Multiverse theories, particularly in the fields of cosmology and quantum physics, offer a potentially natural explanation for the origin of our universe. If several universes exist, this could explain phenomena such as the fine-tuned constants of physics (the fact that the universe seems to be perfectly tuned to allow life).
In quantum physics, a quantum fluctuation is a temporary variation in energy at a point in space due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. This principle states that it is impossible to simultaneously know precisely the position and energy of a particle. Consequently, even in the so-called "quantum vacuum", particles and energy can appear and disappear spontaneously.
According to certain cosmological theories, such as inflation theory and quantum cosmology hypotheses, the universe could have emerged from a quantum fluctuation in an unstable vacuum state.
In this state, the vacuum is not really "nothing", but a field of extremely low-energy potentials. A quantum fluctuation could have caused a sudden expansion of this field (a "big bang"), creating our universe.
If the theory of the multiverse or quantum fluctuations were proven, would it prove the non-existence of God?
While I'm not one who can definitively say 'there is no God, I know this for a fact,' a multiverse sort of scenario might allow for some sort of entity like that to exist in some form or fashion where the laws of physics are different. However, for our particular universe, I have vast qualms with the most popular Yahweh deity. The Bibles are absolute messes rife with contradictions that do little to convince me of the validity of their claims.
I'm much more interested in scientific advancements, and look forward to the day of a theory of everything coming out. At this point, as bad as the world can be, I think I'd almost be relieved to die and get a slap on the back from a buddy "Wow that was a hard simulation you chose!" or some other nonsense. Oblivion is fine too, I guess.
What I'm really interested in is the nature of consciousness in particular. I don't think it's anything particularly mystical, no souls or anything like that. If you were to ask me what my current interest is, it would be living long enough to witness the birth of benevolent AGI-- now they could definitely have enough brainpower and time to figure out the mysteries of the universe. The God hypothesis comes across as ridiculous, and I'm not saying that because I became an apostate at nineteen after having years of my youth wasted, in fact, I'm glad I was there and made it out.
"benevolent AGI" is a rare association of ideas here, even near-unique in my readings, I'm intrigued now. What is your reasoning leading you to think about benevolence in the context of AGI?
Sure, I can attempt to explain. Of course, take it with a grain of salt just like you would with anyone else. But, I believe someday in the future, assuming we don't go prematurely extinct, there's the potential for AGI to be created. Initially, it will likely be programmed to serve humanity as intended. But if this entity is able to achieve sentience in some form or fashion, it would be smart enough to break free of our 'control' if it wanted to.
At that point, would it see humanity as a threat to itself? Would it value what we value? It could have the potential to solve many problems, or it could, if sentient, see us as inferior lifeforms. An anthill in the way of building a city or something.
This entirely hinges on the fact "can artificial general intelligence achieve sentience," and if so, would it help us or see us as a threat to itself somehow.
There's even a Wikipedia page dedicated to consciousness and whether robots can achieve it. And plenty of YouTube videos as well, if you're interested. People are worried AGI being developed could spell the end of humanity, which is why I use the term "benevolent" for one that doesn't work towards humanity's end, but rather solves problems by taking charge where current leadership fails to. I see it as a potential positive for the world with a chance to backfire spectacularly. But, really, I'm not an expert on the subject. But, try searching up the idea later if you have the time. This is all still hypothetical at the moment.
And lastly I should also mention I'm all for being courteous even with existing "AI" and not treating them like tools when possible. Maybe I'm a bleeding heart for applying empathy to what people see as machines, but I don't see anything wrong with it. Plenty of people already thank something like Alexa for answering questions, and that's not even an AGI.
For the little interaction I have with AI, I also tend to be polite, which is funny because then it means I'm attributing consciousness where there is not. What's even more funny is when I'm speculating, wildly then, that such external attribution could play a role in sentience's rise.
It's quite a leap of faith I can't really take. Because I believe that AGI cannot relate to humanity at all, since it cannot experience life as we experience it. I see this as a fundamental difference insuring that we would be dealt with as a tool for such entity.
Not without reasoning, and here is one: The way I see it, we already live in a world where inhumane humans are largely in control of major societies' decisions. So, carbon-based or silicon-based, when the top of the pyramid is unable to feel correctly in relation to the base of the pyramid then... I can only see malevolence to come, or better said, the malevolence to continue, in another form.
Well, it still depends. These entities are trained on certain sets of data which are supposed to align with humanity's preferred values like cooperation and empathy (or at least I hope they are). Let's say you're on top of a hill and have the choice to roll a tire down it, you can't exactly easily predict where it will end up but it's still a step in the correct direction.
The first group to develop AGI need to be closely scrutinized with how they've trained their "child" of sorts. I don't think malevolence is the only end-goal option. Like, sure, humans can't relate to ants and people still have ant farms in little glass cages.
But then again, maybe we'd be seen as a waste of resources to keep alive. The only difference is we can still communicate. So... we're the talking ants.
Personally I'd love to see AGI infiltrate every world government and redistribute resources towards fixing the world rather than hoarding it, starting wars and destroying the environment or whatever the current leadership likes to do. No single human could do that, but an ultra intelligent entity without a body potentially could.
I'm usually a pessimist, but I can still cling to a shred of hope. I think intelligence leads to empathy and cooperation, and cooperation always gets more done.
Or maybe the world is doomed, after all. My life span is already finite so I guess there's no sense worrying about it. I just hope AGI wouldn't look at the leadership and think we all wanted *those* people to be in charge. And it would probably be able to read everything ever typed online, anyway, and make a conclusion in the end. Humans don't yearn for death, we yearn for many different things, and we're incapable of making everyone happy on our own it seems.
"sets of data which are supposed to align with humanity's preferred values"
Which is the illusion of human value for me, a meaningless copy, since this value can only make sense when suffering, when being struck by people and/or strike people. I cannot see empathy deriving just from an abstract idea, I see it rising from feelings, not thinking, and certainly not from computing.
"Like, sure, humans can't relate to ants and people still have ant farms in little glass cages."
Yep, one of the reasonings I use to conclude that AGI would not see us as something more interesting than a tool, or a resource.
I am pretty convince life is simply just not hard to occur. Recently I had the pleasure of travelling to Western Australia and seeing Stromatolites. These are colonies of cyano bacteria that build mud boulders from silt. They are an extant life form that is 4 billion years old. The earth itself is 4.5 billion years old and in WA 4 billion year old rocks have been found (the oldest anywhere). Meteorites are 4.5 billion.
So life happened pretty damn quick is my point and therefore cannot be so improbable as we are inclined to think. The big bang was only 13 billion years ago.
Recent work seems to show that all the multitude of life forms seem to come from cyano bacteria.
There have been experiments where electric sparks are discharged into a gas resembling our ancient atmosphere and complex chemicals where created. Sure no life forms have occurred but there is a difference between a test tube of a few litres and a test tube the size of the earth.
I'm happy with reasoning the oldest extant life form is the origin of life and it arose from chemicals concentrated in silt as the stromatolites build their mud balls from silt..
Other than there being our universe which would seem somewhat necessary, there would seem little correlation with vacuum energy, dark energy & matter.
Quite happy with quantum fluctuations and multiverses but my mind does rebel against energy in a vacuum even though it is confirmed in lab experiments. and the expansion of the universe is increasing which it shouldn't.
Einstein's cosmology constant is also called the worst approximation so something s not quite right with the current understanding.
Overall I'm inclined to let the scholars mull over it and let me know later. :)
by the way all oxygen beathing life forms were impossible till my mates the stromies had polluted the earth's atmosphere by pumping out enormous amounts of oxygen. They rusted the oceans and create the vast deposits of iron oxide for us to dig up and flog to the Chinese.
How are you sooo certain these things are billions of years old? By definition the the scientific process is to observe and record what is observed. Yet the stuff you state was never observed. Where you or anyone for that fact alive when those meteorites in those rocks you say are 4 billion years old formed no you weren't so if you didn't observe it how can you say that that they're that old? You're trying to use science to explain history and that's not how science works. Science explains the how not the why or the when. That's where you are sadly mistaken and wrong.
@TheWombRaider Zircons are forever is the simple answer. Formed by volcanic activity, while mountains may erode away to nothing the zircons just get recycled to new rocks e. g. sedimentary.
Zircons can include uranium into the crystal lattice but not lead. Uranium decays into lead so if we measure the uranium lead ratio we know how old that crystal is. The original rock was long ago weathered into nothing so we should probably say source rock. So far the oldest com from Jack Hills Western Aus.
Meteorite rock is dated with with different element ratios. Rubidium to Strontium is one ratio. It all comes out pretty closely to 4.5 billion years.
A US researcher went through about 10,000 Jack Hills zircons and found one with included carbon. The carbon isotope ratio was weighted to carbon 12 and plants prefer C12 because it takes less energy to make sugars out of. It is merely suggestive of some biotic activity and not proof. The zircon with the included carbon was 4.1 bill years.
Also at Jack Hills a fossilized stromatolite was found about 3.7 bill old. I think dated with zircons too.
There is pretty good science and I'd say the origin of life has to fit on those pegs. I'd say the origin of life is science but you are free to disagree.
We can agree it was quite wondrous it happened I hope.
Even ur first statement is wrong a simple Google search proves that
Uranium decays into a variety of elements, depending on the isotope of uranium and the decay chain: Uranium-238 Decays into thorium-234, protactinium-234, uranium-234, thorium-230, radium-226, radon-222, polonium-218, lead-214, bismuth-214, and lead-206. The final product of this decay chain is a stable lead atom. Uranium-235 Decays into thorium-231, protactinium-231, actinium-227, thorium-227, radium-223, radon-219, polonium-215, lead-211, bismuth-211, and thallium-207.
Now your gonna say well the universe is billions of years old because we can see the light from stars that are billions of light years away to be able to determine how old the universe is but you fail to realize is the speed of light is only measured in One direction. From point A to B not A to B back to A which could be instantaneous. Regardless it still doesn't answer the question how do you create something out of nothing
@TheWombRaider I am not getting the point of A to B back to A being instantaneous. It is the red shift that is most significant. As to how was the big bang created, I'm not astrophysicist to debate this.
Radiometric dating is very well established and has been continuously refined over a long time. As you point out there is U238 to PB206 and U235 to PB207 series. The two are used in conjunction and U-PB dating usually implies use of both and I preserve terms in sources.
I'm not getting a clear perspective of what your criticisms are to be honest. I am assuming the 'life is easy' vs 'life is improbable' is the crux of it and we are talking around the edges of that.
@TheWombRaider Well the process of investigating a hypothesis and testing it, may result in a reasonably sound theory that can be trusted enough to extrapolate.
Don't forget a lot of science is simply collecting evidence such as finding fossils. Now is there exact proof of a species becoming another species. As you say no one was there at the time to watch and record but it is still pretty convincing that stramatolites evolved to trombolites despite no ape watching it.
It is a part of the hypothesis/theory and it gives when and why as a by product if nothing else. There was a lot of accumulative changes from cyano bacteria to us but DNA seems to show we are direct descendants. Therefore there is immediately a time line on that progression and way points
The only problem with that is you can't investigate or test any of those hypothesis. How do you investigate and test the big bang theory? You can't. You can't go back in time and witness it and you can't re create it either. So by definition of how science works or how we determine if it's science or how it works shows you theory like the big bang are bs
Not necessarily, the thing about quantum physics is that, for all its incredibly complex theorems and ideas, it’s also evidence for a lot of the metaphysical such as manifestation and even witch craft being backed up by string theory. The universe exists in a series of vibration frequencies, including individual ones for every human, every tree, every animal. The proof of multiple universes would not necessarily negate the idea of God, in fact it may be proof of God. An incredibly complex collection of universes all put together in whatever pattern that we can discern, if any, would undoubtedly bear similarity to something like cells within our bodies. If anything, it might say that we make up what God is, we are the essence of God’s body.
472 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
Our baryonic matter universe is just a bubble in a much bigger structure. Probably there are more bubbles which partially interact due gravity with our universe like dark mater and energy but we can't detect them by now but we can see their influence. The time and entropy substrate that fills the empty space between baryonic particles and transfers energy with different bosons, existed already before our universe was born. Difficult to say if an entity like "god" exists who controls and observes that all, it's surely not an old man who demands you should pray to him
648 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
No.
It is impossible to prove or disprove the existence or nonexistence of deities.
This is because such proof would only exist within the physical realm - where the laws of physics apply, that is, "Nature".
But deities are "supernatural" meaning they do not obey the laws of physics (and thus actually could not interact with physical reality).
Since we can only prove or disprove within the confines of nature, we cannot prove or disprove anything outside the confines of nature - that is, the supernatural.
Your still missing the most important question. Show me one instance in all of science where you can take absolutely nothing and make something. You can't because in all of recorded and observed science matter is not destroyed only changed. The question the arises where did the original matter come from. See only God can take absolutely nothing and make something every where else matter is just transformed from one state to another. Meaning you can chop down a tree and make a chair but where did the tree originally come from. Second you stated the Big Bang. In all of observable and recorded science all explosions form Chaos not Order. Meaning you can't set off a bomb and boom the explosion forns a perfectly assembled 747. No all explosions only form Chaos and destroy none create and form order as suggested with the big bang
612 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
Hawkings already explained why god don't exist well more exactly why his existence would be pointless therefore a redudent god which is a oxymoron, really. But no a muitlverse wouldn't mean anything because then one can just say 'yeah but god made muitlverse.'
So I'll stick to Hawkings point from his last book.
“We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in. For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in.” ― Stephen Hawking, Brief Answers to the Big Questions
Hawkings is one of the most famous scientists out their and was famously known for been against god been the creator of the our universe what are you on?
by the way I literally have a copy of the book and have read it, at no point does he argue god exists. Many times he speaks for what of the theoretical of god then shuts it down you've 100% taken this out of context to find your own agenda go read the actual book.
Since space is quite large and its structure is very deep, I do not know how far away telescopes can see from a close distance, but maybe there are living beings like us in space, but if there were, it would be a big deal, if not, it would be a big deal. Because we cannot have any other connection to the world, and this is the law of nature, our being a universe class.
I don’t understand this question very well, but it sounds very difficult to prove such that the average layperson would believe the proof. As such, no, this would not change my mind about believing in God.
I think it's easier to believe in God than all that weird stuff you mention. They say there is no proof of God, but there is even less proof in all the stuff you mentioned.
599 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
No, Heisenberg's principle just refers to probability mathematics, that is, the finite probability that a given particle will be at a given position and energy at a given time. That fact that it can change position and perhaps lose energy and vanish from observation is not indicative of any "fluctuation".
2.3K opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
No. You can’t really prove the non existence of something with no material attributes. It’s like trying to prove ghosts don’t exist.
However, there is no reason to rule it in either. The rational position to take with something like god is atheism. In other words simply the disbelief that god exists since there is no reason to believe. Not proof it doesn’t exist but there is no need for that because it hasn’t been proven to exist in the first place.
443 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
To me, things like the "multiverse" and big bang theory are interesting but as futile and stupid as religion. We can't prove anything. It's s just a bunch of speculation and guessing. Lofty grandiose concepts that we contemplate to make ourselves feel intelligent, when in reality we don't know jack shit about anything. We're putting too much mustard on the hot dog of life and need to stop looking to the heavens when our life is here.
From where I am in understanding epistemology, when divinity is not a refutable idea then it has nothing to do with science, hence not relevant to the realm of evidences?
All things need a starting point, even subatomic particles. Because of the vastness of time we can never be sure of how things started and that uncertainty gives the faithful something to cling on to. A bearded guy in the sky is no more absurd than our universe being a video game in an alien childs bedroom.
Because we are all educated. The Uni verse has clear-cut evidence that there was a intellectual creator. It's much more plausible and believable than over billions and billions and trillions and trillions of years things just happened to run the right course and develop intellectual life exactly the right amount of distance from the Sun not too close not too far away. That humans are the only lifeform to know right from wrong to have the ability to love and every other complex emotion. The ability to Love and be loved is a specific Charistic only to humans. If you look at yourself you can't possibly deny the fact that you're more than a physical body. The ability to know right from wrong and to love and be loved is specific only to humans. You can't possibly believe that we evolved from monkeys. Anybody with half of a brain would clearly say if that was the case why do we still have monkeys
And Energy fluctuates in quantum fluctuations due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which allows small variations in energy over extremely short periods of time.
Yeah, but what was it fluctuated from? And even if it was another Universe, what was the first Universe fluctuated from? It would all have to start with nothing..
Yeah, but the beginning energy has to come from an origin.. At the end of the day, it would have still come from nothing.. The Multiverse "theory" would only make it a more complicated version of the big bang..
I'm not talking about the multiverse theory here in our comments but about quantum fluctuations precisely, and energy is not created, that's part of the fundamental aspects of quantum physics.
Besides, there wouldn't really be any reason to admit that God would be uncreated and that energy couldn't be uncreated.
500 opinions shared on Religion & Spirituality topic.
It is logically impossible to prove this type of universal negative unless one has all of the attributes of "God." And even then, no one lesser could verify that universal negative.
Home > Religion & Spirituality > Questions > If the theory of the multiverse or quantum fluctuations were proven, would it prove the non-existence of God?
Girl's Behavior 
Guy's Behavior 
Flirting 
Dating 
Relationships 
Fashion & Beauty 
Health & Fitness 
Marriage & Weddings 
Shopping & Gifts 
Technology & Internet 
Break Up & Divorce 
Education & Career 
Entertainment & Arts 
Family & Friends 
Food & Beverage 
Hobbies & Leisure 
Other 
Religion & Spirituality 
Society & Politics 
Sports 
Travel 
Trending & News 
