What is your Religion/Affiliation/Religious Affiliation/Etc.

[Logikal X]

yay

[Jal]

I'm agnostic

[kev222]

I have a popular science that explains 10 dimensions of existance, Its a pretty interesting read.....But i just dont see it as a sure possibility.

They're up to 11 now with something called M-Theory.

Just a random thought. Lets say you are an indestructable molecule. At what point could you end?

You can't end, because you'd be indestructable. Neither me or Andrew claimed that matter and energy couldn't be infinite into the future, just not the past. A more relavent question would be, if you were an indestructable molecule, at what point could you begin? Which is a silly question.

Mathematics alone prove that infinite IS in fact very real.

Even if Mathmatics does indeed prove that infinite is real. That doesn't help your case. The position you need to defend is that matter and energy have existed infinitely, not just that infinity is "very real". Are you saying that because infinity is possible, matter and energy must have always existed? If so, can you explain your logic?

Nothing else proves an ending or a beginning to anything at all.

I have given you a thermodynamic proof (*) that matter and enery must have a beginning.

Lets say you were to cut something in half, no matter what it is. At what point could you not cut it in half any more? Doesnt that depend on how fine of a cut you make? And how finely are we capable of cutting?..... I believe this relates to mathematics in the form that .001>00001>000000000001, how many zeros can you put? Cant that go on forever? Show me an end and i will believe time has an end and space has an end, and that our universe is the only universe and that we are the only child of creation, if creation exists which is the common belief. It is impossible

The numbers you use to represent the portions of the "something" we are cutting are an abstraction of reality, not actually reality! Just because the numbers you use in your model are infinitely divisable doesn't mean that matter itself infinitely divisible. Am I supposed to demonstrate an end to the infinite set of all numbers? Similarly, just because the concept of infinity exists in Mathmatics, doesn't necessarily mean that anything is actually infinite in reality.

Your arguments have ceased to be relavent to the issue of whether the matter and enery in the universe has a beginning. Whether or not an indestructable molecule can end, whether or not infinitey is "real", or whether or not you can divide something infinitely does not help your case.

-Kev

* The term "thermodynamic proof" isn't entirely honest. The laws of Themodynamics are based on overwhelming chance, and so can't prove anything in the strictest sense of the word. But to plead chance in your case would be like believing you could drop an ice cube into a glass of water and have the ice cube grow and the water begin to boil.

[Logikal X]

What im saying is that infinite is proven, None of these other theories are proven or observable, Thus making it a more acceptable solution in my opinion.  


And how do you know that you cannot cut something in particular infinitely?  Has it been proven something could not be cut infinitely?  We are only capable of going so small, I assume with technological advances this will increase.  No one knows where it actually ends yet.


Interesting on the 11 dimensions, im not saying your beliefs are not true or impossible either, just stating that i have reasons to believe what i do and they are possible.  If you completely discredit what i believe it is a matter of opinion from how i see it

[kev222]

What im saying is that infinite is proven. None of these other theories are proven or observable, Thus making it a more acceptable solution in my opinion.

The laws of thermodynamics are proven experimentally and observable. Again, just because infinity exists as a mathmatical concept, doesn't mean that anything actually exists with any infinite properties. A circle exists as a concept in maths, but perfect circles do not occur in reality as far as we know. Even if infinity were proven, the possibility that something could be infinite doesn't prove that matter-energy are of infinite age. In fact, as I've already said, there is thermodynamic proof that this is not the case.

And how do you know that you cannot cut something in particular infinitely?

I don't and I didn't claim that it couldn't be. All that I said is that just because numbers can be infinitely divided, does not in any way imply that matter can be. I have no problem with the idea that matter can be cut infinitely.

Has it been proven something could not be cut infinitely?

No proof that I know of.

Interesting on the 11 dimensions, im not saying your beliefs are not true or impossible either, just stating that i have reasons to believe what i do and they are possible.

I only mentioned M-theory as a side note. I don't know much about it. The Maths is way beyond me. Also, you don't need to worry about sparing my beliefs If you manage to discredit them, then it's my own fault for placing them into the debating firing line.

If you completely discredit what i believe it is a matter of opinion from how i see it

Discrediting beliefs is not something I set out to do. The reasons I am debating this issue are 1) I enjoy debates and 2) Your argument that special creation is not required, if it were true, undermines mine and Andrew's challenge to Keith's pejorative "too many brain cells" comment (which was an attempt, allbeit a poor one, to discredit my beliefs). I'd very much like keep this challenge in tact. But, if you like, we can agree to disagree, I think I've said everything I have that's worth saying

-Kev

[keith]

*yawns*

[Logikal X]

If you are using thermodynamics to create...Doesnt that mean you are just converting energy in a form?  The only possible end i see is as Andrew was saying that energy will become too dispersed, Which is a good theory.  Yet that shows no change in the amount of energy.  I cannot plausibly see a beginning or end to the amount of energy there is.  Possibly a big bang forced the energy into a smaller area and created an odd situation that caused life to form, If that is the case i would still lean towards energy was always there, just too dispersed previously as well.  In such case that could mean there were previous big bangs which unleashed an entirely different situation so long ago it cannot be accounted for.  I wouldnt discount that entirely.  

I wouldnt mind agreeing to disagree but this type of bantering tends to improve reasoning skills in the best of us

it doesnt take many braincells to insult someones ideas either  Im always interested in peoples point of view in a lot of situations.  I have no qualm with any belief that is within reason

[Will]

Pete, read Cantor's works. He pretty much proves that there is no infinity as you think of it. Rather, infinity is relative to what you are measuring. If I am dealing with a number like .0000152 and the highest this value can ever be is .0014, 1000 is infinite in comparison. There are different kinds or flavors of infinity depending on the situation.

Besides, infinity+1>infinity. Infinity is not really a solid concept, but a mathematically useful one.

[Logikal X]

infinite is not a set value and cannot be described as a set value due to the fact that it is a concept based on the fact that there is no end to numerical values


therefore infinite + 1 still just equals infinite

Im not playing the kids game of well i hate you infinite + 1, oh yeah i hate you infinite +2, well i hate you infinite plus infinite. haha beat that....I dont think numbers can be added to a concept

[kev222]

If you are using thermodynamics to create...Doesnt that mean you are just converting energy in a form?  The only possible end i see is as Andrew was saying that energy will become too dispersed, Which is a good theory.  Yet that shows no change in the amount of energy.  I cannot plausibly see a beginning or end to the amount of energy there is.

I'm not using the laws of thermodynamics to create. I'm using them to show that matter-energy had a beginning. I use God to create (Genesis 1:1). You say that you cannot see a plausible beginning to matter-energy, but you have not given any support to the idea that matter-energy has always existed. As far as I can tell, all that you have said is that because infinitey exists as a mathmatical tool, it's possible that matter-energy had no starting point.

Because you thought I was using "thermodynamics to create", I assume that you have not understood my argument, so I'll restate it here.

1) The total amount of mass-energy in the universe is constant (1st law)
2) The amount of energy available for work in the universe is decreasing and NEVER increases (2nd law)

Notice I said "energy available for work" and not simply "energy". If I were to heat an iron bar at one end, then I could place a thermocouple across the bar and get useful work out of that system. Once the bar has cooled, as it always will if left alone, it is not possible to extract useful work from the system. No energy has been destroyed, that would violate the 1st law, the energy still exists within the bar and in the surroundings, but the amount of energy available for work has decreased.

If the universe were of infinite age, then there would be no energy available for work at this point in time. This is not the case, so the universe must be of finite age, it has a beginning, it has a cause (which I hold as the God of the bible).

This argument eliminates the idea that the universe has always existed as a reasonable possibility. Can you challenge this argument?

Possibly a big bang forced the energy into a smaller area and created an odd situation that caused life to form, If that is the case i would still lean towards energy was always there, just too dispersed previously as well.  In such case that could mean there were previous big bangs which unleashed an entirely different situation so long ago it cannot be accounted for.  I wouldnt discount that entirely.

This is fantastic just-so story. I don't think either of us require such a "theory", do we? So I won't bother to argue against this.

I wouldnt mind agreeing to disagree but this type of bantering tends to improve reasoning skills in the best of us

it doesnt take many braincells to insult someones ideas either  Im always interested in peoples point of view in a lot of situations.  I have no qualm with any belief that is within reason

Cool

-Kev

[Logikal X]

Energy for work regenerates as matter biodegrades.  We have obviously seen huge reductions in energy for work over the past few centuries due to our overly huge population and petroleum fueled machines.  Before this very little non living energy was used for anything, so it could have always been here, and not even be necessary to use.  Living energy or energy used by living organisms such as plants animals fish etc works on the circle system.  As we have seen ecological breakdown these circles are being destroyed causing exinction, however i dont see that as an ending to the overall universe.  New stars are born everyday as well as old stars expand and fade into nothing.  We know light can be used as a form of energy.  I cant be sure of the actual cycle of anything non living though due to the fact that my lifespan is such a minute fraction of existance compared to these energy sources.  Your ideas may in fact work however i dont see them as proof in any form that the universe will just come to an end at some point in time.  However it does observe the possibility that humankind will most likely come to an end

[Grakthis]

Energy for work regenerates as matter biodegrades.  We have obviously seen huge reductions in energy for work over the past few centuries due to our overly huge population and petroleum fueled machines.  Before this very little non living energy was used for anything, so it could have always been here, and not even be necessary to use.  Living energy or energy used by living organisms such as plants animals fish etc works on the circle system.  As we have seen ecological breakdown these circles are being destroyed causing exinction, however i dont see that as an ending to the overall universe.  New stars are born everyday as well as old stars expand and fade into nothing.  We know light can be used as a form of energy.  I cant be sure of the actual cycle of anything non living though due to the fact that my lifespan is such a minute fraction of existance compared to these energy sources.  Your ideas may in fact work however i dont see them as proof in any form that the universe will just come to an end at some point in time.  However it does observe the possibility that humankind will most likely come to an end

The universe will not come to an "end".  I never said this and neither did Kev.  The universe WILL die.  Die as in, there will be no more energy.  Only frozen matter.  No more life.  No more heat.  Absolute 0 will reign.

And as I said 2 times already, I do NOT disagree that matter and time MAY continue on forward for an infinit time... what i challenege is that under the rules of science as we understand them now, time and energy could NOT have gone backwards infinitly and our universe still end up as it is now.  Think of it this way.  The big bang is one big f'in explosion.  And there is nothing to pull it all back together.  So things will continue to expand out to infinity.  If that occurs, then how did matter get into a position for that explosion?  We have no science to answer this.

What you end up with is a VERY Christian friendly universe.

Science as we know it cannot explain HOW the big bang came to be without including an unmoved-mover into the equation.

[Logikal X]

I agree with all the above points basically.  I just cant imagine a set beginning in time.  Whatever the real answer is im sure it is amazing.  Id love it if religion really was correct, and i have a due amount of faith that there is very likely something out there that initiated everything, but im equally worried it isnt and dont want to spend my whole life worshipping and trying to please a god who may not be there, hopefully being a good person with positive intentions will always keep me in a good place in either situation.  


@Andrew, Im going to be in Atlanta Thursday night sometime  

[kev222]

Energy for work regenerates as matter biodegrades.

No it doesn't. It is possible to get local increases in available energy (that is, a local decrease in entropy) in an open system such as the earth, but this is always at the cost of a greater increase in the total entropy of the universe. Nothing can decrease the total entropy of the universe (i.e. regenerate energy available for work). If you know of a way to do this, I would urge you to construct a perpetual motion machine and sell it on ebay for a billion squillion dollars ;-)

We have obviously seen huge reductions in energy for work over the past few centuries due to our overly huge population and petroleum fueled machines. Before this very little non living energy was used for anything, so it could have always been here, and not even be necessary to use.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics is not an extrapolation of observed human fuel consumption. That has little to do with it. The 2nd law is the result of experimental observation of fundamental natural processes. Even without humans, heat still flows from hot bodies to colder bodies, if the universe is infinitely old, all bodies in the universe would be of uniform temperature, all stars would be burned out, all radioative atoms would have decayed, the universe would be dead (as Andrew defined the term). Entropy would be a maximum, there would be no energy available for work.

Living energy or energy used by living organisms such as plants animals fish etc works on the circle system.  As we have seen ecological breakdown these circles are being destroyed causing exinction, however i dont see that as an ending to the overall universe.

These system do not perpetually cycle. Living organisms survive because the earth is an open system with outside energy input (such as the sun). With time, the sun would burn out and these cycles would cease.

We know light can be used as a form of energy.  I cant be sure of the actual cycle of anything non living though due to the fact that my lifespan is such a minute fraction of existance compared to these energy sources.

You can be sure that no such cycle exists, because of thermodynamics ;-)

-Kev

[Grakthis]

I agree with all the above points basically.  I just cant imagine a set beginning in time.  Whatever the real answer is im sure it is amazing.  Id love it if religion really was correct, and i have a due amount of faith that there is very likely something out there that initiated everything, but im equally worried it isnt and dont want to spend my whole life worshipping and trying to please a god who may not be there, hopefully being a good person with positive intentions will always keep me in a good place in either situation.  


@Andrew, Im going to be in Atlanta Thursday night sometime  

It doesn't matter what you can immagine, only what can actually occur.  I can immagine infinity, but it still exists.

This isn't a proof for God, BTW.  It is a proof that believing in an unmoved mover is crequired under our current scientific theories.  That unmoved mover does NOT have to be a sentient God.

Oh yeah? Atl? YOU should look up Jason!

edit @ Kev - well, the saving grace of the universe used to be that we believed gravity "redistributed" energy back into potential energy with the big crunch.  So thermodynamics didn't eliminate the cyclical universe until the gravity driven big crunch fell out of favor.