Stephen Meyer: Can you have an expanding universe without a beginning?

_{Denyse O'Leary

October 6, 2021

Big Bang, Intelligent Design}

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Stephen Meyer offers some thoughts:

In this extended conversation released as part of the Science Uprising series, best-selling author Stephen Meyer discusses the big bang, whether you can have an expanding universe without a beginning, and the most common ways scientists have tried to avoid a beginning to the universe. Along the way, Meyer addresses the ideas of Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Edwin Hubble, Lawrence Krauss, Sean Carroll, and more.
Stephen Meyer is a philosopher of science and author of the book The Return of the God Hypothesis.

Comments

Belfast/21
Seversky at 17 Yes Yes Yes Now what do you do?
Keep on doing what we have been doing. Unless you can think of a better way of getting closer to the truth.Seversky_{October 9, 2021
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Indeed. And apparently atheistic meat robots, despite the fact that-- being the robots that they are-- they can only blindly follow instructions, believe that they can come to an accurate understanding of reality. Since, in their world view, there can only be blind non-rational forces behind these instructions I see no solid basis for their belief.Origenes on vacation_{October 9, 2021
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OoV, "Don’t they realize that it is the half-baken ‘neuronal illusion’ that is the edifice of science?" You would think it would be obvious to them. Apparently they are blind to that fact. For instance, there is this beauty of a quote from Jerry Coyne,,,
“You are robots made out of meat. Which is what I am going to try to convince you of today” Jerry Coyne – - (Science Uprising 02) – video https://youtu.be/rQo6SWjwQIk?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1OmYcqv_yQSpje4p7rAE7-&t=20
I don't care who you are, or how smart you think you are, it takes a LOT of gullibility to believe that you are a meat robot instead of a real person, :)bornagain77_{October 9, 2021
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Bornagain77:
Seversky, ‘you’, as a ‘neuronal illusion’, simply have no yardstick to measure your own reality with, much less do you have any way of ascertaining whether what somebody else experiences is real or not.
Hear! Hear! What baffles me is that atheists do not seem to understand that , what they call "neuronal illusion", is at the very foundation of all knowledge. Don't they realize that it is the half-baken 'neuronal illusion' who is doing and understanding science? It is almost as if they believe that they can do science & talk about consciousness from some position independent from consciousness.Origenes on vacation_{October 9, 2021
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As should be needless to say, Darwinists, by the very act of claiming they are merely 'neuronal illusions' and denying the fact that they really do exist as real persons,,,,
"There is no self in, around, or as part of anyone’s body. There can’t be. So there really isn’t any enduring self that ever could wake up morning after morning worrying about why it should bother getting out of bed. The self is just another illusion, like the illusion that thought is about stuff or that we carry around plans and purposes that give meaning to what our body does. Every morning’s introspectively fantasized self is a new one, remarkably similar to the one that consciousness ceased fantasizing when we fell sleep sometime the night before. Whatever purpose yesterday’s self thought it contrived to set the alarm last night, today’s newly fictionalized self is not identical to yesterday’s. It’s on its own, having to deal with the whole problem of why to bother getting out of bed all over again.,,, - Alex Rosenberg - Professor of Philosophy Duke University - The Atheist’s Guide to Reality, ch.10
,,, Darwinists, (by the very act of claiming they are merely 'neuronal illusions', and denying the fact that they really do exist as real persons), have completely lost any credibility that they might have had as to properly differentiating what is real from what it illusory,, But anyways, despite the fact that Seversky, (if he really exists as a real person), has completely lost any credibility whatsoever that he might have had as to properly differentiating that which is real from that which is illusory, Seversky still feels like he is perfectly qualified to comment that Near Death Experiences (NDEs) might be "something equivalent to a dream or hallucination".
Sev at 16: "I think the people reporting NDEs genuinely experienced what they describe. But there’s no way to verify them. They might simply be something equivalent to a dream or hallucination. They are certainly worth studying but I think people who interpret them as evidence of an afterlife are setting the evidentiary bar way too low."
Well golly gee whiz Seversky, according to your Darwinian premises, you yourself are "something equivalent to a dream or hallucination", so please pray tell how you, as "something equivalent to a dream or hallucination", were able to accurately surmise that somebody else's experience was "something equivalent to a dream or hallucination"? Seversky, 'you', as a 'neuronal illusion', simply have no yardstick to measure your own reality with, much less do you have any way of ascertaining whether what somebody else experiences is real or not. Moreover, in the following study, materialistic researchers, (who had a inherent atheistic bias against Near Death Experiences being real), set out to prove that NDEs were merely ‘false memories’ by setting up a clever questionnaire that could differentiate which memories a person had were real and which memories a person had were merely imaginary. Simply put, these materialistic researchers did not expect the results that they got. To quote the headline 'Afterlife' feels 'even more real than real”
'Afterlife' feels 'even more real than real,' researcher says - Wed April 10, 2013 Excerpt: "If you use this questionnaire ... if the memory is real, it's richer, and if the memory is recent, it's richer," he said. The coma scientists weren't expecting what the tests revealed. "To our surprise, NDEs were much richer than any imagined event or any real event of these coma survivors," Laureys reported. The memories of these experiences beat all other memories, hands down, for their vivid sense of reality. "The difference was so vast," he said with a sense of astonishment. Even if the patient had the experience a long time ago, its memory was as rich "as though it was yesterday," Laureys said. http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/09/health/belgium-near-death-experiences/ Memories of Near Death Experiences (NDEs): More Real Than Reality? - Mar. 27, 2013 Excerpt: University of Liège ,,,researchers,, have looked into the memories of NDE with the hypothesis that if the memories of NDE were pure products of the imagination, their phenomenological characteristics (e.g., sensorial, self referential, emotional, etc. details) should be closer to those of imagined memories. Conversely, if the NDE are experienced in a way similar to that of reality, their characteristics would be closer to the memories of real events. The researchers compared the responses provided by three groups of patients, each of which had survived (in a different manner) a coma, and a group of healthy volunteers. They studied the memories of NDE and the memories of real events and imagined events with the help of a questionnaire which evaluated the phenomenological characteristics of the memories. The results were surprising. From the perspective being studied, not only were the NDEs not similar to the memories of imagined events, but the phenomenological characteristics inherent to the memories of real events (e.g. memories of sensorial details) are even more numerous in the memories of NDE than in the memories of real events. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130327190359.htm
In fact, and in typical Darwinian fashion, the lead researcher in the preceding study did not believe the results of his own questionnaire and still holds NDEs to merely be 'false memories'. But regardless of the lead researcher's inherent atheistic bias, and his refusal to accept the conclusion of his own study, the results of his study remain clear, i.e. 'Afterlife' feels 'even more real than real'. Here are a few quotes on the ‘more real than real’ aspect of Near Death Experiences:
A Doctor’s Near Death Experience Inspires a New Life – video Quote: “It’s not like a dream. It’s like the world we are living in is a dream and it’s kind of like waking up from that.” Dr. Magrisso https://www.nbcchicago.com/local/a-doctor/2053401/ “More real than anything I’ve experienced since. When I came back of course I had 34 operations, and was in the hospital for 13 months. That was real but heaven is more real than that. The emotions and the feelings. The reality of being with people who had preceded me in death.” – Don Piper – “90 Minutes in Heaven,” 10 Years Later – video (2:54 minute mark) https://youtu.be/3LyZoNlKnMM?t=173 “I was in the spiritual dimension. And this spiritual dimension, this spiritual world, that’s the real world. And this spiritual man that I was seeing and perceiving, that was the real me. And I instantly knew it. The colors are brighter. The thoughts are more intense. The feelings have greater depth. They’re more real. In the spirit world instantly I knew that this is the real world.,,,” – The Near Death Experience of Mickey Robinson – video (testimony starts at 27:45 minute mark) https://youtu.be/voak1RM-pXo?t=1655 Medical Miracles – Dr. Mary Neal’s Near Death Experience – video (More real than real quote at 37:49 minute mark) https://youtu.be/WCNjmWP2JjU?t=2269 Dr. Eben Alexander Says It’s Time for Brain Science to Graduate From Kindergarten – 10/24/2013 Excerpt: To take the approach of, “Oh it had to be a hallucination of the brain” is just crazy. The simplistic idea that NDEs (Near Death Experiences) are a trick of a dying brain is similar to taking a piece of cardboard out of a pizza delivery box, rolling it down a hill and then claiming that it’s an identical event as rolling a beautiful Ferrari down a hill. They are not the same at all. The problem is the pure materialist scientists can be so closed-minded about it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ingrid-peschke/near-death-experiences_b_4151093.html
My question to atheistic materialists is this. "How is it remotely possible for something to be real for neuronal illusions in the first place?", much less, "How is it remotely possible for something to become even 'more real than real' for 'neuronal illusions'?
The Illusionist – Daniel Dennett’s latest book marks five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness. – 2017 Excerpt: “Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.” – David Bentley Hart https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-illusionist
This 'even more real than real' aspect of NDEs simply makes no sense whatsoever under materialistic presuppositions. In forsaking the necessity of their own immaterial mind to be the foundation for any coherent definition of reality that they may put forth, Atheists simply have no coherent basis and/or definition for reality that they can put forth that does not collapse into pure fantasy and imagination. As I have stated several times elsewhere now,
Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris), who has unreliable, (i.e. illusory), beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the reality of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Who, since beauty cannot be grounded within his materialistic worldview, must hold also beauty itself to be illusory (C. Darwin). Bottom line, nothing is truly real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, beauty, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,, – Darwinian Materialism and/or Methodological Naturalism vs. Reality – video - per YouTube
Whereas under Theistic presuppositions, in which the Mind of God is held to be the source for all reality, this ‘even more real than real’ aspect of NDEs is to be expected in that it pretty much directly follows that things will become even 'more real than real' for us the closer we get to God.
2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
bornagain77_{October 9, 2021
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seversky:
I think the people reporting NDEs genuinely experienced what they describe. But there’s no way to verify them. They might simply be something equivalent to a dream or hallucination. They are certainly worth studying but I think people who interpret them as evidence of an afterlife are setting the evidentiary bar way too low.
I think the people reporting UCD genuinely think they have experienced what they describe. But there’s no way to verify them. They might simply be something equivalent to a dream or hallucination. They are certainly worth studying but I think people who interpret them as evidence of a science are setting the evidentiary bar way too low.ET_{October 9, 2021
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The term "neuronal illusion" makes no sense no matter how you look at it. Isn't it telling, that in their attempt to deny consciousness they do not seem to be able to come up with a coherent term?Origenes on vacation_{October 9, 2021
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At 16 Seversky states,
I think the people reporting NDEs genuinely experienced what they describe. But there’s no way to verify them. They might simply be something equivalent to a dream or hallucination. They are certainly worth studying but I think people who interpret them as evidence of an afterlife are setting the evidentiary bar way too low.
As to his very first sentence, "I think the people reporting NDEs genuinely experienced what they describe." Yet, if Seversky's Darwinian worldview were actually true then there are no people who are having genuine experiences. Under Darwinian premises, People become 'neuronal illusions' who are merely having 'constructed representations' of reality, and who are not having genuine experiences of reality. In short, in Darwinian evolution were actually true, people become illusions who are merely having illusions of experience.
The Brain: The Mystery of Consciousness - Monday, Jan. 29, 2007 Part II THE ILLUSION OF CONTROL Another startling conclusion from the science of consciousness is that the intuitive feeling we have that there's an executive "I" that sits in a control room of our brain, scanning the screens of the senses and pushing the buttons of the muscles, is an illusion. Steven Pinker - Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University http://www.academia.edu/2794859/The_Brain_The_Mystery_of_Consciousness “the illusion that our brains evolved to have, a very compelling and persistent illusion – namely that the reality we perceive is real, rather than a constructed representation.” – Steven Novella – academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine
The primary reason for this catastrophic epistemological failure inherent within Darwinian theory is that 'Personhood' itself is an abstract concept of the immaterial mind that can find no grounding within the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution.
What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? - M. Anthony Mills - April 16, 2018 Excerpt: Barr rightly observes that scientific atheists often unwittingly assume not just metaphysical naturalism but an even more controversial philosophical position: reductive materialism, which says all that exists is or is reducible to the material constituents postulated by our most fundamental physical theories. As Barr points out, this implies not only that God does not exist — because God is not material — but that you do not exist. For you are not a material constituent postulated by any of our most fundamental physical theories; at best, you are an aggregate of those constituents, arranged in a particular way. Not just you, but tables, chairs, countries, countrymen, symphonies, jokes, legal contracts, moral judgments, and acts of courage or cowardice — all of these must be fully explicable in terms of those more fundamental, material constituents. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html
i.e. How much does the concept of person weigh? How fast is the concept of person? Is the concept of person positively or negatively charged? etc.. etc.. 'Persons' simply don't exist on the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution since 'persons' can't possibly be reduced to purely materialistic explanations! This Darwinian claim, (that people do not really exist as real people but that they are merely 'neuronal illusions' who are have 'constructed representations' of reality), is a very interesting claim for Darwinian atheists to make. First off, as Rene Descartes himself pointed out, the fact that we really exist as real persons is, by far, the most certain fact that we can possibly know about reality. In fact, Rene Descartes, via his ‘method of doubt’, found that he could doubt the existence of all things save for the fact that he existed in order to do the doubting in the first place, “As Descartes explained, “we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt….”
Cogito, ergo sum Cogito, ergo sum[a] is a Latin philosophical proposition by René Descartes usually translated into English as “I think, therefore I am”.[b] The phrase originally appeared in French as je pense, donc je suis in his Discourse on the Method, so as to reach a wider audience than Latin would have allowed.[1] It appeared in Latin in his later Principles of Philosophy. As Descartes explained, “we cannot doubt of our existence while we doubt….” A fuller version, articulated by Antoine Léonard Thomas, aptly captures Descartes’s intent: dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum (“I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am”).[c][d] The concept is also sometimes known as the cogito.[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cogito,_ergo_sum
And as Eugene Wigner pointed out, “The principal argument against materialism is not that illustrated in the last two sections: that it is incompatible with quantum theory. The principal argument is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied."
“The principal argument against materialism is not that illustrated in the last two sections: that it is incompatible with quantum theory. The principal argument is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied. On the contrary, logically, the external world could be denied—though it is not very practical to do so. In the words of Niels Bohr, “The word consciousness, applied to ourselves as well as to others, is indispensable when dealing with the human situation.” In view of all this, one may well wonder how materialism, the doctrine that “life could be explained by sophisticated combinations of physical and chemical laws,” could so long be accepted by the majority of scientists." – Eugene Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, pp 167-177.
Yet Darwinian atheists, via their reductive materialistic framework, are, apparently, forced to deny this, by far, most certain fact that we can possibly know about reality and to deny that they really do exist as a real people. Yet, if this were actually so, and as Ross Douthat bluntly asked Jerry Coyne, "why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit?"
The Confidence of Jerry Coyne – Ross Douthat – January 6, 2014 Excerpt: But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession (by Coyne) that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary. https://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?mcubz=3
Moreover, far from 'illusory selves' having 'constructed representations' of reality, i.e. having illusions of reality,
The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality - April 2016 The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. Excerpt: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/
, far from 'illusory selves' having 'constructed representations' of reality, i.e. having illusions of reality, we now know, via advances in quantum mechanics, that our conscious observations of reality take primacy over the existence of what we consider to be an external material reality. As the following Wheeler's Delayed Choice that was done with atoms found, ““It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015 Excerpt: Some particles, such as photons or electrons, can behave both as particles and as waves. Here comes a question of what exactly makes a photon or an electron act either as a particle or a wave. This is what Wheeler’s experiment asks: at what point does an object ‘decide’? The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html
And as the following falsification of 'realism' found, "Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it."
Quantum physics says goodbye to reality - Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell's inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell's inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics.?Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization.?They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640
Thus, directly contrary to the Darwinian claim that our observations of reality are merely 'constructed representations' of reality, and are therefore not to be held as reliable observations of reality, we instead find that our observations of reality precede the very existence of material reality, and therefore, vis that finding, our observations are found to be far more reliable of reliable of reality than what is held to be true under Darwinian presuppositions. Which is very fortunate for us since reliable observation happens to be a necessary cornerstone of the entire scientific method itself
The scientific method https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/82/The_Scientific_Method.svg/520px-The_Scientific_Method.svg.png
In short, via the Darwinian claim that we cannot have reliable observations of reality, Darwinian evolution undermines its own claim that it is based upon the scientific method. Thus, in the very first sentence I highlighted from Seversky from post 16, we find that Seversky has, once again, made a couple of demonstrably false claims. I will try to address the rest of Seversky's fallacious comment at 16 later on this morning, but for now I will let it simmer that his very first sentence falsifies his entire Darwinian worldview.bornagain77_{October 9, 2021
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Seversky at 17 Yes Yes Yes Now what do you do?Belfast_{October 8, 2021
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[Given what we think we know about the universe,] can you have an expanding universe without a beginning? Nobody knows. Astrophysics is still in its infancy. -Ramram_{October 8, 2021
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Sev at 16: I think that would be true if the consistencies for thousands and thousands and thousands weren't there. But they are. Ignore at your peril. One piece of a much larger pie.AnimatedDust_{October 8, 2021
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You are almost as good of a spin doctor
Another specious comment. Supports my assessment.jerry_{October 8, 2021
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Bornagain77/13
Since you are apparently adverse to having your atheistic worldview challenged in any way, shape, or form, and refuse to even watch the video, I will quote the relevant part of the video to you,
Did Meyer happen to mention that there are three or four variants of cyclic or oscillating universe models? Did he point out that the Big Bang theory is no longer held to necessarily point to a primordial singularity? Did he point out that science makes no claim to definite knowledge of how the Universe started or even if it had a beginning?Seversky_{October 8, 2021
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AnimatedDust/10
Seversky loves to pick and choose what he responds to. Sev, why don’t you have the slightest commentary on all those evidential examples from people who have had NDEs? What do you make of those?
I think the people reporting NDEs genuinely experienced what they describe. But there's no way to verify them. They might simply be something equivalent to a dream or hallucination. They are certainly worth studying but I think people who interpret them as evidence of an afterlife are setting the evidentiary bar way too low.Seversky_{October 8, 2021
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#14 Jerry Jerry You are almost as good of a spin doctor as the folks at the Discovery Institute. Keep working on it... :-)chuckdarwin_{October 8, 2021
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If you’ve heard one Meyers video …. you’ve heard them all…….
True! Fantastic complement!!! Correct thinking has a way of repeating itself. Aside: Seversky and ChuckDarwin are two of the best ID supporters here. By making one specious comment after the other, they are providing credence to ID with every comment they make.jerry_{October 8, 2021
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Seversky asks, "What particular false claim did you have in mind?" Well although, over the years, you have made a myriad of false claims, the only false claim that you have made in this particular thread, in relation to the video in the OP, has been at post 3 where you claimed that, "You could have a bouncing universe that goes through expansion and contraction cycles." Since you are apparently adverse to having your atheistic worldview challenged in any way, shape, or form, and refuse to even watch the video, I will quote the relevant part of the video to you,
"That (oscillating universe) theory ran into two big problems. The first was that it was discovered that there was not enough matter in the universe, even counting dark matter,,, to cause the universe to recollapse. And secondly, it was determined by thermodynamic analysis, by an MIT physicist named Alan Guth, which showed that the energy available to do work would diminish with each successive cycle. That there would be a build-up of entropy, and therefore less energy available to cause a outward push. So even if there was an outward push it would be smaller and eventually each successive outward push would be smaller and smaller and smaller. It would be kind of like a ball bouncing to the ground and then finally it would damp out to a nullifying equilibrium with no more bounces. Now if the universe had been infinitely old then that means we should have reached that nullifying equilibrium point long ago. But since we aren't at such a point we can infer that the universe wasn't infinitely old and there still must be a beginning. So even if there were a series of bounces there must have been a beginning was the conclusion. So the oscillating universe also ran into trouble for theoretical and observational reasons and so the idea of the Big Bang really began to be accepted pretty widely by the 1970s and 80s." - Stephen Meyer Discusses the Big Bang, Einstein, Hawking, and More - 19:20 minute mark https://youtu.be/m_AeA4fMHhI?t=1160
Of supplemental note:
Mathematics of Eternity Prove The Universe Must Have Had A Beginning - April 2012 Excerpt: Cosmologists use the mathematical properties of eternity to show that although universe may last forever, it must have had a beginning.,,, They go on to show that cyclical universes and universes of eternal inflation both expand in this way. So they cannot be eternal in the past and must therefore have had a beginning. "Although inflation may be eternal in the future, it cannot be extended indefinitely to the past," they say. They treat the emergent model of the universe differently, showing that although it may seem stable from a classical point of view, it is unstable from a quantum mechanical point of view. "A simple emergent universe model...cannot escape quantum collapse," they say. The conclusion is inescapable. "None of these scenarios can actually be past-eternal," say Mithani and Vilenkin. Since the observational evidence is that our universe is expanding, then it must also have been born in the past. A profound conclusion (albeit the same one that lead to the idea of the big bang in the first place). http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27793/
bornagain77_{October 7, 2021
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I'm with Seversky on this one. If you've heard one Meyers video/lecture/debate/sermon, you've heard them all.......chuckdarwin_{October 7, 2021
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Be careful with that title! Mathematically, You CAN Have An Expanding Universe Without A Beginning! Set R(t) = A/( To-t), where R(t) is the rate of expansion at time t. A is a constant, and To is some positive, fixed time, say 100 billion years or whatever. Then t = 0 is "now", and as t approaches To in the distant future, the expansion will grow without limit. Going back in time, for t < 0, you can see that the expansion is always positive and remains so, no matter how far back you go. Thus, in principle, there is no beginning, yet the universe has always been expanding. If you are concerned about integrating the expansion back in time to find an infinite expansion, then how is that any different from the expansion from a singularity at the Big Bang up to today, all in a mere 14 billion years? Of course we could get around that in another way by using the following: R(t) = B/(To-t)^2 Then the integral back to negative infinity is not infinite. Of course, I don't actually believe this, but it does show that, in principle, you can have an ever-expanding universe without a beginning.Fasteddious_{October 7, 2021
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Seversky loves to pick and choose what he responds to. Sev, why don't you have the slightest commentary on all those evidential examples from people who have had NDEs? What do you make of those? Are they all delusional? No one will ever be able to argue that they didn't have enough evidence when the curtain falls. BA's posts are long, but they are a treasure of evidence for his claims.AnimatedDust_{October 7, 2021
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Bornagain77/7
Whatever Seversky. You made a false claim. That false claim was addressed in the video. Most people would be embarrassed by the fact that they had made a false claim. Apparently making false claims and not being bothered by it is just part of the cost of being an Atheist.
What particular false claim did you have in mind?Seversky_{October 7, 2021
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not related, but lots of people like Chris Hitchens... this was a pretty entertaining cut from a debate. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwfAQzyqwNIzweston_{October 7, 2021
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Whatever Seversky. You made a false claim. That false claim was addressed in the video. Most people would be embarrassed by the fact that they had made a false claim. Apparently making false claims and not being bothered by it is just part of the cost of being an Atheist. Different day, same modus operandi.
A Defense of the (Divine) revelation against the objections of freethinkers (atheists), by Mr. (Leonhard) Euler Excerpt: "The freethinkers (atheists) have yet to produce any objections that have not long been refuted most thoroughly. But since they are not motivated by the love of truth, and since they have an entirely different point of view, we should not be surprised that the best refutations count for nothing and that the weakest and most ridiculous reasoning, which has so often been shown to be baseless, is continuously repeated. If these people maintained the slightest rigor, the slightest taste for the truth, it would be quite easy to steer them away from their errors; but their tendency towards stubbornness makes this completely impossible." http://www.math.dartmouth.edu/~euler/docs/translations/E092trans.pdf (Leonhard) Euler is held to be one of the greatest mathematicians in history and the greatest of the 18th century. A statement attributed to Pierre-Simon Laplace expresses Euler's influence on mathematics: "Read Euler, read Euler, he is the master of us all."[4][5] Carl Friedrich Gauss remarked: "The study of Euler's works will remain the best school for the different fields of mathematics, and nothing else can replace it."[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler
bornagain77_{October 7, 2021
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There are a lot of things I want to watch before Meyer's video. You might find this instructive.Seversky_{October 7, 2021
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Perhaps Seversky should have actually watched the video before commenting on "bouncing universes'?bornagain77_{October 7, 2021
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Something cannot come from nothing, unless you redefine nothing...to something.zweston_{October 7, 2021
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You could have a bouncing universe that goes through expansion and contraction cycles. Maybe that's God's equivalent of that scene from The Great Escape where Steve McQueen passes his time in the cooler by repeatedly bouncing a baseball off the floor and wall of his cell.Seversky_{October 7, 2021
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It is also interesting to note that, via special relativity, (prior to Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin’s proof that the space-time of this universe must have had an absolute beginning), we already knew that time, as we understand it, comes to a complete stop at the speed of light.
“The laws of relativity have changed timeless existence from a theological claim to a physical reality. Light, you see, is outside of time, a fact of nature proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities. I don’t pretend to know how tomorrow can exist simultaneously with today and yesterday. But at the speed of light they actually and rigorously do. Time does not pass.” – Dr. Richard Swenson – More Than Meets The Eye, Chpt. 11 Time dilation Special relativity indicates that, for an observer in an inertial frame of reference, a clock that is moving relative to them will be measured to tick slower than a clock that is at rest in their frame of reference. This case is sometimes called special relativistic time dilation. The faster the relative velocity, the greater the time dilation between one another, with the rate of time reaching zero as one approaches the speed of light (299,792,458 m/s). This causes massless particles that travel at the speed of light to be unaffected by the passage of time.,,, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_dilation#Gravitational_time_dilation
So that time and space, as we understand them, would be shown to have an absolute beginning by Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin, is not really all that surprising. i.e. We already knew, via thousands of tests on special relativity, that time, as we understand it, comes 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 special relativity.
“In the spring of 1905, Einstein was riding on a bus and he looked back at the famous clock tower that dominates Bern Switzerland. And then he imagined, “What happens if that bus were racing near the speed of light?”, (narrator: “In his imagination, Einstein looks back at the clock tower and what he sees is astonishing. As he reaches the speed of light, the hands of the clock appear frozen in time”), “Einstein would later write, “A storm broke in my mind. All of the sudden everything, everything, kept gushing forward.”, (narrator: “Einstein knows that, back at the clock tower, time is passing normally, but on Einstein’s light speed bus, as he reaches the speed of light, the light from the clock can no longer catch up to him. The faster he races through space, the slower he moves through time. This insight sparks the birth of Einstein’s Special Theory of relativity, which says that space and time are deeply connected. In fact, they are one and the same. A flexible fabric called spacetime.”) – Michio Kaku Einstein: Einstein’s Miracle Year (‘Insight into Eternity’ – Thought Experiment – 6:29 minute mark) – video https://youtu.be/QQ35opgrhNA?t=389
It is also interesting to note what happens when we turn the hypothetical observer around 180 degrees in Einstein’s thought experiment and, instead of visualizing the clock face as Einstein did in his original thought experiment, we instead visualize what will happen to space-time itself as we approach the speed of light. At the 3:22 mark of the following video, which is entitled “Optical Effects of Special Relativity”, we find that the 3-Dimensional world, basically, ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape as a ‘hypothetical observer’ approaches the speed of light, (this is also known as the 'headlight effect')
Optical Effects of Special Relativity – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQnHTKZBTI4
Believe it or not, and as counterintuitive as it may seem at first glance, this 'folding and collapsing' of the 3-dimensional world into a tunnel shape makes perfect sense. Namely, since time, as we understand it, does not pass for light, and yet light obviously moves from point A to point B in our universe, and therefore light is obviously not ‘frozen within time’, then it logically follows that light must be of a ‘higher dimension’ of time. If light did not have this ‘higher dimensional’ quality to it, light would simply be ‘frozen within time’ since time, as we understand it, does not pass for it. Moreover, while it is very difficult to see how the higher dimensional 4-D space-time of special relativity would make any sense whatsoever for the Atheistic Naturalist, on the other hand, for the Christian Theist, it is ‘expected’ that this universe would be described by higher dimensional mathematics. Namely, Christian Theism ‘predicted’ that this universe was created by God from the ‘highest heavens’ which ‘belong’ to Him.
Psalm 115: 2-3 and 15-16 Why do the nations say, “Where is their God?” Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him.,,,, May you be blessed by the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth. The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to man.
In short, Christian Theism ‘predicted’ the universe to be created from a ‘higher dimension’ thousands of years before the higher dimensional mathematics that describe our universe were even elucidated.
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here,,,, We now have, in physics, two theories of great power and interest: the theory of quantum phenomena and the theory of relativity.,,, The two theories operate with different mathematical concepts – the four dimensional Riemann space and the infinite dimensional Hilbert space, respectively.,,, https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/wigner.pdf
Moreover, stunning confirmation for special relativity, namely confirmation for the time-dilation and the 4-D space-time curvature of special relativity, comes from a very surprising place. Namely, Near Death Experiences, of all things, offer stunning confirmation for what special relativity predicts. In the following video clip, Mickey Robinson gives his Near Death testimony of what it felt like for him to experience a ‘timeless eternity’.
‘In the ‘spirit world,,, instantly, there was no sense of time. See, everything on earth is related to time. You got up this morning, you are going to go to bed tonight. Something is new, it will get old. Something is born, it’s going to die. Everything on the physical plane is relative to time, but everything in the spiritual plane is relative to eternity. Instantly I was in total consciousness and awareness of eternity, and you and I as we live in this earth cannot even comprehend it, because everything that we have here is filled within the veil of the temporal life. In the spirit life that is more real than anything else and it is awesome. Eternity as a concept is awesome. There is no such thing as time. I knew that whatever happened was going to go on and on.’ In The Presence Of Almighty God – The NDE of Mickey Robinson – video (testimony starts at 27:45 minute mark) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voak1RM-pXo
And here are a few more quotes from people who have experienced Near Death, that speak of how their perception of time was radically altered as they were outside of their material body.
‘Earthly time has no meaning in the spirit realm. There is no concept of before or after. Everything – past, present, future – exists simultaneously.’ – Kimberly Clark Sharp – Near Death Experiencer ‘There is no way to tell whether minutes, hours or years go by. Existence is the only reality and it is inseparable from the eternal now.’ – John Star – NDE Experiencer
As well, Near Death Experiencers also frequently mention going through a tunnel to a higher heavenly dimension:
Ask the Experts: What Is a Near-Death Experience (NDE)? – article with video Excerpt: “Very often as they’re moving through the tunnel, there’s a very bright mystical light … not like a light we’re used to in our earthly lives. People call this mystical light, brilliant like a million times a million suns…” – Jeffrey Long M.D. – has studied NDE’s extensively – abcnews nightline The Tunnel and the Near-Death Experience Excerpt: One of the nine elements that generally occur during NDEs is the tunnel experience. This involves being drawn into darkness through a tunnel, at an extremely high speed, until reaching a realm of radiant golden-white light. – near death research
In the following video, Barbara Springer gives her testimony as to what it felt like for her to go through the tunnel to the ‘higher dimension’ of heaven:
“I started to move toward the light. The way I moved, the physics, was completely different than it is here on Earth. It was something I had never felt before and never felt since. It was a whole different sensation of motion. I obviously wasn’t walking or skipping or crawling. I was not floating. I was flowing. I was flowing toward the light. I was accelerating and I knew I was accelerating, but then again, I didn’t really feel the acceleration. I just knew I was accelerating toward the light. Again, the physics was different – the physics of motion of time, space, travel. It was completely different in that tunnel, than it is here on Earth. I came out into the light and when I came out into the light, I realized that I was in heaven.” Barbara Springer – Near Death Experience – The Tunnel – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gv2jLeoAcMI
And in the following audio clip, Vicki Noratuk, who has been blind from birth, besides being able to see for the first time during in her life during her Near Death Experience, also gives testimony of going through a tunnel:
“I was in a body, and the only way that I can describe it was a body of energy, or of light. And this body had a form. It had a head, it had arms and it had legs. And it was like it was made out of light. And it was everything that was me. All of my memories, my consciousness, everything.”,,, “And then this vehicle formed itself around me. Vehicle is the only thing, or tube, or something, but it was a mode of transportation that’s for sure! And it formed around me. And there was no one in it with me. I was in it alone. But I knew there were other people ahead of me and behind me. What they were doing I don’t know, but there were people ahead of me and people behind me, but I was alone in my particular conveyance. And I could see out of it. And it went at a tremendously, horrifically, rapid rate of speed. But it wasn’t unpleasant. It was beautiful in fact.,, I was reclining in this thing, I wasn’t sitting straight up, but I wasn’t lying down either. I was sitting back. And it was just so fast. I can’t even begin to tell you where it went or whatever it was just fast!” – Vicki’s NDE – Blind since birth – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e65KhcCS5-Y
And the following people who had a NDE both testify that they firmly believed that they were in a higher dimension that is above this three-dimensional world and that the primary reason that they have a very difficult time explaining what their Near Death Experiences felt like is because we simply don’t currently have the words to properly describe that higher dimension:
“Regardless, it is impossible for me to adequately describe what I saw and felt. When I try to recount my experiences now, the description feels very pale. I feel as though I’m trying to describe a three-dimensional experience while living in a two-dimensional world. The appropriate words, descriptions and concepts don’t even exist in our current language. I have subsequently read the accounts of other people’s near-death experiences and their portrayals of heaven and I able to see the same limitations in their descriptions and vocabulary that I see in my own.” – Mary C. Neal, MD – To Heaven And Back pg. 71 “Well, when I was taking geometry, they always told me there were only three dimensions, and I always just accepted that. But they were wrong. There are more… And that is why so hard for me to tell you this. I have to describe with words that are three-dimensional. That’s as close as I can get to it, but it’s really not adequate.” – John Burke – Imagine Heaven pg. 51 – quoting a Near Death Experiencer
That what we now know to be true from special relativity, (namely that it outlines a ‘timeless’, i.e. eternal, dimension that exists in a higher dimension above this temporal dimension), would fit hand and glove with the personal testimonies of people who have had deep heavenly NDEs is, needless to say, (very) powerful evidence that their testimonies are, in fact, true and that they are accurately describing the ‘reality’ of a higher heavenly dimension that exists above this temporal dimension. I would even go so far as to say that such corroboration from ‘non-physicists’, who, in all likelihood, know nothing about the intricacies of special relativity, is a complete verification of the overall validity of their personal NDE testimonies. It is simply astonishing that Special Relativity, (one of our best theories in science), and deep Near Death Experience Testimonies, (which are explicitly 'spiritual' in their foundational character), would find such harmony with one another in order to validate the reality of a heavenly eternal paradise that exists above this temporal dimension. Again, it is simply astonishing that 'hard science' would so beautifully corroborate what is so profoundly spiritual in its foundational character.. Verse:
2 Corinthians 12:2-4 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.
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At the 36:42 minute mark of the video, Dr. Meyer states,
"There is another development in theoretical physics called the Borde, Guth, Vilenkin theorem. And its not based on General Relativity but its based on Special Relativity. And for that reason it is not effected by postulations about what gravity might or might not have been like in the first tiny smidgen of time after the beginning of the universe. And it is those speculations that prevented the Hawking, Penrose, Ellis, singularity theorem from absolutely proving a beginning point. Instead the Borde, Guth, Vilenkin, theorem proves a beginning to the universe on the basis of considerations from special relativity that have nothing to do with whether or not there were quantum fluctuations within the first tiny smidgen of time after the beginning of the universe, and whether gravity might have worked differently or not. Instead it is independent of all those kind of considerations and caveats that prevent us from saying that the Hawking, Penrose, Ellis, results are absolute proofs (for a beginning of the universe). Instead you have a very strong proof of a beginning from theoretical physics that is not dependent on these conditions.",,, - Stephen Meyer Discusses the Big Bang, Einstein, Hawking, and More – video – 36:42 minute mark https://youtu.be/m_AeA4fMHhI?t=2202
Although I was aware of atheists trying to force all types of speculations into the first tiny smidgen of time in order to avoid an absolute beginning to the universe, as is implied by the Hawking, Penrose, Ellis, singularity theorem,,,
Big Bang Theory – An Overview of the main evidence Excerpt: Steven Hawking, George Ellis, and Roger Penrose turned their attention to the Theory of Relativity and its implications regarding our notions of time. In 1968 and 1970, they published papers in which they extended Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity to include measurements of time and space.1, 2 According to their calculations, time and space had a finite beginning that corresponded to the origin of matter and energy.”3 Steven W. Hawking, George F.R. Ellis, “The Cosmic Black-Body Radiation and the Existence of Singularities in our Universe,” Astrophysical Journal, 152, (1968) pp. 25-36. Steven W. Hawking, Roger Penrose, “The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, series A, 314 (1970) pp. 529-548. http://www.big-bang-theory.com/ “Every solution to the equations of general relativity guarantees the existence of a singular boundary for space and time in the past.” (Hawking, Penrose, Ellis) – 1970 “Before he worked on black hole evaporation, Hawking worked with Penrose on the singularity theorems. Penrose’s theorem showed that, in contrast to what most physicists believed at the time, black holes are a pretty much unavoidable consequence of stellar collapse. Before that, physicists thought black holes are mathematical curiosities that would not be produced in reality. It was only because of the singularity theorems that black holes began to be taken seriously. Eventually astronomers looked for them, and now we have solid experimental evidence that black holes exist. Hawking applied the same method to the early universe to show that the Big Bang singularity is likewise unavoidable, unless General Relativity somehow breaks down. And that is an absolutely amazing insight about the origin of our universe.” – Sabine Hossenfelder
Although I was aware of atheists trying to force all types of their speculations into the first tiny smidgen of time after the beginning of the universe in order to avoid an absolute beginning to the universe, as is implied by the Hawking, Penrose, Ellis, singularity theorem, I was not aware that Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin, ingenuously, used special relativity, instead of General Relativity, in order to bypass the speculations that atheists were trying to cram into that first tiny smidgen of time, and so as to provide a more robust proof that the universe had an absolute beginning than was available with the Hawking, Penrose, Ellis, singularity theory alone.
Inflationary spacetimes are not past-complete – 2003 Arvind Borde,1, 2 Alan H. Guth,1, 3 and Alexander Vilenkin1 Excerpt: we will construct a definition for H that depends only on the relative motion of the observer and test particles. In order to motivate what we do, we first consider the case of nonrelativistic velocities in Minkowski space. Suppose that the observer measures the velocities of the test particles as a function of the time t on his own clock.,,, IV. Discussion. Our argument shows that null and time- like geodesics are, in general, past-incomplete in inflationary models, whether or not energy conditions hold, provided only that the averaged expansion condition Hav > 0 holds along these past-directed geodesics. This is a stronger conclusion than the one arrived at in previous work [8] in that we have shown under reasonable assumptions that almost all causal geodesics, when extended to the past of an arbitrary point, reach the boundary of the inflating region of spacetime in a finite proper time (finite affine length, in the null case). https://www.brainmaster.com/software/pubs/physics/Inflation%20past0110012v2.pdf
As soon as I learned from Dr. Meyer that Borde, Guth, and Vilenkin had used Special Relativity instead of General Relativity, to provide a more robust proof for an absolute beginning to the universe it immediately made a lot of sense to me. The reason that it makes a lot of sense to me that Special Relativity would provide a more robust proof for an absolute beginning for the universe, than General Relativity was capable of doing, is that Special Relativity, via renormalization, and/or ‘brushing infinity under the rug’, has already been ‘unified’ with quantum mechanics, whereas General Relativity, notoriously and infamously, refuses to ‘play nicely’ with the other forces and particles and be 'unified' with the other forces and particles in a single mathematical framework.
Theories of the Universe: Quantum Mechanics vs. General Relativity Excerpt: The first attempt at unifying relativity and quantum mechanics took place when special relativity was merged with electromagnetism. This created the theory of quantum electrodynamics, or QED. It is an example of what has come to be known as relativistic quantum field theory, or just quantum field theory. QED is considered by most physicists to be the most precise theory of natural phenomena ever developed. In the 1960s and ’70s, the success of QED prompted other physicists to try an analogous approach to unifying the weak, the strong, and the gravitational forces. Out of these discoveries came another set of theories that merged the strong and weak forces called quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, and quantum electroweak theory, or simply the electroweak theory, which you’ve already been introduced to. If you examine the forces and particles that have been combined in the theories we just covered, you’ll notice that the obvious force missing is that of gravity (i.e. General Relativity). http://www.infoplease.com/cig/theories-universe/quantum-mechanics-vs-general-relativity.html
So that Special Relativity would provide a more robust proof for an absolute beginning of the universe than general relativity capable of doing simply makes a lot of sense to me since special relativity has already been ‘unified’ with the other forces and particles of the universe, and thus it directly follows that Special Relativity can 'naturally' offer us a more accurate description of what the other forces and particles are doing at various points in space-time. It is also interesting to note, prior to Einstein’s elucidation of the 4-D space-time of General Relativity circa 1915, that “In 1908, Hermann Minkowski—once one of the math professors of a young Einstein in Zurich—presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions of space into a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space.” In fact, in 1916, Einstein fully acknowledged his indebtedness to Minkowski, whose (geometric) interpretation (of special relativity) greatly facilitated the transition to general relativity.
Spacetime Excerpt: In 1908, Hermann Minkowski—once one of the math professors of a young Einstein in Zurich—presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions of space into a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space. A key feature of this interpretation is the definition of a spacetime interval that combines distance and time. Although measurements of distance and time between events differ for measurements made in different reference frames, the spacetime interval is independent of the inertial frame of reference in which they are recorded. Minkowski’s geometric interpretation of relativity was to prove vital to Einstein’s development of his 1915 general theory of relativity, wherein he showed that spacetime becomes curved in the presence of mass or energy.,,, Einstein, for his part, was initially dismissive of Minkowski’s geometric interpretation of special relativity, regarding it as überflüssige Gelehrsamkeit (superfluous learnedness). However, in order to complete his search for general relativity that started in 1907, the geometric interpretation of relativity proved to be vital, and in 1916, Einstein fully acknowledged his indebtedness to Minkowski, whose interpretation greatly facilitated the transition to general relativity.[10]:151–152 Since there are other types of spacetime, such as the curved spacetime of general relativity, the spacetime of special relativity is today known as Minkowski spacetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime Beyond the Surface of Einstein’s Relativity Lay a Chimerical Geometry BY VASUDEVAN MUKUNTH – 10/09/2015 Excerpt: let’s skip forward to July 1912, when Einstein had just returned from Prague to Zurich. The first thing he did was to speak to his friend Marcel Grossmann, who was also the head of the maths department at the Zurich Polytechnic: “Grossmann, you’ve got to help me or I will go crazy” (Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson, p. 193).,,, The problem was that Einstein didn’t know the mathematical laws that described the properties of the gravitational field he was trying to uncover. When working on his special theory of relativity, he hadn’t bothered with the mathematical rules of the system – only their physical properties and behaviour. It was after he’d published his results that his former teacher, Hermann Minkowski, described the geometry of special relativity’s space-time, since called Minkowski space-time. But with general relativity, Einstein felt he needed to explore the maths himself as he was starting to realise it would help him make discoveries that lay beyond the reach of his famed intuition.,,, Grossmann referred Einstein to the work of Riemann,,, Einstein had only popularised what Riemann had found in 1854.,,, Einstein’s theories were contested by various mathematicians who saw in his conception of relativity the imprint of their discoveries in geometry – in turn drawn from the findings of Riemann and his teacher, Gauss.,,, For example, Minkowski is often credited with unifying space and time into a single continuum in 1907,,,, https://thewire.in/10451/beyond-the-surface-of-einsteins-relativity-lay-a-chimerical-geometry/ General Relativity Excerpt: General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalizes special relativity and refines Newton’s law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of partial differential equations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity Space-time Excerpt: In the Minkowski universe, the time coordinate of one coordinate system depends on both the time and space coordinates of another relatively moving system according to a rule that forms the essential alteration required for Einstein’s special theory of relativity;,,, Einstein’s general theory of relativity (1916) again makes use of a four-dimensional space-time, but incorporates gravitational effects.,,, In Einstein’s curved space-time, a direct extension of Riemann’s notion of curved space (1854), a particle follows a world line, or geodesic, https://www.britannica.com/science/space-time#ref206206
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