Problem With Materialists Understanding of Physical Laws

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On the one hand you tell me that laws of physics are just descriptive and they don't determine anything. On the other hand you say that there is natural world that extends beyond our space/time, presumably to anything physical? So you see the dichotomy of nature/spirit as physical, tangible, visible vs "in" and "un" and "non" versions of these, intangible, invisible, non physical.

But how can it be that "nature" extends all over existence beyond the realm of all we know to all other realms anywhere and yet there are no prescriptive physical laws? It seems to me that to be able say that you would have to have a set of laws that delimit what can happen. Otherwise how can you possibly know there is not a universe in which all existence is immaterial?



Here are some quotes about Big bang cosmology. They are from major physicists and some obscure physicists and the major upshot of them is we have no physics to explain the big bang.


No Physics to explain something from nothing.


John Mather, NASA's principal investigator of the cosmic background radiation's spectral curve with the COBE satellite, stated:

"We have equations that describe the transformation of one thing into another, but we have no equations whatever for creating space and time. And the concept doesn't even make sense, in English. So I don't think we have words or concepts to even think about creating something from nothing. And I certainly don't know of any work that seriously would explain it when it can't even state the concept."[John Mather, interview with Fred Heeren on May 11, 1994, cited in his book Show Me God (1998), Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 119-120.]


That is describing the excepted theory, that the universe seems to pop up from nothing, yet physicists just accept it and assume that its possible even with no physics to explian it. That is a total paradigm shift.

*Multiverse is unscientific metaphysics.

Sten Odenwald, Goddard, Nasa: http://image.gsfc.nasa.gov/poetry/ask/a11215.html

"yes there could be other universes out there, but they would be unobservable no matter how old our universe became...even infinitly old!! So, such universes have no meaning to science because there is no experiment we can perform to detect them."


John Mather, NASA's principal investigator of the cosmic background radiation's spectral curve with the COBE satellite, stated:
"We have equations that describe the transformation of one thing into another, but we have no equations whatever for creating space and time. And the concept doesn't even make sense, in English. So I don't think we have words or concepts to even think about creating something from nothing. And I certainly don't know of any work that seriously would explain it when it can't even state the concept."[John Mather, interview with Fred Heeren on May 11, 1994, cited in his book Show Me God (1998), Wheeling, IL, Searchlight Publications, p. 119-120.]That is describing the excepted theory, that the universe seems to pop up from nothing, yet physicists just accept it and assume that its possible even with no physics to explain it. That is a total paradigm shift. "yes there could be other universes out there, but they would be unobservable no matter how old our universe became...even infinitely old!! So, such universes have no meaning to science because there is no experiment we can perform to detect them."


Some physicists, such as Oldenwald, are aware of this, but that doesn't stop the materialists from continuing the assumption. So if it is religious metaphysics its bad, but if its metaphysics the materialist can use then it's "ok."

First horn of the dilemma

We have no physics to explain the bb and yet you want to argue that we know what it is and how it works and that it is material. dilemma:

several problems connected with this horn:

(1) if physical laws are not prescriptive then you must expalin how everything can be the same over all existence

(2) if psychical laws are not prescriptive

.....(a) beileve in miracles there no barrier to them

.....(b) it could be that some worlds are supernatural. It's only if you have a delimiting set of laws that you can bleary define natural from supernatural (if you go by the degraded concept most of you try to defend)

Second horn of the dilemma

(1) if there is a physics to expalin bb then it's seems physical laws are prescriptive

(2) if there is no physics to explain it then it doesn't operate by natural law we can well think of the bb as supernatural. Or even magic.


The problem with prescriptive laws is where do they rest? How can laws exist prior to the existence of a universe? It seems there would have to be a mind or some sort of repository point for the laws to reside in. A ground of being or something of that nature would be required if physical laws are prescriptive.

Comments

adude said…
Boy, we're either thinking along the same lines, or you picked up my vibe about Hume in the last post--or something else.

I cut about a page out of that post.

I think naturalism is incoherent. The problem is that it is subtly incoherent. Unlike the other side, I don't reflexively call anyone "irrational" for being on the other side. But after going around and around in their circles a few times, I look for the exit by trying to understand the method of meaning.
9/20/2008 10:55:00 PM
Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said…
amen you know what they say about great minds?
9/21/2008 08:10:00 AM
Anonymous said…
"On the other hand you say that there is [a] natural world that extends beyond our space/time, presumably to anything physical?"

When did I say the natural world extends beyond our space/time? This loaded question seems to thrust words into my mouth ...

"No Physics to explain something from nothing."

On the contrary: Creation ex nihilo - Without God.

Regarding the "dilemma":

"if physical laws are not prescriptive then you must [explain] how everything can be the same over all existence"

What is meant by "the same over all existence"? And second, throughout the entire "dilemma" explanation, I think the word "prescriptive" is highly confusing. You cannot describe objective reality with subjective prescriptions, because reality is independent of proposals and business plans. Physical laws are, by very nature, descriptive and not prescriptive. Specifically, I have trouble deciphering the meaning of this apparent non sequitor:

"if there is a physics to [explain] bb then it's seems physical laws are prescriptive"

Could someone clarify this for me, so I can understand what the sentence is saying?
9/30/2008 02:44:00 PM
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