a 0.0000000000001 percent difference.  He's not talking about carbon life forms vs silicon life forms.  He's saying that a slight change in the constant means NO UNIVERSE AT ALL.

    It's an assumption that they are all expanding, another assumption that they have existed for eternity, and the problem with them overlapping is that they all would exist in a place which has no spatial dimensions. Even though our own universe is expanding, it doesn't necessarily follow that what is outside is shrinking. 

    If there have been multiverses bubbling up from eternity past, then just like our universe will continue to exist for eternity future, an eternity of universes must exist out there.  If there have been an infinite number of universes created then there would be some kind of energy signature and they should have coalesced.  If any share out dimensions of height, width, and depth, then logic suggests they would have collided and coalesced with our own. I hope you are thinking of the issue in terms of eternity past and future, because that's what we are talking about, not just our own universe's spacetime.

    You keep returning to the Borde-Guth-Vilinken theorem and I don't understand why. Alan Guth believes the universe had no beginning. That aside, you claim "chaotic inflationary models for a multiverse fail a basic math equation", but chaotic inflation is the dominant scientific theory. 

    No.  Guth favors a one off explanation for the universe.  He has expressed interest in an energy fluctuation out of a de sitter space as a possibility.  He also seems to have worked with Carroll on his time in 2 directions model which claims to not have a "beginning", just a low entropy point (but its a beginning).  For a quick point of reference think about the movie Tenet - time is running in both directions and proceeds in each direction ongoingly.

    You maybe confusing Guth's work on identifying inflation as part of the creation process in our universe with eternal inflation.  Guth's model only works towards the future, and is not past eternal.   

    Nothing has thus far ruled out Hawking's "no boundary" proposal, where space-time can be finite and yet still have no beginning. 

    Well, nothing but math.  You know that Hawking's model does not work with real numbers right?  And I mean that LITERALLY.   Hawking's no-boundary or shuttlecock universe model has failed numerous math proofs.  From Quantum Magazine:

    In their 2017 paper, published in Physical Review Letters, Turok and his co-authors approached Hartle and Hawking’s no-boundary proposal with new mathematical techniques that, in their view, make its predictions much more concrete than before. “We discovered that it just failed miserably,” Turok said. “It was just not possible quantum mechanically for a universe to start in the way they imagined.” The trio checked their math and queried their underlying assumptions before going public, but “unfortunately,” Turok said, “it just seemed to be inescapable that the Hartle-Hawking proposal was a disaster.”

    Richard Feynman work also busted the model.

    I still don't understand how you have reached the conclusion that the universe should be infinitely old, and when you say the universe is "relatively young", then relative to what? 

    The discussion was about cyclical universes.  The point is to avoid a beginning.  If something has a beginning, it has a cause.  If it has a cause then it must be something beyond itself.  So, relatively young would be 13.7 billion years.  Cyclical universes should be infinitely old.

    Essentially, you are spending all of your time attacking the existing theories, and no time explaining why yours is the viable alternative. 

    I've done more to articulate why I think God best fits the evidence of the creation of the universe.  Pointing out why other models are not scientifically sound is just part of the process.  Sorry for being too scientific for you.

  • just_sayinjust_sayin 853 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    Argument Topic: Yep[ - genetic code is hard to explain

    @Nomenclature
    Here's some advice if you want to pursue the God argument. Theories of the origins of the universe are not particularly helpful to you. I suggest you turn your attention to the genetic code instead. That is something I have considerable difficulty producing satisfactory answers for. 

    No doubt it is hard to explain from a naturalistic point of view.  The co-discoverer of DNA has said:

    An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. - Francis Crick

    He believed the complexity of even the simplest creature's DNA posed a significant problem for naturalistic evolution.  He proposed panspermia as an alternative.  But this only pushes the problem back one more step and doesn't provide a naturalistic explanation for out alien life came to be. 

    Hoyle, who coined the derisive term "big bang", also noted the complexity of chromosomes:

    "...life cannot have had a random beginning...The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 10 to the 40,000power, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup. If one is not prejudiced either by social beliefs or by a scientific training into the conviction that life originated on the Earth, this simple calculation wipes the idea entirely out of court....The enormous information content of even the simplest living systems...cannot in our view be generated by what are often called "natural" processes...For life to have originated on the Earth it would be necessary that quite explicit instruction should have been provided for its assembly...There is no way in which we can expect to avoid the need for information, no way in which we can simply get by with a bigger and better organic soup, as we ourselves hoped might be possible a year or two ago."

     see Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space [Aldine House, 33 Welbeck Street, London W1M 8LX: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981), p. 148, 24,150,30,31).

  • DreamerDreamer 272 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    Argument Topic: Religion in the broader sense is on the rise and will stay with us to the end of time.

    When people lose faith in experts it is often due to impossible expectations. Predicting the future is difficult, though experts do a better job than laypersons. This is is according to Tom Nicholas the Death of Expertise.

    Individual religions are possible to defeat. In the book God is not Great Christopher Hitchens gives the example of a minor religious denomination floundering and dying off. So, we know it is possible. Yet, people have a habit of mutating ideas.

    When you start becoming a media critic as in feminism and anti-racism you will see many of the same tropes in science-fiction are really just ancient Greek Mythology repackaged in modern day. The damsel in distress is quintessential example.


    Andromea and the sea monster.

    Old wine new bottle. Just as racism went from religion to scientific racism pseudo-science.

    Religion will mutate, because it is useful to con artists. The tax exemptions alone are a reason why religion will not simply disappear on its own. Fake believers will virtue signal their belief in a higher power for economic gain.

    Two variants of religion I predict will be with us to the end of time are conspiracy thinking and the worst part of social justice. Conspiracy thinking while not strictly a religion and not needing a supernatural element has enough in common with religion to be safely called a religion.

    The other is social justice as religion. People want to belong and exclude. If Bogan is correct in a previous post, liberals form a social hierarchy of virtue signaling. Not everyone can make the top tier and there will always be pressure to exclude.

    The supernatural element of religion will disappear and instead people will believe in aliens, beings from other universes, dimensions, and of course criminals. In this broader sense religion in on the rise.
  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @Dreamer
    When people lose faith in experts it is often due to impossible expectations. Predicting the future is difficult, though experts do a better job than laypersons. This is is according to Tom Nicholas the Death of Expertise.
    If you're going to continuously commit to the "blind appeal to authority" fallacy, then at least learn enough to make sure the person you are appealing to is a genuine authority, and that there are no other forms of authority who might disagree with your first authority. If there are other forms of authority who disagree with your first authority, then you're committing another fallacy called selection bias.  
  • dallased25dallased25 379 Pts   -  
    When I was in college and saw how the internet was expanding and how easy access to knowledge and information was becoming, I thought for sure that religion would start to decrease. I vastly overestimated humanity and what people truly value. I now realize that religion will always persist in some form or another, because religion is really a response to nihilism and the fact that the majority can't psychologically deal with it. They can't deal with the fact that this is the only life they'll get, that once they die, it's over, that they won't get to see family and friends again and that there is no inherent purpose to life. So people value more what they find comforting, even if deep down they know it's a lie. So, even if major religions like christianity eventually do start to decrease in numbers, it'll just get replaced with something else. Religion will exist so long as humans are afraid of death and the nothingness that comes with it. 
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5966 Pts   -  
    @dallased25

    That is the rubber though: I think that religion and similar ideologies are chiefly responsible for people fearing death. I personally have never feared death: as I see it, it is just an inevitability no one can do anything about, so one might as well just accept it as a fact of life and move on. Same way as we accept many other facts of life which we would rather not be facts, such as the need to eat, drink and sleep.

    Many ideologies, however, promote the idea of some sort of permanency of life. Religions often feature reincarnation, or the afterlife. Secular ideologies sometimes depict the individual as part of something bigger than them, and their contribution to it is what remains alive after their departure. One believing such a thing fears death precisely because of the possibility of messing this life up and having to pay the price later, personally or in a more abstract way.

    I have always seen this life as just an episode. It ends, and that is it, the show is over. It is not a depressing thought at all, just like no one is depressed when watching a movie by the knowledge that the movie will eventually end. And I fail to see why everyone cannot think this way, provided they are living in a somewhat rational society and are not under influence of these strange ideologies.
  • @MayCaesar

    Forgive me I am going to try delegation as a tactic of debate.
    I think you can do better in describing the connection you are trying to make......Here....


  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -  
    @just_sayin
    He believed the complexity of even the simplest creature's DNA posed a significant problem for naturalistic evolution

    Infuriatingly, I'm afraid you're making the exact same common mistake atheists make in confusing the genetic code with DNA. DNA is the genetic material, and truly not a problem for science to explain. The genetic code is the set of instructions which governs the behaviour of the genetic material. 

  • NomenclatureNomenclature 1245 Pts   -   edited January 2023
    @just_sayin
    MayCaesar was alluding to was Penrose's comment on how finely tuned the universe appears to be.
    MayCaesar doesn't have anything to do with our conversation, your mention of Roger Penrose, or the reason you mentioned Roger Penrose. Please stop these silly deflections every time you make a mistake. 
    The Hawkings-Penrose Theorem reference was concerning how expanding/contracting universes are not past eternal. 
    There is no Hawking-Penrose theorem. Both of them produced separate theorems related to gravitational singularities, and neither of them worked on ruling out expanding/contracting universes. You're literally making stuff up which isn't true and it's extremely annoying. Professor Hawking is quoted as saying::-

    Prof Hawking explained: “If it slowly weakens, then gravity could get the upper hand and, in 20 billion years or so, the universe would go into reverse and drive everything back to where it came.

    “Space itself would contract. This is known as the Big Crunch."

    https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1372867/end-world-stephen-hawking-doomsday-prediction-dark-matter-big-chill-crunch-universe-spt

    There was no confusion on my part. 
    Stop telling lies.
    I'll take your word on Penrose being an atheist.  I do not know.
    You can literally Google it. Your intellectual dishonesty is really beginning to get on my nerves.
    No.  I'm not. 
    Yes, you are. You have no idea what other forms of life might be possible.
    He is not saying that the universe could not support life like us, he is saying that there would be no universe at all.
    But he is not saying it was possible for those initial conditions to be any different. That's something you are making up. He is also not saying ours is the first universe which has ever existed. That's something you are assuming.
    He's not talking about carbon life forms vs silicon life forms. 
    And he's not talking about God. He's talking about density and rate of expansion. 
    He's saying that a slight change in the constant means NO UNIVERSE AT ALL.
    He's saying no such thing. There are 26 (known) constants in the universe, none of which concern the density or initial rate of expansion. Any one of the constants could be different and it wouldn't necessarily rule out some form of life. What he is talking about can be explained with the anthropic principle. Nobody knows how many failed universes there may have been before a stable universe occurred.
    If there have been multiverses bubbling up from eternity past
    You've been arguing for the past three days that no multiverse can be past eternal. Please make up your poor confused mind. 
    an eternity of universes must exist out there.
    Eternity is a length of time, not a quantity, so your sentence doesn't even make enough sense to criticise.
    If there have been an infinite number of universes created then there would be some kind of energy signature and they should have coalesced. 
    You're repeating yourself, not addressing any of my objections. Why would the energy signature of one universe be detectable in another universe? What evidence do you have that this is true? And why would finite universes existing inside an infinite of nothingness have to coalesce?
    No.  Guth favors a one off explanation for the universe.
    Please learn what you are talking about before opening your mouth. Alan Guth believes the universe had no beginning, exactly like I just told you:-

    Alan Guth, one of the co-authors of the theorem, disagrees with Vilenkin and believes that the universe had no beginning.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borde%E2%80%93Guth%E2%80%93Vilenkin_theorem
    You maybe confusing Guth's work
    You are really beginning to get on my nerves. It's bad enough having to correct you every time you write anything, but when you blame me for your own ignorance it's infuriating.
    Well, nothing but math.
    Math does not rule out Hawking's no boundary proposal. 
    You know that Hawking's model does not work with real numbers right?  And I mean that LITERALLY.   Hawking's no-boundary or shuttlecock universe model has failed numerous math proofs.  From Quantum Magazine
    Not only is the paper you have linked more than half a decade out of date, but I find it especially amusing that you can use Google to find criticism of Hawking's no boundary proposal, but apparently not to find out whether Roger Penrose is religious. The inconsistencies in Hawking's model have been rectified since Turok's paper. See:-

    Now in a new paper, physicists Alice Di Tucci and Jean-Luc Lehners at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam, Germany, have shown that the path integral formulation can be used in a way that avoids instabilities, while still providing a consistent definition of the no-boundary proposal.

    https://phys.org/news/2019-05-stabilizing-no-boundary-universe-quantum.html
    Richard Feynman work also busted the model.
    You are such a laughable halfwit. Hawking released his no boundary model in 1989. Richard Feynman died in 1988.
    If something has a beginning, it has a cause.
    I have explained to you at least three times that this is not true. Cause and effect is a consequence of space-time. If something happens outside space-time it does not need a cause. Do you need me to write it on your head before you finally understand this one simple fact?
    I've done more to articulate why I think God best fits the evidence of the creation of the universe.
    You've done no such thing you boring, long-winded troll. Your argument can be summarised:-

    Premise A: The universe had a beginning.

    Premise B: The beginning had a cause.

    Conclusion: The cause was therefore a timeless magic fairy.

    To call that a false syllogism doesn't actually do justice to how silly it is.
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