Robin: The concept of god is undefined. No one can say what it is, because that places limits on it.

True for the human concept.
In science, true infinities don’t really occur practically (maybe in theory but the quantity of energy is finite), so I find it difficult to believe a god would be limitless, indeed if he were there would be no problems/need for testing in the world, indeed he’d have little need to create in the first place because he’d be satisfied as is

But as Nathaniel Branden pointed out, to be nothing in particular is not to be. If cold then is the absence of heat, darkness the absence of light, and to go further, a vacuum is the absence of substance, then the undefined is the absence of knowledge and understanding. There’s nowhere else to go.

Negatives do exist though - like antimatter (has less matter than a vacuum), anti-energy (which would make temperature the other side of absolute 0 and would not only be the absence of light, but something that would eliminate any light that was introduced, a negative quantity of light being darker than absolute darkness).

And I’ll say hate isn’t merely the absence of love, it’s actually a negative of it - a mere absence of love would be apathy, apathy is not hate, hate is that you desire someone harm, love is desiring someone happiness, so those two have magnitudes of caring about something, but apathy has no magnitude, as it’s not caring of anything.

Zilch - :LOL:

Bahamat - I doubt that anti-matter has less energy than a vacuum. AFAIK most scientists are of the opinion that it will react to and generate gravitational fields exactly the same way as matter.

Anti-energy? I’ve heard of negative energies but only in relative terms ie binding and potential energy. Are you sure that anti-energy exists? If so I’d appreciate being pointed towards some further reading.

Anyway matter and anti-matter annihilate to give energy....positive not negative energy. So I’m pretty sure that anti-matter does not have anti-mass.

I personally think that anti-matter is a misleading term. Matter and anti-matter are just two different types of matter that cannot exist in close proximity. If anti-matter was really anti matter, they would annihilate without any by product.

Edit: I’m assuming that “the antichrist” is “Bahamat” who was formerly known as “Distant Claws”

Note- edited to make more sense

Julian: I doubt that anti-matter has less energy than a vacuum

I said it has less matter than a vacuum

AFAIK most scientists are of the opinion that it will react to and generate gravitational fields exactly the same way as matter

Probably albeit with a negative mass value it might repel from other antimatter unless you square it or somethin’ to make the sign go away. If this isn’t the case I wonder what, if any gravity antimatter would have when interacting with matter, maybe it cancels. If it doesn’t use some method of removing the negative (like squaring) I think gravity must be linked to time, because time is one of the only seemingly unsymetrical thing we got (indeed relativity links mass to time, and we know that gravity is linked to mass...).

Are you sure that anti-energy exists? If so I’d appreciate being pointed towards some further reading

My memory on refrences only goes as far as my symmetry class and reading A Brief History of Time, from which I either read or made up this concept, I cant remember…

Anyway in order to get something from nothingness (one example being big bang) you need an anti to cancel it, it simply doesn’t balance to get a load of positive energy from nowhere, there should, somewhere in the system be an equal amount of the negative (perhaps before the BB if the BB was the middle point in time and both sides are like mirror images of each other)

Positive energy can split into equal quantities of matter and antimatter (which has been done experimentally I think), and, if negative energy is simply the mirror of positive and also a valid entity in itself, there is no reason why it should not also be able to split into both matter and antimatter, the only difference is it will have negative energy- If matter of positive energy met antimatter of positive energy you’d reform the original positive energy, and the same would go on the negative side to reform negative energy, but if, say matter of negative energy met antimatter of positive energy in equal amounts, then you would have total anhialation to 0 matter and 0 energy

But - why don’t we see much matter of negative energy existing and why doesn’t antimatter of positive energy last long? I think it could only be due to time asymetries.

Just to muddie the waters, anti-light would look (as a drawing of the wave) no different than regular light out of phase, but would carry negative energy. Destructive interference occurs between 2 light waves of positive energy, and the energy is redistributed somewhere (it must be by the laws of thermodynamics though I don’t know where), anyway it’s possible to get light out of phase in space without flipping it’s energy into negative, the difference is though that if light destructively interfered with the anti you wouldn’t get a re-distribution of energy, you’d get elimination to 0.

Matter and anti-matter are just two different types of matter that cannot exist in close proximity

They are mirror images of each other, the mass has opposite sign for the anti (-ve), the spin has opposite direction, etc

Edit: I’m assuming that “the antichrist” is “Bahamat” who was formerly known as “Distant Claws”

Yup, yup and yup, I quickly got tired of this new one though and changed back, I was being experimental with antichrist

Probably albeit with a negative mass value it might repel from other antimatter unless you square it or somethin’ to make the sign go away. If this isn’t the case I wonder what, if any gravity antimatter would have when interacting with matter, maybe it cancels. If it doesn’t use some method of removing the negative (like squaring) I think gravity must be linked to time, because time is one of the only seemingly unsymetrical thing we got (indeed relativity links mass to time, and we know that gravity is linked to mass...).

I don’t think anti-matter has a negative mass value. Even if it did it would attract other AM. Since masses are multiplied under Newton’s Law of Gravity, the negative signs would be eliminated. It would however repel matter. But as
I said I doubt AM has negative mass because:

They are mirror images of each other, the mass has opposite sign for the anti (-ve), the spin has opposite direction, etc

They are mirror images of each other but they don’t have negative mass. Anti-particles simply are made of Anti-Quarks instead of Quarks which do have opposite spins. Remember, in annihilation experiments E=mc^2 holds when the masses are added up. This means that both M and AM have the same sign for mass. Since they annihilate to form only one kind of energy(positive) I like to think of energy as the “mirror” or “axis of symmetry” between the two mirror images of M and AM (at least in terms of their properties). Now since energy reacts to and generates gravitational fields identical to the equivalent amount of matter, it seems logical to assume that M and AM have the same kind of mass (positive).

Anyway in order to get something from nothingness (one example being big bang) you need an anti to cancel it, it simply doesn’t balance to get a load of positive energy from nowhere, there should, somewhere in the system be an equal amount of the negative (perhaps before the BB if the BB was the middle point in time and both sides are like mirror images of each other)

The way I understood that was that all the matter and energy in the universe is balanced by the negative energies caused by Gravitational negative potential energies and other binding energies like the negative electrostatic energies involved in binding electrons within their Bohr orbits and the binding of nucleons within the nuclei (they have negative potential energy).

Positive energy can split into equal quantities of matter and antimatter (which has been done experimentally I think), and, if negative energy is simply the mirror of positive and also a valid entity in itself, there is no reason why it should not also be able to split into both matter and antimatter, the only difference is it will have negative energy- If matter of positive energy met antimatter of positive energy you’d reform the original positive energy, and the same would go on the negative side to reform negative energy, but if, say matter of negative energy met antimatter of positive energy in equal amounts, then you would have total anhialation to 0 matter and 0 energy

Well then that would imply we actually have 4 types of matter (2 types of M and 2 types of AM) along with 2 types of energy. As of now we only have evidence for 1 type of each of the three above mentioned entities so it’s pretty unlikely that negative energy and the second types of M and AM exist.

Note:- One problem I had is drawing a difference between negative energy which can be converted into the type II M and AM you referred to, and negative energies in a relative sense, i.e. binding energies etc. I couldn’t think of suitable terms to distinguish between the two.

Julian: E=mc^2 holds when the masses are added up. This means that both M and AM have the same sign for mass

Or the sign of E matches the sign of m, but if you want E to be positive maybe there is a hidden square-then-root of m, perhaps. But note, mass and energy are interconvertable so it is possible for both matter and antimatter to increase/decrease their mass simply by changing energy (side note: indeed this is why there is an asymptote at the speed of light, because energy by that point is contributing more to mass than force) - anyway, what i’m saying is E=mc^2 includes the energy something has and that distorts it’s mass away from the ground-state mass, which might be negative.

I suspect mass is caused by a form of spin, and the classical field effect part of gravity may merely be spin-coupling. But gravity has a second (quantum) part, relativity, which couples mass to time, and that might explain the difficulty of including gravity in a unified theory, because it’s more than one effect, maybe

I have read something interesting; that because of the interconvertability between mass and energy that perhaps matter is just a form of negative energy itself, but able to interact safely with light (positive) because enthalpy changes the energies that would match to eliminate far away from anything conventional, but still hit the right frequency and it should eliminate. Again the different roles of positive and negative may link to time asymetry.

Perhaps having the negative energy locked up as mass explains where it went and why we have mass, as well as the stark difference between the frequencis of particle-like things and wave-like things for us (everything has particle-wave duality, but is more like one than the other, and I suspect time might again be responsible) - we don’t have much of intermediate frequency between them, save for the electron, which is just an antiquark of sufficient energy to be stable (and being about as fundamental-particle as you can get, having the lowest cumulative spin (one that might couple to time) might explain why it’s frequency is markedly lower than other particle-like things), because it has less of what time is interacting with to make things particle-like

The way I understood that was that all the matter and energy in the universe is balanced by the negative energies caused by Gravitational negative potential energies

I have read that they are mathematically linked and was interested, note that would meen the mass of something would have to change with it’s distance from another massive object, maybe that happens, nethertheless if mass was a storage of energy itself, and gravity depends on the quantity of the storage, then those two things are linked - it could just be that mass is made of negative energy itself and since gravity couples it, it’s representative of that, and since gravity affects the overall energy of a particle, gravity changes it’s mass by changing the quantity of negative it stores

E=mc^2 says that if something has more positive energy it’ll have more mass, which at first looks to conflict with the idea of mass being a container of negative energy, but maybe it’s that surrounding nothingness splits into positive and negative, the positive adds to e and the negative to m - and this occurs with any energy change (On the gaining KE front, gain positive from surrounding nothingness, so also gain negative too. On the GPE front have a more negative energy from surroundings as gou get closer to a mass, and to make up for it the complimentry positive is added to KE, making the object accelarate towards the mass)

Well then that would imply we actually have 4 types of matter (2 types of M and 2 types of AM) along with 2 types of energy. As of now we only have evidence for 1 type of each of the three above mentioned entities so it’s pretty unlikely that negative energy and the second types of M and AM exist

Well if one sign of the energy is locked away into matter when time goes forward, it would be unavailable to split into more matter+antimatter itself. It can be contained by the same type of things it can split into, it’s just being contained by what has previously split (maybe from the unlocked sign, if they can both make matter+anti)

Also all they have to do to go from 4 to just 2 types again is change energy (hence there isn’t a clear distinction between +matter and -matter as one changes into the other), which may happen by splitting nearby nothingness, and projecting into your particle whatever it wasn’t before until it’s the other type, and project the counterpart away (much like how a black hole degrades)

A couple of flaws in Les’ rebuttal:

I’m pretty sure that anything sort of superheated plasma won’t produce gamma radiation as heat radiation, and in such conditions there’d be plenty of visible light too. Gamma radiation is typically produced in radioactive decay and its photons are far more energetic than those of visible light, UV or infrared.

Also, a system at absolute zero temperature wouldn’t be void of all energy, but merely thermal energy, which is just the kinetic energy of the particles making up the system. Heat, after all, is nothing other than the random motion of particles colliding with one another.

Flaky: I’m pretty sure that anything sort of superheated plasma won’t produce gamma radiation as heat radiation, and in such conditions there’d be plenty of visible light too. Gamma radiation is typically produced in radioactive decay and its photons are far more energetic than those of visible light, UV or infrared.

There would probably be what’s known as a maxwell-boltzmann distribution of energy for any object that’s been formed and is emitting. Most emitters will have a ballpark amount of energy depending on the temperature (shifts the curve), but notice that it tails off to both 0 on the low end and infinity on the high end, that means all frequencies, high and low should in theory be possible in different amounts so long as one light wave doesn’t contain more energy than the entire system (the practical limitation on the theory).

Higther temperatures shift the peak of the curve towards the high end, and also broadens it, meaning larger variations would be more common.

This doesn’t apply to energy and the anti seperating from nothingness (as nothingness has an overall energy of 0), only to storages like, say an atom, which have a non-zero amount of total emittable energy. For nothingness it’s only concern is the individual scale, and the splitting would (it seems) likely be into the smallest units of energy possible. Light has different frequencies because it stores different amounts of these units, but they are so small that it appears unquantized on our scale, but I don’t think it eally is.

Why do I think the splitting is into small units? If it were just as likely to split into any size, complex matter wouldn’t exist for long before it’d be ‘evaporaed’ by elimination from nearby split anti’s to restore entropy. Enthalpy makes the energy of complex matter different, so it won’t be eliminated by the normal anti-units. There has to be something to make it prefer small units in this case, so I think there might be some kind of like-repels-like about this energy, but if not we still have the kinetic arguement that splitting of larger units into smaller ones and nothingness into 2 components is more probable if it would take time to recombine (without taking time there would be no prefrence at all). However, there is an infinite quantity of nothingness everywhere, and if there is any positive probability whatsoever of a larger splitting, it’s effectively guaranteed to happen to an infinite extent, so we must conclude that it’s not at all possible to have a larger splitting.

Was the big bang a larger splitting at one point though? Not necessarily, it could’ve just been lots of little ones who’s products congregated under gravity, perhaps to make a black hole from which matter could be made by the splitting of nothing outside to eliminate, but that would have taken a looooong time

Also, a system at absolute zero temperature wouldn’t be void of all energy, but merely thermal energy, which is just the kinetic energy of the particles making up the system. Heat, after all, is nothing other than the random motion of particles colliding with one another

It’s true that your storage (ie atoms/molecules) have residual energy that cannot be removed, but it would be incapable of emitting anything so for all intents and purposes you might as well consider that energy as a component characteristic of the storage itself (because the mirror anti would have the exact -ve) and might as well consider the whole thing to be overall 0 because deviance from the ground is 0 - if you want to eliminate that locked energy you have to eliminate the entire particle, and you can do that if you really want by throwing in the antis that would cancel it out

ok so i can see that this argument still brings problems i am not coming against the ideals of all of the people who believe in evolution i just liked the post. see when you like something you want to share it. evolution no matter how unprovable it is is a belief of an entire world of people.  i can respect that as a writer and a reader. But i will say don’t come against my post unless you have researched the matter as much as Les. He actually made since but i will still choose to believe what i no is true. all of our theory on the origin of the world still revolves around blind faith.

not forgetting evolution where science had to evolve to support. Most of the original projects to prove evolution have been proven wrong.  read Darwin’s the origin of species once more and you will see what i am talking about.
much love Joseph

evolution no matter how unprovable it is is a belief of an entire world of people.

Wrong, but it’s futile to pursue this. You have made it abundantly clear that you

choose to believe what i no is true

Willful ignorance at its finest.

But i will say don’t come against my post unless you have researched the matter as much as Les.

How about: Don’t argue against evolution unless you have a clue about the actual science?

not forgetting evolution where science had to evolve to support. Most of the original projects to prove evolution have been proven wrong.  read Darwin’s the origin of species once more and you will see what i am talking about.

We know what you’re talking about. We also know that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

I’m not the first one to say that butting heads with creationists is only interesting if you study their psychological makeup.

Joseph - If you’re talking about the entry on SEB (and not the one at your blog), then we (at least I) tend to drift a long way off from the original topic - entries are just a home for whatever discussion arises amongst the commenters within, we often end up debating with each other on points that have no connection whatsoever to the original.

But since you brought it up, please show us your evidence (or at least explanation) of evolution being wrong, and provide an alternative explanation that agrees, and makes sense, with all observation. This is necessary for us to understand your point of view, you gotta understand that this is how our minds work. I trust you, as a person, wouldn’t write us off…

ok so i can see that this argument still brings problems i am not coming against the ideals of all of the people who believe in evolution i just liked the post. see when you like something you want to share it. Evolution no matter how unprovable, it is a belief of an entire world of people.  i can respect that as a writer and a reader. But i will say don’t come against my post unless you have researched the matter as much as Les. He actually made since but i will still choose to believe what i no is true. all of our theory on the origin of the world still revolves around blind faith.

not forgetting evolution where science had to evolve to support. Most of the original projects to prove evolution have been proven wrong.  Read Darwin’s the origin of species once more and you will see what i am talking about.
Much love Joseph

Joseph, repeating your ill-conceived and mistaken assertions doesn’t make them more true.

By the way, accepting a word of fiction, the Bible, as literal truth is not equivalent to understanding and accepting a scientific theory.

He must’ve saved a template of that response, it’s word for word, or near as damn it. I don’t think he’s even reading

The professor makes perfect sense in his explanation of evil.

Also, it doesn’t matter.

I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. Isaiah 45:7

Right there.  CLEAR as day.  He admits he created evil.  Argument over.

Being secular myself, I admire your response to the obvious flaws in the argument, however, there is something to be said of “God”.  In the original treatise, replace “Brain” with “Mind” or “Soul” or “Conscious”.  It is this ego we all have that plucks at even the most militant atheists strings.  We cannot deny our own existence, and because of this, and because of the collective desire to exist, we all seek a reason for it all and attribute it to a higher power.  No one wants to believe life is all for nothing.  No one wants to believe there is no meaning, that we are all just apes of a different sort living our lives without purpose.  Slaves to nature.  I think the issue really is that of worship and the title you give your God.  I believe in a higher power, but I do not believe in Jesus.  The issue with Christianity is not God, but whether or not Jesus was the human manifestation of it.  Any mythical story of God taking human form is bogus, but that does not mean God is bogus.  It has nothing to do with faith either.  We don’t necessarily “feel” gravity without the perspective of what it does to us. Without a point of reference, we would not perceive the pull of Gravity as represented in the “anti-gravity” plane rides they take people on.  You are not weightless, you are merely falling at the same speed as the plane, yet people perceive it as weightlessness.  Certainly you can measure gravity, but only because we decided to make instruments to do so.  Perhaps someday we will invent something to measure faith, and saying it cannot be done is much like saying the world is flat.  Just because the knowledge isn’t here right now does not make it right to discount it entirely.

db- I find conciousness a difficult thing to pin down - is it possible to contain genuine conciousness within a circuit? If so we should be able to make truely AI computers, if not then it somehow needs to be interacting with the physical - it would have to be linked if it was not completely contained.

Then again, that all depends on how real our ‘reality’ is.

The desire for meaning is an odd, yet common, phonomenon - it might have an explanation in evolution, but when questioned few feelings really have any basis or justification for being maintained were the one feeling them able to stop/alter them (as we are to some extent). I also don’t understand what makes a person desire a feeling to be satisfied - they do, but I don’t see why

And yes, a point of refrence allows comparison, but…

Perhaps someday we will invent something to measure faith, and saying it cannot be done is much like saying the world is flat.  Just because the knowledge isn’t here right now does not make it right to discount it entirely

I wouldn’t think it’s possible because I don’t see anything quantifiable about faith - things of the mind are not always well-defined and you cannot arbitarily assign values to certain ‘switches’ of brain circuitry and know that they’re fairly represented, because it’d vary with each brain, with time.

We can generally say things are not possible in the future when there is no mechanism of doing it (Ie you cannot ever see what truely happens experimentally when time is run backwards, because we do not control the rules, just what obeys them). Our improvements to machinery only increase the sensitivity and scope, it rarely allows it to do anything new, and even then it needs to have a mechanism within our model in order to be done - also rules within our models rule out some things (ie violating thermodynamics)

We cannot deny our own existence, and because of this, and because of the collective desire to exist, we all seek a reason for it all and attribute it to a higher power.  No one wants to believe life is all for nothing.  No one wants to believe there is no meaning, that we are all just apes of a different sort living our lives without purpose.

Speak for yourself, db.  I myself do not seek a reason for it all and attribute it to a higher power.  And just because the Universe as a whole has no meaning or purpose, does not mean that there are no meanings or purposes within the Universe- within the short span of time we living things have to be alive.

This is an argument I hear again and again from theists of all stripes: if there’s no God, there’s no meaning or purpose to life.  Nonsense- meanings and purposes do not exist outside of life: they are evolved entities, and while our curious nature is always seeking bigger and better meanings and purposes, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they exist.

And this dismissive “just apes of a different sort"- what do you mean “just”?  Apes are pretty wonderful, and people even more so.  I’m quite happy with the meanings and purposes I find in my own limited time here, and making up stuff about higher powers doesn’t seem like it would make me any happier.

What Zilch said. I have no problems accepting that there is no reason behind existence and no set purpose to life. It just makes it all the more amazing for existing in the first place.

Life has whatever meaning you give it
If you want it to mean something, make it mean something

Doesn’t it sound scary? … no afterlife…

Scares the shit out of me, hurts my head the thought that I (my conciousness) will one day no longer exist. 

And yet I’m still an atheist. What I want and what I know to be true can be in conflict, but it does not change the truth.

LH- why fear nonexistence? Can’t hurt because you wouldn’t even know about it, and you wouldn’t have to work anymore.

Either way, it makes no difference to the living whether or not someone exists beyond death, so all you would’ve done here would’ve been concluded anyway on death

Late to the party…

Being secular myself, I admire your response to the obvious flaws in the argument, however, there is something to be said of “God”.

And that would be “no”.

In the original treatise, replace “Brain” with “Mind” or “Soul” or “Conscious”.  It is this ego we all have that plucks at even the most militant atheists strings.  We cannot deny our own existence, and because of this, and because of the collective desire to exist, we all seek a reason for it all and attribute it to a higher power.

Not all of us do. What you’re saying here amounts to the argument from ignorance and a cop-out default answer rolled into one.

Speaking for myself, I simply don’t get the jump from “isn’t nature full of wonders” to “god did it"…

No one wants to believe life is all for nothing.  No one wants to believe there is no meaning, that we are all just apes of a different sort living our lives without purpose.  Slaves to nature.

What zilch said. And Dawkins. The universe it cruelly indifferent to us, but rather than being down about it, we should view it as an opportunity to put our existence to a purpose of our own choosing.

I think the issue really is that of worship and the title you give your God.

I do not worship anything that could be reasonably called ‘god’.

I believe in a higher power, but I do not believe in Jesus.  The issue with Christianity is not God, but whether or not Jesus was the human manifestation of it.

There are many issues with Christianity and the resurrection myth is among the more harmless ones.

Any mythical story of God taking human form is bogus, but that does not mean God is bogus.

There are many reasons for ‘God’ being bogus and a myth itself.

It has nothing to do with faith either.  ...
Perhaps someday we will invent something to measure faith, and saying it cannot be done is much like saying the world is flat.  Just because the knowledge isn’t here right now does not make it right to discount it entirely.

I don’t see a problem with measuring faith. Concoct a few more goofy religions and see how many people you can sell it to. You’ll get a rough estimate for the gullibility of people, on a scale of outrageous claims vs. percentage of buy-in.

LH- why fear nonexistence? Can’t hurt because you wouldn’t even know about it, and you wouldn’t have to work anymore.

Your money or your life!

I will tell you all somthing that will give you a better understanding of me… Well to start off i kind of see my self in this fictional teacher, always pointing out the contradictions and hippocracy of Christianity… Im sure ANY ONE not christian would cheer someone bringing up the points this man made(at least in the early part didn’t read it all srry) in private but alot off people wouldn’t in public… But you know it dosen’t matter in the end… NOTHING matters in the end… If you don’t have a faith that is… I do though and this may sound crazy to the “learned peoples” but my faith is Mayan, not the most understandable religion but it works for me. To me the worlds ending in 2012 (should the gods choose wisely) and man will start over...and I’ll admit I can’t wait… I hate this culture it’s so… material and lazy and… Lets just say it has me praying for the end. Oh yeah and I don’t give a fuck what you have to say about my personal opinion.

Im sorry if I have ranted and for what ever gramar problems I had, not really in the mood to check.

Your money or your life!

I know that one, Hussar:
“Take my life.  I’m saving my money for my old age”.