Discussion with John Clark
James Redford
James Redford
wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 30, 2010 at 6:54 PM, jrredford <jrredford@...> wrote:
>
> "I clearly summed up Profs. Krauss and Turner's paper by stating that "there
> > is no set of cosmological observations which can tell us whether the
> > universe will expand forever or eventually collapse.""
> >
>
> If Krauss and Turner are correct then Tipler was wrong yet again because he
> thought it was a legitimate scientific question, he thought the idea that
> the universe was closed COULD be disproven. And in fact it was disproven. So
> it would seem that Krauss, Turner and Tipler were all wrong.
That was the operating assumption of all cosmologists before Profs.
Krauss and Turner's paper on this matter. But there's nothing about
the Omega Point Theory that requires this assumption, so the
assumption being wrong is certainly not a disconfirmation of the Omega
Point cosmology. Had the assumption been true (i.e., that one can know
whether the universe will expand forever or eventually collapse based
upon the Hubble constant), then the Omega Point Theory would be
disconfirmed.
> "So the only prediction that Tipler has gotten wrong is the second part of
> > his "Fifth Testable Prediction" on p. 149 of his book The Physics of
> > Immortality, that of the Hubble constant."
> >
>
> And the mass of the Higgs Boson, and the fact that the Universe is open not
> closed, and the fact that Tipler himself said all his predictions must be
> shown to be correct or the theory is dead.
Clark, you're again confused. As Profs. Krauss and Turner's aforecited
paper demonstrates, there is no set of cosmological observations which
can tell us whether the universe will expand forever or eventually
collapse. So your insistence that the universe is open is a non
sequitur. As my first post in this thread demonstrated, the Omega
Point Theory's stability bounds on the mass of the Higgs boson are
perfectly consistent with the higher range of allowed values of the
latest Higgs boson data--indeed, they're right on target. Please try
to follow the conversation.
Again, there's nothing about the Omega Point Theory that requires the
then-universal assumption regarding what the Hubble constant implies
about the fate of the universe, so the assumption being wrong is
certainly not a disconfirmation of the Omega Point cosmology. At the
time Tipler made the Hubble constant prediction, he failed to consider
what the effect would be on the Higgs field of life annihilating
baryons. Although amazingly, in this same book (p. 465) Tipler stated
the following: "The only known mechanism that could stop the
contraction [of the universe] is the positive cosmological constant
Lambda that must exist (if the standard model is correct) to cancel
the current negative energy density of the Higgs field; ..."
Tipler's above 2005 Rep. Prog. Phys. paper corrects this oversight by
showing that the Standard Model baryogenesis mechanism of the early
universe necessarily results in the Higss field being in a false
vacuum that is not its true vacuum, thereby resulting in an
uncancelled observed cosmological constant, of which would be forced
to its absolute vacuum, thereby allowing the universe to collapse, if
the same Standard Model baryogenesis mechanism were to be reversed
(i.e., by life annihilating baryons for its energy requirements).
> "We now have the Feynman-Weinberg-DeWitt quantum gravity/Standard Model
> > Theory of Everything (TOE) describing and unifying all the forces in physics
> > and which solves the outstanding problems in physics and cosmology"
> >
>
> You are quite simply incorrect, we do not have a Theory of Everything, we
> still have outstanding problems in physics and cosmology, and despite
> massive effort little progress has been made in uniting gravity with the
> other 3 forces of nature, and until we do the Bekenstein bound is little
> more than a hunch.
Your above statement is the logical fallacy of bare assertion. See
Prof. Tipler's below paper, which details the Feynman-Weinberg-DeWitt
quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) describing
and unifying all the forces in physics, and of which itself also
intrinsically requires the Omega Point cosmology (in addition to
giving a proof that the Omega Point cosmology is separately required
by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, general relativity, and quantum
mechanics).
F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers", Reports
on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964.
http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as
"Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a
Theory of Everything", arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007.
The Omega Point TOE solves all the outstanding problems in physics and
cosmology, such as the black hole information issue; the dark matter
and the dark energy; the observed isotropy, homogeneity, and spatial
flatness of the universe; the observed excess of matter over
antimatter; the observed photon to baryon ratio; the
Harrison-Zel'dovich perturbation spectrum; the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin
ultra-high-energy cosmic rays issue; etc.
Regarding the Bekenstein Bound, it is a central theorem of quantum
field theory. It is a logically inescapable result of the Second Law
of Thermodynamics and general relativity.
> "Tipler's above 2005 Rep. Prog. Phys. paper corrects this oversight by
> > showing that the Standard Model baryogenesis mechanism of the early universe
> > necessarily results in the Higss field being in a false vacuum"
> >
>
> Yes, it "necessarily results" if you insist on salvaging the Omega Point
> Theory no matter what. Fifteen years ago such fudging was not needed, the
> theory hung together very well all on its own and I liked it a lot, but then
> those darn new facts got in the way.
>
> Incidentally 2005 was just two years before Tipler published "The Physics of
> Christianity", certainly one of the most embarrassing books ever written by
> a respected scientist. Among many other odd things, Tipler now believes that
> there are original sin genes, that it could be proven that Jesus's mother
> Mary was a virgin by examining the blood on the Shroud of Turin, that Jesus
> walked on water by "directing a neutrino beam" downward from his feet and
> that his virginal (parthenogenesis) mother ascended into heaven in a
> similar manner. Tipler thinks we should check her tomb for telltale tracks
> of nuclear particles.
Prof. Tipler is merely being a good scientist by following the
evidence to wherever it leads. Tipler isn't claiming that physics
proves that the miracles of Jesus Christ occured, simply that they
need not have violated any known laws of physics. Tipler proposes
tests on particular relics associated with Jesus which, if the relics
are genuine, could verify whether in fact said miracles did take place
via the proposed physical mechanisms. This proposed process uses
baryon annihilation by way of electroweak quantum tunneling, and the
inverse of this process, caused via the principle of least action by
the requirement of the existence of the final Omega Point cosmological
singularity. If miracles exist then they do not violate physical law,
but instead are events which are so improbable that they would only be
likely to occur within human history via the least-action principle if
the universe is required to evolve into the Omega Point. If the
miracles of Jesus Christ were necessary in order to lead to the
formation of the Omega Point then (if the known laws of physics are
correct) the probability of those miracles occuring is certain.
Tipler's idea of original sin is animals that eat other animals, which
thereby introduced lethal aggression, as well as pain and suffering
separate from accidents or natural disasters. With this conception of
original sin, genes that encode original sin obviously exist. Jesus
never preached a doctrine of original sin. In two different letters
Paul does, obviously influenced by the story of the Fall of Adam and
Eve in the book of Genesis.
Correct epistemic methodology is not to *a priori* assume what must be
true and then dissallow any serious consideration of a matter by
regarding it as *by definition* false. That is not science--that is
the antipode of science. The only thing required by apriorism is
logical consistency.
If one uses Prof. Deutsch's epistemological methodology,[1] then the
best explanation--the one that is hardest to vary--for the historical
record of Jesus Christ's ministry and the rise of the Christian Church
is that God does exist, that God can perform miracles (which in
traditional Christian theology, do not violate natural law), and that
Jesus rose from the dead as a divine miracle. The reason this
explanation is hard to vary is because no other explanation for these
events makes rational sense. If one *a priori* designates the
existence of God and miracles as *by definition* false then it becomes
extremely easy to vary the explanation for these events, as then one
can *ab intra* come up with any implausible, *ad hoc*, *a priori*
theory--all unsupportable by a shred of historical evidence, and hence
also no means to decide among them. And so by rejecting the existence
of God in explaning these events, one is thereby violating Deutsch's
rule of epistemology, because then it's easy to vary the explanation.
And again, such an *a priori* assumption is not science, but rather
the antithesis of science.
For the historical reliability of Jesus Christ's bodily resurrection
and the untenability of theories which deny his resurrection, see
Prof. William Lane Craig, "Contemporary Scholarship and the Historical
Evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ", Truth, Vol. 1 (1985),
pp. 89-95. http://www.leaderu.com/truth/1truth22.html For more on the
historicity of Jesus Christ's resurrection, see William Lane Craig,
Reasonable Faith: Christian Truth and Apologetics (Wheaton, Ill.:
Crossway Books, 3rd ed., 2008), Chap. 8: "The Resurrection of Jesus",
pp. 333-404, particularly pp. 360 ff.
We should hardly be shocked that the religion which invented the
university system, which invented natural science in the modern sense
by giving us the Scientific Revolution and which created modern
Western civilization should turn out to be correct.
> "Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's above paper was selected as one of 12
> > for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles published
> > in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected
> > by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all
> > received the highest praise from our international referees and a high
> > number of downloads from the journal Website.""
> >
>
> I confess I've never heard of "Reports on Progress in Physics" but I figured
> that could just be due to my ignorance, so I looked up the 10 most cited
> (respected) journals in science and this is what I got:
>
> 1 Journal of Biological Chemistry
> 2 Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
> 3 Nature
> 4 Science
> 5 Physical Review Letters
> 6 Cell
> 7 J. American Chemical Society
> 8 Physical Review
> 9 Journal of Immunology
> 10 New England Journal of Medicine
>
> If we limit our interest exclusively to physics the most respected journals
> are:
>
> 1 Science
> 2 Nature
> 3 Physical Review Letters
> 4 Nuclear Physics
> 5 PNAS
> 6 Physics Letters
> 7 Physical Review D
> 8 Europ. Physical J. C
> 9 Applied Physics Letters
> 10 Nuclear Fusion
>
> And for Chemistry we have this:
>
> 1 Nature
> 2 Science
> 3 PNAS
> 4 Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.
> 5 J. Amer. Chem. Soc.
> 6 Analytical Chemistry
> 7 J. Medicinal Chemistry
> 8 Electrophoresis
> 9 Chemistry-European J.
> 10 J. Combinatorial Chem.
>
> So now I don't feel quite so stupid never having heard of "Reports on
> Progress in Physics".
>
> John K Clark
>
>
> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>
Reports in Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (at 11.444
for year 2009) according to Journal Citation Reports than either
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
of America (PNAS; at 7.328 for 2009) or Physical Review Letters (at
9.432 for 2009), America's most prestigous physics journal. A
journal's impact factor is a measure of the importance the science
community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its
papers in their own papers, with higher numbers meaning more
citations. Impact factors published by Journal Citation Reports are
the standard measure used to compare a journal's influence.
Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute
of Physics, Britain's main professional body for physicists.
-----
Note:
1. As set forth in "David Deutsch: A new way to explain explanation",
TEDGlobal 2009 (TED [Technology, Entertainment, Design]), filmed July
2009.
http://www.ted.com/talks/david_deutsch_a_new_way_to_explain_explanation.html
----------------------------------------
James Redford, author of "Jesus Is an Anarchist", Social Science
Research Network (SSRN), revised and expanded edition, October 17,
2009 (originally published December 19, 2001)
http://ssrn.com/abstract=1337761 ,
http://theophysics.chimehost.net/anarchist-jesus.pdf ,
http://theophysics.ifastnet.com/anarchist-jesus.html
Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist (a website with information
on Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point Theory and the quantum gravity
Theory of Everything [TOE]) http://theophysics.chimehost.net ,
http://theophysics.host56.com