In addition, I find that serious scientists/engineers/researchers tend to publish papers, with their methods described, sources listed and rationales explained. Cranks tend to make Youtube videos. I have never determined whether that is just laziness on the case of the video producers, or if the sort of people who believe in woo simply prefer video over written material - but it does save time. It's a good bet that any poster that demands that you watch several videos that prove his point doesn't have much rigor behind their opinions.
Quantum Creationism -- Is It Science Or Is It Religion?
- Thread starter Eugene Shubert
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Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I don't think that Alexander Vilenkin can be called a 'crank'. He's a reasonably well known cosmologist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Vilenkin
http://cosmos2.phy.tufts.edu/vilenkin.html
And he isn't alone in the kind of speculations he makes, even if he's one of the more outspoken proponents. Others, including some of the biggest names in physics, agree with it in principle.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Vilenkin
http://cosmos2.phy.tufts.edu/vilenkin.html
And he isn't alone in the kind of speculations he makes, even if he's one of the more outspoken proponents. Others, including some of the biggest names in physics, agree with it in principle.
Eugene Shubert
Valued Senior Member
You are free to label QC (quantum creationism) a metaphysical speculation but are unquestionably inconsistent to also label my well-developed systematic interpretation of QC and the Christian faith a religious mythology. Consequently, please retract your false statement and do not misrepresent me again. I said nothing about possessing the only possible alternative. The challenge I put forward is unmistakably clear. I demonstrated that there is more science in my theology than there is science in Alexander Vilenkin's outrageously empty pre-big-bang physics.
Eugene Shubert
Valued Senior Member
I found that highly distinguished scientists submit to personal interviews that appear on youtube and that naysayers that are overly wise in their own conceit can't imagine that a prominent scientist would do that.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I don't think that you are in any position to control what my opinions are. The best you can do is to try to persuade me.
"Well-developed" and "systematic"? I don't think so. It still isn't clear to me what point you are trying to make. That "QC" (however you choose to define it) is a "religion" (whatever that means)? I've already said that I don't think that it's either sound astrophysics or 'religion'. It's a metaphysical speculation. (And not a particularly successful one in my opinion.)
I don't think that the only two alternatives are "quantum creationism" or "7th day Shubertism". I don't think that attacking the former constitutes any kind of justification for the latter.
You obviously don't, since metaphysical agnosticism is easily the most justifiable position to take on the ultimate question of the origin of absolutely everything, of reality itself.
Challenge to whom, about what?
http://truthinverity.org/three-angels-messages/
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Eugene Shubert
Valued Senior Member
Yes, that's a very good example!
Eugene Shubert
Valued Senior Member
Yes, but I prefer mathematical courage and science. There's no science in only acknowledging the data collected by a device and synthesized by a machine.
"All of science is uncertain and subject to revision. The glory of science is to imagine more than we can prove." - Freeman Dyson.
Maybe I should ask the original poster, but anyway, what is that a "very good example" of?
There's something I'm not getting.
Eugene Shubert
Valued Senior Member
http://truthinverity.org/three-angels-messages/ is an example of a scientific theology than contains more science than Alexander Vilenkin's outrageously empty pre-big-bang physics.
Hmm. So in your world, scholarship is propagated by short video segments, rather than published peer-reviewed papers.
I am starting to see why you are such easy prey for woo. "But it was on Youtube . . . ."
Eugene Shubert
Valued Senior Member
I am a publisher of peer-reviewed papers, one of which has an embedded 5-hour video.
Did you link that?
Eugene Shubert
Valued Senior Member
Yes.
Bullshit. Where's the science of the supernatural? Hint: it doesn't exist.
Eugene Shubert
Valued Senior Member
The science of the supernatural was created by The General Conference of Seventh-day Shubertians and is easily accessible by those who have the privilege of viewing their sacred writings.
Standard science procedure, then.
Eugene Shubert
Valued Senior Member
No, not the mediocre method that many believe is science. I exalt the superlative method.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Exchemist said:
Neither do I. I don't particularly like the video format for lectures. I much prefer written text that I can slow-read and re-read and whose reasoning I can laboriously try to follow. (That's difficult work so I have to have some motivation to read the more technical sort of academic writing.)
I do often watch streaming videos of things like SpaceX launches. So the video format works better in my opinion for illustrating events than for conveying complex ideas and the reasoning that leads to them. (I can imagine videos displaying experimental procedure on a lab bench or something like that.)
billvon said:
I don't think that video presentations are meant to take the place of published books and papers. The videos supplement that stuff. Alexander Vilenkin, the cosmologist referred to earlier in the thread, has produced many publications:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=alexander vilenkin&oq=alexander vil
His earlier ideas about 'something from nothing' can be found (here.)
Many universities make videos of their classroom lectures freely available to the public. MIT is famous for doing that.
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video-course
There are videos of classroom lectures from many universities and lecture presentations at professional conferences circulating around out there, as well as filmed interviews and all kinds of things.
So I disagree with the idea that video presentations are evidence of crankery.
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Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Yazata said:
I don't see anything resembling mathematics or science on your exceedingly bizarre 'three angels messages' webpage at all.
Alexander Vilenkin's oeuvre is infinitely more scientific than yours, even if I think that he goes off the deep-end into metaphysical speculation and petitio principii fallacies now and then.
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=alexander vilenkin&oq=alexander vil
I'll add that if the cosmic inflation hypotheses are indeed true, then Vilenkin's (and Alan Guths's and others') hypotheses about how that inflation might have happened before particles of conventional 'matter' first appeared might be valuable and even correct. (It's probably too speculative to actually know for a fact at this point and it's above my pay-grade anyway.)
My only objection is that it doesn't provide a plausible answer to the ancient 'why is there something rather than nothing' question. What these theorists are trying to do is spin the universe of space-time-matter out of the abstract mathematics of quantum mechanics, which they seem to treat in mathematical Platonist fashion as having some kind of ontologically prior abstract reality of its own.
They make no attempt to explain where this exceedingly hypothetical and tendentious realm of abstract Platonic form (the metaphysical assumption there should be obvious) comes from and how they can suggest that it's 'nothing'. Christian (and Islamic) theology of the more Neoplatonist sort has traditionally equated the forms (including mathematical forms so beloved of theoretical physics) with eternal ideas in the mind of God.
These people being prominent cosmologists doesn't mean that they are right about everything they say or that it's smart for laypeople to believe their every utterance. Admitting that we just don't know is often the best and most justifiable position to take on matters like these.
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WTF?
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