Q. Q logic. Q mechanics. QM. And the RoS. There is no such thing as absolute reality. Not for anyone. Nobody. Not even for God. He does play dice. It’s not just due to the limitations of measurement. Indeterminacy is for real. Like all points of view.
It contradicts classical mechanics. But classical mechanics is wrong when it comes to subatomic particles. A philosophy constructed from antiquated physics which has been demonstrated wrong by written procedures anyone can follow to get the same result no matter what they want or believe is not a reasonable philosophy. It might as well be a religious fantasy.
Incorrect. That would be hidden variable theory which has been proven wrong repeatedly. Because of the failure of Bell’s inequality we know there are no hidden variables. But this unknown momentum you imagine the particle to have would be a hidden variable. This has been demonstrated not to exist.
Sorry but that belongs to fantasy land along with ftl travel and perpetual motion machines. Science can demonstrate that such things will never exist.
On the contrary, it is just following scientific procedure which tests hypotheses and ACCEPTS the results of those tests.
You clearly don’t know what you are talking about. The is not about the three-body problem not being solved. It is about the solution (which we have using numerical methods) being nonlinear.
The point was that the universe has more than three bodies in it and thus the motion of bodies in the universe are non-linear.
Incorrect. Like I explained above, Ilya Prigogine PROVED that nonlinear systems require knowing the initial conditions to an infinite degree of precision. But because of quantum physics such precision does not even exist.
The conclusions of science are not about what is necessary but what is reasonable given the what we have seen over and over and over again and which anyone can see for themselves by following written procedures.
From our perspective as scientifically-informed humans, the physical universe has a number of aspects that are not predictable in detail, but there are many broadly predictable patterns. How one interprets this in relation to free will and determinism reflects one’s philosophical position on free will and determinism more than it reflects the science. As a specific example, the relative unpredictability versus determinism of the Cambrian radiation is debated. Gould famously asserted that, if one could rewind to the Cambrian and have it happen again, it would probably have turned out radically different (cf. his comparison to the movie It’s a Wonderful Life). [To avoid dragging in a different argument about determinism, assume that the restart may have trivial differences from the actual Cambrian.] But Conway Morris argues that natural laws produce enough constraints that the outcome is pretty much going to be the same. Of course, which of these is true hinges on what counts as “pretty much the same”, which is subjective.
Curiously, the deterministic / unpredictable debate has gotten entangled with political biases as well, even though one could interpret either one as fitting with a particular political agenda.
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With all due respect you seem to contradict yourself. You say that you do not care about galaxies, atoms, and cells and how they got there and then you say that you do.
I agree. Science is great, I do not think that you can say that science is than the universe. I am thankful for science, but more thankful for life, breath, and the world we live in
Somehow you seem to think that Christianity is about science, when it is not. Christianity is about history. It is the story of how God, YHWH. revealed Godself to the Hebrews through the OT and then to the whole world though Jesus Christ.
You say that “No genie had to blink it all into existence.” Are you implying that this what I think, or any responsible believer thinks? Does science say how the singularity which caused the Big Bang came into existence?
You are grateful it seems to That Who created this world to be our home and gave humans abilities far surpassing other creatures.
It has been 2 thousand years since the time of Abraham to 1 AD, and another 2 thousand years since the time of Jesus Christ. I should think that 4 thousand years is sufficient time to think this over.
How does being invisible disqualify God from being the Creator? Since God is everywhere, wouldn’t God being visible mean that we would not see anything but God?
God made God visible through Jesus Christ. If you have something against Jesus that disqualifies Him from being the Creator, speak up!
On this we can agree. Life and the ability we are afforded to appreciate and understand our world is a wonderful thing. It isn’t the bare existence of the stuff science can measure which matters most to us. That stuff is interesting and sometimes useful too. But it doesn’t tell you everything about what makes being a human being an incredible opportunity.
For that reason I don’t know why Christianity puts so much importance on God being the maker of everything from nothing. As people we can never know that, no matter how many miraculous lotteries one wins or narrow escapes from certain death one makes. We’re simply not in any position to know such a thing in my opinion.
Any and all responsible believers? No, I know there are believers who do not assert this as an empirical fact but there are plenty who do. It shouldn’t be such an important point of belief in my opinion. The church would be on more solid ground not to let that be a hill on which so many believers’ faith dies.
Yes, I’m grateful to “that”, “who” or “whatever” it may be which has led to the quality of experience we enjoy.
It doesn’t so long as the creator is understood as that which mediates and makes possible our experience on a daily basis from the time we are knit together in the womb until the wheels come off in old age.
I have nothing to say against or in favor of your assertion. I don’t share your opinion but I have no dog in that fight.
Maybe because God created for a purpose, to increase his joy. You can disparage ‘miraculous lotteries’, but that does not make the facts go away.
It has to do with epistemic something. The God of miraculous lotteries is knowable.
I’d rather not. Once again I can muster no more than one liners to one of your posts. Well at least I shan’t be contributing to a string of them. Goodnight Dale.
The God who is is lovable. And his demonstrated sovereignty over time and space and timing and placing is really cool! Delightful and enjoyable, too – not wanting to know him is maybe foolish?
@MarkD, now I think I understand. Your God is the Logos which makes our universe intelligible. So is mine, but my God is also the Creator Who gives us life and a home to live it in. My God is also the Spirit of Love, Who brings people together in joy and peace,
Mine is mostly a mystery and all I can attest to is what I can experience directly.
What do you mean by mystery? Many “things” are a mystery.
Well it is the sort of thing one can completely ignore or take for granted. But if you think at all about what makes experience like ours possible you can’t help but notice how much takes place without our input. We would not be capable of the detachment which makes science but also alienation possible without the autonomic processing that takes place on our behalf. I find this pretty mysterious. In the same way TE doesn’t rule out a role for God in creation just because evolution explains so much, I don’t think we should dismiss the wonder of what makes us possible just because neuroscience can explain more and more. I don’t think we can ever be understood in an entirely mechanistic manner.
“The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” attributed to Albert Einstein, What he actually wrote was:
“The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. … The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.”
Many people associate mystery with incomprehensibility, which is a not true. Just because we know that God created the universe through the Big Bang and humans through evolution does not make God, or the universe, or us any less of a mystery is Love, does not make God any less of a mystery. Indeed. it is more of a mystery, because we cannot really answer the question, Why would anyone go through so much trouble to do something that S/He would not have to do?
The Greek philosophers had no place for God in their understanding of reality. They believed in the Indo-European pantheon and the myths that explained nature. Yet the Greeks saw that there was a Unity in Reality which make rationality possible and desirable. This Unity found expression as the Logos.
The Jews found unity in their faith in the One God, YHWH, Who was the Source of their identity as a nation and a religion. They were not really interested in science
or how the world works, but they were focused on how to relate to their God and other people.
Jesus, the Jewish Messiah. reconciled Jewish faith and the Greek philosophy by being the Logos the Unity of the universe and the Unity of humanity to establish a new faith and worldview.
Our history since then has been the working out of this new understanding of Reality, but the time has come when we need to come to a new synthesis. The old view of Western Dualism has become obsolete and a new vision of the Logos and the One And the Many must take its place, or we will become extinct.
Physics and chemistry and biology are enough to know that they are enough and have been for 150 odd years… No matter the gaps, no matter the inexplicability of eternal existence. There is nothing in nature above that grounding that isn’t physics, chemistry, biology. They aren’t accessible to us as clockwork. We are mesoscopic, not Planck, Quantum or Einstein, Relatavistic scale creatures. Not even molecular or cellular or planetary or nebular. Everything is more complex than our tiny consciousnesses can possibly tell a story about. That doesn’t necessitate magic as real in the slightest.
I think you misunderstand me. I don’t think any kind of external agency is doing any of it, not originating the universe, nor life and not our minds either. But I do think there is processing and agency that takes place beneath our notice. That is what I think has given rise to and still supports God belief. I can’t and don’t argue that it is a fact, but for me personally it is the only possibility that makes sense.
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I beg your pardon MarkD.
sOhhh, the only way for me to reconcile that, forgive me if we’ve been here before or if I’ve only just realised, is that agency emerges in nature in entities other than ‘higher’ (i.e. most complex) creatures like ourselves. I wish it were so! Gaia, Solaris, forests and their staggering, actual capabilities. Greg Bear’s Blood Music and Darwin’s Radio & Children. I see the origin of God belief in our superegos projected on nature, especially in its balancing act and the fine jewelled watches it blindly crafts. I’d like to believe that group selection operates too, but it isn’t necessary, like theism isn’t.
I’m sure you’re in good company in that view. For me though something like “superego” seems far too specific for something we have no way to examine up close. Freudian mythology just doesn’t speak to me. It gives one the illusion of certainty and a schema to read into human affairs.
Humans are set adrift in the power of their hypothetical possibilities which unlike every other mammal leaves them unmoored from the nature from whence they sprang. Except that that nature is still there beneath the surface performing the bulk of the processing which allows us to wallow in our analyses and theories. It permits us to recognize what might fulfill us, something our puny reason cannot begin to deduce no matter how long it tries. The only hope is to recognize that for all our technological might we are helpless unless we make peace with and come to recognize the will of that which has always already been on board. The stories of the Bible as with so many other mythologies hint at this. In the end none are literally true but all reflect something true about our condition and the remedy. We need to be less proud of our capacity for control and more mindful of our limitations.
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The way I read what you say is that nature is your God, because humans sprang from nature. You seem to think that God must be an agency external to nature, but pantheists would not agree. The scientific evidence indicates that the universe/nature had a Beginning with the Big Bang.
It seems to me that you have not addressed the primary questions of life, such as does life have meaning and purpose? because you reject the concept of God/YHWH, as the Source of the universe.
Well “God” isn’t a classification that I worry about any more than “superego”. Whatever it is that completes us, no word will capture it and no particular word is essential.
Does not follow. By that logic, your mother would be your God if you believe she gave birth to you.
But more importantly this is an insipid reaction to what is quite a thoughtful observation from MarkD. It begs me to step up to provide a better response.
And yet by that unmooring we are set free to be aware of nature on a much grander scale – to see the big picture rather than being consumed by the details of our immediate surroundings.
That statement itself shows an awareness which the other species really do not have.
I would use the word “imagine” as often the case rather than recognize. For while some do find something to fulfill us, other leap from one thing to another endlessly searching.
Since we have little reason to attribute a will to nature, that has the distinct smell of theism. LOL
This gives rise in me to a suspicion that there something wrong with the phrase “literal truth.” I doubt that the meaning is in actually the words themselves.
Being a believer in a God who chose love and freedom over power and control, I think there is more to this than just an understanding of our limitations. It more a realization that an obsession with control can leave us distinctly lacking in something more important.
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