More Denton: A new book (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, March 11, 2016, 08:55 (2970 days ago) @ David Turell

Dhw: Are you saying we actually know of a "pure plasma of energy"?
DAVID: Yes. Quark gluon plasmas exist briefly at the LHC for example:-http://press.web.cern.ch/backgrounders/heavy-ion-collisions-quark-gluon-plasma-and-quan...
 
I have hunted in vain for the word “pure”. The article says: “...an early discovery was that the quark-gluon plasma behaves more like a perfect fluid with small viscosity than like a gas, as many researchers had expected." With quarks as one of the building blocks of matter, how does this make a quark-gluon plasma into a “pure plasma of energy”?
 
DAVID: A brick wall is not a wall until the bricks are made into one. Atoms are matter, pure energy particles must as noted in the quote coalesce into atoms of matter. Energy and matter are bound together, but at extreme levels of heat and energy they can be separated, as in The big Bang! I assume that God is in a pure energy state.-Again - and understandably, since the whole concept is controversial - the word “pure” is not used anywhere in the quote. The fact that energy and matter can be separated does not mean they can exist without each other.
 
DAVID: You want God to be matter. Why!?
dhw: I don't want any such thing. I called your God's consciousness “disembodied”. On Monday you responded “How do you know God's consciousness is disembodied? I consider is as a fully organized construction”. If you don't think it's disembodied, it must be material. -DAVID: I wasn't clear. I apologize. I view God as a force of organized energy, a 'consciousness' and being organized it is not disembodied (and is a 'body' or a 'formation'), but not material at the same time because God does not have a material body. Obviously this concept of God is not of this reality, but exists in the quantum layer of reality, remembering the interconnectedness of all quantum sister particles.-Apology accepted. No concept of God can be “of this reality”, and I guess we can imagine whatever we like in the “quantum layer of reality”.-DAVID: Back to the theory that the brain is a receiver of consciousness as a possibility. Consciousness may exist as electromagnetic wave fields, and they are not matter. Magnetic fields are not matter, but magnets are.
dhw: Once again, my question is whether energy and matter can exist without each other - not whether they can be separated. Your “pure energy” God (magnetic fields) would have to exist independently of matter (magnet) and would then have to produce “de novo” the matter (magnet) that produces energy (magnetic fields). But nobody knows what consciousness is, so we should keep an open mind. -DAVID: My mind is not closed, but what we know about reality needs a reasonable explanation, and I've given one I accept. I don't expect you to since you don't appear to like supernatural explanations, remembering that whatever created this universe existed prior to this natural reality we have and may well be considered supernatural, i.e., not of this reality.-I agree that our reality needs a reasonable explanation, and whatever gave rise to life and consciousness has to lie outside of nature AS WE KNOW IT. (Otherwise, we would already have found the explanation.) Your “supernatural” God is one possibility among others that I find equally difficult to believe in. That is the agnostic's dilemma.
 
DAVID: If you have followed my reasoning, consciousness may be pure energy, and the only matter necessary is the matter that receives the thoughts and feelings and interprets.
dhw; I'll accept “may be”, but that still doesn't make it true, and it doesn't make “always been” more logical than “became”.
DAVID: I don't know how anything can become conscious all by itself, when we recognize that consciousness is so mysterious we have no explanation at all for its existence (Nagel).-Agreed. Unfortunately, I don't know how eternal energy can simply ”be” conscious all by itself. Maybe one day an LHC will be able to test your quark-gluon plasma for signs of consciousness. 
 
dhw: Clearly, then, you think your God knew all about boredom, so it ties in perfectly with him creating life to relieve his own boredom.
DAVID: I'm sure God know about all human emotions before we had any. Why you want Him to avoid boredom is beyond me. He had lots to do inventing the fine-tuned universe and running the process of evolution.-Thank you. If he knew all about them before we existed, it can only be because he felt them. It would seem, then, that just like our animal ancestors, your God has passed fundamental attributes down to us. We are not anthropomorphizing them or him - we have inherited these attributes. I offer boredom as a feasible motive for him inventing the fine-tuned universe and setting the process of evolution in motion. Having lots to do is a good antidote for boredom.
 
dhw: There was no need for ANY jumps [in evolution]. Yes, teleological, the purpose being survival and/or improvement. You seem to think the word “teleology” is confined to meaning “God created life for the purpose of producing humans”!-DAVID: That is exactly my thought.-Teleology simply denotes purpose, not one person's idea of one particular purpose.