I consider myself a budding philosopher of science. In most cases, I did not need to cite a particular science paper as I referred to commonly known evidence such as Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. Regarding BGV theorem, here’s the full citation:
Borde, Arvind, Alan H. Guth, and Alexander Vilenkin. “Inflationary spacetimes are incomplete in past directions.” Physical review letters 90.15 (2003): 151301.
I also mentioned Vilenkin’s 1983 paper proposing the universe began through a quantum nucleation. I did not give the full citation because Grok knew the paper I was referring to. But here’s the full citation:
Vilenkin, Alexander. “Birth of inflationary universes.” Physical Review D 27.12 (1983): 2848.
Regarding the fact the RNA World hypothesis has been falsified, I also cited this paper by my friend Charlie Carter and gave the full citation.
Wills, Peter R., and Charles W. Carter Jr. “Insuperable problems of the genetic code initially emerging in an RNA world.” Biosystems 164 (2018): 155-166.
You are repeating an often recited misnomer. We do not live in a quantum universe. As Purdue physics professor Erica Carlson likes to say, “We do not live in a quantum universe. We live in a classical universe with some quantum effects.”
Why does she say this? Matter, energy and radiation are exist in discrete quantum units, but spacetime does not.
It would be nice for researchers if spacetime did exist in quantum units because then it might be possible to develop a full theory of quantum gravity. Because that was a goal much to be desired, researchers postulated that spacetime is quanta.
But whenever researchers have looked for ‘spacetime quanta’ or ‘spatoms’ using high-precision measurements, such as:
Gamma-ray bursts (GRBs): We’ve looked at photons from distant GRBs to test if higher-energy photons arrive sooner or later than lower-energy ones (as some quantum gravity theories predict if spacetime is discrete). So far, there’s no dispersion detected at the precision level that would indicate a “grainy” spacetime.
Interferometry experiments (like at LIGO and other precision labs): These have tested for spacetime noise or fluctuations at very small scales. Again, no hint of discreteness.
Some of researchers are stubborn and continue to insist that spacetime is quanta but must be in discrete units that are much smaller than they originally thought. Other researchers are more pragmatic and accepting of the research results and have left the field of quantum gravity research.
Right now, quantum gravity is pure speculation. There is no empirical evidence for the most fundamental and necessary condition.
Because spacetime is more fundamental that matter or energy, the right conclusion is that we live in a classical universe with some quantum effects.
That was a blatant straw man fallacy, as no one is denying that some researchers use AI.
The challenge was whether you could cite publications in which:
None of those meet the two criteria you stated clearly. Your use of “and” requires both to be present.
Yet another straw man. I didn’t ask about specific papers, some of which include evidence. I simply asked about evidence, because I don’t see any.
Theories are not evidence. You might want to learn basic scientific terminology to assist in your budding, which as others have noted, looks a lot more like apologetics. Big difference.
Proposals are not evidence either. Evidence is what is measured and observed.
As I noted, you cited zero scientific evidence. The fact that Grok did not catch your omission is an example of its lack of utility.
inflation then hot big bang following is explained by quantum fluctuation without the need to invoke God. The rest of 13.8 billion years of universe evolution follows without God.
What actual evidence did you provide? Are you familiar with any of the evidence provided by current OoL research, or do you merely parrot creationist hearsay?
Apologetics (from Greek ἀπολογία, apología, ‘speaking in defense’) is the religious discipline of defending religious doctrines through systematic argumentation and discourse.
This paragraph, from theoretical physicist Sean M. Carroll, would appear to cast doubt on this claim:
On my part, I knew that WLC liked to glide from the BGV theorem (which says that classical spacetime description fails in the past) to the stronger statement that the universe probably had a beginning, even though the latter is not implied by the former. And his favorite weapon is to use quotes from Alex Vilenkin, one of the authors of the BGV theorem. So I talked to Alan Guth, and he was gracious enough to agree to let me take pictures of him holding up signs with his perspective: namely, that the universe probably didn’t have a beginning, and is very likely eternal. Now, why would an author of the BGV theorem say such a thing? For exactly the reasons I was giving all along: the theorem says nothing definitive about the real universe, it is only a constraint on the classical regime. What matters are models, not theorems, and different scientists will quite naturally have different opinions about which types of models are most likely to prove fruitful once we understand things better. In Vilenkin’s opinion, the best models (in terms of being well-defined and accounting for the data) are ones with a beginning. In Guth’s opinion, the best models are ones that are eternal. And they are welcome to disagree, because we don’t know the answer! Not knowing the answer is perfectly fine. What’s not fine is pretending that we do know the answer, and using that pretend-knowledge to draw premature theological conclusions. (Chatter on Twitter reveals theists scrambling to find previous examples of Guth saying the universe probably had a beginning. As far as I can tell Alan was there talking about inflation beginning, not the universe, which is completely different. But it doesn’t matter; good scientists, it turns out, will actually change their minds in response to thinking about things.)[1]
Is there anybody else of note who considers yourself to be a budding philosopher of science? So far, I’m picking up more of a budding apologist vibe.
Strip away the grok gunk, and you seem to be presenting the age old God of the Gaps argument based on abiogenesis and Thomas Aquinas scholastic arguments.
No kidding. How many orders of magnitude is the Large Hadron Collider away from planck scale? Nobody ever held any illusion there.
Where do you get the prerogative to declare what is more fundamental - spacetime or the wavefunction? The right scientific conclusion is that nobody is yet in any position to draw a conclusion.
Citation please.
From her profile on old earth creationism site Reasons to Believe. She works in applied solid state physics at a premier university, and offers some highly regarded courses in QM, which is great, but more context for her cosmology is needed to evaluate the statement you provide.
Dr. Erica W. Carlson is professor of physics at Purdue University. Dr. Carlson holds a BS in physics from the California Institute of Technology (1994), as well as a PhD in physics from UCLA (2000). A theoretical physicist, Dr. Carlson researches electronic phase transitions in novel materials. In 2015, she was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society “for theoretical insights into the critical role of electron nematicity, disorder, and noise in novel phases of strongly correlated electron systems and predicting unique characteristics.” A member of the faculty at Purdue University since 2003, Dr. Carlson also serves as faculty advisor for Cru and Ratio Christi. She occasionally does speaking engagements on the intersection of Christianity and science.
What I find significant is that you are far more interested in presenting conversations with AI bots than your argument. If your argument was actually any good then it should have priority. The chats are best presented - if at all - as mere supplements. AI bots cannot understand, nor truly reason. The Illusion of Thinking. It is likely that the responses reflect biases in the training data - including the tendency to sycophancy, as is very much the case for ChatGPT’s evaluation of this nonsense.
Ronald Cram is a graduate of Talbot School of Theology at Biola University and author of the booklet Why Three Brilliant Atheists Became Christians. Ronald is also the founder of Factbridge, a ministry that partners with campus ministries and apologists to strengthen the faith of Christian students and prepare the way for the gospel on university campuses.[1]
Factbridge’s goal is to publish the evidence supporting faith in Christ from science, history and logic on university campuses across the nation.
So it would seem that Ronald most emphatically is a religious Apologist, as Ron and I had previously concluded.
Given Ron graduated from a School of Theology, and, by his own admission, “spends most of time as a real estate funding coach”[1], I have to wonder what level of familiarity Ron has with the underlying science.
It is all-too-common to see apologists, often with little or no scientific expertise, making grandiose claims about what the “scientific evidence” leads to.
It would also seem that superficial engagement with Large Language Models would seem likely to inflate their confidence in their dubious ‘mastery’ of these topics.
You seem caught up on my use of the term ‘personal’. I would encourage you to look passed that term to examine the scientific evidence for a Creator who existed priot to to spacetime. That’s the real point here.
I can certainly defend my use of the term ‘personal’ but it requires discussion of a much larger set of scientific evidence. The amount of evidence currently available for discussion is already quite large. Have you ever examined the evidence that the initiall conditions at the ultimate beginning of the universe were “no spacetime”? This was first discussed in the popular book God and the Astronomers by NASA scientist Robert Jastrow. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it!
You ask about my personal qualifications to discuss science. That is a question that would seem more appropriate after demonstrating that I had misunderstood something important about the science. No one so far has even attempted to discuss the science with me.
To satisfy your curiosity about me, I am a licensed real estate agent in Arizona and a real estate advisor nationally. I have a coaching program called Real Estate Funding Academy, I have been writing on the topic of scientific apologetics for a number of years now. I consider myself a budding philosopher of science.
I have exchanged emails with a large number of scientists, mostly in physics and astronomy. After reading their papers, I would email them and ask questions. Some of these have turned into long email exchanges. My exchanges with Alexander Vilenkin and Jeremiah Ostriker of Princeton were particularly interestnig.
Based on the strength of this blog article, I was invited to take part in a panel discussion with physicists Aron Wall and Luke Barnes and hosted by Cameron Bertuzzi to discuss the Carroll/Craig debate. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gye1XE0kVJY
Later I turned my attention to the challenges faced by abiogenesis. I co-founded a monthly biology journal reading club. My co-founder was an evolutionist and a PhD researcher. Andy is a Chief Science Officer at a medical software company and not a public intellectual so I will not name him. Andy and I would select papers to discuss and email the authors so they could be present to discuss their papers. We had two meetings discussing:
Wills, Peter R., and Charles W. Carter Jr. “Insuperable problems of the genetic code initially emerging in an RNA world.” Biosystems 164 (2018): 155-166.
Charlie Carter attended both of those meetings. This is an important paper because it falsifies the RNA World hypothesis. We had researchers from Cambridge and other universties attend our meetings.
Have I ever published a peer reviewed science paper? No. But I do intend to publish in philosophy of science journals. Stay tuned.
Gisteron,
True, but as I already mentioned, matter, energy and radiation do exist in discete quanta. If you are only studying matter, energy and radiation, then you would only be concerned with the quantum scale.
But when you start talking about the universe, cosmology or cosmogony, then you must discuss spacetime. Spacetime is not quantum. Spacetime is more fundamental than matter, energy and radiation.
A Creator is personal, there is no getting passed that.
At best, the question as to whether the universe had a temporal beginning may be within the scope of science. The matter of a Creator is not a scientific inference, and there is no tower of Babel from which God can be either observed or experimentally manipulated. Scientific evidence for a Creator is a category error. Insufficiency in our understanding of nature does not equate to evidence for supernature, even if it is harmonious with faith in God.
Again, you have not justified that assertion. What rigorous definition of more fundamental are you even employing here?
[quote=“Paul_King, post:32, topic:17269, full:true”]
What I find significant is that you are far more interested in presenting conversations with AI bots than your argument. If your argument was actually any good then it should have priority. The chats are best presented - if at all - as mere supplements. [/quote]
False. I am interested in presenting my argument and AI’s evaluation of the argument. I think this can be very informative. Anyone who is familiar with the way AI evaluates scientific claims by referring to its knowledge base before responding, knows that AI will often catch bad science. See This Flat Earther Got Very Frustrated Trying to Outsmart ChatGPT
My goal in bringing this AI discussion here was to get real experts to look at the science to see if Grok missed anything. So far, no one has found any errors in the evidence I presented or the logic used. Grok did not. And no members of this forum have found any errors either.
I think that’s pretty encouraging that this scientific argument can stand up to scrutiny.
You opine that it is likely that Grok’s responses reflect biases in the training data. I disagree. Grok’s default position is that the universe is entirely natural. It changed it’s position only after assessing the evidence and logical argument.
I do not know what you mean about “ChatGPT’s evaluation of this nonsense”. I looked at your URL. I was not created by ChatGPT. I asked ChatGPT to evaluate it and ChatGPT gave it a very low rating. You did not provide an evaluation from ChatGPT so I have no idea what you mean. If you have evidence that ChatGPT gave that nonsense a high rating, I would need to see both the prompt and the response. In fact, it would be best if you share the ChatGPT conversation URL here so I can read it myself and ask followup questions. I shared Grok’s conversation URL. You should do the same.
I must disagree. The existence of a Creator is a scientific inference. Here are a few papers.
Hsu, Steven, and Anthony Zee. “Message in the Sky.” Modern Physics Letters A 21.19 (2006): 1495-1500. https://arxiv.org/pdf/physics/0510102
Proposes that the cosmic microwave background could be fine-tuned by a Creator to send a message to intelligent beings.
Barnes, Luke A. “The fine-tuning of the universe for intelligent life.” Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia 29.4 (2012): 529-564. https://www.publish.csiro.au/as/pdf/AS12015