Ship of Fools: Purgatory: Faith in physics, or physics in faith?

Thread: Purgatory: Faith in physics, or physics in faith? Board: Limbo / Ship of Fools.

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

So there I am outside Triangle at Holy Trinity Leicester last Friday night and this young chap says, 'Have you seen Futurama Martin?' (the young eh?) and I say that Bender is one of my favourite characters (not just for the three rows of teeth, voice and running on alcohol) but because he symbolizes the Augustinean (from Ptolemy, so no, the East is as heretic as the West) sophomorically omniscient God.

God as a clock, a robot with all future eternity tick-tocked and spooled out in His infinite chest.

That raised another friend's eyebrow, so I translated: 'Does God know if it's going to rain tomorrow?'.

'Yes.' I was authorititavely informed. He'd done 'A' level physics and we were in the presence of an IngoB two-brained type so we thrashed out wave-particle duality and quantum indeterminacy as you do (he'd never applied it to reality) and he insisted that God still knows whether it's going to rain tomorrow because science can't prove anything by definition and having a conceptual understanding of reality being necessarily indeterminate is a faith position.

I ask you! To be fair I didn't grasp indeterminacy as a basis of reality until my forties. I'm THAT dumb.

And when I asked where God gets the information from that it will rain tomorrow that did not compute at all.

I'm amazed at highly intelligent, young, well educated people not being able to join up the dots. I am NONE of those things compared with him or the denizens here.

For God to be able to know that it will rain tomorrow He either has to make it so - no problem - OR it has to be a few Planck frames on in His chest.

BIG problem.

No?

[ 05. January 2015, 01:34: Message edited by: Kelly Alves ]

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
No?

No.

Posted by anteater (# 11435) on :

Martin:

Enjoyable post, as always.

If I ever thought they meant anything, I'd reply.

I wondere do you read Finnegan's Wake to get to sleep?

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
No?
No.

No?

So God doesn't know it's going to rain tomorrow?

Didn't she put the laws of the Universe in place?

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
So God doesn't know it's going to rain tomorrow?

Of course God does. Rather, there is no big problem with that.

Posted by GreyFace (# 4682) on :

I'm a bearer of but one brain, but if Ingo's not going to play I'll have a go.

This is essentially what Martin's getting at. Quantum physics shows that the universe can't be regarded as proceeding fully predictably from one moment to the next (the clockwork universe model), i.e. the state of the universe at any one time doesn't necessarily determine fully its state at the next moment. It isn't a question of insufficient knowledge, it's actually impossible rather than impractical for us to a) know the current state of the universe and b) predict reliably what the next state would be even if we did, because there's an element of true randomness in events.

Martin's then going on to say that this being the case, God can't know what will happen next unless he's actually controlling the outcome of the apparently random events involved in changing from one state to the other in which case the clockwork model is true and quantum physics is wrong. Thus if QP is true, God cannot know the future.

My initial line of attack on this would be to say that we have no idea how to fit a God-level observation of state into the model, not least because we don't believe God to be contained within the universe. My second thought would be that it may well be true that through control of randomness, God is controlling the universe more than the closed-system assumptions of physics show. My third thought is that I don't believe the concept of free will/choice is possible unless the soul is in some sense supernatural - but that's not really related to the question.

Posted by goperryrevs (# 13504) on :

What if God could know if he wanted to, but chooses not to know?

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:

Martin's then going on to say that this being the case, God can't know what will happen next unless he's actually controlling the outcome of the apparently random events involved in changing from one state to the other in which case the clockwork model is true and quantum physics is wrong. Thus if QP is true, God cannot know the future.

Why would God need to know the future?

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

Attack away Greyface! And Evensong, did you notice that the laws of physics, of reality, of reason, of thought, of logic include the absolute ... indeterminacy of reality. All and any reality. Including any other 'higher' reaches of God. Which, Who is the ONLY reality.

God doesn't interfere with randomness (r), with indeterminacy (i) to make those things (r & i) look like they happen. He just blithely wills through them, above them, despite them with His extra 'dimension' of purpose. He loosens the knot without untying it.

IngoB is toying with me here. Ullo mate! I'm not rising to ANY bait. Gainsaying don't cut it mate.

The information weather (did you like that Anteater?) it will, of itself, rain tomorrow or not, does not and never will exist even if God decides it will rain tomorrow. He cannot POSSIBLY know that it will otherwise, as He can ONLY think reality, concretization, indeterminately (a tautology I realise). Reality = indeterminacy.

The only way God can know beyond what is currently indeterminate without willing it to spin up or rain down isn't by using a filter on His projector of actually determined reality to make it fuzzy, it's by every Planck tick being tocked.

Is by Him being Bender. A robot. A player-piano. Frozen, trapped in fixed eternal determinacy.

If you knew otherwise, IngoB, I'm sure even you would stoop to conquer, boring and annoying though it is as it might take you a moment.

(I must get back to your excellent thinking on the hypostatic union of dog-God some time.)

But you don't. Except in some Jungian, untransferable, mystical sense.

(Hmmmmm, will he see through my risible reverse psychology?)

I do LOVE a good mystery.

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

goperryrevs! He cannot. Where is the information?

Posted by Pyx_e (# 57) on :

Oh come on Martin, you can be a bit erm ........... dense on ths Ship and you ignore that fact (or seem to which is the same). Having information and knowing information are two seperate things.

All the best, Pyx_e.

Posted by Yorick (# 12169) on :

Martin, what are your thoughts about Luschenn’s Paradox with respect to the decoherence bias of wave functionality in a time irreversible quantum system? As I understand it, the Schrödinger post-measurement state is partially stochastic in collapsing thermodynamic macroscopic ningnongs, but what about the fluoby-dooby wombum blah blah?

Is it possible that God is, will be, never was intrinsically, parsimoniously choate?

Posted by Adeodatus (# 4992) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:

quote:
Originally posted by GreyFace:

Martin's then going on to say that this being the case, God can't know what will happen next unless he's actually controlling the outcome of the apparently random events involved in changing from one state to the other in which case the clockwork model is true and quantum physics is wrong. Thus if QP is true, God cannot know the future.

Why would God need to know the future?

Because the point is, he doesn't know the future. There is no future to God, only the present. But everything that's ever happened or ever will is in his "present". That's because time is subject to him, not the other way round. So it's less accurate to say, "God knows it's going to rain tomorrow"; more accurate to say, "God knows it is raining tomorrow."

(But only if it actually is raining tomorrow.)

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
"God knows it's going to rain tomorrow"; more accurate to say, "God knows it is raining tomorrow."

(But only if it actually is raining tomorrow.)

Oh - it will be here, this is Manchester.

[Biased]

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

Knowing whether it'll rain tomorrow is a question of knowing the current conditions and the laws by which those conditions propogate through time and space to sufficient accuracy to predict the weather in one location tomorrow with sufficient precision to say "yes, it'll rain" or "no, it won't".

Quantum indeterminancy (which is not the same as randomness) operates at the atomic and subatomic scale. At increasing scales the indeterminate behaviour of individual components is diluted into the behaviour of the whole, which is the average of the behaviour of the individual components. The larger the scale, the more individual components and the better determined is the average behaviour. On the scale of weather systems, the quantum indeterminancy on the behaviour of individual molecules is totally insignificant. We can't accurately predict the weather tomorrow because a) our knowledge of the current conditions (that can, in principle, be determined to near infinite precision.) is incomplete and imperfect; instrumental uncertainities and non-total-coverage of the instruments is more than enough to result in substantial input uncertainties, b) our knowledge of the underlying laws that govern the weather is incomplete and imperfect and c) our ability to compute the propogation of the current conditions through those laws is limited, even if we had better data and theories.

Now, if God can know the precise conditions at any time (even to the limit imposed by quantum indeterminacy), and he has a perfect understanding of the underlying laws, and he has infinite "computing power" then he could, if he wanted, produce a perfect weather forecast for tomorrow. Or, the day after that ... assuming no other influences outside his control interfere (eg: if we are entirely free to decide what we do, then the decisions we make whether to drive to work, have a smoke, leave the doors to the house open for the day to let it air out etc... will be outwith the control of God).

Of course, if you were asking if God could predict which of two slits a single electron would pass through then quantum indeterminacy is entirely relevant.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

God in classical Christian theology does not predict anything. That would require God to be at some point in time such that other points in time were future for God. In classical Christian theology all time coexists in God's presence. Therefore, God does not predict. Therefore, quantum indeterminacy is irrelevant.
(There may be Christian arguments against free will. God knowing future actions isn't one of them, since for God there's no such thing as a future action.)

Posted by WhateverTheySay (# 16598) on :

God made the universe. Therefore God made the laws of physics.

God is all-knowing and all-powerful. Therefore what God says is what goes.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

quote:
Originally posted by WhateverTheySay:
God made the universe. Therefore God made the laws of physics.

God is all-knowing and all-powerful. Therefore what God says is what goes.

Even if one of the laws of physics he made is that the properties of atomic and subatomic particles are indeterminate? Can God know something that he has made to be unknowable?

Posted by GreyFace (# 4682) on :

Alan, I'm not convinced. It seems certain to me that quantum-tunnelling events such as radioactive decay could have some influence on weather given the notorious potential for weather systems to be ill-conditioned. I haven't attempted the maths - I haven't got the data, the time, or frankly the brains to make a start - to have a shot at the probability of these events changing the answer to the question "Will it rain tomorrow?" though it's obviously going to be tiny, but if we have to do the calcs doesn't this mean we've conceded the point? The weather isn't perfectly determined even in the absence of agents of free will who might start nudging butterflies [Biased]

Yorick, you owe me a keyboard.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
There is no future to God, only the present. But everything that's ever happened or ever will is in his "present". That's because time is subject to him, not the other way round. So it's less accurate to say, "God knows it's going to rain tomorrow"; more accurate to say, "God knows it is raining tomorrow."

Correct. Furthermore, whether quantum "randomness" turns out to be an actual feature of nature or not (yes, reasonable doubt remains possible...), this has nothing whatsoever to do with Divine "causality". Because God simply is not a cause in the universe. If we say something is "random", we mean that we cannot explain it (completely) in terms of some prior causes in the universe. But if it exists, then its being is still entirely "caused" by God: it is then created as being (somewhat) independent of prior causes in the universe. If there is rain tomorrow, then only because God made it be - and this is utterly independent of the question whether it is in some way predictable from prior states of the universe.

When we say "God knows it is raining tomorrow," we are actually also saying "God makes it rain tomorrow." There is no separation in God between His knowledge and His action. He knows perfectly all that ever was, is, and shall be, because He makes it be. And it is neither here nor there whether He makes something be that stands in deterministic or random relationships with other things He makes be.

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

Incorrect. Nice rhetoric mind. The future does not exist. Period. Any more than the past does. And Alan: I have one word for you: chaos, as Greyface alluded to. And you yourself did.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Even if one of the laws of physics he made is that the properties of atomic and subatomic particles are indeterminate? Can God know something that he has made to be unknowable?

The properties of atomic and subatomic particles are not really "indeterminate" in quantum theory, but you know that.

Of course God knows something that He has made to be unknowable. He knows it as something He has made to be unknowable. That's not some kind of Zen statement. The present confusion arises strictly from mixing up creation and creator, which is invalid. When we say that something is indeterminate, random, unknowable, etc., we are talking in terms of creation. If one measures very precisely the position of an electron, then its momentum is as good as unknown. True (or at least: true if quantum theory is true). However, this is a purely creation-internal statement. In terms of the information one can gather from the universe, one cannot tell how fast and in what direction that electron is going. God however created this precise state of affairs with perfect knowledge: God creates where this electron will be next, and where any other position-determined electron will be next, in precisely such a manner that we cannot predict this from any of our observations. This manner of God governing the universe with total precision we then call the "Heisenberg uncertainty relation", a piece of physical law.

Perhaps an analogy will help. Let's say an author writes: "By pure chance, just as the curtain was swept aside briefly, Martha walked past the window and saw her man with another woman." Now then, is that a chance event or not? At the level of the story, with which we as readers engage, of course it is. That's the very point of saying that this happened by chance. It was a purely random occurrence that set off all we can expect to follow in the story, and we would be quite justified in musing about what would have happened if Martha had - by chance - been delayed a bit longer. However, this chance event was of course completely determined by the author writing it into existence. There was no chance involved in the author putting this to paper, he meant it to be this way, and so it was. Maybe this is the very point of his story, the influence of chance on life. At any rate, the author knew perfectly well what would happen by chance, because He made it happen by chance. He determined what the pure chance event would be. This makes it no less pure chance in the story. Rather, it is pure chance in the story precisely because the author decided that it should be so.

This is how it works with God and His creation. And since somebody is bound to come up with "free will": precisely the same applies. Not that anybody really knows what we mean by saying "free will". But whatever relation it may actually indicate within creation between creatures, it exists as free will only because God perfectly determined it to be of free will. Just like an author can write that some character in his story "freely decides" to do this and that. And therefore, they do. If the author wrote something else, they wouldn't. It's a different level of description, and we get terribly confused only because we want to pull God down to our level, make Him an actor within creation as we are actors. But that's not possible, He's not an actor in creation, He is the Creator.

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

And God thinks the universe. Causes it. Wills it. Indeterminate, necessarily. God's knowledge of tomorrow is indeterminate. Necessarily. Unless He wills - acts - otherwise as a four dimensional being can put what's in my locked drawer on my desk without touching the desk with it until its there.

His knowledge and His action are NOT the same.

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

Somewhere in the world, it will rain tomorrow.

The real problem is not whether God knows, but whether we can definitively obtain that information form him, which I doubt. Therefore whether he knows or not becomes irrelevant.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
The future does not exist. Period. Any more than the past does.

Let's say I've written "As Martha packs her suitcase for her big trip to New York in a hotel room in Paris, she reminisces about her gondola rides in Venice." Where is Martha at this point in time? Well, in Paris. Her past in Venice is no more, even though she contemplates her memory of it at present, her future in New York is not yet, even though she is preparing for it in this very moment. However, I'm of course free to browse back to see what I wrote about her time in Venice, or browse forward to remind myself what I wrote about her time in New York. For I have the book of Martha's life in my hand. Not that I really need to read it. I remember what I wrote, I am its author, and Martha is my creation.

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
And Alan: I have one word for you: chaos, as Greyface alluded to. And you yourself did.

A nice word. Perhaps you should educate yourself what it actually indicates in modern physics?

Posted by EtymologicalEvangelical (# 15091) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard
Incorrect. Nice rhetoric mind. The future does not exist. Period. Any more than the past does.

And neither does the present, actually. What is "the present moment"? A durationless instant, in other words, a "period of time" which is infinitely small, since any duration can be divided into past and future, and therefore no period or duration could ever be called "the present moment".

Which then poses the question: in what does our consciousness operate, if not in the "present moment"? And if the present moment is infinitely small and lacks duration, then in what realm does our consciousness exist?

For me the only answer is "eternity" - in other words, a dimension higher than time.

I guess this is a problem for the materialist, but certainly not for the Christian.

Posted by alienfromzog (# 5327) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
So there I am outside Triangle at Holy Trinity Leicester last Friday night and this young chap says, 'Have you seen Futurama Martin?' (the young eh?) and I say that Bender is one of my favourite characters (not just for the three rows of teeth, voice and running on alcohol) but because he symbolizes the Augustinean (from Ptolemy, so no, the East is as heretic as the West) sophomorically omniscient God.

Oh Martin, this post made me quite nostalgic. It's so long since I've been to Holy T in Leccy...

Some very interesting questions, but essentially I think you're barking up the wrong tree and Ingo B is right.

First I want to admit my assumptions
1. God is infinite
2. This infinite God has no past or future only present (as so well put above by Dafyd) because God is outside of time and creator of it. Or Spacetime if you prefer.

Newtonian Physics, we know is a very good model. At least for big things. I am in awe of the work of Newton and how his theories are still used today. Of course, Newtonionism is only an approximation and in some circumstances the approximation is not good enough - this is essentially where Einstein comes in. And from Relativity we can move on to quantum mechanics and possibly the unifying theory of everything.

Where I think you are going wrong in the first instance is to assert that QM is reality. In may be but in the strictly scientific sense it is a model of reality that works. It works in the sense that it makes testable predictions. This means it helps us to understand how the universe works. Of course the same is true of Newton. What I think is so amazing about Relativity is that as we discovered Newtonian physics didn't always work, we needed a better understanding, but Newton fits into Relativity and Relativity even predicts where Newton will work and where it won't. Hence Relativity is a better model than Newtonian physics. Of course that does not mean that Relativity is a perfect model...

Similarly QM tells us that knowing the position and momentum of all particles accurately is not possible - leading on to a degree of indeterminancy. What it doesn't tell us is that the same degree of uncertainty if-you-will is true for God. And philosophically I would start from a completely different point.

This infinite God who made the universe and who sustains it (Classic Christian thinking) therefore must have a complete (perfect if you're Ingo B) knowledge of the universe. It doesn't really matter whether physics says that raining tomorrow is a random event of totally dependent on today's meteorological conditions. The rules that govern the universe belong to God as does everything in it.

The analogy of a character in a book and God as the author I think is very helpful. Although of course it is a very pale one. I have heard many good authors talk of how their characters took on a life of their own and ended up doing things they didn't expect. Of course, in one sense this is ridiculous - who writes the book after all?!! But. But if you create a believable and 'real' character than when writing about them they must react to situations in ways consistent with who they are. I think good authors have an intuition for this and often find scenes going in a different direction to what they first intended as to do otherwise means compromising the character and most readers come away dissatisfied as the realism or believability is lost. What I am getting at here is the all-powerful all-knowing creator and his creation. As Ingo put it, the universe is willed by God.

I thus have no problem with God know any and all future possibilities and especially what the future will actually be. Because to God it is not the future.

The future is not written. For us, within the universe I think that is true. But I also think that is a ridiculous statement for the creator of the universe.

Do I find this paradox easy to hold in my mind? Of course not, but then I don't understand God. And I'm quite pleased about that.

Of course passages like in Genesis where it is said that Moses changed God's mind I find really tricky...!

AFZ

P.S. Dr Werner Heisenberg was stopped by the police for speeding. The officer in question asked Dr Heisenberg:
"Tell me sir, do you know how fast you were going?"
"No officer," he replied, "but I can tell you exactly where I am!"

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

Then God is Bender writ infinite and there is no freedom whatsoever. If He knows the four dimensional space-time co-ordinates of every raindrop in Manchester tomorrow because it's already tomorrow in Manchester in Him. Because that's the only way He can possibly know those co-ordinates without willing it. Isn't it Alan?

By proliferating every entity. If that's the right tree to bark up: I won't even pee on it.

Because Alan, rain is just so fractal isn't it? Chaotic. Uncomputable under ANY circumstances. You'd be better off with gorillas and typewriters inside Bender.

What good Muslims you all are, as in so many other ways.

And IngoB, why would I want to do that? (You in particular are such a good Muslim: it is written.) Is there some intellectualist esoterica I'm missing?

There's a wonderful novel by Jonathan Carroll called The Land of Laughs. Sounds like you're in it. Am I?! I think Straub covers similar ground in In The Night Room.

And why were you telling me that indeterminate doesn't mean random? Dullard on the Clapham omnibus though I be? Or is that my paranoia and you wouldn't DREAM of being that patronizing? Of telling me that null isn't zero.

And when did 'classical' Christianity start chaps?

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

authoritatively ... sigh

You'd be welcome alienfromzog! Are you a Roger Morgan man? John Woolmer?

Posted by alienfromzog (# 5327) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
authoritatively ... sigh

You'd be welcome alienfromzog! Are you a Roger Morgan man? John Woolmer?

Roger.
I was at uni in Leicester 97-2000.

AFZ

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Then God is Bender writ infinite and there is no freedom whatsoever.

Of course there is freedom, there just is no unknown, no "escape". Every hair on your head is counted and even if you were to go down to Sheol, God is already there.

I don't know why you can't get over this point. That your action is known simply does not mean that is unfree, determined, predictable. If I watch a movie of what you did yesterday, you have become entirely determined. I can watch that movie over and over, and say exactly what you did. That doesn't make your actions in the movie any less free. Because considered in terms of the world back then, your actions were free. The appropriate measure of the freedom of your actions is the world and you up to the time of action. I know that you also do not believe in eternity, so let's say instead that I have a time machine. I go one week in the future, and watch what you do. To make sure I get it right, I reset my time machine to the same point, and watch you several times as you do it. Now, answer me this: have you become unfree in your actions merely because I have observed you and know exactly what you are going to do? Of course not, you are as free as you ever have been in doing what I know you will be doing. Because the appropriate measure of your freedom is the world and you up to the time of action. My foreknowledge is not a measure of your freedom, because it was not gained from the world and you up to the time of action. It was gained from the world and you at the time of action.

Having returned to this time, can I make you unfree? No, I can't. If my time machine really was a time machine (and not just a device to visit parallel worlds), then it is now certain what you will do. I can even go and tell you now. Have you thereby become unfree? No, still not. Not that you can do other, of course, if my time machine was working correctly. But whatever faculty it is that you have which makes you free (and nobody really has an idea about that), you have not suddenly lost it. Rather, you will make your free choices, and they will inescapably lead to what I've seen will happen. Plenty of stories make hay with this, from "Oedipus" to "Premonition". Of course, that just goes to show that if humans acquire Divine powers, tragedy is inevitable. Nevertheless, the key point is sound. Observation of what will happen does not make what happens any less "random" or "free". Because these words measure the present against the past, not against the future.

One final point: I'm always talking in terms of a spectator. But that's very human, it really has nothing to do with how God "observes" you throughout your time. He is not "looking at you". He is creating you. A close analogy would be to your arm and fist as you strike a wall. They are the "actualizers" of your action. You've decided to hit that wall, and they do. For you, with you, but also as part of you. They are the medium of your action message. Your arm and fist "know" what you are doing not as passive observers, but because they are enacting your deed. In a sense, your fist knows better what it means to hit that wall than you do. This, and not spectating, is how God knows what you do. Because from your cells converting ATP to your fist rushing to the wall, God is actuating it all. He is the support of your reality in motion, he is not passive, he is your dynamics. You lift your finger, sure, but the motion of your finger, and indeed the motion of your will, is purely God-powered. Not a speck of dust in the world, no atom, no electron, no Planck time, moves without God saying "let it be so". So your freedom, whatever it may consist in, is actualized by God. He is as intimate to it as your fist is to your strike of the wall.

I could be talking about a mechanical universe there, like Laplace. But I'm not. Because that is saying that God is dead. That He's merely a CPU clock to the universe. It's much more interesting than that. God is alive, God is free. And if there is one thing we really struggle with explaining "mechanistically" in this universe, it is life and freedom. So I think it's really the opposite of Laplace. By being actualized through God, all this universe becomes alive and free. It is merely so that some parts let God shine through more clearly. And we are already like a dirty piece of glass. One that can be cleaned...

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
Chaotic. Uncomputable under ANY circumstances.

That's not what chaotic means. I've computed chaotic systems many times. It's not hard. You can download Octave for free and compute the Lorentz system with a few lines of code yourself. As I've said, try looking up the terms you are using.

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
And why were you telling me that indeterminate doesn't mean random?

Presumably because it doesn't, and we like words that have different meaning to continue having their different meanings.

Posted by goperryrevs (# 13504) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard:
goperryrevs! He cannot. Where is the information?

Well, what if he knows it'll screw things up like you say if he does, so although he could, he chooses not to.

If we were playing poker, of course I could jump up and look at your cards, or fix the deck or whatever, but at that point there's not much point playing the game anymore, because the game as it was meant to be played has ceased to exist.

So he chooses to limit himself to not know the future, and play along with the rest of us. Chooses not to get up and look at our cards, but still plays the game and beats us at it anyhow.

Posted by Apocalypso (# 15405) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
Of course, if you were asking if God could predict which of two slits a single electron would pass through then quantum indeterminacy is entirely relevant.

You pose that question as though God were not the single electron.

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

The OP and subsequent discussion seemed to be posed in the context of theistic understandings of God (who is transcendant and immanent), rather than pantheistic or panentheistic understandings. I've found pantheism and panentheism to be unsatisfactory approaches to understanding God, especially in a Christian context, and therefore stick with theism.

So, yes, I would say that the single electron is not God.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:

Of course God knows something that He has made to be unknowable. He knows it as something He has made to be unknowable. That's not some kind of Zen statement. The present confusion arises strictly from mixing up creation and creator, which is invalid. When we say that something is indeterminate, random, unknowable, etc., we are talking in terms of creation.

I'm not sure if this is total bollocks or Truth.

I think it's the latter.

And I'm loving the comments on God outside space/time with past/future/present all present in one moment.

Only occasionally come across it but never have before the ship. And it raises the hairs on the back of my neck every time.

I love this ship. [Smile]

You learn stuff you don't learn in theological college (but that you should).

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
This, and not spectating, is how God knows what you do. Because from your cells converting ATP to your fist rushing to the wall, God is actuating it all. He is the support of your reality in motion, he is not passive, he is your dynamics. You lift your finger, sure, but the motion of your finger, and indeed the motion of your will, is purely God-powered. Not a speck of dust in the world, no atom, no electron, no Planck time, moves without God saying "let it be so". So your freedom, whatever it may consist in, is actualized by God. He is as intimate to it as your fist is to your strike of the wall.

This is difficult to accept in terms of evil and theodicy. Yet if your free will (?) arguments apply to above, I think I can get my head around it. Just.

I think. [Paranoid]

Um, yeah.

Do you have a "name" for this kind of argument Ingo? Or this kind of "philosophy"?

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Adeodatus:
So it's less accurate to say, "God knows it's going to rain tomorrow"; more accurate to say, "God knows it is raining tomorrow."

(But only if it actually is raining tomorrow.)

Gee, all I know is God is reigning tomorrow.

If physics tells us that the future is unpredictable, yet we are supposed to believe that God knows the future, then we enlightened and sophisticated types might as well pack it in and join the young earth creationists.

Posted by ken (# 2460) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Alogon:

If physics tells us that the future is unpredictable, yet we are supposed to believe that God knows the future, then we enlightened and sophisticated types might as well pack it in and join the young earth creationists.

No. Why would you think that? It doesn't make sense. God is not located in the world, either in time or in space.

Its no different to say that God can know what's happening tomorrow (though we can't because we are stuck in today) than it is to say that God can know what is happening on a planet going round the star Nu Ophiuchi (though can't because we are stuck on Earth).

Posted by Alogon (# 5513) on :

quote:
Originally posted by ken:
Why would you think that? It doesn't make sense. God is not located in the world, either in time or in space.

What makes sense is debated with considerable rigor. Two books from the past decade or two are Free Will and the Christian Faith by W.S. Anglin, and God, Foreknowledge, and Freedom, edited by Martin Fischer.

You wouldn't suggest that, because God is not located in the world, God can create a stone so heavy that God cannot lift it. The classical idea that God sees all time in the present and looks at history like a tapestry may be correct after all, but let's not accept it glibly. Some argue that it is actually logically incompatible with a claim that we have free will, if not as obvious to the man in the street. One doesn't want to cling to a belief that can be reduced to absurdity by a logical proof. Nor do I think that God litters scientific findings with falsehoods just to test our faith, as the fundamentalists do to dismiss fossils and carbon dating. Lacking the training to follow all the arguments either way, I am unconvinced.

quote:
Its no different to say that God can know what's happening tomorrow (though we can't because we are stuck in today) than it is to say that God can know what is happening on a planet going round the star Nu Ophiuchi.

Yes, it is different. The Library of Congress subject headings may make no distinction, but omniscience is not the same as foreknowledge.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Evensong:
Do you have a "name" for this kind of argument Ingo? Or this kind of "philosophy"?

Well, it is certainly inspired by the movement known as Analytical Thomism, or more generally, Anaytical Scholasticism (scroll down to the entry with that title to see some names). Whether my speculations remain true to these exalted labels is a different question. I certainly have a lot more enthusiasm for, than education in, philosophy and theology.

Anyhow, I agree with the general idea of reconnecting with the high middle ages as the last point where Christian philosophy and theology were still internally coherent, faithful to scripture and tradition, and meaningful to the individual, but without pretending that therefore one actually belongs to that age and throwing away all the knowledge and tools we have gathered in the meantime. So what I've been saying can certainly be found in Aquinas in some fashion (God knowing the contingent future, God as support of all action, etc.), or for that matter in Bonaventure (God's foreknowledge, God is in all things, etc.). But I hope I can give it a new voice to some extent: not by virtue of being a saintly genius, as they were, but simply by virtue of being contemporary.

Posted by Evensong (# 14696) on :

Thank you. Will do some reading.

I think where "modernity" has gone wrong is to accept the Cartesian world view that divides God from the world.

Which in turn has theoretically pit science against God. When in fact, no such duality exists.

Posted by alienfromzog (# 5327) on :

quote:
Originally posted by IngoB:
Well, it is certainly inspired by the movement known as Analytical Thomism, or more generally, Anaytical Scholasticism (scroll down to the entry with that title to see some names). Whether my speculations remain true to these exalted labels is a different question. I certainly have a lot more enthusiasm for, than education in, philosophy and theology.

Anyhow, I agree with the general idea of reconnecting with the high middle ages as the last point where Christian philosophy and theology were still internally coherent, faithful to scripture and tradition, and meaningful to the individual, but without pretending that therefore one actually belongs to that age and throwing away all the knowledge and tools we have gathered in the meantime. So what I've been saying can certainly be found in Aquinas in some fashion (God knowing the contingent future, God as support of all action, etc.), or for that matter in Bonaventure (God's foreknowledge, God is in all things, etc.). But I hope I can give it a new voice to some extent: not by virtue of being a saintly genius, as they were, but simply by virtue of being contemporary.

Now I know why I agree with IngoB so much (when I understand him) that is the same perspective I have. Aquinas was both a saint and a genius and we have much to learn from him. Of course, in the past half-millenia the world has moved on and we should add to Aquinas what we have learnt.

AFZ

Posted by the gnome (# 14156) on :

The view of God as outside time, along with the argument that this means His foreknowledge is still compatible with free will, dates back a long time before Aquinas. I don't know who articulated it first, but you can find it in Boethius in the sixth century--Book V, prosa vi of the Consolatio Philosophiae:

Deum igitur aeternum esse cunctorum ratione degentium commune iudicium est. Quid sit igitur aeternitas consideremus; haec enim nobis naturam pariter diuinam scientiamque patefacit. Aeternitas igitur est interminabilis uitae tota simul et perfecta possessio....Si est diuini humanique praesentis digna collatio, uti uos uestro hoc temporario praesenti quaedam uidetis ita ille omnia suo cernit aeterno. Quare haec diuina praenotio naturam rerum proprietatemque non mutat taliaque apud se praesentia spectat qualia in tempore olim futura prouenient. Nec rerum iudicia confundit unoque suae mentis intuitu tam necessarie quam non necessarie uentura dinoscit, sicuti uos cum pariter ambulare in terra hominem et oriri in caelo solem uidetis, quamquam simul utrumque conspectum tamen discernitis et hoc uoluntarium illud esse necessarium iudicatis. Ita igitur cuncta dispiciens diuinus intuitus qualitatem rerum minime perturbat apud se quidem praesentium ad condicionem uero temporis futurarum....Idem futurum cum ad diuinam notionem refertur necessarium, cum uero in sua natura perpenditur liberum prorsus atque absolutum uideri.

"'God is eternal; in this judgment all rational beings agree. Let us, then, consider what eternity is. For this word carries with it a revelation alike of the Divine nature and of the Divine knowledge. Now, eternity is the possession of endless life whole and perfect at a single moment....If we may without unfitness compare God's present and man's, just as ye see certain things in this your temporary present, so does He see all things in His eternal present. Wherefore this Divine anticipation changes not the natures and properties of things, and it beholds things present before it, just as they will hereafter come to pass in time. Nor does it confound things in its judgment, but in the one mental view distinguishes alike what will come necessarily and what without necessity. For even as ye, when at one and the same time ye see a man walking on the earth and the sun rising in the sky, distinguish between the two, though one glance embraces both, and judge the former voluntary, the latter necessary action: so also the Divine vision in its universal range of view does in no wise confuse the characters of the things which are present to its regard, though future in respect of time....The same future event is necessary from the standpoint of Divine knowledge, but when considered in its own nature it seems absolutely free and unfettered.

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :

Martin - I was going to say 'oh no, not again', but I think we've got further this time. I don't like the thread title you chose because, as someone else has pointed out, it poses a false dichotomy when viewed from a faith position. In fact, I think it's a false dichotomy anyway - things are what they are and the truth about that is what it is, and what we think or believe is irrelevant.

quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
The OP and subsequent discussion seemed to be posed in the context of theistic understandings of God (who is transcendant and immanent), rather than pantheistic or panentheistic understandings. I've found pantheism and panentheism to be unsatisfactory approaches to understanding God, especially in a Christian context, and therefore stick with theism.

So, yes, I would say that the single electron is not God.

I think I'm probably a panentheist, but I have no problem with God being transcendent and immanent; neither do I think that it leads to the conclusion that S/He "is the single electron". Am I doing it wrong?

Posted by Alan Cresswell (# 31) on :

I'm not going to judge whether anyone is doing it right or wrong. All I know is that panentheism hasn't been fruitful for me in thinking about God.

As I understand it, in pantheism and panenthiesm the single electron would be part of God. But, that begs the question of whether God is in control of his whole being to the extent that he can a) know exactly what each part is doing and b) do anything about it anyway.

Posted by QLib (# 43) on :

Hmmm, I think that's an overly-literal approach. For me, panentheism is about God being sort-of embedded in the 'just-is'ness of things.

I think the question of whether God knows it's going to rain tomorrow is not the most helpful, because, as someone has said on this thread, and as I posted on the previous thread, God would be an infallible weather-forecaster on the basis of knoweldge, omniscience and experience.

More to the point, did God know I would miss Meeting this morning? I thought I was going; I told a couple of Friends I'd see them there, but I'd also been thinking for the last couple of days that 'I really must get that funny noise the boiler's making checked out'. And then this morning I thought I would just look it up on the internet before setting off to meeting, and what I read there prompted me to phone British Gas, and what I told them prompted them to say they'd send an engineer this afternoon (so I could still have gone to Meeting at that point) but then he rang to say he was round the corner and would it be OK if he came now?

There was some free will here, and some apparent chance. Did God know in advance? Did S/He silently scoff when I said 'see you tomorrow' to the person I spoke to last night?

That's all relatively trivial (I just get to lose an arm and a leg when the bill comes in). But...
How many times in your life have you looked back and seen a path you didn't know you were treading? I have to agree with these line from Shakespeare's 'Hamlet':
There is a destiny that shapes our ends
Rough-hew them how we may.
The rough-hewing is the free will bit; God's shaping takes account of it - our choices are real but they are (to switch metaphors) just woven into the tapestry. Physics, Schmisicks. [Razz]

Posted by Sarah G (# 11669) on :

To follow up on the comments about God being outside of time- the image I've always found helpful is that of someone standing on a very high hill by a motorway. He can observe all the comings and goings, but isn't part of the traffic.

Posted by churchgeek (# 5557) on :

I'm not willing to commit myself to a particular take on this problem, but there is also the view known as molinism, or "middle knowledge," where God knows all possibilities, and (therefore) can act to direct where the future ultimately goes, but doesn't know which specific possibilities will be actualized by the free will of creatures. It does have the benefit of resonating with those bits in Scripture where God seems to express surprise over human actions, but then weaves them into God's plans anyway.

A good author lets their characters act and sometimes is surprised at directions the story takes, but can still bring it to the desired conclusion (although some authors might not, they might let the characters completely change the story).

Posted by Squibs (# 14408) on :

I wonder - from a theological perspective - what part Satan plays in all this.

Does Satan know something we don't - i.e. that the future is not knowable even to God? There are other options, of course. For example, he might be deluded in the same way that Hitler was deluded in his certitude that shifting phantom divisions around a map would turn the tide of defeat. It has always struck me as odd that this supernatural being stays opposed to God in what orthodox Christianity would teach is certain defeat.

Posted by Lamb Chopped (# 5528) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Squibs:
I wonder - from a theological perspective - what part Satan plays in all this.

Does Satan know something we don't - i.e. that the future is not knowable even to God? There are other options, of course. For example, he might be deluded in the same way that Hitler was deluded in his certitude that shifting phantom divisions around a map would turn the tide of defeat. It has always struck me as odd that this supernatural being stays opposed to God in what orthodox Christianity would teach is certain defeat.

This does look very odd indeed. The funny thing is, after forty years of exposure to way more human evil than I ever wanted to see, [Eek!]

I've come to see a pattern that might explain it--or at least it looks that way to me. Have you ever noticed how the more evil a person is in what he says and does, the just plain stupider he is in terms of common sense? It's like a kind of intellectual rot sets in. And so we get politicians doing damfool stupid things that are bound to get them caught, like soliciting people for sex in public restrooms, or daring the press to catch them in affairs. And major church leaders screwing around with finances, women, etc. and leaving a trail a mile wide behind them. Even garden variety murderers who do things like taking out life insurance on their victims, or who solicit hitmen over the internet as if nobody would notice. Any ten-year-old would hide their tracks better.

Occasionally I've been tempted to think that if I ever took to a life of crime I'd do a damn sight better at it. But that's not likely, really, because the brain rot would set in and I'd wind up a Darwin Award like the rest. And that I think is what has happened to Satan. A kind of spiritual insanity that has infected an intelligence that was originally as far above ours as we are above an ant. And now he's almost to point and laugh level.

It's rather sad.

Posted by IngoB (# 8700) on :

quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
I'm not willing to commit myself to a particular take on this problem, but there is also the view known as molinism, or "middle knowledge," where God knows all possibilities, and (therefore) can act to direct where the future ultimately goes, but doesn't know which specific possibilities will be actualized by the free will of creatures.

Your last statement is not Molinist. The very point of Molinism is that God knows precisely what "free willed" decision would be take under any circumstance, even if counterfactual. That is the "middle knowledge". So not only present free decisions, but also future ones and indeed those that never happen are known to God. That, for the Molinists, solves the question how God's providence is compatible with man's freedom. Say God knows that under circumstances/graces A, you will freely decide to do X, whereas under circumstances/graces B, you will freely decide to do Y. Then if God wants you yo do Y, He can simply put you into circumstances/graces B. Whereupon you'll freely decide to do Y, yet nevertheless you'll do what God wished you to do.

Molinism may defend a modern idea of freedom, but certainly not by making God less knowing. In a sense, Molinism relies on transferring power from God's will to God knowledge, making Him "super-omniscient".

quote:
Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:
And that I think is what has happened to Satan. A kind of spiritual insanity that has infected an intelligence that was originally as far above ours as we are above an ant. And now he's almost to point and laugh level.

Hardly. But I'm sure Satan will be delighted to hear you underestimate him so much. I'm fond of the theory that Satan fell when he learned that He would have to bow His knee to a mere human due to the Incarnation, and felt insulted in his (very real) dignity. A person of angelic intelligence cannot directly attack God, since that is clearly pointless. But he can decide to attack us, and hope to reverse God's decision by making us unsuitable for God'd higher designs. And that seems to have been Satan's plan from the first.

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

It's completely and utterly different Ken.

God knowing what's happening elsewhere in His mind simultaneously is a given. Demonstrated, at least analogously by the delocalized nature of electrons when the spin of one of a pair is determined and this determines the other's, no matter at what distance. As the future does not exist, what's in one 4D light cone and not another's yet isn't even an analogy for God knowing what hasn't happened.

God is not frozen in eternity.

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

another, sorry

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