Where did the laws of physics come from?

Thanks for helping me expand my “fallacy vocabulary”!

These types of arguments for God are more about consistency than about proof, though. One good example is Plantinga’s arguments about divine action:

https://biologos.org/blogs/guest/divine-action-in-the-world-part-2
https://biologos.org/blogs/guest/divine-action-in-the-world-part-4

He is not arguing that the fact that Newtonian mechanics are only deterministic for closed systems or that quantum mechanics is probabilistic proves that God interferes in the world, but rather showing that they are not inconsistent with/disprove divine action. That is why I don’t think those fallacies apply, really.

I would agree. In the case of Plantinga, he is starting from the position of already believing in God. I can completely understand (from a human perspective) why believers would see the actions of God in nature.

Obviously, there is a big difference between “does not disprove God” and “leads to the conclusion that God exists”. Again, if someone is professing a belief then citing fallacies probably isn’t necessary or even applicable, and I am probably guilty of doing so on more than one occasion and perhaps even on this occasion. Besides, if I were perfect it would be too heretical for a christian website. :wink:

So yes, I see nothing wrong with Plantinga’s position and it is a reasonable position for a christian to take. Where fallacies start to become more important is arguments like the Kalam Cosmological argument or the Fine Tuning argument which appear to put forward positive evidence for the existence of God.

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Well, if one claims that they are proof of the existence of God and that no other answer is plausible, then yes. But if what is claimed is that God could be the answer to those (although the answer could also be something else that we don’t know), then I don’t think it is necessarily falacious. But yeah, if one claims that God is the only reasonable answer and therefore that these arguments prove God, I would agree its falacious.

I’m sorry the answer to what exactly?

@T_aquaticus,

Thank you for your list.

You are using the a priori fallacy. As you know this means that your thinking is an ideology that has predetermined the answer to the question before the discussion.

When you begin with the worldview that only the physical exists, and the only truth is scientific truth, then you predetermine any argument a priori that finds truth beyond the physical, including the source of the laws of physics.

What are you talking about? I actually follow very little that you said in your entire post.

I see.

Do I have to find Max’s same comments of this for you to understand? Do you not know those five, regular/symmetrical and convex polyhedra?

Do you not understand there is only five possible in the whole wide Universe/God?

Since capital U and capital G in Universe/God includes multiverse scenarios then that statement is true even if multi-verse scenarios were valid.

Multi-verse --i.e. multiple local small u universe’s-- even they exist are all connected via gravity if not also gravities opposite dark energy.

Again, I can look for Max’s comments regarding five and only five you really need his comments to understand what I stated.

If there is any comments by me in other posts please address them specifically and I will try to assist you. None of them are rocket science. :smile:

That’d be a great place to start.

I suppose they could be, though effectively would be isolated in the same sense that we are gravitationally isolated from the Perseus-Pegasus Supercluster as shown in this short Nature video:

Again that’d be great, but I doubt that his comment will clear up all the confusion over what appears to be perfectly reasonable to you. To the point where you I hope in jest say:

As someone who regularly does problems involving rockets and simple astrophysical calculations, I’m at a loss still. Let’s start from square one.

First you did not answer a relatively simple question. Do you not know those five, regular/symmetrical and convex polyhedra?

2nd reaonable to anyone who has been seeking absolute truths via geometry. Rocket science may be a detriement to knowledge of well known fact for who knows how many years now.

Gravity has no distance limit ergo all mass of Universe/God is connected by gravity. To suggest that two super-clusters are do not have a graviatonal relationships is incorrect.

I will look for Max Tegs comments from 10 - 15 years ago regarding the existence of only five regular/symmetrical polyhedra of Universe/God are possible.

A simple internet search will reveal the same thing Ive stated. Finding those statements by Max may take a little time. Sleep and work are closely approaching my event horizon.

…“Using this definition, there are a total of nine regular polyhedra, five being the convex Platonic solids and four being the concave (stellated) Kepler-Poinsot solids. However, the term “regular polyhedra” is sometimes used to refer exclusively to the convex Platonic solids.”… maybe you will be satisfied with Wolframs mathematical assessments.

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/RegularPolyhedron.html

Or perhaps it’s that gravitational waves (which travel at the speed of light) are effectively becoming increasingly isolated from one another since the space between them is traveling at faster than the speed of light thus defeating the simplistic approximation of an ‘infinite’ force. To suggest that we are ‘connected’ to the Perseus-Pegasus supercluster is a bit of a stretch as well.

Alright you do that.

1} twice you have not addressed the question posed to you regarding do you know the five regula/symmetrical and convex polyhedra, even after I sent you quote from Wolframs page and link to same page.

Your playing mind games now. :disappointed:

You above is irrelevant for two reasons;

2} we have no evidence of your alledged “space” --whatever you think that is supposed to be-- is between two known{?} superclusters is “traveling faster than speed of light”,

3} again, you have no evidence, details, specifications of what this alledged “space” is exactly, that, you say “perhaps” is “traveling faster than speed of light”.

Gravity has no distance limits --same EM charge-- ergo gravity will stretch, reach connect irrespective of distance. Gravity connects all mass and that is called mass-attraction.

It is not a stretch. Your using concept that is often used in multi-verse scenarios. All you have done is to try evade the lack of evidence of multi-verses and instead used two known{?} super-clusters and injected the “perhaps” “space between them is traveling at faster than the speed of light” concept.

Please address my givens as stated. Mind games are fun when that is the agreed upon intention. Otherwise the energy exchange is short-circuited. A ground leakage that has potential to blow the breaker/disconnect in service panel we call brain/nervous/system

So that is enumerated set of three that you need to address. Simple.

Let me see here:

As I look at the shapes, your claims don’t make any more sense to me yet. Let’s keep trying.

My apologies if it seemed I was saying the two superclusters were traveling apart at such speeds. They are not yet, though someday they will be as outlined in this paper by Krauss. Also perhaps this might clear up some confusion:

Is the universe expanding faster than the speed of light?

Kind of. Just because a good approximation of the force (with Newton’s Laws) has a 1/r^2 term, which never technically reaches zero doesn’t mean that it has no distance limits. And since gravitational waves move at the speed of light and if two objects are moving away from each other faster than the speed of light - gravity does have limits.

According to Coulomb’s Law, sure but effectively all charges get screened at very short distances and thus Coulomb’s law definitely is not effectively ‘infinite.’

I hope I cleared some things up here. We are effectively gravitationally isolated from our neighbor super-cluster since we are headed towards the ‘great attractor’ and everything in the super-cluster is heading somewhere else. It matters not one bit that we might feel any gravitational force from anything in our neighbor super-cluster and someday we will be moving away from that supercluster at faster than the speed of light, truly gravitationally isolated forever. Note: we are already moving away from many galaxies faster than the speed of light and already gravitationally isolated forever (unless the big crunch turns out to be correct after all).

That kinda reminded me of that weird idea of Plato about the five elements

image

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It’s good to see all sides of an argument.

To me, the more provocative question is along the lines of Wigner’s “unreasonable success of mathematics” argument. Personally, and subjectively, the best prima facie evidence for God is not the fine tuning of the universe (although I would also include it as an arrow in my apologetic quiver) but rather that we can do physics at all. I always ask my students, in an honors class that I teach, what do they think the world would be like if Newton’s Second Law was a nonlinear differential equation. In fact all over the place in physics we, at first blush, take linearity as “obvious”. But what if the electric field from one charge affected the electric field of another? (It is very hard to impress upon students that superposition of E and B is not obvious; it is profound.)

Physics could have been DOA. It could have been too hard to compute anything, and too hard to invent computers with the first few centuries of advances that relied on us being able to compute without them.

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I have never said that only the physical exists, nor do any of my statements in this thread depend on the assumption that only the physical exists.

You don’t have to say it. You just have to reject all arguments that do not correspond to your a priori universe as invalid.

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This passage is from the link you gave for Wigner’s argument. But I didn’t see anything there that would lead me to posit a creator. I wonder if you could amplify for me how the argument is supposed to work. In general I’ve never heard an argument in favor of God belief which did more than establish the reasonableness of making that supposition. Declining the supposition that a divine creator must be responsible aways seems just as permissible.

The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning.

I don’t see any reason why I should feel any less amazed at the ability of mathematics to model the world or any less grateful about that on account of not sharing the hunch that a creator has designed it so.

I didn’t bring up the argument so that you would be any more or less amazed. Perhaps you glossed over where I wrote, regarding the unreasonable success of math/physics:

Personally, and subjectively, the best prima facie evidence

It is a personal apologetic, not a hopeless attempt to prove a deity or convince someone of a deity. It (this simplicity/comprehensibility/calculability) of the universe is marvelous–but make of it what you will. It (as all science does, to a greater or lesser extent) strengthens my faith. What it does to your faith, or lack of faith… well, I have nothing to say about that.

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