Taner Edis Quotes

• Quantum events have a way of just happening, without any cause, as when a radioactive atom decays at a random time. Even the quantum vacuum is not an inert void, but is boiling with quantum fluctuations. In our macroscopic world, we are used to energy conservation, but in the quantum realm this holds only on average. Energy fluctuations out of nothing create short-lived particle-antiparticle pairs, which is why the vacuum is not emptiness but a sea of transient particles. An uncaused beginning, even out of nothing, for spacetime is no great leap of the imagination.

  Taner Edis

  Average, Sea, Imagination

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• Attaching a Creator to the boundary is metaphysical skullduggery.

  Taner Edis

  Religion, Boundaries, Metaphysical

  Taner Edis (2002). “The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science”, Pyr Books

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• Which is better: to achieve Nirvana, or become a Boddhissatva?

  Taner Edis

  Libertarian, Achieve

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• Physicists use 'God' as a metaphor more often than other scientists-- especially in popular writing, but in the technical literature as well. Of course, this is just a metaphor for order at the heart of confusion. A rational or aesthetic pattern underlying reality is far from a theistic God.

  Taner Edis

  Writing, Heart, Reality

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• To talk intelligibly about modern physics, we have to admit the possibility of uncaused events.

  Taner Edis

  Religion, Events, Physics

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• Quantum mechanics is so counter-intuitive, physicists have never been able to come up with a comfortable picture of how it works.

  Taner Edis

  Religion, Able, Mechanic

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• Asking about a time before the beginning of our spherical spacetime is like asking what lies north of the North Pole. There is no such thing.

  Taner Edis

  Lying, Religion, Asking

  Taner Edis (2002). “The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science”, Pyr Books

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• In the popular imagination, the Big Bang is a great explosion; at one time there was nothing, then matter erupted into previously empty space. However, the Big Bang is the beginning of spacetime itself, not an event in time.

  Taner Edis

  Space, Imagination, Religion

  Taner Edis (2002). “The Ghost in the Universe: God in Light of Modern Science”, Pyr Books

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• Creation out of absolute nothing is a metaphysical quagmire for theists anyway, since nothing must at least have the potentiality for becoming something. Since theists are stuck with potentiality, it might as well be something like a quantum vacuum.

  Taner Edis

  Religion, Vacuums, Quagmire

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• When confronted with a demand that the universe have a cause, infidels have usually pointed out that God was not much of an explanation. This is true enough, but not really a positive argument. After mechanistic explanation became popular, infidels liked to restrict causality to the chain of causes in an eternal material universe, pointing out that no supernatural cause was then necessary. Plausible, but still rather defensive. Today's skeptic can do better. In all likelihood, the universe is uncaused. It is random. It just is.

  Taner Edis

  Religion, Demand, Causality

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• Of course, Jastrow's comment is exaggerated at best; theologians hardly predicted the Big Bang. If our universe turns out to be closed, hence with an end, this does not mean apocalyptic visions of the end of the world were on target. And even if a beginning for the universe is a successful prediction of one version of theism, this is still not that impressive. After all, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. The Big Bang becomes strong support for God only with an argument showing that such a beginning requires a Creator.

  Taner Edis

  Strong, Mean, Successful

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