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[OM] IMG: Welcome to Jordan!

Subject: [OM] IMG: Welcome to Jordan!
From: usher99@xxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 19:20:27 -0400 (EDT)
Af writes:
>>The problem is that they are usually trying to be mutually inclusive.
>>I do enjoy watching the mental gymnastics of those who try and
reconcile them
>>into compatibility.

Yes, many have tried over the ages to reconcile philosophy/science with
religious beliefs.
Maimonides comes to mind with the The Guide of the Perplexed, completed
in 1190.
It appears he favored the ex nihilo version for the cosmological
argument and in turn for the existance for the something other than
nature as the prime force, he but didn't appear totally convinced.

Summarized from the GP he also said:
"For all we know, the origin of a thing may be completely different
 from its development later on. Thus it is presumptuous to suppose that
we can extrapolate from our experience of the world as it is at present
to the moment of its creation.

Perhaps he was prescient to the appearance of quantum electrodynamics,
quantum mechanics and their implications for cosmology.
Nature at the quantum and cosmoligical scales behave very differently 
from our limited  scale experience.
What does nature care if the behaviour is not intuitative to us?

The ex nihilo argument may run into trouble with nature's spontaneous
production of virtual particles. These particle produce the
Casimir effect.

Casimir   imagined two metal plates so close together that the distance
between them was comparable with the wavelengths of the virtual
particles. (Another consequence of quantum theory is that all particles
are simultaneously waves.) In these circumstances, he realized, the
plates would be pushed together. That is because only particles with a
wavelength smaller than the gap between the plates could appear in that
gap, whereas particles of any wavelength could  be present on the other
sides of the plates.   Though this was in the late '40's by 1997 this
force could be rather precisely measured and in impressive agreement
with predictions---U. C. Riverside:

http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/9805038

This  non-zero vacuum energy is expected to contribute to the 
cosmological constant resulting in the acceleration of the expansion of 
the
universe. A pure vacuum is thus  a very very busy place.  Why doesn't  
this violate the conservation of energy law???  Well the particles 
exist and anhililate each other in less than Planck time (about 10**-44 
sec) so it doesn't count.  These  virtual particles/quantum 
fluctuations have dramatic implications for  cosmology.   Nature 
doesn't seem to need much help creating things.

Better finish up in office soon or else may end up with a virtual 
dinner, Mike

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