Our Place In The Multiverse

New Science Stories: Ripping Away At the Multiverse, Supersymmetry and Higgs Boson as the God Particle.

The big news two years ago was the "discovery' of the Higgs Boson, aka the God Particle, so called because it supposedly gives mass to all other particles, in a sense "creating" them. That's so 2012. Now the particle physicists, still trying to earn their meals, have devised an attack on both the Higgs Boson and the Multiverse Theory.

Called the "scale-symmetric theory of nature", the new theory makes a basic assumption for no apparent reason: all particles start off with neither mass nor length. This eliminates a lot of stuff from the equations, of course, and allows all sorts of rampant speculation. For one thing it strips mass from Higgs, right off the bat (and thus the appellation of God Particle).

Nature, at the deepest level, may not differentiate between scales. With scale symmetry, physicists start with a basic equation that sets forth a massless collection of particles, each a unique confluence of characteristics such as whether it is matter or antimatter and has positive or negative electric charge. As these particles attract and repel one another and the effects of their interactions cascade like dominoes through the calculations, scale symmetry “breaks,” and masses and lengths spontaneously arise.

So mass occurs spontaneously when there are so many massless particles of type A and type B that somehow the balance between type A and type B is lost, and the imbalance "creates" mass. That imbalance is called "symmetry breaking". So once again we have something coming from nothing, er... sort of.

"When the Large Hadron Collider at CERN Laboratory in Geneva closed down for upgrades in early 2013, its collisions had failed to yield any of dozens of particles that many theorists had included in their equations for more than 30 years. The grand flop suggests that researchers may have taken a wrong turn decades ago in their understanding of how to calculate the masses of particles.

” Meanwhile, supersymmetry used standard mathematical techniques, and dealt with the hierarchy between the Standard Model and the Planck scale directly. Supersymmetry posits the existence of a missing twin particle for every particle found in nature. If for each particle the Higgs boson encounters (such as an electron) it also meets that particle’s slightly heavier twin (the hypothetical “selectron”), the combined effects would nearly cancel out, preventing the Higgs mass from ballooning toward the highest scales. Like the physical equivalent of x + (–x) ≈ 0, supersymmetry would protect the small but non-zero mass of the Higgs boson. The theory seemed like the perfect missing ingredient to explain the masses of the Standard Model — so perfect that without it, some theorists say the universe simply doesn’t make sense.

Yet decades after their prediction, none of the supersymmetric particles have been found. “That’s what the Large Hadron Collider has been looking for, but it hasn’t seen anything,” said Savas Dimopoulos, a professor of particle physics at Stanford University who helped develop the supersymmetry hypothesis in the early 1980s. “Somehow, the Higgs is not protected.

Some even question that the entire enterprise of breaking things, sorting through all the trash to see if one of the pieces fits the prediction, and claiming success if one time out of many there is one shard that fits, sort of, is a valid pursuit at all. It does, however, create employment.

“We’re not in a position where we can afford to be particularly arrogant about our understanding of what the laws of nature must look like,” said Michael Dine, a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who has been following the new work on scale symmetry. “Things that I might have been skeptical about before, I’m willing to entertain.”"

Scale Symmetry has been ignored since it was first proposed in 1995 by William Bardeen. Instead, the sexier "Supersymmetry" was pursued full throttle, in part because it proposed buckets full of new particles to be verified in high energy accelerators. What fun... except that none of those particles have shown up in the 30 years of bashing particles into each other. This is known as the grand flop.

So now the entire enterprise is being stood on its head, with creation now occurring from massless, dimensionless non-things having their population going out of balance. Is this converging on strings? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

How does the multiverse fit into this? With the perfection of the previous model being so unlikely, it was thought that there must be many other universes which have models which are more likely. But now that is out, also, if scale symmetry is valid.

” As the logical conclusion of prevailing assumptions, the multiverse hypothesis has surged in begrudging popularity in recent years. But the argument feels like a cop-out to many, or at least a huge letdown. A universe shaped by chance cancellations eludes understanding, and the existence of unreachable, alien universes may be impossible to prove. “And it’s pretty unsatisfactory to use the multiverse hypothesis to explain only things we don’t understand,” said Graham Ross, an emeritus professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oxford.”

But the scale symmetry approach means that gravity might not affect the Higgs boson: therefore “agravity” has to be invented. And agravity creates “ghosts”.

” A theory called “agravity” (for “adimensional gravity”) developed by Salvio and Strumia may be the most concrete realization of the scale symmetry idea thus far. Agravity weaves the laws of physics at all scales into a single, cohesive picture in which the Higgs mass and the Planck mass both arise through separate dynamical effects. As detailed in June in the Journal of High-Energy Physics, agravity also offers an explanation for why the universe inflated into existence in the first place. According to the theory, scale-symmetry breaking would have caused an exponential expansion in the size of space-time during the Big Bang.

However, the theory has what most experts consider a serious flaw: It requires the existence of strange particle-like entities called “ghosts.” Ghosts either have negative energies or negative probabilities of existing — both of which wreak havoc on the equations of the quantum world.

“Negative probabilities rule out the probabilistic interpretation of quantum mechanics, so that’s a dreadful option,” said Kelly Stelle, a theoretical particle physicist at Imperial College, London, who first showed in 1977 that certain gravity theories give rise to ghosts. Such theories can only work, Stelle said, if the ghosts somehow decouple from the other particles and keep to themselves. “Many attempts have been made along these lines; it’s not a dead subject, just rather technical and without much joy,” he said.”

Let’s see. Agravity; ghost particles; negative probabilities; particles with neither mass nor dimension; creation of mass out of nothing; that’s a hard sell.

” In the meantime, there’s a sense of rekindling hope.
“Maybe our mathematics is wrong,” Dine said. “If the alternative is the multiverse landscape, that is a pretty drastic step, so, sure — let’s see what else might be.”

Well, it IS something for the guys to do.

Amir D. Aczel Eradicates the Infinite Multiverse Using Probability Theory

Amir Aczel demonstrates a straightforward and deadly approach to the concept of the infinite multiverse. In order to get around the anthropic characteristics inherent in our own universe, physicists posit the existence of other universes which vary slightly, but are infinite in number. This is not provable, and is a useful fiction only for the story-telling aspect that now inhabits much of non-experimental, non-verifiable, non-empirical science. Yet much of cosmology now depends on this useful fiction.

Fictions are now often employed by science apologists, and the question is no longer that of science as truth, but of science as the pursuit of agenda by story telling. The TV scientistic apologetics series, Cosmos, has aroused the historians due to its false presentation of science history as Atheistic and religion as scientific heresy. There is even a debate regarding the proper ethics of using useful lies to promote scientific "truth", in this case regarding Cosmos, but also in the past regarding the usefulness of Haekel's fraudulent embryo drawings in modern texts; the designation of evolution as "truth" by Jerry Coyne despite its non-falsifiability and the inability of selection to account for it; the fraudulent title and thrust of Laurence Krauss' book declaring knowledge of a "universe from nothing"; the entire field of "evo-devo" as it applies to the evolution of psychological and cultural features; the "settled truth" of climate computer models, and so on. The field of anthropology actually removed the term "scientific" from the description of its endeavors, in a fit of intellectual honesty rarely seen in science today.

But is this multiverse fiction even possible? Aczel walks through a quick demonstration of how infinities and probabilities collide, providing clear, logical evidence that a multiverse cannot be probable. I think Aczel is my new favorite mathematician.

After the proof (read it, it is clear, sharp and concise), Aczel concludes:

"What does it all mean? It means that if you create universes that are countably infinite then, yes, you could say that things will happen (maybe something like you and me will materialize in other universes--maybe), similarly to how a monkey might reproduce Hamlet after a really, really long time. But you can't really say anything about parameters and fine tuning. If you think that you can somehow "create" finely-tuned parameters for your universe, ones that live on the continuum of numbers (such as pi!), then you can forget about it: With probability one (that is, except for on a set of measure zero), this will never happen! Put another way, there is a zero probability that you could ever recreate finely-tuned parameters that would replicate those of our universe. What does this imply about our own universe?"

Of course, the implication for our own universe is clear: it is uniquely outside of any mathematically possible multiverse.

Quick Thoughts on the Multiverse

I actually love Dawkins' claim that the multiverse is the Darwinian approach to solving the issue of the fine-tuning of the universe. The Darwinian approach is purely by imagining connections between distinct observatons, and creating fantasy observations to fill the holes in the observational history.

But there is a logical disconnect even outside the Darwinian fantasy approach, which is this:

Materialist claim:

All things which exist are material (note 1);

The source of all things which exist is therefore material.

This is a direct example of Russell's "Set of All Sets Paradox". When Russell and Whitehead were writing Principia Mathematica, which they intended to explain all mathematical concepts, Russell encountered the paradox whereby a "set of all sets" must also include itself, and therefore could not be a true set of all sets. Paradoxically, there can be no set of all sets.

The materialist claim, above, is paradoxical for the same reason. If the source of all things which exist material, then it must be the source of itself (self-referencing), or have existed forever in infinite time (infinite regression), or else require a non-material source (the claim is false).

The multiverse is an extension of the known universe (actually only partially known), and is an attempt to assert the infinite regression without having to face the usual philosophical disdain for such a claim.

Some try to assert the "material source created itself" position, but unsuccessfully. Hawking required preexisting physical laws which affected a quantum field. Krauss claimed that "coming from nothing" meant coming from the preexisting quantum field or foam or whatever preexisted, which was not material but only pre-material (or something like that). In every case, there is never an actual absence of all concepts of preexistence involved in creation-from-nothing. So it devolves to another infinite regression.

But under Godel's theorems, a hierarchy must exist if knowledge is to be certain. This brings us back to Darwinian Just So Stories, which are created imaginings of connections, fables without evidence, and then considered to actually BE evidence. That is exactly what the multiverse is.

Note 1: This claim cannot be proven materially or rationally; it is an assertion only. The use of this assertion as a premise renders the entire argument to be false. Further, it is part of a Category Error, in which material methodology (required) is used in attempts to claim that there is no material evidence for non-material existence.

Mehdi Hasan interviews Dawkins for Al Jazeera

The entire interview is well worth the time it takes. But for quick reference, here are some highlight points:

At 14:34 Dawkins rather heatedly states: "I don't much care about what's good and evil. I care about what's true!" Start shortly before 14:00 for full context. Unfortunately Hasan doesn't attack the "truth" in science.

At 31:20 Evidence.

At 41:00 Civilization is not due to religion.

At 43:30 Atheist beliefs without evidence.

Regarding the universe: "the multiverse is the Darwinian way of solving the problem of fine tuning the universe" (paraphrased).
Well of course it is: another Just So Story is required, based on zero evidence. Thus the new Just So Story trumps "mystery" because it is a way around the immediate need for an agent. But it is also an infinite regress which doesn't answer the source of the multiverse, therefore yet another Just So Story is required, if the source of all things is to be maintained as physical-only.

Transitions

The difference between an ideology defender and a truth seeker is immense: they are polar opposites. The chasm between them is something that I will now attempt to define. To start, I will elaborate some on my own experience, which was one of going from closed to open, from a perception of dominance to a voluntary position of subservience.

As an Atheist, I had confidence in my own superiority because I had consciously chosen the path of the elites. It works like this: To become an intellectual elite, all one has to do is to utter three little words: “ain’t no God”. By having had the intellect to make this choice, one is elevated to eliteness. But even better, one gets to choose an ethic, a morality, and to choose one that is convenient, one that fits what you do, who you are.

Having chosen a compatible morality, one becomes instantaneously righteous, perfectly moral, perfectly superior to, say, Christians, who cannot ever consistently meet the demands of their morality. The ease with which the self-anointed morality is achieved reflects directly on the character of the self-anointers: only a superior character could be so completely moral, so easily.

A perfectly righteous and intellectual elite then cannot be blamed for exuding self-righteousness; self-righteousness is almost certain for these individuals. This personal elevation has a meaning attached to it: this personal elevation was due to Atheism and to the self-selected morality – so they must be correct, because they work. This means that Atheism is morally correct, and that the morality is intellectually correct. What is not to love about that?

The Atheist has created a personal moral and intellectual superiority that is precious, it is cherished. The self is now highly satisfactory; it must be defended. In order to defend the Atheist self, the Atheist is free to use any position he finds necessary, because the defense of correct things must be correct no matter what it is. So any logic that supports the correct things must be correct. Any logic that does not support correct things must not be correct. The correct things are determined first; the axioms are created in their support.

Thus the logic that Atheists use bears no resemblance to traditional logic or rationality. This is an important feature to remember.

The chasm between ideologists and seekers of truth is binary: it is the difference between closed and open.

My own transition from ideologist to seeker began when I started to listen to other Atheists. Very frequently their positions went against common sense and common decency. I discovered that their self-endowed reputation for logic and rationality was highly disputable. As a logic designer I had some experience with logic. But I didn’t know how to define rationality, how to determine its coverage or its limits, what the actual functional limits of science were or why that was the case. So I had to learn how to think from the ground up. What is rationality? What is logic? How do we know that they are valid? How do we know that anything is valid? Most importantly, how do I construct a valid worldview?

Leaving an ideology can be painful, especially if one’s self-value is heavily invested in an ideology which supports that self-value. Leaving a supportive ideology means losing all the psychological benefits which that ideology bestowed, and it is a fearful loss of one’s internal, core, perceived personal value and self-image. In the case of Atheism, it is a loss of self-perceived superiority in both intellectual and moral eliteness. And what is gained? Only subservience. And not subservience to truth, because for the Atheist there are no absolutes, and that tenet is an Absolute Truth, a moral concept. So losing an ideology can also mean losing a morality, and even if the morality was self-derived, it can be a serious loss, an impediment to any transition. It is not a trade made lightly or without some source of coercion.

In fact, Atheists sometimes rail against subservience and humility: these are declared to be an abomination, a denigration of the human independence and integrity. (These same arguers will, of course, argue that there is no free will and that humans just happened and have no special value). Accepting the humility necessary to acquiesce to truth, when it is found, is not easy to choke down when a person has been basking as an intellectual elite and personally 100% moral in his past existence.

So if we are to use logic to define ourselves, the question becomes, which logic are we to use? Atheist rationalization or traditional rational logic? A seeker of truth has to consider how each logic is supported by its fundamental axioms and how it compares to observed reality both in life and across the universe. Traditional logic doesn’t work for Atheism and Atheist logic doesn’t work for seekers of truth.

The entire purpose of traditional logic is to discriminate against absurdity and falseness. It builds on a fundamental structure of universal validity, and provides methods of detecting fallacy. Logic is exclusive: it excludes falseness in favor of demanding validity. This is diametrically different from the increasingly popular use of inclusive thought and Atheist logic.

Two of the most powerfully deceptive of the inclusive theories are those of evolution and infinite universes. For example, evolution provides for any and all eventualities without exclusion (including no change at all) to have evolved from a single cell, and specifically denies anything to do with the advent of that original single cell. And the infinite universe theory means that anything that is conceivable not only could, but will exist in some parallel universe somewhere… including an orbiting teapot, a Flying Spaghetti Monster, and pink unicorns. This is declared inevitable: the equations defining it are “robust”. This is the new look of science.

But what does it mean to have a “theory of everything” that is, in reality, a theory of anything no matter how absurd? If theories and equations discriminate against nothing whatsoever, then what do they actually prove? Isn’t science supposed to be logic based, and designed, even required, to filter out the absurd? No longer, it appears. Much of science has quietly aligned itself with Philosophical Materialism over the past century, thereby becoming aligned with ideology, an eventuality that was not supposed to happen. When observations now include characteristics of the observer, the objectivity which science prided itself on in its heyday has become subjective. When a legitimate science such as biology becomes subservient to a non-empirical offshoot like evolution, science becomes beholden not to experiment and verification so much as to extrapolated inferences, and predictions retrofit into experimental results. Validity must be taken on the word of experts, who are never reticent to give it (especially biologists). The scientists become authoritarian in their ideology-of-absurdity, as Hawking demonstrates (“Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist”, Hawking says, with the definitude of a religious prophet). Something from nothing is now science, not absurdity. Even Feynman’s “many histories” model of quantum electrodynamics, which Hawking fearlessly applied to the emergent universe, means that histories of our existence are not really known – or knowable – knocking out all prior knowledge, scientific and otherwise. Absurdity is now endemic; a functional ignorance is “scientifically” enforced as an ideology.

So the thinking of the semi-educated is no longer held to the exclusivity of traditional logic; it is watered down with theories-of-anything-no-matter-how-absurd, and their acceptance without observational verification, and merely on the word handed down by the authority of the elites. It is indistinguishable from ideology because it is ideology.

Traditional logic is fighting uphill in today’s culture as well. Tolerance is valued over discrimination, to the point that discriminatory thinking is culturally and legally derogated. So how can discriminatory logic survive in a blatantly anti-discriminatory culture?

I don’t have an answer to this, short of personally defending the discrimination against fallacy as vehemently as I possibly can. And that is the purpose of this blog, which invites rational discussion based on, and held within, traditional principles of logic, and which has those principles explicit in the right hand column.

I’m not certain how to evaluate the difference in moral weight between temperance and truth; I certainly have the capacity to sacrifice the first in intemperate defense of the second. But I will hope for and try to maintain both temperance, and the pursuit of truth through traditional logic. There has to be something that is valid and true in the universe (even Atheists agree functionally as I showed above). Whatever is really, actually valid and true is worth defending, as is the process to find it.

Stephen Hawking and the Grand Design

Stephen Hawking has published another popular-culture targeted book of science, this one called “The Grand Design”. Written in collaboration with Leonard Mladinow, it is clear from the cover that Hawking has the spotlight. It is not clear who actually wrote the book. Books intended for the popular market are a special thing. In the introduction to Feynman’s book on quantum electrodynamics, ”QED”, physicist A. Zee wrote that there are three classes of audiences to be addressed by scientists who write books on their specialties: students who might be inspired to continue to study; intelligent, curious laypersons; professionals in the field (note 1). Many authors and publishers, says Zee, wring the meaningfulness from the pages in order not to spook lay readers.

Zee also quotes Steve Weinberg, who claimed that “lay readers only want to learn a few buzzwords to throw around at cocktail parties”. Further Zee quotes Hawking who said that every equation in a book halves the number of readers. Consequently, most books of popular market science contain references such as “given two numbers, the high priests have a way of producing another number”, with implied faith that what the high priests produce is correct, meaningful, and applicable to the topic at hand.

Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow have produced a popular book of the kind that references the high priests. There are many things that are stated as fact that must be assumed true without much in the way of proof; proof of the ordinary kind is eschewed, and even history is denied (more on that below). Grand Design finally morphs into a faith-based belief system, after reviewing modern physics in its several forms, and stacking some dubious axioms. The narrative starts early on toward that belief system by declaring in the first pages that “philosophy is dead”. Whether either author has an awareness of philosophical issues outside Materialism is immediately in question, especially since nowhere in the ensuing text are any of the basics of ethics, for example, discussed or even acknowledged. The entire point of the book is to stack up the models in a manner that might sift out a source for the universe that could eliminate the need for a First Cause, much less an intelligent one. One supposes that ethics must fall where it may under those conditions.

The case being made here is that, given a series of assumptions, there are some conclusions that can be made. These conclusions are that:

(a) Time had no beginning due to excessive warp of space-time making time just another crunched up physical dimension (completely unlike time as we know it), thereby creating a boundary-less universe; this is compared to the shape of the earth: there is nothing south of the south pole. Without time at the start, it being all bound up tight, there is no “beginning”, no time south of crunched-time.

(b) Applying Feynman’s “sum over histories” to our universe creates a situation where the universe has many histories, not just one, as the model for quantum particles suggests. Sum over histories, or path-integral, is the idea that a particle takes ALL possible paths to a desitination simultaneously, i.e. all histories apply.

(c) Defining life simplistically allows for high probabilities of creating life; denying free will helps.

(d) And finally, given that gravity provides a negative energy which balances positive energy use for creating mass, a universe can spontaneously create itself from nothing, with nothing to restrict it. Given that the energy in a universe must be zero, gravity and mass cancel out.

The ideas that are reached are philosophical – no need for intelligence in order for intelligence to exist; no need for mass-energy in order for mass-energy to exist, and so on – all based on speculation.

The speculation is embedded in assumptions and even the equations themselves, which are mentioned but not shown. For example, the problem of infinities arises throughout. This amazing statement ensues following a discussion of supersymmetry:

”This [the equivalence of force and matter] has the potential to solve the problem of infinities because it turns out that the infinities from closed loops of force particles are positive while the infinities from the closed loops of matter particles are negative, so the infinities in the theory arising from the force particles and their partner matter tend to cancel out. Unfortunately, the calculations required to find out whether there would be any infinities left uncanceled were so long and difficult and had such potential for error that no one was prepared to undertake them. Most physicists believed, nonetheless, that supergravity was probably the right answer to the problem of unifying gravity with the other forces.” (note 2)

Canceling infinities? Unknown possible uncanceled infinities? Such is the state of the scientific knowledge that is used to reach the beliefs being espoused.

Again,

String theories also lead to infinities, but it is believed that in the right version they will all cancel out” (note 3)

There are also the paradoxes and philosophical presuppositions slipped past:

A paradox: if only the four space dimensions existed in the early universe, and time was a space dimension, not actually time, then how did the expansion progress – given that progress requires time? Motion requires time. It can be argued that physical existence requires time (or there are no measurements possible to confirm or deny it, plus, mass only exists in temporal motion from t(n) to t(n+)).

Another paradox: The no-boundary condition (a presupposition) provides a means to:

“remove the age-old objection to the universe having a beginning, but it also means that the beginning of the universe was governed by the laws of science, and doesn’t need to be set in motion by some god.” (note 4)

Declaring that there was no beginning, it always existed in boundary-less and timeless form, and then declaring that in the beginning scientific laws existed… is self-refuting.

A strange tautology: The statement that “the laws of science apply at the beginning of the universe” is a tautology, IFF science understands what happened, perfectly, and documents that understanding. That tautology is in no way a refutation of anything in particular – it is a definition of scientific knowledge. The idea that science, by its existence, refutes a deity is false. Science produces an infinite regress of next questions. This book does not ask those questions. Questions not asked by the authors are discussed below, near the end.

Presupposition: It is presupposed that quantum theory will subsume Newtonian theory, and that means that determinism is guaranteed, even if it is probabilistic. (note 5)

Another presupposition: It is presupposed that quantum theories of particles will apply to the universe when it was quite small; this is not apparent, because the initial universe was infinitely dense, with particles collapsing into who knows what. This presupposition is a giant leap of faith.

And another presupposition: It is presupposed that there is no explanation for free will if we are just a mass of atomic subparticles (This is also known as Darwin's Horrid Doubt). The immediate conclusion is that free will cannot exist because of our composition, which is deterministic. (note 6) This is a Philosophical Materialist conclusion, not a scientific data driven one. And this leads to the bizarre conclusion that follows:

”Because it is so impractical to use the underlying physical laws to predict human behavior, we adopt what is called an effective theory [ OK we admit that free will exists…]. In physics, an effective theory is a framework created to model certain observed phenomena without describing in detail all of the underlying processes…. In the case of people, since we cannot solve the equations that determine our behavior, we use the effective theory that people have free will. The study of our will, and the behavior that arises from it, is the science of psychology.”(note 6 again)

We must be very clear here. They deny free will based on quantum composition; they do admit to the creation of a contingent theory based on observation that models the existence of free will in humans! They choose the quantum compostion as Truth, and ignore the model based on observations of facts!

Zee sets the environment straight for us: ”Theoretical physicists are a notoriously pragmatic lot. They will use whichever method is easiest. There is none of the mathematician’s petulant insistence on rigor and proof. Whatever works, man!” (note 7) One cannot let observations interfere with the pursuit of a faith.

There is an admission up front in the Grand Design. One must abandon all prior knowledge. Period. The universe, if viewed from the many-histories viewpoint, does not have a single history. The universe, like Fenman’s particles, has many, many histories, and must be examined from the present backwards, not from the beginning forwards. If this is the case, then all knowledge, having been historically derived, is null and void.

This necessarily includes logic, which is based in observations of the characteristics of the universe over many human lifetimes and even eons. Logical demands are of no value in the quantum world, and that is now being applied to the universe, in fact to all universes. And along with free will being destroyed by quantum determinism, logic is destroyed by many-histories.

So the logic of canceling infinities, or uncancelled infinities or any other paradoxes is of no concern.

Where exactly does this leave science? Does science still require experimental confirmation and non-falsification? The authors say yes, and yet their conclusions are firm, unyielding faith statements.

Or is experiment and verificaton an artifact of logic in science which is no longer required for believing in The Grand Design?

The Grand Design, taken alone and without the expertise of cosmology, quantum theory, might seduce the unsuspicious who are truly willing to abandon logic-based rationality in order to stack unproven and likely unmathematical speculations into a belief system. In fact, science might some day robustly lead to a new view of the universe and its origin. But that robustness is not available within the parameters of this book.

Also ignored in this book are the subsequent questions not being asked: Whence gravity? If we start with nothing, why would we expect gravity to appear as a balancing entity, a rule out of nowhere? Why gravity? Why not nothing? Whence the laws of science, or rather the order that science describes, even if probabilistically? What about the mind-connection in quantum mechanics, does that apply to the universe too? Whence the origin of the no-boundary existence of four crunched-up dimensions, and if they just exist, how did they get to the point where time became time? Where are these other universes? Why do we not see new universes all the time and everywhere, if there are truly no constraints on spontaneous creation? Why don't neighboring universes create warp in our universe? It goes on and on.

But I am most curious about this: Were these two authors compelled by determinism to write this book? Or did they have free will to stack all these unknowns into their belief system? That’s the question I’d like to see them answer, non-philosophically, of course. I’ll need data and replication; I'm thinking that the "effective theory" holds, and better than the quantum theory of the universe.

Note 1: A. Zee, from Feynman, “QED”; Princeton Univ. Press, pg xii-xiv.

Note 2. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 114-5.

Note 3. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 115.

Note 4. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 135.

Note 5. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 72-3.

Note 6. Hawking/Mladinow; “The Grand Design”; Bantam, NY; pg 32.

Note 7. A. Zee, from Feynman, “QED”; Princeton Univ. Press, pg xvi.

A Mind Seeks Itself; Part 1: Monism

[Author’s note: This is the first of a series addressing Monism and Dualism as they relate to Atheism. The next in the series will address Mental Monism.]


This is the beginning of a series of short articles that will cover the various ideas of MIND, what it is and what it is not thought to be. The idea of mind and its relation to transcendence vs. its attachment to the specifically material neurological glob called the brain has been a mainstay of both philosophy and of science. It also is central to the debate between Theism and Atheism.

Monism has many variants, all based on the idea of unity or oneness. For example, if the highest type of existence is counted, there would be only one, not more than one. So the argument of Monistic Mind reduces to a more basic question, that of, “what is the highest level of existence?”

The entire Monist concept, ultimate unity, appears to be a philosophical non-essential, yet one that philosophers cannot seem to avoid. It even appears that Dualism conflicts with Monism not in the fundamental of unity, but at the level of existence where that unity exists.

What is there that leads away from a multiplicity of superior existences, and restricts the realm of possible existences to just one, unified, all inclusive category?

In fact, Monism works downwards, too, with the underlying constitution of all existence thought to be just one. There is a “God Parable” that asks, if there were not a firm base for existence, how would God have known where to begin? [Note 1]. Without a constitutional monism, an infinite regress conundrum exists.

So does all existence cohere at the top level, or at the bottom? Or both?

Material Monism: Philosophical Materialism / Naturalism

This discussion will be limited to three monisms, partly because there are too many to cover outside of a book or at least a chapter, and partly because these are the three most pertinent to Atheism and are the ones that interest me. The three under consideration here are Material Monism, Mental Monism, and Neutral Monism.

Material Monism insists that unity is acquired at the physical, material level, and that nothing exists beyond that: the material level is the highest level of existence. The evidence for this is negative only, in the sense that no non-material reality can be detected by human sense perception, therefore there is no non-material reality. In other words, the materiality of human senses provides inductive proof of lack of the existence non-materiality. Once the Material Monist “Law” of Existence is established, of course, many hypotheses may be deduced from that law. Here, I am concerned mainly with hypotheses of the human mind.

Material Monism contains the idea that the mind is the brain, and the brain is the mind – they are necessarily one and the same. The brain and mind emerged more or less together through the process of random mutation / non-random selection known as evolution. The mind is seen as a self-assembled massively parallel computer, running at somewhere around 100 Hz, and consuming roughly 100 Watts.

For the Material Monist, all concepts and percepts are physical electrochemical manifestations within the neural glob, and consciousness is nothing more than an accumulation of these physical electrochemical manifestations: an information awareness, in essence.


Consequences of Material Monism:
There are secondary consequences (besides Atheism) for belief in Material Monism:

Human Non-Exceptionalism: Humans are merely a host for DNA, a means for the molecules to replicate themselves within this particular environment.

Human minds generate physically from the ionic transfer within the structure that houses them; minds are replicable in AI programs which will become as conscious as humans, and might present a possibility for transferring human consciousness from a frail body to a robust machine for extended or perpetual life.

Conversely, humans are ethically equivalent to animals or less, due to environmental damage to their host planet.

Natural Non-Exceptionalism:
What appear to be exceptional physical law characteristics are not extraordinary at all.

The consistent order found in the operation of the universe is not exceptional; multiverse theories can account for all possible conditions.

The set of circumstances surrounding the life that appears abundantly on this planet are purely accidental and are in no way exceptional; in fact, no matter where we find ourselves living and existing, it is accidental that the conditions are just right for our existence. That we exist at all is determined by the pre-existence of suitable accidental conditions favorable to our existence; there is no other reason or purpose.

Multiverse theories cover for all intricacies, all organization, and the vastly improbable rarity of conditions for life, much less intelligence. Yet there is no empirical evidence for any universe other than ours, string theory notwithstanding [Note 2].

Reductionism:
Materialist Monism is seen to be reductionist in its very premise, reducing all types of reality to one single, monistic, material existence. This includes all types of experience as well as material entities and abstracta such as logic, mathematics, art, beauty, ethics, and philosophy in general.

Because Materialist Monism is reductionist in its conception, there are subordinate reductions that are required to follow necessarily. Reduction eliminates arguments not by successful refutation, but by attempting to eliminate the argument from the debate.

Anentropy of living beings is reduced by inserting the complexity of self-organization into self-animated, self-sustaining, biomechanical self-replicators; complexity is no more than is needed to compete in the existing environment. There is no essence of life, beyond the existence of these replicators, which manipulate the form of an organic host (plants, animals, humans) as environmentally selected for successful replication. This reduction is even to the point of reducing intentionality and creative, abstract non-physical philosophies to mere ionic disturbance in the neural pathways in the physical brain. Whether these ionic disturbances have, or produce, meaning, is disputable.

Consciousness is denied as an exceptional experience, and is reduced to an agglomeration of ionic sensory inputs combined with ionic memory input of similar sensory inputs for comparison: consciousness is merely a mechanistic awareness of inputs from sensors.

The lack of any credible probability for abiogenesis actually having occurred is either ignored or hand-waved away by reducing it to unproven chemical necessity. Life is no different from non-life, except in the form of its constitutional molecules. Once replicators occurred, they successfully continued replication and evolution; there is nothing exceptional about either the process or the product.

The problem of intentional behavior exhibited by humans, as opposed to determinate behavior of non-living objects, is reduced to environmental determinism (you behave the way your environment instructs you to behave), with a slight amount of intent admitted, to be explained at a later time by Scientism.

Reductionist Scientific Monism: Scientism.
Scientism is a subcategory of Material Monism. It is the concept that, since all existence is material, then science can describe and formulate all of existence; there is no existence exempted from scientific capabilities. While Material Monism is a metaphysic, it attempts to justify itself with the co-option of empiricism as a basis, a practice that fails logic outright.

Since science, as defied by empirical, experimental empiricism, agrees voluntarily that it is not able to measure or experiment on non-material existences, science is unable to address the question of whether there are existences that are outside the material realm.

This position is hotly disputed by some Philosophical Materialists, who insist that if it exists, it is material; therefore, science can be believed to some day find a way to measure it. However, this objection is a faith statement without empirical experimental verification or any possibility of falsification. So empirical science remains outside the realm of ultimate existence determination, and Scientism is false.

Conclusion
Materialist Monism exists as a concept only because it is successful in reducing certain problematic issues to an absurd extent without ever being forced to address them head-on. This in turn produces an easy system of rationalized beliefs, which ignore the logical difficulties of dealing materially with a non-limited set of real existence. Materialist Monism limits complexity by ignoring it, thus producing a simplistic model for belief. This is a belief of convenience, not of rationality, nor of empirical science.

The Material Monist “Law” of Existence referred to above, is based on both the inductive fallacy and the proof of a negative fallacy, as well as the inability to provide falsification, making it a metaphysical belief statement and not an empirical finding. This means that any hypothesis that is deduced from such a “law” is doomed from the start.

A more complete analysis will follow the investigation of the types of Monism, coming here soon…


Note 1: Stanford Plato; http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/monism/

Note 2: String theorists currently hope to find “escaped gravity” that would indicate a contact of some sort with another universe; the idea is for a proof of concept that the universal “branes” collided, causing our universe to explode into existence. But is that what it actually would prove? Skepticism of such double and triple layers of unknowables is warranted.

Challenge to Atheists

Atheists are de facto Materialists. Materialism is a necessary consequence of denying the supernatural. As Materialists they tend to revere empiricism as a source of truth. And they are convicted of their own possession of the singular truth of the universe, that there is no first cause.

Since Atheists have possession of the truth, they should not be adverse to sharing it here with us. The truth of course would be in the form of material, empirical experimental data, replicated by separate disinterested scientific teams, unfalsified, peer reviewed and published in a major scientific journal. These are criteria frequently cited by Atheists, and should be agreeable to them.

Here is a partial list items requiring empirical proof (See Rules below):

1. Prove there is no God.

2. Prove Materialism is true.

3. Prove Monism is true.

4. Prove abiogenesis actually happened.

5. Prove macroevolution actually happened.

6. Prove Parsimony is a Law of Nature.

7. Prove Universal Uniformitarianism exists in all cases.

8. Prove wisdom does not exist.

9. Prove humans are perfectible.

10.Prove universal happiness is a moral imperative.

11.Prove information is identical to the media scaffold upon which it resides.

12.Prove the Multiverse exists.

Rules:
1. Only empirical experimental data, replicated by separate disinterested scientific teams, unfalsified yet falsifiable, peer reviewed and published in a major scientific journal.

2. No generalities or philosophical meanderings will be accepted; only empirical (material) experimental proofs are allowed.

3. Truth by majority vote is not accepted; Truth by deferring to authority is not accepted.

Note: If you can prove #4 (abiogenesis), there is $1,000,000.00 waiting for you here.

Science Shreds Atheism

Atheists have long conflated their belief with science, hoping to gain the aura of respectability that is afforded with the empirical pursuit of fact. Notwithstanding that real scientists do not confuse empirical fact with Truth, Atheists love to use science as their foundation.

But recent developments indicate several new concepts that are destined to give Atheists considerable trouble, in fact more than just trouble.

First let’s consider the “darks”; dark energy and dark matter. 95% of our universe consists of things we didn’t even know existed 20 years ago. We don’t even fully comprehend our 5% of reality and now there is 20 times as much reality that we cannot see, weigh, touch, measure or feel. Our valiant science efforts are still massively ignorant of overall reality.

But even more interesting is our newly formed science of quantum cosmology. I call it this even though it doesn’t have an official name that I know of. This is the extension of quantum mechanics to apply to the formation of the universe, a theory put forth recently by Stephen Hawking.

Quantum mechanics describes some very non-intuitive behavior. For example, a quantum particle exists only as a mathematical relationship until it is observed. The relationship is described by the Schroedinger equation which is an analog of the relationship of potential energy to kinetic energy. These equations describe a spectrum of existences, that depend on when they are observed.

For example a ball held aloft but not moving possesses potential energy only. As it falls it trades potential energy for kinetic energy until it reaches the ground. Just before impact it has all kinetic and no potential energy.

Same sort of relationship with a quantum particle/ wave. It exists as a spectral relationship where the wave is one end of the spectrum and the particle is the other end. Here is where it gets non-intuitive: the spectral existence only comes to a physical reality when it is observed.

This bit of metaphysics seriously troubled Einstein who mused, does the moon only exist when we view it? The idea has seemed so fantastic and un-real, that quantum mechanics has long been after tests to verify or falsify it. In some testing it was found to be even more weird: the particle / wave under observation could actually pre-determine the measurement, in effect knowing in advance what was about to occur. Recent testing in Vienna has shown that the equation collapse is more real than a constant, invariant reality. In other words, reality is created as we observe it.

The connection between mind and matter is now all but certain, at least as certain as testing can show it to be. Why this is the case is another matter. But the most interesting is a very recent proposal.

Recently Hawking and Thomas Hertog have proposed that the Big Bang which created the universe was actually a quantum event. At t=0 an equation that described all possible universes (multiverses) collapsed, producing only the universe that we inhabit.

The unstated metaphysics are beautiful: where did the equation come from, and why did it collapse (who observed it)? The mechanism of equation collapse upon observation is a knife in the heart of Atheism. The duality of wave / particle is a spectrum of existence, where mind is in control and material particles are not. If the mind controls the existence of physical entities, then the mind must exist outside physical existence. Otherwise, there would be no physical things at all, just a superposition of possible existences as described by a single equation awaiting an outside mind to observe it.

To bring it into focus, our minds must exist outside physical, material existence; they are transcendental in a manner that we do not understand (yet, at least). The existence of the universe before us must have been hinged on a moment-to-moment observation by someone other than us. The continuity of reality that we seem to think we experience must have been created by an outside mind, which not only created it but coordinates it for overall coherence in each sequential moment of time. And the Big Bang spectral universe equation collapse must have been triggered by the observation by some mind outside the universe itself.

Atheists will have to pedal hard to deny these quantum issues. If they falsify them they can pick up their Nobel prizes; I’m sure there must be prizes for negations. In the meantime, the “scientific” blocks have been knocked out from under the mental process of Atheism, and it was done by science, which is not by definition Atheistic anyway.

"It would be perfectly consistent with all we know to say that there was a Being who was responsible for all the laws of physics'
Stephen Hawking


Go science!

Ubiquity in Multiverses

Why should there be any multiverses? Is there evidence for them? Can the theory be falsified? Is the theory logically necessary? Where did this story originate, and why?

Multiverses are an attempt to get around the need for extra-universal intervention in producing a life-friendly universal environment, including fine-tuning the constants that make the universe what it is. The idea that an intelligence greater than Dawkins and Hawking and all the other skeptics combined and raised to the nth power... exists and even meddles, is anathema to those skeptics. So they invented a story out of whole cloth: multiverse theory, with, oh let's say, an infinite number of universes, where ours just happens to be the one out of the infinity that is capable of life. There, that kills off the need for any intelligence greater than the sum of the skeptics'.

Skeptics are materialists. The mind is material. If all material is removed from the universe, nothing is left. Oh, maybe the Higgs Field, or whatever; the point is that man is purely material, and this is necessary in the light of the absolute truth value of the Atheist position. (The conclusion proves the premise).

Now Atheism is not provable, nor is it falsifiable, empirically, because it is not a material object. So evidentiarily, Atheism is not a sustainable theory, especially by materialistic evidence. But it is nonetheless an article of absolute faith that Atheism is the only truth. This trickles down into the necessity of multiverses, not empirically necessary, not logically necessary, but necessary to the Atheist faith. Again the conclusion proves the premise.

But the materialists blindly assume that their multiverses are parallel material universes. Understanding that all infinity stories are flawed from the get-go, let's assume that there really are an infinite number of universes. And we will not let it go at that, we will pursue it to its logical conclusion.

First off, multiverse theory projects an infinity of material universes, existing in the same three dimensions plus time, that our universe exists. Is it necessary to stop there? Absolutely not! There must also be universes that exist in dimensions 1 thru 3, without time; dimensions 2 through 4, with and without time; dimensions 2 through 5, with and without time; dimensions 17 through 92, dimensions 42 through 964, sans 457 through 598, with and without time. You get the picture. An infinity of dimensions is just as predictable as an infinity of universes.

So, given a separate universe of say, conservatively, dimensions 4 through 26 without time, because it is not material in our 3-D sense, there is no reason to predict that it could not coincide and overlay our universe of paltry dimensions 1 through 3 plus time.

Moreover, there is no reason to predict that this superimposed universe, (4 through 26, no time) could not sustain life. And there is no reason to predict that the life contained in such a universe would not be far different from any concept we could possibly entertain of living entities.

And even more moreover, this projected life would of necessity be non-material...!

So the multiverse theory, taken to its logical conclusion, actually serves to predict that there could well be...

a) universes with an infinite number of combinations of dimensions;
b) universes that are in no way material (no x,y,z,t space-time);
c) universes undetectable by us that overlay us.
d) universes that contain life in a structure that we cannot comprehend;
e) an infinite number of the above, in an infinite number of combinations.

At this point one senses that the skeptics will want to either abandon the multiverse fable, or entertain the possibility of massively intelligent life that overlays our own meager existence.

Either way, the multiverse story does not serve to eliminate the existence of the dreaded extra-universal superintelligence. The "rational" religion once again has shown itself to be the "rationalizing" religion.