From Entangled Minds (from Xtranormal.com) comes a five minute video in which a self-proclaimed skeptic from the 1980s approaches an attractive scientist (as attractive as a computer generated image can be I guess) and they have a discussion about what is and is not science. The self-proclaimed skeptic (skep-dick as they are referred to on The Urban Mystic) talks about how folks like him make proclamations from preconcieved beliefs about what is and is not real. The scientist, like Ken Wilber did in his deep science video, explains that there is a scientific method and that experiments need to be conducted and theories revised. Science, unlike skep-dick-ism (or fundamaterialism), does not start with the conclusion and work its way back using circular reasoning. Science is open-ended and willing to change based on new data.
"I'm A Skeptic" video
Ken Wilber on deep science
Also, Daniel Drasin's "Zen and the Art of Debunkery" has just been updated for 2010. The link on the official Irked-Confusion site will have to be changed now.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Georg Cantor's Infinities (Part Two)
Continuing the last post on Cantor and how he overturned the entire world, this story comes from UD and is called "Infinitely Wrong."
Cantor demonstrated that some infinities are bigger than others (infinitely so). Robert Sheldon, in the post linked above, attempts to demonstrate that cardinality can be used to show how the multiverse can't save Darwinism.
As Roger Penrose pointed out, in order to avoid conflicting with the second law of thermodynamics, the Big Bang had to be insanely precise. According to Penrose (who now believes that after all the matter in the universe is swallowed up by black holes, and after they evapourate leaving behind nothing but photons, everything gets bigger and somehow the universe starts over again, forever, but that's a different story), the force causing the expansion of the universe has to match the force of gravity to at least one part in 10^(10^123) or the universe would have either exploded into nothing or collapsed back right after it banged. I'm not sure just how many zeroes are in that number, but think of it like this: if the universe had one more or one less proton (or probably less mass than that) at the Big Bang it wouldn't be here right now for us to talk about (or me to bore you about). Hawking, who was balked in September, places the ratio at a more reasonable one part in 10^60.
The Hawking solution to this seemingly fine-tuned feature? Infinite time + infinite space. Hawking et al. propose universes popping into existence all the time in their bubble multiverse. With infinite universes being created in a process that has infinite duration anything that can happen will happen, no matter how improbable, including gravity matching the expansion of the universe to that whole stack of tens. However, at least one part in 10^(10^123) does not mean that the fine-tuning is exactly that precise, just that that is the minimum precision of the fine-tuning. It could be more. It could even be infinite.
To deal with this, according to Sheldon, the anti-design folks ask Hugh Everett for help with creating infinitely more universes. Doing some fancy mathematics, if I'm reading it right, the anti-design folks can get an Aleph-naught infinite number of universes out of their quantum fudgery to solve a design problem with an Aleph-one cardinality, something that is impossible because the fine-tuning is now infinitely larger than the attempts at explaining it away by chance.
So, if all that made sense to you, it should have clearly been demonstrated that an infinite multiverse cannot solve the problem caused by the fine-tuning of the physical constants.
-Dee
Cantor demonstrated that some infinities are bigger than others (infinitely so). Robert Sheldon, in the post linked above, attempts to demonstrate that cardinality can be used to show how the multiverse can't save Darwinism.
As Roger Penrose pointed out, in order to avoid conflicting with the second law of thermodynamics, the Big Bang had to be insanely precise. According to Penrose (who now believes that after all the matter in the universe is swallowed up by black holes, and after they evapourate leaving behind nothing but photons, everything gets bigger and somehow the universe starts over again, forever, but that's a different story), the force causing the expansion of the universe has to match the force of gravity to at least one part in 10^(10^123) or the universe would have either exploded into nothing or collapsed back right after it banged. I'm not sure just how many zeroes are in that number, but think of it like this: if the universe had one more or one less proton (or probably less mass than that) at the Big Bang it wouldn't be here right now for us to talk about (or me to bore you about). Hawking, who was balked in September, places the ratio at a more reasonable one part in 10^60.
The Hawking solution to this seemingly fine-tuned feature? Infinite time + infinite space. Hawking et al. propose universes popping into existence all the time in their bubble multiverse. With infinite universes being created in a process that has infinite duration anything that can happen will happen, no matter how improbable, including gravity matching the expansion of the universe to that whole stack of tens. However, at least one part in 10^(10^123) does not mean that the fine-tuning is exactly that precise, just that that is the minimum precision of the fine-tuning. It could be more. It could even be infinite.
To deal with this, according to Sheldon, the anti-design folks ask Hugh Everett for help with creating infinitely more universes. Doing some fancy mathematics, if I'm reading it right, the anti-design folks can get an Aleph-naught infinite number of universes out of their quantum fudgery to solve a design problem with an Aleph-one cardinality, something that is impossible because the fine-tuning is now infinitely larger than the attempts at explaining it away by chance.
So, if all that made sense to you, it should have clearly been demonstrated that an infinite multiverse cannot solve the problem caused by the fine-tuning of the physical constants.
-Dee
Friday, November 12, 2010
Bush and Kanye West
Remember how for eight years Bush was the enemy, and Hitler, and the Devil? Now, folks like Oprah and gay fish Kanye West are getting chummy with him? It's more than a little bit suspicious. It's almost as if that whole Bush was evil thing was an act, like someone is ordering us to dance and we gladly play along with this game. Who do you think that is, pulling the strings, making us dance, telling us to hate Bush, and making us elect a president who continues all of his bad policies?
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Wonderful Story from France
From AFP comes a wonderful piece about a toddler who fell out a window in France and survived.
The story begins:
"An 18-month-old boy survived after falling seven floors and bouncing off a Paris cafe awning into the arms of a passer-by, witnesses said Tuesday."
The man, Philippe Bensignor, caught the boy who fell out the window!
After the several negative posts and the seemingly endless parade of bad news this story, that was sitting in my in box for quite some time before I read it, and then read it again, really moved me. There's a lot of crap in the world, and I mean a whole lot, but there are events like this that make it all worth it. Enjoy this story.
-Dee
The story begins:
"An 18-month-old boy survived after falling seven floors and bouncing off a Paris cafe awning into the arms of a passer-by, witnesses said Tuesday."
The man, Philippe Bensignor, caught the boy who fell out the window!
After the several negative posts and the seemingly endless parade of bad news this story, that was sitting in my in box for quite some time before I read it, and then read it again, really moved me. There's a lot of crap in the world, and I mean a whole lot, but there are events like this that make it all worth it. Enjoy this story.
-Dee
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Why The Multiverse Is A Disaster For Atheists
Vjtorley, UD contributor, has written an enormous thing about an article that explains how it is consistant to be a young earth creationist and still have millions of years old stars. In it he says that invoking a multiverse, a scenario in which there are an infinite number of "universes" in which everything that can happen does happen, does not disprove the existence of God. The number of universes where everything was created in 6,000 years is infinitely greater than the number of 13.7 billion year old universes. When you're dealing with infinities, the number of nonparsimonious universes is infinitely larger than the number of parsimonious universes, so the likely hood that we inhabit a nonparsimonious universe, like say one that's 6,000 years old yet has seemingly billion year old stars, is infinitely greater than the likelihood we inhabit a parsimonious universe. When you deal with infinities you have to throw parsimony out the window. Also, having a multiverse that's been around for 6,000 years yet still has infinitely many universes that were all created 6,000 years ago still has that pesky infinity problem to get around.
The whole UD piece is monstrously long and involves many more points than I could possibly add to this summary, so I'll just skip to the end: "I conclude that a skeptic who wishes to deny the reality of God by positing a multiverse containing an infinite number of universes is engaging in scientific and intellectual suicide. Such a skeptic no longer has a reason to believe in a 13.7 billion-year-old universe which unfolded in an orderly fashion, without any changes in either the laws of Nature or the constants of Nature. Indeed, the multiverse destroys the skeptic’s arguments against a 6,000-year-old universe. And finally, the multiverse fails to rule out God anyway – for you could always say that God created it." (bold and italics in original)
-Dee
The whole UD piece is monstrously long and involves many more points than I could possibly add to this summary, so I'll just skip to the end: "I conclude that a skeptic who wishes to deny the reality of God by positing a multiverse containing an infinite number of universes is engaging in scientific and intellectual suicide. Such a skeptic no longer has a reason to believe in a 13.7 billion-year-old universe which unfolded in an orderly fashion, without any changes in either the laws of Nature or the constants of Nature. Indeed, the multiverse destroys the skeptic’s arguments against a 6,000-year-old universe. And finally, the multiverse fails to rule out God anyway – for you could always say that God created it." (bold and italics in original)
-Dee
Friday, November 5, 2010
Georg Cantor's Infinities (Part One)
From Uncommon Descent comes a wonderful video linked to by a poster bornagain77 (the one known for posting many thousands of words in the comments section). In the video very British people explain the history of infinity, Georg Cantor, and how he overturned the world.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Great Winter of 2010
During my meditation last night I had a precognitive experience that later proved true (ten minutes later to be exact). This got me thinking about a topic I have wanted to post for a while but never got around to. I had two powerful precogs in February 2006, around the time many miracles were happening and I got involved on the path of the mystics. The first one, 24 February, came to me in hypnonogogic sleep. I saw two men attacking an oil refinery in a desert and on that same day there was just such an attack in Saudi Arabia. At the time I posted it on the original Urban Mystic (now taken down). On 22 February I had another experience that hasn't come true yet, but the time it described is rapidly approaching.
(From my notes) I was reading a book when I saw the Morph strongly on its pages. It was like water sheeting down from the top of the book to the bottom. After a few seconds I felt compelled to close my eyes. Scrolling across from right to left were newspaper headlines. I don't remember the first one but the second one read: "CERN, Great Winter of 2010." What follows is a bit sketchy but it was something like "Discovery - Soul."
What I take from this is at least two things.
1. There will be a big story out of CERN in the Winter of 2010 (December), possibly an important discovery.
2. The Winter will be very bad, so bad in fact it will be called the "Great Winter of 2010."
It's also possible that there's some important discovery regarding the existence of the soul or survival of consciousness. I know there's that AWARE study going on; maybe the results are going to be really good.
-Dee|
(From my notes) I was reading a book when I saw the Morph strongly on its pages. It was like water sheeting down from the top of the book to the bottom. After a few seconds I felt compelled to close my eyes. Scrolling across from right to left were newspaper headlines. I don't remember the first one but the second one read: "CERN, Great Winter of 2010." What follows is a bit sketchy but it was something like "Discovery - Soul."
What I take from this is at least two things.
1. There will be a big story out of CERN in the Winter of 2010 (December), possibly an important discovery.
2. The Winter will be very bad, so bad in fact it will be called the "Great Winter of 2010."
It's also possible that there's some important discovery regarding the existence of the soul or survival of consciousness. I know there's that AWARE study going on; maybe the results are going to be really good.
-Dee|
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