How/Where does matter spontaneously materialize?

[Ryan_m_b]

While YOU may enjoy being corrected, in my experience MOST people do not. My buddy does this all the time. We will talk about something, I'll correct him or explain something like it really is, and then he will make some sort of joke about it and the discussion comes to an abrupt end and everything goes to nonsense. I'm guessing its some sort of "defense mechanism" to avoid embarassment or something. I know many people that do this.

I see no problem with taking it as a victory when you convince someone of something, especially when you have to work hard to get it through their ignorance and unwillingness to accept something contradictory to their own views/ideas.

Now I don't take it as a personal challenge to convert people or anything else, but if I'm in a heated discussion for an hour over something and I can eventually bring the person to my side I consider that a hard won victory and take a bit of pride in it. And if I don't convince them, well no big deal, you can't win them all.

I find it is less about "convincing" someone and more about re-educating them. I take pride in being able to do that and get satisfaction but the attitude of "I won!" just perpetuates the feelings of embarrassment you mentioned.

In my experience taking a passive and calm attitude whilst constantly showing respect for somebody's intellect (even if they are totally wrong) will speed up the process of debate. It's very easy for humans to adopt their Us vs Them response and see it as a competition between people rather than a discussion about evidence. To that end I always try to end discussions by fostering a feeling that it was a joint victory even if the whole debate was me explaining to the other person why they are wrong.

 

[Darken-Sol]

back to the o,p,s question. isn't there a vacuum state where atoms wink in and out of existence?

 

[JaredJames]

I find it is less about "convincing" someone and more about re-educating them. I take pride in being able to do that and get satisfaction but the attitude of "I won!" just perpetuates the feelings of embarrassment you mentioned.

In my experience taking a passive and calm attitude whilst constantly showing respect for somebody's intellect (even if they are totally wrong) will speed up the process of debate. It's very easy for humans to adopt their Us vs Them response and see it as a competition between people rather than a discussion about evidence. To that end I always try to end discussions by fostering a feeling that it was a joint victory even if the whole debate was me explaining to the other person why they are wrong.

Bingo.

back to the o,p,s question. isn't there a vacuum state where atoms wink in and out of existence?

Not a clue, although I have heard something similar. Don't think the context is here though.

 

[ZapperZ]

back to the o,p,s question. isn't there a vacuum state where atoms wink in and out of existence?

Note what I said in my first post in this thread:

There is something logically contradictory about this whole thing.

So let's start with the principle that something cannot come out of nothing. If one claims that this is the evidence for "God", then one then has made a logical contradiction, because you've accepted that there's God, and that God didn't have a "maker" or didn't come out of nothing. In other words, who made "God" and where did God come from? To argue that god didn't come out of anything implies that one HAS accepted something out of nothing. So one is being logically inconsistent - not accepting that something can come out of nothing, while at the some point, switch gears and accept that something can come out of nothing.

This is BEFORE we argue about vacuum fluctuation, etc. in Quantum field theory.

Such quantum fluctuation is the mechanism for many quantum phase transition processes.

Zz.

 

[Drakkith]

I find it is less about "convincing" someone and more about re-educating them. I take pride in being able to do that and get satisfaction but the attitude of "I won!" just perpetuates the feelings of embarrassment you mentioned.

In my experience taking a passive and calm attitude whilst constantly showing respect for somebody's intellect (even if they are totally wrong) will speed up the process of debate. It's very easy for humans to adopt their Us vs Them response and see it as a competition between people rather than a discussion about evidence. To that end I always try to end discussions by fostering a feeling that it was a joint victory even if the whole debate was me explaining to the other person why they are wrong.

Hrmm. You've never argued vs my friends then lol. To them it IS us vs them. I've had them ask me a question first, then I give my answer, and then they scoff at me and say it makes no sense. How can you reason with someone who literally cannot understand how a particle can have "spin" and have it not be like normal spin of a ball or something. I'm not making this up when I say this, but he says "That doesn't make any sense, they should call it something else. It just doesn't make sense that it could do that, so I don't think it is correct". Evidence? Doesn't matter. Math? Doesn't matter. My calm attitude? Doesn't matter.

And then comes the barrage of tiresome statements like: "Thats just a theory, they don't really know that", and "Well, if they are right, why can't they explain ____? They can't so they are wrong."

I find that people that are willing to listen to me and accept current scientific evidence don't give me those problems to begin with, so it's much easier, obviously.

To me it comes down to this. If they person is willing to listen to you and accept evidence, then go ahead and try to convince them or whatever you want to call it. If the person immediately goes on the defensive and shuts down to logical conversation, just pat them on the back and tell them that the evil demon fairies must have gotten into your brain last night.

 

[Drakkith]

This is BEFORE we argue about vacuum fluctuation, etc. in Quantum field theory.

I don't really know anything about QFT, but I'm assuming based on your post that it IS possible for matter to appear spontaneously according to QFT?

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Hrmm. You've never argued vs my friends then lol. To them it IS us vs them. I've had them ask me a question first, then I give my answer, and then they scoff at me and say it makes no sense. How can you reason with someone who literally cannot understand how a particle can have "spin" and have it not be like normal spin of a ball or something. I'm not making this up when I say this, but he says "That doesn't make any sense, they should call it something else. It just doesn't make sense that it could do that, so I don't think it is correct". Evidence? Doesn't matter. Math? Doesn't matter. My calm attitude? Doesn't matter.

And then comes the barrage of tiresome statements like: "Thats just a theory, they don't really know that", and "Well, if they are right, why can't they explain ____? They can't so they are wrong."

I find that people that are willing to listen to me and accept current scientific evidence don't give me those problems to begin with, so it's much easier, obviously.

To me it comes down to this. If they person is willing to listen to you and accept evidence, then go ahead and try to convince them or whatever you want to call it. If the person immediately goes on the defensive and shuts down to logical conversation, just pat them on the back and tell them that the evil demon fairies must have gotten into your brain last night.

I have friends like that too but I still find it far more gratifying an experience to start from the ground up and help them learn. If they aren't willing then they aren't willing but humility in debates always helps things run smoothly. I think a large part of the problem with public perception of science is that people just see know-it-alls who are out of touch with reality, we have to bridge that gap by creating an open and friendly environment where people feel respected. Although I'm not suggesting that you don't do this in general!

 

[Drakkith]

I have friends like that too but I still find it far more gratifying an experience to start from the ground up and help them learn. If they aren't willing then they aren't willing but humility in debates always helps things run smoothly. I think a large part of the problem with public perception of science is that people just see know-it-alls who are out of touch with reality, we have to bridge that gap by creating an open and friendly environment where people feel respected.

I'm not arguing against you, I agree. However, one can take the humility part all day long and accomplish nothing. Sometimes in order to stay sane one must punch someone in the face with evidence. (I should make that last sentence part of my sig) We are, after all, still human.

 

[Andrewjh07]

I find it hypocritical when scientists bash on the existence of a god. Has anyone here read Plato's Allegory of the Cave? Whose to say neither party is correct? I am not arguing for or against anything just expressing my point of view. =)

 

[JaredJames]

I find it hypocritical when scientists bash on the existence of a god. Has anyone here read Plato's Allegory of the Cave? Whose to say neither party is correct? I am not arguing for or against anything just expressing my point of view. =)

Nothing hypocritical at all.

You have to realize that science doesn't mind being proved wrong. That's part of science. Until something better comes along or evidence goes against it, the theory is accepted. Religion on the other hand doesn't like being corrected and proving something in religion wrong is not liked at all.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

I find it hypocritical when scientists bash on the existence of a god. Has anyone here read Plato's Allegory of the Cave? Whose to say neither party is correct? I am not arguing for or against anything just expressing my point of view. =)

For a claim to be considered it needs evidence, in addition for the claim to be scientific it needs to be falsifiable. Claims of God fulfill neither of these.

 

[ZapperZ]

I find it hypocritical when scientists bash on the existence of a god. Has anyone here read Plato's Allegory of the Cave? Whose to say neither party is correct? I am not arguing for or against anything just expressing my point of view. =)

Why is this even relevant here?

Obviously, you're missing the POINT of several of the post. It isn't a "god bashing" thread. It is a "did-you-switch-logic-gears" to deny one thing and accept another?

Your "point of view" is misdirected.

Zz.

 

[chronon]

(It seems that this comes from http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_arguments_that_God_does_not_exist)
"The bedrock of the so called intelligent design movement is that matter cannot come from nothing. Illustrating one of the many reasons intelligent design isn't allowed in a class room is that physics shows that matter does indeed spontaneously materialize, and that the true evidence of a universe with a God, would be one in which nothing existed. In fact, it has been said by Nobel Prize winning scientists that because there is material in the Universe, is proof God doesn't exist."

I would say that every claim of this statement is wrong, so I wouldn't bother trying to defend it.

Now if you believe
A:It's OK for something to have existed since t=-infinity but it's not OK for something suddenly to come into existence.
Then it seems reasonable to believe that something existed before the big bang which caused the universe to come into existence, i.e (on the basis of A) Big bang=>Creator (or equivalently No creator=>No big bang)

Certainly this was a common point of view before the discovery of the CMBR, when the big bang was seen by many as tantamount to creationism.

I would say, though, that A isn't a reasonable belief, since time is we can easily rescale the time coordinate. The real question is 'Why is there something rather than nothing', and this provides much less support for the idea of a creator.

 

[MrGamma]

So can anyone explain where there is proof that matter spontaneously appears? I would really like to know more about this.

Well... The Big Bang, in general is the "proof" that matter spontaneously generates, right?

I am sort of in the belief that the Big Bang is actually very compatible with a "creator" myth in the sense that very rapidly, over the course of 7 days, God created everything.

George Lemetaire was a Belgian Catholic Priest and the Big Bang goes to his credit right?

So I am not sure how you can argue with some one who is driven by blind faith, and why should you?

 

[Drakkith]

Nothing about the big bang proves that anything was spontaneously created. Also, matter did not exist after the big bang until the universe cooled to a low enough temperature for protons, neutrons, and electrons to form and remain stable.