Equilibrium, creation, and the beginning of time

[Bill3000]

You do?

Do you get into nastiness with multiple dimensions of space?

You do, actually, assuming that other dimensions are not curled up. Mathematically there are a lot of things which are only valid in 3 or 4 dimensions. Stable orbits as a result of central forces is one of them, for example.

 

[warpus]

You do, actually, assuming that other dimensions are not curled up. Mathematically there are a lot of things which are only valid in 3 or 4 dimensions. Stable orbits as a result of central forces is one of them, for example.

I don't see that as evidence that the only dimension of time that exists is the one we experience.

 

[Perfection]

Not to mention that these dimensions of time don't have to be intertwined in any way. They could be entirely independent.

Then how does God interact with His creation?

I don't see that as evidence that the only dimension of time that exists is the one we experience.

It's not, the burdon of proof is on Bozo, not us. We're just telling some things that would needto be explained in order to make his model coherant.

 

[vikingruler]

if you believe that god is all powerful and created the universe then no problems really arise. religious people believe that god is all powerful and can do whatever he wants, he is not limited to the laws of physics or thermodynamics or anything.
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[Bill3000]

if you believe that god is all powerful and created the universe then no problems really arise. religious people believe that god is all powerful and can do whatever he wants, he is not limited to the laws of physics or thermodynamics or anything.
​

That's not really an answer to the question, though. The universe wasn't in equilibrium right after the big bang and before inflation - it was uniformally distributed, yes, but was at a state of low entropy because gravity played a dominant force. When gravity plays a dominant force, a state of maximum entropy is one in which all matter are in black holes, as black holes have the maximum amount of entropy for a given volume.

So it wasn't at equilibrium in the first place - and something can easily go into equilibrium once it has been disturbed due to the second law of thermodynamics. There is no need to resort to God being above any particular law of nature.

And no, God is limited to following the laws of logic if he is to be logically consistent. God cannot make 2 + 2 = 5, for example.

 

[Perfection]

if you believe that god is all powerful and created the universe then no problems really arise. religious people believe that god is all powerful and can do whatever he wants, he is not limited to the laws of physics or thermodynamics or anything.
​

Physics or thermodynamics aren't the real issue, the issue is logic. We generally assume God must behave in a logically coherant fashion (that is he can't make 2+2=5) and so the issues of causality in a God is important.

 

[WillJ]

aneeshm, it seems like you're not specifically arguing against creation, but rather arguing against the concept of the beginning of time in general (regardless of whether it was created or started on its own) --- am I right about this? If so, do you think the concept of time stretching infinitely back and infinitely forward is any more coherent?

 

[Bill3000]

If that's the case, it's an irrelevant line of reasoning, as there is empirical evidence of the beginning of time.

As I said before, cosmology is now a matter of physics, not metaphysics.

 

[WillJ]

If that's the case, it's an irrelevant line of reasoning, as there is empirical evidence of the beginning of time.

Really? In my extremely limited understanding, I was under the impression that with regard to the question of whether or not anything happened before the Big Bang, there is currently nothing pointing to an answer. So I'm wrong?

 

[Bill3000]

Really? In my extremely limited understanding, I was under the impression that with regard to the question of whether or not anything happened before the Big Bang, there is currently nothing pointing to an answer. So I'm wrong?

While we can't really comprehend what happens before one planck time, the general consensus is that time as we know it didn't exist beforehand - that's how the standard theory works, anyway.

 

[aneeshm]

Yes, it can, because of the second law of thermodynamics.

This is a physical question, not a metaphysical question.

Perfect static equilibrium? Won't the laws of quantum mech. prevent that?

 

[aneeshm]

While we can't really comprehend what happens before one planck time, the general consensus is that time as we know it didn't exist beforehand - that's how the standard theory works, anyway.

OK. Then what went before?

And most importantly, why did the whole thing start off in the first place, if time did not exist?

 

[Bill3000]

Perfect static equilibrium? Won't the laws of quantum mech. prevent that?

Perfect static equilibrium is an oxymoron, because equilibrium is a macroscopic state, not a microscopic one. Equilibrium only means that there is no net change - not that there is no change. Even in a perfect vacuum, the equilibrium is not static, as there are virtual particle exchanges and such. So, the answer to your question is that a "perfect static equilibrium does not exist", and that a closed system tends to reach maximal entropy, which is equivilant to say thermal equilibrium.

OK. Then what went before?

Other than the fact that you can simply say "our current knowledge of the laws of physics cannot predict what happened before one planck time", one could also say "there *was* no before t = 0".

And most importantly, why did the whole thing start off in the first place, if time did not exist?

I dunno! Random quantum fluctuations? The Big Splat of M-theory?

 

[R.B.]

The more I ponder over the idea of creation, the more patently ridiculous it seems. Here are a few of my musings.

Note that thought I have used terms from physics, readers are requested to take them to mean their philosophical equivalent. I'm just most comfortable using physics as a language.










Consider a perfectly isolated system in perfect static equilibrium. Will it ever be able to break out of that equilibrium? By the definition of equilibrium, it cannot.

Thus, it is impossible for the universe to have "started" from a state of equilibrium.



Consider a perfectly isolated system in perfect static equilibrium. That system undergoes no change whatsoever. Time is, therefore, meaningless in such a system. It makes no difference whether a nanosecond, a minute, or an aeon passes - the thing remains just the damn same. There is no way in hell to detect how much time has passed simply by observing the system (if we ignore for a moment the inconvenient fact that it is impossible to observe such a system without destroying the equilibrium - just assume we're omniscient, or something like that which allows us to observe without disturbing). It also means that system will never "start" and break out of its equilibrium.

This means that time cannot ever have a beginning, because that would mean an equilibrium state before its beginning, and as we have just seen, there is no way to break out of such equilibrium, thus it could not have started.



The last problem is trickier, and I haven't come to a satisfactory answer yet.

Consider a perfectly isolated system which is disturbed (not in equilibrium). Can this system ever attain perfect static equilibrium? If it can be proven that it cannot, then the idea of the "beginning of the universe" is provably false, along with an idea of the "end of the universe" or "end of time".









All of these results tell us that the idea of creation is absurd, it is puerile.

The problem is, most religious people, instead of confronting the problem head-on, choose to instead break the model by positing that the system is not, in fact, isolated, and that there exists a second entity, let us call it "God", who comes in and disturbs the system (the act of creation is a disturbance of the state of an equipoised nothingness).

The problem is just shifted one step back - start treating God as our system, and all the old problems still apply.

They then try to wiggle out of it by saying that the attribute of time is not applicable to God. Now that's one of the dumber things to declare, because if time does not apply to God, then neither does causality (in which time is implicit), and if you can discard causality, then what is the need of a theory of creation at all, given that it was thought up to satisfy the curiosity concerning causality in the first place?

Why didn't you just say "why does anything exist?" This thread make brain ache-not reading.

 

[LucyDuke]

While we can't really comprehend what happens before one planck time, the general consensus is that time as we know it didn't exist beforehand - that's how the standard theory works, anyway.

What evidence is there that time didn't exist? It seems to me that the only thing we know is that we don't know. How could we? I'm sure you know more physics than I do, so I'm not going to try to argue, just question.

 

[Bill3000]

What evidence is there that time didn't exist? It seems to me that the only thing we know is that we don't know. How could we? I'm sure you know more physics than I do, so I'm not going to try to argue, just question.

It's not that time didn't exist, necessarily; just that the time dimension would be in a form that it is different from what we know it as. As a simple example, it could just have not been a nonseperatable part from the quantum foam.

More importantly, time is one of the properties that defines the universe. If the universe doesn't exist, then time doesn't exist, by the conventional definition of the universe and time. Time is just one of the dimensions of the universe - one that's a bit different from to the space dimensions, though.

Talking about what happened before time is like trying to find out what's north of the North Pole, as time is defined to begin at the big bang. Even if there was another time frame before the Big Bang, none of that information would be accessible to us. However, what we don't know, because there is no theory for it, is what happened between t = 0 and t = 10^-44 seconds.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

Well, the whole, if God is beyond time, then how can He think thing?

If all possible states are already contained within God, would his 'thinking' require change? If God already contains, embodies and personifies all thought, would God really need to 'think' in the same linear, Time dependent way that we do?

To say that God cant possibly exist, because he would violate the physical laws that humans are bound by, doesnt make any sense to me.

But really I do want to know, why you think that way.

Because the analogy helps me explain to myself and sort of understand how God might interact with Time and yet not be bound by it.

It's not, the burdon of proof is on Bozo, not us. We're just telling some things that would needto be explained in order to make his model coherant.

I didnt know I had a burden of 'proof'. The only burden I recognize in a discussion like this is the burden of having ideas.