Screw it. I take back what I said before. I'm gonna stick to this argument till the bitter end... or until I get actually tired of this. Depending on my mood.
I understand quantum mechanics
I still remains highly doubtful of this. When I used the Casimir effect as evidence that quantum fluctuation exists, you said that quantum fluctuation requires the existence of the plates to take place, which isn't true. Quantum fluctuation occurs in perfect vacuums too,
assuming that it is real; I will address the possible "unrealness" of quantum fluctuation later. You also claimed that quantum fluctuation requires pre-existing material to occur, which it doesn't. This suggests that you don't really understand quantum fluctuation. You also went off on some tangent about astronomers, despite the fact that quantum fluctuation is a theory in physics, formulated by physicists. And then there's that thing about "proof". All of those things make it seem to me that you don't really know what you're talking about.
If you're so sure that you understand quantum mechanics, then explain to me what a wavefunction is and how we can use it to get actual results. Limit yourself to only one spatial dimension and non-relativistic situations.
I am coming from the mathematical point of view. The term 'virtual protons' is used because of the equations used in fluctations. Unfortunately, most agree that these particles only are there purely for the equation process.
http://io9.com/5731463/are-virtual-particles-for-realSure, you can say that virtual particles are only "mathematical tricks" used to make equations work out. But using the same argument, you can say that wavefunctions are only mathematical tricks too. Are wavefunctions real? That depends on your favorite interpretation of quantum mechanics; arguing about that is not much different from arguing about the best flavor of ice cream. You can pretty much call anything a mathematical trick if you try hard enough.
But quantum fluctuation still occurs. Stuff still pops out of nothing in what is otherwise a vacuum, due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and we can still observe it indirectly via things like the Casimir effect. Yes, I know that there's a
paper arguing that you don't need zero point energy to calculate the Casimir effect. I do not yet know enough physics to understand everything in that paper, but even the author of that paper admits to being doubtful that zero point energy can be avoided altogether.
Maybe the existence of virtual particles and quantum fluctuations is up to the mathematical model we use, and we can make up all sorts of models to try to describe and predict the universe's behaviors. In fact, the world that we perceive is a model made up by our brains. So if you're so desperate to not lose the argument that you're nitpicking into it this much, then we'll have no choice but to start discussing perception versus reality. If you can argue that virtual particles are not real, you can technically argue that any other object or whatever is not real. That's the place where things start to get unfalsifiable and rather pointless.
So I guess now I should rephrase myself. In a certain point of view or model or interpretation of quantum mechanics or whatever, virtual particles are real. It is not totally implausible that things arise from nothing due to quantum fluctuations. Thus, the existence of God is not necessary for the universe to have arisen out of nothing. God may or may not exist, but that's an unfalsifiable matter, and I don't want to argue about unfalsifiable matters.
Virtual protons in reality is still not validated.
Maybe that's because protons are composite particles? A proton is made of, loosely speaking, three quarks and a bunch of gluons. I'm kind of guessing here, but I'd think that it's extremely unlikely for all the appropriate virtual quarks and gluons to all appear and form a proton. We don't see virtual protons because they're
unlikely to appear, or that they appear for such short periods of time that we can't detect them. For a similar reason, we don't see all the gas molecules in a box spontaneously condensing in one of its corners.
Technically you can divide by zero, but the number you get is an ever increasing entity which is why our calculators say error.
This is not correct. The limit of 1/x as x approaches 0 from the right is positive infinity. Whether division by zero is allowed or not depends on the system of mathematics you're using. For example, a system with some kind of "point at infinity", like the real projective line or Riemann sphere, does allow for division by zero, and the answer is infinity. However, if we just have the real number line or complex plane, then division by zero is undefined because we can prove that division by zero does not yield any number in the real line or complex plane. Our calculators says error when we try to divide by zero because it is programmed to do so, because if it isn't, then the algorithm the calculator uses will get stuck in an infinite loop and keep running forever in attempt to calculate a division by zero.
I never mentioned anything about if I am even religious at all.
It seemed to me that you were arguing in support for God. You were also arguing that something cannot come from nothing, so I assumed that you were arguing for the necessity of God so that things can exist. If you were just playing devil's advocate, well... Then I made a bad assumption, didn't I.
You made assumptions and also claimed that I am not understanding because it goes against my religious view...that is a fallacy.
Now here you're misunderstanding me. I made two statements:
1) If you want to disprove quantum mechanics because it goes against your religious view, go talk to some real physicists.
2) You don't seem to understand quantum mechanics because of reasons I already stated above.
The two statements have no relation to each other. Claiming that they have a fallacious relation to each other and then concluding that such a fallacious relation renders both statements invalid is itself a fallacy.
And you know what annoys me the most?
YOU KEEP IGNORING MY POINTS. I make a long post containing many points, but you just ignore most of them and nitpick at a small number of them in an annoying and confusing manner. I'm only continuing because if I didn't, it'll look like you've won the argument. But I'll get tired of this eventually, and then I'll leave. Again, no one can win any arguments ever because of the backfire effect, and I now regret wasting one hour thinking of and typing everything above. But I don't want all that effort to go to waste, so I'm going to post this regardless.
