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| Title |
Author |
Date |
| Two questions |
Darfler, Ben |
Feb 07, 2006 |
Mr. Perakh,
I was reading your article on Schroeder's books and have two questions. I'd like to preface by saying I'm not advocating the arguments I'm about to bring up but just curious as to your response.
1) In the section on GTR you mention that you need an independant frame of reference to find out if 15bil yrs can equal 6 days. Is it possible that if we posit a god point of view (for the sake of argument) which would be external to our universe that we would then satisfy the need for an independant frame of reference? Granted we would probably have no way of knowing what the actual relative time dilation is but it seems that it might at least be plausable. I know there are many arguments against the existance of such a god or that pov but I'm curious how the physics would work if it were to exist.
2) Later when talking about frames of reference at the speed of light you mention that no physical body can move at the speed of light. However, any theist would say that god has no physical body (granted, for Schroeder's STR example you have to assume he does but lets ignore that contradiction). It then seems that this is the crux of your argument that no such frame of reference can exist (correct me if I'm wrong). However, I was wondering what could be said of the frame of reference of a massless being (you could think of a massless particle if its easier) traveling at the speed of light. Could we say that time stops for god (or photons)? Or would photons still move at the speed of light in a frame of reference which was itself moving at the speed of light. If time stops then wouldn't there be some credability left in Schroder's argument?
Thanks for your time and for your wonderful article. I look foward to hearing back from you.
Ben Darfler
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Related Article(s):
Not a Very Big Bang about Genesis
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| Title |
Author |
Date |
| Does not the creationist's argument refute itself? |
Mayer, David |
Jan 04, 2009 |
I understand and accept the argument presented in this article. But could the creationist's argument be refuted at an even earlier stage as following?
When one writes "VALUES THAT SUPPORT LIFE", it gives the impression that the rules of life are somehow independent of the creationist's god.
However, the creationist believes that god designed not only the values but also the laws nature. This means that for ANY values god could have designed laws of nature such that life could exist for those numbers.
So when a creationist arrives to the conclusion that it was god who designed the exact values, I think it supports also the belief that god
designed the laws of nature as well (at least the god of Abrahamic religions certainly did). At that moment the creationist's argument refutes itself, since the conclusion of the argument leads to the argument being meaningless (god designed two things - numbers and laws - and could tweak one or the other, so any numbers would do). Please correct me if this is logically incorrect.
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Related Article(s):
The Fine-Tuned Universe -- the insignificance of very small numbers
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| Title |
Author |
Date |
| The Fine-Tuned Universe |
island, |
Jan 04, 2009 |
The fallacy of arguing that because a physical constant has to be extremely precise to support life it is therefore extremely unlikely that the constant had a value that would support life.
Um, physicists don't say that it is extremely unlikely that the constant had a value that would support life because a physical constant
has to be extremely precise to support life.
Good grief.
They say that it is extremely unlikely that the constant had such an extremely precise value, because these values are totally unexpected by any natural model that we have ever been able to produce from first principles.
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0512148
This idiotic debate has caused the relevant points to be lost in creative speculation that has absolutely nothing to do with the observation that they AREN'T even talking about.
What a bunch of dorks.
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Related Article(s):
The Fine-Tuned Universe -- the insignificance of very small numbers
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