Alice can freely switch, but the particles can’t.
Why? How does correlation show that there is a purpose or plan? That seems to be stretching the evidence beyond the breaking point.
Why not? Why can’t there be mechanistic laws in place that particles follow where the information travels faster than the speed of light?
If Alice is an author who can freely switch, then the choice between (heads, heads) and (tails, tails) is equally free.
As you very well say, this free choice does not come from “localized particles”. Consequently there must be an invisible agent enacting the choice nonlocally.
Without purpose or plan all 4 possible outcomes would be equally probable:
(heads, heads)
(heads, tails)
(tails, heads)
(tails, tails).
However only two outcomes are selected:
(heads, heads)
(tails, tails)
Similar thing for anti-correlated outcomes.
This would contradict the Michelson-Morley experiment and imply the absurdity that you could kill your grandfather before he begot your father.
Travelling in space-time means travelling NOT faster than light.
Excellent point!
Stars go super-nova in such a way that we can see the remains.
So if there were no humans to see the remains, it would not make sense to speak about stars going super-nova.
This is exactly what John A. Wheeler suggests by agreeing that “the Big-Bang is here".
Quantum physics makes explicit the obvious fact that the basis of science is observations, and observations require observers. For the science we know and make these are human observers.
It seems plain to me that the word “day” in Genesis 1 refers to a “time of God’s work”, and not to periods of “24 hours”. So the days are defined by stating: “there was evening, and there was morning –the first day…”, instead of stating “there was sun rise and there was sun set –the first day…”
I my view Psalm 104:22-24 clearly supports the preceding interpretation by calling the period from sun rise until evening the time “when people go out to their work”:
The sun rises, and they steal away;
they return and lie down in their dens.
Then people go out to their work,
to their labor until evening.
How many are your works, LORD!
In wisdom you made them all;
the earth is full of your creatures.
I also don’t see why there needs to be free choice. When you are running the double slit experiment, are you saying that there is some entity deciding where each and every particle will land?
That is false. If we are talking about entangled particles then only heads-tails or tails-heads are possible.
It wouldn’t be a contradiction since only information is travelling faster than the speed of light and not energy or matter.
The formulation “where each and every particle will land” is ambiguous as it suggests that particles are following a well-defined trajectory before “landing”.
The double-slit experiment and other similar single-particle interference experiments led the founding fathers of quantum mechanics to the idea of the “collapse of the wave function”. This cryptic term means simply that one cannot assign properties or trajectories to the particles before detection. In the case of the double slit experiment the photographic plate registering the single blackenings can be considered an array of many detectors. So the idea of the collapse means that at the moment of detection there is a coordination of all these detectors establishing which of them counts and imposing to the others to remain silent.
In the 5th Solvay Conference (October 1927) Einstein opposed such an explanation arguing by means of a thought experiment that it would imply faster-than-light communication, if the detectors are placed enough far away from each other.
Astonishingly Einstein’s thought experiment was first realized in 2012 and I am proud of having proposed it (see this article). The experiment proves nonlocal coordination between detection events.
This is the fundamental quantum mechanical nonlocality. The entanglement-nonlocality discovered by John Bell is a particular case of the nonlocality at detection, which already appears in interference experiments like the double slit one.
Accordingly, in the double-slit experiment the spot in the plate where the blackening appears (“where the particle lands”) is the result of a free choice coming from outside space-time.
I have the impression we are misunderstanding each other. I would be thankful to know your References for your claims about entanglement.
I myself have been taught by John Bell himself, and even proposed and co-worked in realizing entanglement experiments.
According to my experience, in “entangled particle experiments” the correlations oscillate from 100% discordances [50 heads-tails and 50 tails-heads] to 100% concordances [50% heads-heads and 50% tails-tails] passing through all possible intermediate distributions conforming to a sinusoidal function depending on the phase (given by the settings of the apparatus), as for instance:
80% discordances [40% heads-tails and 40% tails-heads] and
20% concordances [10% heads-heads and 10% tails-tails].
50% discordances [25% heads-tails and 25% tails-heads] and
50% concordances [25% heads-heads and 25% tails-tails].
40% discordances [20% heads-tails and 20% tails-heads] and
60% concordances [30% heads-heads and 30% tails-tails].
And so on.
The important point is that the sinusoidal dependence cannot be considered caused by Alice’s choices of the apparatus settings because the measurements are space-like separated.
Accordingly the dependence reveals plan or purpose coming from outside space-time.
Without such a plan there would be no entanglement at all and the 4 possible results would have been equally distributed for all settings.
Information without any “material or energy” carrier means immaterial information and hence refers to “pre-established harmony” (Max Born) in some invisible mind beyond space-time.
replied to the op without knowing. open for deletion.
Do you think there is some entity guiding each and every particle so that it creates an interference pattern?
Why does it require a free choice?
That’s not what happens. Two entangled particles will have opposite spins. When you measure the spin of one particle the other particle takes on the opposite spin. Therefore, the only result you will get for a single particle is heads-tails or tails-heads.
What if Alice and Bob measure with their polarizers or magnets oriented at different angles?
Same thing. The measurement at one position determines the measurement at the other.
I apologize for insisting again:
Could you please give us the References supporting your claims?
Otherwise this discussion risks to become nonsensical.
Could you refer to a scientific journal peer reviewed by cows? Or to a Supreme Court where the justices are cows?
If not, then it is a sign that cows cannot be considered suitable observers to define the observations which are the basis for the experimental science we know and do.
“Alien life forms”, if they exist and share in “Moral Agency which establishes moral accountability”, then they have to be necessarily human: Don’t forget that Evolution (as we know it) worked to the end of bringing about a “life form” that can be ruled by moral principles and law. And this can only be done if the individuals of this “life form” exhibit a specific body which can sharply be distinguished from the bodies of other “life forms”. So if Evolution is not limited to our planet, it has anyway reproduced our “human living form” in another planet. It would have been nonsensical on the part of God to produce another “life form” called to follow the rule of law and exhibiting a body as different from the human body as a chimp’s body.
Very good point! The particle or aggregations of particles do NOT have any Freedom at all! The Freedom “on the part of Nature” quantum experiments demonstrate is the Freedom of “invisible authors” who are shaping the phenomena we observe.
Once again, we reach this conclusion (that there is freedom “on the part of Nature”) as far as we take the freedom of the human experimenter (you and me) as an AXIOM. If you dispose of your freedom (what you do not, as you declare) and I dispose of my freedom, then we cannot conclude on “freedom on the part of Nature” (“invisible authors”), but then we dispose of science (quantum physics and relativity) as well.
As the quantum physicist John A. Wheeler suggests: “the universe starts with our [human observer’s] observations”. Then before the appearance of human observers endowed with capability of free choice all “speech” about periods of time is necessarily “figurative”.
Claims like “the universe started 13.79 billion years ago”, “life began 4.28 billion years ago” refer to times that would have been so, if we had been there, what obviously is not the case. In other words these times are useful in order to describe coherently the phenomena we observe today. However they should not be interpreted in an absolute way, as if a physical reality had been there independently of the human observers to come. Claims regarding what happened before free human observers appeared refer to activity in some invisible mind, which was thinking how the world should appear to us. Accordingly the times “13.79 billion or 4.28 billion years” as such are not less “figurative” than the 6 days of Genesis.
If you can sell this to the YECs, I’m on your bandwagon!
Really enjoyable discussing with you, George!
Do you have a proposal for a sell strategy?
If I did, I would have been doing it. You have been the one selling me on your idea.
I will champion it, if you figure how to do so…
The Hebrew word for earth is eretz which means land or earth, as in a region. It appears in other places in the Bible with the same meaning. For example, “am ha’eretz” means “people of the land.”
Jim Stump wrote in this Essay:
“We could take the text as employing hyperbole, as Tremper Longman argued in our series on the theology of Genesis. Or you might think this is an indicator that the story is not meant to be taken as real history at all. AiG doesn’t like either of those options because of their commitment to a strictly literal, face-value interpretation of the text. There is another option they might take, and I wonder why they didn’t: it was just miraculous. All the millions of species fit on the ark and lived there for a year because God miraculously made the ark bigger on the inside than the outside—think of the tents at the quidditch world cup in Harry Potter, or the Kingdom of God shed in Narnia’s Last Battle. Wouldn’t that kind of explanation make the story even more a testimony to God’s power?”
Meanwhile (after our discussions) I think the third option referred to by Jim above is the most appropriate one: Noah’s Flood was just miraculous.
The reference to Harry Potter and Narnia support my comparison with the “Miracle of the Sun” in Fatima (on October 13, 1917), and my interpretation in terms of parallel worlds.
In this line of thinking I assume more in detail:
Only accountable and free people with capacity to sin experienced the miraculous Flood, that is, some hundreds of thousands living around Noah in the region of the antediluvian cities in Sumer. These people would be the analogous counterpart of the tens of thousands who experienced Fatima’s "Miracle of the Sun”.
The rest of the planet outside the region where the miracle occurred was populated by creatures without capacity to sin. In this sense this rest of the planet outside the miraculous region can be considered part of Noah’s Ark.
At the end of the “miraculous” Flood both parallel worlds merged again. At this moment God transformed all Homo sapiens creatures living in the rest of the planet into image bearers with capacity to sin (according to Genesis 9:5-6). Since this very moment Humanity is definitely established as a community called to live according to the “Golden rule”, and the human body becomes the “Golden principle” for assigning rights.
Have you changed some of your views? How could you write these three bullet points without writing something I couldn’t possibly agree with ? Shall we just say, Miracles Happen?
So, point [1] seems fine.
Point [2] is fine, as long as we agree that the hominids without the capacity to sin (outside of Eden) don’t have the capacity because they are not morally aware to the divine laws.
Point [3] just has this little itty-bitty issue I would raise:
"At the end of the miraculous Flood (because it could have never happened through natural forces), God “transformed all Homo sapiens… living in the rest of the planet”.
Aren’t they all dead? Don’t you mean, after the flood, the only people left are the transformed ones of Noah’s family?
Or are you coming up with a very figurative interpretation of a non-existing Global Flood? If so, it would seem you are equating the term “Great Flood” to God’s wholesale transformation of all human souls … all at once, I guess?
Or transformation, birth by birth? Please explain…
In the thread “My theory about the Flood” I supported the view that Noah’s Flood could be explained by assuming a big local flood affecting the region of the five antediluvians cities in Sumer. Your comments led me to analyze the available archaeological evidence, and I realized this evidence does not support the hypothesis of a big local Flood.
Additionally, thinking about Fatima’s “Miracle of the Sun” I discovered the possibility of explaining “miracles” through the assumption of “parallel worlds”.
Accordingly I was led to point [1] above, and I am delighted seeing that you agree.
Point [2] was already proposed in “My theory about the Flood”.
I fully agree to what you say with minor changes as follows:
The hominids (outside the region where lived Noah, his family, and the people who perished in the Flood) didn’t have the capacity to sin because they were not morally aware to the divine laws.
These hominids can be considered Homo sapiens and “anatomically modern humans” (very much like Noah and we ourselves are), but they were not yet image bearers endowed by God with capability for moral agency.
I would say: (because it could have never happened through ordinary natural processes)
As said above, by “Homo sapiens living in the rest of the planet” I mean “anatomically modern humans” (like Noah and us) but without capability for moral agency and capacity to sin.
At the end of Noah’s Flood “these hominids in the rest of the planet” all at once were transformed by God into people aware to the divine laws with capacity to sin. Thereafter all hominids living on earth were “image bearers”, and all their descendants (“birth by birth”) till now are “image bearers” as well, according to Genesis 9:6.
In summary:
One has to distinguish between the beginning of Humanity and the (non-existing) beginning of hominids or evolving living form Homo sapiens.
At the end of the Flood God engraves in all “human hearts” the Foundation of Law.
At this very moment the “human body” becomes the observable basis for defining what is human and assigning rights.
Help me out with just this one little point …
You believe there was a global flood - for real…
And you also believe the global flood - for real - did not kill off all the other humans?
Or do you mean, instead of a Global Flood, there was a regional flood… somewhere… which, naturally, left lots of other humans alive.?
Is that where you are trying to go? Don’t let me put words in your mouth … but I just don’t “get” the idea (repeated twice now) that there was a Real Global Flood, and that there were humans other than Noah’s party left alive by this global flood.
This one. He means “universal” in the sense that all Adam’s descendants except Noah & co. were killed by the flood. But not all humans.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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