Your comment on my paper’s page:

Paul,

We posit some of the same mysteries, issues and questions but I tend to leave nature in the realm of a process we are left with and God in the realm of faith to embody what we can't seem to fathom. Entropy is a natural process which seems to govern the animate and inanimate -- the tiny and the colossal.

An interesting read.

Jim...

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Your comment on my paper’s page:

Paul,

We posit some of the same mysteries, issues and questions but I tend to leave nature in the realm of a process we are left with and God in the realm of faith to embody what we can't seem to fathom. Entropy is a natural process which seems to govern the animate and inanimate -- the tiny and the colossal.

An interesting read.

Jim Hoover



Dear James,

Your concept of God is common among those who don’t actually believe in the actual existence of God. The general belief is that as science advances all of the things we currently can’t fathom will be explained and then there will be no need for a concept of God. The problem with that concept is that there are two possibilities. One is that God exists and created the universe and the other is that God does not exist and the universe came about in some other way. Putting blinders on oneself and only looking at and trying to work for justification of only one of the two possibilities will likely end in false results because they will be founded on the wrong assumptions. Only a balanced approach that honestly looks at and analyzes both possibilities and looks for all the information that can be found that would support both possibilities and also all the information that would be against both possibilities can after full analysis be expected to be able to likely give a truly valid answer to the question. As an example, suppose that God does exist and that he created the universe and everything in it, but suppose that he made it such that it works automatically, so that you find that it appears to you that no God is needed. If God made it for some purpose, such as to create a body for himself and left signs of that purpose hidden in the structure of the universe in such a way that you would not see them unless you were purposely looking for them and also gave explanations of his purpose to certain men who then wrote them down in a book for people to read and get an understanding of his purpose, which included that he made us to become parts of his body which will live eternally in a new universe after this one is destroyed by him when he has all of his body members made, but we must choose to become members in a certain way that he has provided for us to do so, you would likely not read that book because you would think that you have the answer that you desire to have. The result would be that you would spend a lot of time coming to a conclusion that would leave you out of the whole purpose of the universe and the life that can be had after this one. A true scientist looks at and analyzes all of the possibilities and then makes decisions based on all the information available. Even then he always keeps his mind open to new evidence that could possibly change that decision.

I spent over twenty two years looking for that answer in man’s science as that advanced over the years and in other sources all of which together ultimately led me to understandings that go well beyond man’s current understandings of how the world works. I then, by what I at that time thought was just by chance, happened to open and read a part of the Christian New Testament scriptures and found to my amazement that it contained information that was not currently known by man in this world. That a book written about two thousand years ago contained such advanced information caused me to decide to read it all and I have since found much more information, some of which I still don’t yet completely understand about many different areas of knowledge. I also found that the Old Testament contains similar information. I included a small amount of that information in my paper, but the paper was too short to include very much of that information in it.

When I first started my quest to determine whether God exists or not, I found it relatively easy to believe in a natural universe because the accepted theory at that time was the steady state theory, which held that the universe has always existed and that stars would eventually burn out and explode and that the dust from that explosion would eventually come back together to form new stars, etc. Evolution was also easy to believe because living creatures were said to be composed of cells that were filled with protoplasm and cytoplasm and some mysterious unknown life force. This sounded simple enough to possibly come about naturally and evolve. As the steady state theory was ultimately disproven and it became evident that the universe had a beginning and that living creatures were made of cells that were actually very small factories that produced very complex structures that are even today beyond man’s ability to make, etc., it became evident that the universe could not have created living creatures because it tends to break down such structures instead of making them and since the universe had a beginning, that also fit into the concept that it was created by God. I still did not fully accept the existence of God until I saw the information that was provided in the scriptures about him and the world that he created. Since then I have also come to understand other problems with concepts such as evolution. As an example, If you use a DNA copy error rate and a positive result rate that are great enough to possibly allow the production by evolution of all of the types of living creatures that have ever existed, those rates would cause an exponential increase in evolution due to the population increase of all of the creatures, so that today we should see many major evolutionary changes happening all around us, but we don’t.

You are right that entropy is a natural process and that it governs both animate (living creatures) and inanimate (nonliving structures) and applies to things of all sizes. The main difference between the living and nonliving things is that the nonliving things behave completely according to entropy while the living creatures apply some of the motion (energy) that they use to build very complex molecular machines and thus work contrary to entropy in that respect. The nonliving things don’t do this. Of course, living creatures use more motion than they place into the building of these complex structures, so they still can’t completely escape entropy. All of the fossil fuels that man is currently using and has used in the past are the remnants of that stored motion that living creatures have produced over a long time. The natural world does not generally build and store such motion. Instead it tends to break down and disperse any such stored motion over time.

I looked at your paper and found some of the usual attempts to justify the concept that the universe somehow created life. The idea that entropy could drive matter to acquire life-like physical properties ascribes an intelligence to inanimate matter that it does not possess. Inanimate matter can only act in accordance to its built in structural information which means that it behaves in accordance with entropy and tends to average the motion contents of all entities in the system toward the center or average of their motion amplitude range and tends to disperse evenly throughout available space. Larger entities that are more subject to gravity tend to be pulled together by it, etc. There is a long way from matter that is placed in an environment with a lot of motion forming clumps and the generation of complex protein machines and DNA molecules. If that is a natural tendency, why do we not see naturally produced protein molecules and DNA molecules everywhere? The planet Mercury receives a great amount of energy that needs to be dissipated. It should, therefore, by the theory that you support generate a very great amount of life on that planet to help to dissipate all that energy. The same could be said about Venus. If that theory really worked it would be very good because if I made a kettle of chili, every time I warmed it up it would reproduce and automatically make more for me in order to dissipate the applied heat, so I would never need to make more. I might, of course, have to add some dirt or something for it to convert into more chili every so often or something like that. One of the problems with the concept that life would form as a natural process to aid dissipation of energy is that building complex molecular structures is not energy dissipation. It is energy storage. Nonliving matter would tend to dissipate all applied energy, but living creatures would store much of the applied energy into the complex molecular structures that they make. This would actually hinder energy dissipation, not aid it.

Evolution does not intrinsically increase complexity in living creatures. It would only support successful adaptation to the environment. If the environment were to change so that no creature larger than an ant could survive, we would all die out, but ants would still survive and that would be evolution in action even though it would be supporting less complex living creatures over the more complex ones.

The earth’s environment could support the 7+ billion people on this planet if man would stop burning the fossil fuels and use solar energy to generate needed power. If this was done properly, man would take energy that hits the earth from the sun and needs to be dissipated anyway and use it to produce the motion that is needed and then allow it to dissipate back into space normally. This would also get rid of the pollution problems.

It took me quite a while to fully accept the evidence that the universe and life were created by God, so I can understand why those who desire a natural answer to the question of the source of the universe and of life would tend to rationalize some way to look at the world in a way that would support that result, but it is evident that entropy works against life which is why all living creatures have machinery to repair the damages that it causes to them. If the big bang actually happened to create the universe, its cause cannot be discerned because all of man’s theories break down before getting all the way back to the actual beginning of the expansion. With two possibilities (created by God or by some natural occurrence) and no way to determine which it is, any reasonable person would say that it is a fifty percent chance either way. The only thing that could change that understanding would be if the universe’s structure indicates that it was created by an intelligent being or by natural random processes. In that respect its complex multilevel hierarchical structure implies that much intelligence went into its construction, especially into the production of living creatures. To me an attempt to convince people that the thing (entropy) that works to break down and destroy living creatures and the things that they make actually is what works to create life is the ultimate misinformation campaign. Of course, each has the right to have his own delusion if he desires to do so. I just desire to know and understand how things really work too much to continue down that path when it is now so obvious that it is a dead end path.



I find it interesting that we are coming to the end of a complete cycle of understanding. If you go back into history in the United States, when the country was more Christian oriented, someone with the naturalist philosophy would have been considered either very naïve or foolish. At that time there was little scientific evidence either way. Later scientists bought into that philosophy which gave it much credence in the intellectual world and it got to the point that those who believed in God were considered very naïve or foolish. When I came on the scene, I did find that most Christians that tried to disprove evolution did not understand its concepts, so that led me to tend to agree with the scientists of the time. As time went on and the true complexities of the world and the life in it became more and more known, it became apparent that a natural explanation was not practical. Now I find that some scientists are purposely trying to reinterpret the facts of how things actually work in the world to continue to support the naturalist philosophy when the scientific evidence is actually showing it to be wrong. In addition to that I am now finding some Christians who have gone into scientific fields such as genetics and biology who recognize the problems and are beginning to publically address them. The main good thing that has come out of all of this is that science has greatly advanced in the process of trying to prove it in one direction or the other and in the end God still wins because his works prove him.

Sincerely,

Paul

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Dear Jim Hoover,

Thank you for reading my essay and for your comments. I am posting my reply here also.

The Novae and Super Novae (Exploding stars) produce many elements and even new flavours of neutrinos. These things are covered in another paper. Here page length limitation is there. I could not cover many points. To give a basic idea about Dynamic Universe...

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Dear Jim Hoover,

Thank you for reading my essay and for your comments. I am posting my reply here also.

The Novae and Super Novae (Exploding stars) produce many elements and even new flavours of neutrinos. These things are covered in another paper. Here page length limitation is there. I could not cover many points. To give a basic idea about Dynamic Universe Model…..

Dynamic Universe Model doesn’t use Relativity concepts. So the associated problems of SR and GR like singularities and Bigbang etc are not present. By considering the other 60 percent of Galaxies in the Universe including Blue shifted Galaxies and Quasars, the model doesn’t restrict itself to only expanding Universe model.

For your information Dynamic Universe model is totally based on experimental results. Here in Dynamic Universe Model Space is Space and time is time in cosmology level or in any level. In the classical general relativity, space and time are convertible in to each other.

Many papers and books on Dynamic Universe Model were published by the author on unsolved problems of present day Physics, for example ‘Absolute Rest frame of reference is not necessary’ (1994) , ‘Multiple bending of light ray can create many images for one Galaxy: in our dynamic universe’, About “SITA” simulations, ‘Missing mass in Galaxy is NOT required’, “New mathematics tensors without Differential and Integral equations”, “Information, Reality and Relics of Cosmic Microwave Background”, “Dynamic Universe Model explains the Discrepancies of Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry Observations.”, in 2015 ‘Explaining Formation of Astronomical Jets Using Dynamic Universe Model, ‘Explaining Pioneer anomaly’, ‘Explaining Near luminal velocities in Astronomical jets’, ‘Observation of super luminal neutrinos’, ‘Process of quenching in Galaxies due to formation of hole at the center of Galaxy, as its central densemass dries up’, “Dynamic Universe Model Predicts the Trajectory of New Horizons Satellite Going to Pluto” etc., are some more papers from the Dynamic Universe model. Four Books also were published. Book1 shows Dynamic Universe Model is singularity free and body to collision free, Book 2, and Book 3 are explanation of equations of Dynamic Universe model. Book 4 deals about prediction and finding of Blue shifted Galaxies in the universe.

With axioms like… No Isotropy; No Homogeneity; No Space-time continuum; Non-uniform density of matter(Universe is lumpy); No singularities; No collisions between bodies; No Blackholes; No warm holes; No Bigbang; No repulsion between distant Galaxies; Non-empty Universe; No imaginary or negative time axis; No imaginary X, Y, Z axes; No differential and Integral Equations mathematically; No General Relativity and Model does not reduce to General Relativity on any condition; No Creation of matter like Bigbang or steady-state models; No many mini Bigbangs; No Missing Mass; No Dark matter; No Dark energy; No Bigbang generated CMB detected; No Multi-verses etc.

Many predictions of Dynamic Universe Model came true, like Blue shifted Galaxies and no dark matter. Dynamic Universe Model gave many results otherwise difficult to explain

Have a look at my essay on Dynamic Universe Model and its blog also where all my books and papers are available for free downloading…

http://vaksdynamicuniversemodel.blogspot.in/

Be
st wishes to your essay.

For your blessings please…………….

=snp. gupta

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Dear Sir,

(On his essay) You are right that “our pursuit of goals depends on the contextual occasions of life”. How do we fix a goal? We feel the deficiency of something which creates a need in our mind. If we have the knowledge of the mechanism to fulfill the need, we fix that as goal and direct the necessary agencies in our body to execute the task. For this reason, there is a brief...

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Dear Sir,

(On his essay) You are right that “our pursuit of goals depends on the contextual occasions of life”. How do we fix a goal? We feel the deficiency of something which creates a need in our mind. If we have the knowledge of the mechanism to fulfill the need, we fix that as goal and direct the necessary agencies in our body to execute the task. For this reason, there is a brief time lag between the feeling of the need and its execution, which is called the Readiness Potential (RP). Thus, the goal is related to fulfilling the need – hence beyond survival. It extends to food, shelter, survival and procreation in all life forms, who only respond to the given situation based on past memory.

Though some animals and birds appear to plan for the future, it is related to these four areas based on memory of experience or observation and as a response to impending signals. Only human beings truly plan for the future. Dr. Jeremy England is correct in extending these instincts to inanimate objects, because if we precisely define life (separate from consciousness), it behaves mechanically. Once our first heart beat starts, it continues perpetually mechanically. When it stops, our body disintegrates. Our senses appear with the body and disappear with death. Thus, laws of increasing entropy drive matter to acquire life-like physical properties. But this is not consciousness, because it is mechanical.

You are right that “living organisms seek order, but as we age we lose order”. The reason is related to the nature of time evolution, as separate from Darwinian evolution. Time evolution is applicable to everything that exists in the same manner. It has six stages: 1) from being as cause to 2) becoming as effect. 3) Growth due to accumulation of similars, 4) Transformation due to harmonious accumulation, 5) Transmutation due to non-harmonious accumulation and finally, 6) Change of form or destruction by disintegration. You are talking about the fourth and the fifth stages. This is the “basic natural order, according to England, that is dissipation-driven, aided by self-replication and restructuring”.

When you are speaking of a “mindless process where matter, is a dissipation-driven organization, that naturally seeks self-replication to ramp up its ability to dissipate energy”, the statement is incomplete. What is mind? We consider rest as mutual cancellation of all forces acting on a body. If one of the forces is removed or applied, the center of mass of the body moves in the same or opposite directions with attendant consequences. The point from which the motion starts is the mind. Thus, even inanimate objects can have mind. In humans, we have seen that unless mind is conjoined, our senses will not function. And mind operates only one channel at one time, though at a very high speed.

Since we have the ability to plan for the future, we enjoy certain degrees of freedom. This is our freewill. This gives us the power of discrimination. When mind is used with discrimination, it is called intelligence. Because of our discrimination in decision making, we get attached to it. That is called egotism. When we reflect on our memory and review our decision, it is called sentiency. But all of these are mechanical processes – hence not consciousness.

The above mechanism have certain pit-falls. Our attachment and memory affect our discretion. Thus, mostly, a proper decision making becomes biased and thus distorted. The same affects the so-called mathematical physics. For this reason, we have pleaded in our essay for replacing with physical mathematics.

What is a dimension? If you define it precisely and apply to time, you will know the difference. Duration is nothing but a measure of time or time itself, because duration is the interval between events and that is the definition of time. How do you say that the “10th dimension of observable space, the tenth being infinite possibilities? Symbolic of infinity”? Before that you have to prove that there is a tenth dimension different from what we have defined.

Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed your essay.

Regards,

basudeba

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Dear James

Your essay is an easy readable account of present understanding of the universe by Physics, built on England’s idea that what propels the universe is an urge to dissipate energy as fast as possible.

Thermodynamics is just the simplest case of this property; in my opinion, with little relevance for the evolution of the universe. What really makes the universe to evolve is...

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Dear James

Your essay is an easy readable account of present understanding of the universe by Physics, built on England’s idea that what propels the universe is an urge to dissipate energy as fast as possible.

Thermodynamics is just the simplest case of this property; in my opinion, with little relevance for the evolution of the universe. What really makes the universe to evolve is the tendency of matter to form ever-larger associations. This is a much more efficient form of dissipating energy, in accordance with England’s idea. In my essay I do not mention it, due to the size limitation of the essay, but the “intelligence” of a system, as I defined it, is also a measure of the energy consumption – or dissipation – of the system. The “intelligence” of human societies depends on the availability of energy – the key for the evolution of ancient civilizations was the surplus of energy, or food, carefully sustained by strong politics of birth control, something usually not mentioned. When the control of the size of the population failed, the civilization lost “intelligence”. A recent case is the control of the population in China. While a society does not find a way to control the population, there is not enough energy per capita for the society to have enough “intelligence” to evolve.

Now, in relation to the picture you make of the universe, which in accordance with current ideas in Physics, I know that it is largely wrong. As I say in my essay, the cause of the apparent space expansion is the hypothesis no one considered – it is not the space that expands, it is the matter that is … decreasing in size, loosing energy… in accordance with England’s idea. Space expansion model is just a modern version of Ptolemy model, with dark energy in the role of the celestial spheres (driving stars away instead of around) and dark matter in the role of epicycles (explaining the motion of galaxies instead of planets). And truly the universe is much more interesting then you think – somewhat as the universe of Newton is much more interesting than the one of Ptolemy.

Going away of England, I would say that “energy” is the amount of the perturbation of the medium that we call “vacuum” and that this perturbation tends to the equilibrium (i.e., to disappear) as fast as possible. But what happens to this “energy”? It does not simply vanish, it is transformed. In what? In Intelligence!

Asimov wrote a story where he described the end of the universe, the final fade out; and at that last moment, something happens: Let there be light!

I read this story more then forty years ago, I no longer remember many details, but in this aspect Asimov was in accordance with what I think.

Concerning the voting, I don’t see the voting system as the selection system – that role belongs to the Jury, or to the community members that are not authors of essays. I am now voting the essays considering other things, namely the inspiration I get from the essay, the exchange of ideas the author promoted, its commitment with the spirit of the contest. My vote reflects all that.

All the best!

Alfredo.

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Dear James Hoover

I greatly enjoyed your essay. What I credit mostly too, is the underlying and persistent theme that the very particular orders and complexities observed of this world, requires an organisational principle for explanation. An explanation convention does not provide for. That this is your focus speaks well to me. And I also greatly appreciated how you broke away from...

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Dear James Hoover

I greatly enjoyed your essay. What I credit mostly too, is the underlying and persistent theme that the very particular orders and complexities observed of this world, requires an organisational principle for explanation. An explanation convention does not provide for. That this is your focus speaks well to me. And I also greatly appreciated how you broke away from conventional views with speculations towards explaining Dark Matter, then attempt to identify rationalized anchor points for them within known observation. I thrive on these types of considerations. Nicely done.

By the way, your criticism of my essay title is well founded. I do see your point.

I feel the concept of entropy is wonderful, within bounds of the process of dissipation of heat, and processes that are observed follow on causes. However I am not a fan of the many ways entropy has become the extension for everything tool, Swiss army knife of physics. I feel that the comparison between heat dissipation and disorder is an erroneous association, and a misdirection which has been taken far by some. I like that Jeremy England is in pursuit of an answer for organisation principles of nature that explain physical orders of this world, however I dont see the connections he is trying to bridge. Like entropy being the champion of replication. Unless England can tell me how entropy is the cause for the properties of matter that then give rise to the capacity for molecular bonding, then it can only be applied after the properties of matter and bonding were established. It doesn't go deep enough to satisfy the organisational principle needed to explain the structure and function of atoms. Such a principle would need to be applied at the foundation.

Its just that I have a bone to pick with what I view as the mistreatment of the entropy concept, which apparently I am unable to contain. It is made out to have implications in all universal physical circumstances, but what of entropic gravity? And why did matter condense out of the big bang inferno, defying the tendency of energy dissipation? The universe should have remained as a dissipating bath of radiation, given interpretation of entropy. These points contradict the popular view but are selectively ignored, it seems to me.

Anyway, I'm off subject. This is not a criticism of your work, for which I am about to rate you highly. Very enjoyable read.

Kind regards

Steve

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