Life and the universe -- origins

So, . . . like I said. The universe is everything. Your dictionary quote proves my point.
The idea of multiple universes is taken seriously because we live in non-serious times where people hate the consequences of reason and facts. So they fantasize about universes where the limitations of nature they hate don’t exist.

Did you actually look at the definition? Further down it lists a number of different senses some of which would include this usage.

This is an Ad Hominem, not a real rebuttal. Physics and cosmology are serous endeavors.

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That’s everything.
Physics and cosmology proves that there are not other universes. People claim otherwise because they don’t like what physics, etc, finds.

Rationality transcends the limits of empiricism.

Science cannot prove a theory.

Did someone eventually point out, in this thread, that:
Artificial Life Forged in a Lab? Scientists Create Synthetic Cell That Grows and Divides Normally

They did NOT create a synthetic cell, they created a synthetic genome in a cell; they replaced the genome of an existing unicellular organism.

Rationalism beyond empiricism is not testable, falsifiable by definition. So what?

Your objection appears to be with the article’s claim. You might wanna take your objection up with the authors of the article, then let us all know how that turns out. Till then, you’re dismissed.
On the other hand, I suppose, you could start a thread intended to answer the question: “When is a cell a cell and when is it not a cell?” and see what kind of a crowd it draws.

They didn’t create life in a lab. They stripped out genes from pre-existing cells.

“they started with cells from a very simple type of bacteria called a mycoplasma.”
Read past the headline.

I did. I am nobody important enough to arm-wrestle with. You may want to submit your objection to the article to its author(s), … or not.

Not exactly. Multiverse theory is legit theoretical physics and has math behind it, not just imagination.

How exactly do you believe physics and cosmology prove that there are not other universes? That is not what I have heard physicists say. I’ve heard them say you can’t prove the multiverse doesn’t exist and you can’t prove that it exists. It’s purely theoretical.

No, it’s not. It’s just a way of avoiding the laws of physics. There’s only one set of laws of physics. If people are talking about others, they’re writing fiction, not science. You even stated it yourself: they can’t prove it exists, which means that they are fantasizing and it has nothing to do with science.

The article proves that you’re wrong, which two of us have pointed out to you already. They didn’t create life in a lab.

Just because we have a mathematical description of wormholes and tachyons doesn’t mean they exist. Theoretical physics is in many ways like a paint set. Just because you can paint a picture of fairies doesn’t mean they are anything but our imagination.

Again, perhaps you still misunderstand what I said about string theory. Without evidence we cannot say anything in string theory is real, but all the work done developing the mathematics is like adding few colors to our paint set, which can have value even if the things of string theory are not real.

Incorrect. At most, there is no connection between this universe and any other. But that just means that the one thing physics and cosmology could never do is prove that other universes do not exist. We simply do not know – and that is all there is to it.

Also, English proves that there are not other universes. The word “universe” means everything. The idea that there are other universes is nonsense.
The laws of nature prove it because there is only one set of the laws of nature, hence one universe. Anyone telling you otherwise has confused science fiction with science.

Sounds like the ontological argument trying to define God into existence. No. When we talk about other universes we are talking about space-time structures other than the one which began 13.8 billion years ago. At one time the word “universe” might have had the meaning you refer to, but the meaning of words change as our awareness expands.

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Actually, your last response proves that I was wrong: It appears that you think I am important enough to argue with. Okay, let’s take a little trip down memory lane to refresh our memories.

  • Astrid posted:
  • You posted

I saw the sentence “There is no life created in a lab.” So happens that I suspect and believe that the “creation” of life in a lab is as ridiculous as the notion that something can be created out of nothing, but I was just curious to see if anybody has said something on the matter since I took a Biology course in College 50+ years ago.

Being unoccupied with anything interesting at the moment, I searched on-line and came across the article that has evoked your disapproval. For kicks, I shared the link with you, noting when I did so that the heading reads: “Artificial Life Forged in a Lab? Scientists Create Synthetic Cell that Grows and Divides Normally”, and asked, since I was sharing it in a growing thread, "Did someone eventually point out the article’s claims in this thread. I don’t know where you’re from, but in my neighborhood, my question was a simple “yes” or “no” question. I gather, from the responses that the article evoked, that the simple answer would have been “no”, but silly me, I had a lapse of memory and forgot that I shared the link in biologos.org where simple "yes"es and "no"s are too simple to be common. My “bad”.

That’s when Klax, well-known for his propensity to arm-wrestle with anybody over anything chimed in, not with a “yes” or “no”, but with the assertion that “They did NOT create a synthetic cell, they created a synthetic genome in a cell; they replaced the genome of an existing unicellular organism.”

Personally, I would have thought that the claim that “Artificial Life Forged in a Lab” would have been a “head’s up” to readers that the folks in the Lab didn’t start their forging of anything with nothing, ergo, IMO, they started with something. Although I am not a blacksmith nor have I been trained in the trade, I have observed the forging of horseshoes, and every time I saw a horseshoe forged, it was forged out of something. By extension, I conclude that someone who claims to have “created” something by forging it out of something else, started not with nothing but with something else. So I’m accustomed to the human practice of talking about creation of something out of pre-existing stuff, which I’m inclined to think is common practice when creating something.

Be that as it may, my response to Klax stands: "

That’s when you took it upon yourself to chide me for pretty much the same thing that Klax fussed over, which is why I suggested the same thing to you that I suggested to Klax: “You may want to submit your objection to the article to its author(s), … or not.”

Nobody here is avoiding the laws of physics. On the contrary. The laws of physics, phusikos, nature only are necessary to explain infinite existence from eternity. The laws of thermodynamics, closed systems, cannot be broken, the conservation laws cannot be broken. Within the context of eternal infinity. Except by God theoretically of course: loves and fishes, water and wine. God of whom the laws of nature are prevenient. He has no choice in theoretically instantiating them, as He has done from forever. Proof is for mathematicians and scientists to as many sigmas as you like. Empiricism. It’s irrelevant to logic. Rationalism. The logic of being. The truth of being, of existence. That needs no proof and indeed cannot be proven. It needs no revelation. It needs no falsifiability. It sails where empiricism cannot go. Negentropy is inexhaustible. That’s a fact. It is not changed by what makes it so. Whether it’s just quantum thermodynamics in an infinite closed system from eternity or whether that needs another layer to instantiate it (why?) called God makes no difference to the ultimately inexplicable fact of it in the slightest.

You, like ALL here IME, like many physicalist (I’m going to refuse to use the term atheist as there is no theism to be a- of, whether God grounds existence and incarnates in it or no) philosophers - postmodern and post-postmodern - and scientists, including brilliant men of my acquaintance, cannot do the biggest, most fundamental, prevenient fact of all. Eternity. In fact NO thinker I’ve ever come across, apart - and only implicitly - from the conservative Christian Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and existentialist and nihilist Christians, can start with eternity. In the beginning was eternity: eternity is the beginning. There is no beginning, no end, of beginnings.

That first, prime, rational fact drives all my lying John.

I’m a simpleton in that. Far too simplistic for all you thinkers. I’m just a little boy in the wee-wee end of the pool watching the big boys play confidently in the deep end. Seeing what they can’t.

And I’m very glad to see that you can see that I’m fiercely possessive of the truth, as you included me in your ‘two of us’.

I’m a two edged sword John. And you used me rightly. But I am sharp John. And excise all spurious claims mercilessly and without favour, bias.

Still need my help to block me?

And the sum total of all infinite energy is… zero.

Very true. If I’m not mistaken, until fairly recently astronomers thought that our galaxy was the universe … until they discovered that all those “fuzzy little nebulae” were distant galaxies in their own right! So, (as John suggests), the word in its traditional sense was just expanded to definitionally include the larger cosmos. But as Mitchell suggests, the possible existence of other “cosmoses” in other dimensions, or that did not originate in “our” big bang would be another matter (or antimatter !) entirely. There are probably now even more expanded terms for that … “multiverse” or “metaverse” that may now take on the role that the term “universe” traditionally filled. I tend to share in John’s doubts about those - though I will have no share whatsoever in expressing any such denial as a certainty. [or in my case, it isn’t so much that it is any kind of strong “doubt” as it is what I view as a fairly intractably imposed agnosticism about the whole thing.]