Peter Woit on the multiverse as a weapon against religion: “a lousy one and not going to convince anyone”
| February 21, 2012 | Posted by News under Multiverse, News, Science |
At Not Even Wrong, Peter Woit comments on Larry Krauss’s recent interest in the multiverse:
Today’s New York Times has an article by Dennis Overbye about Lawrence Krauss and his new book A Universe From Nothing. Much of the book is an excellent discussion of cosmology and the physics of the vacuum, but it also devotes a lot of effort to discussing the meaningless question of “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and arguing against the invocation of a deity in order to answer it. Krauss is no fan of string theory, which he regards as overhyped, but he seems to have developed an attraction to multiverse studies recently, perhaps motivated by their use in arguments with those who see the Big Bang as a place for God to hang out.
Personally I’ve no interest in arguments about the existence of God, which epitomize to me an empty waste of time. Given the real dangers of religious fundamentalism in the US though, I’m glad that others like Krauss make the effort to answer some of these arguments. I’m less happy to see him and others adopting the multiverse as their weapon of choice in this battle, since it’s a lousy one and not going to convince anyone. In the New York Times piece we’re told:
“Maybe in the true eternal multiverse there are truly no laws,” Dr. Krauss said in an e-mail. “Maybe indeed randomness is all there is and everything that can happen happens somewhere.”
Given the choice between this vision of fundamental science and “God did it” as explanations for the nature of the universe, one can’t be surprised if people go for the man in the white robes…
Well, if God exists, science follows, but if there are truly no laws, science doesn’t follow.
11 Responses to Peter Woit on the multiverse as a weapon against religion: “a lousy one and not going to convince anyone”
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People who buy into the common stereotype that all religious people are ‘fundamentalists’ really need to take time to actually read the New Testament for themselves instead of buying into the stereotype that only a minority of Christians actually reflect. This picture of a angry God who is out to get you is patently false. and In fact the New Testament is actually a very anti-fundamentalist book. Philip Yancey, who grew up in a very ‘fundamentalist’ environment, gives a very good overview of the ‘grace’ revealed in the New Testament in this video:
Well, if God exists, science follows, but if there are truly no laws, science doesn’t follow.
But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? ~ Charles Darwin
If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. ~ J.B.S. Haldane
The ultimate irony is that this philosophy implies that Darwinism itself is just another meme, competing in the infectivity sweepstakes by attaching itself to that seductive word “science.” Dawkins ceaselessly urges us to be rational, but be does so in the name of a philosophy that implies that no such thing as rationality exists because our thoughts are at the mercy of our genes and memes. The proper conclusion is that the Dawkins poor brain has been infected by the Darwin meme, a virus of the mind if ever there was one, and we wonder if he will ever be able to find the cure. ~ Phillip Johnson
The very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. ~ Paul Davies
Modern science was conceived, and born, and flourished in the matrix of Christian theism. Only liberal doses of self-deception and double-think, I believe, will permit it to flourish in the context of Darwinian naturalism. ~ Alvin Plantinga
Wait, what? This statement might make some sense, coming from a liberal or mainline Christian, but coming from you, bornagain77, it’s just bizarre. You’re a young-earth creationist, if memory serves. It is possible to be a fundamentalist and not be a young-earth creationist — e.g., William Jennings Bryan was an old-earther — but it’s pretty impossible to be a young-earth creationist and not be a fundamentalist.
You seem to have some definition of “fundamentalist” in your head that is something like “fundamentalists are mean Christians no one likes”. But this is miles from the historical definition. Basically, fundamentalism boils down to the acceptance of Biblical literalism or a strong version of Biblical inerrancy. Google it…
Nick, you imagine that I’m;
Really??? Since I have not ever once held, nor defended, the Young Earth position on UD, and have indeed held, and defended, the Old Earth position several times on UD, that the days of Genesis are to be interpreted as each being long periods of time, then this goes to show, clearly, that you have projected a unwarranted ‘fundamentalist’ stereotype onto me, and, Nick, this would make you wrong,, AGAIN!,,, Go Figure Nick!!!, At least your consistent!
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notes:
Born again, I particularly enjoyed the debate between Ross and hovind
and Ross was right about the word days in the bible. As Ross correctly states the Hebrew word for day is yom and yom can mean day or period of time. It’s one of those words that has multiPle meanings.
Heck my parents use the Lebanese version of that word I’ll yome or yome and it’s still being used in multiple contexts and definitions.
Hugh Ross is a sharp cookie and he was one of of the pieces of the puzzle for my conversion from theistic evolutionist to ID. Ross also correctly points out that the bible also described the circumference of the earth when other scientists thought the earth was flat.
Nick as far as your memory of bornagain being a yec, I think your memory needs a cleaning.
Back to Hugh Ross the only thing I don’t like about him is his opinion that the shroud of Turin is a forgery, but no ones perfect as I agree with most of what he says on just about everything else
Nick, since you think that ‘time’ counts against Theism, it is very interesting to point out that the findings of modern science, about the nature of time, are very, very, conducive to a overarching Theistic view of time;
Notes to that effect;
Reflections on the ‘infinite transcendent information’ framework, as well as on the ‘eternal’ and ‘temporal’ frameworks:
The weight of mass becomes infinite at the speed of light, thus mass will never go the speed of light. Yet, mass would disappear from our sight if it could go the speed of light, because, from our non-speed of light perspective, distance in direction of travel will shrink to zero for the mass going the speed of light. Whereas conversely, if mass could travel at the speed of light, its size will stay the same while all other frames of reference not traveling the speed of light will disappear from its sight.
Moreover time, as we understand it temporally, would come to a complete stop at the speed of light. To grasp the whole ‘time coming to a complete stop at the speed of light’ concept a little more easily, imagine moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light. Would not the hands on the clock stay stationary as you moved away from the face of the clock at the speed of light? Moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light happens to be the same ‘thought experiment’ that gave Einstein his breakthrough insight into e=mc2.
,,,Yet, even though light has this ‘eternal’ attribute in regards to our temporal framework of time, for us to hypothetically travel at the speed of light, in this universe, will still only get us to first base as far as quantum entanglement, or teleportation, is concerned.
That is to say, traveling at the speed of light will only get us to the place where time, as we understand it temporally, comes to complete stop for light, i.e. gets us to the eternal, ‘past and future folding into now’, framework of time. This higher dimension, ‘eternal’, inference for the time framework of light is warranted because light is not ‘frozen within time’ yet it is shown that time, as we understand it, does not pass for light.
It is also very interesting to note that we have two very different qualities of ‘eternality of time’ revealed by our time dilation experiments;
i.e. As with any observer accelerating to the speed of light, it is found that for any observer falling into the event horizon of a black hole, that time, as we understand it, will come to a complete stop for them. — But of particular interest to the ‘eternal framework’ found for General Relativity at black holes;… It is interesting to note that entropic decay (disorderly randomness), which is the primary reason why things grow old and eventually die in this universe, is found to be greatest at black holes. Thus the ‘eternality of time’ at black holes can rightly be called ‘eternalities of decay and/or eternalities of disorder’.
i.e. The event horizons of Black Holes are found to be ‘timeless’ singularities of randomness, chaos, and disorder rather than singularities of creation and order such as the extreme (1 in 10^10^123) low entropic order we see at the creation event of the Big Bang. Needless to say, the implications of this ‘eternality of chaos’ should be fairly disturbing for those of us who are of a ‘spiritually minded’ persuasion!
It is also very interesting to note that this strange higher dimensional, eternal, framework for time, found in special relativity, and general relativity, finds corroboration by multiple ‘eye witness accounts’ in Near Death Experience testimonies:
It is also very interesting to point out that the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, reported in very many Near Death Experiences(NDEs), is also corroborated by Special Relativity when considering the optical effects for traveling at the speed of light. Please compare the similarity of the optical effect, noted at the 3:22 minute mark of the following video, when the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape around the direction of travel as a ‘hypothetical’ observer moves towards the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light, with the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ reported in very many Near Death Experiences: (Of note: This following video was made by two Australian University Physics Professors with a supercomputer.)
Here is the interactive website, with link to the relativistic math at the bottom of the page, related to the preceding video;
Here is corroboration of the tunnel from Near Death testimonies,,,
As well, as with the ‘scientifically/mathematically’ verified tunnel for special relativity, we also have scientific/mathematical confirmation of ‘tunnel curvature’ within space-time, even ‘extreme tunnel curvature’ within space-time to a ‘eternal event horizon’ at black holes;
Even light is bent by this ‘fabric’ of space-time;
Once again, these consistent findings from science/math, that just so happen to corroborate a consistent characteristic mentioned in NDE testimonies, ‘should’ be fairly disturbing for those of us of a spiritual persuasion,,,,
Moreover, severely contrary to what many atheists would prefer for us to believe, there actually is solid empirical evidence for a ‘soul’ to man that provides a coherent mechanism for traversing to these higher space-time dimensions revealed by our science:
And once again this man is ‘swimming in an ocean of light’ finding from science finds corroboration from NDE testimonies;
Moreover, the finding of quantum entanglement/information, on a massive scale in molecular biology, has falsified the reductive materialistic (atheistic) theory of neo-Darwinism;
Moreover, recent breakthroughs into ‘Quantum Biology’ easily, even ;naturally’, supports the contention of a ‘Quantum Soul’ to man that lives past the death of our temporal bodies;
Moreover, the quantum entanglement/information that is shown to be, in fact, ‘holding us together’ (constraining molecular biology to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium) at the base molecular scale is, in fact, of a ‘higher quality’ of higher dimensionality than 4-D space-time itself is:
,,,but to continue on with the main topic,,, hypothetically traveling at the speed of light in this universe would be instantaneous travel for the observer going at the speed of light. This is because time, as we understand it, does not pass for them, yet, and this is a very big ‘yet’ to take note of; this ‘timeless’ travel is still not instantaneous and transcendent to our temporal framework of time, i.e. Speed of light travel, to our temporal frame of reference, is still not completely transcendent of our framework since light appears to take time to travel from our perspective. Yet, in quantum teleportation of information, the ‘time not passing’, i.e. ‘eternal’, framework is not only achieved in the speed of light framework/dimension, but is also ‘instantaneously’ achieved in our temporal framework. That is to say, the instantaneous teleportation/travel of information is instantaneous to both the temporal and speed of light frameworks, not just the speed of light framework. Information teleportation/travel is not limited by time, nor space, in any way, shape or form, in any frame of reference, as light is seemingly limited to us. Thus ‘pure transcendent information’ is shown to be timeless (eternal) and completely transcendent of all material frameworks. Moreover, concluding from all lines of evidence we have now examined; transcendent, eternal, infinite information is indeed real and the framework in which ‘It’ resides is the primary reality (highest dimension) that can exist, (in so far as our limited perception of a primary reality, highest dimension, can be discerned).
Logic also dictates ‘a decision’ must have been made, by the ‘transcendent, eternal, infinite information’ from the primary timeless (eternal) reality ‘It’ inhabits, in order to purposely create a temporal reality with highly specified, irreducible complex, parameters from a infinite set of possibilities in the proper sequential order. Thus this infinite transcendent information, which is the primary reality of our reality, is shown to be alive by yet another line of evidence besides the necessity for a ‘first mover’ to explain quantum wave collapse.
etc.. etc.. etc..
Nick, I simply see no conflict between what science has revealed to us about the nature of time and my overall Christian Theistic view of reality!
Quote and music:
Hi Nick,
Strange that you would say something about redefining words when it is obvious that is all your position does-> redefine words to suit your needs.
Joe, are you accusing Nick of being an Intelligent Randomer/Chaoser/Haphazarder/Gigakoinkidinkier? For….SHAME! Or mebbe a tad less than Intelligent?
Take it easy on Nick, folks. He needs to preserve his strength as he might have to go back and help with the public relations again at the NCSE after the Gleick fiasco and Scott’s foot-in-mouth press release relating to the NCSE’s shiny new “anti-science” (I think that’s what they called it?) climate campaign.
/Back to the regularly scheduled programming.