Cosmology: Inflation theory under attack part 3 (Introduction)

by John Kalber, Tuesday, October 31, 2017, 16:48 (2579 days ago) @ dhw

Hi again dhw

I have not ignored your queries.

You have plainly long been well aware of many of the ideas I support . I am glad that, at whatever level, we have an area of agreement. Nonetheless, it is this that makes it hard to understand why you choose to sit on the fence about aspects of religious belief. In the case of evolution you assume limits to the power of 'Mother Nature', in that ‘She’ may not be solely responsible for the emergence of ‘life and everything’, yet you consider, without a shred of evidence, attributing that power to a made up God you cannot actually believe in!

Not that it matters, we just hold different views,

Of fundamental importance [in understanding my beliefs] is to accept that the Universe encapsulates every form of every possible thing. No exceptions –none!

The way this functions is by being played out over time in ever changing conditions. This alone presents any researcher with presently insoluble problems. We may well have no verifiable awareness of those conditions at any particular point [including the present]. No problem for what I choose to call 'Mother Nature' which operates principally on automatic response mechanisms. Whilst there are various levels of intelligence extant at all times, they act in subordination to nature not its ‘direction’.

You may question my ideas because I maintain that all these things are eternal and therefore pre-existant. I do, but I also think that ‘local’ parts of the Universe are subject, over massive periods of time, to reconstruction. This perhaps reconstitutes an area, destroys the past and restarts the cycle. What is ‘ever present’ is the inate potential for whatever that can exist to reappear in suitable conditions.

Quite how this may occur is not as yet understood. My principal reason for thinking this is that geological formations show that some materials have been formed before others and all inorganic Matter preceded life. This suggests to me that the earliest life acts as a ‘marker’in a reconstituted area.

That the Universe is endless is also suggested by the probability that what is presently assumed to be the most distant edge has already had 13.5 +/- extra billions of years to move on from there!

I am pleased that we agree that a varying degree of awareness must exist in what I have described as the 'rules of engagement'. This is demonstrated especially in lifeforms. The flower ‘knows chemically’ that a visiting bee will act, albeit unconsciously, as a pollinator. Such an awareness was, almost certainly, first gained over umpteen thousands of years in an earlier life in the sea. It creates nectar which attracts pollinators. This a result of an extended period of chemical awareness in the plant – not a lucky chance.

Experience forms chemical memories tucked away in the genes [veritable giant libraries of intensely concentrated information]. Again, the elements of such information must work on the basis that each little bit engages automatically with the next in just one way, with inbuilt ‘instructions’ that dictate an unavoidable path. Conscious awareness is totally unnecessary.

The ideas I use to describe how nature uses this facility are offered, not as confirmed reality, but as a guidance that – leaving proven scientific fact on one side [no-one yet has this level of information] suggests strongly that this is [at least roughly] how my dear old 'Mother Nature' performs her magic. It expresses a logical base with which ‘She’, with automatic inevitability, ‘does the business’.

If, as I maintain, there is not, nor can there be any superpower involved, surely – surely there can be no other possibility but that nature, employing only physical law, must be fully responsible. A different natural process may well exist.

You surprise and disappoint me by dismissing my ‘maze’ analogy illustrating that working backwards to solve a problem can be far more difficult than working forwards. Consequently, this proves the falsity of the idea that when high [genius?!] levels need to be applied in solving a problem [e.g. my maze] they do not necessarily prove that high intelligence was needed to create it.

Dhw: “I’ll repeat what I said in my earlier response: The universe is what it is and does what it does. That’s it.”

That tells me nothing. You do not accept that nature does everything, especially life. Why wouldn’t it? How the Dickens can you know?

Dhw: ... [the]crucial question is precisely the degree of awareness or consciousness (I am not talking of human self-awareness) that may or may not be present in all materials. Do you believe it is sufficient to put together all the components necessary for the enormously complex mechanisms of life, reproduction, and the capacity for evolution leading from bacteria to the human brain? Such belief requires ignorance of these complexities... (or a mighty degree of faith).

This comment has been answered in the affirmative by my 'rules of engagement' theory.
To be continued.