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cho_pilo
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Anyone?
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empther
Guest
Not long ago, last week maybe, I said on another thread something like this: “If there’s a single subatomic particle there must be a God.” I can’t remember the exact words.
Now you use this comment to start a thread, but contribute no content yourself.
I noted you similarly started another thread:
Thread Name: Is dying for your belief a noble?
Your post number 1:
Now you use this comment to start a thread, but contribute no content yourself.
I noted you similarly started another thread:
Thread Name: Is dying for your belief a noble?
Your post number 1:
I recall a story of a man who went to a restaurant with his date and spent all the time going around from table to table saying hello to people he knew. Finally his date complained he was ignoring her. He said, “Can I help it if I’m popular?”
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JDaniel
Guest
Cho:
“Subatomic particles” are what? Dimensionless points? That have their own properties of creational ability, causal ability, and ‘thinking’ ability? Do “subatomic particles” have the ability to create algorithms? Like some super-intelligent Borg that existed before intelligent life? The ability to provide impetus for complex and intelligent life? Oh, and all of this by chance? (Or, perhaps I should say, by design?) By “mutation?” An infinity of mutations times an infinity of complexification?
I think my explanation is much simpler and much more elegant.
God bless,
jd
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cho_pilo
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Ok, here is the content - Imagine that the universe (including this little subatomic particle of yours) is a product of some sort of fundamental quantum mechanical vacuum state. Or whatever you like really. The bottom line is that if something can necessarily exist then something can necessarily exist.
No tell me why you made a satement something like “If there’s a single subatomic particle there must be a God” since it’s you who introduce an additional element to existence.
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seagal
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Where did the single subatomic particle come from? Even supposing it is the product of a fundamental quantum mechanical vacuum state, what produced the vacuum state? You can bring it back as far as you like, there has to be an initial cause that is itself uncaused. That’s God.
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RICKY_RASPER
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God is not made of matter.Matter is made of God.
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JimG
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A single subatomic particle does not contain within itself sufficient reason for its existence. It is a contingent, not a necessary being.
If a subatomic particle arises from a quantum vacuum, the next question is “why is there a quantum vacuum? Is a quantum vacuum a necessary being or a contingent being?”
In any case, both subatomic particles and quantum vacuum’s are material substances, not spiritual substances. Material substances are spread out in time and in space. They have parts. They can come apart. God is a spiritual substance with no parts.
If a subatomic particle arises from a quantum vacuum, the next question is “why is there a quantum vacuum? Is a quantum vacuum a necessary being or a contingent being?”
In any case, both subatomic particles and quantum vacuum’s are material substances, not spiritual substances. Material substances are spread out in time and in space. They have parts. They can come apart. God is a spiritual substance with no parts.
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JDaniel
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Ricky:
Welcome to CAF.
Your statement smacks of “pantheism,” which Catholics reject. To an extent, you are correct, but the question is, How is God matter?
God bless,
jd
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RICKY_RASPER
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I was rather hoping to portray a sense of God’s omnipotent nature i.e present everywhere. Thanks anyway for labelling me as some pagan Greek
Your Druid brother Richard:sad_bye:
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hazcompat
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Time Began
peace
peace
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tonyrey
Guest
Singularity or plurality doesn’t affect the need for an explanation.
Why should one be less significant than billions?
Why should one be less significant than billions?
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shoe
Guest
A single subatomic particle cannot come into existence from nothing, since nothing isn’t able to bring a thing into existence out of something it does not possess. And since nothing can be the creative source of even a single subatomic particle, then we need to seek a Source outside the material world that can. I believe that this needed Source is God.
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jochoa
Guest
Why? For the sake of Wisdom and Hope!
Reasoning:
Given there are only two options for the state of being of the first physical/material substance to exist: It must be either non-living (subatomic particle) or living (cell-like).
If it is non-living, there would be no option for a Heavenly after-life.
If it is living, it could think of and design a plan and purpose for a Heavenly Life.
Therefore, the wise and hopeful option is to place one’s faith in the first physical/material substance to exist is living, in particular the Body of Jesus Christ.
Thoughts?
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cho_pilo
Guest
We don’t know yet, because we can’t do any experiment that distinguishes dimensional points from things such as superstrings.
Subatomic particles don’t think - at least not unless there are many of them arranged just so. As for the other abilities, I’m not sure what you mean. Certainly one particle can set off a chain of causation. And certainly one particle can cause the creation of other particles.
In large numbers, yes. For example, I am one such collection of subatomic particles.
Subatomic particles don’t live in an orderless, random universe. They are subject to the laws of physics. The particles, bound by those laws, have certainly given rise to complex, intelligent life. Again, I am a living example.
You think introducing a massively more complex entity - God - is somehow more elegant than building things bottom-up according to some simple laws of physics?
You want to explain complexity by introducing something even more complex?
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seagal
Guest
Again, where did the original subatomic particle come from? The laws of physics would not exist if there were nothing to act or be acted upon.
What’s wrong with that? If you wrote a textbook about physics, it would be a complex work. But you as a physical entity with the ability to think and reason and feel and develop language to communicate with others and experience emotion and spirituality are infinitely more complex than your book.
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JDaniel
Guest
Cho:
We have a pretty good idea though, especially since it is doubtful that we’ll ever find evidence of “superstrings,” considering that they are postulated within other dimensions (also postulated) and are past-extended (outside of time).
One of many theoretical models.
But see, I don’t believe that God is “massively more complex”. I think God is, at a different level, one with continuous space. This succinctly answers the question of what is it that is outside of the universe.
Rather, I think it’s the other way 'round. “Superstring” is outside of the boundaries of our investigational abilities - it is merely a theoretical postulation. We have to go from there to reality, and merely because it seems to work mathematically for certain calculations, does not show that it is the better postulation.
As the model indicates, at least two superstrings were out there colliding with each other forever, until at one collision, the big bang resulted. The question is, “out where?” “forever?” Outside of the laws of physics, “colliding” into one another? What would cause one event, in an infinity of like events, to result in the big bang?
Remember your OP: you asked about a “single subatomic particle” needing more than itself. I think it does. Even in the “superstring” scenario, there are at least two subatomic particles that are required. Is one of them God, or an effect of God?
God bless,
jd
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JimG
Guest
Catholic theology doesn’t view God as a complex being at all but rather as a simple being. God is not material and has no parts. (If he had parts, he could come apart, and thus change and cease to be God.) He is a simple infinite spiritual substance having the faculties [not parts] of intellect and will.
Just wanted to clarify that no Christian theology I know of views God as composed of matter or having the complexity of matter.
Just wanted to clarify that no Christian theology I know of views God as composed of matter or having the complexity of matter.
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cho_pilo
Guest
JDaniel,
You think God may be a subatomic particle?
That’s quite a different kind of god from the God who answers prayers, sends his son to die for your sins and so on
You think God may be a subatomic particle?
That’s quite a different kind of god from the God who answers prayers, sends his son to die for your sins and so on
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Anselm33
Guest
Cho, speaking as a physicist (51 years in the game), I’d say “The Standard Model” (quarks, leptons, all that good stuff) is just that–a model to explain the results of very expensive and complicated experiments. Many philosophers and physicists (the “anti-realist” crowd) would dispute that the model has a fundamental relation to ultimate reality. (Read Bernard d’Espagnat’s “Phyics and Philosophy” for a description of the “veiled reality” lying behind quantum mechanics; and Bas van Fraassen’s “Laws and Symmetry”). String theory is mathematical metaphysics, since it has any number of possible interpretations (landscapes) and cannot be falsified or confirmed by any conceivable experiment (never mind the impossibility of attaining sufficiently high energy accelerators to test it; read Peter Woit’s “Not Even Wrong”). In 50 years (if the world can survive the leftist hierarchy here and in Europe and the Islamist terrorists), the physical theories we have now may be superseded by something unimaginably different, as has happened in the past.
Rather than saying a single subatomic particle needs God, I’d say God is manifested as the infinite, both in mathematics and in the world of the mind.
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