If not a Creator, then What?

[Karl]

I've always like the Hindu creation story best, they are the most humble.

 

They say in the beginning there was vibration, but who created it? Did someone start it? "Who can say" is basically the answer. How can we see outside of creation? This thread will surely have both poetic and logical arguments one way or the other, but at the core of aren't we just afraid of there not being an answer we can reach?

 

The answer presupposes that something did though, but a nice political answer.

[dawei]

Finally, I'll add that "If not a creator then what?" is not the right question. One must discover where the creation happens.

 

To be fair, I split this out of another topic... so this discussion was not started with a concrete idea and title... I simply gave it this name based on what was said up to the point of splitting it off.

 

So your comment is valid and your raising the idea of 'where' seems like you can share more  

[Fate]

I've always like the Hindu creation story best, they are the most humble.

 

They say in the beginning there was vibration, but who created it? Did someone start it? "Who can say" is basically the answer. How can we see outside of creation? This thread will surely have both poetic and logical arguments one way or the other, but at the core of aren't we just afraid of there not being an answer we can reach?

 

I don't see that presupposition, can you clarify?

 

To clarify my stance so it seems less 'political,' the Taoist concept of Wuji which can't exist without movement and thus Taiji erupts and all things once again move... I've also had a vision or an intuitive 'knowing' that I rely on that on the level of consciousness we are all once again going to merge back into whatever that oneness prior to the big bang which will lead to another big bang and this is just a great cosmic cycle that has always been going on for as long as those metaphysical laws existed.

 

To try and enter into a discussion on whether there's a sentient, conscious creator beyond this process, and whether he has any current influence on the state of things within the process is beyond my level.

 

Actually, I don't think its very political at all to confront people with the idea that this entire discussion rests on "having to know" or have an answer one way or the other to the question.

[Karl]

I don't see that presupposition, can you clarify?

 

To clarify my stance so it seems less 'political,' the Taoist concept of Wuji which can't exist without movement and thus Taiji erupts and all things once again move... I've also had a vision or an intuitive 'knowing' that I rely on that on the level of consciousness we are all once again going to merge back into whatever that oneness prior to the big bang which will lead to another big bang and this is just a great cosmic cycle that has always been going on for as long as those metaphysical laws existed.

 

To try and enter into a discussion on whether there's a sentient, conscious creator beyond this process, and whether he has any current influence on the state of things within the process is beyond my level.

 

Actually, I don't think its very political at all to confront people with the idea that this entire discussion rests on "having to know" or have an answer one way or the other to the question.

 

Yes 'who can say' doesn't give a clear answer to the question. It just says 'I don't know'. That's effectively allowing the possibility of anyone's Gods to be implemented and thus preserves the philosophy without conflict and allows it to merge with other philosophies and religions. The Chinese were damned good at the integration game.

 

I don't trust 'knowings' or 'feelings' as a method of understanding objective reality. We came a long way with inductive reasoning and the scientific method as well as the Aristotelian method of deductive logical reasoning so ignoring all that and going on 'feeling' is really dark age stuff.

 

It shouldn't be beyond your level. A sentient, conscious creator would need to be conscious of some thing. Consciousness does not exist of and by itself. We are always 'conscious of' something. If there was nothing to be conscious of there would simply be nothing and that's not what we have.

 

Well we are trying to discover the truth. We have a few excellent tools in reasoning and direct perception. We can use scientific and logical methods to arrive at the answer ' is there a creator' ?

[Moonbar]

.

[forestofclarity]

It's an interesting list. I listened to Peter Kreeft's philosophy of religion class where he goes through the pros and cons of each argument. I find that the pro-God arguments tend to appeal to concepts of the higher good: truth, love, beauty. Anti-God arguments tend to appeal to pain, suffering, and other negatives. 

 

Ed Feser addresses some of your objections. I think the arguments are sound philosophically in that I think one could accept these arguments as a basis for a faith that is not inconsistent with reason.  In fact, William Lane Craig has made something of a career demolishing prominent atheists in debate--- although that seems to have more to do with his skill in debating than anything else. 

 

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/so-you-think-you-understand.html

 

I'm not necessarily advocating one side or the other personally, just pointing out the situation is often a bit more complex than it can seem. 

 

[snip]

 

I shall wander through your list.

[snip]

As it stands it is a mixed hypothetical argument denying the consequent and is valid when applied to 'things' in the universe, but not true of the universe.

However the universe contains ALL things, it isn't a thing within itself or we get Russian dolls.

It posits causality as the existence of the creator. So, now apply Aquinas argument to God. :-) God cannot then be a cause of himself and prior to himself, so there must be a creator of God and so on and so on.

[3bob]

tools of logic and reason are fine for items that they can be applied to deductively and comparatively (etc..) but not to that which they can not be applied to, one without a full measure of logic and reason is blind to that simple fact.

[Karl]

tools of logic and reason are fine for items that they can be applied to deductively and comparatively (etc..) but not to that which they can not be applied to, one without a full measure of logic and reason is blind to that simple fact.

 

They can always be applied successfully to human arguments/ concepts on the human level because it we who are thinking them.

[Karl]

It's an interesting list. I listened to Peter Kreeft's philosophy of religion class where he goes through the pros and cons of each argument. I find that the pro-God arguments tend to appeal to concepts of the higher good: truth, love, beauty. Anti-God arguments tend to appeal to pain, suffering, and other negatives. 

 

Ed Feser addresses some of your objections. I think the arguments are sound philosophically in that I think one could accept these arguments as a basis for a faith that is not inconsistent with reason.  In fact, William Lane Craig has made something of a career demolishing prominent atheists in debate--- although that seems to have more to do with his skill in debating than anything else. 

 

http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2011/07/so-you-think-you-understand.html

 

I'm not necessarily advocating one side or the other personally, just pointing out the situation is often a bit more complex than it can seem. 

 

I can't see his argument for a creator. He seems to be selling his book in which he reveals all. Typical marketing blurb but more high brow than the usual thing.

[thelerner]

I'm not that interested in God as creator.  Nor am I interested in proofs- logical, emotional or biblical Or intellectual. 

 

There have been people gone before me, many mystics (and regular folks) who found God.  A satori experience, often filtered through cultural and religious filters, but similar phenomena.  A deep abiding sense of Oneness, finding and feeling the totality. 

 

In my tradition God is an awesome phenomena who's majesty and mystery suffices everything.  From the Universe out there to the food we eat.   Technically from morning to night, with everything we eat, every bowel movement, from the common to miraculous, Jews say a prayer that's essentially Wow, God.  kinda Breath/Spirit of God is here, His mystery fills creation, Wow - bread, fruit, rainbow...

 

Course I'm not that observant.  Still I travel the time honored road that through meditation and the deep silence it brings, I'll attain a mystical experience of God.  It won't get me anything, no miracles or prizes, maybe not even any huge insight, but as long as I'm alive, it seems a worthy goal.   

Edited July 22, 2015 by thelerner

[Seeker of Wisdom]

When people say they know there is no god, I'm curious as to what they mean by God, because usually it is a dumbed-down, straw man God -- typically a superhero type of God. 

 

Here are 20 arguments for the existence of God, created by philosophers throughout the centuries. 

 

http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics-more/20_arguments-gods-existence.htm

This is going to be way too skimmy and shallow, but I can only be bothered to spend so long on this. Here goes:

 

1) Argument from change - let's assume that the conclusion 'there must be something outside the universe' is correct. Why God? Multiverse theories would apply just as well.

 

2) Efficient causality - there could be an endless series of caused causes (as in multiverse) because once A has caused B, B can exist without A. But let's assume there must be an uncaused cause. Saying 'this is God' is begging the question. Why couldn't the big bang itself be that uncaused cause?

 

3) Time and contingency - anthropic principle, and time would be meaningless if nothing existed.

 

4) Degrees of perfection - something that smells infinitely bad can only do so if it exists. Therefore, an infinitely bad smell exists.

 

5) Design - anthropic principle, argument from inability to imagine how chance could produce this stuff.

 

6) Kalam - a being outside time cannot make a decision, as this is an inherantly temporal process. There can be no free will without time to consider options. And applying the first premise to the big bang singularity is iffy.

 

7) Contingency - substitute God for BBS.

 

8) World as interacting whole - assuming the cause would have to be intelligent, and also a mind is composed of interacting parts itself!

 

9) Miracles - assuming they happen, it's still an argument from ignorance. Before we knew how lightning works, we said it was Thor.

 

10) Consciousness - is the universe wholly intelligible? I see no reason to assume God just because consciousness exists and we don't understand it yet. There are many theories besides God (however defined), so an argument for God based on consciousness needs to define God well, and consider other theories. What if 'chunks' of consciousness exist, in cause and effect, just as physical particles etc do, as part of a Mental + Physical universe, with no ontological absolute or summum bonum in any form? Better to be honest about not knowing for the moment.

 

11) Truth - "There is too much about the theory of knowledge that needs to be said before this could work as a persuasive demonstration."

 

12) Origin of idea of God - a human concept of perfection isn't equivalent to perfection, an imperfect mind can imagine its own idea of perfection. Different religions all say their God is perfect, but omnibenevolence looks very different even across the Old and New Testaments - different imagined perfect beings!

 

13) Ontological Argument - similar issue to 4).

 

14) Moral Argument - assumes an objective morality can only have a source in some form of God. Morality is only meaningful to a mind, which can reason morality based on how actions affect itself and others.

 

15) Conscience - let's assume that obeying conscience is a moral absolute. Evolutionary psychology and social psychology explain the conscience fairly well, and people can be obligatated by things less than themselves - when survival instincts overthrow suicidal desires, for example.

 

16) Desire - the desire for something eternal and absolute results from people wanting good things and not recognising dukkha (if some is good, I must get all!). With all loss of false hope for a summum bonum (oh, there's no all that I can get after all, and that's OK), one stops desiring it and finds profound peace with what is real. Perhaps that desire for an absolute is the real problem, not the lack of its' fulfilment? See Kenneth Folk's batgap interview.

 

17) Aesthetic experience - why is God necessary for Bach to be beautiful?

 

18) Religious experience - psychology, and perspectives and experiences like expressed in my response to 16) also exist.

 

19) Common consent - ref. my response to 16). So many people seek a summum bonum because of ignorance.

 

20) Pascal's wager - someone can't choose what they believe, and an intelligent God would be able to tell the difference between fire insurance and real belief. A merciful God doesn't punish people for something they can't control. Finally, the argument doesn't even attempt to prove that God exists, only that it is safer to believe that God exists - a subtle but important distinction.

[Karl]

I'm not that interested in God as creator.  Nor am I interested in proofs- logical, emotional or biblical Or intellectual. 

 

There have been people gone before me, many mystics who found God.  A satori experience, often filtered through cultural and religious filters, but similar phenomena.  A deep abiding sense of Oneness, finding and feeling the totality. 

 

In my tradition God is an awesome phenomena who's majesty and mystery suffices everything.  From the Universe out there to the food we eat.   Technically from morning to night, with everything we eat, every bowel movement, from the common to miraculous, Jews say a prayer that's essentially Wow, God.  kinda Breath/Spirit of God is here, His mystery fills creation, Wow - bread, fruit, rainbow...

 

Course I'm not that observant.  Still I travel the time honored road that through meditation and the deep silence it brings, I'll attain a mystical experience of God.  It won't get me anything, no miracles or prizes, maybe not even any huge insight, but as long as I'm alive, it seems a worthy goal.   

 

Well said. I also have no interest for the same reason, except when someone wishes to debate it. There is a place for the belief in God regardless of logical arguments or proof. It's the same argument for children believing in Santa Clause ( I mean that in the sense of its positives for children ). Everybody is going through their own thing. I recommended a belief in God in my own book and had a relationship with God for several years. Sometimes it's just necessary and there is no particular reason why. It just is.

[Karl]

This is going to be way too skimmy and shallow, but I can only be bothered to spend so long on this. Here goes:

1) Argument from change - let's assume that the conclusion 'there must be something outside the universe' is correct. Why God? Multiverse theories would apply just as well.

2) Efficient causality - there could be an endless series of caused causes (as in multiverse) because once A has caused B, B can exist without A. But let's assume there must be an uncaused cause. Saying 'this is God' is begging the question. Why couldn't the big bang itself be that uncaused cause?

3) Time and contingency - anthropic principle, and time would be meaningless if nothing existed.

4) Degrees of perfection - something that smells infinitely bad can only do so if it exists. Therefore, an infinitely bad smell exists.

5) Design - anthropic principle, argument from inability to imagine how chance could produce this stuff.

6) Kalam - a being outside time cannot make a decision, as this is an inherantly temporal process. There can be no free will without time to consider options. And applying the first premise to the big bang singularity is iffy.

7) Contingency - substitute God for BBS.

8) World as interacting whole - assuming the cause would have to be intelligent, and also a mind is composed of interacting parts itself!

9) Miracles - assuming they happen, it's still an argument from ignorance. Before we knew how lightning works, we said it was Thor.

10) Consciousness - is the universe wholly intelligible? I see no reason to assume God just because consciousness exists and we don't understand it yet. There are many theories besides God (however defined), so an argument for God based on consciousness needs to define God well, and consider other theories. What if 'chunks' of consciousness exist, in cause and effect, just as physical particles etc do, as part of a Mental + Physical universe, with no ontological absolute or summum bonum in any form? Better to be honest about not knowing for the moment.

11) Truth - "There is too much about the theory of knowledge that needs to be said before this could work as a persuasive demonstration."

12) Origin of idea of God - a human concept of perfection isn't equivalent to perfection, an imperfect mind can imagine its own idea of perfection. Different religions all say their God is perfect, but omnibenevolence looks very different even across the Old and New Testaments - different imagined perfect beings!

13) Ontological Argument - similar issue to 4).

14) Moral Argument - assumes an objective morality can only have a source in some form of God. Morality is only meaningful to a mind, which can reason morality based on how actions affect itself and others.

15) Conscience - let's assume that obeying conscience is a moral absolute. Evolutionary psychology and social psychology explain the conscience fairly well, and people can be obligatated by things less than themselves - when survival instincts overthrow suicidal desires, for example.

16) Desire - the desire for something eternal and absolute results from people wanting good things and not recognising dukkha (if some is good, I must get all!). With all loss of false hope for a summum bonum (oh, there's no all that I can get after all, and that's OK), one stops desiring it and finds profound peace with what is real. Perhaps that desire for an absolute is the real problem, not the lack of its' fulfilment? See Kenneth Folk's batgap interview.

17) Aesthetic experience - why is God necessary for Bach to be beautiful?

18) Religious experience - psychology, and perspectives and experiences like expressed in my response to 16) also exist.

19) Common consent - ref. my response to 16). So many people seek a summum bonum because of ignorance.

20) Pascal's wager - someone can't choose what they believe, and an intelligent God would be able to tell the difference between fire insurance and real belief. A merciful God doesn't punish people for something they can't control. Finally, the argument doesn't even attempt to prove that God exists, only that it is safer to believe that God exists - a subtle but important distinction.

 

Most awesome tenaciousness. I got completely bored after the second point. I've concluded I can no longer be bothered to discuss it further it singularly unhelpful to the believers and redundant for me.

[thelerner]

I recommended a belief in God in my own book and had a relationship with God for several years. Sometimes it's just necessary and there is no particular reason why. It just is.

What..? You??  relationship with God???

 

what have you done with Karl???? 

[Wu Ming Jen]

We come from the unknown and return to the unknown, there is nothing to know, life and death is not a question, its a given with no effort so no answer needed, it just is. Many fear the unknown their whole life and need to know everything.

 

We all know the divine and call it different names but speculation and conceptional thought can not reach the divine so many religious  groups will not agree and even separate to form a new branch. If God made man then it implies that man created God as well. I say throw it all out do not be apart of any group that separates people and be the divine instead of giving the power away.This world needs love so lets bring it.

[Apech]

What..? You??  relationship with God???

 

what have you done with Karl???? 

 

 

They had a relationship but it was well, you know ... difficult ... they grew distant, talked about having a messiah baby but by then they were drinking too heavily, then it fell apart, screaming rows in church, the altar get's smashed, someone calls the cops, then God met someone else which made him angry, so he keeps away now and reads Christopher Hitchens and weeps.

[Karl]

What..? You??  relationship with God???

 

what have you done with Karl???? 

 

Yes. It's on record :-)

 

 

 

[Karl]

They had a relationship but it was well, you know ... difficult ... they grew distant, talked about having a messiah baby but by then they were drinking too heavily, then it fell apart, screaming rows in church, the altar get's smashed, someone calls the cops, then God met someone else which made him angry, so he keeps away now and reads Christopher Hitchens and weeps.

 

LOL If bathing in a bath of baked beans, standing on your head and singing the national anthem Does the job, then that's what is needed.

 

I see no point in arguing God away from people unless it is contrary to their development. The fruit falls from the tree when it's ripe.

[Wu Ming Jen]

I think its time for God to come out of the closet. With whats written God obviously favors men. At least the Greek gods were doing each other and mortals.God personified seem so lonely we should hook him up with some of our good gay friends that are also divine so they would have something in common..

[Karl]

I think its time for God to come out of the closet. With whats written God obviously favors men. At least the Greek gods were doing each other and mortals.God personified seem so lonely we should hook him up with some of our good gay friends that are also divine so they would have something in common..

 

Kurt Cobain of Nirvana fame used to daub the slogan "God is gay" throughout his local town of Aberdeen according to his biography.

[Wu Ming Jen]

Thats hilarious!

[Bud Jetsun]

"Every consciousness is the root creator of it's own reality model built from perceptions. No two can be alike or they would be the same reality."

 

 

That seems backwards Bud ?

 

 

Consciousness is conscious of something.

 

 

We are conscious of the direct percepion of reality, the things we see and touch that make up the universe-we can use tools to look deeper into the structures of those existent realities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

With respect friend, you may wish to look into recent QM experiments to probe the nature of reality for better 'science' so to speak to base your models upon.

 

Consciousness observing is the requirement for 'matter' to be be defined with a location velocity and energy state.  'Matter' prior to a consciousness defining it exists only in a probabilistic state. 

 

A machine observing it alone can't define it until a consciousness chooses to keep the data the machine collected or discard it without viewing.  This holds true even for letting the consciousness choose AFTER (or the illusion of after) the machine/matter interaction occurred. 

 

In delayed choice quantum eraser, you run the double-slit in a closed box with only a microcontroller storing the data of which paths particles took through the slits. The closed box has a single button linking to outside the box, when pressed it erases the particle/slit data.   After you've already fired the particles through the slits, you can wait any amount of time you like, then choose to erase the data before opening the box and get a wave interference pattern.  Alternatively, you can wait any amount of time and not erase the data, and find a non-interference clump pattern.   

 

In both sets, the particles experienced the same path and had the same data collected by the machine setup.  It's not until post-event when a consciousness chooses to observe that the paths the particles traveled prior gets defined. 

 

The experimental apparatus setup needed to conduct the test gets increasingly difficult to construct as the particles become larger, however it's been tested perfectly even with very large molecules like C60 and C70 fullerene atoms (which only have a probabilistic existence until a consciousness observes them).  

 

One may argue that's still probing the nature of particles not solids though.  Fortunately, some clever fellow recently found a way to confirm only consciousness-determined existence in crystalline 'solids' as well. 

 

To the limit of man's feeble ability to probe what composes the material world (or illusion thereof), it requires consciousness to define, and otherwise has exclusively probabilistic existence. 

 

Therefore, if you like to think of yourself as a man of logic and rationality trusting in direct observations of the material world, you arrive at consciousness giving rise to 'matter' (or the illusion called matter that manifests to us as an aspect of oneness) and accept the impossibility of matter giving rise to consciousness. 

 

 

That's if you want a sciencey logic based explanation though, which put into words can exclusively be misunderstanding and delusion. 

 

With Unlimited Love,

-Bud

[Karl]

 

 

 

 

With respect friend, you may wish to look into recent QM experiments to probe the nature of reality for better 'science' so to speak to base your models upon.

 

Consciousness observing is the requirement for 'matter' to be be defined with a location velocity and energy state.  'Matter' prior to a consciousness defining it exists only in a probabilistic state. 

 

A machine observing it alone can't define it until a consciousness chooses to keep the data the machine collected or discard it without viewing.  This holds true even for letting the consciousness choose AFTER (or the illusion of after) the machine/matter interaction occurred. 

 

In delayed choice quantum eraser, you run the double-slit in a closed box with only a microcontroller storing the data of which paths particles took through the slits. The closed box has a single button linking to outside the box, when pressed it erases the particle/slit data.   After you've already fired the particles through the slits, you can wait any amount of time you like, then choose to erase the data before opening the box and get a wave interference pattern.  Alternatively, you can wait any amount of time and not erase the data, and find a non-interference clump pattern.   

 

In both sets, the particles experienced the same path and had the same data collected by the machine setup.  It's not until post-event when a consciousness chooses to observe that the paths the particles traveled prior gets defined. 

 

The experimental apparatus setup needed to conduct the test gets increasingly difficult to construct as the particles become larger, however it's been tested perfectly even with very large molecules like C60 and C70 fullerene atoms (which only have a probabilistic existence until a consciousness observes them).  

 

One may argue that's still probing the nature of particles not solids though.  Fortunately, some clever fellow recently found a way to confirm only consciousness-determined existence in crystalline 'solids' as well. 

 

To the limit of man's feeble ability to probe what composes the material world (or illusion thereof), it requires consciousness to define, and otherwise has exclusively probabilistic existence. 

 

Therefore, if you like to think of yourself as a man of logic and rationality trusting in direct observations of the material world, you arrive at consciousness giving rise to 'matter' (or the illusion called matter that manifests to us as an aspect of oneness) and accept the impossibility of matter giving rise to consciousness. 

 

 

That's if you want a sciencey logic based explanation though, which put into words can exclusively be misunderstanding and delusion. 

 

With Unlimited Love,

-Bud

 

 

Always with respect.

 

That's what I thought you were saying. This theory is also contained in my book as is the current belief that decisions arise prior to the conscious decision being made in the brain. In effect we are viewing a similar thing with consciousness apparently viewing consciousness through the medium of electrical detection.

 

There's a problem with that theory and the quantum double slit experiment. We make the wrong conclusion simply because we are fallible and not because of what the experiments or science reveals. We can be conned by our own magic show. These aren't the hard science experiments of the past which offered us physics, chemistry and biology knowledge.

 

I'm neither a scientist, nor a very good logician, I'm not particularly intelligent either, but I have one clear advantage. I know I'm fallible, I know that I have mistaken rope for snake and that potential error always remains. Basic logic is my guide. Even without constructing the syllogisms, I can know that, if I'm be told or shown that a square is a circle, then it is wrong. I have been deceived in some way which may not be apparent. Two things are never one thing-check your premise.

 

The universe always contained the potential of conscious awareness, but we are matter first. When the body dies there is no consciousness in the body, neither is it swimming around looking for a host like some errant tadpole. The body remains, consciousness does not. Therefore matter must coalesce for consciousness to be. Consciousness must be conscious of some thing. Matter then prior to consciousness. Consciousness as a result of matter. It's elementary my dear Watson ;-)

[Bud Jetsun]

What defined the matter without perception my friend? 

 

Matter, like time and like space require perception first to arise from indeterminate existence. 

 

This path of discussion often end up chicken/egging.

 

All a human could know of God is no-thing, and yet also inherently everything our reality constructed as a personal God delusion. 

 

With unlimited Love,

-Bud

[Karl]

What defined the matter without perception my friend? 

 

Matter, like time and like space require perception first to arise from indeterminate existence. 

 

This path of discussion often end up chicken/egging.

 

All a human could know of God is no-thing, and yet also inherently everything our reality constructed as a personal God delusion. 

 

With unlimited Love,

-Bud

 

What created the universe ? It was not and was never created.

 

I said I was a simple man so here is an example. I'm chucking ideas here because I'm not a scientist but I'm am an observer of reality.

 

I look at the double split experiment and I get to wondering that a seemingly self contained particle is really that self contained. It has an energy, indeed it is an energy. So then isn't it energy travelling within energy-like a particle of sand chucked into other particles of sand. A wave is produced in the sand by kinetic conversion of energy and harmonics. I know these things are connected because I have this base knowledge. It doesn't help me to construct wave guides, musical instruments or detection systems, that's beyond my understanding- or I have never applied myself to learn them.

 

So, back at the double slit. It isn't that consciousness is causing the effect. It isn't the observer principle. It's the clouded thinking principle of seeing what one wants to believe one is seeing, then extrapolating an erroneous conclusion.

 

Years ago in the 17th century an experiment was conducted with canon balls to see how far they would travel with a given amount of gunpowder. As the amount of powder increased the distance the ball travelled increased and then it stopped. No more amount of gunpowder would make the ball travel any further. The experimenter concluded that the problem was air pressure preventing the ball travelling any faster which by simple physics meant it could not travel further.

 

Later in the 20th century they came across the phenomenon whilst trying to break the sound barrier. Energy meets energy and energetic waves are produced which are harmonic derivatives. There is frequency and amplitude. Didn't the Chinese already say that in the beginning there was a vibration ?