Ship of Fools: Purgatory: A random proof of God

Thread: Purgatory: A random proof of God Board: Limbo / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

And God said, "Let there be heads"; and there was heads. And there was the beginning of a quantum coin toss and there was its end, one Planck time.

Consider (deterministic) causality. In a very simplistic manner, we can symbolize its general workings by

A -> B

That is to say: if the world is sufficiently like A now, then it will be sufficiently like B next. This in fact an amazing mystery, but like most people most of the time, I will here consider it as trivial. I'm hence not particularly concerned about the details of A, B, "now" and "next". What is important to me is rather that this so-called "(deterministic) causality" makes sense to us, indeed, it is what making sense is all about. If I push my car over a cliff, it will fall down and be wrecked. A->B. That is clear enough, and relevant.

Now consider a coin flip. We can symbolize it like this

A -?-> (B or C)

Given a coin flip (A), it's either heads (B) or tails (C). Now, this is odd. It's not really "(deterministically) causal" like the above. Given A, I still know something about what will happen next (B or C), so it is causal. But it is random whether it will be B or C, or to use a technical term, stochastic. While it is of course a common experience as well that random stuff happens, it does not make real sense to us. What makes sense to us is that "it will be B or C", since that is determined causally (if the coin would vanish in thin air we would be much surprised, if it landed stably on the rim we would add that possibility - but our mind is at sea thinking whether it will actually be B or C in a normal coin toss, since we cannot know that).

Along comes so-called "deterministic chaos" to restore sense to our world. The basic idea is this: sometimes what a system will do next can depend very sensitively on how it is now. Balance a straw upright on a table. If this was a vibration-damped lab table in a vacuum, the straw would just remain standing. However, in your living room the table vibrates very slightly and there are minuscule gusts of air. So the straw falls quickly. Furthermore, you have no idea in what direction it will fall, since you are not able to measure those disturbances. In general, there are limits to how precisely one can measure anything. So when one makes any measurement, one always makes some tiny error at least. However, what will happen next for a highly sensitive system is then already known only up to a small error, and what will happen after that with a significant one, then a large one, next it's a huge error - and soon one has no idea anymore what will be happening.

The upshot is is that we can now symbolize that coin flip in a different way

A -> B
? or ?
A' -> C

Thus if we were able to measure everything perfectly, how the thumb is moving, what the air is doing, etc., then we may well be able to predict that this particular throw will be heads, and that other one will be tails. However, since we cannot tell whether it is A or A', due to measurement error, the result appears random 50:50 to us. We have reduced the weirdness of in principle not knowing where things are going to a practical problem of measurements.

This could be the end of that, but it isn't. For there is quantum mechanics, and QM is supposed to be truly stochastic in nature. One has to be careful there though. QM is mostly deterministic, e.g., the Schrödinger equation tells us precisely what will happen to a QM wavefunction with time. It's just that this wavefunction is merely a probability (density) function. Added to deterministic QM is hence a prescription, often called the collapse of the wavefunction. Thus when a measurement is performed, then somehow all this probability is collapsing into a reality. How precisely nobody knows...

Important for our purposes is however the following: one can show - with something called Bell's inequalities, see here for a state-of-the-art experiment - that there are no "hidden variables" determining that outcome. That is to say, for a "quantum coin" we appear to truly have stochastic causality

A -?-> (B or C)

we cannot reduce it (completely) to some "deterministic chaos" as above. Thus the universe stops making sense microscopically. In fact, since in reality our classical world is built on quantum foundations, we should have to say that our sense of things is merely statistical in the final analysis.

I hope with this lengthy introduction I've set the stage for a very simple proof of the existence of God. Take a truly random process, i.e., make it "quantum" to be sure that it is not just some deterministic chaos. Then our problem is that given

A

now, and the causal but stochastic relationship

A -?-> (B or C)

somehow the world must arrive at

B

which we happen to see next. Not C, mind you: we have flipped the (quantum) coin, and for sake of argument let us say it was heads (B) this time, not tails (C). But we cannot understand how

A ... B

can happen. We can only understand some deterministic causal arrow like this

A -> B

Of course, the actual situation could be hellishly complicated, that one arrow could summarize any number of interactions etc., but by construction here no ultimate reason of that form can be given, when all is said and done the situation is random. Is there no way out? Well, yes, there is. Note that I - the author of this - was easily able to determine this relationship

A ... B

That was my choice. Now, I could choose something else just as easily, say

A ... C

Again, no causality connects the (quantum) coin toss with this time tails (C). No causality within the world of the coin toss, that is. As it happens, that world is imaginary in my (and your) head, so I can without any difficulty whatsoever create one option, or the other, or indeed the "miracle" of the coin disappearing if I want

A ...

There, it just happened. Note that my creative causality is of a different kind. It side-steps the requirement of some "world-internal" rule that would lead from A to B (or C, or nothing, ...). What actually happens is "world-external", not located within the imaginative space of my mind, but in my will acting upon that space.

My "random proof of God" is now obvious, I assume. If there are truly random phenomena in our world, they cannot be "world-internally" determined, at least we cannot understand how that could be. Whereas if we assume that they are determined "world-externally", by some creative will acting upon our world, then we can understand that true randomness can be seen in the world. And this creative will we call God.

Obviously the counter-argument exists that "we just cannot (not 'do not') understand" how nature realizes randomness, how the (quantum) coin knows which way to actually fall. That is fine, but it clearly is a fundamentally non-rational claim. Whereas my explanation in terms of God may not be satisfying as far as God is concerned (I cannot explain why God chooses this or that), but it is a rational claim about the actualization of randomness.

Note further that it is not fair to say that I've merely hidden the non-rational randomness within that word "God". For I have not explained the stochastic actuality of the world by another stochastic entity. I have rather explained it by God's will. At a minimum then this argument reduces two mysteries (randomness and free will) to aspects of one mystery, free will.

If my argument holds, then the upshot is that Einstein was both right and wrong. He was right in being deeply suspicious about the claim of QM that true randomness exists (Einstein was one of the champions of the "hidden variables" idea). He was wrong however (as demonstrated by Bell's inequality experiments) to say this:

quote:
Letter to Max Born (4 December 1926) in "The Born-Einstein Letters" translated by Irene Born, Walker and Company, New York, 1971 (via Wikipedia):
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the "old one." I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.

Quite to the contrary: If the world can be understood rationally, then God must play dice.

And in fact, since all the world is built on quantum foundations, we get here a "modern" sense of what it means that God keeps the world in existence by continued creation. God constantly decides by His will what quantum randomness becomes actual.

And God said, "Let there be tails"; and there was tails. And there was the beginning of a quantum coin toss and there was its end, a second Planck time.

[ 27. December 2014, 18:13: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

Maybe I slept through it, but was there actually a proof of anything in that?

--Tom Clune

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

No.

There was an unnecessary proliferation of entities though.

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

I follow you through the "We have to think of it as deterministic" bit because I've read my Kant.

I have problems where you make the move

1. A>BvC

2. B

Therefore A>B

I know of no logical proof that can get us from A>BvC to A>B. So I can't see how your argument works.

Zach

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I follow you through the "We have to think of it as deterministic" bit because I've read my Kant.

I have problems where you make the move

1. A>BvC

2. B

Therefore A>B

I know of no logical proof that can get us from A>BvC to A>B. So I can't see how your argument works.

Zach

I think it goes:
1. A>BvC

2. God>B

Therefore A>B, and furthermore, God. But I'm not entirely sure...

--Tom Clune

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

A nice piece of work. The only point I'd query on first reading is where you move from God's will to free will - I don't see any necessary equivalence there.

I guess from Martin's and Zach's reactions they don't recognise the 'amazing mystery' you referred to at the beginning.

[ 08. November 2010, 20:31: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Orlando098 (# 14930) on :

I'm sure it's terribly impressive, but I don't have the stamina to read through it.. oh well, I guess I will have to stay unsure

Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :

Okay. So, now you've proven logically He exists, how do you explain why He's such a shit?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I follow you through the "We have to think of it as deterministic" bit because I've read my Kant.

I have problems where you make the move

1. A>BvC

2. B

Therefore A>B

I know of no logical proof that can get us from A>BvC to A>B. So I can't see how your argument works.

Zach

I take the -> of IngoB's formulae to be that of causality, not logical implication.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Not from the Clapham omnibus, no Dave. The relevance of it. That stuff changes is an amazing mystery, yeah. And ? Am I missing something ?

This random 'proof' of God is not transferable.

It is no such thing.

Ever so clever as it undoubtedly, obviously is, this emperor has no clothes.

His bollocks are exposed Dave.

Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on :

You are assuming that the world has to be rationally understandable. Maybe it can't. Or maybe it can but not by us.
I agree that the randomness at the heart of Quantum Mechanics can be somewhat disturbing.
But why is a being that makes the decisions instantaneously for each of the roughly 10 to the 84 particles in the observable universe a good explanation for the randomness in nature?
Assuming it needs explaining.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
I have problems where you make the move

1. A>BvC
2. B
Therefore A>B

I know of no logical proof that can get us from A>BvC to A>B. So I can't see how your argument works.

Firstly, a necessary condition of the argument is that no other deterministically causal explanation exists for a truly random A-?->(B or C). If A merely provides a possibility of "B or C" (for example A could be the experimenter setting up a quantum coin toss, and his lab as it is being set up), but then it is actually "D->B" which selects B from the possibilities, then I would consider D to be deterministically causal (in the circumstance of A).

Secondly, my argument is not based on logic but on physics (or perhaps "metaphysics", though I'm sticking as close to experiment as the physical concept of the "collapse of the wavefunction" does, which is usually considered a part of physics). In fact then, B happens. That's not a logical deduction itself, rather I operate with (hopefully) logically consistent argument on that fact.

Thirdly, it is precisely the whole point of my argument that there is no "world internal" explanation of the actualization of randomness: B does not follow "logically" (causally, really), but it does in fact follow (actually). The basic argument is hence: True randomness is inexplicable in this world. Yet true randomness exists. Therefore either the world is inexplicable, or an explanation exists apart from the world. The latter option we call God. The former is a viable choice, but one which I would find rather ironic for most atheists.

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
The only point I'd query on first reading is where you move from God's will to free will - I don't see any necessary equivalence there.

In contrast, I'm not sure what an "non-free will" is supposed to mean, in particular when one refers to God. But this is a side issue here, so I'll leave it at that for now. Perhaps that's something to discuss in a different thread?

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Okay. So, now you've proven logically He exists, how do you explain why He's such a shit?

On the assumption that this is a serious question: Apart from hope (or, if you like, "wishful thinking") I know of no argument that shows that God is not a shit. Based on Christian revelation, however, some reasonable hope can be maintained that He smells of roses. I at least certainly can offer no more than that.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
You are assuming that the world has to be rationally understandable.

Nope. I'm saying that if it is rationally understandable, then it requires God as explanation. The fun bit is that it is usually believers (of various kinds, not necessarily Christian) who are OK with a universe that is fundamentally non-explicable, whereas it is atheists (or at least the so-called "brights") who typically insist on an explicable universe. Contra the latter, my point is that a basic, "experimentally proven" feature of the universe is best explained by God.

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
But why is a being that makes the decisions instantaneously for each of the roughly 10 to the 84 particles in the observable universe a good explanation for the randomness in nature?

Simply because any explanation is better than no possible explanation, if indeed the explanation offered matches known facts and some explanation is sought.

[ 08. November 2010, 21:40: Message edited by: IngoB ]

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
That stuff changes is an amazing mystery, yeah.

Sure, it's stating the obvious, from a disinterested, tomorrow we may die point of view. But so is every last bit of academic theology, if we happen to be able to be familiar with whatever reality is being considered with respect to God.

quote:
And ? Am I missing something ?

Interest in God the reality, perhaps? If your interest is only from a personal salvation point of view, poking holes in other people's theology might provide reinforcement for your assumptions about what you find obvious. But that's mostly trivially easy. Where this kind of exercise might lead could be uncomfortable. It might convince us we are wrong.

quote:
This random 'proof' of God is not transferable.

Transferable to what? It's a standalone connection of God's will with reality as being described by contemporary science. What do you want to transfer it to?

quote:
this emperor has no clothes.

That's bluster, Martin, unless you can show errors in the OP's logic. The result may not interest you, but that doesn't mean it's not a result.

[ 08. November 2010, 22:20: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

That's the great thing about symbolic logic- it can sum up arguments about anything and examine the soundness of the argument itself. Which is why there is no way to get from A>BvC to A>B.

Leaving that behind, it seems to me you are falling into the same mistake as "deterministic chaos." You seek to explain randomness by denying it. "It's not random- God did it."

Zach

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

You're having a laugh Dave.

"It's a standalone connection of God's will with reality as being described by contemporary science."

No it isn't.

That's Kant for you.

There are NO net arguments for God in 'reason', ALL of the arguments of science are against.

No connection has been established as Ikkyu sees.

Say it has all you like.

It hasn't.

It hasn't has the day, the inertia, needs more WORK to be overcome (what a perfect analogy for what Spongiform atheism has to do up against orthodoxy).

Make risibly spurious claims about the reality of God to you transcending mine all you will.

God is no less real to me and the parsimonious reality of God including intrinsic, fundamental, hypostatic, essential indeterminism has yet to be antithetically refuted or even equalled.

The abstract - thought - and the concrete - creation - are fuzzy all the way up.

I could be wrong on what ? That the future has happened ? That's not even wrong.

God does NOT decide what becomes actual EXCEPT by will. Exceptionally. He could not care less what would become actual if He didn't. He does NOT decide what the spin of electrons is, whether it will rain on me tomorrow based on the configuration of the Earth and Sun now or who will be damned in eternity from now or even conceived, during the endless increase of His government.

He can't. They are meaningless questions.

As the incomparably brilliant IngoB says, there are no hidden variables: there are no 'ideal' Platonic electrons.

God's will IS the - indeterminate - reality described by contemporary science. He's holding nothing back, there is nothing between it and Him. It IS Him.

He has NO CHOICE in the ... matter. But to supervene. To create life, mind. To save.

Again, am I MISSING something here ? I MUST be surely.

Something intellectualist ?

Help IngoB stoop to conquer will you ? He REFUSES to do it for me.

Which makes me think he can't.

Intellectually.

Doesn't have the teaching ability.

The metaphors. The analogies.

Just the Jungian certainty.

I can understand that.

The fact that you guys all agree it's brilliant and explains everything or will do just around the corner sure does mean I don't understand something.

;0)

I won't be following you as we haven't even actually started.

Posted by Zach82 (# 3208) on :

quote:
There are NO net arguments for God in 'reason', ALL of the arguments of science are against.

Oh, Lordy, do I imagine I will regret asking this but...

Martin... which scientific arguments are against God again? I mean, name one or two.

Zach

Posted by pjkirk (# 10997) on :

This reminds me a little bit of the Chewbacca Defense (South Park).

It also reminds me of the many attempted "proofs" of God via Godel's Incompleteness Theorem.

You seem to rely on stochastic processes not making sense and being inconsistent with how we perceive reality, but don't show why things need to match our perception of reality. I think history of the last few centuries (and QM) show exactly why things often *don't* make sense to us, but are how things work. Why is this so very different from the others?

And while you ostensibly show that something is needed "outside" the system (assuming your need for one is sensible and just), you have not met the huge burden to call this thing "God." How do we prove the usual omniscient, omnipresent, timelessness, singular in nature, etc, etc, traits that people give God? How do we know there is interaction in the way we think of things? (Or is the voice in the air just a manipulation of probabilities for vibrations, etc?) How were things created, if they were?

I'm comfortable w/ the possibility of a God, and don't expect I'll ever come to a decision either way for one. It's the specifics that I'm so very uncomfortable with.

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

Ingo, does that not negate, or at least ignore, chaos theory (which surely has to be more than a theory at this point in any case)?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
But why is a being that makes the decisions instantaneously for each of the roughly 10 to the 84 particles in the observable universe a good explanation for the randomness in nature?
Simply because any explanation is better than no possible explanation, if indeed the explanation offered matches known facts and some explanation is sought.

But aren't you then in danger of providing a God of the gaps? If in 20 years science comes up with an explanation for what is currently inexplicable and upon which your proof rests, then out the window it goes.

Posted by fletcher christian (# 13919) on :

But it's already out the window. Chaos is the gap.

Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on :

To be fair to IngoB's original argument. He does not say that the randomness in classical systems is a problem (That would be Chaos). The randomness he takes issue with is that in quantum systems.
The difference as IngoB correctly pointed out is that one is random in practice because we can never know all of the variables in they system well enough to account for them (That's Chaos). But in theory if we had enough data to enough significant figures we could predict the randomness out.
Quantum systems on the other hand are random in a way that can never be eliminated by more data.

But defining "God" as that which explains the randomness at a quantum level, even if you find that explanation both satisfactory and necessary.
Is quite far from any definitions of the Christian God I have heard before, as already pointed out by pjkirk.
And a God that "designs" a universe that has to be micromanaged to that incredible amount of detail, Is just not a very efficient God. ( Remember he has to tell more than 10 to the 84 particles exactly what to do at every instant)

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

Is "efficient" one of the necessary or even expected properties of God?

Posted by pjkirk (# 10997) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Is "efficient" one of the necessary or even expected properties of God?

Wisdom is, which makes efficiency a not unreasonable inference. Not a great one, since you can argue around it, but if God is as smart, wise, etc, as people say he is, the situation as Ikkyu describes it is pretty silly.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Is "efficient" one of the necessary or even expected properties of God?
Wisdom is, which makes efficiency a not unreasonable inference. Not a great one, since you can argue around it, but if God is as smart, wise, etc, as people say he is, the situation as Ikkyu describes it is pretty silly.

Doesn't follow. Maybe it's the way God chooses to be intimately related to his universe rather than aloof.

Posted by pjkirk (# 10997) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Is "efficient" one of the necessary or even expected properties of God?
Wisdom is, which makes efficiency a not unreasonable inference. Not a great one, since you can argue around it, but if God is as smart, wise, etc, as people say he is, the situation as Ikkyu describes it is pretty silly.
Doesn't follow. Maybe it's the way God chooses to be intimately related to his universe rather than aloof.

If this is intimate, I'd hate to see his aloof. Oh wait, I'm not sure I could tell the difference.

Posted by Apocalypso (# 15405) on :

What about if the coin lands on its edge? Rare, but it's been known to happen . . .

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
God is no less real to me and the parsimonious reality of God including intrinsic, fundamental, hypostatic, essential indeterminism has yet to be antithetically refuted or even equalled.

To quote Numpty from another thread, it depends what you mean by God. What do you mean by God, Martin?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
What about if the coin lands on its edge? Rare, but it's been known to happen . . .

That's just God showing off.

Posted by Johnny S (# 12581) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
we cannot reduce it (completely) to some "deterministic chaos" as above. Thus the universe stops making sense microscopically. In fact, since in reality our classical world is built on quantum foundations, we should have to say that our sense of things is merely statistical in the final analysis.

I hope with this lengthy introduction I've set the stage for a very simple proof of the existence of God. Take a truly random process, i.e., make it "quantum" to be sure that it is not just some deterministic chaos.

I agree with others that this isn't really a proof for the existence for God but it is a rational argument offering evidence for some kind of prime mover.

However, I'm still completely confused (both on this thread and on the Calvin thread) exactly what Martin's objection is. He rejects both indeterminism and determinism. All that I see left is genuine chaos.

As Ingo says, the universe makes sense at a macroscopic level. Martin's position, as I understand it, makes all life entirely meaningless and random.

Now, I'm willing to concede that Martin's posts are consistent with this position but I can't see any evidence that anyone else is.

Posted by pjkirk (# 10997) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
What about if the coin lands on its edge? Rare, but it's been known to happen . . .
That's just God showing off.

Is this part of his "intimate relations?"

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
What about if the coin lands on its edge? Rare, but it's been known to happen . . .
That's just God showing off.
Is this part of his "intimate relations?"

Can I plead the 5th here?

Posted by pjkirk (# 10997) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Can I plead the 5th here?

I don't see how it actually applies, but feel free to traipse on to other threads and leave this unanswered. I couldn't stop you anyways.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

You're taking this far too seriously. "God showing off" wasn't meant to be anything more than a grin.

[eta missing ]

[ 09. November 2010, 03:08: Message edited by: mousethief ]

Posted by pjkirk (# 10997) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
You're taking this far too seriously.

I get accused of that a lot. My reply was meant to (ham-handedly, I guess) prod a reply to my previous statement about aloofness. Perhaps I'll start another thread about it.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

I'd never have guessed that's what you were driving at (obviously).

Your "aloof" comment seemed to me to go off in the direction of apologetics/problem-of-evil, a tangent to this thread, and a subject on which I have almost nothing to say.

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :

A coin isn't A that then --> B or C. It is B/C that changes to C/B or stays as B/C. 'cept when it lands on edge.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
That's the great thing about symbolic logic- it can sum up arguments about anything and examine the soundness of the argument itself. Which is why there is no way to get from A>BvC to A>B.

As I've discussed above: (1) your statement is plain wrong (physics cannot be reduced to logic alone), (2) as far as it is right, it supports my argument (that B does not follow in a random case is precisely my point).

quote:
Originally posted by Zach82:
Leaving that behind, it seems to me you are falling into the same mistake as "deterministic chaos." You seek to explain randomness by denying it. "It's not random- God did it."

You have not demonstrated any mistake in my argument. Furthermore, what you say is simply not true. To the contrary, my argument is that if something is truly random in the world then it can be understood only by God acting upon the world. Randomness is hence a question of the reference frame. Throw a (quantum) coin and it will be 50% heads and with 50% tails, and there is no "world internal" way of telling which way it is going to go. It is truly random by all measurements that one performs, indeed, by all thinkable experiments. This is in no way hindered by saying that God causes this randomness, precisely because God's causation is not "world internal". It is is of a different kind.

quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:
You seem to rely on stochastic processes not making sense and being inconsistent with how we perceive reality, but don't show why things need to match our perception of reality. I think history of the last few centuries (and QM) show exactly why things often *don't* make sense to us, but are how things work. Why is this so very different from the others?

Of course nothing has shown why things do not make sense to us. Otherwise they would make sense to us then. Science operates successfully upon refusing "why" questions of a particular kind. Getting used to leaving certain questions alone is however not the same as obtaining answers.

Anyway, what I do here is to pit "rational realism" against science, by taking a hard look at something that is generally taken for granted or being glossed over: randomness. You can solve this dilemma by grabbing one of its horns, but you cannot (in my opinion, and no counter-argument has been given) hold onto both horns. I've stated several times now that it is valid choice to abandon "rational realism". However, few atheists argue "I'm a non-rational operationalist, hence I can claim validly that God does not exist." The force of my dilemma is a leveling of that high ground upon which "brights" in particular like to stand.

quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:
And while you ostensibly show that something is needed "outside" the system (assuming your need for one is sensible and just), you have not met the huge burden to call this thing "God." How do we prove the usual omniscient, omnipresent, timelessness, singular in nature, etc, etc, traits that people give God?

I can simply call this "world external" power "God". Furthermore, that this "God" is compatible with say the Christian God, in the sense that the Christian God could fulfill this function, is obvious. That this "God" must have other specific features (which would make the Christian conception more plausible), that would indeed require more argument. Such arguments are of course out there, but I'm not interested in them here. If I can successfully show that there is a "God", unless one is willing to abandon "rational realism", then I'm done here.

quote:
Originally posted by pjkirk:
How do we know there is interaction in the way we think of things? (Or is the voice in the air just a manipulation of probabilities for vibrations, etc?)

I can offer no argument for reality that goes beyond appeal to a sense of reality that I'm sure you in fact share. One has to start somewhere, and if we can deny that things are, then frankly there is nothing left to argue with.

quote:
Originally posted by fletcher christian:
Ingo, does that not negate, or at least ignore, chaos theory (which surely has to be more than a theory at this point in any case)?

I've discussed deterministic chaos at length in my OP. My assumption is that it has been proven - by experiments on Bell's inequality - that nature can be random in a more fundamental way than a positive Lyapunov exponent.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
But aren't you then in danger of providing a God of the gaps? If in 20 years science comes up with an explanation for what is currently inexplicable and upon which your proof rests, then out the window it goes.

One has to make a distinction here. My objection to true randomness cannot be touched by physical experiment as such. As long as science in some way or form claims that there is indeed true randomness, my argument retains its force. What could happen however is that science shows that true randomness does in fact not exist in nature. Then indeed my argument would fail. However, my objection to true randomness is not original in the context of science (as mentioned, Einstein raised it and indeed Schrödinger's cat was another dig at it), but science has rather forcefully asserted that it exists over the last eighty years. This includes very hard experimental evidence. So the situation is more that science is enthusiastically opening this particular "gap for God".

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
And a God that "designs" a universe that has to be micromanaged to that incredible amount of detail, Is just not a very efficient God.

Maybe. But it is of course the classical Christian doctrine that God is continuously keeping all the universe in being. The Christian God is not a Deist watchmaker. Furthermore, nobody but Dave Marshall spotted the bigger picture. Causation as such is utterly mysterious. I'm just going on about randomness because there it is much easier to make people feel the strangeness. There's however nothing trivial in A -> B. Why would A become B? To say that it is "the rule" does not provide an answer, it is just a description. So really I would argue that God is needed as "CPU clock" of the universe anyway, whether A-?>(B or C) ... B or A -> B, God is needed for the "next step" every Planck time. However, I prefer to work with randomness here because it is easier to argue with common sense rather than against it.

quote:
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
What about if the coin lands on its edge? Rare, but it's been known to happen . . .

I discussed that in the OP...

Posted by Patdys (# 9397) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Okay. So, now you've proven logically He exists, how do you explain why He's such a shit?

My understanding is that God likes to think He is a doctor.

Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :

Orthopaedics, no doubt.

Posted by Big Oil (# 15713) on :

quote:
"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
...
It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't though of that" and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Douglas Adams

Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Okay. So, now you've proven logically He exists, how do you explain why He's such a shit?
On the assumption that this is a serious question: Apart from hope (or, if you like, "wishful thinking") I know of no argument that shows that God is not a shit. Based on Christian revelation, however, some reasonable hope can be maintained that He smells of roses. I at least certainly can offer no more than that.

It was a semi-serious question, though tangential. I was trying to say something about the problem of logical proofs of God’s existence being that they beg pretty awful questions about His existent nature. It’s a Pandora’s box of worms.

But my vote for OP of the Year, nonetheless.

Posted by Alfred E. Neuman (# 6855) on :

My understanding is, the architect is not a general contractor and couldn't care less if you can wield a compass or square. That is your concern.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
I was trying to say something about the problem of logical proofs of God’s existence being that they beg pretty awful questions about His existent nature. It’s a Pandora’s box of worms.

Sure is. I've never understood the "comfy" view of God. If God is your couch, then one day that couch will swallow you, chew you through and through, and spit you out half-digested. Yet one has to take a stand, that is the human thing to do - and the trinity of Sunyata, Chaos and Cthulhu provides no hope to me.

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
But my vote for OP of the Year, nonetheless.

Thank you. [Smile]

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

I may have missed this part of the "proof", but why exactly is saying 'it's random' or 'we can't know in advance which way the quantum coin will come down' not rational?

Posted by Barnabas62 (# 9110) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

The Christian God is not a Deist watchmaker. Furthermore, nobody but Dave Marshall spotted the bigger picture. Causation as such is utterly mysterious.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Only limited internet access for a few more days, but thanks for this fascinating thread.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I may have missed this part of the "proof", but why exactly is saying 'it's random' or 'we can't know in advance which way the quantum coin will come down' not rational?

Just to be clear, it is rational to say "After throwing the (quantum) coin, either heads or tails will result." The non-rational moment is precisely in the transition from the coin being thrown to (say) heads resulting. Rational means "agreeable to reason", and with reason I mean "mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences". But I cannot conclude, judge or infer from the (quantum) coin toss that in fact heads results. Neither can anybody else, if the toss was truly random.

A stream of consciousness representation of reason tracking observed events would be a bit like this: "... and this causes that, and that causes this, and next it results in this and now ... hang on, random event, wait for it ... ok, we have that result, apparently ... but that causes this and this causes that and next ...". This break in the tracking of causality performed by reason is what I'm talking about. "It just so happens" is simply no explanation, but merely a descriptive affirmation, and there is no purchase for the rational mind in that.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Just to be clear, it is rational to say "After throwing the (quantum) coin, either heads or tails will result." The non-rational moment is precisely in the transition from the coin being thrown to (say) heads resulting.

It may be that I'm missing some high-level thinking here, but if there are a finite number of possibile outcomes arising from a given action, each equally possible, then why does there have to be a mechanism for explaining why any given result actually happens?

After the event, is "the coin was tossed and the result was heads" not a rational enough explanation?

quote:
Rational means "agreeable to reason", and with reason I mean "mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences". But I cannot conclude, judge or infer from the (quantum) coin toss that in fact heads results.

You can do so after the fact, because the result is observable. As for why it resulted in heads? Because it had to result in either heads or tails, and this time it came down that way round.

quote:
A stream of consciousness representation of reason tracking observed events would be a bit like this: "... and this causes that, and that causes this, and next it results in this and now ... hang on, random event, wait for it ... ok, we have that result, apparently ... but that causes this and this causes that and next ...".

So you're trying to track causality through everything that has ever happened? Why?

Besides, it's not a truly random event. There is a finite number - in this case two - of possible outcomes, which have known effects. We're not standing around without a clue what will happen - we know that the result has to be either H or T. Why, oh why, do you maintain that we have to know exactly what caused any specific individual result?

quote:
This break in the tracking of causality performed by reason is what I'm talking about.

I don't see a 'random' choice between a finite number of possible outcomes as a break in causality. The coin being tossed is what caused it to land on heads, even if next time the coin is tossed it lands on tails. The causality is there for all to see - what isn't there is the ability to predict future events based on those that have already happened.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
What about if the coin lands on its edge? Rare, but it's been known to happen . . .
That's just God showing off.

If I follow IngoB's argument, I think it's really God not paying attention...

--Tom Clune

Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
if there are a finite number of possibile outcomes arising from a given action, each equally possible, then why does there have to be a mechanism for explaining why any given result actually happens?

After the event, is "the coin was tossed and the result was heads" not a rational enough explanation?

Of course it's rational after the observing event, but QM tells us that the result being observed is determined by the observation, not by itself. Until then, the (quantum) coin is both heads and tails.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

quote:
Originally posted by tclune:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:

quote:
Originally posted by Apocalypso:
What about if the coin lands on its edge? Rare, but it's been known to happen . . .
That's just God showing off.
If I follow IngoB's argument, I think it's really God not paying attention...

Or Him deciding to make it more interesting...

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
if there are a finite number of possibile outcomes arising from a given action, each equally possible, then why does there have to be a mechanism for explaining why any given result actually happens?

After the event, is "the coin was tossed and the result was heads" not a rational enough explanation?
Of course it's rational after the observing event, but QM tells us that the result being observed is determined by the observation, not by itself. Until then, the (quantum) coin is both heads and tails.

If a tree falls, and nobody hears it, does it still make a noise? [Yipee]

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
As for why it resulted in heads? Because it had to result in either heads or tails, and this time it came down that way round.

Precisely, it had to result in either option (rationally: with reason), but it did result in one option not the other (non-rationally: without reason). By claiming that the event is truly random, you are stating that it could have been tails when it was in fact heads. How did the (quantum) coin "decide" what it really is going to be then? The answer that "something in the (quantum) coin decided it" (hidden variables) is experimentally false. Thus nothing caused the (quantum) coin to flip this way, it landed as heads entirely "ex nihilo", without (world-internal) reason. That leaves you with a choice: either abandon rational realism, or accept that there is some world-external reason (traditionally called "God").

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
So you're trying to track causality through everything that has ever happened? Why?

It's my hobby and profession. However, I'm doing so here because the failure mode of this causal tracking points to God.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Besides, it's not a truly random event. There is a finite number - in this case two - of possible outcomes, which have known effects.

And? That makes it no less "truly random". It merely means that this "true randomness" operates only on two clearly specified options.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Why, oh why, do you maintain that we have to know exactly what caused any specific individual result?

I don't maintain that. However, I'm interested in the statement that we cannot possibly know relevant causes if something is "random". That is a very strong statement, and since quantum random events are far from rare (in fact, ultimately everything appears to be based on them), they sure are important.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I don't see a 'random' choice between a finite number of possible outcomes as a break in causality.

That is so simply because you refuse to investigate the choice process itself. You merely look at the state before, which is explicable, and after, which is also explicable. But something happened between before and after, since the state before is not the same as the state after. You can however say nothing causal about this happenstance itself. There's your break.

Posted by sebby (# 15147) on :

I admit to a cursory glance at the prolix OP and subsequent posts. However, I am interested in the fact that such an idea was posted and welcome and enjoy debates like this.

The internal fallacy in the argument is that the proposer uses the God-of-the-gaps idea to explain and to maintain that there is a reason behind the non-randomness on QM. That there is a reasom is wishful thinking, and the way the argument is proposed suggests the desire for a theological outcome and a looking at the data or argument, desirous or even determined that this be the case. It is not necessary to have a reason; things can just BE. The propser may not think this is the case, but it is just a little like subjective science; and such a thing can exist, despite the internal confusion.

A contender for the Templeman Prize?

Posted by sebby (# 15147) on :

Templeton Prize, even. sorry.

Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Thus nothing caused the (quantum) coin to flip this way, it landed as heads entirely "ex nihilo", without (world-internal) reason. That leaves you with a choice: either abandon rational realism, or accept that there is some world-external reason (traditionally called "God").

Yeah, actually, I’m struggling with this.

Why must there be a cause? You seem to be saying that it’s because without one, we cannot be rationally satisfied, but I don’t see how it follows that we must therefore abandon rational realism.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

In the scenario presented, there must be a cause, it's just not been observed.

At the quantum level, observation may be a problem , but its just a question of time for its understanding and I understand there is already a framework for that.

And the basis for this

quote:
The answer that "something in the (quantum) coin decided it" (hidden variables) is experimentally false.

being? if I missed it, could someone point out where it's chalked out?

Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on :

IngoB is saying that "God" tells upwards of 10^84 particles what to do every Plank time (10^-44 seconds).
Then these particles do it in a random way. So random that there is no experiment even in principle that can distinguish that randomness from an uncaused version of that randomness.

So I think this proof is safe from the Douglas Adams argument.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Yorick:
Why must there be a cause? You seem to be saying that it’s because without one, we cannot be rationally satisfied, but I don’t see how it follows that we must therefore abandon rational realism.

Well, you have to abandon the idea that things really are (have actual being independent of your perception of them), and that the way they change has some in principle discernible reason. Not that in practice you would - or even could - find out all reasons for all things. But the idea is that there is some reason to be found always, if one only goes looking.

You can name that idea any way you want. I call it "rational realism". This idea remains the very engine of natural science, in spite of quantum randomness. There are some slick moves concerning that particular "issue" (Copenhagen interpretation and all that), but in practice most scientists simply attach the label "random" to certain things and then happily return to rational realism about absolutely everything else. My point is that this is the modern equivalent of "here be dragons", except that Someone else may lurk there...

Oh yes, and I'd happily accept the £1,000,000 sterling of the Templeton prize. I know no shame.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by footwasher:
In the scenario presented, there must be a cause, it's just not been observed.

That's what Einstein thought as well, but he has been proven wrong - experimentally.

quote:
Originally posted by footwasher:
if I missed it, could someone point out where it's chalked out?

The OP contains a link to a recent experiment on Bell's inequalities, published in PNAS. A freely accessible preprint thereof can be found here. (The result is nothing new as such. It just eliminates experimentally some "loopholes" people have thought up concerning earlier experiments.)

Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on :

I am rather partial to sunyata (Buddhist emptiness).
So I already don't think things "exist" in isolation and without depending on everything else.
So it does not bother me that some things may not be knowable even in principle unless you actually measure them. If the world is like that, the world is like that.

Most scientists do not bother that much with being philosophically consistent. They just go with what seems to work. And will readily abandon it when its stops working. The quantum randomness we are discussing, while it underlies all scientific explanation. Does not have that many observable consequences at the "macro" level so it is very efficient to work under earlier assumptions that work very well in the everyday world. It works.
When ever there is a need to explain something on the macro level using quantum Ideas. Scientists are not afraid to do that.
Your argument IngoB seems to be, as has been pointed out previously a "God of the Gaps" argument.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
By claiming that the event is truly random, you are stating that it could have been tails when it was in fact heads.

Yes, of course.

quote:
How did the (quantum) coin "decide" what it really is going to be then? The answer that "something in the (quantum) coin decided it" (hidden variables) is experimentally false. Thus nothing caused the (quantum) coin to flip this way, it landed as heads entirely "ex nihilo", without (world-internal) reason.

Essentially, yes. There is no discernable or observable reason why it landed H rather than T.

quote:
That leaves you with a choice: either abandon rational realism, or accept that there is some world-external reason (traditionally called "God").

I disagree. Just as the problem of evil doesn't force us to abandon the concept of an omnipotent loving God, quantum uncertainty doesn't require us to abandon rational realism.

It might make transporter beams a bit tricky to perfect though. Bring on the Heisenberg Compensators [Biased]

quote:
However, I'm doing so here because the failure mode of this causal tracking points to God.

You've claimed before that the fact that science can't explain what happened before the Big Bang 'proves' God as well. One is left with the impression that the search for a scientific proof of God is something that's very important to you, but I'm afraid that I don't think you'll ever find a cast-iron one.

quote:
I'm interested in the statement that we cannot possibly know relevant causes if something is "random". That is a very strong statement, and since quantum random events are far from rare (in fact, ultimately everything appears to be based on them), they sure are important.

We may not know what causes them, but by 'eck they're dependable, aren't they! I mean, at the quantum level there might be nothing preventing me from turning inside out or splitting perfectly down the middle, but at the macro level I know that just ain't about to happen. Maybe this quantum uncertainty isn't as important as you make out.

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I don't see a 'random' choice between a finite number of possible outcomes as a break in causality.
That is so simply because you refuse to investigate the choice process itself.

I don't even adknowledge it as a choice. It just happens - nothing decides it.

Posted by footwasher (# 15599) on :

If what is being stated in the premise is true, then many technological efforts should not be delivering. But since those endeavours ARE delivering, I wont be taking the short cuts I normally resort to: reading peer reviews to check the weaknesses in the claim! IOW, no airplanes falling out of the sky, no moonshots disappearing ignominously into the sun, no nano surgery going awry, ON A REGULAR BASIS, nada. There's a random nudge in every toss of the coin right? Show it, with results.

Because that's what counts, results.

And the obverse is true as well:

Feynman's observation that peer reviews were rarely reliable because the number of people who were qualified to review cutting edge science in highly specialised, arcane fields, could be counted on the fingers of one hand holds true, and even then the conclusions were not done deals. Case to point, Fleischmann's claims were not shot down by peer review, and it wasn't until big business ponied up the cash and asked him to deliver was the lie exposed.

You could say that the external nudge occurred at a level much higher than the coarse level of newtonian physics, but then it shouldn't affect the outcome at that level, right? Stream of consciousness should have been able to catch all the internal forces at play that affected every spin and twist of the coin. Replace the thumb with a mechanical flipper, and every accelerated or retarded motion of the coin would be traceable back to the deflection and rebound of the flipper, if you could refine its action to an acceptable amount of repeatability, through control of all the parameters.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

I think the problem, Ingo, is that you are trying to solve a problem that no longer exists. Yes, maybe having a gap in a chain of causation use to be a cause for consternation, but it no longer is.

Just as we have re-defined geometry to allow for non-euclidean geometries, and we have re-defined number theory to allow for the square root of -1 to be a number or to allow for infinite cardinalities, and we have redefined intertia such that continued motion is inertial and not just rest, so we have redefined causality to allow quantum gaps, and still accept the causal chain to be complete.

The problem is only a problem if you hold to the earlier concept of causality, which has been abandoned. You might just as well say that you have solved the problem of imaginary numbers by importing God. We don't need God to solve that problem; the problem has been solved by reframing the question.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

You said it Ingo: abandon rational realism, whatever that is (I thought that had been done 90 years ago?). And then there is certainly no need to invoke God - THE Hidden Variable in your schema - deciding, attomanaging anything: God versus the world is a false dichotomy.

If you think worlds, this is how they MUST be. The only theoretically possible choice is the indeterminate values of the dimensionless constants and stepping in every now and again to start life, mind, salvation.

We know that stuff does not inherently exist. God wills it to exist. And it HAS to be quantal, indeterminate, superpositioned. These are the simplest a prioris. Nothing else is possible, necessary: explanatory.

Certainly not the insanely staggering imparsimony of God having to decide all change for eternity.

I'm happy with the apparently chaotic, apparently random, forever ineffable, awesome mystery of stuff, within (redundant) fuzzy, indeterminate Reality where good wills out regardless.

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :

Isn't your argument just an inversion of the doctrine of the spheres? You have God on the inside as the prime mover instead of in the outer sphere.

What are the theological consequences of accepting your argument? Are we then saying that every thing that happens, even random appalling shit, is not simply "the will of God" in the general sense that is allowed to happen within creation, but that God is actually behind everything that happens?

Because, in that case, you may have proved God exists, but you have also proved the Yorick hypothesis: that He is a total and utter shit.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
Your argument IngoB seems to be, as has been pointed out previously a "God of the Gaps" argument.

And I have responded to that already. Frankly, I've never been impressed by that label at all. It requires prior ideological commitment to scientism to believe that "God of the gaps" is a devastating judgment, i.e., one must already assume that science can close all gaps that could house God. I have never heard any good argument for that scientistic faith. For all we know the universe is indeed full of unclosable gaps as far as human science is concerned, and God discernibly shines through some of them.

Furthermore, the number and everyday significance of truly random events is in the end neither here nor there. If only a single such event ever occurred, and if it influenced no other event in the universe, then my argument would still hold. I'm falsifying an idea, and a single counter-example will do for that.

Finally, you go on about the astronomical number of quantum events that God would have to decide every infinitesimal time step. On one hand, this would have to be thought through more carefully. After all, only measurements are occasions of "truly random events", at least in classical QM. As far as randomness goes at least, the difficult question then arises what counts as a measurement. On the other hand, as alternative you have to postulate an astronomical number of independent "gods", namely every single (random) event ever. They all somehow decide themselves: they just become this or that. This is a miraculous "just", and I fail to see how your scheme is inherently more "efficient" than one where a single "world external" Creator adjusts the lot of them according to His will.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
There is no discernable or observable reason why it landed H rather than T. ... quantum uncertainty doesn't require us to abandon rational realism.

These two statements are in strict contradiction with each other, on my terms. Define your terms.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
You've claimed before that the fact that science can't explain what happened before the Big Bang 'proves' God as well. One is left with the impression that the search for a scientific proof of God is something that's very important to you, but I'm afraid that I don't think you'll ever find a cast-iron one.

I don't particularly remember what you may be referring to. The "first cause" argument for God does not require a Big Bang, it works for an eternal universe just as well - and I've been aware of that for several years now. At any rate, I fail to see what possible relevance it could have how much I value "scientific" proofs of God, and I'm not at all interested in your personal prejudices concerning the topic. Arguments, please.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I don't even acknowledge it as a choice. It just happens - nothing decides it.

Fine. That's a non-rational stance though, by the dictionary definition of "rational" I've linked to above.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
I think the problem, Ingo, is that you are trying to solve a problem that no longer exists. Yes, maybe having a gap in a chain of causation use to be a cause for consternation, but it no longer is. ... The problem is only a problem if you hold to the earlier concept of causality, which has been abandoned.

Since when is truth a function of fashion? But anyway, what you say is simply not true. What has in fact happened, practically speaking, is that the "Copenhagen interpretation" turned into the "Copenhagen method". That is to say, for most practical purposes, the problem simply gets ignored by most physicists. And that is possible, because the "collapse of the wavefunction" works as a predictive mechanism. If you are merely trying to calculate what an electron will do when hitting a double slit, or whatever, then it is indeed sufficient to collapse the wavefunctions you've been calculating. The right results are obtained by that method. Physicists are usually busy with physics, not with philosophy, hence that is usually good enough for them.

However, a cottage industry certainly exists even within physics, which does in fact bother very much with the so-called "measurement problem". A reflection of this is shown even in the experimental paper I linked to: they are trying to close "loopholes" (for "hidden variables") precisely because some theorists are punching loopholes into the previous experiments. Furthermore, some of the weirdest ideas in all of physics have been proposed (seriously!) to solve this problem, just consider Everett's many worlds interpretation. This issue is very much alive in the community. However, since there is an effective method of dealing with quantum computation, the interest is now maintained by specialists.

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
We know that stuff does not inherently exist. God wills it to exist. And it HAS to be quantal, indeterminate, superpositioned.

It does not have to be so, but I see little point in arguing about that, since in fact it is so and since you are in the habit of strong assertion where you lack argument.

The problem that you have is simple: you do not believe what you are saying. Ultimately your God is still the Deist god, it's just that you have stuffed him into a Planck time. Your god creates some "indeterminate state" and then it somehow manages to exist and change indeterminately on its own (at least till the next tick of the cosmic clock), therefore your god does not know what will happen. Bollocks. You've abandoned your own principles. As soon as God lets go of anything, it ceases to be. Your indeterminate state can only exist, be, as long as God supports it. All the way. From its indeterminate beginning A-?->(B or C) to its indeterminate outcome A...B. God gave being to B there, God did not give being to C, hence A...C is not what happened. There is nobody and nothing but God that can give such being. To say that A is "created with indeterminate tendencies which then flow into either B or C on its own" is creating an idol, a godlet - a strange one, sure, that may just exist for a Planck time. Yet still a rival to God in the domain of being, and there's no God but Him. Who is this A that it can tell God that B will be, and not C? Where does your idol A derive its power from to make its decision and command the Almighty?

Your problem is that you think God's determinism is "world internal", hence that it stands in the way of freedom. If I command you to do this or that, then I have set limits to you. But God's determinism is "world external", hence it does not stand in the way of freedom, it makes it be. A...B now, and A...C later, and then again A...B perhaps - because God says "let there be this" without cease. He is the carrier wave of existence, thus every electron spin on your head is counted. Not in the world, where they are in indeterminate relationship to other beings, but in God, without whom all those electron spins would just stop being.

quote:
Originally posted by QLib:
Are we then saying that every thing that happens, even random appalling shit, is not simply "the will of God" in the general sense that is allowed to happen within creation, but that God is actually behind everything that happens?

Naturally, in the sense that all that is derives its being from God alone. This is the classical Christian position, of course.

quote:
Originally posted by QLib:
Because, in that case, you may have proved God exists, but you have also proved the Yorick hypothesis: that He is a total and utter shit.

Possibly. However, the usual arguments still apply. For example, that evil is not being, but a privation of being, and hence that God is not directly causing evil.

Furthermore, I did not want to go into "free will" here, because it is even more difficult than randomness. However, the same basic point will apply - somehow. God's determinism does not hinder your free will, it makes it be. Thus you can blame your sins on God in the sense that without God, you would not have the opportunity to sin. But not in the sense that God makes you sin.

I'm speculating that free will in us could be related to how "randomness" comes about. Imagine God delegating His power to determine something as random (world internal) in a specific manner (world external), for a restricted part of the universe (your body). Then all attempts to nail down your freedom deterministically would fail, because world internal the result would be random. However, world external your rational soul would choose what will happen. However, I do not know of any reasonable mechanism that would translate quantum randomness to brain function (pace Penrose et al.). Furthermore, I do not know in what sense God could delegate such powers to a human soul. Indeed, I'm not sure that I understand properly how God keeps souls in existence. Hence I cannot really give a "mechanistic" explanation here.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
They all somehow decide themselves: they just become this or that.

You continue to phrase this in terms of a decision being made, but that is not necessary. The coin does not decide to fall one way or the other, it just happens. There is no decision being made, because there is no consciousness there to make it. It's not decided, it's random.

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
There is no discernable or observable reason why it landed H rather than T. ... quantum uncertainty doesn't require us to abandon rational realism.
These two statements are in strict contradiction with each other, on my terms. Define your terms.

My terms as stated are quite simple: at the quantum level, the normal rules of physics do not apply. Therefore, neither does rational realism. But they both continue to apply at non-quantum levels.

quote:
The "first cause" argument for God does not require a Big Bang, it works for an eternal universe just as well - and I've been aware of that for several years now.

True.

quote:
At any rate, I fail to see what possible relevance it could have how much I value "scientific" proofs of God, and I'm not at all interested in your personal prejudices concerning the topic. Arguments, please.

Arguments? How about this: God is not scientifically provable. If He was, then He would be no more than another being or force within the physical universe.

The best you can do is point to gaps in our knowledge and say "God must have done it". But humans have been doing that for years, right back to when we couldn't understand why some crops failed and some thrived, so we said (a) god had done it.

And no, that doesn't mean I think we'll fill in all the gaps one day. It just means you can't use the gaps as proof of God. They're gaps - we don't know what fills them yet. Could be God, could be the Higgs Boson, could be an as-yet undiscovered Cosmic Force. But we don't know, and a "don't know" proves nothing.

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
I don't even acknowledge it as a choice. It just happens - nothing decides it.
Fine. That's a non-rational stance though, by the dictionary definition of "rational" I've linked to above.

If you absolutely insist on framing the conversation in your own terms, then fine. It's a non-rational stance. At the quantum level, rationality does not apply. Happy now?

quote:
As soon as God lets go of anything, it ceases to be. Your indeterminate state can only exist, be, as long as God supports it.

Your presuppositions are showing.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
You continue to phrase this in terms of a decision being made, but that is not necessary. The coin does not decide to fall one way or the other, it just happens. There is no decision being made, because there is no consciousness there to make it. It's not decided, it's random.

I did not intend to indicate any sort of consciousness there. I merely could not think of a good word for stating the fact that given two possible options, one "happened", and the other "did not happen". If you like we can say that the (quantum) coin "forked" into heads rather than tails, or something like that. My point is that this forking is mysterious to the mind. We can understand things obeying rules (the stone - due to gravity - falls down) and we can understand people making choices, but we cannot understand things "forking". Understanding is based on reason, and there is per definitionem no reason in "random forking".

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
My terms as stated are quite simple: at the quantum level, the normal rules of physics do not apply. Therefore, neither does rational realism.

Then as far as I can see we are in agreement about my analysis, you have merely chosen the other horn of the dilemma.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
How about this: God is not scientifically provable. If He was, then He would be no more than another being or force within the physical universe.

That's assertion followed by a non sequitur, at least if we take the general meaning of "God" (rather than the specific Christian one) that I've been using here. If one can show that experimental results are incompatible with fundamental intellectual principle, but only if "God" does not exist, then this is a proof of "God" which does not require reducing Him to an agent in the world. Of course, that proof is conditioned on the fundamental intellectual principle, but absolutely every analysis of anything is in some way conditioned on such principles.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
The best you can do is point to gaps in our knowledge and say "God must have done it".

Quite to the contrary, I have done better. I have pointed to advances in our knowledge that suggest an irresolvable difficulty, indicating that "God must have done it". As long as science continues to claim that there are some truly random events - and it was progress of science which suggested that, not the lack thereof - my argument will continue to hold. Of course, it only is compelling if one believes that "rational realism" is true. But that is not a religious principle as such.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
At the quantum level, rationality does not apply. Happy now?

Certainly. I think you are dead wrong, of course, but I cannot prove principle.

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Your presuppositions are showing.

I was talking to Martin, not to you, basing my arguments on what I believe Martin would agree with. I like to adapt my argument to the prior level of agreement.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Of course, it only is compelling if one believes that "rational realism" is true. But that is not a religious principle as such.

I find it far more likely that your 'proof' points to a weakness in our definition of the term "rational realism" than that it points irrevocably towards God. Afer all, it's not like "rational realism" is some kind of idol that cannot possibly be altered in any way.

Perhaps you should demonstrate why rational realism must mean what you say it does, and why it must be the only correct way of examining the world.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
Perhaps you should demonstrate why rational realism must mean what you say it does, and why it must be the only correct way of examining the world.

What "rational realism" means is simply a definition. I have argued above, using dictionary definitions of the words, why I think this particular label is appropriate for this particular principle.

I do not know how to argue for a principle this fundamental. Do you really believe that something can go from A to B, or from A to C, and nothing whatsoever determines in any sense or form whether it is going to be B or C, yet nevertheless A indeed becomes either "B and not C" or "C and not B"? I think that that is strictly impossible, but the only "argument" I can think of is basically repeating this question in various forms until you hopefully agree. That would be rather tiresome as a thread though... So it's best to ask once, and then stop.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Of course He has to. That's what the 'math' says. The second order differential equation that is the uncertainty principle for a start.

That's what Bell's paradox says.

Ther are NO hidden variables including in Him.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Do you really believe that something can go from A to B, or from A to C, and nothing whatsoever determines in any sense or form whether it is going to be B or C, yet nevertheless A indeed becomes either "B and not C" or "C and not B"?

Yes. I don't see a problem with that at all.

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

Clarification: I don't see a problem with that at the quantum level.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by QLib:
Because, in that case, you may have proved God exists, but you have also proved the Yorick hypothesis: that He is a total and utter shit.
Possibly. However, the usual arguments still apply. For example, that evil is not being, but a privation of being, and hence that God is not directly causing evil.

But this proves the same thing for any agent; the not-being-ness of evil is not God-specific. Hence no agent causes evil, hence there is no evil, hence the world is morally perfect, hence God has nothing to hold us responsible for, nothing to judge us for. We are morally pure.

quote:
Furthermore, I did not want to go into "free will" here, because it is even more difficult than randomness. However, the same basic point will apply - somehow. God's determinism does not hinder your free will, it makes it be. Thus you can blame your sins on God in the sense that without God, you would not have the opportunity to sin. But not in the sense that God makes you sin.

But we do not sin, because sin is evil and you have shown that evil can have no causal agent.

If there were such a thing as evil, I agree that your scheme here (or whatever we should call it) does not make God the author thereof; however, it certainly makes Her an accomplice.

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Frankly, I've never been impressed by that label [i.e. "God of the Gaps"] at all. It requires prior ideological commitment to scientism to believe that "God of the gaps" is a devastating judgment, i.e., one must already assume that science can close all gaps that could house God. I have never heard any good argument for that scientistic faith. For all we know the universe is indeed full of unclosable gaps as far as human science is concerned, and God discernibly shines through some of them.

One doesn't have to argue that all gaps are closeable. This is not an argument about the future but about the past. God was used to close gaps that science has since closed itself. Hence, using God to close gaps is a bad idea because we don't know which gaps science will close in the future that we are using God to close now, thus (at that time) gutting our "proof" of God, and submitting God (not to mention ourselves) to ridicule. We don't need to postulate a perfect science, only that the future will resemble the past. Which is a basic assumption of science (and daily life).

Posted by sanityman (# 11598) on :

IngoB, thanks for this. I'm not sure if I've understood you correctly, but could I ask:

1)Does you mention of deterministic chaos mean that you regard quantum randomness as directly responsible for this effect? As I understand it, there is no coherent account of quantum chaology (and some suggestion that the inherent scaling of quantum effects given by Planck's constant conflicts with the lack of scaling in macroscopic chaos), and the problem of unifying decriptions of the behaviour of microscopic and macroscopic systems remains unsolved.

I'm getting this from Polkinghorne's Exploring Reality, which I'd be interested to hear what you thought of. I think you're both driving at the same sort of thing: as he puts it, "If [physics] reports an epistemic deficit in its account due to the existence of intrinsic unpredictabilities... then there is an opportunity for the metaphysician to propose that... they correspond to actual ontological openness,allowing the operation of further causal principles"[1] (sorry to selectively quote, but JP is fond of long words and run-on sentences!)

2)Do you see this argument as the lower-level underpinning of arguments denying the possibility of meaningful thought if the universe is itself without meaning? Your comments about the 'high ground' of the Brights reminded me of this.

Thanks for a good thread,

- Chris.

--
[1]:Ch 2, p 33

[ 10. November 2010, 15:05: Message edited by: sanityman ]

Posted by GreyFace (# 4682) on :

I've thought for a long time that perhaps the ability to determine the outcome of QM random events allowed for the transcendent manipulation of reality we call providence, without every providential... erm... event for want of a better word being supernatural or miraculous*. But I hadn't seen the implication that Ingo's picked up on here. Nice one.

I'm not quite up on the consequences of abandoning rational realism as you've defined it, though. I seem to implicitly believe it but I'm not sure what difference it makes if it's gone.

* Is a miracle then anything other than a providential event which is statistically speaking, startlingly unlikely?

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
But this proves the same thing for any agent; the not-being-ness of evil is not God-specific.

That's a clever one, mousethief! But it's a bit off-topic, because nothing in my "random proof" requires anyone, God or man, to be morally good, evil or neutral. New thread perhaps?

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
One doesn't have to argue that all gaps are closeable. This is not an argument about the future but about the past. God was used to close gaps that science has since closed itself. Hence, using God to close gaps is a bad idea because we don't know which gaps science will close in the future that we are using God to close now

Abusus non tollit usum. (Abuse is not an argument against proper use.) If there is the possibility that God can be detected by unclosable gaps in human science, then it is IMNSHO the duty of both believers and scientists to explore this possibility as diligently as possible. And there's exactly nothing wrong with proposing a "God gap" that later is closed by natural science. That's simply a proper part of science in the general sense (here including theology). I think we can move beyond 19th century trench warfare between religion and science now, troglodytes like Dawkins notwithstanding.

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
Does you mention of deterministic chaos mean that you regard quantum randomness as directly responsible for this effect?

No. Deterministic chaos is entirely possible in "classical" systems. Anything nonlinear with more than three state variables can be chaotic. (Incidentally, I heartily recommend "Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos" by Steven H. Strogatz to anyone with sophomore uni maths. Just about the most fun and useful math book that I know.) My point was that "deterministic chaos" does not work for my argument, because while it may appear random, it is in fact deterministic. I need true randomness. For the same reason I keep writing "(quantum) coin toss", because a normal coin toss is likely not random, but deterministically chaotic.

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
"If [physics] reports an epistemic deficit in its account due to the existence of intrinsic unpredictabilities... then there is an opportunity for the metaphysician to propose that... they correspond to actual ontological openness,allowing the operation of further causal principles"

Yes, precisely. However, I'm not sure from your quote to what extent Polkinghorne makes the "world internal" vs. "world external" distinction, which is crucial IMHO. One cannot supervene on "world internal" causality from within the world. That reduces to a "world internal" causal chain. One has to step out to step in without a footprint.

quote:
Originally posted by sanityman:
Do you see this argument as the lower-level underpinning of arguments denying the possibility of meaningful thought if the universe is itself without meaning? Your comments about the 'high ground' of the Brights reminded me of this.

Control of randomness may be involved in meaningful thought, I actually talked about that above in discussing free will. However, I think the mechanism is likely even more exciting. On one hand there is the whole issue of the classical incorporeal soul that has self-sustaining activity. On the other hand there is the QM measurement problem, which to me looks very much like it is privileging observers extraordinarily. Wheeler once suggested based on this that the whole universe is "back-constructed into the past" based on what observers see now. (Sorry, no reference - I've forgotten where I read this, QM stuff is almost a decade ago now for me...) That's probably over the top, but there seems to be an opportunity here to give a whole new meaning to "created in the image and likeness of God". Perhaps we are "pro-creating" not primarily with our genitals, but with our minds/souls...

Posted by Ikkyu (# 15207) on :

You accuse Martin of Deism but if your idea was true the effect of "God" on the world would be completely indistinguishable with randomness.
You are claiming that the strength of your argument lies in that it is an alternative that saves "rational realism" from quantum randomness.
But why is it a rational explanation to postulate a being that is not part of this world but is somehow able to intervene in it by an unexplained mechanism when it suits him?

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

I think I'll submit this to Private Eye's Pseud's Corner: "One has to step out to step in without a footprint.".

[ 11. November 2010, 17:59: Message edited by: Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard ]

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
You accuse Martin of Deism but if your idea was true the effect of "God" on the world would be completely indistinguishable with randomness.

Only if that's the only way in which God acts.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
If the world can be understood rationally, then God must play dice.

Back up the thread I noted reservations about equating "God's will" with free will. I wonder if God's will is precisely not genuinely free, in the sense that quantum randomness is genuinely random. While God appears to play dice at the (sub-)micro level, at the macro level of creation that's not an option.

Ultimate creativity, "creating from nothing", implies ultimate consistency. I don't have a proof for that, but the alternative, ultimate inconsistency, would render creation incoherent. "God's will", apparently expressed in an astronomical number of throws of the dice each instant to generate reality, is therefore "constrained" by the act of creating.

Constrained is in quotes because for me thinking in terms of God's will seems unjustifiably personifying. What we experience through the mystery of utterly consistent causation is that it is God's nature to create. The OP shows the genuine openness of that creativity, constrained only by the requirement for ultimate consistency.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
Ultimate creativity, "creating from nothing", implies ultimate consistency. I don't have a proof for that, but the alternative, ultimate inconsistency, would render creation incoherent.

Why is ultimate inconsistency the only alternative to ultimate consistency? What about partial consistency?

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

What would it mean for some aspect of God's creation (ie. our universe plus any others) to not be ultimately consistent with the rest?

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

So what is this "ultimately consistent"? Do you just mean "consistent when it comes right down to it"? If parts of our universe are inconsistent with one another, does that throw the whole universe into the bin? If so, why?

[ 12. November 2010, 17:14: Message edited by: mousethief ]

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

For creation (from nothing) to take place, whatever elemental particle exists at instant T at some location, call it X, cannot be negated by, inconsistent with, what exists at every other location at T. Otherwise X would not exist, ie. would not have been created.

X could be anywhere, T could be any instant. The aggregation of every X is the whole of creation at instant T. Creation must be ultimately consistent.

[ 12. November 2010, 21:04: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
You accuse Martin of Deism but if your idea was true the effect of "God" on the world would be completely indistinguishable with randomness.

As mousethief pointed out, that's a misrepresentation of what I'm saying. My fundamental point is that truly random processes leave a hole in "rational realism", which cannot be filled with anything in the world, but can be closed with some kind of "God". To what extent God influences the world beyond random processes is not part of my main point. One can however speculate that randomness could be controlled so that every single quantum process is random per se, but in the massive statistical average of such randomness that is entailed by a macroscopic body, a net macroscopic bias emerges.

Say I can control for two coins how they land after a flip. Now, I control them such that by observing each individual coin, one will obtain statistics indistinguishable from a random series of 50:50 heads and tails. However, I control them also such that if the first coin is heads, then there is a 51% chance that the second coin is heads, and if the first is tails that yields a 51% chance of tails in the second. The result for an observer of the coin tosses, who is supposed to have no idea that I am in control of their outcome, is a mysterious correlation between two random events. Now, if I do this under particular but regular circumstances only, say only if the temperature is low, then the observer may start drafting "the law of coin tosses" to the effect that low temperature correlates coin tosses. But if I do this under particular but irregular circumstances only, say when Ikkyu has said a fervent prayer, then the observer may start praising the "miracle of the coin tosses".

However, all this is really just speculation, not the central point I was trying to make.

quote:
Originally posted by Ikkyu:
But why is it a rational explanation to postulate a being that is not part of this world but is somehow able to intervene in it by an unexplained mechanism when it suits him?

It is completely false to talk of an "unexplained mechanism". That is precisely getting back to the idea of a demiurge manipulating the world. This necessarily implies a "world internal" causal chain, and that cannot possibly work. The whole idea is that God's causality is not of that kind, at all, and because it isn't then it becomes possible to have random but causal events.

Take another diagram at the stereotypical causal diagram

A -> B

There are two ways in which this diagram can be understood. On one hand we can consider it "world internal", at the level of A and B. Then it says something about how B is related to A, namely causally. At this level it is utterly inexplicable how

A ... B

can come about, i.e., how a truly random but causal connection between two events can exist. The two concepts fight with each other, I cannot explain why B arose out of A, if C could have arisen instead, and the connection is random.

On the other hand, I can consider these diagrams "world external", namely at the level of you and me, who as far as this thread goes are in the position of God. Now, clearly the causality for

A -> B and A ... B

are exactly identical considered "world external", at the post level. Both came about because I typed them on my keyboard. There's no difference here, "world internal" deterministic causal and random causal are both identically "world external" IngoB causal.

This is a completely rational explanation, and it would remain so even if you were observing these events "world internal", i.e., if you were observer D who watches A turn into B, and not a "God" at the post-reading level like me. If you lived "among the characters written", so to speak, then you might not have the slightest idea what a human poster would be like. You are just a (somehow conscious) letter D, there is an unimaginable abyss between you and a human. You will not have the slightest idea about keyboards, internet, servers etc. You know nothing of the "machinery" that those mythical "human beings" which control your typographic destiny employ. And yet you could make this argument simply on observing that some A turn into B or C randomly, a fact that is inexplicable in the world of type, and requires a mysterious other.

That's what I'm doing here, pointing to something other to which we are as equal as a (somehow conscious) letter D would be to me, basing my conclusions on the observation of truly random effects that are inexplicable within this world.

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
Back up the thread I noted reservations about equating "God's will" with free will. I wonder if God's will is precisely not genuinely free, in the sense that quantum randomness is genuinely random. While God appears to play dice at the (sub-)micro level, at the macro level of creation that's not an option.

Ultimate creativity, "creating from nothing", implies ultimate consistency. I don't have a proof for that, but the alternative, ultimate inconsistency, would render creation incoherent. "God's will", apparently expressed in an astronomical number of throws of the dice each instant to generate reality, is therefore "constrained" by the act of creating.

I think this is a pseudo-problem brought about by a wrong, but nowadays universally accepted, conception of freedom. Namely the idea that freedom means "freedom of choice", rather than (as it used to be historically) "freedom for excellence". I have written at length about this in the past (probably that can be found in Limbo or Oblivion somewhere), and will not repeat it all.

In our case we can deal with this rapidly at the level of an analogy. Take a writer writing a novel. Is he "more free" if for hundreds of pages he bangs randomly on the keyboard, creating a meaningless heap of characters; or is he "more free" if he thinks up an engrossing story and sets it out in clear and appropriate language, carefully typed out? It is clear that in the second case he obeys truckloads of rules (spelling, grammar, logic, ...), and indeed at the level of the story one can require "internal consistency" as one of the indispensable requirements for a good work. Yet all this is arguable not restricting his freedom, to the contrary, only by following all these rules does he become truly free to tell the story. Arguably it is the random typist, who for all his ultimate freedom of choosing what key to hit, is in fact not free at all - it is (near) impossible that he will come up with something worthwhile.

As far as God is concerned, we have the extra complication that there is nothing "external" that would determine the "freedom for excellence". It is as if the author was inventing the language from scratch in the process of typing. Hence he decides what is "random keystrokes" and what not, as he is keying. Yet nevertheless it is clear that in the act of bringing something good about, He must brings about "internal restrictions" of His own choosing. So in God "freedom of choice" and "freedom for excellence" are sort of united, the former expressing His absolute sovereignty, the latter His absolute goodness. Considered at the level of creation however, we would indeed see the latter and then can indeed say that God is "restricted". Yet that does not take away His freedom, that is His freedom of creation - just like for the author in the analogy.

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

IngoB:
I'm going to try and divert this thread, rather than starting a new one.

I said in a previous post that I was looking forward to this thread, and I have read it with as much interest as my knowledge of QM enables.

Which raises a question. Do you think that this is an approach that can have general apologetic use? Or is it a specific approach for a specific group?

Personally I find it hard to grasp, and I assume that this is because I am insufficiently grounded in QM. What I mean is that I don't really believe QM with sufficient force to be concerned about what it says about the world. I am far from convinced that any true randomness exists, and I can see why you may say that I would be convinced if I knew more. But I don't, so I don't.

What comes out of this for me as the key question is: What do we mean by explanation?

Atheists and rationalists have a constrained view of what constitutes an explanation, and I doubt if yours would pass muster. ITSM you have already moved away from a rational-empiricist view of what constitutes and explanation, which more or less is limited to "in-world". So it seems that you are trying to convince people using an explanation that they would only accept if they were already convinced.

If you think I've expressed any significant thoughts, you are welcome to reply to them.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
a wrong, but nowadays universally accepted, conception of freedom. Namely the idea that freedom means "freedom of choice", rather than (as it used to be historically) "freedom for excellence".

Freedom of choice is not a wrong conception of freedom, it's just not the one that you prefer. Because it is nowadays universally accepted, I can reasonably expect free when applied to will to be understood to mean something like "without constraint". To indicate your preferred meaning you have to add a qualifier ("freedom to" rather "freedom from", for example).

As you note, as far as God is concerned there is nothing "external" that would allow your "freedom for excellence" to make sense. By attempting to impose that meaning you're simply introduce your take on the "Christian God", at best an unfalsifiable hypothesis that in most respects is unrelated to the metaphysical God we've been discussing.

In the same way, talk of goodness implies an "external" moral context for judging God to be "good", which is nonsense. God as illustrated in your OP has no means or requirement to "decide" or "choose" anything, just a nature that apparently tips genuinely random potential into ultimately consistent creativity.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

IngoB

Thick, stubborn, dim but dogged old fool that I am, I TRULY acknowledge the brilliance your OP discourse and all that follows by you and all others APART FROM myself.

All that went previously is EXCELLENT, but it has taken me many days to ecdyse my preconceptions, my allergic reactions, my bias (necessary in fully fed fifth-instar larvae of Rhodnius bloodsuckers if the anus is blocked ...).

I therefore APOLOGIZE for speaking about that which I did not understand.

Shame on me.

PLEASE don't give up on me, brute that I unashamedly am. Struggling to be mere Caliban to your Prospero.

I'm refusing to give up on this and will lick this bone clean whilst all others here have understood it immediately.

I'm licking again Heracliteanly as there is always more nutriment than I at first 'thought' and have got as far as:

'Obviously the counter-argument exists that "we just cannot (not 'do not') understand" how nature realizes randomness, how the (quantum) coin knows which way to actually fall. That is fine, but it clearly is a fundamentally non-rational claim. Whereas my explanation in terms of God may not be satisfying as far as God is concerned (I cannot explain why God chooses this or that), but it is a rational claim about the actualization of randomness.'

and will mull and mull, a week at a time probably, but IngoB and all here, PLEASE don't give up on the dullard on the bus.

In this and ALL areas, please IngoB.

Because from here we need to go on to predestination, in my mind.

RESPECTFULLY Martin

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
I said in a previous post that I was looking forward to this thread, and I have read it with as much interest as my knowledge of QM enables.

That would be a misunderstanding of the thrust of the argument then. I could just as well have considered regular coins. Except somebody versed in modern physics could have doubted that a regular coin is truly random, in which case QM provides scientifically more accepted examples of true randomness.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Do you think that this is an approach that can have general apologetic use? Or is it a specific approach for a specific group?

I don't think of this argument as apologetic primarily, but philosophy. It should make one consider causation in general and randomness in particular.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
Personally I find it hard to grasp, and I assume that this is because I am insufficiently grounded in QM.

No. The specifics of QM are near irrelevant to the argument. All I needed from QM was that true randomness exists in the world.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
What I mean is that I don't really believe QM with sufficient force to be concerned about what it says about the world. I am far from convinced that any true randomness exists, and I can see why you may say that I would be convinced if I knew more. But I don't, so I don't.

I'm not giving lessons in physics here, and an argument from ignorance is not particularly compelling. If you paid careful attention to the argument, then it would be clear that randomness isn't really necessary in the end. It is just that randomness provides better psychological access to the philosophical strangeness of causality. As with most philosophy, the problem is to make people aware that there is a problem in the first place.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
What comes out of this for me as the key question is: What do we mean by explanation?

I would prefer if you took this question elsewhere.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
ITSM you have already moved away from a rational-empiricist view of what constitutes and explanation, which more or less is limited to "in-world".

I have appealed to rational realism, not to rational empiricism. Realism is not identical with empiricism. Empiricism is more a statement about how we gather knowledge, realism more about what exists and how. I'm largely a Thomist, so I agree with the basic empiricist idea that human knowledge is derived from sensory experience, but not with the way this is often cashed out.

quote:
Originally posted by anteater:
So it seems that you are trying to convince people using an explanation that they would only accept if they were already convinced.

Frankly, I'm a better rhetorician than you give me credit for. The core of this argument is what I say about me writing "A->B" and "A...B", respectively. That's the Trojans, all the rest is the horse.

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
Freedom of choice is not a wrong conception of freedom, it's just not the one that you prefer.

Freedom is too important a topic to be a matter of taste. Freedom of choice considers a means to be the end, and given the ways of the world, hence eventually results in evil. But this is rather off-topic, wouldn't you agree?

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
God as illustrated in your OP has no means or requirement to "decide" or "choose" anything, just a nature that apparently tips genuinely random potential into ultimately consistent creativity.

This reduces to the "non-rational flow of events, at least as far as quantum stuff is concerned" stance, which Marvin signed up for earlier. The confusing bit is why you insist on talking about God in that context. As far as I can tell, nothing is lost in rewriting your stuff without God.

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
In this and ALL areas, please IngoB.

Just chill. No apology is needed, much less any lavish praise. I merely try to work those talents that I have here. Like every Sunday, today after mass I lit some candles to an altar showing the Good Thief next to Christ, and some more to an icon of the Mother of God - and believe me, I'm not precisely running out of my own darknesses and insufficiencies when kneeling for prayer there...

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Because from here we need to go on to predestination, in my mind.

Do we? Predestination is the only doctrinal topic that has been protected against easy decision by a STFU from a pope to theologians at war. Some things can seriously warp mind and soul, and this one breeds heresy like warm sugar water bacteria. Are your loins girded with truth, do you wear the breastplate of righteousness and the helmet of hope? Or are your stepping forward into the fray in your theological flip-flops?

Somehow everybody in the predestination debate manages to agree that if I lead a godly life, I'll likely go to heaven, and if not, then perhaps not. They just disagree severely about why that is so, about what causes what. One simple way of dealing with predestination is hence to live a godly life, and then ask God in heaven to explain the details...

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
Freedom of choice is not a wrong conception of freedom, it's just not the one that you prefer.
Freedom is too important a topic to be a matter of taste.

"Freedom is so important that people can't be left free to decide what it means". Priceless.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
a wrong, but nowadays universally accepted, conception of freedom. Namely the idea that freedom means "freedom of choice", rather than (as it used to be historically) "freedom for excellence".

Yes, my owner wants me to be free to do an excellent job picking cotton.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
"Freedom is so important that people can't be left free to decide what it means". Priceless.

You can't be free to decide what "free" even means. That's a vicious circle of arbitrariness removing all potential moral value. As is demonstrated by this response:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Yes, my owner wants me to be free to do an excellent job picking cotton.

mousethief's owner would make a perfectly valid statement here, unless indeed people like him are not really free to decide what "free" means. In order to justify freeing mousethief from his owner, we ourselves clearly must have a concept of freedom that cannot be freely adjusted, but is sufficiently fixed to interfere with his property rights.

"Freedom of choice" as practiced in our societies is entwined with many political and social issues, and IMHO evaluated more with a "common law" than with a principled approach. We are free to choose certain things, and not free to choose others, because of historically accumulated "common sense" decisions (sometimes the sense became common by shooting those who disagreed, as in the case of slavery in the US).

However, if a principled derivation of "freedom of choice" were to be attempted, then it would in my opinion basically result in a "freedom for excellence" discussion. A slave is much more restricted in what he can excel at than a freeman. If for example he has musical talent, he will nevertheless be forced to work the fields rather than the piano. Furthermore, the evaluation of whether a career as a farm worker or a musician is appropriate requires an excellence all of its own. And one can argue that it belongs intrinsically to human nature to deal with such situations, that one should be free to excel at such evaluation and risk taking.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

So your ethical theory has as its underpinning, "maximize excellence for the most people"? Hmm. I wonder what J.S. Mill would think. Of course "excellence" is a subjective thing. My owner thinks that excellence in picking cotton is, for me, the most important and most fully realizable excellence. Why should someone else's understanding of excellence, let alone mine, be held as superior, if my freedom of choice doesn't come into it, or is subordinate to my freedom for excellence?

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
So your ethical theory has as its underpinning, "maximize excellence for the most people"?

If at all, that seems like a decent ansatz for social engineering.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Of course "excellence" is a subjective thing.

That's neither of course, nor in my opinion true in a fundamental sense.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Why should someone else's understanding of excellence, let alone mine, be held as superior, if my freedom of choice doesn't come into it, or is subordinate to my freedom for excellence?

Why should your freedom of whatever kind come into anything anyhow? FWIW, I believe in natural (moral) law as the foundation on which "freedom" must stand. But I'm not sure why we are discussing all this now. My original on-topic point was that it is false to say that God is "restricted" (less than perfectly free) just because His creation is "consistent" (not perfectly arbitrary chaos).

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Of course "excellence" is a subjective thing.
That's neither of course, nor in my opinion true in a fundamental sense.

Awesome! Tell us what criterion we can use for excellence that we all will agree upon! You shouldn't hold this back from the world. We could solve so many issues if we only knew this secret.

quote:
Why should your freedom of whatever kind come into anything anyhow?

Because we're discussing what freedom means. [Confused]

quote:
But I'm not sure why we are discussing all this now.

Because it arose in the course of the conversation, I'm thinking.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Freedom is too important a topic to be a matter of taste.

In addition to what Marvin and mousethief have said, I wasn't suggesting the reason you preferred "freedom for excellence" was taste.

quote:
Freedom of choice considers a means to be the end, and given the ways of the world, hence eventually results in evil.

Can result in evil. Or good. Without freedom of choice we have no means to express our moral agency.

The more I think about the notion of "freedom for excellence", the more I'm convinced it's a bogus derivation, a corruption of what it means to be free. However much I might wish to excel in some field, I cannot imagine a situation where I would willingly give up my freedom to opt out of whatever constraints were necessary to achieve it. Freedom to choose is what people die for.

quote:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
God as illustrated in your OP has no means or requirement to "decide" or "choose" anything, just a nature that apparently tips genuinely random potential into ultimately consistent creativity.
This reduces to the "non-rational flow of events, at least as far as quantum stuff is concerned" stance, which Marvin signed up for earlier.

No it doesn't. I'm not diminishing in any way God as the uncaused causer of the tip.

quote:
The confusing bit is why you insist on talking about God in that context. As far as I can tell, nothing is lost in rewriting your stuff without God.

Then what you mean by God is not the traditional Christian meaning. As far as I can tell, the whole superstructure of trinitarian theology is underpinned by precisely the metaphysical reality that both your OP illuminated and that I use as the basis for my theology. Perhaps your confusion arises from starting a thread about metaphysics in the context of rational realism and then assuming your proof is transferrable to the Catholic extensions to God. Those extensions have no foundation in rational realism.

[cross-posted]

[ 15. November 2010, 20:19: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
FWIW, I believe in natural (moral) law as the foundation on which "freedom" must stand.

Ah. It makes more sense to me to think in terms of what "free" means in ordinary language.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Awesome! Tell us what criterion we can use for excellence that we all will agree upon!

Natural (moral) law. There is however every reason to expect it to be more contended than natural (physical) law, and we are still far from finished with that one.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Because we're discussing what freedom means.

My point was that a value judgments about some "hierarchy" of freedoms requires first a value judgment of why freedom is important at all. And before that we need to say what we consider as the foundation of such value judgments. Then I told you what I consider as my foundation.

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
Because it arose in the course of the conversation, I'm thinking.

And I'm thinking we are getting too far away from what I at least wanted to talk about.

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
Freedom to choose is what people die for.

Nowadays, perhaps. In the "pure" form in which we are discussing this here, I sincerely doubt that many people would have died for it prior to the 14thC. And nowadays the concept has been so overloaded with meaning that I doubt that it is still feasible to die for it as such. Who is capable of stripping the grand narrative of Western modernity from all this?

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
No it doesn't. I'm not diminishing in any way God as the uncaused causer of the tip.

If your "causer" is random, then nothing is explained beyond "it just so happens". If your "causer" is regular, then what imposed regularity? "Ultimate consistency" of the world? The notion of some sort of causal feedback between creation and Creator does not step back radically enough. That rule of feedback itself, if it were to exist, would then be what I would call "the first thing caused", and what caused it I would call "the First Causer", whereas whatever is sitting in that feedback loop I would call a demiurge, some instrument of causation, however powerful. (I do not believe that God and the world are like that. I'm just pointing out why "causal feedback", as necessary as it seems to us creatures, doesn't work for God.)

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
Perhaps your confusion arises from starting a thread about metaphysics in the context of rational realism and then assuming your proof is transferrable to the Catholic extensions to God. Those extensions have no foundation in rational realism.

I do not feel particularly confused about this. Certainly essential parts of Catholic doctrine cannot be derived metaphysically, though they all can be checked for metaphysical compatibility (and all pass muster, as far as I can tell).

Posted by Marvin the Martian (# 4360) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
"Freedom is so important that people can't be left free to decide what it means". Priceless.
You can't be free to decide what "free" even means.

But you can? [Roll Eyes]

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Marvin the Martian:
But you can?

No. Only God can do that. But I can claim to have better understood what freedom is about. Whether I'm wrong or right in fact, it certainly is possible that I'm more right about that.

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

There's a good reason to do something. Because it's possible that it's right. This is the excuse that the Republicans and their lap dogs at Fox Noise are giving for their lies about Obama.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Dave Marshall:
No it doesn't. I'm not diminishing in any way God as the uncaused causer of the tip.
If your "causer" is random, then nothing is explained beyond "it just so happens". If your "causer" is regular, then what imposed regularity?

Referring to God as uncaused causer in a particular context doesn't imply that is all God is, any more than acknowledging you as author of the OP implies you're a mechanical discussion board poster.

quote:
The notion of some sort of causal feedback between creation and Creator does not step back radically enough. That rule of feedback itself, if it were to exist, would then be what I would call "the first thing caused", and what caused it I would call "the First Causer", whereas whatever is sitting in that feedback loop I would call a demiurge, some instrument of causation, however powerful.

Yes. God is the Creator of "all that is, seen and unseen", not its mechanical causer. We're talking about the means by which that creativity is expressed, where creativity is a fundamental feature of ultimate reality. It's the nature of creating (from nothing) that imposes ultimate consistency, not the choice or decision of a detached conscious being.

quote:
Certainly essential parts of Catholic doctrine cannot be derived metaphysically, though they all can be checked for metaphysical compatibility (and all pass muster, as far as I can tell).

Only, though, in the sense that a Ford and a Vauxhall are physically compatible with a road. Such compatibility doesn't help when the engine in the Vauxhall breaks and you only have Ford spare parts.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
There's a good reason to do something. Because it's possible that it's right. This is the excuse that the Republicans and their lap dogs at Fox Noise are giving for their lies about Obama.

As always, "abusus non tollit usum" (abuse is not an argument against proper use). I have a more definite source of morals in my faith, but that's at best relevant for those sharing my faith. I can see nothing wrong in following my best guess on what is right. What else am I supposed to do?

Dave, I'm sure we disagree on something, but based on your last post I have no real idea on what. I'm happy to leave it there.

Posted by tclune (# 7959) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
As always, "abusus non tollit usum" (abuse is not an argument against proper use).

You seem quite fond of this saying, but I confess that I find it stupid. When people argue, for example, that marijuana should not be legalized for medical purposes because it is subject to abuse, and furthermore there are equally effective drugs that do not have the same history of abuse, ISTM that a perfectly cogent argument has been offered. One may decide that it is not dispositive, but it certainly is not vapid.

--Tom Clune

Posted by mousethief (# 953) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by mousethief:
There's a good reason to do something. Because it's possible that it's right. This is the excuse that the Republicans and their lap dogs at Fox Noise are giving for their lies about Obama.
As always, "abusus non tollit usum" (abuse is not an argument against proper use). I have a more definite source of morals in my faith, but that's at best relevant for those sharing my faith. I can see nothing wrong in following my best guess on what is right. What else am I supposed to do?

You do what you feel is right. Just don't impose it on anybody else without something more than "it's possible".

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Mr. B. et al.

Hmmm. I'd gone a paragraph too far. Having assimilated all that went before I get to:

'My "random proof of God" is now obvious, I assume. If there are truly random phenomena in our world, they cannot be "world-internally" determined, at least we cannot understand how that could be. Whereas if we assume that they are determined "world-externally", by some creative will acting upon our world, then we can understand that true randomness can be seen in the world. And this creative will we call God.'

My simplistic take is stuff from the quantum up is truly ineffably, irrationally, random, just like the numbers say.

Randomness IS world internal.

This is abstract, is independent of God, just like morality.

But STUFF isn't. That there is stuff is UTTERLY dependent on God. And stuff is (quantally), fundamentally, inherently, definitively, inescapably, indeterminate, truly random as said previously. And will be again!

God's will both creates and sustains (random) stuff in sufficient complexity (the laws of physics based on the new Standard Model with its 25 fundamental dimensionless constants as our present approximation) and there is therefore a universe, matter, stellar evolution, planets.

The world is world external.

Some extrapolate to life and mind as deterministic, inevitable from the mystery of indeterminate coin tosses. As if they are just a step or two beyond the vast mysterious leap from quanta to the history of the universe.

I cannot (that's another 'debate'). That's where I see God's will supervening His will. His will makes stuff that is inherently random and still metagalaxies of population I star planetary system galaxies inevitably emerge by the collapse of wave functions Planck ticks at most after 'the beginning' and despite the seething practical infinity of almost mystically meaningless Planck events in every Planck tick since. (But not life and mind.)

A mystery indeed. Small stuff changes randomly inside, beneath big stuff that has a big 'coherent' narrative. That's stuff for you.

I don't so how randomness demonstrates God, needs God in the slightest. Apart from needing stuff to be inherent of. Stuff (which is inextricably random) does. Stuff demonstrates God. Unless we collapse stuff to randomness, stuff = randomness. Then randomness demonstrates God (who is not the author of confusion [Snigger]

).

In ALL openness and utter naked, dim, vacuous ignorance, what do I lack ? What am I missing ? What's wrong with this picture ? This narrative ? What does it lack in entities ?

:

Small stuff explains randomness and the entire history of the universe (except life and mind).

God wills small stuff. NOT its randomness.

And am I completely failing to engage with your narrative ?

Have I missed the point entirely ?

If so, what is it ?

(And of course I'm no nearer to accepting that God knows whether it will rain on me tomorrow. Let alone that He saved me personally from eternity.)

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

I think there's an ineffable aspect to God, in that the scale of creation is beyond our comprehension. But for example the explanation of the collapse of the wave function on this thread (I think I get the jist now) suggests to me the principles are discoverable, as long as we recognise the point at which we personally need to stop and take in the picture and level of detail we've identified so far. Consolidating that within our world view may then enable us to ask the grounded questions that allow us to discern more of the detail.

What seems to create confusion and the whole "we can't know anything about God" nonsense is how religion insists that we import unsupported truth claims into the picture. Again for example, talk of "God's will" seems completely unjustified when considering God in a metaphysical context. It sneaks in connotions of God as a conscious rational being, completely wrecking the vast simplicity of the real Creator.

[ 18. November 2010, 12:37: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

' course there's always the problem of quantum entanglement ... which itches with spookiness.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

It's that ultimate consistency in action, I shouldn't wonder.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Forgive me Dave, spooky is as spooky does ?

Quantum entanglement is either independent of God or dependent on Him.

If it's independent of Him then we don't have the maths to explain it. Not down here on the top floor of the bus. May be IngoB does. Why it HAS to be so. Does it imply that there is a relationship for all electron pairs in which as well as there being separation, there is not ... that's how stuff HAS to be ?

If it is dependent on Him, then He HAS to micro...pico...femto...atto...Planck-manage every pair of electrons to supervene distance instantaneously. Which He ... shortcuts by making the materially UNECESSARY rule that all electron pairs are both separate in space-time and NOT. (Planck-management is absurd, meaningless like ALL unnecessary predestination up to of souls from eternity). The latter is no problem for Him as He's thinking, sustaining everything concurrently any way ... unless that is LOGICALLY impossible. Meaningless. Which I begin to go wobbly on ...

HYPERSPACE explains it all ... but looks Thomist ... hmmmm.

Surely one would have to err on the side of electron pairs being both spaced and hyperspaced: i.e. still a single paired entity with regard to polarized spin which is a higher entity. They ARE spaced in space-time and NOT, by definition, in hyperspace.

Fumbling to see my dim way from the top of the old south pea-souper bound London omnibus: hyperspace HAS to be so. And once again God is irrelevant to the way things have to be if they be, but essential that they can be at all.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

groan ... unNecessary.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
once again God is irrelevant to the way things have to be if they be, but essential that they can be at all.

I reckon. The how is just our invitation to wonder at how it all is.

[ 21. November 2010, 23:49: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Coo! Can I play with you clever boys another day ?

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

It feels like you are playing, though, and not in a way that's easy to respond to. What is clever anyway. You seem to get process, you have arrived at conclusions here I pretty much agree with, yet at the same time you sound obsessed by preoccupations that only make sense in a fundamentalist mindset.

So I wonder, do we really agree that "God is irrelevant to the way things have to be if they be, but essential that they can be at all". Or is it that you've worked out where I am and are saying nothing about your own position? It's hard to tell, and therefore hard to engage with most of what you post.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Believe me Dave, that is my position. It's parsimonious, so it has to be. I'm vainly delighted that you can't tell otherwise.

I come from a revived cultic background but have always grasped Occam's razor even when it cut me to ribbons. My development has been arrested and lurching, but parsimony has always served me well.

It has taken me 10 years here, fed most recently by perichoresis: neo-orthodoxy, to come to terms with the meaningless of omniscience beyond that which is knowable, to be be able to articulate that, as some of the very best minds here seem to be predestinarian and I thought I must be missing something.

You have helped confirm that which I have known for only a couple of years.

I'm not.

Regards - Martin

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

... articulate ... ness ...

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

What's parsimonious about perichoresis, though? Or neo-orthodoxy. As far as I understand what you mean, both are derivative of the whole trinitarian megalith that has dominated institutionalised Christian thought almost from the beginning. Surely that's the antithesis of parsimony?

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

How can we orthodoxly contract God to a modal unitarian entity or expand Him to a tritheist one?

He is revealed as three persons.

The Cappadocian Fathers did a perfect job of minimally, parsimoniously reconciling to me.

Perichoresis is how the three in one interact: mutually interpenetrative to an inifinitesimally fractal degree but ever distinct.

In eternal relationship, needing nothing.

Hence the uniqueness of creation AND Christ the vicarious human, God who makes us divine by becoming human AFTER eternity: half way between the eternities.

All elegantly minimal. Given the orthodox fact of three persons.

Does God HAVE to be three?!

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Does God HAVE to be three?!

That would have been my question.

Is there any basis in quantum (or other non-subjective) reality for such a claim? None that I can see.

[ 23. November 2010, 20:57: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Well as there isn't any any immediate basis in quantum (or other non-subjective) reality for such a claim as God in the first place, then no.

But as a given, yes.

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

So it seems by God we mean different things. I go with what it seems to me there is irrefutable evidence for, the Creator of the universe, the tipper of genuine randomness into the quantum foundation of reality as we experience it.

[ 23. November 2010, 21:48: Message edited by: Dave Marshall ]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Ooooh. I see no difference between genuine randomness and the quantum foundation of reality. Can you differentiate that for me?

Are you saying there is a timeless, undirected, eternal randomness (NOT zero-point energy?) contingent with God but not an aspect of His consciousness from which quanta emerge by His will?

That there is an ever-present pre-creation, a field, a charge, a potential, a hum? That would even be if God weren't? So YES zero-point energy? And/or Thought?

Is this and creation 'proper' eternal? Does God HAVE to create? Which is more parsimonious at first glance. But the two entities of randomness and quanta aren't.

This feels dispositional, not orthodox. I was going to say not rational, but I see that it is as it tries to be parsimonious on the one hand ... until it takes away with the other.

I do see proof of God in the impossibilities - why is there anything, life and mind - of creation with the Fingerprint of Fermi's Paradox as an added bonus.

Are you saying that there is something before there's anything APART from God thinking? "Let there be true random chaos." ?

Smacks of Plato's cave to me.

What are you saying to the clod on the Clapham omnibus?

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
I see no difference between genuine randomness and the quantum foundation of reality.

No, there's no difference to see because God is real. Ingo's OP seems to show that without God there would be only genuinely random potential, so I'm going with that. Without God there would be no tip into spacetime reality, no creation.

quote:
Are you saying there is a timeless, undirected, eternal randomness (NOT zero-point energy?) contingent with God but not an aspect of His consciousness from which quanta emerge by His will?

Definitely not, both on account of the contradiction inherent in separating God from eternity and not seeing any basis for God having 'consciousness'.

quote:
What are you saying

I guess that I'm assuming a process view of creation, reality and everything, while you seem to see process as simply an optional front end to some other religious orthodoxy.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Without God there'd be nowt.

You're being imparsimonious to suggest otherwise. So is IngoB if that's what he's suggesting, which isn't clear to me.

Moving toward pantheism.

God tips nowt. He thinks - being THE consciousness, which you have an unorthodox problem with, and quanta are. The rest follows materially apart from life and mind.

I fully endorse process theology within orthodoxy and see no parsimonious reason to dispense with orthodoxy. Orthodoxy - including the Trinity - is the given WITH parsimony. Parsimony does not trump it.

THE orthodoxy. Not 'some other'.

God is a gestalt (meta-consciousness?) of three inseperable and unmixed consciousnesses, a meta-mind of minds, a meta-person of persons. A perichoresis. One of which is another - Jesus the vicarious man. That's all given.

I'm primitive enough to DEPEND on, know God as being personal, relational, affected, emotional: the Lord my God IS a jealous God. All dependent on consciousness.

An un- or a- conscious God is meaningless.

So what do you mean?

Nirvana?

Posted by Dave Marshall (# 7533) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Without God there'd be nowt.

Neither I nor I think Ingo are suggesting otherwise.

quote:
God tips nowt.

No, but without God nowt would tip, so there would be nowt. In order to think about such things we have to abstract a framework within which to consider reality that is beyond us. The tipping only makes sense within the (minimal, informally constructed) quantum randomness abstraction I'm using. If you step outside that, you disengage from what I'm trying to say.

Then we're just talking past each other.

quote:
I fully endorse process theology within orthodoxy and see no parsimonious reason to dispense with orthodoxy. Orthodoxy - including the Trinity - is the given WITH parsimony. Parsimony does not trump it.

I don't think that paragraph makes any sense at all. It's a jumble of buzz words. Process theology as described by Whitehead and Hartshorne doesn't relate to any religious view of God. It's a philosophical model of reality.

What's parsimonious about the Trinity? It's a construct to justify the claim that Jesus was both God and man. The parsimonious take is that Jesus was a man who others wanted to elevate to supreme-human status. That doesn't make him God the Creator of all that is.

As for orthodoxy, it's a fundamentally dysfunctional basis for belief. If humanity is consistent in anything, it's our willingness to believe what we want to believe until, sometimes well beyond, it's demonstrated to be false.

quote:
God is a gestalt (meta-consciousness?) of three inseperable and unmixed consciousnesses, a meta-mind of minds, a meta-person of persons. A perichoresis. One of which is another - Jesus the vicarious man. That's all given.

No, that's religious dogma with no basis in verifiable reality.

quote:
I'm primitive enough to DEPEND on, know God as being personal, relational, affected, emotional: the Lord my God IS a jealous God. All dependent on consciousness.

That's what I suspected you believed. And if it's non-negotiable, you really don't want to consider how I make sense of reality. Because for me, even allowing for some kind of translation from the human to an eternal context, God as conscious, affected and emotional is too wrong to be helpful as any kind of meaningful description. We can relate to God in a personal way, but I imagine that's not what you mean.

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

Fine.

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0