Comments

  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    the meta-physical eternal TAO or G*D or LOGOSGnomon

    Isn't this more than 'Nothing'. Isn't it still a something in some kind of realm as above in that realm's level as tangible to that realm but not to ours?
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    What is the nature of the First Cause, given that it has no input?
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Sounds like the TAOGnomon

    Bounded by non-existent absolutes,
    The Essence lies between the Null and Full—
    As relations of all that’s possible,
    Exuding universes, first begat
    In a Bang, destined to die in a sigh.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Yes, but is the "One" physical & ever-changing, or meta-physical & omni-potential?Gnomon

    It remains as the physical One; its rearrangements are temporary; it doesn't make new substances; it is ever itself.

    Eterne’s Great Wheel e’er whirls its energy,
    It having to turn and return, to be,
    'Transmuting', as ne’er still—eternally,
    Into life’s temporary pattern-trees.

    Moves of the Eterne dooms forms’ permanence;
    But the patient time til their expiration
    Restrains for some while the shapes’ destructance;
    Thus they can slowly traverse life’s distance.

    Is that what psychics "see" as the human Aura?Gnomon

    Not at all. It is the contents of consciousness.

    So the answer is Be Here Now? Don't worry about what was, or will be. Sufficient unto the day . . . . . . .Gnomon

    "No salvation." — Gnomon

    Would you your sparkle of Existence spend
    Beyond The ‘Vacuum’—quick about it, Friend!
    A Hair perhaps divides the False from True—
    And upon what, prithee, may all depend?

    The Simple Hair divides the False and True;
    Yes; and the single Alif is the clue,
    As the Quantum Field—to the Treasure-house,
    Though not adventure in The Master’s brew.

    Forget about the blame and also the fame—
    The Great Wheel’s not designed in any name,
    Since, with no beginning, it ne’er became;
    Thus no Alif through Ye: it’s e’er the same.

    My spirit to the Causeless was near blind:
    Quoth I, ‘If the Beginning you could find—
    The Alif—of word, phrase, and uni-verse,
    Thou needs not the alphabet—all’s been mined.’

    Seize the moment or lose its momentum,
    Wearing time as your royal diadem;
    Richly accelerate life’s momentous gem,
    Letting your motto be ‘Carpe diem’.

    World does not pass by; you pass through it;
    Clear your being so the treasure may arrive;
    This spirit sparkles of a different light,
    The gemstones are of a different mine,

    Whose secret Presence through transient veins
    Running Quicksilver-like fuels your gains;
    Taking all shapes from fish to moon as
    They change and perish all—but It remains.

    The best of all that is below the moon
    And above the fish is beauty’s commune,
    In her wine poured and sipped, all else forgone,
    From Mah to Mahi, raptured noon to noon.

    The Secret guessed—then back behind the Fold
    Immerst of Darkness round the Drama roll’d
    Which, for the Pastime of Eternity,
    Doth It all contrive, enact, and get told.

    ’Twas writ each time, whatever was to be,
    By quill, unheeding bliss or misery,  
    Yea, writ upon each tablet universe—
    To murmur or resist is vanity. 

    Outputs must have inputs, they in turning
    Becoming inputs to more fates churning,
    Temporary; all is writ, on every path,
    As in ours, so what must be will e’er spring.

    Each morn springs thee over the wasteland’s brink,
    And on time’s sand you the oasis drink.
    Life’s strange caravan through the desert winds,
    Back toward Nothing; drink—afore the stars sink.

    O unenlightened race of humankind,
    Ye are temporary, built on empty wind!  
    Yea, a mere nothing, hovering in the abyss,
    Writ on water with smoke and fog, resigned!

    And so in vain, down on the stubborn Floor
    Of Earth, and up to Heav’n’s unopening Door,
    You gaze To-day, while You are You—how then
    To-morrow, when You shall be You no more.(Omar direct)
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    But those who suggest a Multiverse or Many Worlds alternative would be embarrassed to respond with "so is my Multiverse". That sounds too much like "my Material god-substitute versus your Spiritual God".Gnomon

    That's fine for some, but it's not 'God'; it's just the simple basis of the more complex as the Ground of Determination.

    And physicality would logically require an infinite regression of world-cycles in space-time.Gnomon

    ? The one and only basis remains; no regress.

    His outlandish ideas opened the door to Quantum Theory, which like quicksand has undermined the ancient Atomic Theory with invisible intangible Mathematical Fields as the fundamental reality of Physics.Gnomon

    Einstein's discovery of the quantum discreteness of photons proved true, so it was not outlandish.

    The quantum fields are the basis of all the physical goings on in our universe, so they are physical. They are not made of math, but their physical operations are amenable to being described by math, the physical quantum fields results matching the math predictions, thus confirming the quantum fields.

    physical Brains that mysteriously generate invisible mind-fields are ultimately composed of, not things per se, but incorporeal relationships between things.Gnomon

    We do see the mind-fields, and that is all we ever 'see'; they're as maps made in the brain process of consciousness.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    why are we here? What should we do now that we are here? And how should we live?Gnomon

  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Einstein's idealized Block Universe is indeed pictured as eternal, but it's also static : nothing new ever happens. Instead, all possibilities exist simultaneously & forever as inert potentials. In the dynamic Real physical world, that's impossible. But, in an Ideal Meta-physical realm, it's not only possible, but also logical (sequential cause & effect) ; as Plato implied in his descriptions of LOGOS.Gnomon

    The Block Universe is a picture of change, but anyway, back to the presentism-like cause and effect mentioned: Potential Everything would then still come about linearly in a dynamical real physical way.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Yes, but . . . the problem with the Multiverse conjecture is the same old Eternal Regress that you find hard to accept in anthro-morphic god-models. Also, how could something that is constantly changing and evolving be self-existent? That's the same old tower-of-turtles teaser.Gnomon

    How come you are always referencing turtles when the buck clearly stops at my One as the base?

    This Self-Existent, as the overall quantum field as the quantum vacuum, for example, doesn't go away as it rearranges into the elementaries.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Every-Thing encompasses all possible worlds.Gnomon

    You have recognized the multiverse. That accords well.

    Enfernity" : similar to Einstein's "Block-Time" or "Space-Time", but in a holistic sense, timeless & spaceless.Gnomon

    You have recognized the block multiverse. That is the answer! Accords well with timeless eternalism.

    Yes, the omnipotential One is indeed timeless, spaceless, and super-posed. But the existence of our world implies that something transformed that omnidirectional Potential into an evolving world --- to collapse the superposition.Gnomon

    The superposition collapse problem is no longer needed for this direction of analysis, for it's more of a presentism notion for real time passing when measuring where a particle probably is.

    Thus, all possible universes are real in the block multiverse, as timeless and all done, finished, most of them not having life or being outright flops. 'Everything' is a big spender overall, as well as in our universe of so much stuff!
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    So, 'Nothing' does not challenge 'God', but the necessity of a single, simple base physical substance does, in that it required no creation.

    My own worldview is still monistic, but the "single substance" is now invisible Information, not tangible matter.Gnomon

    This physical information, to speak of it in a holistic way that you might like, can operate without a programmer and her problematic regress…

    The Great 'IS' that is the monistic One would already have all possible realities of universes in it in a superposition, as it being Everything since what has no beginning can't have a direction inputted to it.

    This is as a multi-verse, which also be deduced by another way: If their is a Fundamental One from which our universe came forth, the One ever remains and so it could just as well make another universe. Alternately, if one wants the universe to have been a spontaneous event, then more universes could become the same way. The ‘spontaneous’ can also be regarded as a capability that is the One.

    Anyway, the One is as complete in its information in the same way that a Library of Babel would be in having all possible books. The overall information content is zero, but there is still all the information that could ever be.

    Of course, in any universe that creates thinking life, such as in ours, the thinkers would wonder how such an apparently fine-tuned marvel could have happened.

    The next philosophy to all this would be to explain which of all the possible universes get realized and actualized, and how, unless they all do.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Yes. And posters on this forum are still arguing about such non-physical non-sense, such as Life or Death.Gnomon

    Life and death are as physical as can be for the Earthly creatures.

    A scientific poem on the quantum 'vacuum' first cause physical example:

    On the One and Only Base Existence

    Prolog


    In this lost haunt on the Orion arm
    Of the galaxy, safe from the core’s harm,
    The philosophers meet in the forum,
    As sleuth-hounds unweaving the Cosmic yarn.

    We search for the Start of the Universe,
    The End, the Before, the After, the Kinds,
    The Measures, and All That Lies Between:
    The Music of the Spheres’ Magnificat.

    Reveal
    We follow every single avenue,
    Whether it’s brightly lit or a dark alley,
    Exploring one-ways, no-ways, and dead-ends,
    Until cornered where the Truth is hiding.

    Since we all became of this universe,
    Should we not ask who we are, whence we came?
    Insight clefts night’s skirt with its radiance—
    The Theory of Everything shines through!

    We are ever in touch with the unknown,
    For that’s ever the reach of science shown.
    Reality is grasped by focusing
    On what interacts with what and the means.

    There is a realm of happenings, not things,
    For ‘things’ don’t remain the same on time’s wings.
    What remains through time are processes—
    Relations between different systems.

    An Eternal Basis has to be so,
    For a lack of anything cannot sow,
    Forcing there to be something permanent,
    As partless, from which the particles grow.

    Consider quantum fields of waves atop
    One another: waves are continuous,
    And so qualify as Fundamental;
    Quantized lumps are particles; they move.

    Note that there is no other absolute:
    Newton’s fixed space and time got Einstein’s boot;
    Particle spigots making fields are mute;
    Classic fields have no fundamental loot.

    There’s a lightness to elemental being
    Since any more would have to be of parts,
    And thus go beyond the fundamental arts.
    The vacuum puffs of energy are small.

    On the Forced Defaults for the Only Existence

    There can only be the one Existence,
    Forced, with no option for it not to be,
    Which is no mystery because a ‘Nil’
    Cannot be, even as spacers within.

    There is neither ‘Full’ nor ‘Null’,
    But a lightness of being near ‘Zero’,
    As that’s what the universe amounts to,
    Nor ‘Nil’s kin as ‘Still’, since there’s constant change.

    This must-be partless Existence Eterne
    Can’t end, so it must remain as itself,
    Transmuting into multiplicity
    Of the temporary as ‘elementaries’.

    Since The Eterne has to be, of not ‘null’,
    ‘Supernatural Magic’ isn’t required;
    So, there’s only the natural as the base;
    One degree of freedom is its forced default.

    Motion is a must, or naught would happen;
    It can’t have parts, so it’s continuous;
    No end, it must e’er return to itself.
    There can’t be anything else but it.

    It is everywhere, with no gaps of ‘zilch’;
    It waves, as is ubiquitous in nature,
    Rearranging to the elementary
    Particles at stable rungs of quanta.

    Only quantum fields fit the criteria;
    Particles as spigots failed to flow,
    Newton’s ‘Space’ and ‘Time’ disappeared via
    Einstein’s relativity special and general.

    Quantum field points that must spring up and down
    Form the field’s waves by dragging on others.
    These sums of harmonic oscillations
    Force the fixed quanta energy levels.

    So the wave estimate proves to be right;
    An electron/photon goes through both slits
    Because it is a spread out field quantum.
    Quantum jumps cannot be wave fractionals.

    The universe is a large quantum field,
    For the 25 quantum fields interact,
    This containing the whole of physics.
    There’s no ‘God’s’ eye view; anything happens.

    The anything of the massive universe
    Is a lot of needed extravagant junk,
    For on Earth the right conditions obtained,
    Our planet being where and what it has to be.

    Cosmic and biological evolution were forced,
    Stars collecting the elementaries,
    Producing all the atomic elements
    That went on toward molecules, cells, and more.

    All this took 13.5 billion years,
    Since, again, there were no hoodoo shortcuts.
    Life and consciousness emerged, no ‘Mojo’—
    Since long ago on Earth they were not there!

    Our planet is very good at promoting life,
    But it is much better at extinguishing it.
    Of the billions upon billions of organic things,
    99.99% are no longer around here living.

    Of all extinctions, the Permian was the worst.
    245 million years ago, for 95% of species perished,
    Suddenly disappearing from the fossil recording.
    Life had almost come to a total obliterationing.

    “Hurray,” said the shrew; now I can evolve!

    ‘You’ were once a lucky shrew, darting all about,
    But then attached to a favorable evolutionary line…
    Every single one of your forbears on both sides
    Being attractive enough to locate a loving mate,
    And they fortunately had the good health to celebrate!

    Our blind-fated path was the further paved
    When disasters finished most of the species.
    Far from a feature of Intelligent Design,
    It opened up the space that was needed.

    The Downfall of ‘Beyond’ and ‘Extra’
    ‘Magic’ has fallen by the wayside, it
    As trancendence an intangible writ,
    Unable to be distinct from matter,
    Having to talk/walk the talk/walk of it.

    An extra distinct realm isn’t needed,
    As ‘intangible’, ‘ineffable’, etc.,
    For it only begs the question—regress!—
    And as separate couldn’t have effect.

    The ‘immaterial’ and ‘nonphysical’
    Haven’t shown anything at all to date,
    Plus, all the more they’d have to be explained;
    The ‘supernatural’ claim has to fail.

    Five billion years ago there was no life
    Or consciousness, and now they are both here,
    Thus, they emerged, evolving during that time;
    So, there’s no need for any ‘hyperphysical’.

    Where’s the esoteric among atoms?
    What inside their doings would be else wise?
    Do molecules swirl into spooky states?
    What their secret patterns hidden away?

    The light atomic elements were prime,
    And the stars made more, on up through iron,
    And the rest were from collisions/novae;
    So, what unknown secrets would they contain?

    The ‘God’ idea has fallen from its throne;
    Forever quantum fields’ excitations’
    Elementary quanta roll on the fields
    That are everywhere and remain intact.

    Epilog

    The quantum fields’ unity is the Whole,
    Being ever, exhausting Reality,
    Unbreakable and Unmakeable,
    As partless and continuous monads.

    All that emerges is still the fields at heart,
    Though secondary and temporary,
    Arising and at some time returning;
    The quantum fields are indivisible.

    Quantum fields are the fundamental strokes
    Whose excitations at harmonics cloak
    The quanta with the stability
    To persist and thus obtain mobility.

    The elementary particles beget,
    As letters of the Cosmic alphabet,
    And combine in words to write the story
    Of the stars, atoms, cells, and life’s glory.

    Why Something?

    Quantum states melt via uncertainty,
    And this means that no quantum property
    Can e’er be zero—a precise amount,
    And so it is that motion can ne’er cease.

    The Something

    The quantum field is the bridge between ‘Nil’
    And basic matter, and can ne’er be still;
    Thus the ‘vacuum’ is the quietest field—
    The closest approach to ‘Nothing’ that can be.

    No ‘Null’ nor Matter Full

    ‘Nothing’ had no chance to be the hero,
    Plus QM scrubs the idea of zero
    Out of the physical world of being;
    ‘Vacuum’ ne’er sleeps, but’s e’er up to something.

    A Mere Blip

    But for the small quantum uncertainty,
    The Cosmos sums to naught, its lunch being free:
    No net electric charge; a weightless brick;
    Minus-potential = plus-kinetic.

    The Impossibles

    Oh, those imaginings of what can’t be!
    Such as Nought, Stillness, and the Block’s decree,
    As well as Apart, Beginning, and End,
    The Unfixed Will, Blame, Fame, and Theity.
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    Another scientific poem on a quantum vacuum first cause physical example:

    On the One and Only Base Existence

    Prolog


    In this lost haunt on the Orion arm
    Of the galaxy, safe from the core’s harm,
    The philosophers meet in the forum,
    As sleuth-hounds unweaving the Cosmic yarn.

    We search for the Start of the Universe,
    The End, the Before, the After, the Kinds,
    The Measures, and All That Lies Between:
    The Music of the Spheres’ Magnificat.

    We follow every single avenue,
    Whether it’s brightly lit or a dark alley,
    Exploring one-ways, no-ways, and dead-ends,
    Until cornered where the Truth is hiding.

    Since we all became of this universe,
    Should we not ask who we are, whence we came?
    Insight clefts night’s skirt with its radiance—
    The Theory of Everything shines through!

    Reveal
    We are ever in touch with the unknown,
    For that’s ever the reach of science shown.
    Reality is grasped by focusing
    On what interacts with what and the means.

    There is a realm of happenings, not things,
    For ‘things’ don’t remain the same on time’s wings.
    What remains through time are processes—
    Relations between different systems.

    An Eternal Basis has to be so,
    For a lack of anything cannot sow,
    Forcing there to be something permanent,
    As partless, from which the particles grow.

    Consider quantum fields of waves atop
    One another: waves are continuous,
    And so qualify as Fundamental;
    Quantized lumps are particles; they move.

    Note that there is no other absolute:
    Newton’s fixed space and time got Einstein’s boot;
    Particle spigots making fields are mute;
    Classic fields have no fundamental loot.

    There’s a lightness to elemental being
    Since any more would have to be of parts,
    And thus go beyond the fundamental arts.
    The vacuum puffs of energy are small.

    On the Forced Defaults for the Only Existence

    There can only be the one Existence,
    Forced, with no option for it not to be,
    Which is no mystery because a ‘Nil’
    Cannot be, even as spacers within.

    There is neither ‘Full’ nor ‘Null’,
    But a lightness of being near ‘Zero’,
    As that’s what the universe amounts to,
    Nor ‘Nil’s kin as ‘Still’, since there’s constant change.

    This must-be partless Existence Eterne
    Can’t end, so it must remain as itself,
    Transmuting into multiplicity
    Of the temporary as ‘elementaries’.

    Since The Eterne has to be, of not ‘null’,
    ‘Supernatural Magic’ isn’t required;
    So, there’s only the natural as the base;
    One degree of freedom is its forced default.

    Motion is a must, or naught would happen;
    It can’t have parts, so it’s continuous;
    No end, it must e’er return to itself.
    There can’t be anything else but it.

    It is everywhere, with no gaps of ‘zilch’;
    It waves, as is ubiquitous in nature,
    Rearranging to the elementary
    Particles at stable rungs of quanta.

    Only quantum fields fit the criteria;
    Particles as spigots failed to flow,
    Newton’s ‘Space’ and ‘Time’ disappeared via
    Einstein’s relativity special and general.

    Quantum field points that must spring up and down
    Form the field’s waves by dragging on others.
    These sums of harmonic oscillations
    Force the fixed quanta energy levels.

    So the wave estimate proves to be right;
    An electron/photon goes through both slits
    Because it is a spread out field quantum.
    Quantum jumps cannot be wave fractionals.

    The universe is a large quantum field,
    For the 25 quantum fields interact,
    This containing the whole of physics.
    There’s no ‘God’s’ eye view; anything happens.

    The anything of the massive universe
    Is a lot of needed extravagant junk,
    For on Earth the right conditions obtained,
    Our planet being where and what it has to be.

    Cosmic and biological evolution were forced,
    Stars collecting the elementaries,
    Producing all the atomic elements
    That went on toward molecules, cells, and more.

    All this took 13.5 billion years,
    Since, again, there were no hoodoo shortcuts.
    Life and consciousness emerged, no ‘Mojo’—
    Since long ago on Earth they were not there!

    Our planet is very good at promoting life,
    But it is much better at extinguishing it.
    Of the billions upon billions of organic things,
    99.99% are no longer around here living.

    Of all extinctions, the Permian was the worst.
    245 million years ago, for 95% of species perished,
    Suddenly disappearing from the fossil recording.
    Life had almost come to a total obliterationing.

    “Hurray,” said the shrew; now I can evolve!

    ‘You’ were once a lucky shrew, darting all about,
    But then attached to a favorable evolutionary line…
    Every single one of your forbears on both sides
    Being attractive enough to locate a loving mate,
    And they fortunately had the good health to celebrate!

    Our blind-fated path was the further paved
    When disasters finished most of the species.
    Far from a feature of Intelligent Design,
    It opened up the space that was needed.

    The Downfall of ‘Beyond’ and ‘Extra’
    ‘Magic’ has fallen by the wayside, it
    As trancendence an intangible writ,
    Unable to be distinct from matter,
    Having to talk/walk the talk/walk of it.

    An extra distinct realm isn’t needed,
    As ‘intangible’, ‘ineffable’, etc.,
    For it only begs the question—regress!—
    And as separate couldn’t have effect.

    The ‘immaterial’ and ‘nonphysical’
    Haven’t shown anything at all to date,
    Plus, all the more they’d have to be explained;
    The ‘supernatural’ claim has to fail.

    Five billion years ago there was no life
    Or consciousness, and now they are both here,
    Thus, they emerged, evolving during that time;
    So, there’s no need for any ‘hyperphysical’.

    Where’s the esoteric among atoms?
    What inside their doings would be else wise?
    Do molecules swirl into spooky states?
    What their secret patterns hidden away?

    The light atomic elements were prime,
    And the stars made more, on up through iron,
    And the rest were from collisions/novae;
    So, what unknown secrets would they contain?

    The ‘God’ idea has fallen from its throne;
    Forever quantum fields’ excitations’
    Elementary quanta roll on the fields
    That are everywhere and remain intact.

    Epilog

    The quantum fields’ unity is the Whole,
    Being ever, exhausting Reality,
    Unbreakable and Unmakeable,
    As partless and continuous monads.

    All that emerges is still the fields at heart,
    Though secondary and temporary,
    Arising and at some time returning;
    The quantum fields are indivisible.

    Quantum fields are the fundamental strokes
    Whose excitations at harmonics cloak
    The quanta with the stability
    To persist and thus obtain mobility.

    The elementary particles beget,
    As letters of the Cosmic alphabet,
    And combine in words to write the story
    Of the stars, atoms, cells, and life’s glory.

    Why Something?

    Quantum states melt via uncertainty,
    And this means that no quantum property
    Can e’er be zero—a precise amount,
    And so it is that motion can ne’er cease.

    The Something

    The quantum field is the bridge between ‘Nil’
    And basic matter, and can ne’er be still;
    Thus the ‘vacuum’ is the quietest field—
    The closest approach to ‘Nothing’ that can be.

    No ‘Null’ nor Matter Full

    ‘Nothing’ had no chance to be the hero,
    Plus QM scrubs the idea of zero
    Out of the physical world of being;
    ‘Vacuum’ ne’er sleeps, but’s e’er up to something.

    A Mere Blip

    But for the small quantum uncertainty,
    The Cosmos sums to naught, its lunch being free:
    No net electric charge; a weightless brick;
    Minus-potential = plus-kinetic.

    The Impossibles

    Oh, those imaginings of what can’t be!
    Such as Nought, Stillness, and the Block’s decree,
    As well as Apart, Beginning, and End,
    The Unfixed Will, Blame, Fame, and Theity.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Quantum scientists never actually see anything in the quantum realm, they infer such things as Quarks & Quantum Fields from mathematical reasoning. Even the so-called "particles" of QFT are "virtual" (i.e. potential or imaginary or Platonic forms).Gnomon

    They see the jets of the quarks. The virtual particles are but the non-quantum level excitations that can't be at a stable quantum rung of energy and so they collapse rather instantly. We make all sorts of devices based on QFT.

    The physical did it all on the physical Earth, forming life from none, unto the complexity of today’s life. It didn’t need any help from a ‘non-physical, and it couldn’t even receive any ‘non-physical’ input because it can’t entertain the ‘non-physical’, plus the ‘non-physical’ can’t speak the physical.

    This is also what doomed Decartes’ distinct mental and physical realms: they couldn’t exchange energy.

    The addition of a ‘non physical’ or 'intangible' only enlarges the question to produce a regress.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    human conditionGnomon

    All is physical. The Earth is physical and it physically gave rise to life and then a long physical time went by during which physical happenings went on… In the present day, life is higher and more diverse; so, life is purely physical in that all that progressed in between was physical. For example, consciousness is physical.

    In short, there was once no life on Earth and now there is.

    In the picture, Socrates is being given hemlock because he spoke too much nonsense about some invisible non physical goings on being so.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    True, but trivial.Gnomon

    True, but true.

    What we dialog about on The Philosophy Forum is literally "non-sense" and "beyond physical". Look at the topics --- how many are about "something physical"?

    Metaphysics is all about Non-Sense. It's what feckless philosophers do : talk about things-that-are-not-things, but ideas-about-things. And when Poets write about Feelings, Qualities, Love, and other illusions & delusions, they are also doing Metaphysics. Philosophers and Poets don't build monuments or cure cancer. All they do is spout abstract non-sense to each other. Are you guilty of such extra-sensory time-wasting? :joke:
    Gnomon

    No, my main categories are the human condition, science, and the universe. I don't post the non physical.
  • What is metaphysics? Yet again.
    NOT STUFF. Not an object, not a thing.Wayfarer

    It would be an event of a process.
  • What is metaphysics? Yet again.
    It's likely that there's no non physical realm that can have any effect on the physical realm simply because it's not able to perform physically; so, I suggest that all that goes on is purely physical.
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    I think the idea that you are reaching for is not first cause but brute fact.SophistiCat

    That's good. Even if we reason that there is no alternative to the Existent having to ever be, with no creation of it, it's still a brute fact with some understanding to why it has to be brute.

    All of our local seeming causes and effects from what the Existent forms are really just the continuing one big effect of the Existent. For the convenience of calculations and localizing to an event of interest, we place artificial boundaries to bound our local notion of a cause and effect.

    The Permanent Existent formed our temporary universe, and so it could form more universes.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    It's not just "religious thinkers" who extend their inquiring minds beyond the limited scope of space-time. Many non-religious scientists are also not willing to be bound by physical restraints and provable postulations, when their imagination can make quantum leaps into the Great Unknowable beyond the Big Bang beginning. String Theory, Big Bounce, Multiverse, Many Worlds, Bubble Universes, etc. Can those conjectures be dismissed as "religious non-sense", simply because they are literally "super-natural" (outside of knowable Nature) and "hyper-physical" (meta-physical) and "infinite" (external to space-time)?Gnomon

    Yes, nonsense, and worse nonsense if they aren't referring to something physical.
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    Was that of your own making or taken from somewhere?Philosophim

    It's the beginning and end of my longer poem about the First Cause being the quantum fields.

    Deriving the Narrative Uni-Versed Poem
    Of Our Poetic Universe of the Cosmos


    All the temporary complexities
    From the Eterne must someday fade away,
    Namely, our universe with its grandness
    Dispersing its greatness into blandness.

    In between, the Basis writes a story
    That gets lived by the transients within,
    As us and all the stars, moons, and planets—
    In our book from the Babel Library.

    What’s Fundamental has to be partless,
    Permanent and e’er remain as itself;
    Thus, it can only form temporaries
    Upward as rearrangements of itself.

    Change, change, change… constant change, as fast as it
    Can happen, the speed of light being foremost
    The speed of causality, over 13 billion years,
    From the simple on up to the more complex.

    Reveal
    The ‘vacuum’ has to e’er jitter and sing,
    This base existent forced as something,
    Given the nonexistence of a ‘Nothing’;
    If it tries to be zero, it cannot.

    At the indefinite quantum level,
    Zero must be fuzzy, not definite;
    So it can’t be zero, but has to be
    As that which is ever up to something.

    What’s continuous means a field, naught else,
    That waves; ‘Stillness’ is impossible.
    A field has a changing value everywhere,
    For the ‘vacuum’ e’er has to fluctuate.

    The fields overlap and can interact;
    So, there is one overall field as All.
    It’s the basis of all that is possible—
    From another forced default, of motion.

    From field points moving in their one degree
    Quantum field waverings have to result
    From their dragging e’er on one another.
    Points are the bits that form letters’ strokes.

    As sums of harmonic oscillators,
    Fields can only form their elementaries
    At stable quanta energy levels;
    Other excitation levels don’t persist.

    Since the quantum fields are everywhere,
    The elementaries as kinks can move
    To anyplace in the realms of the fields;
    As in a rope, only the quanta move.

    At each level of organization
    Of temporaries in the universe
    New capabilities become available,
    And so they take on a life of their own
    In addition to what gives rise to them.

    The great needle plays, stitches, winds, and paves
    As the strands of quantum fields’ webs of waves
    That weave the warp, weft, and woof, uni-versed,
    Into being’s fabric of Earth’s living braids.

    Quantum fields are the fundamental strokes
    Whose excitations at harmonics cloaks
    The field quanta with stability
    To persist and obtain mobility.

    As letters of the Cosmic alphabet,
    The elementary particles beget,
    Combining to words to write the story
    Of the stars, atoms, cells, and life’s glory.

    This is the Poetic Universe.

    The weave of the quantum fields as strokes writes
    The letters of the elemental bytes—
    The alphabet of the standard model,
    Atoms then forming the stars’ words whose mights

    Merge to form molecules, as the phrases,
    On to proteins/cells, as verse sentences,
    In to organisms ‘stanza paragraphs,
    And to the poem stories of the species.

    Of this concordance of literature,
    We’re the Cosmos’ poetic adventure,
    Sentient poems being unified-verses,
    As both the contained and the container.

    We are both essence and form, as poems versed,
    Ever unveiling this life’s deeper thirsts,
    As new riches, through strokes, letters, phonemes,
    Words, phrases, and sentences—uni versed.

    We have rhythm, reason, rhyme, meter, sense,
    Metric, melody, and beauty’s true pense,
    Revealed through life’s participation,
    From the latent whence into us hence.

    From quantum non-locality entanglement,
    We know that information’s primary
    Over distance, that objects don’t have to
    Be near each other to have relation.

    Everything connected to everything
    Would seem to be a ‘perception’ as an
    All-at-onceness, so a particle
    Might ‘know’ something about what to do.

    Informationally derived meanings
    Unify in non-reductive gleanings,
    In a relational reality,
    Through the semantical life happenings.

    This is a realm of happenings, not things,
    For ‘things’ don’t remain the same on time’s wings.
    What remains through time are processes—
    Relations between different systems.

    Syntactical information exchange,
    Without breaking of the holistic range,
    Reveals the epic whole of nature’s poetics,
    Within her requisite of ongoing change.

    So there’s form before gloried substance,
    Relationality before the chance
    Of material impressions rising,
    Traced in our world from the gestalt’s dance.

    All lives in the multi–dimensional spaces
    Of basic superpositional traces
    Of Possibility, as like the whirl’s
    Probable clouds of distributed paces.

    What remains unchanged over time are All’s
    Properties that find expression, as laws,
    Of the conservation of energy,
    Momentum, and electric charge—unpaused.

    A poem is a truth fleshed in living words,
    Which by showing unapprehended proof
    Lifts the veil to reveal hidden beauty:
    It’s life’s image drawn in eternal truth.

    A poem is both the thought and the presence,
    An object born from one’s profoundest sense,
    An image of diction, feeling, and rhythm;
    It’s both the existence and the essence.

    Poetry makes clear what’s just barely heard,
    For it translates soul-language into words,
    Whereas, music plays right on the heartstrings;
    Merged, they create song; heart and soul converge.

    Poems are renderings of the soul’s spirit,
    The highest power of language and wit.
    The reader then translates back to spirit;
    If the soul responds, then a poem you’ve writ!

    Oh, those imaginings of what can’t be!
    Such as Nought, Stillness, and Permanence,
    As well as Apart, Beginning, and End,
    The Unfixed Will, Blame, Fame, and Theity.

    When the universe ends—sparse photons left,
    All splendor, life, and objects will have gone
    The way that all temporaries must go,
    To oblivion—oh, grand complexities!

    Only the Eternal Basis remains
    As potential for all possible books
    In Everything’s Babel Repository
    To author another universe’s story.
  • Higher dimensions beyond 4th?
    Any thoughts?TiredThinker

    More directly…

    There are ten degrees of freedom:
    length, width, and depth, for three,
    through your life and death;

    Then, 4D, where there’s timeless movement
    Back and forth along
    Your world-line from a fetus to a corpse—
    A tube-like smear of your life as a whole.

    5th, all your probable futures;
    6th, jump directly to any of them,
    7th, all possible Big Bang timelines,
    From starts to endings—an infinity;
    8th, all time-lines of other universes,
    9th, jump to a different universe’s timeline,

    10th, the IS of all possible realities without any delineation between those realities.
    It is an infinity of infinities: Everything.

    Is it a coincidence that string theory has 10 dimensions?
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    Yes! Isn't that neat? Opposed to multiverse theory being something we entertain for fun, it becomes something we can view as a logically likely reality.Philosophim

    The First Cause ever writes the 'verses…

    All the temporary complexities
    From the Eterne must someday fade away,
    Namely, our universe with its grandness
    Dispersing its greatness into blandness.

    In between, the Basis writes a story
    That gets lived by the transients within,
    As us and all the stars, moons, and planets—
    In our book from the Babel Library.



    When the universe ends—sparse photons left,
    All splendor, life, and objects will have gone
    The way that all temporaries must go,
    To oblivion—oh, grand complexities!

    Only the Eternal Basis remains
    As potential for all possible books
    In Everything’s Babel Repository
    To author another universe’s story.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    That's the best attitude indeedVerdi

    Verdi,
    Veni, vidi, velcro: I came, I saw, I stuck around.
  • A first cause is logically necessary
    This doesn't mean we should keep trying to look for prior to that which we discover causality, but logically, there will be a point that has no prior explanation for its existence. And if that is logically the case, what does that mean for the universe's existence? What potentials does that open up? Does this mean multiverse theory is not only plausible, but a logical certainty given enough time?Philosophim

    Yes, a certainty. Besides, if one universe can become, so then can another.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    So, how come the multiplicity has to be temporary, given that it is the Permanent One at heart?

    After all, such as electrons are not something else that is weaker that got quantized; electrons are directly the quanta of their lasting field. Well, either they get annihilated or they wear out eventually perhaps because there can't really be any infinite precision, meaning that everything temporary leaks. The One ever moves, too, this maybe somehow also contributing to the destined demise of its forms.

    Stability decreases on upward: molecules are neither inclined to stay together nor to instantly break apart, stars burn out, cells have to get replaced, the tips of DNA tear off a bit during every division, eventually ripping into the good part, like a fraying shoelace after the protective end has gone away.

    All the temporaries are doomed! The fate of all their epicness is to fade. The great statues crack and crumble; only the pedestal of the One remains intact.

    Heaven’s Great Wheel e’er whirls its energy,
    It having to turn and return, to be,
    Transmuting, as ne’er still—eternally,
    Into life’s temporary pattern-trees.

    Change in the Eterne dooms forms’ permanence;
    But the time required for their constructance
    Restrains for a while the shapes’ destructance;
    Thus they can slowly traverse life’s distance.

    The chain is forged that links a thousand deaths
    To a thousand future-generated breaths—
    When lips ripe as fruit gently part in pain:
    The smile of a corpse is life touched by death.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    But somehow there must be a pillar of the universe.Verdi

    In answering to this pillar, we are bounded by not going backwards in having it to be even more inexplicable, on the one hand, and on the other hand to have it be doable in a simple manner but wishfully somewhat beyond brute force.

    The fallback can be the multi-verse but no one can show that yet.

    We see in photosynthesis that the electrons find the most efficient path among all the possible paths in superposition, that path winning out.

    Perhaps, since the Eternal Existent with no beginning can't have any input going into it as a design, the default is every path possible, as like a giant wave function superposed, and what paths keep going the furthest with a high novelty return reach the winners' circle… whereat, as a pedestal, not a pillar, the winning potential paths somehow get activated by some criteria into Big Bangs.

    Or else, who cares, since we can't get blamed for not knowing how all became. I'd really rather just make art compositions, write books, and have romance.
  • Philosphical Poems
    Seasonings

    Nature springs from winter’s tomb,
    The bloom already in the seed,
    The trees within the acorns.
    Surging sprigs sprout from the soil;
    Spring showers make the summer flower.

    Summer wakes from spring’s dying kiss,
    Blooming when the rose does,
    Sunning after the spring’s running.
    Summer reigns upon the land,
    Eventually fading in the night.

    Autumn falls as summer leaves,
    Harvesting its sum of days,
    Seconding the rose of spring.

    The smile meets the tear—
    Fall’s embers last through December.

    Ice winds stalk the weed flowers,
    The ghosts frosting the dead stalks,
    Snow crystals barring all that grows.

    Winter is life cooled over;
    Melting snows feed spring waters.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    rokns-9.81-full-p9-dft-65fw-3840px-30fps-apple-devices-4k.2021-07-12-12_57_28.gif

    (One of the maiden Goddesses of Parmenides' 'On Nature')
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    With all beautiful stuff in itVerdi

    great-living-art-scenes37_36.gif

    We, of the endless forms most beautiful,
    Are stunned that our glass to the brim is full,
    Life’s wine coursing through us, as magical,
    On this lovely, rolling sphere so bountiful.

    Life’s a web, of whos, whys, whats, and hows,
    Stretched as time between eternal boughs.
    Gossamer threads bear the beads that glisten,
    Each moment a sequence of instant nows.

    Memory’s ideas recall the last heard tone;
    Sensation savors what is presently known;
    Imagination anticipates coming sounds;
    The delight is such that none could produce alone.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    Perfect, I'll likely do the same then.Manuel

    You will go crazy reading about all their 'likes' and 'unlikes' portrayed in umpteen ways.

    All multiplicity has to be like the One and that's that.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Somehow, this robs the universe of meaning, whatever that means, and however full of meaning it is!Verdi

    A great meaning would be restrictive, but, more noteably, it would have to come from a God-Mind that is way too complex to be Fundamental, and so there is no overall meaning to the existence of the universe, plus, regardless, the universe comes and goes, so its beginning didn't ultimately mean anything, although we had to study it to see if it did.

    What meaning can we get out of the Mandatory Eternal Existent that cannot not be, beyond that it makes 'God' unnecessary? Well, it's not like it had a choice, so beingness is not its message, yet, as a local meaning our wills drive us to survive and be, which was no picnic in the old days.

    Living can finally be rewarding in these modern times in places where it isn't still barbaric or greatly stressing, so all I can come up with is that experiencing life happily is close to being the only benefit to come out of the whole meaningless shebang.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Great one! Still the question remains where the least, comes from. Maybe it came from, or lies on another great, even in an eternal succession, but even then. Where TF did that came from? In my hunger for knowledge, I just can't understand.Verdi

    The religious thinkers face the haunt of the regress that dooms their notion once they propose the lesser from the greater. They likely see the universe and its complexity to be too astounding to just be so from the lesser, and so they must question it, 'answering' it with something all the more astounding, but don't question that since they've granted immunity to its prosecution by merely just declaring it to be supernatural and hyperphysical, and, to protect it even more add infinite scope to its Mind such that it couldn't even be any more astonishing and then readily accept that in place of the now infinitesimal scope of the universe in comparison that they wouldn't accept in the first place.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    The FTL Inflation Theory (from almost nothing to everything in an immeasurable fraction of time) is either super-natural or magical, or both. For my own worldview, I prefer to move any postulated preternatural events outside of the natural space-time margins. Since we have no empirical evidence for anything that is not subject to the limitations of space-time, outside the known anything is possible. But to imagine such lawless behavior within the bounds of reality is un-realistic.Gnomon

    Yes, and it is greatly failing now that we didn't find a lot of B-mode polarization to indicate gravity waves for that kind of inflation.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    For zero, infinity's twin, is not like other numbers. It is both nothing and everything.Gnomon

    Well, some think zero is the greatest number if it's actually the sum of all the positives and negatives. Infinity, being everything, like the Library of Babel, in a way has the same information content as no library at all: zero.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    change is an illusionTheMadFool

    Yes, as in a DVD playing.

    Another illusion might be that temporary 'things' are things, and separate even, not events of the One as the One. All that goes one is the One as the One's transmutations.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    The vacuum is not empty and so it isn’t a vacuum; I propose it as the One of Parmenides. It is the simplest because the simple elementaries first become, and then form composites later…

    The elementaries are tiny lightweights, which shows that what formed them is also lightweight. Thus, the Basis as the One is simple.

    The One, being energetic, is never still (or all multiplicity would never arise). Thus it has a energy value at every point that fluctuates. The short name for this is a field. The temperature field in one’s home has a degree value at every point. Fields are simple, not mysterious.

    Let us look into the field that forms electrons, since they are familiar to us. Its points tug at each other, ever making for varying lumps in it, similar to those in an ocean, so the field wavers.

    Why do electrons last? Why don’t they just slosh away like lumps in water?

    All electrons are identical in volume, integer energy level, and charge, and so that defines how they have to be, as stable. Any other wanna-be bump in the electron field doesn’t make an electron or a fraction of one, although these may turn out to be the virtuals that collapse in an instant.

    An electron bound in an atom can jump to a higher orbital cloud level if it gets the right amount of energy from a photon, say, as double what it has. This is known as the quantum jump; simple, but we haven’t yet gotten to what a quantum is yet, but that’s the kind of happening that led physicists there, as again no fractional allowed to be lasting. A quantum is a specific energy level that can last in the field that is everywhere, it then being able to move anywhere in the field. It’s sort of like a kink in a rope; it travels but the rope doesn’t.

    Can we derive the math of an electron quantum field to see if that matches it?

    Victor Toth says, We decompose the field into harmonic oscillators, since that’s what the field does, with its moving points, though a Fourier-transform, each point now as a quantum harmonic oscillator whose energy comes in quantized units.

    The lowest energy state is not zero when we sum for all possible values so we get an infinite result.

    When a theory is renormalizable, there’s a mathematically sensible process to discard the unwanted infinities but still account for finite differences, which are responsible for observables. We may sum energies to some finite cutoff value, and use it to compute physically observable values; in the limit of the cutoff going back to infinity, the physical prediction doesn’t change.


    There are 25 types of quantum fields, one for each entry in the Standard Model. The fields overlap and can affect one another, making for one overall quantum field, this complicating the math. The Higgs field even has a much higher rest energy than the other fields.

    Quantum Field Theory (QFT) is the most firm and successful theory in the history of science.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    Since ex nihilo nihi fit, Parmenides rejected becoming; after all becoming implies an initial stage of nonbeing which in Parmenides universe is either nothing or too close it for comfort.TheMadFool

    His One of Necessity has no beginning; it is ever and always. Did the One make our universe that has time in it linearly or did the One make it all at once and then replay it slower so as to be experienced in time? Or did the One always have everything in it, such as our universe, and then plays it slower.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    Yes. Do you have a better explanation for a palpable universe from who-knows-what?Gnomon

    The One of Necessity that has to be, per Parmenides, as the simplest base. The least can lead to the great, albeit temporary, as seen in our universe.

    Yes. Do you have a better explanation for a palpable universe from who-knows-what?Multiverse theories, infer that an unknowable eternal universe has always existed, and froths with bubble universes that come & go. A likely story, but based on what "facts & reason"?Gnomon

    Simpler same as the Great Programmer always being present and creating more universes.

    … from Nothing…Gnomon

    'Nothing' cannot even be meant.
  • Can theory of nothing challenge God?
    And here is the proof of a bug we foundSpaceDweller

    50000-80000 species of insects known as bugs; here the great programmer coded 0/0.
  • Parmenides, general discussion
    Parmenides shocked the philosophic/scientific/religious world way back and it is still reeling, even with his revelation being a poem filled with maidens.

    It was a disaster for the religious to realize that the One of necessity that could not not be there made 'God' unnecessary and irrelevant. Like the proposed 'God' it was there without ever having been created, but in a simple form. Their template that the lesser had to come from the greater, which was ever haunted by regress, had to be thrown out, although they went into denial. It is that the lesser leads to the greater, but temporary, just as we can plainly see in our universe.

    Then science came through to show it as the 'vacuum' that isn't empty and its quantum fields that we can get onto later to show it as the One.

    I selected what I thought were the best translations of Parmenides' 'On Nature' that improved the style but didn't leave out any points, and then illustrated it, and then made a video of it:



    The intro from the Stanford Philosophy seems to be mostly OK but for it referencing two substances. An electron, for example, is still constituted of the One (and only), as a rather stable quantum of it.

    Recall that for Parmenides, it doesn't really make sense to say a thing is not, because if X is not, then how were you just talking about it?frank

    What I do is to put in quotes what cannot be or even be meant, such as 'Nothing'.

PoeticUniverse

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