A.Suarez's Treatment on a Pope's Formulation for Original Sin's Transmission!

Nonlocal correlations coming from outside space-time are the most basic quantum-physical phenomenon. In this sense they underpin all natural phenomena.

The view that nature or physical reality reduces to contents within space-time is that of classical materialism, which has definitely been superseded by the quantum view: In the quantum perspective we have to assume that physical reality cannot be explained exclusively by information propagating within space-time.

Accordingly no natural phenomenon can be explained only by materialistic terms.

Natural visible phenomena can be ordinary or extraordinary:

Ordinary phenomena are those we can calculate and predict by means of mathematical equations as for instance the trajectory of the Sun in the Sky.

Extraordinary phenomena are those deviating from the usual patterns, as for instance the Resurrection of Lazarus, Pentecost, the Sun dancing in the Sky at 2pm on October 13, 1917 in Fatima (Portugal), etc.

The quantum perspective means that God ordinarily shapes the world according to mathematical equations so that we can live in and behave rationally. But there is no equation that can fit completely the content of Gods mind and predict extraordinary miraculous events.

Accordingly we can develop technologies to control ordinary events and use them to act more efficiently in the world. For instance your mobile will ring by the very fact they I correctly enter your number in my mobile.

As far as miracles are visible events can be considered extraordinary natural ones. But as far as we cannot control them by operational means can be considered supernatural events.

On the one hand there is no “law” forbidding nature to perform miracles. On the other hand we cannot use quantum physics to bring “miracle technologies” to the market (as many supporters of esoteric and paranormal phenomena pretend). The only way we have to “produce miracles” is prayer.

Proper supernatural effects refer to the realm of eternal life and the interplay between human freedom and God’s Grace to become in the Image of God. The paramount example is forgiveness of sins and growth in God’s love.

1 Like

Meaning nature has a cause from outside of nature.

Yes, provided

  • “nature” means the realm of things accessible to our senses

and

  • “cause” refers to an author with free will.
1 Like

Is this required, given you’re evidence? (if so then good)

Yes, it is required. We have extensive experimental evidence that:

  1. Nonlocal correlations cannot be explained by material causal chains within space-time: they originate from outside space-time.

  2. As far as one assumes the free will of the experimenter one has to assume free will behind the nonlocal effects.

From this it follows that nonlocality (which pervasively underpins nature) cannot be explained by causality but requires authorship.

2 Likes

Meaning God?

I’m still finishing to read your paper, but I just remembered reading about the idea that entangled particles could be connected by wormholes a while ago:

I don’t have the technical competency to understand the discussion in a deep level, but I was just curious to know. If that turned out to be true, would that eliminate the necessity of “something outside of space and time”?

Yes, for the following reasons:

By quantum physics we are led to these Results:

  1. If the experimenter has free will, then there is free will behind the quantum phenomena. The physical reality requires an author with free will. The world is speakable because it is spoken.

  2. Nature ordinarily is shaped according to mathematical equations so that we can calculate it, predict it, and behave conveniently. Nonetheless no equation can completely fit all possible phenomena. Extraordinary phenomena (miracles) can also occur: although highly improbable, they do not violate any law of nature.

  3. Under the condition of quantized or pixelated space-time, the conservation of my personal identity requires someone who is always aware of his own being, someone who can authentically claim: I AM.

Result 1
fits well with John 1:1-3: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. […] Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made”, and also philosophers like Plato.

Result 2
corresponds to the conception of God in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and philosophers in these major traditions, in particular Muslim philosophers.

Result 3
echoes God’s name YAHWEH in Judaism and Christianity, and also the conception of God by philosophers like Aristotle.

As I said previously I prefer a relational basis to cosmology to quantum physics. Evidence indicates that quantum physics is not the basic structure of the universe, but the structure of the physical which is the building blocks of nature.

  1. [quote=“AntoineSuarez, post:489, topic:35442”]
    The physical reality requires an author with free will. The world is speakable because it is spoken.
    [/quote]

  2. Nature is more than physical, so it is more than math. The physical (math) is only one kind of rationality. We also have the rational and the spiritual, neither of which can be reduced to math.

  3. Even though space/time is not quantized, the conservation of my personal identity and history is dependent requires Someone Who is I AM, Who is related unconditionally to all.

@AntoineSuarez

I’m not convinced of this idea. You are using a bottom-up analysis of what is Free Will. It would require that the mind is located within an individual quantum.

I think a more persuasive idea is that Free Will requires the mind to operate in a spatial dimension outside of natural causation as we understand the idea.

If we consider a light bulb as a model of the soul … is the soul the filament? Or is the soul the light generated by the filament?

Similarly, is the Brain “the mind”? Or is the Brain a “channel” for the mind’s presence in our 4 dimensional Space/Time reality?

As long as the soul or mind is seen as only existing within these 4 dimensions, how can you have a sane mind without saying it is a prisoner of causation? If Freedom of Causation is a requirement in our world for being Free, then only people who act insane and crazy and unpredictable could be said to be “free” of neurological or psychological causation.

This is an impossible situation.

This is why Dennett (one of the 4 horsemen of New Atheism) is fond of saying, “there is a kind of Free Will, just not the kind of Free Will we want to think we have”.

I think the kind of Free Will we want to think we have exists by means of some dimension of reality that doesn’t follow any of the rules that we think are necessary for reality to follow.

@AntoineSuarez How accurate is this?

The article by Leonard Susskind you refer to does not to actually eliminate the necessity of “something outside of space time” for explaining quantum phenomena, but rather extends this necessity to general relativity as well.

In this sense Susskind argument is related to my argument in this paper, where I propose a unified description of quantum nonlocal and local relativistic correlations: Both assume free will and happen without continuous connection in space-time.

Notice also Leonard Susskind’s claim : “The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and Everett’s Relative State Formulation are complementary descriptions which in a sense are dual to one another.” This supports my argument in the paper you are reading: In the light of Quantum Contextuality one can unify Copenhagen and Many-worlds (Everett) to a new interpretation “All-possible-Worlds”.

Finally: Susskind is assuming that macroscopic systems can be in quantum superposition: Schrödinger’s cat, Wigner’s friend. As you can read in my paper this amounts to assume miracles as ordinary natural phenomena, and makes possible all the “wonderful things” Susskind speculates about. I think such an assumption is not appropriate.

My view is as follows: Quantum physics dos not forbid quantum behavior of macroscopic objects, i.e.: “miracles” (as for instance that the Sun starts dancing in the sky at 2pm). However such “miracles” are highly improbable and are beyond our operational capabilities: Quantum physics does not allow us to bring “miracle technologies” to the market (as supporters of esoteric and paranormal phenomena dream).

1 Like

I appreciate these videos by Inspiring Philosophy.
In particular the video you refer to highlights that the space-time is pixelated, as I do.

The argument could be formulated more accurately by stressing that then “personal identity” cannot be warranted by any material substrate; so God is necessary to warrant that I remain the same person notwithstanding time passes.

Inspiring Philosophy has not yet discovered the interest of Many-Worlds or the Multiverse for arguing in favor of God’s existence: I have sent him a suggestion in this sense.

He should also distinguish between ordinary phenomena and extraordinary ones (miracles). Otherwise one can get the impression that quantum physics will allow us to develop “miracle-technologies” (as supporters of esoteric and paranormal phenomena dream).

Anyway I am interested to know which impression you have got from such a video.

Can you respond to some of the responses here:?

Just finished reading your paper, I found the ideas very interesting even though I had trouble with some of the math and experiments you refered to. If I understood it right, would it be fair to say that your model of the universe would be a type of block universe, with the past, present and future existing simultaneously, but instead of having just one past, present and future, we would actually have all possible events (and therefore a myriad of pasts, presents and futures) that would unfold from stochastic processes from the big bang to the end of the universe existing simultaneously as well? If that is the case then the solution to the “Andromeda paradox” would be to say that the “future” that coexisted with the observer is real, but not inevitable, since there are equally real futures “in the mind of God”, and therefore you could both have a future in which the aliens decided to attack earth and one in which they choose not do so (thereby eliminating the deterministic implications of the paradox)? Also from the paper:

“All this means that what is and is not possible is not
determined by physical \laws” but the other way around,
it is these \laws" which actually arise from what is and
is not possible."

That reminded me a lot of George Ellis idea of “possibility spaces”, which also assume “pixelated” space-time, are you familiar with his ideas and their implications for his ideas about morality and God? I would be interesetd in reading your comments on that if possible.

That’s very interesting! I thought it was actually the other way around, using “shortcuts” in within space-time to say that the particles could comunicate with v < c by travelling through them, but it seems I’ve got everything wrong. Thanks for clarifying that!

I will try to check that one as well.

In my naive enthusiast view I always framed it somewhat like that: Quantum events are random, but have probabilities associated to them, and the reason you don’t see quantum phenomena at a macroscopic level would be analogous to throwing dices (even though dice throwing is not truly random): If you throw just a couple of dices and make the average of the values (1-6), it is not that hard to get averages of 1 or 6 (1/36 for each chance if you use two dices, for instance), but as you increase the number of dices, it becomes more and more likely that you will get average results near 3.5 and more and more unlikely that you will get results near the extremes (averages of 1 and 6), since macroscopic events have lots of quantum events occurring in their composing particles at the same time, the random results would tend to average out and produce predictable outcomes, but like you said, it is technically not impossible to see these phenomena at macroscopic level as long as you get “lucky” enough (I.E. throwing 1 million dices and having all of them land at 1). How accurate is that?

Even assuming that “God creates the evolving ecosystem using ecological natural selection or symbiosis”, you can’t help acknowledging illness, decay, death, natural catastrophes, etc. as consequences arising from evolution.

These effects can be considered certainly evil as far as they affect mankind created in the Image of God.

So the question arises: Why did God shape creation this way?

My answer is as follows:

  • God creates the first Image Bearers in a stage of “original Blessing” capable of overcoming illness, aging, and death (what is not the same as having “eternal life”).

  • After the Fall God in His mercy decides to give sinners the opportunity to atone instead of throwing them to join the devil and his angels in hell. So sinners remain on earth in the stage of “need of Redemption” (the so called “stage of original sin”).

  • For the sake of Salvation God permits that humans are affected by illness, suffering, death originating from evolutionary mechanisms: Indeed such “side effects” of evolution help us to realize that we are not “like God”.

To this explanation one could object:

If evolutionary “side effects” like illness, suffering and death are supportive for Redemption, why did not Got create the first Image Bearers bowed to all these effects already before they fell?

My answer:

If God had created Humanity in such a way, He would have been the author of evil. So God can let “side effects” from evolution affect Image Bearers only AFTER these have sinned.

Since God in his omniscience foresaw the possibility of sin, He wisely made to Image Bearers only a little population among the millions of human-like animals spread all over the earth, according to Genesis 1:27 and 2:24. This was a population living in Mesopotamia, likely Sumer, who were called to live according to the primeval commandment Jesus refers to in Matthew 19:3-6 and Mark 10:2-9. Before the Fall these Image Bearers were not affected by illness, suffering and death: they lived in a stage of “original Blessing” (in @Aleo’s wording). After some of these Image Bearers (possibly not all) transgressed God’s commandment, this population lost the stage of “original Righteousness and Blessing” and evolved to the population around Noah as described in Genesis 5-6, ending in a stage of great wickedness, corruption, violence and disorder.

In this light the Flood appears as a Second Act of Creation: God wipes out the disorder and re-creates order. At the End of the Flood God transforms all human-like animals around the world into Image Bearers. This second act of creation is referred to in Genesis 9:6.

Since this very moment the following important principles hold:

  1. God identifies “Mankind” and “Being in the Image of God”.

  2. Both, the status of “Image Bearer” and that of “Belonging to Humanity” can be ascertained through cut-off anatomically observable features.

  3. For the sake of Salvation God permits that all Image-Bearers (members of Humanity) are affected by evolutionary “side effects”.

Notice that according to this explanation God is not the author of human evil and sin at any moment. The authors of human suffering are always we, the sinners. Nonetheless God in His mercy revealed us how to use evolutionary “side effects” to the end of salvation: He decided to die on the Cross, to show us (amazing grace!) how to transform suffering into love. This was fully realized by the good criminal being executed in a cross besides Jesus: the guy jumped on the chance with a request (Luke 23:42) we all should have in the lips when “sister death” (this “evolutionary side effect”) comes to visit us.

Antoine, this thread that you began so long ago contains enough food for thought it would warrant an entire book devoted exclusively to it. I found your dialogue with @Relates especially pertinent. That’s when I look at the arguments through the “theological” lens of my philosophical bifocals. It is when I view your arguments through the “science” lens (the ones for short-sightedness?) that I have problems. For example:

Science cannot provide a shred of evidence that humankind (or any of its predecessors) ever enjoyed such a condition even on a temporary basis. If one is forced to construct a theology upon A Fall from innocence, then one misses the true meaning of Original Blessing. As Teilhard saw it, evolution continuously led to more complex forms, first in the Cosmos, then in the Biosphere, and finally (just recently) in the Noosphere which produced a creature with a mind and conscience that could choose to cooperate with God as co-creator. The dark side of that Gift was, in freely refusing to cooperate, humankind was the first creature that could sin.

This sounds as if God waited until Adam sinned before deciding to send a Savior. (I realize that is NOT what you meant, but it does sound like it.). It is more satisfying to me to believe that God’s plan was to let the entire universe evolve toward more complexity until a life form reached the level consciousness (perhaps on thousands of other planets), and, if necessary, send them help (in whatever form they had attained) to overcome the innate selfishness of the evolutionary process, replacing it with love. And, not just incidentally, to use the Gift of Mind to overcome the bodily illnesses and suffering inherent in creation through evolution. IMHO bodily death was never in question–it always ended biological life. It took Jesus’ resurrection to show us that death is the way to eternal life.

@Relates
This is the problem that TE has not addressed properly if at all. The best answer is that God does not create using Darwinian natural selection. God does not use evil means to create good ends.
[/quote]
Roger, we as humans see both ‘evil’ (predation, illness, etc) and ‘good’ (symbiosis, ecological natural selection) operating in the evolutionary process. We can only guess as how God looks on them. It seems possible that if humans are destined to be truly co-creators and image bearers, that we must be faced with significant challenges to overcome. In the past, these challenges seemed overwhelming, and it was easy to believe that this earth was not our ‘true home’–that a carefree Heaven is what we should aspire to. Even if humans do find a way to overcome tribalism (true Christianity should be a great help) and we enter a Golden Age, there always will be plenty of challenges remaining in any Heaven on Earth.
Al Leo

Astonishingly, in the quote you refer to I am paraphrasing David Deutsch (see Reference [13] in my paper), who declares himself an atheist!

As you state, George Ellis utters a similar idea and interprets (like me) that the Multiverse is related to possibilities in God’s mind.

For me Ellis’ interpretation is what any “normally wired brain” (without “denial mechanism”) should conclude.

Let me add that your quote from my paper is completed by the last paragraph in it:

“But if the universe only starts with our observations, is then the Big Bang here?" To this question John A. Wheeler answered once: “A lovely way to put it -‘Is the big bang here?’ I can imagine that we will someday have to answer your question with a ‘yes’.” ([46], p. 6, note 5). Without “human free choices”, no physical reality!

Could you please tell us which “implications of his [George Ellis’] ideas about Morality and God” you find especially relevant? This may be of interest for all contributors to this thread. Thanks in advance!

Your question is quite good.
I am working on an answer and hope to post it in the coming days.

Meanwhile I would like to refer to this answer I have just posted in another thread, which adresses the question of “Miracles and the Multivers” and is somewhat related to your query.