Learning about crossovers helped convert me from atheist to a believer in God


Let’s see if this one survives.    

I have been an atheist for 50 years.  Recently I became a believer.  One factor that helped tip the scales is the “fine tuned universe” argument - the idea that the physics constants, e.g. the mass of an electron, are so finely “selected” that if they weren’t very close to what they are, life wouldn’t exist.  This is an argument for a creator.  The best counter argument seems to be that there are an infinite number of universes and we got lucky.  

When I got into audio, and started learning about crossovers, I was ASTOUNDED at how well the pieces fit together.  Octaves are exact doubles of frequency.  3dB describes so many seemingly unrelated phenomena.  But the one that really got me was the magic of capacitors and inductors.  They share no parts, other than wires sticking out at each end (usually), one acts due to voltage, one acts due to electromagnetism, one resists AC, one resists DC.  And yet, somehow, they are mirror images of each other, using almost exactly the same equations, behaving perfectly orthogonal to each other, even to the extent of how powerfully they perform their function (3dB again).  How is this possible?  Could this have happened due to random chance?  I smell a creator.  

alanhuth

I once heard a physics professor from Oxford University explain why he was a believer—in a similar spirit to you, he cited the beauty of the fundamental equations that describe physical phenomena in the standard model.  FWIW, I also find your first argument compelling—the idea that there are an infinity of different universes and we got lucky seems to me much more far fetched than the existence of a Creator.

David

 

The physics of sound (and therefore music) is also too "conveniently perfectly arranged" to be mere coincidence. I’ve known only one genius in my lifetime, and he was very much a believer. He also loved J.S. Bach above all others. JSB was himself one, but then just about everyone was in his time.

I like Christopher Hitchens a lot, but I fear he found out he was wrong. 😉

 

Speaking of crossovers, for an easy-to-understand primer on them, check out Danny Richie's GR Research YouTube videos in which he explains all.

The universe is a wondrous place and we haven't even scratched the surface of its wonders.

While I believe in a higher power, I sometimes wonder if he (or she) couldn't have left out a few things, like psychopaths and addictive pain killers, and still given us whatever experience he (or she) wanted us to have here.

Post removed 

Even if there exist an infinity of different universes they are all finite each one...

What make me believe in God or in the Source, is the existence of an information/formation field which throw his shadow in the mind of any intelligent being in any universe  : the prime numbers distribution...This is an absolute fact as the circle is an absolute TRANSCENDANT FACT...

Now listen this music of the primes translated by Alain Connes ( one of the great living mathematician) ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBArTv71Edk

 

The most complex object in the universe is not a material object but a symbolic object : the prime numbers series which include the universal knowledge in it and the cosmic memory...

 

Those who think that randomness can explain the universe are deluded... Randomness is a relatively constrained phenomena in mathematics...It cannot be defined absolutely by itself...

Think about music which is neither order nor disorder but informed meaning for a consciousness about another consciousness...

Agnosticism i undertand that philosophical position for sure ... But atheism belief is for the weak minds sorry...

There is no need for a proof concerning evidence... In the same way to perceive an evidence we must open the eyes or look in the right direction... In the same way for the mind eye the Source is an evidence at least in number theory if you dont look in nature...

As said a Romanian thinker , Cioran, a non beliver, an agnostic who love reading mystics all his life , one of the best french writer by the way , i paraphrase from my memory : Bach is the best proof of God if there is a God and God need more Bach than Bach ever needed God ...

 

By the way the OP is right about his thinking ... I studied acoustic to tune my room , and in a larger context i thought about sounds ... It is evident that randomness cannot explain sounds qualities of a source and their direct perception...

 

In science one differentiates between in- and deductive hypotheses. Hopefully I am  not insulting anybody in assigning this to the former and perceiving some distance to Thomas of Aquinas‘ attempted proof.

The greatest American thinker , Charles Sanders Peirce , distinguished , from inductive and deductive reasonning , abductive or retroductive reasonning... Science after him keep this third form of reasonning...

This implies a circle , or a spiralling set of hypothesis at the end encompassing everything...Peirce created semiotics , the science of signs with this abductive idea , and it takes three steps in this science to encompass the infinity...The Percean triads..

We must read Aquinas 5 proofs of the existence of God all 5 TOGETHER in this Percean abductive context...

  1. the argument from "first mover";
  2. the argument from universal causation;
  3. the argument from contingency;
  4. the argument from degree;
  5. the argument from final cause or ends ("teleological argument").

But at the end the Source being an evidence only need the mind eye directed on the right direction at the right time...

I will add to Aquinas 5 ways my sixth way : the absoluteness of number theory and the Nicolas of Cuses proof of the absolute infinity , before Cantor , which inspired Cantor to create the first universal mathematical theory...

In science one differentiates between in- and deductive hypotheses. Hopefully I am not insulting anybody in assigning this to the former and perceiving some distance to Thomas of Aquinas‘ attempted proof.

 

Mystics of all religions (not theologians there is a BIG difference here )  deliver the most bright mind and intelligence possible among humans with great mathematicians...Atheist are anything but not really deep minds... Sorry...
 
 

 

 

Great post. I don't have enough faith to believe this was a mistake or came about by chance. There is design in all created things. The creator God is beyond our ability to comprehend. 

The convolution of politics and religion was one of the principal subjects the Founding Fathers tried to prevent in drafting the Constitution. To see the religious right claim it as theirs is as much an alternative truth as MAGA was in its heyday

God or the Source has nothing to do with religions or politics...

Dont invite politics here... Nor religions...

mystics said all the same , nevermind their religions...

And by the way as Eddington said it , after quantum mechanics, matter exist no more as a substance...

Materialism died in 1925....

it was replaced by a technological cult today call transhumanism... And this is not science but the use of technology in a cultish auto destructive way...

Confusing spirituality with religions is like confusing science with technology ...

And i am not interested in politics at all , especially nowadays , where there is no more even the appearence of democracy...

 

 

The convolution of politics and religion was one of the principal subjects the Founding Fathers tried to prevent in drafting the Constitution. To see the religious right claim it as theirs is as much an alternative truth as MAGA was in its heyday

 

 

 

Music has been known for 1,000s of years electronics are no more advanced 

then the instruments of ancients of 1,000s of years, although maybe basic it still 

is at its purest form  of acoustic instruments which we still use today from flute,

drum, and stringed instruments the end result is the same without the complexity.

 there are some people who will not listen to amplified music. The flute is  considered a soothing instrument .

Each instrument has its own meaning ,cause  and effect, it’s all about perception and interpretations. 

The Universe is amazing. It made us and we can now look back at it. Through us it has become aware. And not only through us. We can call it God. It doesn’t care.

 

It sings amidst a constant background hiss of the big bang.  

 

 

"This is an argument for a creator." Why?
If there is a higher power it is a power I wish to have nothing to do with. Why? War, famine, the suffering and misery of innocent kids. Do you really believe a higher power would allow this?
Far better to be a Pastafarian and believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

I’m a filthy hearted, hypocritical, generic Christian. I’m working on and forever failing to love others as myself, but I’m trying. 
 

The universe is more wondrous than I can comprehend, that’s for sure.
 

  

Your lament is not an argument...

Why ?

First because we were created free ... Then the world resemble what our free acts make it so...

Second, inform yourself, we reincarnate; it is even a proven fact for decades now... Imagine you are a racist and you kill someone by hate, you will CHOOSE FREELY yourselfr to reincarnate and pay for the dinner so to speak , not as a punishment, there is no punishment, but to learn... Learning can be painful , no need for punishment... The worst judge the more implacable one is ourself ...

Then your expression of doubts only reflected a great empathy you have for all living creatures that suffer, but this empathy for others suffering so good it is as a human quality is a poor argument against God... In fact no argument at all...

 

"This is an argument for a creator." Why?
If there is a higher power it is a power I wish to have nothing to do with. Why? War, famine, the suffering and misery of innocent kids. Do you really believe a higher power would allow this?
Far better to be a Pastafarian and believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

 

The OP is bringing up faded memories of V.D. posting here about his products (cables I think) being based upon intel he personally received from Jesus Christ.

This was 20 some years ago and I suspect the posts/threads were deleted (think the guy may still be operating).

Otherwise, I have nothing pertinent to add to the OP's post.

 

DeKay

I believe in God, I just don't believe in religion. It's a problem of scalability, and religions just don't scale well. As one person put it, "The farther you get from Jerusalem, the sillier religion becomes." And by the time you reach the stars, religion is downright hysterical. So we have a conundrum, one that is, to my mind, resolved by recognizing the principle of self-organization, that is, the universe self organizes into an order defined by the physical laws of that universe. It is that principle that explains how, in a demonstrably, measurably, entropic universe, we can be here, having this conversation.

Randomness, another thorny problem, is simply order on a scale beyond our comprehension or capability to calculate. Shooting a single pool shot is simple enough to calculate and execute to make it a game. Breaking a rack of 15 balls, for all practical purposes is random in aggregate.  Each interaction between balls, felt, and cushion; the associated coefficients of friction and elasticity, geometry and gravity, can be individually calculated but the resulting transfer function of the whole rapidly becomes impossible due to minor variations - the butterfly effect. 

And so it is with our favorite topic here, acoustics. We all get direct sound, a trnsfer function of the speaker into the listening environment, but the transfer function of the reflected sound is vastly more complex, beginning with early reflections, then secondary, and tertiary reflections before we throw up our hands an call the aggregate sum of all non-direct sound "reverberation" the character of which our brain uses to assign size and subjective quality of the listening environment. My mentor, an acoustical physicist and architect once tried to define the transfer function of a concert hall on paper. After 20+ pages of equations he came to the conclusion that an approximation adequate to fool the ear was possible, but even small variations in parameters could lead to huge unexpected - and audible - variations. In complexity theory, this modeled in part through, among other means, the General Logistics Equation. 

Bsck to the questions of God, and life. It follows from the Principle of sel Organization, that life is an eventuality, given certain preconditions. And sentient life is simply an even more 'random' example of that eventuality. Creating religions in an attempt to explain that  phenomena is to ignore the greater story, and the uniqueness that is, for better or worse, ourselves.

Sorry, frankly you lost me with your weak religion conversion argument. Your logic statement doesn’t hold up well enough to prove one way or the other. Just my perspective. You’re welcome to yours.

Transitions between creationism, spirituality, religion and confessional faith are gradual. Excluding one from the other is a matter of personal opinion. Whatever you call it should be highly personal and in no way used to instruct others about the right way to live. In hippie words, love and peace, brothers. 

To apply the same principle to audio would rid us of many a selfrighteous and opinionated post in these fora. 

You are right for sure ....

But i will rectify your order about the transition:

Spirituality , religions, creationism  and specifc faiths...  Taoism, Buddhism and advaita vedanta, or panthéistic cults  are not creationist, there is no bearded man creating a cosmos ...

The existence of a design does not mean a personified creator...An impersonal spirit is the source , which can manifest in a person as you and me...

 

 

I like to read others opinion and discussing them... As the Op did ...As you did...

Opinionated i am for sure, 😊 but i am able to change my mind when i felt i was wrong... I have two sides...

In my belief and experience all is one, and there exist only a perfect , uncondional , love between the non manifested and the manifested... And all that is you... or me...

 

 My best to you...

 

Transitions between creationism, spirituality, religion and confessional faith are gradual.

Inductor, Capacitor?  For me it was Thermos.  When you pour in something hot it keeps it hot, but when you pour in cold it keeps it cold, but HOW DOES IT KNOW WHAT TO DO???

Seriously, I don't know if God exist and don't really care, but if so, then perhaps he just created (programmed) our world and doesn't care anymore.  Sometimes I wonder why anybody would even create such cruel world, where one living thing has to eat another to survive. 

My father must have been searching for God.  I remember him often banging on the bathroom door screaming  "Jesus Christ, are you still there?"

What created the supposed Creator? To infer mystery or some blessed wanton infinitude as a plugin solution to this conundrum is specious at best. 

Religion ruins everything, always has...people dream up gods or redefine nature to fit minds mired in ignorance or fear, march into war or strap suicide bombs to themselves for some insane deity somebody imagined in the Iron Age or ancient Egypt. Keep it to yourself along with any other comforting myths you may have and we’ll all get along a little better...maybe...

Man created god, not the other way around.  I have seen more proof that Santa and the Easter bunny exist.  God is a crutch for those who can’t accept that the short time we have here is all we get.  Your stating that crossovers showed you that a higher power exists shows just how absolutely ridiculous that concept is!  Why the heck isn’t there a “block” option here?

When the OP talks about the magic of capacitors and inductors he is just showing his ignorance.  Which makes me wonder does ignorance generate religion?

At the same time, at the level of bosons, leptons, the four fundamental forces and three dimensions plus time it is pretty amazing what evolved.  But it's even more amazing that we (our species) can comprehend what happened.

In the end, I just can’t get past the unrequited evil thing.  If there is a Creator, then why did he make it possible to create gas ovens to murder millions of people?  Or give an innocent small child a disease like spinal meningitis and suffer a horribly painful demise?  I could go on ad infinitum here.  Supposedly this is all part of a grand plan, and every awful bit is a necessary part of the Creator’s Grand Jigsaw Puzzle.  Sorry, this into a puzzle that I wish to play.

  Your capacitor works well?  Great.  Your stereo is sounding good?  Enjoy.  There is no need to postulate a divinity as being the cause of any of these things 

   

I was once a communist- which is a religion. In my youth it seemed like a fair deal- we all work together and share. The obvious problem is the nature of man- pride and greed prohibit this utopianism. As time passed it became obvious to me that intelligent design is supported by the greater weight of the evidence. Then came the obvious conflict- if good why evil?  My conclusion was pure love requires free will. Free will leads to choices for good and/or for evil. I am free to conform or free to rebel. Conform to what? to Good. Who or what is the ultimate Good? The Thrice Holy God. And the ultimate evil? He or that which stands in opposition to God- who is The Perfect Good and pure Love. It takes faith to believe in that which one cannot see- or completely comprehend. It takes much more faith to believe He does not exist and will not ultimately reconcile all things to Himself. 

It is extraordinary that men does not know what is free will...

All there is in the world perceived as evil comes from men...

The rest is accident and wait for human awakeness.... My body will go to the floor soon and i will quit it...So what ? my consciousness is not my body...

Consciousness is the only existing reality.... All there which occur, occur between consciousness...

Nothing is forgotten ... The information field is infinite... His image is number theory itself...

The OP stumbled on a phenomenon that has awaken his memory of the source so what ?

I bought a book about mammal physiology , the best ever, 1,500 pages, reading it , it is impossible not to enter in awe ....

Someone studying projective geometry who does not stay in awe dont really see geometry music..

Acoustic is a mystery... Studying it is becoming awake.... Everything speak of the ONE or the source...

Linguistic is so deep that it rival mathematic...And it speak about an intelligence exceeding any human speaker... We use divine tool without even knowing what we did when speaking... Study linguistic and awake yourself...

Only those willing to stay blind and deaf for a short time for a reason of their own free choices thinks that death is the only reality for a very short time ( 80 years average )...

The only self sustaining process is unconditional love , it is the only universal infinite process which remember anything as if it was HIM who goes into the process... HIM is the paradoxically impersonnal source manifested as a single consciousness... Call it God or your mother or an ant... No difference... it is the same HIM and it is the same THAT...

I dont believe all that i just written...

I perceive it , i imagine it in a creative way , i read it in mathematics as the law of the infinite...I felt it inside me...

How many people know that all Cantor transfinite theory pre-axiomatization comes from the three contemplative methods of a mystic : Pseudo-Dyonisos the Areopagite.. If mathematic fundamental theory itself is based on spiritual vision of the infinite, why negating his value without grasping it first ?

Men are free to stay where they are and free to be no more slaves of the corporations.. They are lazy...

They prefer to say to someone : you wear a "tin foil hat"...

The staggering ignorance because people want to keep their beliefs is staggering...

For someone who open his eyes there is no more beliefs, because he look at thing in a creative imaginative way , he dont need to imagine them obeying his past dead passive imaginations... if you want to know the difference between passive and active imagination, between corpse and living entities study geometry or biology and the crux of the matter LINK THE TWO TOGETHER... Specialization is the death of science but the bread and salt of industrial technology...Any true scientist become a philosopher... Because science must be way more than mere technology it must become personal knowledge... Wisdom...

Opening his eyes is call thinking... Thinking is putting together all there is in one vision...

Separating things from one another is not thinking...

Hubris is not wisdom...But there is an "intelligence" in hubris and an "intelligence" in wisdom... Dont confuse them... Discern between them...

Bill Gates is not Archimedes...

 

The OP addressed the question at the metaphysical level, and the discussion should have stayed there. OP merely rehashes the tired argument from design. Well, the beauty of symmetry and predictability of physical laws don't imply a designer, and the "randomness" and "alternative universes" oppositions are straw men long since burned down. Either matter and energy will exist or they won't. As it happens, they do, so to speak of nothingness is to speak idly. So if existence is the case, that which exists will express the laws necessary to its existence and behavior, including the interconvertibility of matter and energy. We humans, extreme latecomers to this universe existing for billions of earth years before our arrival, whose existence was made possible only by temporary conditions on one obscure planet (out of perhaps a decillion others about which we know little or nothing), NATURALLY find beauty in the symmetries of mathematics, electricity, gravity, magnetism, etc., because we are creatures of those forces. Just as children love their parents, we all love the natural world IN WHICH, AND ALONG WITH WHICH, WE COEVOLVED. How could we not find it beautiful?  If there were a designer, then how come we humans capable of appreciating this "design" were a mere afterthought in the nature of an asterisk on a footnote arriving after eternities of astrophysical wonders beyond comprehension? Yet mathematical truths, like gravity, were there all along, just with nobody around (that we know of) to declare them beautiful or symmetrical or harmonious or mysterious.

Great post!

The peroblem in your post is that you suppose a separation , a dualism , between matter and consciousness,  BUT this Cartesian dualism died with quantum mechanics...

His death was analysed and predicted by Alfred North Whitehead, he called it the Cartesian bifurcation , and call the unability to be conscious of this bifurcation of tought  and his consequences a fallacy;  "one commits the fallacy of misplaced concreteness when one mistakes an abstract belief, opinion, or concept about the way things are for a physical or "concrete" reality"...

When men think that an outer material substance is more real than their own thought process and consciousness...This outer substance is a reified abstraction called "matter"... Heisenberg put it at rest for eternity... After him man must distinguishe as the physicist Wolfgang Smith described : sub physical abstraction of physics with phenomenal corporeal qualitative reality and vertical transcendant spiritual reality...

 

The OP addressed the question at the metaphysical level, and the discussion should have stayed there. OP merely rehashes the tired argument from design. Well, the beauty of symmetry and predictability of physical laws don’t imply a designer, and the "randomness" and "alternative universes" oppositions are straw men long since burned down. Either matter and energy will exist or they won’t. As it happens, they do, so to speak of nothingness is to speak idly. So if existence is the case, that which exists will express the laws necessary to its existence and behavior, including the interconvertibility of matter and energy. We humans, extreme latecomers to this universe existing for billions of earth years before our arrival, whose existence was made possible only by temporary conditions on one obscure planet (out of perhaps a decillion others about which we know little or nothing), NATURALLY find beauty in the symmetries of mathematics, electricity, gravity, magnetism, etc., because we are creatures of those forces. Just as children love their parents, we all love the natural world IN WHICH, AND ALONG WITH WHICH, WE COEVOLVED. How could we not find it beautiful? If there were a designer, then how come we humans capable of appreciating this "design" were a mere afterthought in the nature of an asterisk on a footnote arriving after eternities of astrophysical wonders beyond comprehension? Yet mathematical truths, like gravity, were there all along, just with nobody around (that we know of) to declare them beautiful or symmetrical or harmonious or mysterious.

 

All i can add is Ockham’s razor. Belief is a category of knowledge that does not admit to discussion in a meaningful way as we understand it. The theologians of yesterday tried their proofs and indirectly contributed to the secularization of the world.it is indeed an interesting phenomenon (sentience),all of this. It could well have been nothing. For fun think of a world without the universal consciousness of language, or specifically as it applies to you, and your opposable thumbs and build from there over a long time frame. I studied for a European doctorate in linguistic philosophy.

We have a son who made a lot of bad choices in his adolescent years. At home we had family Bible studies and I was an elder in our local church for 5 years. I taught  professionally for AT&T and taught the Bible at our local congregation. Our son dropped out of college and joined the Marines. There he also made some poor choices and was almost given a dishonorable discharge. 

But things changed. He found a wonderful lady also in the Marines who is a Christian and they married when they finished their commitment to the service. Lots of things continued to change including the kind of music he listened to. Still enjoyed the same genres but trading dark for light. Fast forward, Graduated from college with a 4.0. Finishing his master's with a 4.0. Has 3 beautiful children who also love music. Our son now plans to go into the ministry..

Music has a powerful influence on lives. I remember lyrics to old songs much easier than I do names of past friends. Kids have a profound ability to remember whole songs before they can hardly put a sentence together. 

Yes, there is a Creator, and he is waiting to transform the lives of all who believe. Music is a gift. Music played through a fine audio system is just that much better. 

 

 

You know that all these "razors" beginning with Ockham comes from a nominalism realm which dominate the anglo-saxon world and from it influence the rest of the world through the industrialization era ? ( the last one being the illusory and rethorical Hitchens razor )

This world of nominalism so hated by Charles Sanders Peirce and William Blake is coming to an end after industrialization right now...

A new "realism" is born...

If you studied linguistic philosophy ( my master is Gustave Guillaume ) you guess already that the greek logos was detotalized, and lost his unity, dissolving into realism and nominalism and conceptualism , three parts of a lost unity ( as language perceived unity separated in two illusory opposing modes : prosaic and poetic ) ...This lost was also a gain...Christianity created his own demise as a religion or superstition and gave to us a laical free world for all over any religions... The true logos of Plato manifested as a powerdful human teaching by Christ... We enter now in the conscious spirituality era over any religious faiths...

We assist now worlwide at the end of anglo saxon nominalism and materialist domination...The return of the logos as predicted by Goethe, the german Aristotle...

What do you think?

By the way studying linguistic was an ectasy...It is on par with music and mathematic and biology as mysteries initiation....

You are lucky...

All i can add is Ockham’s razor. Belief is a category of knowledge that does not admit to discussion in a meaningful way as we understand it. The theologians of yesterday tried their proofs and indirectly contributed to the secularization of the world.it is indeed an interesting phenomenon (sentience),all of this. It could well have been nothing. For fun think of a world without the universal consciousness of language, or specifically as it applies to you, and your opposable thumbs and build from there over a long time frame. I studied for a European doctorate in linguistic philosophy.

 

We created the units of measurements (notes / volts / whatever) through observations - we define and name them like ticks placed on the ground every 10’ when walking a mile at a steady pace. Next, some time goes by and we forget the times we we did not have these ticks on the ground defined. Now we devise a wheel to count the ticks. Then we sit back in an amazement and wonder about the serendipity of it all - how could this measuring device perfectly line up with these units of measurement. Well we defined both puzzle pieces - so of course they fit together. 

There may be reasons to have faith, but I do not believe this is a very strong one. If there was a higher power and they had a hand in electronics, WE 300B’s would grow on trees like oranges and I wouldn’t have to consider skipping a mortgage payment to get a pair. 

We dont need amplifiers growing on tree to enter in spiritual ectasy...

Look at the cell working growing on any tree  :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJyUtbn0O5Y

😊

There may be reasons to have faith, but I do not believe this is a very strong one. If there was a higher power and they had a hand in electronics, WE 300B’s would grow on trees like oranges and I wouldn’t have to consider skipping a mortgage payment to get a pair. 

Brauser agree +7, OP congratulations for becoming a believer.Indeed there is God.🙏🙏

Beautiful video, @mahgister !

First: I’m assuming (hoping) the people discussing this topic don’t dispute proven scientific theories such as evolution, which led to the complexities of the cell shown in that video. (If you are, for example, a Bible literalist who believes in six actual days of creation, and that God put dinosaur bones in the ground just to fool us, then I can’t have a discussion with you, as any argument you advance will always reduce to the tautology of belief).

But if you understand the basic tenets of evolution, you will understand that there can be emergent properties generated from simpler sub-parts; "emergent" means the property can’t be seen in the sub-components. This leads to seemingly "intelligent design" due solely to random variation, environmental selection processes, and a length of time so long that humans cannot fathom it. That is the big thing: If you wait long enough, even the highly improbable eventually happens. Our written history (read: collective knowledge) is but a blip compared to the timescale of geologic processes, which in turn are a tiny fraction of the timescale of the universe. Our civilization can not experience anything on these timescales.

To the extent I believe in anything, I would simply quote Einstein, who said "I believe in Spinoza’s God, who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings." That’s what I think most of you talking about symmetry of equations, or inductors and capacitors, are saying. But it doesn’t require a Creator. Just time and the physical laws of the universe.

If there were an actual God-Creator, personally interested in what I do, I would assume She endowed me with rationality. So She should think I’m an idiot for taking the word of the Torah or the Quran or the Bible without any proof. Why would a God who endows me with rationality not provide rational proof of Her existence?

And if this God-Creator is good, then why all the evil in this world? Graham Nash summed this up nicely in the lyrics of Winchester Cathedral (his sentiment is Christian-centric but applies universally to those religions that posit a Creator):


Open up the gates of the church and let me out of here!
Too many people have lied in the name of Christ
For anyone to heed the call.
So many people have died in the name of Christ
That I can’t believe it all.

The problem of evil is solved by free will and reincarnation... Which is a censored fact by christian church fathers...

Today reincarnation can no more being described as a fantasy...

The intelligent design of the cosmos is solved in principle if we distinguish an impersonal "intelligent" process separated from consciousness levels...

Intelligence is not consciousness...Consciousness is not intelligence...

A slime mold can solve very complex optimization problem without consciousness... An A. I. can be very intelligent without any consciousness...

Tomorrow man will create "artificial consciousness" a consciousness not grounded in the universal intelligent field ... We are free creator but we must remind ourself our own spiritual responsability...

Nowadays pure evil rule our life , corporate powers, pure separated and isolated intelligence without any consciousness...

We need to free ourself...Of materialism , of hubris, and we need to respect all conscious beings from cell to stars...If not pure intelligence separated from the universal intelligence field is auto destruction ...

About evolution we are mislead by our concept of time...

Creation is not the act of a bearded god in the past...it is an ongoing participated process in which we are all co-creators with the source... Time dont exist by itself , save for our filtering/tuning brain /body ...

The most difficult idea to represent is levels of consciousness separated from levels of intelligence and crossing and uniting in each organism....When we represent it in ourself we discover that all that exist is ONE manifest as an internal pluralities... Then i am not pantheist as Spinoza, i am panantheist... All is source and from the source but the source is also transcendant absolute infinity... Impersonal transecendance and personally manifested love...It is WHAT YOU ARE....There is two levels in each one of us...listen and you will hear...

I trusted mystics and mathematicians on par with one another... I trusted philosophers way less...

I trust the products made by engineers but i trust no engineer philosophy... 😊

The OP evidently means to invoke the “anthropic principle” when he mentions the “fine tuned universe argument.” Many believers in God appeal to this principle, as it seems to support the “argument from design,” perhaps the most intuitively appealing of any of the arguments for the existence of God. However, this involves a misunderstanding. The anthropic principle only states the tautological truism that, were it not for us as observers, the observed features of the universe would not be. That is, the construal of this principle as support for some kind of Supreme Designer gets the causality backward. The principle is just an extension of Kant’s fundamental insight: that “reality” is necessarily relative to the observer who experiences, and so defines, it. Space and time are not independently real, they are features of the observer; thus, all the spatio-temporal features of the universe determined by physics—our physics—are extrapolations of features of our own minds. This is NOT to say that the very existence of some unknowable reality depends on us. But the knowability of that, or any, reality does, tautologically, depend on the knower (and the cognitive and bodily structures of the knower).

 

For what it’s worth, it seems to me the wisest thing to “say” about God is what Meister Eckhart—a 13th century German Catholic (Dominican) mystical theologian—wrote: “Now notice this.  God is nameless, for no one can know or articulate anything about God. A pagan teacher [Aristotle] speaks to this point in saying that what we can know or express about the First Cause is more than anything else what we are than anything that the First Cause is or might be, for it is beyond all human expression and understanding.  If I were to say that God is good, I would be wrong; it is more correct to say that I am good and God is not good….  And because God cannot become better he cannot become best, for all three of these terms—good, better, and best—are far from God’s reality….  If I go on to say that God is wise, it is not true—I am wiser than God.  If I further say that God is a being [that he exists], that is not true.  God is a being beyond being and a nothingness beyond being…. So be silent and do not flap your gums about God, for to the extent that you flap your gums about God, you lie and you commit sin.”

Hickamore, thank you for taking my OP seriously enough to respond to it in kind.  I appreciate that.  Your point seems to be that matter and energy exist, therefore, how surprising is it that we find harmony in the mathematics (for example) that we use to understand this existence.  My response is that you are starting at the endpoint, that matter and energy exist,  That appears to be just as much a religious statement as is the suggestion of a creator.  BTW, I think you will find that the idea of multiple universes is not a dismissed straw man, as you say, but it is currently an active theory which is offered to explain the “finely tuned universe” argument, which is based on the idea that many of the physical constants of the universe, [e.g. gravitational constant, Planck constant, elementary charge], have very little wiggle room in their range for life to exist.  

 

zasouswing, I also thank you for addressing my post directly.  Your point seems to be that it’s not surprising that we find harmony and beauty in the way, for example that the capacitor and the inductor seem to mirror each other so perfectly because we set up the measuring system to achieve that exact result.  While I agree that we set up a very clean measurement system (metric and physics), I don’t see how that explains, for example, that an inductor’s low-pass cutoff frequency rolloff has the exact same slope as as that of a capacitor’s high-pass at the opposite end, using a different mechanism of operation, and using no common parts.  It just seems too good to be true.  But I could be wrong.  

The answers the OP look for about his statement :

While I agree that we set up a very clean measurement system (metric and physics), I don’t see how that explains, for example, that an inductor’s low-pass cutoff frequency rolloff has the exact same slope as as that of a capacitor’s high-pass at the opposite end, using a different mechanism of operation, and using no common parts.  It just seems too good to be true.  But I could be wrong.  

The answer about this is complex but completely described in this video by one of the greatest mathematician  always living , and i cannot resume this answer in a few words :

Alain Connes , "the music of shapes" conference ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z52ZAPrRbqE&t=522s

Master Eckhardt takes his idea from his own experience of the Source but also was inspired by Dyonisos the Areopagite , the greatest of all mystic in the christian church, for catholics as for Orthodox... he lives in the sixth century...

He is so deep that Georg Cantor takes all his ideas and method about infinities hierarchical relations from him , from his three methods : silent contemplation in non discursive intuitive consciousness, apophantic and cataphatic discursive methods...Nicolas the Cues the mathemathical genius in the 15 century takes also his ideas from Dyonysos and gives after Archimedes the first description of actual infinity..

Without this mystic , i doubt that Cantor who taught also theology and was a mystic too, would have been able to create transfinite set theory... You can read Michael Hallett " Set theory and the principle of limitation of size" to verify it if you study Dyonisos too ...

Then question : How in the world could a mystic be at the origin of the ONLY mathematical modern foundation of the most fundamental of science ?

The only contender of set theory as a foundation was created by another mystic who wrote a one thousand pages book about his dialogue with God in his dreams , in french "la clef des songes".. I read it...Alexander Grothendieck is the genius who created modern algebraic geometry ALONE ... he is the master of Alain Connes among many other genius and also the master of Shinichi Mochizuki the controversial genius from Japan ...

The OP evidently means to invoke the “anthropic principle” when he mentions the “fine tuned universe argument.” Many believers in God appeal to this principle, as it seems to support the “argument from design,” perhaps the most intuitively appealing of any of the arguments for the existence of God. However, this involves a misunderstanding. The anthropic principle only states the tautological truism that, were it not for us as observers, the observed features of the universe would not be. That is, the construal of this principle as support for some kind of Supreme Designer gets the causality backward. The principle is just an extension of Kant’s fundamental insight: that “reality” is necessarily relative to the observer who experiences, and so defines, it. Space and time are not independently real, they are features of the observer; thus, all the spatio-temporal features of the universe determined by physics—our physics—are extrapolations of features of our own minds. This is NOT to say that the very existence of some unknowable reality depends on us. But the knowability of that, or any, reality does, tautologically, depend on the knower (and the cognitive and bodily structures of the knower).

 

For what it’s worth, it seems to me the wisest thing to “say” about God is what Meister Eckhart—a 13th century German Catholic (Dominican) mystical theologian—wrote: “Now notice this. God is nameless, for no one can know or articulate anything about God. A pagan teacher [Aristotle] speaks to this point in saying that what we can know or express about the First Cause is more than anything else what we are than anything that the First Cause is or might be, for it is beyond all human expression and understanding. If I were to say that God is good, I would be wrong; it is more correct to say that I am good and God is not good…. And because God cannot become better he cannot become best, for all three of these terms—good, better, and best—are far from God’s reality…. If I go on to say that God is wise, it is not true—I am wiser than God. If I further say that God is a being [that he exists], that is not true. God is a being beyond being and a nothingness beyond being…. So be silent and do not flap your gums about God, for to the extent that you flap your gums about God, you lie and you commit sin.”

 

Sniff, thank you also for addressing my post directly.  Sadly I’m not smart enough to understand your major point.  Perhaps you could re-phrase it in simpler language.  I don’t understand what the misunderstanding you refer to is, and how this means that the finely tuned universe argument gets the causality backwards.  

One innovation, from the history of religion, that Western (Judeo-Christian) religion offered was the compound idea that a) the universe is intelligible, b) that humans are equipped to understand it, and c) that it is good to pursue this understanding.  On that basis the Scientific Revolution happened in the West.  Math and physics were developed, not as human confections, but as the byproduct of observation and experimentation.  So, while I understand that one sees what one looks for, that to a hammer everything is a nail, etc., to then extrapolate that physics, as it stands, is a human language that shapes and distorts our observations of reality may be true but it isn’t really useful.  It’s all we have to make sense of the physical world.