If computers, cars, etc. have designers why not the universe?

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Braznor

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2005
4,767
435
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The laws of the universe are quite elegant enough for all the creations within. But the universe itself exists most probably due to a cause outside it, (perhaps a supercosmos?) But again the question stands where did the Supercosmos came from? Perhaps a Big Bang in terms we can never understand.

Godel's incompleteness theorems:

Gödel's incompleteness theorems are two theorems of mathematical logic that establish inherent limitations of all but the most trivial axiomatic systems capable of doing arithmetic. The theorems, proven by Kurt Gödel in 1931, are important both in mathematical logic and in the philosophy of mathematics. The two results are widely, but not universally, interpreted as showing that Hilbert's program to find a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible, giving a negative answer to Hilbert's second problem.
The first incompleteness theorem states that no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an "effective procedure" (e.g., a computer program, but it could be any sort of algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the relations of the natural numbers (arithmetic). For any such system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system. The second incompleteness theorem, an extension of the first, shows that such a system cannot demonstrate its own consistency.

This basically means that the universe cannot contain within itself everything that makes it true i.e. reality. Perhaps this means some part of the universe belongs to the environment 'outside' it.

By the way, this 'outside' cannot be interpreted in terms of distance or location. Since everything including spacetime was created only after the big bang, this 'outside' is a kind of a conceptual impossibility which will always remain as the last frontier for all life in this universe. I also believe this universe is finite.
 

Cattlegod

Diamond Member
May 22, 2001
8,687
1
0
Let me try the question a different angle to show you how silly it is.

If humans, trees, etc. live on Earth, why not Mars?
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
72,874
33,944
136
no

While chance plays a role there are abundant rules of physics that events follow. If you show a shoe at the wall, the wall does not respond by singing I don't understand the Parisians. With gods, all things are possible, not so with reality.
 

sandorski

No Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
70,784
6,343
126
no

While chance plays a role there are abundant rules of physics that events follow. If you show a shoe at the wall, the wall does not respond by singing I don't understand the Parisians. With gods, all things are possible, not so with reality.

I disagree. We have no idea what existed pre-Big Bang. There could be as many Universes as there are Stars in our Universe, for eg.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
72,874
33,944
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Mars is too big. It would probably screw up our orbit.
:biggrin:

Yesterday I went hiking and got my socks filled with sock stickers, those nasty seeds that drill through you socks, flesh, and straight into your ankle bones. If a designer god exists then we need to track it down and kill it before it designs again.
 

wirednuts

Diamond Member
Jan 26, 2007
7,121
4
0
the best question to ask before you start any of this is- what is life? i mean, define it. its a little creepy when you realize there really isnt a way to define it. even the dictionary has a hard time. whatever you think about evolution, god or whatever will all be based off your individual definition of life.
 

IronWing

No Lifer
Jul 20, 2001
72,874
33,944
136
I disagree. We have no idea what existed pre-Big Bang. There could be as many Universes as there are Stars in our Universe, for eg.
Possibly but we would be extrapolating well beyond our data to attempt to describe the physics that exists in those hypothetical universes. In this universe, the probability path that would allow for a singing wall is very remote.
 

Lonbjerg

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2009
4,419
0
0
the best question to ask before you start any of this is- what is life? i mean, define it. its a little creepy when you realize there really isnt a way to define it. even the dictionary has a hard time. whatever you think about evolution, god or whatever will all be based off your individual definition of life.

Not really...evolution is well defined, has nothing to with eg. abiogenesis.
 

WaTaGuMp

Lifer
May 10, 2001
21,207
2,506
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The bible makes sense. It talks about Noah's Ark and makes perfect sense that all the animals knew the language and were told to get on this boat and they did. None of them tried to even eat another, since predator and prey knew what was up.
 

Cerpin Taxt

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
11,940
542
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Godel's incompleteness theorems:



This basically means that the universe cannot contain within itself everything that makes it true i.e. reality. Perhaps this means some part of the universe belongs to the environment 'outside' it.
But what about his Completeness Theorem?

It's all quite irrelevant, in fact, because the theorems describe attributes of axiomatic systems, and you haven't showed that the universe is an axiomatic system.
 
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Lonyo

Lifer
Aug 10, 2002
21,938
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No, you still have it backwards. The laws are here because of the universe, not the other way around. The land does not exist because someone drew a map of it.

I said we are here, not the universe.
The universe came to be. The laws were determined by the universe.
We came to be because of the laws and the universe.

The only reason we exist is because the conditions caused us to develop in this way. If the conditions had been different, we would be different/not exist is my point. Therefore you can't use the argument that the universe/laws are perfect for us/ordered, because we are only here because they are there.
 

Baked

Lifer
Dec 28, 2004
36,052
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81
Clearly my God's better than your God because my people invented all the shit, but your people stole all the shit afterward and claimed invention by patenting all the shit. Your God's a no good thieving asshole, just like your people.
 

Cerpin Taxt

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
11,940
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I said we are here, not the universe.
The universe is not here?

The universe came to be.
That is not a fact.


The laws were determined by the universe.
This is quite different from what you said earlier.


We came to be because of the laws and the universe.
Again: The so-called "laws of the universe" are not causative. We came to be in accord with the regularities of the universe, but they did not cause us to be.

The only reason we exist is because the conditions caused us to develop in this way. If the conditions had been different, we would be different/not exist is my point. Therefore you can't use the argument that the universe/laws are perfect for us/ordered, because we are only here because they are there.
I don't know about you, but I exist and continue to exist for a whole host of reasons, not just one.
 

Braznor

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2005
4,767
435
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But what about his Completeness Theorem?

It's all quite irrelevant, in fact, because the theorems describe attributes of axiomatic systems, and you haven't showed that the universe is an axiomatic system.

Godel's completeness theorem is this:

Gödel's completeness theorem is a fundamental theorem in mathematical logic that establishes a correspondence between semantic truth and syntactic provability in first-order logic. It makes a close link between model theory that deals with what is true in different models, and proof theory that studies what can be formally proved in particular formal systems.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del's_completeness_theorem

This definition only means that the Completeness theorem is used for compacting physical reality (truth) in terms of a restricted set of syntax (structures of that truth aka physical and mathematical units) Here the completeness theorem acts as go between Model theory (which defines the system) and proof theory to establish the structures of that system with provable logic in various aspects such as formulas, constants, constraints etc. If something is true in one system, it need not be necessarily true in another, ultimately what matters is the syntax we choose for constructing those system in the first place. Thus in essence, completeness theorem helps in establishing the model of the observed physical system i.e. axioms for a first degree provable system in terms of physical semantic truth i.e units of measurement.

Eg: if 2 + 2 = 4, then the values, 2 and 4 are the semantic 'truth' measures of something. The plus sign (+) here is a syntax (structural aspect of a mathematical axiom)

If we apply the Completeness theorem to the above equation or statement, the end result will simply assume that adding 2 + 2 equaling 4 is complete in terms of the mathematical system it existed within. Again 2 + 2 may not again equal 4 in some other system where the axioms assumed may be different from the one we are using now. From this we can conclude that the Completeness Theorem proves anything only to the extent of the foundation of that thing within the confines of that model. The Completeness theorem is used only for evaluating a syntactic axiom in terms of its greater system, not the entire system itself.

Both the Incomplete theorem and Completeness theorem are complementary to each other. Completeness theorem establishes the proof of an axiom in relation to its system and the Incompleteness theorem links the system under consideration to its greater system. i.e. Com Theory is for validating axioms in terms of systems and InCom theory is used for validating the system itself as an axiom compared to a greater system.

By the way, axioms are assumptions which are self evident, they do not require proof of their own existence to be used within a formal system. The universe resembles an axiom in the sense that any observer within it doesn't need to provide any kind of proof of its existence (of their own universe) to themselves. If the universe wasn't an axiom by its nature, then none of us would have been to prove anything ever since we won't be able to use the completeness theorem to prove any inner axiom contained within our own universe with its own structure (syntax or model) The completeness theory for such a non axiomatic universe will demand that we present the proof of everything first just to know/prove anything at all.
 

Cerpin Taxt

Lifer
Feb 23, 2005
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By the way, axioms are assumptions which are self evident, they do not require proof of their own existence to be used within a formal system.
Axioms are still statements in a language. The universe is not a language.

The universe resembles an axiom in the sense that any observer within it doesn't need to provide any kind of proof of its existence (of their own universe) to themselves.
Axioms can be postulated and rejected arbitrarily. This is not true of universe.

If the universe wasn't an axiom by its nature, then none of us would have been to prove anything ever since we won't be able to use the completeness theorem to prove any inner axiom contained within our own universe with its own structure (syntax or model).
I repeat: axioms are statements in a language. The universe is not an axiom, nor a set of axioms.

The completeness theory for such a non axiomatic universe will demand that we present the proof of everything first just to know/prove anything at all.
Non-sequitur. Nothing is ever "proved of the universe." The universe simply is.
 
Mar 10, 2005
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if this was my forum, i would have locked this thread after the OP. actually, that goes for a lot of the wastes of electricity posted here.
 

mikegg

Golden Member
Jan 30, 2010
1,976
577
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I'm an atheist and I too, sometimes think that the universe was designed(by god, by scientists, by aliens, who knows?). Is it a coincidence that all of the particles, energy end up creating galaxies, solar systems, stars, earth, us? Could be. Could everything be designed by someone or something? Could be too.

I also believe that the universe could just be a simulation with fundamental laws. Humans have created this also with computers. Just program something and watch what it does. The matrix? Maybe.

The argument of who created god and who created the creator of god can also be applied to scientific theories. Who/what created the big bang? Who/what put the particles/energy there for the big bang? Then who/what created the creator of the big bang?

It's a question we'll never be able to answer, at least I don't think in our life time.
 

Jeff7

Lifer
Jan 4, 2001
41,596
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The Universe came to be from natural forces outside of our spacetime bubble.
Gods evolved within this bubble.
Gods' species figured out how to create more tiny Universes, some of which also contained Gods.
Then it's just Gods all the way down.



I'm an atheist and I too, sometimes think that the universe was designed(by god, by scientists, by aliens, who knows?). Is it a coincidence that all of the particles, energy end up creating galaxies, solar systems, stars, earth, us? Could be. Could everything be designed by someone or something? Could be too.

I also believe that the universe could just be a simulation with fundamental laws. Humans have created this also with computers. Just program something and watch what it does. The matrix? Maybe.

The argument of who created god and who created the creator of god can also be applied to scientific theories. Who/what created the big bang? Who/what put the particles/energy there for the big bang? Then who/what created the creator of the big bang?

It's a question we'll never be able to answer, at least I don't think in our life time.
Fun stuff to think about. :)
Like what's beyond our spacetime bubble? What are things like in a place that may lack our type of causality? Don't know. Kind of like trying to think about a time after death, when you lack the ability to form or have consciousness, thought, or memory. Your atoms will simply be in a different configuration. Or make a Flatlander understand the idea of "depth."


That wonderful man Neil DeGrasse Tyson also spelled out a big buzzkill: That there's also the chance that we, at least in our current evolutionary state, may simply lack the intelligence to understand much about the Universe. Teach a turtle how to solve differential equations. You can't do it. Its brain probably has the raw processing power to handle it (hell, a TI-89 can do basic calculus), but it didn't evolve to do that kind of thing. Our wacky biology is a configuration that works so far as allowing us to survive in a world that routinely tries to kill us. Now we have an information-based society with some pretty nice technology, and a lot of those evolved behaviors and abilities aren't entirely relevant or helpful anymore; a fair number of them are actually hindrances.

Hopefully we'll have the ability to generate some new manner of things that are smarter and more capable, whether those "offspring" are biological or technological in nature. Just to troll them, we'll throw in a memory killswitch so that, in the future, they'll forget their origins, just so that they can debate and argue about their seemingly-intelligent design. :awe:
 

pelov

Diamond Member
Dec 6, 2011
3,510
6
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So if the universe needs a creator/designer, does not god need one too?

Maybe it's just a never-ending chain of gods, human centipede style, all attached anus-to-mouth, digesting and chewing cuttlefish and asparagus.
 
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Imp

Lifer
Feb 8, 2000
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It's almost like there was intelligent design... ta da!

P.S. Whoever intelligently designed this didn't do that great a job.
 

DrPizza

Administrator Elite Member Goat Whisperer
Mar 5, 2001
49,601
167
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www.slatebrookfarm.com
Look at how complex this is! It must have been designed.
01+Dun+Briste+-+Ireland.jpg


Look at how simple this is, it probably occurred naturally:
new-brick-wall.jpg


/sarcasm. How simple or complex something is does not imply whether they were created.
 

SSSnail

Lifer
Nov 29, 2006
17,458
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Look at how complex this is! It must have been designed.
01+Dun+Briste+-+Ireland.jpg


Look at how simple this is, it probably occurred naturally:
new-brick-wall.jpg


/sarcasm. How simple or complex something is does not imply whether they were created.
Those were obviously trick scenarios, God created both of those. In the first scenario, God created the water and wind that eroded that rock, which he/she/it (or, a bearded white guy in some circles) also created. In the second scenario, God created the men that built that brick wall. You just can't see to it that God created everything you see. :awe: