(September 6, 2011 at 12:41 pm)QuestingHound08 Wrote: If there's no order--there's really no point to either reading or not-reading this thread. And especially not for arguing with it . But then again--we've got nothing better to do, either.

I'm not sure if the universe is completely ordered. Take the surface of the sun, or that of Jupiter, there's lots of chaos there. A lot of the matter in the galaxy is just nebula. Boil water, and see how frenetic the vapor escapes. Right now, our theory says that the universe is accelerating, for how long, we can't say. Plus, QM says empty space is full of quantum fluctuations. None of that tells me that the universe is ordered. Maybe parts of it, but all of it? I don't think so.

(September 7, 2011 at 6:45 pm)Rhythm Wrote: I have an argument very much like the banana argument about a certain thing that seems to fit perfectly in my hand.

Yours fits in your hand? Or did you mean both hands?

(September 7, 2011 at 6:36 pm)Rhizomorph13 Wrote: Yep, the fact that electrons evidently gather in shells to facilitate bonding between other elements.

Snowflakes have no reason to form crystals but they do. What purpose do snowflakes serve? I like teleological arguments, they are fun. For example have you every thought about the shape of a banana and how it fits so nicely in your hand?

Sold.

Did I not clarify that I did not believe in the BB? when I say before, I mean the 13.7 Billion year timeline (also ridiculous) that they've given the universe.

-and I believe you are sincere, but probably wrong. Unless of course you happen to have a better explanation based on the available evidence. (apart from God-did-it)

To dismiss an argument simply on the grounds that it is ridiculous without saying WHY it is ridiculous is called an argument from incredulity ,aka argument from lack of imagination.

What the person is actually saying is "I'm too ignorant,too lacking in imagination or too stupid to think of anything else ,therefore god/aliens did it." Of course many of the dogmatic apologists we get here are all three.

The term 'big bang"is a term invented by the media,not physicists;there was no 'explosion'.

Quote:The Big Bang model is the prevailing cosmological theory of the early development of the universe.[1] The major feature of the Big Bang theory is that the universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state that expanded rapidly (a "Big Bang"). This rapid expansion caused the young universe to cool and resulted in its present continuously expanding state. According to recent measurements, scientific evidence, and observations,[2][3] the original state happened around 13.7 billion years ago (see age of the Universe),[4][5] which can be referred to as the time that the Big Bang occurred.[6][7]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang

(September 7, 2011 at 7:33 pm)little_monkey Wrote: I'm not sure if the universe is completely ordered. Take the surface of the sun, or that of Jupiter, there's lots of chaos there. A lot of the matter in the galaxy is just nebula. Boil water, and see how frenetic the vapor escapes. Right now, our theory says that the universe is accelerating, for how long, we can't say. Plus, QM says empty space is full of quantum fluctuations. None of that tells me that the universe is ordered. Maybe parts of it, but all of it? I don't think so.

Chaos as in action yes but not entirely? gravity? the fact that the elements make up everything the universe needs?

Life needs a number of elements to even exist we happen to have them in abundance, minus a few elements everything that exists could just be rock.

We necessarily must find ourselves in a universe perfectly suited for life. If this wasn't the case we would not be here to ponder the question.

(September 7, 2011 at 7:33 pm)little_monkey Wrote: I'm not sure if the universe is completely ordered. Take the surface of the sun, or that of Jupiter, there's lots of chaos there. A lot of the matter in the galaxy is just nebula. Boil water, and see how frenetic the vapor escapes. Right now, our theory says that the universe is accelerating, for how long, we can't say. Plus, QM says empty space is full of quantum fluctuations. None of that tells me that the universe is ordered. Maybe parts of it, but all of it? I don't think so.

All good points.

From certain viewpoints, time and distance scales, you can find appearance of order. Even where apparent order can be observed, it's probably nothing more than a deterministic outcome based on entropy in the initial state.

Put another way, the beauty and order we see in the spiral arms of the Pinwheel Galaxy is nothing more than the laws of physics acting on non-uniform distributions of matter over cosmological time-scales. Similar effects apply from the quantum level on up. Probably.

(September 7, 2011 at 7:51 pm)padraic Wrote: -and I believe you are sincere, but probably wrong. Unless of course you happen to have a better explanation based on the available evidence. (apart from God-did-it)

To dismiss an argument simply on the grounds that it is ridiculous without saying WHY is is ridiculous is called an argument from incredulity ,aka argument from lack of imagination.

What the person is actually saying is "I'm too ignorant,too lacking in imagination or too stupid to think of anything else ,therefore god/aliens did it." Of course many of the dogmatic apologists we get here are all three.

The term 'big bang"is a term invented by the media,not physicists;there was no 'explosion'.

Not at all, I have reasons some stronger than others but you cannot expect someone to ply out all the reasons for it every time they raise the issue.

I don't believe it you I presume do, we can leave it there, I however am ref to the thread's original question.

I amusingly wrote "hands" initially, and then edited it. Modesty is a virtue.

(September 7, 2011 at 7:52 pm)Diamond-Deist Wrote: Chaos as in action yes but not entirely? gravity?

DD this interpretation is exactly wrong when it comes to what we truly understand about our universe. Quantum mechanical systems are the way the world works whether we like it or not, and not only are those systems chaotic and unpredicatble but they are also approximate. That is the universe exsits in an approximate state, not that quantum mechnical system and predications are approximate (quite the reverse they are staggeringly accurate). They stay approximate until the wave function governing their unpredictability collapses. The fact the we perceive order at the middle scale we exist (ie we do not exist at the very small (string size) nor the very large (galaxy size)) is just a fucntion of how are conciousness has come to interpret the world and not how the world really is. The quantum theory of gravity is incomplete, but once it is it will also demonstrate that gravity itself is a goverened by probability, but on the very large scale it approximates to looking ordered.

(September 7, 2011 at 7:52 pm)Diamond-Deist Wrote: the fact that the elements make up everything the universe needs?

The universe has no needs. It just 'is'. It is expressionless.

(September 7, 2011 at 7:52 pm)Diamond-Deist Wrote: Life needs a number of elements to even exist we happen to have them in abundance, minus a few elements everything that exists could just be rock.

The elements needed for carbon based life forms to originate are not in abundance in the universe and come from well understood stellar processes. The most abundant element in the universe is hydrogen. To impute purpose in the universe because of the fact life exists in it, is fallacious. It ignores the facts of the universe; for example 99.9999999999999% recurring of the universe is hostile to life, most matter in the unvierse is concentrated into black holes which hoover up large tracts of time and space, the universe is expanding at an ever increasing rate and will fly apart from itself resulting in an entropic death, our galaxy is dead on a collision course with the nearby Andromeda galaxy. The prognoisis for life is not good, infact if you did wish to impute purpose into the universe you would be better position to argue that life is here inspite of the hostility of the universe and is the biological scum on a / a number of planets with favourable conditions. The 'real' purpose being to create a vaccum or the most balck holes etc etc. I cannot see an argument to impute purpose into the universe at all however.