Hi, Gotlucky. To answer your question, not long.
If that is too long for you, then I'd hate to see what your attitude is toward books.
"Jesus Is an Anarchist", Dec. 4, 2011 http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337761
Theophysics http://theophysics.host56.com
Almost witty, but it was tl;dr.
Then why are you even bothering to post to this thread if you have no intention of reading the following article which it concerns?
James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), January 13, 2012 (orig. pub. December 19, 2011), 185 pp. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708
See Sec. 7.1: "The Haecceities of God" of the article.
Don't reference it, just explain it here and now.
I see that you're an adherent of epistemological relativism, which is the logical fallacy that truth is either infinitely malleable, utterly irrelevant, nonexistent, or unknowable. Yet on the contrary, truth exists, it is knowable, and it is independent of what anyone thinks or feels about it.
Actually, no, I really have no clue what you're saying. If anything, I'm an adherent of Joseph Campbell, who's spent a lot of time on comparative myth/religion. Instead of referencing a bunch of shit, just put in put in your own words what a god is, and a god's role in the universe.
Must a god only create the universe, or can the god be created from the universe? (Thus, a god really isn't the starting point, just another variable in the "equation" of how the universe works.)
Is a god omnipresent, omniscient, etc., or is a god fallible?
Is a god only metaphysical, or can a god exist within a physical realm?
Bert: See Sec. 7.1: "The Haecceities of God" of the article. Don't reference it, just explain it here and now.
I see that you're an adherent of epistemological relativism, which is the logical fallacy that truth is either infinitely malleable, utterly irrelevant, nonexistent, or unknowable. Yet on the contrary, truth exists, it is knowable, and it is independent of what anyone thinks or feels about it. Actually, no, I really have no clue what you're saying. If anything, I'm an adherent of Joseph Campbell, who's spent a lot of time on comparative myth/religion. Instead of referencing a bunch of shit, just put in put in your own words what a god is, and a god's role in the universe. Must a god only create the universe, or can the god be created from the universe? (Thus, a god really isn't the starting point, just another variable in the "equation" of how the universe works.) Is a god omnipresent, omniscient, etc., or is a god fallible? Is a god only metaphysical, or can a god exist within a physical realm?
I notice that many people's reaction to this article is to treat it as if it's haunted with evil spirits, and thus act as if they're afraid to handle it much lest they become possessed by a demon. These are often the same people who attempt to clairvoyantly divine the article's content rather than reading it. But I can assure you and everyone else that no demons lurk within its pages and that it is safe for all of you to read it.
Mr Redford,
1. Before I laid out the syllogysm, I quoted word for word, in the same post, where it comes from. Are you saying that you have contradicted yourself in that paper? If not, please explain what you did mean in that paragraph.
2. Thank God for the internet! The Omega Point, or is it the Flying Spaghetti Monster, has given us Wikipedia on Tipler. And lo and behold. Despite being published in journals, many see Tipler as a bit less authoratative than the Word of God. Just as Tim Tebow has been shown a false idol because he lost a football game, the Omega Point, too, has its critics [and don't forget to look up what the footnotes say about Tipler. They show such disrespect!]. Being published does not mean being generally accepted in the scientifc community.
Mr Redford, thank you for drawing my attention to this fascinating subject.
My humble blog
It's easy to refute an argument if you first misrepresent it. William Keizer
James Redford:Hi, Autolykos. Actually, Smiling Dave was elaborating on a phantasm of his own creation. Since you're interested in what my position is on this matter, then read the article that I wrote about it. That's what I wrote it for. Regarding your second paragraph, your statement therein couldn't be more false. The Big Bang cosmology is a mathematical theorem per General Relativity, which was demonstrated with the Penrose–Hawking–Geroch Singularity Theorems that are discussed in Sec. 5: "The Big Bang" of my following article.
Regarding your second paragraph, your statement therein couldn't be more false. The Big Bang cosmology is a mathematical theorem per General Relativity, which was demonstrated with the Penrose–Hawking–Geroch Singularity Theorems that are discussed in Sec. 5: "The Big Bang" of my following article.
Your "discussion" of that is merely a lengthy quotation from Stephen Hawking (p. 31 of your article):
Stephen Hawking:The final result [of the Singularity Theorems] was a joint paper by Penrose and myself in 1970, which at last proved that there must have been a big bang singularity provided only that general relativity is correct and the universe contains as much matter as we observe. There was a lot of opposition to our work, partly from the Russians because of their Marxist belief in scientific determinism, and partly from people who felt that the whole idea of singularities was repugnant and spoiled the beauty of Einstein’s theory. However, one cannot really argue with a mathematical theorem. So in the end our work became generally accepted and nowadays nearly everyone assumes that the universe started with a big bang singularity. ... [Emphasis added.]
That, to me, is a highly contingent proof.
Wikipedia, however, provides this:
Wikipedia:Hawking's singularity theorem is for the whole universe, and works backwards-in-time: in Hawking's original formulation, it guaranteed that the Big Bang has infinite density. Hawking later revised his position in A Brief History of Time (1988) where he stated "There was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe" (p50). This revision followed from quantum mechanics, in which general relativity must break down at times less than the Planck time. Hence general relativity cannot be used to show a singularity.
In light of this, I can't help but wonder whether the quotations you took from A Brief History of Time were isolated from their contexts - perhaps knowingly.
Finally, the existence of a "Big Bang" in the past doesn't per se necessitate a "Big Crunch" in the future.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
James Redford:The mathematics itself isn't refutable, otherwise it wouldn't be a mathematical theorem. But if it were shown that the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, or Quantum Mechanics were false, then the theorem wouldn't apply to the actual physics of the universe. These physical laws have been confirmed by every experiment to date, and so the only way to reject the Omega Point cosmology is to reject empirical science. That is, there exists no rational reason for thinking that the Omega Point cosmology is incorrect, and indeed, one must engage in extreme irrationality in order to argue against the Omega Point cosmology.
Any mathematical theorem, as a logical theorem, relies upon one or more premises - propositions that are assumed to be true.
As I mentioned in my last post, Stephen Hawking has apparently concluded, from quantum mechanics, that general relativity must break down at times less than the Planck time. I would say that this reveals a contradiction between general relativity and quantum mechanics, but that's just me.
General relativity and quantum mechanics aren't physical laws - they're theories. Just because they've been confirmed* by experiments performed to date does not mean they must be true.
And again, as I mentioned previously, even if a "Big Bang" actually occurred in the past, it does not follow that a "Big Crunch" must occur in the future. Hence the "Omega Point" is hardly inevitable - at least based on our current understanding.
Indeed, in your quote of Frank Tipler (p. 12-13 of your article), he claims that "astrophysical black holes almost certainly exist." Almost certainly. That is in no way the same as "certainly" per se. Proofs deal with logical and mathematical certainty, nothing less. For him to use the phrase "almost certainly" means that his "proof" is actually nothing of the kind. Either he himself mischaracterized it as a proof, or you're doing so.
* Indeed, these experiments may have only appeared to confirm them. Nothing is ever certain in science.
James Redford just so you know I'm not going to bother to read your 100+ page PDF file about something I don't really care about, so either you define "god" here and now or don't bother.
Mr Redford, thank you for drawing my attention to this fascinating subject. ""
Hi, Smiling Dave. By your first reply apparently you found everything that I wrote to be correct (literally speaking--not sarcastically speaking), given that you felt the need to misrepresent the article's arguments. Your "syllogysm" is not anywhere to be found in the article. In fact, in Sec. 7.1: "The Haecceities of God", I specifically state that the First Cause in the abstract sense might not necessarily entail identification with God:
"" Yet another traditional definition of God is the creator of all reality, which means that all causal chains begin with God. According to the Big Bang cosmology, all causal chains start at the initial singularity, which is the first cause. In the abstract sense, the first cause might not necessarily entail identification with God, since one might abstractly imagine that the first cause doesn't have the other properties of God. But in the concrete sense of the known laws of physics, the first cause logically requires a state of infinite mind, i.e., the Big Bang initial singularity cannot exist per the known physical laws without the Omega Point final singularity. As well, the initial singularity is a different aspect of the final singularity. ""
It's actually the Omega Point final singularity which has the haecceities of God, which I detail in the aforesaid Sec. 7.1. Below is the first paragraph from that section:
"" The Omega Point is omniscient, having an infinite amount of information and knowing all that is logically possible to be known; it is omnipotent, having an infinite amount of energy and power; and it is omnipresent, consisting of all that exists. These three properties are the traditional definitions of God held by almost all of the world's leading religions. Hence, by definition, the Omega Point is God. ""
I go on in that section to elaborate on the crucial haecceity of God, that of a state of infinite mind which knows everything that is logically possible to know.
In Sec. 3.1: "The Omega Point" I give the mathematical theorem per the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) that the universe must end in the Omega Point.
Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology has been peer-reviewed and published in a number of the world's leading physics and science journals.[1] Even NASA itself has peer-reviewed his Omega Point cosmology and found it correct according to the known laws of physics (see below). No refutation of it exists within the peer-reviewed scientific literature, or anywhere else for that matter.
Below are some of the peer-reviewed papers in science and physics journals wherein Prof. Tipler has published his Omega Point cosmology:
* Frank J. Tipler, "Cosmological Limits on Computation", International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 25, No. 6 (June 1986), pp. 617-661, doi:10.1007/BF00670475, bibcode: 1986IJTP...25..617T. (First paper on the Omega Point cosmology.)
* Frank J. Tipler, "The Anthropic Principle: A Primer for Philosophers", in Arthur Fine and Jarrett Leplin (Eds.), PSA 1988: Proceedings of the 1988 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (East Lansing, Mich.: Philosophy of Science Association, 1989), pp. 27-48, ISBN 091758628X.
* Frank J. Tipler, "The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions for Scientists", Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science, Vol. 24, Issue 2 (June 1989), pp. 217-253, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9744.1989.tb01112.x. Republished as Chapter 7: "The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions to Scientists" in Carol Rausch Albright and Joel Haugen (editors), Beginning with the End: God, Science, and Wolfhart Pannenberg (Chicago, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 156-194, ISBN 0812693256, LCCN 97000114.
* Frank J. Tipler, "The ultimate fate of life in universes which undergo inflation", Physics Letters B, Vol. 286, Issues 1-2 (July 23, 1992), pp. 36-43, doi:10.1016/0370-2693(92)90155-W, bibcode: 1992PhLB..286...36T.
* Frank J. Tipler, "A New Condition Implying the Existence of a Constant Mean Curvature Foliation", bibcode: 1993dgr2.conf..306T, in B. L. Hu and T. A. Jacobson (editors), Directions in General Relativity: Proceedings of the 1993 International Symposium, Maryland, Volume 2: Papers in Honor of Dieter Brill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 306-315, ISBN 0521452678, bibcode: 1993dgr2.conf.....H.
* Frank J. Tipler, "There Are No Limits To The Open Society", Critical Rationalist, Vol. 3, No. 2 (September 23, 1998).
* Frank J. Tipler, "Ultrarelativistic Rockets and the Ultimate Future of the Universe", NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop Proceedings, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, January 1999, pp. 111-119; an invited paper in the proceedings of a conference held at and sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, August 12-14, 1997; doi:2060/19990023204. Document ID: 19990023204. Report Number: E-11429; NAS 1.55:208694; NASA/CP-1999-208694.
* Frank J. Tipler, Jessica Graber, Matthew McGinley, Joshua Nichols-Barrer and Christopher Staecker, "Closed Universes With Black Holes But No Event Horizons As a Solution to the Black Hole Information Problem", arXiv:gr-qc/0003082, March 20, 2000. Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 379, Issue 2 (August 2007), pp. 629-640, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11895.x, bibcode: 2007MNRAS.379..629T.
* Frank J. Tipler, "The Ultimate Future of the Universe, Black Hole Event Horizon Topologies, Holography, and the Value of the Cosmological Constant", arXiv:astro-ph/0104011, April 1, 2001. Published in J. Craig Wheeler and Hugo Martel (editors), Relativistic Astrophysics: 20th Texas Symposium, Austin, TX, 10-15 December 2000 (Melville, N.Y.: American Institute of Physics, 2001), pp. 769-772, ISBN 0735400261, LCCN 2001094694, which is AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 586 (October 15, 2001), doi:10.1063/1.1419654, bibcode: 2001AIPC..586.....W.
* Frank J. Tipler, "Intelligent life in cosmology", International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 2, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 141-148, doi:10.1017/S1473550403001526, bibcode: 2003IJAsB...2..141T. Also at arXiv:0704.0058, March 31, 2007.
* F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers", Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964, doi:10.1088/0034-4885/68/4/R04, bibcode: 2005RPPh...68..897T. Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything", arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007.
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in which the above August 2007 paper was published, is one of the world's leading peer-reviewed astrophysics journals.
Prof. Tipler's paper "Ultrarelativistic Rockets and the Ultimate Future of the Universe" was an invited paper for a conference held at and sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center, so NASA itself has peer-reviewed Tipler's Omega Point Theorem (peer-review is a standard process for published proceedings papers; and again, Tipler's said paper was an *invited* paper by NASA, as opposed to what are called "poster papers").
Zygon is the world's leading peer-reviewed academic journal on science and religion.
Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper--which presents the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE)--was selected as one of 12 for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website." (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, "Highlights of 2005", Reports on Progress in Physics.)
Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain's main professional body for physicists. Further, Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal's impact factor reflects the importance the science community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own papers. (And just to point out, Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper could not have been published in Physical Review Letters since said paper is nearly book-length, and hence not a "letter" as defined by the latter journal.)
For much more on these matters, particularly see Prof. Tipler's above 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper in addition to the following resources:
James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), January 13, 2012 (orig. pub. December 19, 2011), 185 pp.
Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist.
The only way to avoid the conclusion that the Omega Point exists is to reject the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), and hence to reject empirical science: as these physical laws have been confirmed by every experiment to date. That is, there exists no rational reason for thinking that the Omega Point cosmology is incorrect, and indeed, one must engage in extreme irrationality in order to argue against the Omega Point cosmology.
Additionally, we now have the quantum gravity Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics: of which inherently produces the Omega Point cosmology. So here we have an additional high degree of assurance that the Omega Point cosmology is correct.
-----
Note:
1. While there is a lot that gets published in physics journals that is anti-reality and non-physical (such as string theory, which violates the known laws of physics and has no experimental support whatsoever), the reason such things are allowed to pass the peer-review process is because the paradigm of assumptions which such papers are speaking to has been made known, and within their operating paradigm none of the referees could find anything crucially wrong with said papers. That is, the paradigm itself may have nothing to do with reality, but the peer-reviewers could find nothing fundamentally wrong with such papers within the operating assumptions of that paradigm. Whereas, e.g., the operating paradigm of Prof. Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper and his other papers on the Omega Point Theorem is the known laws of physics, i.e., our actual physical reality which has been repeatedly confirmed by every experiment conducted to date. So the professional physicists charged with refereeing these papers could find nothing fundamentally wrong with them within their operating paradigm, i.e., the known laws of physics.
""
Just to let everyone here know, my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", published at the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), has been ameliorated on January 20, 2012. In addition to the link provided below, one can find links to this updated version in my originating post in this thread: the Theophysics links contain the latest version, and the WebCite links also contain the latest version if one looks on the date drop-down menu for the latest date. James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), January 20, 2012 (orig. pub. December 19, 2011), 185 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 Below is the new file information for this updated version: Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf 2,392,318 bytes MD5: 33d94a4fda1dfdc6d0bc00ffdf7e4383
I did not find your response to my comment to be sufficient. You did not even respond to one question in it. You must have decided that it did not fit in to your pro god theory of everything and pretended i never asked it. I will wait patiently for your response.
James Redford:Hi, Autolykos. General Relativity has been confirmed by every experiment to date. Thus, the only way to reject this result is to reject empirical science.
Please explain to me how exactly you know that General Relativity has been confirmed by every experiment to date. Until then, I will simply take this as a statement of belief.
James Redford:Your reading-comprehension is in need of amelioration, Autolykos. The above was addresed in Sec. 5: "The Big Bang" of the article.
Having read Section 5, I'm assuming this early sentence is indicative of what you're trying to say here:
James Redford:Unfortunately, most modern physicists have been all too willing to abandon the laws of physics if it produces results that they’re uncomfortable with, i.e., in reference to religion.
So your reasoning seems to be that, when physicists arrive at conclusions which you see as supporting the existence of God, they're correct. Otherwise, they're incorrect. It appears that you're begging the question here.
James Redford:That text from Wikipedia misquotes Prof. Stephen Hawking. The portion quoted doesn't begin capitalized, but rather is in the middle of a longer sentence, which is: "It is perhaps ironic that, having changed my mind, I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe--as we shall see later, it can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account." What Hawking is referring to is the Hartle-Hawking No-Boundary Proposal, which has never had any experimental support and which violates General Relativity. As I wrote in footnote 65 of the article: In this book [A Brief History of Time] Hawking is himself dissatisfied with the implications of the Penrose–Hawking–Geroch Singularity Theorems, and on p. 67 goes on to reference the Hartle–Hawking No-Boundary Proposal [174, 187] that he formulated with James B. Hartle as an attempt to avoid the initial singularity, which Hawking writes about further on pp. 172–181, esp. p. 175. However, given the Singularity Theorems, the only way this proposal could be correct is if General Relativity is incorrect, i.e., that General Relativity is merely an approximation to true physical law.
In this book [A Brief History of Time] Hawking is himself dissatisfied with the implications of the Penrose–Hawking–Geroch Singularity Theorems, and on p. 67 goes on to reference the Hartle–Hawking No-Boundary Proposal [174, 187] that he formulated with James B. Hartle as an attempt to avoid the initial singularity, which Hawking writes about further on pp. 172–181, esp. p. 175. However, given the Singularity Theorems, the only way this proposal could be correct is if General Relativity is incorrect, i.e., that General Relativity is merely an approximation to true physical law.
There always remains the possibility that General Relativity is indeed only an approximation to true physical law. Uncertainty lies at the center of science.
I fail to see how the full-sentence quote of Hawking changes the meaning at all. Perhaps it would be more accurate for the Wikipedia article to quote his full sentence, but that's about it. What the Wikipedia article expresses is already accurate - that Hawking had later decided that quantum mechanics can be used to remove the postulated singularity at the beginning of the universe.
James Redford:As Hawking wrote in this same book by him, "In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to spacetime and at which the laws of science break down."
I don't own a copy of the book, but apparently Hawking's use of the phrase "real time" is meant to contrast with "imaginary time". But surely you already know that, having read his book, so why not bring it up?
James Redford:Regarding your last sentence, I never made that argument.
Quoting your article:
James Redford:The Omega Point is a term used by Prof. Tipler to designate the final cosmological singularity, which according to the known laws of physics is a physically-necessary cosmological state in the far future of the universe. Per the laws of physics, as the universe comes to an end at this singularity in a particular form of the Big Crunch, the computational capacity of the universe (in terms of both its processor speed and memory storage) increases unlimitedly with a hyperbolic growth rate as the radius of the universe collapses to zero, allowing an infinite number of bits to be processed and stored before the end of spacetime. [Emphasis added.]
Some physicists believe that, because they believe there was a "Big Bang" and because of the amount of matter (allegedly) observed in the universe, that there must therefore be a "Big Crunch" at some point in the future. I figured that's what you were appealing to when you appealed to "the known laws of physics". If that's not the case, then please clarify.
James Redford:That text you quoted from Wikipedia misquotes Prof. Stephen Hawking. The portion quoted doesn't begin capitalized, but rather is in the middle of a longer sentence, which is: "It is perhaps ironic that, having changed my mind, I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe--as we shall see later, it can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account." What Hawking is referring to is the Hartle-Hawking No-Boundary Proposal, which has never had any experimental support and which violates General Relativity. As I wrote in footnote 65 of the article: In this book [A Brief History of Time] Hawking is himself dissatisfied with the implications of the Penrose–Hawking–Geroch Singularity Theorems, and on p. 67 goes on to reference the Hartle–Hawking No-Boundary Proposal [174, 187] that he formulated with James B. Hartle as an attempt to avoid the initial singularity, which Hawking writes about further on pp. 172–181, esp. p. 175. However, given the Singularity Theorems, the only way this proposal could be correct is if General Relativity is incorrect, i.e., that General Relativity is merely an approximation to true physical law. [Emphasis added.]
[Emphasis added.]
That's my point - Hawking's later revision (if not outright abandonment) of his singularity theorem seems to point to a contradiction between General Relativity and quantum mechanics, IMO.
James Redford:General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are known laws of physics. That simply means that they are physical theories which have been confirmed by every experiment conducted to date. The only way to avoid them is to reject empirical science. Perhaps they aren't part of the actual laws of physics, but there exists no rational reason to think that they aren't.
If "known laws of physics" to you means "physical theories which have been confirmed by every experiment conducted to date", and if other people don't think those two terms mean the same thing, then why not use only the latter term?
Can you logically support your claim that "there exists no rational reason to think that [General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics aren't part of the actual laws of physics"?
James Redford:Your foregoing sentence still doesn't follow, even though your own phantasmagorical argument (which you implicity attribute to me) is wrong. The mathematical proof per the known laws of physics of the Omega Point cosmology isn't based upon the Big Bang.
Then what would you say it's based on, exactly?
James Redford:As I wrote in the article regarding this matter: In the above, the phrase “almost certainly” (also called “almost surely” or “with probability 1”) is a technical term in probability theory that means the likelihood of an event occurring has a probability of 1 (with the range of possible values being from 0 to 1), i.e., that it is infinitely improbable that the event does not occur.23 However, another way to state the Second Law of Thermodynamics is that the universe evolves from less probable states to more probable states.24 An infinitely improbable state is not a “more probable” state. Hence, in order for an infinitely improbable state to occur would require violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Consequently, if the known laws of physics are true statements of how the world works, then the Omega Point cosmology is logically unavoidable. Appart from observations of black holes (via their gravitational effects), black holes are unavoidable in General Relativity.
In the above, the phrase “almost certainly” (also called “almost surely” or “with probability 1”) is a technical term in probability theory that means the likelihood of an event occurring has a probability of 1 (with the range of possible values being from 0 to 1), i.e., that it is infinitely improbable that the event does not occur.23 However, another way to state the Second Law of Thermodynamics is that the universe evolves from less probable states to more probable states.24 An infinitely improbable state is not a “more probable” state. Hence, in order for an infinitely improbable state to occur would require violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Consequently, if the known laws of physics are true statements of how the world works, then the Omega Point cosmology is logically unavoidable.
Appart from observations of black holes (via their gravitational effects), black holes are unavoidable in General Relativity.
First off, how do you know that Frank Tipler was using "almost certainly" in that sense?
Second, even if he was using it in that sense, his statement alone has no meaning other than as a claim asserted by him. He would need to demonstrate that the probability of black holes existing is equal to one, or that the probability of black holes not existing is infinitely small.
Third, according to Wikipedia:
Wikipedia:If an event is sure, then it will always happen, and no outcome not in this event can possibly occur. If an event is almost sure, then outcomes not in this event are theoretically possible; however, the probability of such an outcome occurring is smaller than any fixed positive probability, and therefore must be 0. Thus, one cannot definitively say that these outcomes will never occur, but can for most purposes assume this to be true. [Emphasis added.]
Since we're dealing with science, and science deals with theories, that means we're dealing with theoretical possibilities, aren't we? So for Frank Tipler to say that black holes "almost certainly exist" - assuming he's using "almost certainly" in its technical probability-theory sense - means that he's nevertheless implicitly admitting the theoretical possibility that they don't exist.
Regarding your claim that black holes have been observed "via their gravitational effects", that means they haven't been directly observed at all. The gravitational effects (allegedly) observed have been ascribed to black holes - nothing more. And finally, there remains the theoretical possibility that General Relativity is incorrect.
One overarching curiousity is why you would choose the Mises Institute forum (which as far as I can tell, is for discussions related to Austrian economics and the people, events, and issues that relate to it) as a place to invite criticism of your Omega physics thing.
I would think there are many more folks at the Physics Forums who would be able to discuss many of the technical points of your article in fine detail and with footnotes. Have you tried it?
James Redford:Below is an article that I recently wrote. It concerns the Omega Point cosmology by physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler, which is a proof of God's existence based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics). For anyone who has ever wondered about such questions as what the meaning of life is, what the purpose of their own life is, whether there is life after death, whether God exists, what the future holds for humanity, and why anything exists at all as opposed to nothingness, then this article answers all of those questions using the known laws of physics.
Hi, this is God. I've just comandeered z1235's account to say that James is 100% correct.
Bert:Still waiting on his definition of a god.
don't wait any longer, buddy. Malachi in previous thread just named them all. And all are completely different from one another. Here:
"God-ontologically supreme entity
God-creator of the universe, author of existence
God-initial first cause of the universe, the uncaused cause.
God-omniscient and omnipotent being that exists independently of the universe, and upon whose will the universe exists."
It's like if I defined a ball as red and heavy rock and at the same time defined it as light and round airplane.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
If you're going to make an argument, then make the argument that the above defined properties are a logically inconsistent set. But I just popped in this thread to add that point; let's take all the discussion to the other thread with Malachi. This thread is, well, fairly bizarre.
Just to let everyone here know, my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", published at the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), has been ameliorated on April 9, 2012. In addition to the link provided below, one can find links to this updated version in my originating post in this thread: the Theophysics links contain the latest version, and the WebCite links also contain the latest version if one looks on the date drop-down menu for the latest date. James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), April 9, 2012 (orig. pub. December 19, 2011), 185 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 Below is the new file information for this updated version: Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf 1,760,055 bytes MD5: e3c1f6a076ea609c1e4aa0c89d410738
Jack Roberts:
Hi, Jack Roberts. Mankind can kill each other, but then another sapient species would have to be evolved roughly within our Hubble volume who do go on to participate in forcing the collapse of the universe and then who participate in coordinating the Taublike collapse cycles (i.e., Mixmaster oscillations) as the radius of the universe goes to zero going into the Omega Point final singularity. For more details on this, see my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything" and the following article:
Frank J. Tipler, "Intelligent life in cosmology", International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 2, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 141-148, doi:10.1017/S1473550403001526, bibcode: 2003IJAsB...2..141T. http://www.webcitation.org/5o9QHKGuW Also at arXiv:0704.0058, March 31, 2007.
Putting on my tinfoil hat.
Smiling Dave wrote the following post at Mon, Apr 16 2012 11:58 PM:
That's an appropriate hat for an antirationalist such as yourself to wear.
Then where does singularity came from?
It concerns the Omega Point cosmology by physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler, which is a proof of God's existence based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics).
I lol'd.
Autolykos wrote:
James Redford:Hi, Autolykos. General Relativity has been confirmed by every experiment to date. Thus, the only way to reject this result is to reject empirical science. Please explain to me how exactly you know that General Relativity has been confirmed by every experiment to date. Until then, I will simply take this as a statement of belief.
By that it is of course meant when the data are correct and validly accounted for, as there have been many erroneous claims over the decades of experimental violation of these physical laws which later get overturned by more careful analysis. If there were such experimental disconfirmation it would be widely known, since the physics community has long been attempting to discard the known laws of physics due to their distaste over these physical laws' theological implications. For history on this, see Sec. 5: "The Big Bang" of my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything".
James Redford:Your reading-comprehension is in need of amelioration, Autolykos. The above was addresed in Sec. 5: "The Big Bang" of the article. Having read Section 5, I'm assuming this early sentence is indicative of what you're trying to say here: James Redford:Unfortunately, most modern physicists have been all too willing to abandon the laws of physics if it produces results that they’re uncomfortable with, i.e., in reference to religion. So your reasoning seems to be that, when physicists arrive at conclusions which you see as supporting the existence of God, they're correct. Otherwise, they're incorrect. It appears that you're begging the question here.
You could benefit from taking a reading-comprehension course. That sentence above is literal. I realize in this era of etatist semantic-free language that words and sentences are often just used as weapons or as armor to demonize or to make holy one or another person, group or position, and that the words being used have no semantical content beyond animalistic grunts of disapproval or approval, but I am actually writing literally here, as I go on to show by providing history of what that above-quoted sentence of mine states.
James Redford:That text from Wikipedia misquotes Prof. Stephen Hawking. The portion quoted doesn't begin capitalized, but rather is in the middle of a longer sentence, which is: "It is perhaps ironic that, having changed my mind, I am now trying to convince other physicists that there was in fact no singularity at the beginning of the universe--as we shall see later, it can disappear once quantum effects are taken into account." What Hawking is referring to is the Hartle-Hawking No-Boundary Proposal, which has never had any experimental support and which violates General Relativity. As I wrote in footnote 65 of the article: In this book [A Brief History of Time] Hawking is himself dissatisfied with the implications of the Penrose–Hawking–Geroch Singularity Theorems, and on p. 67 goes on to reference the Hartle–Hawking No-Boundary Proposal [174, 187] that he formulated with James B. Hartle as an attempt to avoid the initial singularity, which Hawking writes about further on pp. 172–181, esp. p. 175. However, given the Singularity Theorems, the only way this proposal could be correct is if General Relativity is incorrect, i.e., that General Relativity is merely an approximation to true physical law. There always remains the possibility that General Relativity is indeed only an approximation to true physical law. Uncertainty lies at the center of science.
As of yet there exists no rational reason to think that General Relativity is incorrect, and one must at present reject empirical science in order to reject General Relativity.
It's called the Hartle-Hawking No-Boundary Proposal because that's all it is at present: a proposal. In order for it to be true General Relativity would have to be incorrect.
James Redford:As Hawking wrote in this same book by him, "In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to spacetime and at which the laws of science break down." I don't own a copy of the book, but apparently Hawking's use of the phrase "real time" is meant to contrast with "imaginary time". But surely you already know that, having read his book, so why not bring it up?
In General Relativity time is measured according to the real numbers, i.e., real time.
James Redford:Regarding your last sentence, I never made that argument. Quoting your article: James Redford:The Omega Point is a term used by Prof. Tipler to designate the final cosmological singularity, which according to the known laws of physics is a physically-necessary cosmological state in the far future of the universe. Per the laws of physics, as the universe comes to an end at this singularity in a particular form of the Big Crunch, the computational capacity of the universe (in terms of both its processor speed and memory storage) increases unlimitedly with a hyperbolic growth rate as the radius of the universe collapses to zero, allowing an infinite number of bits to be processed and stored before the end of spacetime. [Emphasis added.] Some physicists believe that, because they believe there was a "Big Bang" and because of the amount of matter (allegedly) observed in the universe, that there must therefore be a "Big Crunch" at some point in the future. I figured that's what you were appealing to when you appealed to "the known laws of physics". If that's not the case, then please clarify.
For why the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) logically require the Omega Point cosmology, see Sec. 3: "Physics of the Omega Point Cosmology", Subsec. 3.1: "The Omega Point", and also see App. A.2: "The Bekenstein Bound and the Ultimate Future of the Universe" of my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything".
James Redford:By that it is of course meant when the data are correct and validly accounted for, as there have been many erroneous claims over the decades of experimental violation of these physical laws which later get overturned by more careful analysis. If there were such experimental disconfirmation it would be widely known, since the physics community has long been attempting to discard the known laws of physics due to their distaste over these physical laws' theological implications. For history on this, see Sec. 5: "The Big Bang" of my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything".
In other words, you're simply going by the statements of scientists regarding how they've interpreted their experimental data. Therefore you don't know whether General Relativity has been confirmed by every experiment to date, let alone whether General Relativity is actual physical law. I accept your implicit concession here.
James Redford:You could benefit from taking a reading-comprehension course. That sentence above is literal. I realize in this era of etatist semantic-free language that words and sentences are often just used as weapons or as armor to demonize or to make holy one or another person, group or position, and that the words being used have no semantical content beyond animalistic grunts of disapproval or approval, but I am actually writing literally here, as I go on to show by providing history of what that above-quoted sentence of mine states.
I don't think blatant personal attacks help your case one bit - in fact, I think they substantially weaken it. Furthermore, such blatant personal attacks in no way dissuade me from engaging you. Just so you know.
Now then, please understand that I was taking your statement literally to begin with. My response contained statements that, as far as I can deduce, must serve as the underlying basis for the statement you made. It just so happens that these statements constitute an example of begging the question.
James Redford:As of yet there exists no rational reason to think that General Relativity is incorrect, and one must at present reject empirical science in order to reject General Relativity.
In that case, it shouldn't be difficult for you to provide a deductive proof of the above. Why haven't you yet done so?
James Redford:It's called the Hartle-Hawking No-Boundary Proposal because that's all it is at present: a proposal. In order for it to be true General Relativity would have to be incorrect.
My point was that Stephen Hawking himself, in helping to formulate the Hartle-Hawking No-Boundary Proposal, has at the very least expressed doubts about the correctness of General Relativity. Would you say that Stephen Hawking is therefore rejecting empirical science?
James Redford:In General Relativity time is measured according to the real numbers, i.e., real time.
My point was that you're omitting part of the picture - perhaps intentionally.
James Redford:For why the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) logically require the Omega Point cosmology, see Sec. 3: "Physics of the Omega Point Cosmology", Subsec. 3.1: "The Omega Point", and also see App. A.2: "The Bekenstein Bound and the Ultimate Future of the Universe" of my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything".
This does not constitute a clarification in the context of this thread. Please try again.
Autolykos wrote the following post at Wed, Apr 18 2012 1:37 PM:
James Redford:By that it is of course meant when the data are correct and validly accounted for, as there have been many erroneous claims over the decades of experimental violation of these physical laws which later get overturned by more careful analysis. If there were such experimental disconfirmation it would be widely known, since the physics community has long been attempting to discard the known laws of physics due to their distaste over these physical laws' theological implications. For history on this, see Sec. 5: "The Big Bang" of my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything". In other words, you're simply going by the statements of scientists regarding how they've interpreted their experimental data. Therefore you don't know whether General Relativity has been confirmed by every experiment to date, let alone whether General Relativity is actual physical law. I accept your implicit concession here.
If any such experimental disconfirmation actually exists, then it is unknown to the general physics community. Regarding "concession", my position remains unchanged. I see that your position here is one of wishful thinking: hoping that the known laws of physics are incorrect, and hoping that I've made some form of "concession".
James Redford:You could benefit from taking a reading-comprehension course. That sentence above is literal. I realize in this era of etatist semantic-free language that words and sentences are often just used as weapons or as armor to demonize or to make holy one or another person, group or position, and that the words being used have no semantical content beyond animalistic grunts of disapproval or approval, but I am actually writing literally here, as I go on to show by providing history of what that above-quoted sentence of mine states. I don't think blatant personal attacks help your case one bit - in fact, I think they substantially weaken it. Furthermore, such blatant personal attacks in no way dissuade me from engaging you. Just so you know.
It wasn't an attack, it was a helpful suggestion regarding your functional illiteracy.
Your familiarity with argumentation theory is also lacking, since even hypothetically if I had made a personal attack upon you, that would logically in no way weaken any other argument I have made regarding the Omega Point cosmology, which at any rate you are uninterested in, given that you still refuse to read the sections of the article which give the logical proof of the Omega Point Theorem per the known laws of physics, i.e., Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics.
Despite your above verbiage to the contrary, you're again here taking that sentence I wrote to be in the manner of etatist semantic-free language, i.e., that I'm merely using language to express disapproval instead of making a factual statement. Yet if that sentence by me which you quoted is factually correct, then there can be no objection to it on logical grounds. In that same section I go on to provide the history of this matter which shows that said sentence is factually correct.
James Redford:As of yet there exists no rational reason to think that General Relativity is incorrect, and one must at present reject empirical science in order to reject General Relativity. In that case, it shouldn't be difficult for you to provide a deductive proof of the above. Why haven't you yet done so?
Physics is different from economics. As of yet there is no known way to derive all of physical law based purely upon a priori logical deduction. Instead, experimentation is required in order to confirm or disconfirm fundamental physical theories, which become known laws of physics if there is a large body of experimental confirmation and no experimental disconfirmation of them. Logical deduction can then be used starting with such known laws of physics in order to discover the logical implications of them.
So at present a purely logical a priori deduction for the truth of General Relativity cannot be provided, which is why it is known as empirical science, since physical experimentation is required in order to either confirm or disconfirm it. It has been confirmed by every experiment to date--at least as far as known to the general physics community. Hence, to reject General Relativity at present would be to reject empirical science, of which is irrational, if by rational it is meant, at least in part, "abidance to empirical science".
James Redford:It's called the Hartle-Hawking No-Boundary Proposal because that's all it is at present: a proposal. In order for it to be true General Relativity would have to be incorrect. My point was that Stephen Hawking himself, in helping to formulate the Hartle-Hawking No-Boundary Proposal, has at the very least expressed doubts about the correctness of General Relativity. Would you say that Stephen Hawking is therefore rejecting empirical science?
Yes, Stephen Hawking is rejecting the known laws of physics due to his distaste for their theological implications. That is the point of the history I provide in Sec. 5: "The Big Bang" of my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything" regarding my sentence in that section of "Unfortunately, most modern physicists have been all too willing to abandon the laws of physics if it produces results that they're uncomfortable with, i.e., in reference to religion." See also my comments on Hawking regarding his proposed solution to the black hole information issue in Sec. 3.4: "The Omega Point Cosmology Vis-à-Vis String Theory and Other Proposed New Physics"; and my comments on Hawking in Sec. 6: "Science Comes Home", including the footnote containing the sentence "This comment by Hawking ...".
The physics community is trying to discard the known laws of physics because said physical laws produce results which they are philosophically opposed to, i.e., regarding their distaste for religion. With such physical theories as String Theory and other proposed new laws of physics--which have no experimental confirmation--the physics community is reverting back to Aristotelianism, which held to physical theories based upon philosophical ideals. That is, if rejecting God means rejecting empirical science, then so be it.
James Redford:In General Relativity time is measured according to the real numbers, i.e., real time. My point was that you're omitting part of the picture - perhaps intentionally.
Imaginary time isn't the form of time used by General Relativity. Hawking's sentence regarding real time applies to the known laws of physics.
James Redford:For why the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) logically require the Omega Point cosmology, see Sec. 3: "Physics of the Omega Point Cosmology", Subsec. 3.1: "The Omega Point", and also see App. A.2: "The Bekenstein Bound and the Ultimate Future of the Universe" of my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything". This does not constitute a clarification in the context of this thread. Please try again.
It does, but you give no indication that you understand what I'm saying here, so my words are apparently wasted on you. Below is your own quote of me with your own emphasis added:
Quoting your article: The Omega Point is a term used by Prof. Tipler to designate the final cosmological singularity, which according to the known laws of physics is a physically-necessary cosmological state in the far future of the universe. Per the laws of physics, as the universe comes to an end at this singularity in a particular form of the Big Crunch, the computational capacity of the universe (in terms of both its processor speed and memory storage) increases unlimitedly with a hyperbolic growth rate as the radius of the universe collapses to zero, allowing an infinite number of bits to be processed and stored before the end of spacetime. [Emphasis added.] Some physicists believe that, because they believe there was a "Big Bang" and because of the amount of matter (allegedly) observed in the universe, that there must therefore be a "Big Crunch" at some point in the future. I figured that's what you were appealing to when you appealed to "the known laws of physics". If that's not the case, then please clarify.
The Omega Point is a term used by Prof. Tipler to designate the final cosmological singularity, which according to the known laws of physics is a physically-necessary cosmological state in the far future of the universe. Per the laws of physics, as the universe comes to an end at this singularity in a particular form of the Big Crunch, the computational capacity of the universe (in terms of both its processor speed and memory storage) increases unlimitedly with a hyperbolic growth rate as the radius of the universe collapses to zero, allowing an infinite number of bits to be processed and stored before the end of spacetime. [Emphasis added.]
To which I answered you thus:
Perhaps your misunderstanding is that you are not aware that the Omega Point cosmology pertains to " 'the final cosmological singularity, which according to the known laws of physics is a physically-necessary cosmological state in the far future of the universe. Per the laws of physics, as the universe comes to an end at this singularity in a particular form of the Big Crunch ' " (to quote your quotation of me, along with your added emphasis), but how you could not know this is bizarre, because your quotation of me begins with " 'The Omega Point is a term used by Prof. Tipler to designate ...' ", which then leads directly to your previous quotation of me.
Gotta hand it to you, Autolykos, such patience.
Smiling Dave wrote the following post at Wed, Apr 18 2012 3:07 PM:
If you're using "patience" as a euphemism for "slowness", as in uncomprehension, then Autolykos certainly abounds in that. Autolykos couldn't even understand his own quote of me, not realizing that the Omega Point cosmology concerns the passages which he emphasized, even though that very quote he gives of me starts with "The Omega Point is a term used by Prof. Tipler to designate ...". Not to mention that Autolykos and everyone else replying here refuse to actually read my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", acting as if the article is demon-possessed and that they will incur the wrath of some angry god if they so much as even skim too much of it.
The state has been amazingly successful in turning men into beasts. Attempting to talk with people here on this subject is like trying to teach chess to dogs.
James Redford:If any such experimental disconfirmation actually exists, then it is unknown to the general physics community. Regarding "concession", my position remains unchanged. I see that your position here is one of wishful thinking: hoping that the known laws of physics are incorrect, and hoping that I've made some form of "concession".
I couldn't care less whether your position is unchanged. Your position is nevertheless intellectually bankrupt, as far as I'm concerned. That's why I said I accept your implicit concession, because you could offer no substantive challenge, let alone refutation, to my point.
James Redford:It wasn't an attack, it was a helpful suggestion regarding your functional illiteracy.
So you follow up with another attack. Brilliant.
James Redford:Your familiarity with argumentation theory is also lacking, since even hypothetically if I had made a personal attack upon you, that would logically in no way weaken any other argument I have made regarding the Omega Point cosmology, which at any rate you are uninterested in, given that you still refuse to read the sections of the article which give the logical proof of the Omega Point Theorem per the known laws of physics, i.e., Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics.
I consider your arguments to be weakened when you apparently think it's necessary to resort to personal attacks rather than logical counter-arguments. It's clear to me that you expect me to back down in the face of claims such as being functionally illiterate and lack of familiarity with argumentation theory. So it's also clear to me that you're used to arguing from a position in which you feel clearly authoritative. Unfortunately for you, I will not back down whatsoever in the face of any personal attack.
James Redford:Despite your above verbiage to the contrary, you're again here taking that sentence I wrote to be in the manner of etatist semantic-free language, i.e., that I'm merely using language to express disapproval instead of making a factual statement. Yet if that sentence by me which you quoted is factually correct, then there can be no objection to it on logical grounds. In that same section I go on to provide the history of this matter which shows that said sentence is factually correct.
To me, "literal" doesn't mean the same thing as "factual". That sentence in your paper contains the word "unfortunately" as its first word, which expresses a value judgement, not a fact. So I read the word "unfortunately" in a literal way, of course, but that meant taking it to express a value judgement. In other words, taking the word "unfortunately" literally means not taking it as an expression of fact. All of this also applies to the phrase "all too willing" in the same sentence, at the very least.
James Redford:Because physics is different from economics. As of yet there is no known way to derive all of physical law based purely upon a priori logical deduction. Instead, experimentation is required in order to confirm or disconfirm fundamental physical theories, which become known laws of physics if there is a large body of experimental confirmation and no experimental disconfirmation of them. Logical deduction can then be used starting with such known laws of physics in order to discover the logical implications of them.
I think it's a sleight of hand to call laws of physics "known". The only things known in science are observations - nothing more. I've probably said this before, but I could be wrong.
Anyways, if you admit that you can't prove your claim - "As of yet there exists no rational reason to think that General Relativity is incorrect, and one must at present reject empirical science in order to reject General Relativity" - then why should either of us take it seriously?
James Redford:Yes, Stephen Hawking is rejecting the known laws of physics due to his distaste for their theological implications. That is the point of the history I provide in Sec. 5: "The Big Bang" of my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything" regarding my sentence in that section of "Unfortunately, most modern physicists have been all too willing to abandon the laws of physics if it produces results that they're uncomfortable with, i.e., in reference to religion." See also my comments on Hawking regarding his proposed solution to the black hole information issue in Sec. 3.4: "The Omega Point Cosmology Vis-à-Vis String Theory and Other Proposed New Physics"; and my comments on Hawking in Sec. 6: "Science Comes Home", including the footnote containing the sentence "This comment by Hawking ...".
My understanding is that Stephen Hawking has at least considered the possibility of General Relativity being only an approximation of the actual laws of physics, which you consider to be the same thing as General Relativity being "incorrect". I think what you call the "correctness" of a scientific theory or law isn't the same as that of the scientific community at large. Whereas you seem to consider "correctness" to be a binary, all-or-nothing notion, the scientific community at large does not. In its view, even the Ptolemaic geocentric theory was correct up to a point. In other words, the scientific community considers "correctness" to constitute a continuum. That leaves open the possibility that the physical theories currently held valid by (much/most of) the scientific community could well turn out to be not as correct as other physical theories may turn out to be.
James Redford:The physics community is trying to discard the known laws of physics because said physical laws produce results which they are philosophically opposed to, i.e., regarding their distaste for religion. With such physical theories as String Theory and other proposed new laws of physics--which have no experimental confirmation--the physics community is reverting back to Aristotelianism, which held to physical theories based upon philosophical ideals. That is, if rejecting God means rejecting empirical science, then so be it.
There are other apparent issues with General Relativity, such as the apparent mismatches between it and various branches of quantum theory. Yet both General Relativity and quantum theory are very well-supported by experimental evidence. Can you explain (let alone prove) why General Relativity must win out over quantum theory?
James Redford:Imaginary time isn't the form of time used by General Relativity. Hawking's sentence regarding real time applies to the known laws of physics.
Yet imaginary time is a form of time used by quantum mechanics, which is also part of the currently accepted (in place of your "known") laws of physics. One could thus say that, by rejecting the concept of imaginary time, you're rejecting empirical science.
James Redford:It does, but you give no indication that you understand what I'm saying here, so my words are apparently wasted on you. [...] Perhaps your misunderstanding is that you are not aware that the Omega Point cosmology pertains to " 'the final cosmological singularity, which according to the known laws of physics is a physically-necessary cosmological state in the far future of the universe. Per the laws of physics, as the universe comes to an end at this singularity in a particular form of the Big Crunch ' " (to quote your quotation of me, along with your added emphasis), but how you could not know this is bizarre, because your quotation of me begins with " 'The Omega Point is a term used by Prof. Tipler to designate ...' ", which then leads directly to your previous quotation of me.
I've already been aware of that. My point was to question your implicit assertion - which, it's clear to me now, you do make - that the Big Bang (the cosmological origin event postulated as necessary by the currently accepted version of General Relativity) necessitates a Big Crunch. The assertion is implicit in your appeal to the "known laws of physics", as those postulate a Big Bang as the origin of the universe. But nowhere do you prove that a Big Bang necessitates a future Big Crunch, and even in the scientific community today, there's no general agreement as to whether a Big Crunch will ever happen at all, let alone whether one is inevitable. So if you have a proof that a Big Crunch is inevitable following a Big Bang, then surely you can outline it here in the thread, rather than effectively telling me to shut up and go away by pointing me to something that you don't think I'll ever read.
Wasn't talking to you, Mr. Tinfoil.
Smiling Dave wrote the following post at Wed, Apr 18 2012 4:35 PM:
I see that you're talking to yourself again, Dave.
@James Redford: You are a pseudo-scientific quack pretender - you get your article "cited" by some website that would put up a cite to virtually anything and is not any kind of journal. Then you post your quackery here and then berate people who won't read it as if they're "afraid" of some truth you're revealing.
You do not have the spirit of a truth-seeker, your "contributions" to this forum are smoke and mirrors. Get lost.
Clayton -
Autolykos wrote the following post at Wed, Apr 18 2012 3:44 PM:
James Redford:In other words, you're simply going by the statements of scientists regarding how they've interpreted their experimental data. Therefore you don't know whether General Relativity has been confirmed by every experiment to date, let alone whether General Relativity is actual physical law. I accept your implicit concession here. I couldn't care less whether your position is unchanged. Your position is nevertheless intellectually bankrupt, as far as I'm concerned. That's why I said I accept your implicit concession, because you could offer no substantive challenge, let alone refutation, to my point.
James Redford:In other words, you're simply going by the statements of scientists regarding how they've interpreted their experimental data. Therefore you don't know whether General Relativity has been confirmed by every experiment to date, let alone whether General Relativity is actual physical law. I accept your implicit concession here.
You're quoting yourself in the above.
James Redford:It wasn't an attack, it was a helpful suggestion regarding your functional illiteracy. So you follow up with another attack. Brilliant.
Again, that wasn't an attack, but a factual statement and an offer as to how you might be able to remedy it. But obviously your willful ignorance comforts you, so apparently you have no interest to remedy this fault of yours.
James Redford:Your familiarity with argumentation theory is also lacking, since even hypothetically if I had made a personal attack upon you, that would logically in no way weaken any other argument I have made regarding the Omega Point cosmology, which at any rate you are uninterested in, given that you still refuse to read the sections of the article which give the logical proof of the Omega Point Theorem per the known laws of physics, i.e., Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics. I consider your arguments to be weakened when you apparently think it's necessary to resort to personal attacks rather than logical counter-arguments. It's clear to me that you expect me to back down in the face of claims such as being functionally illiterate and lack of familiarity with argumentation theory. So it's also clear to me that you're used to arguing from a position in which you feel clearly authoritative. Unfortunately for you, I will not back down whatsoever in the face of any personal attack.
I don't expect a troll like you to back down from your trolling. You obviously have no moral compunctions about posting about how wrong something is in a thread on a subject which you refuse to educate yourself about, so shame regarding your own ignorance does not appear to be a part of your personal constitution.
James Redford:Despite your above verbiage to the contrary, you're again here taking that sentence I wrote to be in the manner of etatist semantic-free language, i.e., that I'm merely using language to express disapproval instead of making a factual statement. Yet if that sentence by me which you quoted is factually correct, then there can be no objection to it on logical grounds. In that same section I go on to provide the history of this matter which shows that said sentence is factually correct. To me, "literal" doesn't mean the same thing as "factual". That sentence in your paper contains the word "unfortunately" as its first word, which expresses a value judgement, not a fact. So I read the word "unfortunately" in a literal way, of course, but that meant taking it to express a value judgement. In other words, taking the word "unfortunately" literally means not taking it as an expression of fact. All of this also applies to the phrase "all too willing" in the same sentence, at the very least.
It's unfortunate to me that they reject the known laws of physics. So drop the "unfortunate" part if you don't find that objectionable, and the rest is a pure statement of fact. (But in actuality, veridical morality is factual, as my article under discussion here demonstrates.)
James Redford:Because physics is different from economics. As of yet there is no known way to derive all of physical law based purely upon a priori logical deduction. Instead, experimentation is required in order to confirm or disconfirm fundamental physical theories, which become known laws of physics if there is a large body of experimental confirmation and no experimental disconfirmation of them. Logical deduction can then be used starting with such known laws of physics in order to discover the logical implications of them. I think it's a sleight of hand to call laws of physics "known". The only things known in science are observations - nothing more. I've probably said this before, but I could be wrong. Anyways, if you admit that you can't prove your claim - "As of yet there exists no rational reason to think that General Relativity is incorrect, and one must at present reject empirical science in order to reject General Relativity" - then why should either of us take it seriously?
The claim which you quote is easy to demonstrate, if that is what is under question. I wasn't sure as to what you were referring to before, so re-read my edited post which you here respond to for that demonstration. What cannot be a priori demonstrated is all of the known laws of physics, which is the only thing my above comment pertains to.
James Redford:Yes, Stephen Hawking is rejecting the known laws of physics due to his distaste for their theological implications. That is the point of the history I provide in Sec. 5: "The Big Bang" of my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything" regarding my sentence in that section of "Unfortunately, most modern physicists have been all too willing to abandon the laws of physics if it produces results that they're uncomfortable with, i.e., in reference to religion." See also my comments on Hawking regarding his proposed solution to the black hole information issue in Sec. 3.4: "The Omega Point Cosmology Vis-à-Vis String Theory and Other Proposed New Physics"; and my comments on Hawking in Sec. 6: "Science Comes Home", including the footnote containing the sentence "This comment by Hawking ...". My understanding is that Stephen Hawking has at least considered the possibility of General Relativity being only an approximation of the actual laws of physics, which you consider to be the same thing as General Relativity being "incorrect". I think what you call the "correctness" of a scientific theory or law isn't the same as that of the scientific community at large. Whereas you seem to consider "correctness" to be a binary, all-or-nothing notion, the scientific community at large does not. In its view, even the Ptolemaic geocentric theory was correct up to a point. In other words, the scientific community considers "correctness" to constitute a continuum. That leaves open the possibility that the physical theories currently held valid by (much/most of) the scientific community could well turn out to be not as correct as other physical theories may turn out to be.
I'm using correct or incorrect here in the mathematical sense. If Stephen Hawking's No-Boundary Proposal is correct, then General Relativity is mathematically incorrect.
James Redford:The physics community is trying to discard the known laws of physics because said physical laws produce results which they are philosophically opposed to, i.e., regarding their distaste for religion. With such physical theories as String Theory and other proposed new laws of physics--which have no experimental confirmation--the physics community is reverting back to Aristotelianism, which held to physical theories based upon philosophical ideals. That is, if rejecting God means rejecting empirical science, then so be it. There are other apparent issues with General Relativity, such as the apparent mismatches between it and various branches of quantum theory. Yet both General Relativity and quantum theory are very well-supported by experimental evidence. Can you explain (let alone prove) why General Relativity must win out over quantum theory?
They are both correct. See Sec. 3.2: "The Omega Point and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything" of my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything" for the details on that.
James Redford:Imaginary time isn't the form of time used by General Relativity. Hawking's sentence regarding real time applies to the known laws of physics. Yet imaginary time is a form of time used by quantum mechanics, which is also part of the currently accepted (in place of your "known") laws of physics. One could thus say that, by rejecting the concept of imaginary time, you're rejecting empirical science.
Imaginary time in quantum mechanics is perfectly consistent with real time in General Relativity within the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE).
James Redford:It does, but you give no indication that you understand what I'm saying here, so my words are apparently wasted on you. [...] Perhaps your misunderstanding is that you are not aware that the Omega Point cosmology pertains to " 'the final cosmological singularity, which according to the known laws of physics is a physically-necessary cosmological state in the far future of the universe. Per the laws of physics, as the universe comes to an end at this singularity in a particular form of the Big Crunch ' " (to quote your quotation of me, along with your added emphasis), but how you could not know this is bizarre, because your quotation of me begins with " 'The Omega Point is a term used by Prof. Tipler to designate ...' ", which then leads directly to your previous quotation of me. I've already been aware of that. My point was to question your implicit assertion - which, it's clear to me now, you do make - that the Big Bang (the cosmological origin event postulated as necessary by the currently accepted version of General Relativity) necessitates a Big Crunch. The assertion is implicit in your appeal to the "known laws of physics", as those postulate a Big Bang as the origin of the universe. But nowhere do you prove that a Big Bang necessitates a future Big Crunch, and even in the scientific community today, there's no general agreement as to whether a Big Crunch will ever happen at all, let alone whether one is inevitable. So if you have a proof that a Big Crunch is inevitable following a Big Bang, then surely you can outline it here in the thread, rather than effectively telling me to shut up and go away by pointing me to something that you don't think I'll ever read.
The Big Bang only neccessitates the Final Singularity in the sense of the known laws of physics, which is the same thing which necessitates the Big Bang. For the details on that, see my article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything".
I will here also ask you and others to stop trolling in this thread. You have so far refused to actually read the article which is the subject of this thread. If your intention had been to eventually read the article and you felt the need to post a comment before doing so, then an appropriate response would have been to say something to the effect of "Thanks, this sounds interesting. I intend to read it when I have the time."
However, the responses by you have made clear that you are not thankful that I wrote this article, even though it is on a subject which has been thoroughly peer-reviewed in leading physics journals and which you obviously know essentially nothing about, but that you are instead upset that I wrote it and are merely looking for psychological rationalizations as to why it must be wrong.
There is no magical combination of words that I or anyone could say to you to make you take this subject seriously. You are obvously dead-set against it even to the point that you refuse to actually read the artice which is the subject of this thread. If you can't even do that, then it's pretty obvious what your intention is by posting in this thread as you do. You're looking for psychological rationalizations as to why it must be wrong, and hence why you don't have to actually take it seriously and hence have to actually read the article.
I say to you, go ahead and believe what you want to believe. Stop being a troll by wasting my time with these endless series of your inane postings. As I said, there is no magical combination of words that I or anyone could say to you to make you take this subject seriously.
It so happens that I wrote an article to explain all these things to people who are curious about them. But I can't help anyone who is simply interested in providing psychological justifications for their own willful ignorance, as no amount of response to jejune ignorance can help a person who isn't actually looking for help.
So if you're not actually going to read the whole article, then depart from this thread. Stop being a troll.
Clayton wrote the following post at Wed, Apr 18 2012 7:21 PM:
@James Redford: You are a pseudo-scientific quack pretender - you get your article "cited" by some website that would put up a cite to virtually anything and is not any kind of journal. Then you post your quackery here and then berate people who won't read it as if they're "afraid" of some truth you're revealing. You do not have the spirit of a truth-seeker, your "contributions" to this forum are smoke and mirrors. Get lost. Clayton -
Take your own advice, troll.
Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology has been peer-reviewed and published in a number of the world's leading physics and science journals.[1] Even NASA itself has peer-reviewed his Omega Point cosmology and found it correct according to the known laws of physics (see below). No refutation of it exists within the peer-reviewed scientific literature, or anywhere else for that matter. Below are some of the peer-reviewed papers in science and physics journals wherein Prof. Tipler has published his Omega Point cosmology: * Frank J. Tipler, "Cosmological Limits on Computation", International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 25, No. 6 (June 1986), pp. 617-661, doi:10.1007/BF00670475, bibcode: 1986IJTP...25..617T. http://www.webcitation.org/64KHgOccs (First paper on the Omega Point cosmology.) * Frank J. Tipler, "The Anthropic Principle: A Primer for Philosophers", in Arthur Fine and Jarrett Leplin (Eds.), PSA 1988: Proceedings of the 1988 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (East Lansing, Mich.: Philosophy of Science Association, 1989), pp. 27-48, ISBN 091758628X. * Frank J. Tipler, "The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions for Scientists", Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science, Vol. 24, Issue 2 (June 1989), pp. 217-253, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9744.1989.tb01112.x. Republished as Chapter 7: "The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions to Scientists" in Carol Rausch Albright and Joel Haugen (editors), Beginning with the End: God, Science, and Wolfhart Pannenberg (Chicago, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 156-194, ISBN 0812693256, LCCN 97000114. http://www.webcitation.org/5nY0aytpz * Frank J. Tipler, "The ultimate fate of life in universes which undergo inflation", Physics Letters B, Vol. 286, Issues 1-2 (July 23, 1992), pp. 36-43, doi:10.1016/0370-2693(92)90155-W, bibcode: 1992PhLB..286...36T. http://www.webcitation.org/64Uskd785 * Frank J. Tipler, "A New Condition Implying the Existence of a Constant Mean Curvature Foliation", bibcode: 1993dgr2.conf..306T, in B. L. Hu and T. A. Jacobson (editors), Directions in General Relativity: Proceedings of the 1993 International Symposium, Maryland, Volume 2: Papers in Honor of Dieter Brill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 306-315, ISBN 0521452678, bibcode: 1993dgr2.conf.....H. http://www.webcitation.org/5qbXJZiX5 * Frank J. Tipler, "There Are No Limits To The Open Society", Critical Rationalist, Vol. 3, No. 2 (September 23, 1998). http://www.webcitation.org/5sFYkHgSS * Frank J. Tipler, "Ultrarelativistic Rockets and the Ultimate Future of the Universe", NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop Proceedings, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, January 1999, pp. 111-119; an invited paper in the proceedings of a conference held at and sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, August 12-14, 1997; doi:2060/19990023204. Document ID: 19990023204. Report Number: E-11429; NAS 1.55:208694; NASA/CP-1999-208694. http://www.webcitation.org/5zPq69I0O Full proceedings volume: http://www.webcitation.org/5zPsZWvmz * Frank J. Tipler, Jessica Graber, Matthew McGinley, Joshua Nichols-Barrer and Christopher Staecker, "Closed Universes With Black Holes But No Event Horizons As a Solution to the Black Hole Information Problem", arXiv:gr-qc/0003082, March 20, 2000. http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0003082 Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 379, Issue 2 (August 2007), pp. 629-640, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11895.x, bibcode: 2007MNRAS.379..629T. http://www.webcitation.org/5vQ3M8uxB * Frank J. Tipler, "The Ultimate Future of the Universe, Black Hole Event Horizon Topologies, Holography, and the Value of the Cosmological Constant", arXiv:astro-ph/0104011, April 1, 2001. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104011 Published in J. Craig Wheeler and Hugo Martel (editors), Relativistic Astrophysics: 20th Texas Symposium, Austin, TX, 10-15 December 2000 (Melville, N.Y.: American Institute of Physics, 2001), pp. 769-772, ISBN 0735400261, LCCN 2001094694, which is AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 586 (October 15, 2001), doi:10.1063/1.1419654, bibcode: 2001AIPC..586.....W. * Frank J. Tipler, "Intelligent life in cosmology", International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 2, No. 2 (April 2003), pp. 141-148, doi:10.1017/S1473550403001526, bibcode: 2003IJAsB...2..141T. http://www.webcitation.org/5o9QHKGuW Also at arXiv:0704.0058, March 31, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0058 * F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers", Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964, doi:10.1088/0034-4885/68/4/R04, bibcode: 2005RPPh...68..897T. http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything", arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3276 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in which the above August 2007 paper was published, is one of the world's leading peer-reviewed astrophysics journals. Prof. Tipler's paper "Ultrarelativistic Rockets and the Ultimate Future of the Universe" was an invited paper for a conference held at and sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center, so NASA itself has peer-reviewed Tipler's Omega Point Theorem (peer-review is a standard process for published proceedings papers; and again, Tipler's said paper was an *invited* paper by NASA, as opposed to what are called "poster papers"). Zygon is the world's leading peer-reviewed academic journal on science and religion. Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper--which presents the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE)--was selected as one of 12 for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website." (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, "Highlights of 2005", Reports on Progress in Physics. http://www.webcitation.org/5o9VkK3eE ) Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain's main professional body for physicists. Further, Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal's impact factor reflects the importance the science community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own papers. (And just to point out, Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper could not have been published in Physical Review Letters since said paper is nearly book-length, and hence not a "letter" as defined by the latter journal.) For much more on these matters, particularly see Prof. Tipler's above 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper in addition to the following resources: James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), April 9, 2012 (orig. pub. December 19, 2011), 185 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://theophysics.ifastnet.com/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , http://webcitation.org/66pCpB7Zs , http://uploadmirrors.com/download/06X28SFF/ Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist http://theophysics.host56.com , http://theophysics.ifastnet.com , http://theophysics.freevar.com The only way to avoid the conclusion that the Omega Point exists is to reject the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), and hence to reject empirical science: as these physical laws have been confirmed by every experiment to date. That is, there exists no rational reason for thinking that the Omega Point cosmology is incorrect, and indeed, one must engage in extreme irrationality in order to argue against the Omega Point cosmology. Additionally, we now have the quantum gravity Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics: of which inherently produces the Omega Point cosmology. So here we have an additional high degree of assurance that the Omega Point cosmology is correct. ----- Note: 1. While there is a lot that gets published in physics journals that is anti-reality and non-physical (such as string theory, which violates the known laws of physics and has no experimental support whatsoever), the reason such things are allowed to pass the peer-review process is because the paradigm of assumptions which such papers are speaking to has been made known, and within their operating paradigm none of the referees could find anything crucially wrong with said papers. That is, the paradigm itself may have nothing to do with reality, but the peer-reviewers could find nothing fundamentally wrong with such papers within the operating assumptions of that paradigm. Whereas, e.g., the operating paradigm of Prof. Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper and his other papers on the Omega Point Theorem is the known laws of physics, i.e., our actual physical reality which has been repeatedly confirmed by every experiment conducted to date. So the professional physicists charged with refereeing these papers could find nothing fundamentally wrong with them within their operating paradigm, i.e., the known laws of physics.