And science is always about facts, or what is. So any normative prescriptions about what is "right" or "wrong" to believe (i.e. Evolution is "right" therefore believing in the bible is "wrong") are NOT themselves scientific. So science and religion are or should be fully reconcilable. — Pantagruel

What is is that evolutionary science informs us that humans were not made as is, immutable, instantly, in the form of modern humans; so, Genesis is flat out wrong.

It gets even worse, in that the supposedly divinely revealed 'God' turns out to be a bad role model.

Of course, if you come from a branch of Christianity that takes the Bible ad litteram, then that's another whole story. — Patulia

Evolution obliterating the ABCs of Genesis is no small matter, and so now we know that the Bible can't be counted on in its areas of metaphysics. There is more, too, such as that we know how solar systems form, plus that there is one tree of life, not a separate one for the animals. Further, additional claims of divine inspiration among the Bible's xyzs lose their creditability.

What's left happens to be invisible and so it cannot be known, much less shown; so, religion's dogma, doomed to but a 'maybe', can't even be honestly preached as being a truth, this further diminishing its attractiveness and lessening its impact, driving church attendance way down, even in the once stable northeast.

'God' has become constrained to act in exactly the same way nature would if there were no 'God'.

The quantum foam is not quite our usual 'something' when it remains as virtual pairs coming and going without anything else more persistent amounting, nor is it exactly nothing. It seems like 'possibility' sitting around in Eternity's waiting room. Then some rare event occurs, since probability eventually gets around to its happening.

The universe is as a spring wound up that is now slowly unwinding, this giving it 'oomph'; so, something had to have piled up, due to the meeting with some limit, and then the universe came forth, and long it will last, until all the stars have gone and all the photons are far apart.
— PoeticUniverse

The quantum foam is believable, it being confirmed by QCD predictions and measurements, plus noted by Casmir's plates being drawn together. It is as a Sea of Possibility. In the quantum foam, virtual particles pop in and out, always in pairs of matter and anti-matter. They appear but must then go away very quickly, this somehow satisfying the debits and credits on the ledger of nature's thumbnail account.

Something went out of kilter.

The quantum foam can't go away; it is still with us today. — PoeticUniverse

Continuing pre Bang scenarios…

Some matter had to have avoided being annihilated by anti-matter. There are a billion photons now for every proton, so that means that at least 2x10**9 pairs did so right away. The Bang was so great and perhaps there was inflation, too, and so many pairs of virtual particles had to have been driven apart so quickly that they couldn't annihilate, which is fine, but we are more concerned with what made the Bang.

The universe is as a spring wound up that is now slowly unwinding, this giving it 'oomph'; so, something had to have piled up, due to the meeting with some limit, and then the universe came forth, and long it will last, until all the stars have gone and all the photons are far apart. — PoeticUniverse

The quantum foam is believable, it being confirmed by QCD predictions and measurements, plus noted by Casmir's plates being drawn together. It is as a Sea of Possibility. In the quantum foam, virtual particles pop in and out, always in pairs of matter and anti-matter. They appear but must then go away very quickly, this somehow satisfying the debits and credits on the ledger of nature's thumbnail account.

Something went out of kilter.

The quantum foam can't go away; it is still with us today.

I tend to think that universes are constantly being belched from other universes. One or many had to have always existed. — Noah Te Stroete

Yes, for if it happened once, then it can happen again and did happen before, too.

It's made of Rovelli's covariant quantum fields; simple, as we knew it had to be.

We have conscious surrounded—as a brain process, which ought to be enough to say that it is formed internally, it not needing to attach itself self—from floating around externally, independently. Its private nature prevents us from obtaining any more purchase, presently.

The universe is as a spring wound up that is now slowly unwinding, this giving it 'oomph'; so, something had to have piled up, due to the meeting with some limit, and then the universe came forth, and long it will last, until all the stars have gone and all the photons are far apart.

It will drift out of time and pass, as it were, into legend. The universe will no longer exist. — JosephS

Kind of like this?

(In my own voice.)

How the universe ends might tell us something about what the beginning ultimately meant—that is, not much, I suppose.

- is not composite or ‘dissoluble into parts on which it is dependent’; — Possibility

This one is troublesome for one who "knows, loves, and relates", for a system of mind and an emotional system would have parts (that would have to be more fundamental).

I would rather turn the direction of looking for higher being completely around to the opposite: look to the future rather than to the past.

All the current gaps and contradictions in our understanding - the origin of the universe, quantum mechanics, abiogenesis, consciousness, the question of ‘God’ - all seem to dissolve for me in light of the interaction of potentiality as the underlying ‘substance’ of the universe, the fundamental ground of all being. — Possibility

Well put; I'll third that notion.

Beyond Local Reality
Time, space, stuff, change, and form are real-ized from
Fundamental Possibility,
Becoming the penultimate reality,
One possible from the probabilities.

Quantum Superposition is Real
Our reality comes not from nothing,
But exists always as possibility,
One that amounts to something workable,
Among all in superposition.

The First Impossibility
No form of a penultimate realness
Could exist alone before the rest, since
Everything is quantum-known-all-at-once;
For what could make the choice among many?

The Second Impossibility
Nor comes it from an absolute nothing,
Since there can be no such ‘thing’ at all,
So, since either way is impossible,
Fundamental Possibility IS.

The Unbelievable Truth
This ultimate basis of reality,
Though not much like our local reality,
Is hinted at by quantum physics—
It forms reality real as can be!

The Verifiable Truth
So how else could it be, for particles
Do appear and disappear from nowhere,
Going from here to there, with no between,
Manifesting from no-where to now-here.

Now measure out some kg m2 s**−2, and there you have it.

What's any energy, regardless of perspective, made of? — Razorback kitten

It's made of Mass, Length squared, and Time negative squared.

There are many first-person accounts of people having near-death experiences, even after no perceivable brain activity. — Noah Te Stroete

It's still happening in them.

NDE tunnels of light and such can be explained by neurology, and OBE’s by a condition called sleep paralysis. They can also be induced, resulting in full blown episodes. Neither, then, are proof of a beyond, but of an altered brain state.

It is also the case that people of different religions see different religious figures during NDE’s, an indication that the phenomenon occurs within the mind, not without.

OBE’s are easily induced by drugs. The fact that there are receptor sites in the brain for such artificially produced chemicals means that there are naturally produced chemical in the brain that, under certain circumstances (the stress of an trauma or an accident, for example), can induce any or all of the experiences typically associated with an NDE or OBE. They are then nothing more than wild trips induced by the trauma of almost dying. Lack of oxygen also produces increased activity though disinhibition—mental modes that give rise to consciousness.

What about the experience of a tunnel in an NDE? Well, the visual cortex is on the back of the brain where information from the retina is processed. Lack of oxygen, plus drugs generated, can interfere with the normal rate of firing by nerve cells in this area. When this occurs ‘stripes’ of neuronal activity move across the visual cortex, which is interpreted by the brain as concentric rings or spirals. These spirals may be ‘seen’ as a tunnel.

We normally only see clearly only at about the size of a deck of cards held at arm’s length (Try looking just a little away and the clarity goes way down)—this is the center of the tunnel which is caused by neuronal stripes. I am not really dying to go down the tunnel…

What a battle!

Consciousness/qualia is of the brain as a process therein because
1. It reflects what the brain has just come up with from its analysis.
2. It can go away in a faint, with a blow to the head, anesthesia, or get foggy from drugs.

if so, what stops the system from going back to a null-and-void state, — god must be atheist

Heck if I know! Stephen Hawking came up with the zero-sum example, although Pascual Jordan had it long ago, too.

One time I confided some of my recent suffering to the Great Lama of the East, who has a temple here nearby. I have a whole story of it, but I'll just put the end, unless you want it all.

He said not to worry about the suffering, for it isn't real…

I said, “Yes, I’ve heard that this world isn’t really real, that we shouldn’t worry about life’s tribulations.”

He replied, “That’s what we believe. Tell me, does that work?”

“Well, um, does not life’s existence look, seem, and act just the way it would, in every detail, as if it were really real?”

“Yes, indeed. Exactly. That’s what they say makes for the great illusion.”

“I hate to say this, Great Lama, but an implementation difference that makes no difference (as thee messenger) is no difference (in the message).”

“I think you’re onto something.”

But... but... but what if NOBODY did this? After all, in a universe in which nothing is, there is nobody either... to do things. — god must be atheist

Nobody Nowhere Nowhat Nowhen did it.

The negative potential energy of gravity exactly matches and cancels out the positive kinetic energy of stuff.

In other words, we live in a non-material universe,where substance does not exist,but things appear as if things were made of substance. — god must be atheist

What a great hoax is being put over on us! We put a picture of some cheese in a mousetrap and catch a picture of a mouse. Our senses don't really take anything in, but this is faked to fool us. Just wait until I catch the guy who did this!

There is no explanation of how anything in the brain gives rise to or could give rise to mental phenomena without leaving a large explanatory gap. — Andrew4Handel

And yet it does. It's OK to accept a truth instead of a proof when the proof involves the first person realm, the only place where quailia are; tough to get in there.

No research went into the process of thinking up my post. — god must be atheist

My pleasure to meet with a completely honest person, but the thought came from your brain and so there was perhaps some kind of inadvertent 'research' prompting the post.

What is matter made of? I think a better question is, "is matter made of anything?" — god must be atheist

Matter appears to be mostly made of energy, as some have indicated here. Energy is equivalent to mass, and mass is approximately matter, I guess. Some answer 'information', having it to be equivalent to energy.

creationists — god must be atheist

They could still say that 'God did it', this not being an answer, really, but rather an even larger question to ponder.

You never remain as 'you', even for an instant, nor does any other state ever remain the same, for all is in continuous transition, never remaining in any particular state. The one real thing is that which underlies these temporary happenings/events, and it, strangely to us, perhaps, ever remains the same, as the only permanent thing.

no matter how you define it, either you have it or you do not and arguing settles not the issue. — Arne

We defined it, recently, here, for example, that the will makes choices, and, thus, so defined, we have free will. 'Defining' is the key to have the words 'free will' mean something, among other possible meanings. (Aside from coercion, as always.)

it is philosophy as industry and you are only proving my point in that regard. — Arne

Philosophy, leading to science investigation, is not useless, but can sometimes show high probability findings.

Others are often after something deeper, and so define 'free will' to mean that the result of the will doesn't have to be the same if the exact same situation could be run again—that some measure of variety is inherent, even if this is only due to something truly 'random'. 'Random' disrupts the will's natural flow and so it's seldom touted as any kind of plus toward free will, it being like an anti-will harm.

Aside from 'random', the 'fixed will' proponents have a good case, in that the will does its job exactly according to what it has in it, called 'determined', or at least to the best of its resolution. The black and white only opposite, then, to 'determined' is 'undetermined', which is no will at all.

Since indeterminate states other than 'random' can't even be defined, much less shown, a highly probable conclusion obtains for this second definition, which is that the two hundred trillion brain neuron connections do as they must.

This fixed will would be but of the instant of the decision, it continually growing from new information, thus, one might decide today what wouldn't have been decided yesterday, or even a few minutes ago. Minds can change.

In either case, of free versus fixed, the will widens and thus can make better choices, presuming that learning can happen.

Another philosophical item of interest stemming from this area is that of whether consciousness is an independent, second will, with some similar but alternate mechanism to the brain. Well, it doesn't have to duplicate anything like the brain, for it already has the brain behind it, plus consciousness would be part of the brain, too, reflecting what the brain just came up with, albeit in its own unique language.

Consciousness needs to be something useful to the brain, such as a global result that other brain areas can get to and then comment on, now or later, and perhaps the shorthand notation of qualia is necessary, but we are only in our infancy of finding such things out. Better to look into things than to quit because they might never get resolved.

Even finding that consciousness itself doesn't decide anything would shock the world to its foundations, as would fixed will, too. The good part would be to then have more compassion for those who are really stuck

The courts now seem to lean toward protecting society over punishing the offender.

I have and can make a choice. — Terrapin Station

Me, too. This is my brain's will 'speaking' here and always, for thoughts ever arise therein.

The part of the brain that is called the 'will' comes up with a result, after 300-500 or so milliseconds of subconscious analysis, probably via neural connections, of bio, electric, and chemical, of my repertoire.

It may be sometimes that the result is to ruminate further or to put it all aside and move on to something else. This all seems rather instant, but science has informed of what would not otherwise be known about what underlies and the time it takes. The conscious quaila sequentially follow, when meant to.

It is probably that quaila are the brain's own invented internal language, at least closer to that endpoint. Qualia, too, take a bit of time to build and apply unity to, as will as to stitch them seamlessly to the previous. Perhaps they get remembered as a whole and get fed back into memory as a kind of short cut.

These choices appear to aid my survival through their consistency, generally, when one is not a reckless risk taker, nuts, stupid, etc.

I can't say a lot for sure, though, as the brain, for even I am not privy to my own sub-conscious going-on, although sometime I get an inkling. Other times the thoughts seem to come out of the blue. I have also learned not to take my thoughts as gospel just because I thought of them, but with a grain of salt, meaning, I guess, like count to ten first, reflecting. Other, impulsive types may not be so lucky, missing out on that space, but that's life.

Now, after many more milliseconds signal whirling, I'm not even so sure if I should post all this. I await the choice; oh, here it is: post!

Awareness is a decision that is made before we ‘see an apple’. A decision is made to be aware of sense data - to seek information from our senses - and then to connect that sense data to related information in the brain that we find points to there being ‘an apple’ in that sense data. The collaboration occurs when another decision is made to integrate these related sources of information into the thought of ‘seeing an apple’. — Possibility

I suppose this sums up a bit proto-man to human development, 'awareness' having now become automatic, along with the other two items. Or maybe it was the other way around, per Damasio, with awareness and then consciousness coming to mind.

We can train ourselves to be more aware, such as would the intelligence operative and the ninja or by following a cat around in the dark.

My fun video on Energy:

Oh, a particle is a long event happening. — Razorback kitten

Especially protons.

it might decay with a half-life of about 10**32 years — Gooooooggle

I want to hear your idea of what could possibly be at the centre of stuff? — Razorback kitten

'Stuff' would mostly be energy/interactions going 'round, although I lean toward calling 'stuff' to be happenings/events, with apparently stable 'stuff' being just long events.

But you are still made of nothing so how on earth can I take you seriously? — Razorback kitten

We are so temporary that we are changing zillions of times a second, since the All, whether eternal or of 'Nothing', is continuously transitioning and so thus is never anything in particular, but leaving the events/happenings to be to us what is, with things not.

Both Everything, as a Library of Babel, and Nothing, as an empty hut, tell us zip, neither of them having any information content. The only benefit of existence would seem to be experience; so, drink of it..

The Eternal Return?

Behind the Veil, being that which e’er thrives,
The Eternal IS has ever been alive,
For that which hath no onset cannot die,
Nor a point from which to design its Why.

Some time it needed to learn Everything for,
And now well knows how these bubbles to pour,
Of existence, in some like universe,
As those that wrote your poem and mine, every verse.

So, as thus, thou lives on yester’s credit line
In nowhere’s midst, now in this life of thine,
As of its bowl your cup of brew was mixed
Into the state of being that’s called “mine”.

Yet worry you that this Cosmos is the last,
That the likes of us will become the past,
Space wondering whither whence we went
After the last of us her life has spent?

The Eternal Saki has thus formed
Trillions of baubles like ours, and will form,
Forevermore—the comings and passings
Of which it ever emits to immerse
Of those universal bubbles blown and burst.

So fear not that a debit close your
Account and mine, knowing the like no more;
The Eternal Cycle from its pot has pour’d
Zillions of bubbles like ours, and will pour.

When You and I behind the cloak are past
But the long while the next universe shall last,
Which of one’s approach and departure the All grasps
As might the sea’s self heed a pebble cast.

until something comes along — Razorback kitten

Well, something has come along and it exists, so, then, there has to be a way for it to be.

Not that 'Nothing' can have an existence, but if there could be a lack of anything as an absolute 'Nothing' then 'it' would have no properties and 'it' would then still be the case, but 'it' ain't, and I am quite wrong to even refer to it herein, for 'it' cannot even be meant.

Still, we need to eventually account for the apparent zero-sum balance of opposites in nature. For example, the potential negative energy of gravity matches that of the positive kinetic energy of 'stuff', which is very curious.

Also, the net electric charge of the universe appears to be zero. Matter and anti-matter annihilate, but photons are the result, not 'Nothing'. Some propose that photons are a plus and a minus peacefully amounting somehow to a neutral charge without blowing up.

QM has virtual particles fluctuating in and out of existence.

There is also the finding from QM by Anton Zeilinger to several sigma that "randomness is the bedrock of reality", meaning perhaps that there can be outputs with inputs,

A 'null physics' theory has it that the Totality is a 'Nothing' nonexistence externally, while, internally, it still also sums to nothing. Since our three dimensions must be additive, then it can only be the fourth that accomplishes the full nullification, which, in the theory, if I remember, is electric charge.

So, we are ever looking into existence to get more clues like the above, which favor your case, somewhat, but ever add to it some kind of potential/way, making the 'Nothing' no longer a 'Nothing', as if the something-like potential/way is mandatory, and thus some timeless eternal, which state we ever seem to get forced back to.

What else does the known existence suggest or tell us? Anybody?

For the timeless eternal notion, there is that: due to the impossibility of a total 'Nothing' that existence has no alternative and so there can be no opposite to being, leaving something basic as what has to be, plus that this then necessarily must be everything, not just some, since eternal stuff doesn't arrive, but just already 'IS', and everywhere, since there couldn't even be little spacers of 'nothingness' in the fabric of the All. Sounds like covariant quantum fields.

Let's go have a drink at the Madhouse Tavern in the middle of no-where, us being now-here to do so.

Nope. Maybe 2% stuff, 98% not stuff — tim wood

Yes, good video. Lincoln posts on the science and philosophy chat forum sometimes.

I'm open to a better suggestion. But I've been open to a better idea for a while. A may well of gone mad. — Razorback kitten

You are facing a paradox about the base Existence, like we all do; yet, we can be assured that there are no true paradoxes, since there is existence, even with humongous and near unimaginable amounts of stuff/energy seemingly so easy to come by.

On the one hand, there doesn't seem to be anything to make existence out of; hence your conclusion of from 'Nothing', but really your 'Nothing' so far is but a near 'Nothing', for you introduce a capability and possibility (as something) to make our existence of stuff.

If truly there was/is a lack of anything, then how could anything make itself?

On the other hand, which is only that there is an eternal something, then it would be that it is here without it ever having been made!

Time to go mad? Don't go yet, for, right here, we have the answer to All, as either from Nothing or as eternal. Astounding! We have surrounded the TOE and have caged it in! Good progress!

More later.

Space is the extension of matter and the extensional relations of matter. — Terrapin Station

Thus leaving no independent 'space' that is additional beside the span of the relations.

a Universe from Nothing like Lawrence Krauss. — Andrew4Handel

Um, that was, unfortunately for good communication, referring to the physicist's nothing that isn't nothing; the zero-point field still has energy.

2. infinite regression you can reduce matter to other constituents and also these to other constituents etc ad infinitum. — MathematicalPhysicist

I don't see how an effect could ever surface.

So many bands of empty space at different frequencies, — Razorback kitten

You sure have a lot of not nothingness here.

Either you have free will or you do not — Arne

I'll try to zero in on what 'free will' is free to do or what it is free of, since many don't define it, leaving it as some stand-alone phrase not anchored.

For some, it is the ability for the will to operate normally when not forced, this meaning when the will is not coerced. Determinism is not addressed. The depth of coercion, such as (usually) having to stay out of lightning storms and heat waves isn't addressed. That's the end of that one, and so to be clear and not misunderstood, they could declare something like "The uncoerced will is able to operate and thus express itself completely."

I don't think anyone will claim that there is no will or that it can't operate normally when not forced. So, no big revelation here, but just a statement of the obvious that is so trivial that it seems to bee not what is sought by many.

The compatibilists say the same except that they admit determinism. More on that later.

The libertarians, also admitting determinism, mostly, have it that since such as QM shows 'randomness', which mostly cancels out, that some of the 'randomness' might make it into the will's decision-making process, disrupting it, causing an outcome which wouldn't normally happen. However, this harms the will and so it's tough to see how it helps 'free will', for then some decisions might be as 'air-headed', this being not really any help, although they say it can promote variety. Their consolation is that they may have showed that events could have been different if the universe were to be rerun.

We can't rerun the universe. What it already did on its actual run is what it did, this actuality seeming to trump the 'what if' of some fantasy world game situation situation such as 'What if Hitler had developed the A-bomb'.

The 'free' of 'free will' to some might mean that the will is not determined, that determinism in not inherent in its analysis for decisions, that it is somehow undetermined, which doesn't sound useful, but they would have to show something non-libertarian to have a 'free will' that is not a 'fixed will' that still grants us consistency to act as ourselves as we have come to be up to that moment.

If there is another definition of 'free-will', the advocates would have to define it so that we could better size it up.

Of course, we do research first, if luckily it is one of the qualities of our will to seek information and be able to better analyze from both sides. Then our wills gain a wider range and can choose better, even choosing differently later on, changing one's mind. The will usually doesn't freeze into one state, but I appreciate that it may well get stuck for some, with a general, not mental, learning disability, which I leave for cognitive behavioralists to figure out.

How about NOTHINGness, just empty space. Interacting with other empty space, until SOMETHING is happening out of nothing. I believe you really can make something out of nothing. — Razorback kitten

You have Newton's absolute space, whose only quantity would seem to be volume. Einstein replaced this notion with the gravitational field, that is, space-time.

Note that 'Nothing' has no existence, no properties; 'it' doesn't even have an 'it' (a what), an arena (a where), a time (a when), etc., so it is not.

'God's realm has shrunk to being constrained to do only the same as what would naturally happen.

sea of fluctuating empty space — Razorback kitten

This is the quantum foam, ever jittering, for some reason like that QM can never be definite, as mostly noise, items coming and going in a kind of sub-time/pre-time, sub-space/pre-space, sub-stuff/pre-stuff mode since they don't endure; but then, somehow, something lasts for more than an instant, even for a bit, and some chain reaction occurs, and then there are more happenings unto some more…

Also I can't pretend as if I know — Andrew4Handel

Yes, this is a problem for many, as either atheists or theists. To say for sure that 'God' is or is not is misleading at best and dishonest at worst, and they can easily be called on it. Preaching 'maybes' as 'maybes', of course greatly diminishes the impact the saying of getting followers for what is believed in. While we presume that many can see through this dodge, there may be unsuspecting adults or children listening to the 'maybes' touted as if they were truth and fact.

Dawkings is honest, surmising a one in a quadrillion chance for there to be 'God'; he goes by probability, which is all we can do if we want to choose, which often we must, such as to go or not to church. Tough to sit on a fence, but it seems that's what has to be done, as agnostic.