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We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

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Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#251

Post by tresqotheq »

hota_mazi wrote: post #239
ARandomerDude wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bible very explicitly teaches that there are no other gods. Here is one passage among many. Isaiah 44:6-8 ESV Thus says the LORD, the King of Israel and his Redeemer, the LORD of hosts: "I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god. [7] Who is like me? Let him proclaim it. Let him declare and set it before me, since I appointed an ancient people. Let them declare what is to come, and what will hap…

Yes but why should we care what the bible says, especially when what it says contradicts science?

> it says contradicts science?

contradicting science is no great flaw. "Science" contradicts itself from time to time.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#252

Post by jjcon »

IAmGraydon wrote: post #178

“We will never know” is such a contradictory statement. On the surface, it implies the limits of our knowledge while simultaneously indicating that the author possesses the omnipotence required to know what humans will learn throughout the entirety of our future. Add it to your list of things to never write.

And yet it is provable that there are things we know we can’t know

https://youtu.be/HeQX2HjkcNo

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#253

Post by ncmncm »

elevaet wrote: post #6
jacquesm wrote: post #2

"The issue is that physicists can’t accept the scientifically honest answer: We don’t know, and leave it at that." This sentence jumped out for me. Is there some kind of crusade going on that I have missed the beginning of? This feels like a strange sentence in this piece and feels like a (misguided) attack.

The purpose of science is to try to understand the world. Even if we never can answer how the universe began, I hope we never give up trying.

The job of science is to tackle answerable questions. There are lots of these not started on yet.

Maybe save the unanswerable questions for after.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#254

Post by mtlmtlmtlmtl »

I honestly never cared for Hossenfelder's science communication. She's far too dismissive and dishonest in representing theoretical views she disagrees with. And I don't necessarily have the physics understanding to pick these biases out too easily.

I think Sean Carroll for instance does a much better job at this when he interviews people whose views he disagrees with in his podcasts, which happens quite frequently.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#255

Post by jjcon »

jondeval wrote: post #222

My strong opinions, weakly held: * God is not a good hypothesis for any secondary cause. The creation of space-time as we currently understand it must have had a secondary cause. Let's patiently keep looking for a scientific hypothesis (theoretical or empirical) that is an incremental improvement on what we already know. * Religious people who conceive of God as the creator, believing that the word 'creator' refers t…

> Religious people who conceive of God as the creator, believing that the word 'creator' refers to the creation of the universe at some point in the past, are completely misunderstanding the use of the word and need to do some more homework.

Can you explain what you mean here - I couldn’t follow

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#256

Post by eis »

tresqotheq wrote: post #220
eis wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the ratio of babble to sound reasoning is much better in science than in religion. That being said, there is also a lot of science babble and we should call it out and try to keep it at a as low amount as possible. The core tenets of science are pretty sound. Religions are based on a lot of completely made up stuff. They are not 100% bad of course. But we seriously can do much much better than that. I think t…

>But they are very very old tools and I don't think we need them anymore. The societial problems that once solved by religion is worse than ever. It is true that current religions cannot solve it, because they have been "fact checked" out by the new religion of "science" with scientists as the new holymen, but that is a separate discussion. The point is, we need a solution to those problems more than ever, but we tru…

Science is not a religion. Scientists are not holymen as evidence by the constant questioning of their theories by other scientists. That's the whole thing science is about! Relentless checking of hypothesis through experiments that match reality.

I agree strongly with you that we need a solution to these problems as currently we don't have one. I disagree though that we cannot hope to find one. Hope dies last :)

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#257

Post by synu »

DemocracyFTW2 wrote: post #230
synu wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched the video, and the sense I got was you don’t need to bother to read anything where scientists talk about having figured out what happened at the beginning of the universe because we can never know. This seems to explicitly exclude the possibility that there could ever be a discovery you might read about that would change that.

Well to quote user mensetmanusman: "Per thermodynamic axioms, incompleteness is implied by the arrow of time and information atrophy. This would imply an unknowable beginning." I think 'never' should be understood in this way—either there's something wrong or fundamentally incomplete about our theories, or we can not know certain things. Barring groundbreaking advancements in understanding akin to quantum physics and…

Ok, yeah maybe I could see that. But it’s kind of a confusing message - don’t read or take this research on this topic seriously, except in case some research on this topic comes that you should read and take seriously.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#258

Post by dr_hooo »

tresqotheq wrote: post #227
eis wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science is not a religion. If scientism means thinking that science is the best tool we have right now to explain reality then I guess yea I'm pro science. But it's very far from a religion. BTW science does not claim to know it all or even be able to know it all. In fact it is an important part of science to find the limits of science.

>Science is not a religion. What is the difference between a holy man who claims to have the word of god, and a scientist who claims to have followed the "scientifc method"? Modern human believes the latter. That is the difference.

You have to believe the claims of the former, while you can verify the claims of the latter yourself.

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#259

Post by Zizizizz »

judah wrote: post #205
al_mandi wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're straw manning when you say things like "cares about the sexual life of humans". I highly recommend you watch this to broaden your horizons: https://youtu.be/If3cNUixEBM

There is a great deal of evidence, philosophically and rationally, for the existence of God. The Big Bang, first theorized by theoretical physicist and Catholic priest Georges Lamaitre, states the universe sprang into existence 13.7b years ago; it was not eternal as previously thought. And we know from observation that everything that begins to exist has a cause for its existence. This suggests that the universe was…

The kalam is not a good argument https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDr3EnciHjw

Re: We don't know how the universe began, and we will never know

#260

Post by gjsman-1000 »

jjcon wrote: post #255
jondeval wrote: post #222

My strong opinions, weakly held: * God is not a good hypothesis for any secondary cause. The creation of space-time as we currently understand it must have had a secondary cause. Let's patiently keep looking for a scientific hypothesis (theoretical or empirical) that is an incremental improvement on what we already know. * Religious people who conceive of God as the creator, believing that the word 'creator' refers t…

> Religious people who conceive of God as the creator, believing that the word 'creator' refers to the creation of the universe at some point in the past, are completely misunderstanding the use of the word and need to do some more homework. Can you explain what you mean here - I couldn’t follow

"misunderstanding the use of the word"

Aka, I've used someone else's redefinition of the word away from the vernacular understanding, to redefine it to support my view of the world. See also "recession."

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