It is granted that SR holds up well. I believe that SR has not held up to every experiment; “grand unified theory(s)” and much work with “strings” is happening because SR doesn’t explain everything.

There are devices being used today where objects (packets, wave-bundles…) met with instantaneous velocities far greater than ‘c’. The ability to measure what is happening to those objects is fascinating: trying to measure/characterize and event where instantaneous acceleration is faster than ‘c’ are technically difficult to do. Yet, these experiments are now considered ‘common’ (if not done everyday).

So, we already know that SR is based on the idea of measurement and that ‘c’ is a fundamental limit within the domain of SR. We also know that ‘c’ is not a physical limit as we have machines causing reactions between objects where acceleration and instantaneous velocities are close to twice ‘c’.

I don’t think I’m saying anything odd.

As to the comments about #65, I chose not to address those as the content did not relate to my comment. If that was impolite, I apologies.

The deep field images are captured by looking specifically in the direction from where the big bang happened.

The BB happened everywhere, so every direction is the direction in which the BB happened.

The deep field, ultra deep field etc. images are captured by finding and photographing a patch of sky that has no (or very very few) other objects in it.

So, by premise offered, “…if the speed of light is a fundamental limit of speed …” (where, as we say in the logic game ‘ “if” implies “not” ‘ , as is obvious that it is not that the speed of light limits the flight of an object, it is difficult to conclude that space is expanding.

Erm, easy enough, when you see the relationship between redshift and distance.

Unless you start to postulate “tired light” scenarios . . .

All the results still work out nicely on the ‘mean-free path’ hypothesis without the goofy ‘magic’ of expanding space (tough to argue against the expanding space argument when physics hasn’t come up with a more measurable definition of ‘space’ other than ‘that expanding stuff’.

Experimental results are such a drag, aren’t they?

As far as anyone can tell, SR is correct, and c is an absolute limit.

Any competing theory in which c is not an absolute limit has to explain how come SR has passed every test we have thrown at it.

I don’t have a problem with fanciful theories, just not sure why that one is so popular.

Observational data.

I even work with engineers who think you would need an infinite amount of energy/mass to ‘go faster than the speed of light’, when the simpler conclusion is ‘it makes no sense to think you can receive signals faster than the speed of light ‘(see: mass, space, geodesics, none of that are needed to explain the evidence you already have!)

You seem to think that distant objects (those with high redshift and hence high recession velocities) are moving away from us relative to their local space. If this were truly the case, you would indeed require infinite energy to arrange such a scenario.

However, those distant objects are moving no faster relative to local space than is our galaxy moving within its local space. Space itself is expanding, carrying galaxies along with it.

AFAICT, no-one really knows why, other than that it seems to be a fundamental property of the universe.

The speed of light is fundamental to understanding relativistic physics. Please don’t make into more than it is.

Having gone back and re-read Robin’s comment #65, I have to agree with it, and your argument doesn’t touch the point made in #65.

SR, including c being a fundamental speed limit, is correct as far as anyone can tell. If it is in some way wrong or incomplete, it is at the very least a good approximation to the truth. Your postulated alternative, about which you say very little other than that c is not a speed limit except for the transmission of data, appears to be little more than a steaming pile of bovine faecal matter. How, for instance, do all those distant galaxies know to move away from ours? Why does none of them have motion that is perpendicular to our line of sight (and thus neither recedes from nor approaches our galaxy)? Why does none of them have motion towards our galaxy? If c is nothing special and matter can travel faster than c, how come data cannot? Your alternative only explains observations if you place Earth at a special place in the universe, and you provide no reason so to do.

The parsimonious explanation, and therefore the only reasonable conclusion on current information, is that space is indeed expanding as GR implies. Incidentally, GR is another theory that has so far passed every test we have conceived for it and is therefore either correct or a good approximation.

The presumption is incorrect, it didn’t start from a single point. A singularity is not a point in space or time, it’s more of a pathology of the maths, and incomplete path, a divide by zero, a breakdown of the geometry. It is not a singular point in that geometry.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/cosmological-argument/#5.3

“It is not that the universe arose out of some prior state, for there was no prior state. Since time too comes to be, one cannot ask what happened before the initial event. Neither should one think that the universe expanded from some initial ‘point’ into space. Since the Big Bang initiates the very laws of physics, one cannot expect any physical explanation of this singularity; physical laws used to explain the expansion of the universe no longer hold at any time before t>0.”

If your world-view is materialism (nothing exists except matter and energy, and the result of interactions between that matter and energy),

Where does information fit into your definition of materialism?

then the vast size of the universe guarantees other life, based upon the fact that there is life here.

Only if the universe is genuinely infinite. But the observable universe is quite obviously not infinite, so what really matters to us is whether or not life exists elsewhere in the observable universe. And materialism does not guarantee this.

But materialism is provably false — not by science, but by philosophy. It is not hard to demonstrate. It is pretty much impossible to talk about a universe without teleology — goals. Even Darwinian evolutionists talk as if “nature” itself had goals.

Only casually, in the firm knowledge that such talk is an approximation to reality. There is no evidence of any teleology in nature. Therefore, there is no basis to assume the existence of teleology.

It is impossible to explain our behavior, and other animal behavior, without reference to goals.

Well, true, but so what? Those goals do not exist independently of the behaviours exhibited by animals and plants. They are merely abstract concepts invented by humans to explain nature in a way that is comprehensible to us.

But goals cannot arise from nothing, and being non-material entities, they must arise from (be caused by) other non-material entities.

Nonsense.

Goals are intrinsically connected to – in your example – the organisms that strive to attain them. And, depending on your frame of reference, they are intrinsically connected to the scientist using the concept of goals to explain animal or plant behaviour.

Indeed, there must be a chain of such “final” (goal-directed) causation leading to the current behavior of all goal-seeking entities we currently observe, including ourselves.

You have not shown this. You simply state it and expect everyone else to accept it.

Not only is materialism provably false by reference to teleology,

You did not do this.

it is also provably false by reference to Aristotealian (or Platonic) “forms”. Triangles certainly exist.

Prove it.

If you cannot prove that triangles exist independent of human thought then they are potentially nothing more than a component of human thought.

And yet no actual triangles perfectly instantiate the perfect triangular form. Their lines are not perfectly straight, for example.

Again, so what?

You have not shown that the concept of the triangle exists independently of human thought.

And yet, we all know what triangles are.

We have all been taught what triangles are.

Furthermore, triangle-ness exists outside of us. Even if there were no humans, triangle-ness would still exist. It existed before we did.

Maybe so, but you are merely claiming this to be the case. You have not shown it to be so. Did the concept of the triangle exist before humans started scratching lines in the dirt? I don’t know, but neither do you.

All of mathematics is the same. The “form” of triangle-ness — what makes triangles triangles — is non-material.

But it could be intrinsically linked to human thought, and might not exist independent of humans.

Ideas, likewise, are non-material entities. They can be encoded in material, such as voltages in a computer memory, ink splotches on a page, pressure variations in air due to speech, etc. But the idea itself is not the encoding of the idea. The idea itself is non-material, even if it is encoded in a material medium.

You might find it easier to discuss this if you use the word “information”. Ideas are information. And there is a whole branch of mathematics that deals with information. But ideas as information do not exist independently. For example, marks on paper are only ideas within the context of a written language. Without that context, they are merely pretty patterns or meaningless scribbles.

Some ideas have always existed (at least as long as the universe itself has existed), waiting for us humans to discover them; theories of mathematics are examples.

This is random speculation. You have not shown that mathematical theories exist independently, and I suspect you do not actually know it. You are assuming that the existence of these abstract concepts implies their independence from human thought. This may indeed be the case, but your argument assumes it as self-evident, yet it is not so.

All of this, with a bit more argumentation, can be used to show that a First Unmoved Mover, must exist — that an Uncaused Cause must exist. In short, God must exist. He can’t not exist, given what we see in the material universe, and given what we humans see in ourselves. (Read “The Last Superstition”.)

Following from your previous specious argument, this, too, is specious.

If Forms exist (either Platonic, or Aristotelian, or Thomistic), and if Final Causation (goal-directed behavior) exists at all, then it is a lot more questionable whether or not life exists elsewhere in the universe. If life was not created by mindless purpose-less natural processes here, then it would likely require a Mind, and Purpose, elsewhere also.

You ignore here the possibility of a natural process that is mindless but not purposeless. After all, a dandelion plant is certainly mindless, yet it possesses a purpose. The existence of mindless purpose – or at least the convincing illusion of purpose in the mindless – is all around us.

At the end of the day, your entire argument rests on your definition of the word “exist”. What does it mean for an abstract concept to exist? Can an abstract concept exist at all without a mind to ponder it?

The argument for life existing elsewhere would therefore be a philosophical argument, based upon logical necessity, rather than an empirical scientific argument based upon statistics. Nobody has ever made such an argument yet.

I’m not in the slightest bit surprised. Such an argument would likely be torn to shreds. It was not hard to find holes in your own argument here.