Does God really exist?

[Skylink]

AltF4Warrior, what did Stephen Hawking say? What is his famed argument? What did he show? I'm not going to be able to so much as comment unless you give me a little more information on it.

And Digital watches, what you say is true. But keep in mind that Religious myths are from what the people hear or think they hear a deity telling them. The main reason most religions today tell of a God/gods explaining the at the time unexplainable was because back then the God of the gaps argument was the only way those things could be explained. (Science itself didn't really exist until Gallileo)

 

[AltF4]

Are you asking me to give you Hawking's conference transcripts in full? I told you the gist of what it was saying. If you wanted all the details, I could try to find it for you I guess. But unless you know advanced calculus and have a phd in physics you're not going to get it. Not even I understand all of it, not even half the crowd he talked to understood it well. When Einstein developed relativity, there were less than a dozen people who understood it for about a decade. That's just the way this stuff is.

Suffice it to say that there has been a long standing argument of "god must exist because the universe had to have been created". Hawking denounced this by providing a consistent scientific model in which there is no creation. The model doesn't have to be true to break the argument. The mere possibility of its truth contradicts the premise "the universe had to have been created", contradicting the entire argument.

 

[Skylink]

I'm right here, arguing you, F4Warrior. And you're already arguing against any affirmation I have for design in the universe. (Not just you, but everyone else as well) We don't need Hawking for that. The destruction of my argument only comes if we are all already convinced and certain that the universe was designed, and now we find a chance it wasn't.

You can't possibly be saying that I just loose this argument based on his model if you aren't even sure if it is true, let alone understand what part, exactly, that disproves any creation. I seriously doubt he would make any mistakes with his math or understanding of what's going on in his models, but in the interpretation of the data he is using. A lot can hang in that balance, and just because he interprets the data one way doesn't neccisarily mean that's exactly how it's happening. I recently read a whole book, Schrodinger's Kittens and the Search for Reality, all about how the Data from quantum experiments can be interpreted in such different ways that what is actually happening at the quantum level can never be understood, according to John Gribbon at least. So unless you can at least point me to a site or a book to start digging into, I don't have anything else to go off of.

 

[AltF4]

I wasn't arguing you to begin with, I don't think. I first brought up the boundary conditions problem because Falco&Victory tried to use the argument that I've been talking about. He said:

There must be in one form or another a higher power. All that exists could not have come here from nothing, that breaks the laws of physics. Therefore, the laws of physics can't always have existed. What do you think created the universe?

And I responded that this isn't a sound argument. If you still don't believe me, then I will lay it all out in formal logical notation.



- Something that exists, must have been created at a time earlier.
- The universe exists now
---------------------------------------------------
-The universe must have been created at a time earlier than now


We can see that this argument is valid. It follows the form:

All A are B
C is A
------------
C is B

But the argument is not sound. It has been shown that it is possible for the universe to not have the boundary condition of being created at a time previous, but instead something like I elaborated on earlier . Thus premise one is false, and the argument is unsound.

It does not matter whether or not Hawking's model corresponds to reality or not. The mere fact that it could contradicts premise #1 of this argument. I am not trying to say that this is a disproof of god. This is a contradiction of a proof of god. If you would still REALLY like to dispute that this model is consistent, come back to me when you graduate from MIT and find an error in Hawking's math. The interpretations are irrelevant, the math works, making the model consistent, and the argument unsound.

 

[blazedaces]

I was using the globe as an analogy to explain how two situations were similar. Time is not a globe, obviously. My analogy breaks down if you try to use it for any more than a step in the right direction.

And yes Hawking does talk about this, he even has this funny story to tell about it. If you don't recall it, then perhaps it's in another book by him. I would apologize for that. He was in the Vatican for a conference on physics a bunch of years back. The catholic church, having just accepted that they've been wrong about the whole "sun revolves around the earth" thing, invited a number of high profile scientists to inform them of any other issues in science the church would like to look in to. Hawking got a change to speak with the Pope (JP2 at the time) about his work regarding black holes and the big bang.

The Pope said that it was okay of Stephen to explore the events of how the universe formed, but told him not to inquire about the actual moment of creation, since that is god's work. Hawking didn't have the heart to tell the old man that he had just finished a conference where he demonstrated his theories on how the universe had no creation and therefore requires no creator. Too funny.

Dude, can you source this? Even take it straight out of the book. I've read 3 of hawking's books: Brief History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, and The Theory of Everything (the last one is like a copy of Brief history, really. I've also read other books and have heard mention of his theories.

I remember from my readings that in less then a second of time the universe expanded such an extreme amount it needed to be going faster then the speed of light. The reason this "inflation" as it is called still obeys the theory of relativity is because spacetime itself expanded, and the theory of relativity claims all things travel through spacetime at the same speed...

I do not recall this being mentioned, but I could be wrong. I'm just asking for the source and hopefully to understand what you're trying to explain, because it's not quite clear in my head anyways...

-blazed

 

[AltF4]

I don't remember what book it was from, so here's what a quick google search for "Hawking pope story" gave me:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,199673,00.html

That or try any of the links there really.

 

[Falco&Victory]

Since this thread was inevitably going to turn into a physics debate I'll give some input.

We look at the universe as all of existence. The universe is curved, so no form of matter or energy(even light) can escape it's boundaries. Outside our universe, however, could there be others? Who's to say we don't live in a multiverse, where our globe of existence is perhaps small by comparison? There could be countless other areas of space, other intelligent forms of life. Even other galaxies in our universe could be inhabited. However, since the expanse of the universe is growing exponentially we will eventually reach a point of isolation, when force is pulling the galaxies away from each other faster than the speed of light and no form of vessel we made could reach anywhere outside our own galaxy. Do you think there will even be a time when all bodies of matter will be isolated from each other?

 

[Skylink]

Since this thread was inevitably going to turn into a physics debate I'll give some input.

We look at the universe as all of existence. The universe is curved, so no form of matter or energy(even light) can escape it's boundaries. Outside our universe, however, could there be others? Who's to say we don't live in a multiverse, where our globe of existence is perhaps small by comparison? There could be countless other areas of space, other intelligent forms of life. Even other galaxies in our universe could be inhabited. However, since the expanse of the universe is growing exponentially we will eventually reach a point of isolation, when force is pulling the galaxies away from each other faster than the speed of light and no form of vessel we made could reach anywhere outside our own galaxy. Do you think there will even be a time when all bodies of matter will be isolated from each other?

Eventually, that time will come. It's not happening for a while, though. What is your point?

 

[Falco&Victory]

If that were to happen it would contradict the theory of a completely curved time. If time were completely curved it would form a circle, which means the universe would constantly grow and shrink. Time cannot be completely constant if the point of zero communication is achieved.

 

[blazedaces]

If that were to happen it would contradict the theory of a completely curved time. If time were completely curved it would form a circle, which means the universe would constantly grow and shrink. Time cannot be completely constant if the point of zero communication is achieved.

I'm fairly sure that we're talking about the curvature of space-time, which if I recall was concluded to be flat... meaning exactly that, the universe will expand forever, expanding more slowly and more slowly, but never completely stopping, always staying out of gravity's reach...

-blazed