Two last points: I do not equate the philosophy of atheism with religion directly. I DO equate the tactics and the language of the militant atheist with that of the fundamentalist religious devotee. Zealotry is zealotry under any guise, and while the philosophy of atheism is obviously more evolved than that of traditional religions (of any stripe), it is no less subject to codification and dogmatization.

I made a distinction also between surpassing and dismissing. Obviously, valid observation is valid by definition. Newton's laws were originally thought to govern all matter--and at the time they did; all KNOWN matter worked within Newtonian physics. Newton was surpassed in the quantum age when it became evident that those laws ceased to function at the quantum level. Quantum mechanics did not negate Newton's laws in the manifest world in which he elaborated them, but the discovery of relativity and the quantum field required dismissing those laws in the very macro and micro manifest world. The broader the viewpoint (i.e. the more experience we have relative to what we're observing, the more we can observe and the more we experience, ad infinitum) the more accurate we can be in our explanation.

You seem to me to speak of atheism as an absolute, and I am merely suggesting that it is more rightly open-ended and evolving in the same way that the whole of the Cosmos is open-ended and evolving. To state "this is fact for all time" denies all the historical examples of a statement like that later being proven false and closes the door on further, current examination.

That's a problem to me.

King -

The character was Hal Sleet, not Al. Otherwise a fitting tribute.

As for the rest of these intellect vs. faith constructions -

very interesting, I'm sure. You all carry the mark of faith in your arguments, though none of you invented them. Maybe I'll write a monograph on the phenomenon and call it "Origin of the Specious".

All I know is that if you laid all the people that attend church in this country end to end, they'd be more comfortable.

Yes, I stole that.

Thank you for making that distinction between materialism and physicalism; I agree that's important. Thank you also for your detailed summary of T. Padmanabhan. That is all fascinating, and "true" (verifiable) as far as it goes. I don't dispute any of that.

The trouble is it doesn't explain why or how the "early (photon-radiation) era cosmos" exists in the first place. I find the theory elegant, powerful and beautiful, but it doesn't speak to Ultimate Cause in any way.

As for Lynx, I would suggest that by calling me unintelligent in his first post he did indeed call me "an idiot". Perhaps, Lynx should model his discourse more along the lines of droogoy and hotspur if he's truly interested in dialogue (of course, I doubt he is).

Thanks again, droogoy. Best wishes

"Robert A. Heinlein once wrote (approximately), "There is no compelling evidence supporting the theory of life after death. Neither is there any evidence against it. Soon enough you will know, so why worry about it?"

Just how does anyone "know" that we'll "know"?

Is there proof of this?

NO.

jazztao wrote:

The atheists I am referring to are strict materialists. They believe (yes, believe) that everything can be boiled down to a material event involving chemical/electrical processes. That's fine as far as it goes. But that's just the point: it only goes so far.

Strict Materialism is a dead end, and NO sensible person who claims to be an atheist buys that anymore, because s/he knows it is inadequate to describe multifold manifestations of fields, and sub-quantum scale energy. Thus, PHYSICALISM is the more apt name for modern materialsm. I believe there is a book available from American Atheists, that goes into this in great deal, entitled The Atheist Handbook to Modern Materialism or words to that effect.

These atheists are not saying that they can't determine the source of the universe, they are saying the source of the universe is chemical/electrical processes. They refuse to ask the question, "Where did these processes come from?", "How did they begin?" They have no answer as to the origin of the processes. Period. Yet, they believe they have "the ultimate answer".

Those atheists are idjits if they say that, since the temperatures of the early (photon-radiation) era cosmos don't permit ordinary chemical electrical processes. They DO allow quantum ones.

WHERE did the processes come from? May I point you in the direction of a fabulous work of scientific merit?

I reference here the paper by T. Padmanabhan, 1983, ‘Universe Before Planck Time – A Quantum Gravity Model, in Physical Review D, Vol. 28, No. 4, p. 756.) the instantaneous formation of the universe by a possible quantum fluctuation arose when the conformal part of space-time is treated as a quantum variable.

Without going into all the complex mathematics entailed, Padmanabhan employed integrals related to the “action” (J) as a function of time. He proceeded by solving for the expansion factor S(t) using two separate energy equations, one of which (2.15 in his paper) bears a remarkable resemblance to the basic quantum wave potential equation I derived earlier. The potential energy term is remarkably similar to that for the quantum harmonic oscillator.

The most masterful section in his paper is III. ‘Geometry of the Quantum Universe’ wherein spacetime itself is taken to be in a particular quantum state U(q, t). (Where U(q, t) = exp [iE/h INT dt/ S 3(t)] f(q)) He then assumes “stationary states” (given by the variable Q) for the early universe that are independent of time and for which all the dynamics “are contained in S(t)” (ibid., p. 28). The form of the expression for his “energy content” of the universe, e (t) also bears a remarkable structural similarity to the equation given earlier for total energy in an expanding cosmos.

The conformal factor Padmanabhan uses is a, which is a purely quantum mechanical parameter, defined from his equation (2.24):

a = S^ 6 (t) omega ^2 (t)

thereby fixing the state of the universe to be compatible with a harmonic oscillator of frequency a. (Which we know has solutions in terms of Hermite polynomials H _n (q)) To make a long story short, and leave out lots of formalism, he then considers a series of different solutions for the respective energy equations, including for an “open”, “flat” and “closed” model cosmos. It’s found all the spacetimes are non-singular (e.g don’t have an associated singularity or infinity) and start with some minimum value of expansion factor. “Classical” (non-quantum) limits are achieved by setting a = 0, thus S(t) = 0.

NONE of his hypothetical basis is exotic at all. Indeed, Hermite polynomials are well known to all quantum physics students since they are a key part of the solution to the quantum harmonic oscillator.

I suggest you read his paper before despairing that modern physicalists are unable to explain cosmic origin. And if there is such explanation, it means we can refrain from importing exotic supernatural agents and committing ignotum per ignotius