Natural Panentheism?

[bornagainathiest]

 

 

Josh, the acceptance of parallel universes is a logical necessity, not an article of personal or religious belief.

Please try explaining that.  If a solid foundation of theory and evidence demand the logical inference of parallel universes that we can never observe or detect, then they should be logically accepted on that basis and that basis alone.  No belief or religiosity required.

 

 

You're saying that the CI interpretation necessitates the existence of multiple universes? It seems to me that it is the interpretation that allows for only one.

 

 

No, Noggy.

 

The Many-Worlds Interpretation of QM necessarily posits the existence of parallel universes.

The Copenhagen Interpretation of QM (to my knowledge) does not.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

[Noggy]

 

 

 

Josh, the acceptance of parallel universes is a logical necessity, not an article of personal or religious belief.

Please try explaining that.  If a solid foundation of theory and evidence demand the logical inference of parallel universes that we can never observe or detect, then they should be logically accepted on that basis and that basis alone.  No belief or religiosity required.

 

 

You're saying that the CI interpretation necessitates the existence of multiple universes? It seems to me that it is the interpretation that allows for only one.

 

 

No, Noggy.

 

The Many-Worlds Interpretation of QM necessarily posits the existence of parallel universes.

The Copenhagen Interpretation of QM (to my knowledge) does not.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA.

 

 

Okay. I thought you were saying the fact that Antarctica doesn't exist until we observe it supports multiple universes. Just making sure.

[bornagainathiest]

Not a problem, Noggy. 

 

Josh is in dialog with a bunch of Pantheists, over at this site... http://www.pantheism.net/

 

One of them (John Hodgson) expressed the opinion that..."only things that we can detect" and "only things that have a measurable effect upon us" ...are worth expending brain power on.  What's the point of even thinking about anything else?  Things that are unobservable and undetectable (like parallel universes) aren't worth bothering with.  He was responding to Josh's posts on the subject of the Multiverse. 

 

Now, Josh and I hold to the position that, even though the other pocket universes in the Multiverse will never be detected, the internal logic of Inflationary (Cosmological) theory and the proper usage of the Copernican Principle require us to consider them to be as 'real' as our pocket universe.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wikiCopernican_principle  Factoring these 'unobservables' into our understanding of reality is simply the proper and legitimate usage of scientific logic.

 

In post #47 I was explaining to Josh about the philosophical and logical problems generated by the Copenhagen interpretation of Quantum mechanics.  That school of QM posits that it can say nothing meaningful about reality, because reality doesn't exist independently of an observer.  For them, unobserved reality isn't a fixed, concrete thing - it's an unformed and undefined range of probabilities.  These probabilities only become the one 'real' reality we experience, once a human observes it.   That's why I used three examples (the Milky Way, Antarctica and the Higgs boson) and asked if they existed before humans observed them.

 

If Hodgson said, 'Yes', then he'd be contradicting himself.

According to his stated position, undetected things that have no measurable effect on humans, might as well not exist.  So, is he actually saying that the Milky Way, Antarctica and the Higgs boson ALL required humans to bring them into existence by observing/discovering them?   Or is saying that all of these things predated humans and don't owe their existence to us?

 

Josh and I are waiting to see how he responds.

 

Thanks,

 

BAA. 

 

[Joshpantera]

It's gone dead over there BA. 

 

My Natural Panentheism with a question mark has pretty much been solved. The Panen part doesn't suggest simply beyond our universe in a physical sense, it can mean beyond an infinite number of physical universes as well. I believe that Martin was suggesting the very same that you've just suggested. That should keep the Panen part out of what we're talking about in terms of many physical universes a drift in an infinite space with no end. So with respect to the multiverse scenario is seems clear that it ought to remain in the realm of Natural Pantheism for a completely naturalistic spiritual sense towards nature and cosmos. 

 

And Sagan's statement in the original Cosmos still rings true with respect to your final analysis: 

 

Since such a universe has no beginning and no end, he cannot reside beyond it or before it, either.  All that can be said is that a physical, eternal and infinite multiverse requires no point of origin and no creator.  That's all.  The multiverse dethrones God as it's creator, but doesn't mean He can't exist.  As you say below, it renders him irrelevant.  The question now changes from one of God's existence to one of God's function.

 

If the eternal and infinite physical reality doesn't require God to create and sustain it, yet an a-causal, a-temporal and a-spatial God can simultaneously co-exist with, yet transcend this Multiverse... why bother invoking Him at all?

 

What's His function?

 

This is a lot like Sagan contemplating an eternal God and suggesting why not skip a step and just assume that the universe is eternal and has always been there. It makes the very point of concocting a creator God irrelevant completely. There's no need to evoke a creator being when the cosmos itself could easily have always existed and given rise to everything that exists now, anywhere in an infinite and eternal space and time.

 

The function is a real key question. If not creating a multiverse and our universe, then what? 

[bornagainathiest]

It's gone dead over there BA. 

 

Figures.

 

I suspected you'd run into this Josh.  Sorry to say. 

 

My Natural Panentheism with a question mark has pretty much been solved. The Panen part doesn't suggest simply beyond our universe in a physical sense, it can mean beyond an infinite number of physical universes as well. I believe that Martin was suggesting the very same that you've just suggested. That should keep the Panen part out of what we're talking about in terms of many physical universes a drift in an infinite space with no end. So with respect to the multiverse scenario is seems clear that it ought to remain in the realm of Natural Pantheism for a completely naturalistic spiritual sense towards nature and cosmos. 

 

And Sagan's statement in the original Cosmos still rings true with respect to your final analysis: 

 

Since such a universe has no beginning and no end, he cannot reside beyond it or before it, either.  All that can be said is that a physical, eternal and infinite multiverse requires no point of origin and no creator.  That's all.  The multiverse dethrones God as it's creator, but doesn't mean He can't exist.  As you say below, it renders him irrelevant.  The question now changes from one of God's existence to one of God's function.

 

If the eternal and infinite physical reality doesn't require God to create and sustain it, yet an a-causal, a-temporal and a-spatial God can simultaneously co-exist with, yet transcend this Multiverse... why bother invoking Him at all?

 

What's His function?

 

This is a lot like Sagan contemplating an eternal God and suggesting why not skip a step and just assume that the universe is eternal and has always been there. It makes the very point of concocting a creator God irrelevant completely. There's no need to evoke a creator being when the cosmos itself could easily have always existed and given rise to everything that exists now, anywhere in an infinite and eternal space and time.

 

Agree.

 

Invoking an irrelevant God is pointless.

Logic and scientific procedure are quite clear that unnecessary complications simply serve to confuse things, not clarify them.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor

 

The function is a real key question. If not creating a multiverse and our universe, then what? 

 

 

 

Btw Josh, on a slightly different tangent, I came across an excellent quote the other day.

 

"All theories in physics predict some things which are directly amenable to experiment and some which aren't. For example, our theories of the stars predict things one could measure, like how brightly they will shine, and when they're going to go supernova. But they also predict things like the temperature at the center of the star, which we cannot measure directly. We accept these ideas, including their unobservable predictions, because they are the simplest way of explaining the things we can see within a consistent physical theory."

David Deutsch, 'The Ghost in the Atom' p.84.

By P.C.W. Davies & J.R. Brown, Cambridge University Press.

 

(Deutsch is one of the foremost advocates of the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.)

 

Now, this quote describes exactly where you and I stand!

Inflationary theory makes some measurable predictions and some which cannot be measured.  The measurable ones have been brilliantly and repeatedly confirmed by independent lines of evidence.  Therefore, if Inflationary theory is accepted on the strength of it's confirmed predictions, we should at least accept the possibility that it's unmeasurable, unobservable ones are correct too. 

 

Simply dismissing them out of hand is not playing by rules!

 

Thanks,

 

BAA

[Joshpantera]

I may have to go and post an article about the new background gravitational waves discovery and how Guth could well be up for a Nobel Price after all. Funny that Martin pretty much asked for this type of evidence and then here it begins to filter in shortly thereafter. 

[bornagainathiest]

I may have to go and post an article about the new background gravitational waves discovery and how Guth could well be up for a Nobel Price after all. Funny that Martin pretty much asked for this type of evidence and then here it begins to filter in shortly thereafter. 

 

Synchronicity, Josh?

 

Hit Martin with these and then see were he jumps! 

 

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/First-Direct-Evidence-of-Big-Bang-Inflation-250681381.html

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-tegmark/good-morning-inflation-he_b_4976707.html

 

Thanks,

 

BAA

 

 

 

p.s.

Don't forget the David Deutsch quote! 

[Joshpantera]

I posted both links as a heads up. I'll post the quote if any one has a problem with the links. 

 

"Today is a great day for most scientists except multiverse skeptics -- at least in this particular universe. Alex Vilenkin, Andrei Linde, Alan Guth and others have shown that inflation generically predicts a space that is not merely large but infinite, teeming with duplicate copies of our civilization living out countless variations of our lives far far away. Now it's harder for skeptics to dismiss this by saying "inflation is just a theory": first they need to come up with another compelling explanation for BICEP2's gravitational waves. Today is also disappointing for the ekpyrotic/cyclic models that had emerged as the most popular alternative to inflation: they are ruled out by BICEP2's gravitational wave detection."

 

It'll be interesting to see how this will be received...