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At Quanta: How the Physics of Nothing Underlies Everything

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The key to understanding the origin and fate of the universe may be a more complete understanding of the vacuum.

Charlie Wood writes:

As modern physicists have grappled with more sophisticated candidates for the ultimate theory of nature, they have encountered a growing multitude of types of nothing. Each has its own behavior, as if it’s a different phase of a substance. Increasingly, it seems that the key to understanding the origin and fate of the universe may be a careful accounting of these proliferating varieties of absence.

“We’re learning there’s a lot more to learn about nothing than we thought,” said Isabel Garcia Garcia, a particle physicist at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in California. “How much more are we missing?”

So far, such studies have led to a dramatic conclusion: Our universe may sit on a platform of shoddy construction, a “metastable” vacuum that is doomed — in the distant future — to transform into another sort of nothing, destroying everything in the process.

Merrill Sherman/Quanta Magazine

Quantum Nothingness

Nothing started to seem like something in the 20th century, as physicists came to view reality as a collection of fields: objects that fill space with a value at each point (the electric field, for instance, tells you how much force an electron will feel in different places). In classical physics, a field’s value can be zero everywhere so that it has no influence and contains no energy. “Classically, the vacuum is boring,” said Daniel Harlow, a theoretical physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Nothing is happening.”

But physicists learned that the universe’s fields are quantum, not classical, which means they are inherently uncertain. You’ll never catch a quantum field with exactly zero energy. Harlow likens a quantum field to an array of pendulums — one at each point in space — whose angles represent the field’s values. Each pendulum hangs nearly straight down but jitters back and forth.

Left alone, a quantum field will stay in its minimum-energy configuration, known as its “true vacuum” or “ground state.” (Elementary particles are ripples in these fields.) “When we talk about the vacuum of a system, we have in mind in some loose way the preferred state of the system,” said Garcia Garcia.

Most of the quantum fields that fill our universe have one, and only one, preferred state, in which they’ll remain for eternity. Most, but not all.

True and False Vacuums

 In the 1970s, physicists came to appreciate the significance of a different class of quantum fields whose values prefer not to be zero, even on average. Such a “scalar field” is like a collection of pendulums all hovering at, say, a 10-degree angle. This configuration can be the ground state: The pendulums prefer that angle and are stable.

In 2012, experimentalists at the Large Hadron Collider proved that a scalar field known as the Higgs field permeates the universe. At first, in the hot, early universe, its pendulums pointed down. But as the cosmos cooled, the Higgs field changed state, much as water can freeze into ice, and its pendulums all rose to the same angle. (This nonzero Higgs value is what gives many elementary particles the property known as mass.)

With scalar fields around, the stability of the vacuum is not necessarily absolute. A field’s pendulums might have multiple semi-stable angles and a proclivity for switching from one configuration to another. Theorists aren’t certain whether the Higgs field, for instance, has found its absolute favorite configuration — the true vacuum. Some have argued that the field’s current state, despite having persisted for 13.8 billion years, is only temporarily stable, or “metastable.”

If so, the good times won’t last forever. In the 1980s, the physicists Sidney Coleman and Frank De Luccia described how a false vacuum of a scalar field could “decay.” At any moment, if enough pendulums in some location jitter their way into a more favorable angle, they’ll drag their neighbors to meet them, and a bubble of true vacuum will fly outward at nearly light speed. It will rewrite physics as it goes, busting up the atoms and molecules in its path. (Don’t panic. Even if our vacuum is only metastable, given its staying power so far, it will probably last for billions of years more.)

The discovery that string theory allows nearly countless vacuums jibed with another discovery from nearly two decades earlier.

Cosmologists in the early 1980s developed a hypothesis known as cosmic inflation that has become the leading theory of the universe’s birth. The theory holds that the universe began with a quick burst of exponential expansion, which handily explains the universe’s smoothness and hugeness. But inflation’s successes come at a price.

The researchers found that once cosmic inflation started, it would continue. Most of the vacuum would violently explode outward forever. Only finite regions of space would stop inflating, becoming bubbles of relative stability separated from each other by inflating space in between. Inflationary cosmologists believe we call one of these bubbles home.

A Multiverse of Vacuums

To some, the notion that we live in a multiverse — an endless landscape of vacuum bubbles — is disturbing. It makes the nature of any one vacuum (such as ours) seem random and unpredictable, curbing our ability to understand our universe. Polchinski, who died in 2018told the physicist and author Sabine Hossenfelder that discovering string theory’s landscape of vacuums initially made him so miserable it led him to seek therapy. If string theory predicts every imaginable variety of nothing, has it predicted anything?

To others, the plethora of vacuums is not a problem; “in fact, it’s a virtue,” said Andrei Linde, a prominent cosmologist at Stanford University and one of the developers of cosmic inflation. That’s because the multiverse potentially solves a great mystery: the ultra-low energy of our particular vacuum.

When theorists naïvely estimate the collective jittering of all the universe’s quantum fields, the energy is huge — enough to rapidly accelerate the expansion of space and, in short order, rip the cosmos apart. But the observed acceleration of space is extremely mild in comparison, suggesting that much of the collective jittering cancels out and our vacuum has an extraordinarily low positive value for its energy.

In a solitary universe, the tiny energy of the one and only vacuum looks like a profound puzzle. But in a multiverse, it’s just dumb luck. If different bubbles of space have different energies and expand at different rates, galaxies and planets will form only in the most lethargic bubbles. Our calm vacuum, then, is no more mysterious than the Goldilocks orbit of our planet: We find ourselves here because most everywhere else is inhospitable to life.

Love it or hate it, the multiverse hypothesis as currently understood has a problem. Despite string theory’s seemingly infinite menu of vacuums, so far no one has found a specific folding of tiny extra dimensions that corresponds to a vacuum like ours, with its barely positive energy.

These researchers suspect that our vacuum is not one of reality’s preferred states, and that it will someday jitter itself into a deeper, more stable valley. In doing so, our vacuum could lose the field that generates electrons or pick up a new palette of particles. The tightly folded dimensions could come unfurled. Or the vacuum could even give up on existence entirely.

This instability of tiny dimensions has long plagued string theory, and various ingredients have been devised to stiffen them. In December, Garcia Garcia, together with Draper and Benjamin Lillard of Illinois, calculated the lifetime of a vacuum with a single extra curled-up dimension. They considered various stabilizing bells and whistles, but they found that most mechanisms failed to stop the bubbles. Their conclusions aligned with Witten’s: When the size of the extra dimension fell below a certain threshold, the vacuum collapsed at once.

With a large enough hidden dimension, however, the vacuum could survive for many billions of years. This means that theories producing bubbles of nothing could plausibly match our universe….Nature may not be a big fan of the vacuum. In the extremely long run, it may prefer nothing at all.

Full article at Quanta Magazine.

The discussion presented above brings up the famous philosophical question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The (nearly) empty vacuum of space is not “nothing.” Space itself is something. If nothing (a true “nothing” without quantum fields or anything) preceded our “something,” it could not logically give rise to something, otherwise it wouldn’t truly be nothing). If “something” preceded our something, then what gave rise to that pre-existing something? Naturalism seems to require an infinite regress of somethings, made up of matter, energy, or fields, none of which show evidence of being able to exist for infinite time (and even time seems to have had a beginning).

So, why is there something rather than nothing? if infinitely existing nature isn’t in line with logic or science, then there must have been another type of cause, a cause that is immaterial, timeless, powerful enough to give rise to a whole universe, intelligent enough to create living organisms, conscious so that it could impart consciousness, and volitional, so that it could make a choice to bring this universe into being. What do you think?

Comments
Relatd @83,
It is valuable to throw out ideas in astronomy. Or, could it be this, or could it be that? Imaginative speculation combined with known information can create new frameworks that can be compared to the data.
Oh, absolutely! But they need to be termed speculations or hypotheses. For example, since Einstein, it's widely held that gravity is not a force but a local curvature or deformation of space-time. And whatever gravity is, it's NOT a dimension (or at least not a linear dimension). Ok, fine. So, what is gravity? There are lots of ideas, but the truth is simply, "we don't know" and shouldn't pretend to be certain. -QQuerius
August 29, 2022
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I have known a few brilliant people.
Is this when you were working with professional writers?Alan Fox
August 29, 2022
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Querius at 82, It is valuable to throw out ideas in astronomy. Or, could it be this, or could it be that? Imaginative speculation combined with known information can create new frameworks that can be compared to the data. It is not uncommon in physics to get good agreement between a new idea and most of the data. In other words, different plausible explanations can lead to discovering how things actually work. I suspect long-period comets follow an orbital path and then enter our solar system. There was no prize in my empty box, but there was a small, dead beetle at the bottom... I have known a few brilliant people. One was a scientist. The empty box problem was not an issue. They pursued their work.relatd
August 29, 2022
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Relatd @80,
I just opened my box of How to Make Life. On the back: Guaranteed NOT to Work!
Ha ha! But is there is a prize in the otherwise empty box? Or is the box simply there for display, since it occupies a conspicuous empty space on the shelf of scientific understanding? This is why I appreciate Sabine Hossenfelder's adamant but honest position of "we simply don't know." The darker side of putting "empty boxes on shelves" is that they obscure areas of scientific uncertainty and squash the natural curiosity of students from pursuing these areas. An example of this in my education was when I discovered in an astrophysics class that the Oort Cloud(s) was basically "an empty box" needed to explain why there are still long-period comets in our solar system after billions of years. The Oort Cloud functions as sort of a gumball machine around the solar system releasing new comets due to chaotic gravitational disturbances. Maybe it's true, but then, maybe not. From the NASA website:
The Oort Cloud is a predicted collection of icy objects farther away than everything else in the solar system. It fits with observations of comets in the planetary region of the solar system, but scientists have yet to observe any object in the Oort Cloud itself.
-QQuerius
August 29, 2022
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Querius/79 You suffer from a case of no-sense-of-humorousness. It's hard to tell what's worse, that or KF's chronic case of the-glass-is-half-emptyousness. You two must be a real hoot at parties......chuckdarwin
August 29, 2022
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Querius at 79, I just opened my box of How to Make Life. On the back: Guaranteed NOT to Work! It was empty...relatd
August 29, 2022
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. . . And thus the Darwinists once again retreat into the fatuous.
"There is no avoiding it {i.e. entropy} eventually. In the meantime, eat, drink and be merry"
"Rocks dream of being dogs"
"My Druid forebears communicated with rocks all the time"
Topic: "At Quanta: How The Physics Of Nothing Underlies Everything" Problem: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Solution is NOT: "The preexisting attributes of the universe musta caused the universe." -QQuerius
August 29, 2022
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Kairosfocus CD, we both know rocks have no dreams. KF
I didn't know that you are such a rockcist.Lieutenant Commander Data
August 29, 2022
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KF/76 My Druid forebears communicated with rocks all the time, including sharing stories of dreams and hopes. One of those dreams, and hopes, was that humans would treat them and the rest of Mother Nature with a bit more respect. But then Christians came along with their scriptural mandate to exercise dominion over the world and, well, we all know the rest of the story.......
Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, certainly, but degenerated to Vice. -- Friedrich Nietzsche, BGE
Perhaps you don't remember, or maybe it was before your time, but a number of years back, pet rocks were all the rage....chuckdarwin
August 29, 2022
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CD, we both know rocks have no dreams. KFkairosfocus
August 29, 2022
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WJM, no, while I do associate time's arrow with heat death eventually ~ 10^25 s after singularity as yardstick, that is not focal. My question has been, what is time on a cosmological scale. Where, we can profitably talk of a big bang 13.8 BYA, so a cosmological clock/calendar. Where, too, before/after by x years can make sense. The answer is, time is causally successive and proceeds by rates that are thermodynamically driven and yes at cosmological level. Where, further, the associated modern cosmology is intimately tied to General Relativity, thus of course factors in spacetime. That now allows us to see succession of stages of finite duration, years for convenience. It is that succession of stages that runs into logic of structure and quantity structure when one suggests or implies a transfinite past having been completed to reach our current epoch. That is the problem with infinite quasi-physical past cosmologies. Of course, going forward we reach an epoch where even white dwarfs have reached thermal equilibrium, heat death. There would be no clock process possible in such a cosmos and time would have run down to a stop much as an old fashioned spring driven clock. That is a consequence, not a main focus. I repeat, the focus is, what is time at cosmological scale. KF PS: Wikipedia confesses, having been shown the thumb screws:
Cosmic time, or cosmological time, is the time coordinate commonly used in the Big Bang models of physical cosmology.[1][2][3] Such time coordinate may be defined for a homogeneous, expanding universe so that the universe has the same density everywhere at each moment in time (the fact that this is possible means that the universe is, by definition, homogeneous). The clocks measuring cosmic time should move along the Hubble flow. Cosmic time t[4][5] is a measure of time by a physical clock with zero peculiar velocity in the absence of matter over-/under-densities (to prevent time dilation due to relativistic effects or confusions caused by expansion of the universe). Unlike other measures of time such as temperature, redshift, particle horizon, or Hubble horizon, the cosmic time (similar and complementary to the comoving coordinates) is blind to the expansion of the universe. There are two main ways for establishing a reference point for the cosmic time. The most trivial way is to take the present time as the cosmic reference point (sometimes referred to as the lookback time). Alternatively, the Big Bang may be taken as reference to define t as the age of the universe, also known as time since the big bang. The current physical cosmology estimates the present age as 13.8 billion years.[6] The t = 0 doesn't necessarily have to correspond to a physical event (such as the cosmological singularity) but rather it refers to the point at which the scale factor would vanish for a standard cosmological model such as ?CDM. For instance, in the case of inflation, i.e. a non-standard cosmology, the hypothetical moment of big bang is still determined using the benchmark cosmological models which may coincide with the end of the inflationary epoch. For technical purposes, concepts such as the average temperature of the universe (in units of eV) or the particle horizon are used when the early universe is the objective of a study since understanding the interaction among particles is more relevant than their time coordinate or age. Cosmic time is the standard time coordinate for specifying the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker solutions of Einstein's equations.
kairosfocus
August 29, 2022
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KF/71 I have it on the best of authority that rocks dream of being dogs, because everyone loves dogs. Folks are more ambivalent about rocks. The reason I know this is because my pet rock, who's getting up there, tells me so on occasion when it's in its more philosophical moods.....chuckdarwin
August 29, 2022
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KF @69: You are apparently referring to the theoretical consequences of a particular model of physics that predicts a temporal origin and an entropy-guided arrow of time towards the eventual heat death of the universe. This theory is just that: a theory that takes some (not all) evidence and interprets that evidence into a particular conclusion. That interpretive prediction is not a fact. It's just one way of interpreting SOME of the available evidence. That interpretation does not take into account, for example, the relativistic relationship between space and time, what physicists refer to as "spacetime." In this model, the past, present and future all eternally exist at the same time. IOW, if a big bang occurred (and recent Webb telescope images cast doubt on that,) and if there is an eventual entropic heat death of the universe, those things and everything in-between have always existed and will always exist. Therefore, if this universe was created, it was created beginning to end. However, the idea that it was "created" calls into question the before and after of that creation, which places the necessary "world zero" in a state not experienced by that creator as a passage through already-existent sequences of spacetime, because that just kicks the same can of worms up a notch, as I said. The big-bang to the entropic end of the universe scenario also does not take into account the accumulative evidence of 100 years of experimental research into quantum physics, which has clearly demonstrated that the essential requirement of the heath-death theory - the existence of matter and energy with objective states and characteristics that lead to that heat-death - do not actually exist. Rather, it has been demonstrated that our entire experience of reality is fundamentally one of mind and consciousness, not matter and energy. Your position is about one theoretical prediction that basically ignores over a hundred years of conflicting evidence, that conflicting evidence now increased dramatically by the pictures coming in from the Webb telescope. However this universe exists, it is *not* governed by self-existent thermodynamic process and a universal objective entropic arrow of time. That has clearly been demonstrated to be entirely artifacts of our experience at this point, not artifacts of "what the universe is" via spacetime relativity or quantum physics. The only way to escape the infinite regress of time problem is if this universe - whatever is - always existed and will always exist within a higher dimensional framework where time and location are aspects of relative personal experience moving through a static, eternal field of "all things that exist."William J Murray
August 29, 2022
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Logic doesn't work from outside of a person with worldview problem. A worldview it's like a toddler you love, take care of and invest emotionally everything you have . If someone come and tell you that you have to kill that toddler you can't even hear the logical argument of that person. To rebuild your worldview from the foundation you have to destroy the old one in which you invested love, years, energy . You don't have the stamina, the enthusiasm to start again at 40-50-60 years old to rebuild your worldview so you face a dilemma : you play dumb or start the most painfull endeavour ever .If you don't play dumb you have to accept that you practically lost all those years of your life in delusion having a false worldview.Lieutenant Commander Data
August 29, 2022
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Vivid, first, we need to learn that the senior discipline is actually philosophy, not science. For, it is logic of being that enables us to identify a true nothing: non-being. As in, what rocks dream of. Thus we see the u-no-verse, utter non being which having no causal capacity, were it ever the state of affairs, would forever obtain. So, as a world now is, something is necessary being and always was. So, we are debating root of reality, ground world w0. From that, we instantly realise that quantised fields with virtual particles and fluctuations etc are not a true nothing. So, while there is a lot of touting of a misnomer, causing confusion, we are seeing discussion of a hypothesised sub-verse, with clearly thermodynamically constrained processes. Therefore, the speculative q-foam subverse . . . it has not been observed . . . is not W0. So, we can clarify that it too would not be transfinite in the past. We have not here found a viable candidate for W0. KFkairosfocus
August 29, 2022
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CD, yes, kindly look in a mirror. Just above, I have pointed out one of the onward discussions we need to have, which has actually been under the hammer on the anvil here since 2016. Among other things, it is tied to our need to move our base vision of numbers to the hyperreals. Something that also makes a big difference to our vision of Calculus, the math of rates and accumulations of change. KFkairosfocus
August 29, 2022
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WJM, it just means that a causal-temporal, thermodynamically constrained cosmos is inherently finite in the past and so contingent. The onward discussion is how to characterise the root world, the world of necessary being, which must inherently be of eternal character. That is a big onward question but first we must be clear that as time is inextricably thermodynamic at cosmological scale and has finite durations -- years for convenience -- that succeed one another causally as thermodynamically constrained, it cannot have traversed an implicit or explicit past transfinite. And yes, I am pointing to the nature of time for a physical, thermodynamically constrained world; one with an arrow of time. KFkairosfocus
August 29, 2022
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Raymond Tallis? Humanist, yes. ID supporter?Alan Fox
August 29, 2022
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Thomas Nagel? Ok, seems he did say some kind things about ID.Alan Fox
August 29, 2022
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Lynn Margulis? Agnostic, yes. Supporter of ID?Alan Fox
August 29, 2022
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Jerry Fodor? Was he agnostic? Was he an "Intelligent Design" proponent? Seems his book What Darwin Got Wrong got a few things wrong.Alan Fox
August 29, 2022
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61 Vividbleau @61,
“We’re learning there’s a lot more to learn about nothing than we thought,”
This is an example of the manipulation of language. Can anyone tell me exactly what there is to learn about nothing? I am not asking about what we can learn from the quantum world which is a different kind of something but about no thing.
Yes, exactly! Nothingness is synonymous with non-existence. The Easter Bunny is also non-existent, thus the statement you quoted is equivalent in insight and scientific significance to:
“We’re learning there’s a lot more to learn about the Easter Bunny than we thought,”
Be still my beating heart . . . LOL -QQuerius
August 28, 2022
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Relatd @60, According to John 1:1 . . .
In the beginning was the Word (gr. Logos) and the Word was with God and the Word was God. This one was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and apart from him not one thing came into being that has come into being.
I don't pretend to understand this, but it seems like the source of all creation was information. Design is intimately related to the application of information. I find this pretty profound. -QQuerius
August 28, 2022
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Viola Lee @59, Thanks for taking a shot at my question. The reason that I asked was so you would think about the nature of design, the origin of design, and how we recognize design from randomness; whether design requires God or just intelligence; and from where we get the concept of "fairness." For my part, here are a variety of different reactions to a post on the appropriately named agnostic.com: https://agnostic.com/discussion/65774/intelligent-design
Intelligent design Is believing in the possibility of Intelligent Design at odds with being an Agnostic? The more I read about, and understand the theory of Intelligent Design, the more sense it makes to me. However, I don't feel this proves a God or God's are responsible for our universe.
And here's the answer to your question about agnostic supporters of ID. Nonreligious scientists and scholars who doubt modern Darwinian theory include former U.S. National Academy of Sciences biologist Lynn Margulis, medical professor Raymond Tallis, Rutgers cognitive scientist Jerry Fodor, and New York University philosopher and legal scholar Thomas Nagel—all of whom have publicly challenged neo-Darwinism and/or sympathized with ID. Also note that archaeologists and anthropologists frequently must decide whether a presumed artifact was designed by a human or natural in origin. This is not always easy. I once asked on this forum whether anyone would doubt that three rocks stacked on each other in the middle of a desert had a human or a natural origin. One person replied that in their experience, even two rocks stacked alone in the desert wasn't something natural. So, do you believe that after billions of years of earthquakes, that the added complexity apparent in three rocks stacked on each other are a sign of intelligent origin? -QQuerius
August 28, 2022
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“We’re learning there’s a lot more to learn about nothing than we thought,” This is an example of the manipulation of language. Can anyone tell me exactly what there is to learn about nothing? I am not asking about what we can learn from the quantum world which is a different kind of something but about no thing. Vividvividbleau
August 28, 2022
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Queriu at 57, In an attempt to answer your comments, a few things. God is outside of space-time. He is the uncaused cause. He created everything from nothing. Now some would not accept this but that is one explanation.relatd
August 28, 2022
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Q writes,
Yes, I can. [Name some ID proponents who are strong agnostics.] Can you first answer my question: • ID Depends on the Existence of an Unfair God As a strong agnostic, how would you respond to that assertion?
There are many different ideas about what ID might posit about the world, some of which don't even include a God, much less a God that has anything to do with "fairness". However, strong agnosticism is not about ID per se: it's broader than that. Strong agnosticism is the position that we can’t know what the nature of the ultimate origin of existence is. Perhaps, someone believes that “ID Depends on the Existence of an Unfair God”, but I don’t know, and am not interested in, whatever the arguments are for that assertion, and I don't know why you brought it up to me. Now, strong agnostic ID proponents? AF mentions Berlinksi. Anyone else?Viola Lee
August 28, 2022
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But AF was talking about a local effect, which he made perfectly clear: AF wrote, “But if you can find an energy source, you can remain out of equilibrium with your environment, or live – in other words, at least temporarily.” What he wrote does not show a lack of understanding of thermodynamics.
Entropy was something I struggled with for a long time before I was introduced to the idea of energy dispersal by Allan Miller, who shall remain nameless. (Oops) There is no avoiding it eventually. In the meantime, eat, drink and be merry...Alan Fox
August 28, 2022
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William J Murray @54, A good point. The problem is that we, as humans, cannot envision an extra-temporal existence or mind. I try to explain it as our comparison of looking down a meter stick of time, where events have a causal progression to turning that meter stick sideways where we can see all events on it occurring at the same time. But how can one take time out of that perspective? This is hard to do. I'm imagining a state machine where change can occur, but all at once. My best analogy is a large spreadsheet with formulas connecting all the cells and changes propagate instantly without requiring time, but change can occur probabilistically from a realm of all possibilities. Is this how it works with the Creator? I have no idea. A postulated entity to be the intelligence behind ID, is likely to be as inconceivable and incomprehensible to me as any attempt on my part to explain quantum mechanics to my poodle snoozing peacefully at my feet. -QQuerius
August 28, 2022
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KF/47 Sadly telling, indeed....chuckdarwin
August 28, 2022
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