Previous usernames have been Sonofcharl and Fredsnephew, and I think the former was with debate.org.
OK, then it wasn’t you, his exact phrase for God was “floaty about bloke”, pretty close, but no “Scarecrow in a fedora”, that’s unique.
"Potential", in this case simply refers to the possibility for material existence, without the need for what we understand to be physical laws.
You mean, the probable just becomes actual when you look at it?
Is it possible for emptiness to become full...Or can fullness never be empty.
I think I hear the sound of one hand clapping.
And the dilemma for me is that this conundrum cannot be reconciled...Potential can neither be finite nor infinite.
I don’t know about that, according to quantum physics, that’s exactly where physical reality comes from, it is a potential that becomes actual through observation.
Quantum physics tells us reality is made of waves that behave as particles, or particles that act as waves – and not waves of some underlying stuff, but waves of “probability”, reality a halo of pure possibility that goes unrealized until it is “collapsed” by an observer, who almost seems to conjure the particle into existence out of a mathematical haze.
And whilst out walking yesterday, I was suddenly struck with the notion that a circle cannot be infinite, so therefore neither can it's radius.
And then struck with the notion that the circle might be infinitely expandable.
Hey, Einstein used to take walks like that.
What made Einstein great was not some intellectual ability to resolve conflict by determining which side was right, that simply is not what he did to completely revolutionize understanding in physics. Only one representative example would be the battle between wave theory and particle theory of light that had vehemently raged between two "sides" for decades before Einstein took a walk and resolved it all.
He did not determine which side was right, he said both sides were right, and both sides were wrong. He allowed two mutually exclusive theories, two irreconcilable "sides" full freedom to exist simultaneously in his mind with the implicit understanding that perhaps both were expressions of a higher truth and then worked it all out to achieve a higher and more comprehensive understanding of the underlying truth, and in so doing he completely revolutionized physics. Again and again, he engaged in this type of mental process and astounded the scientific world with his insights into the true nature of physical reality. That was his brilliance and the key to his genius.
So keep on walking and let me know when you have figured out the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Just another irreconcilable mind game.
Mind Games (Remastered 2010)
How do you get something – in this case, everything - from nothing?
In generall, there are two schools of thought on the subject.
There are the “magical floaty about” believers who want to reject science in favor of some transcendent reality, many call it God, but many others use different words, the One, the Void, the Primordial Deep, my grandmother used to call it Unetlanvhi. This transcendent reality was described as dimensionless and infinite.
Of course, that’s just silly and unscientific. Science says everything has a cause, so what caused God? And don’t give me any of that “God just is”, or “God is uncreated”, or that “God is a necessary being that must exist”, because that just isn’t science. Those guys always want to invoke some transcendent existence that precedes or lies outside the physical universe, that just has to be the way it is, to which there is no alternative, they want to tell us that underlying our present universe there is something beyond space and time, something very mysterious, but that is all just nonsense, the universe is everything, and science explains it.
Now let me explain it to you scientifically, to show how foolish those people are.
In the beginning there was a primordial mass we call a singularity, it was infinitesimally small, infinitely hot, and infinitely dense, in it all the matter/energy in the universe was squeezed into a single dimensionless point, don’t ask where it came from, it just was, it was uncaused and uncreated, it just is, a necessity that must exist. In addition to that, there was a deep mathematical structure that necessarily existed, it preceded or lay outside of the physical universe, it just had to be what it was because there was no alternative.
Now, within this deep mathematical structure, if you apply relativity and quantum theory to this pre-existing primordial mystery, you get a cosmic loophole big enough for all creation to jump through. In the end, the universe is a quantum fluctuation that can be described as either a particle or a wave, and n a special kind of mathematical transubstantiation, the numbers took on substance and became the universe.
There, we don’t need all that belief and mystery and supernatural God stuff, because now we have science to explain things.
