The Gradual Illumination of the Mind [Evolution]

Scientific American ^ | February 2002 issue | Michael Shermer

[longshadow]

If "Physicist" does not do so before you see this, feel free to "revise and extend" my remarks in #340 as you see fit to correct the record and clarify my "Reader's Digest" explanantion of the matter/anti-matter asymmetry CP violation scenario.

Thanx.

[medved]

Oh man, I just looked at the list again. I totally don't believe you posted a Jack Chick link in relation to scientific argument!

The Jack Chick link was for people like you. The post outlining the problem which evolutionism has with the laws of probability was for intelligent readers.

[Physicist]

Sorry I missed your questions earlier; had longshadow not flagged me tonight I'd have missed it entirely.

My contention however,is what caused the BB, and how did the initiation process start( way before 10E-36 seconds occured)?

In the explanation I linked above, I explained that at the Big Bang, time folds back upon itself, and all directions point to the future. In the context of our time dimension, therefore, the Big Bang is an uncaused event, and that's all we can ever know about it. So your question becomes, why does the universe exist at all?

This gets us back to Heidegger's fundamental question of philosophy, which is, why does anything exist? Why the universe? Why God? Why existence itself? Why not just nothing? I don't think that's answerable. All we can do is note that "existence exists", and take it as an axiom.

The big mystery to me is, why are there more matter than anti matter in the Universe we live in? Should symetry require that there should have been equal amounts? If there were equal amounts, woun't the anti matter, and matter distroy each other, leaving the Universe with nothing but eternal radiation?

That's actually a problem I've worked on. The immediate reason there is an imbalance between matter and antimatter is from an effect called CP-violation. The deeper question of why CP-violation exists is not yet answered, but we're closing in on it.

There are three discrete symmetries obeyed by quantum field theories: "C", or charge conjugation, which is the swapping of matter and anti-matter; "P", or parity, which is the reversal of space; and "T", which is the reversal of time. It was originally thought that the quantum field theories exhibited in nature were invariant under all of these transformations. For example, if an interaction is P-invariant, that means that when you look at the physics in a mirror, it "makes sense". If an interaction is T-invariant, the physics still makes sense if you play the film backwards.

In the 1950's, it was discovered that the weak interaction violates parity. There is a distinct "handedness" to weak decays. C. N. Yang and T. D. Lee got the Nobel Prize for this discovery. However, it was quickly shown that all of the known weak interactions were still invariant under CP: that is to say, if you theoretically replaced all the particles with their antiparticles and watched it in a mirror, the physics would end up the same.

Well, to make a long story short, ultimately some decays were discovered that violate the CP symmetry. If CP were strictly conserved, then particles and antiparticles would always decay at the same rates into "conjugate" states (i.e. the matter and antimatter versions of the same state), but sometimes this isn't true. Matter and antimatter decay differently. The difference is slight, but it's measurable.

CP violation is being studied in exquisite detail right now, particularly using B mesons at the Belle and BaBar experiments. There are several possible known mechanisms for creating CP violation both within and beyond the Standard Model. We don't yet know which mechanism is the right one (none of the above? more than one?), but we'll know in the next few years.

Once you have ansewered these simple minded questions, then we could move on to the next phase of the debate: why this improbable(perhaps only to me in this tread at the moment)Universe exists.

Any possible universe is gigantically improbable, but some universe had to exist. It may seem a miracle that our universe is just right for us, but that's looking at it the wrong way 'round: given a universe, it's inevitable that we would have been just right for it.

[desertcry]

Thank you again, and longshadow for trying to answer the questions I posed. These are essentially the same questions I asked a friend( a leading expert in magnetics, but also a young brilliant physicist) of mine years back during lunch(also a bull session time of the day}. To my surprise a year later, he handed me a manuscript, titled "The Anthropic Universe", and asked me to review it before letting an "outsider" see it. He thought , since I asked the questions which inspired him to write the book, that even if I am not a Physicist, he could find out what the reaction of a man on the street might be to his book. On my 1st question, his book talked about the SINGULARITY(S) as the starting point, or the initial conditions for the BB. He talked about that, at S, Space-Time is very tightly convoluted, talked about the quantum foam,... But then I asked, if it was possible for him to formulate this Initial State to a mathematical form sufficient to discribe the dynamics of the BB. His answer was no, not yet. He has to look into the new fad Super String Theory, to see, if he could come up with something. I have not yet heard from him yet to date, and as far as I know the book has not yet been published. Well, so much for simple questions. Your answer to my 2nd questions had a familiar ring to it, very similar to my friends response, but again, the story is not yet fully told. Well, my shadow is also becoming long, and my time maybe up soon, but am still hoping that before I go, the complete story will be told. Years ago, I told my freind that I still believe in Physics, so much so that, I really believe that the laws of Physics, and God Is an IDENTITY, As the Bible said: " In the beginning there was the WORD, and ...... Again, thank you, and have a good evening.

[desertcry]

Thank you again, and longshadow for trying to answer the questions I posed. These are essentially the same questions I asked a friend( a leading expert in magnetics, but also a young brilliant physicist) of mine years back during lunch(also a bull session time of the day}. To my surprise a year later, he handed me a manuscript, titled "The Anthropic Universe", and asked me to review it before letting an "outsider" see it. He thought , since I asked the questions which inspired him to write the book, that even if I am not a Physicist, he could find out what the reaction of a man on the street might be to his book. On my 1st question, his book talked about the SINGULARITY(S) as the starting point, or the initial conditions for the BB. He talked about that, at S, Space-Time is very tightly convoluted, talked about the quantum foam,... But then I asked, if it was possible for him to formulate this Initial State to a mathematical form sufficient to discribe the dynamics of the BB. His answer was no, not yet. He has to look into the new fad Super String Theory, to see, if he could come up with something. I have not yet heard from him yet to date, and as far as I know the book has not yet been published. Well, so much for simple questions. Your answer to my 2nd questions had a familiar ring to it, very similar to my friends response, but again, the story is not yet fully told. Well, my shadow is also becoming long, and my time maybe up soon, but am still hoping that before I go, the complete story will be told. Years ago, I told my freind that I still believe in Physics, so much so that, I really believe that the laws of Physics, and God Is an IDENTITY, As the Bible said: " In the beginning there was the WORD, and ...... Again, thank you, and have a good evening.

[desertcry]

Longshadow, Thanks for your input, and thanks for flagging Physicist. Please read my post#345, it would be my same response to you. Have a good evening.

[Quila]

The Jack Chick link was for people like you. The post outlining the problem which evolutionism has with the laws of probability was for intelligent readers.

But Jack Chick is about as far away as you can get from a scientific argument. I might as well be citing Clinton as a source on ethics.

[medved]

The argument about probabilities is completely scientific. A theory which requires one or two probabilistic miracles in the entire history of the Earth or solar system might be entertained by serious/competent people; a theory which stands everything we know about probability on its head, a theory which requires an infinite sequence of zero-probability events to even get started.... nobody who is completely logical and rational and has any sort of an understanding of modern mathematics entertains such a theory.

Check out the quadrillion-year time frame link and the link to the WISTAR symposia. You had a series of symposia in which a number of the world's best mathematicians told the evos they were totally out to lunch and the evos have been in a state of denial since then. When you get guys like Fred Hoyle and Bob Bass saying the same thing on the subject, you can take it to the bank. Modern mathematics and evolution are incompatible; deal with it.

[Physicist]

I really believe that the laws of Physics, and God Is an IDENTITY

That is my view exactly. My doing physics is my way of worship.

[RadioAstronomer]

Interesting CP link for me, but most likely pretty basic for you. :)

http://home.fnal.gov/~prebys/talks/rochester_20010926.pdf

[desertcry]

Physicist, it seems that you, and I are in the same wavelength. More power to you. I usually am not in a habit of letting people know about my private life, but I will share some of it with you. In my active years, I earned my living doing work on materials, in paritcular for advanced technology application(computers, optics, and telecommunication). The more I became materialistic(in the context of being involved in more exotic compounds, and elements)the more spiritual I became. Maybe it's just part of the process of becoming old( becoming less arrogant, and less sure of what I know). Nevertheless, I'm enjoying being old, there's lots of benifit, like being no longer draftable. Have a good day.

[RadioAstronomer]

Sorry. Forgot to include pinging you in my post #350. You also may be interested in the link I provided.

[desertcry]

Thanks for the ping. I tried downloading the info, but it's quite a large file. I'm connected to a very narrow band width phone line, and would have taken a long time to complete the download. Where I'm at, the high band width fiber optic lines are not yet, and may never will be available, we are pretty basic down here in the desert.

[RadioAstronomer]

Sorry! Didn't even realize that a dial-up would have a prob with it. Sigh!

[Quila]

nobody who is completely logical and rational and has any sort of an understanding of modern mathematics entertains such a theory.

I have a friend who works at a bioinformatics firm, he has a real doctorate in mathematics. I'll ask him if he thinks evolution is incompatible with math.

[PatrickHenry]

Placemarker.

[memetic]

But from the evolutionary perspective, prosperity is simply the promulgation of one's genes. Sometimes lies work better than the truth in this respect, like the Cassanova who is an unusually good liar. "Oh yeah, baby, I'll love you forever! After tonight, let's get married!" His genes might be spread around the world before George Washington gets his boots on. Or off, as the case may be.

big difference between using untruthfulness and believing untruthfulness. The one is a sometimes effective strategy for improving your odds in the Darwinian War, the second, at least on average, is a way to make your odds worse.

[xm177e2]

a paltry 12 percent accept the standard scientific theory that "human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process."

There's nothing "paltry" about 30 million American citizens, especially when many of them are educated and well-to-do.

[Dumb_Ox]

The one is a sometimes effective strategy for improving your odds in the Darwinian War, the second, at least on average, is a way to make your odds worse.

Have you a basis for this assertion? Has anybody done a census? Do truthful men in fact procreate more than the lying Cassanova? I suspect it is impossible to get a straight answer; it's like those logic problems: one knight sometimes lies, but you don't know which one...

[JMJ333]

I had another thought about your statement that, "Virtue is predicated on reason."

This cannot be since where there is no obedience, there is no virtue; and where there is no virtue there is no good.

Reason doesn't necessitate virtue because the will [and thereby passions] often overrides the conscience.