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6th November 2009, 02:08 PM
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Reps: 497,419,071 (power: 497,422) | | Originally Posted by theFijian  He wants to encourage them to pretend that they live in a movie
I want to encourage them to leave their religion out of science. Sophisticated YEC is not that we live in a movie and I do not want to encourage them to think that. You merely mock me. I used man the movie-maker/creator as a metaphor for God the Creator. Dorothy L. Sayers used man the writer/creator as a metaphor for God the Creator over 80 years ago with utterly no controversy, and I expect this metaphor has been used all the way back to Augustine. If you read into my words that anybody is supposed to pretend or believe that they live in a movie, I never intended such a reading. That people are supposed to pretend that they live in a movie or a story forms no part of what I am talking about. Dorothy L. Sayers and all the rest never intended people who read their theological works to believe that they were living in a story. Originally Posted by theFijian Why would any YEC want to follow such a scheme when essentially any 'scientific discovery' they make is false and not a true reflection of physical reality?
The important use of the word 'false' in connection with a 'scientific discovery' concerns whether or not the theory makes predictions that are borne out when subjected to empirical testing, whether or not it is the best theory that explains the facts, and whether or not it fits with the rest of science. This is all science can expect of a theory. Sophisticated YECers would find theories true or false in exact concordance with non YECers. Beyond that, the sophisticated YECer has assumptions which are not part of science, but which he likes very much, which clash with your assumptions that are not part of science, but which you like very much. These differing assumptions are not part of science because no empirical test can be devised to distinguish them. They are interpretations. Physicists have been aware of multiple interpretations of solid science for almost one hundred years now. This whole fight between YECs and evolutionists is ... so ... nineteenth century. Neither side in this fight has managed to find its way into the twentieth century yet.
Just as you have to tolerate many harmless, weird sets of beliefs you should tolerate this harmless, weird set of beliefs. If, in a tolerant way, you can convince sophisticated YECers to drop the literal interpretation of Genesis, the more power to you. In the meantime, the sophisticated YECer is no longer harming Christianity through ignorant attacks on science. These attacks, in their various forms, are the only real problem with YEC.
I reiterate that the human mind is quite capable of the kind of abstraction I have described. When a sophisticated YECer finds a continuity between the teeth of two hominids dated to 450,000 years before the presence, he believes he has discovered a true relation in creation, as God intended. He has found truth. What is 'essentially false' to him is that the evolution from one to the other occured anywhere but in God's mind. This, to him, is your religious belief, and he tolerates it, just as you should tolerate his.
Comprenez? Originally Posted by theFijian Tom is correct in one thing, it is 'ugly'
I never promised you the Sistine Chapel. Originally Posted by theFijian not just that it's dishonest and condescending.
Who is being deceived? What is the condescension? Originally Posted by theFijian leading to massive theological problems which unsurprisingly Tom doesn't want to address
What theological problem? When did I ever say I did not want to address a theological problem? I answered this charge of veiled trickery by God by saying, in concordance with widely received theology, that God wants us to discover him by faith and that we are not to put God to the test, so the truth of creation cannot be discovered by science, which puts everything to the test. That's not a fumbling, awkward answer either. I think it is a darned good one. So what theological problem do I want to avoid? That God would do such a dastardly thing? It's answered. If sophisticated YEC is true, you can learn the whole truth. Nothing is hidden. Part of the learning comes with faith. The answer is revealed.
This is the exact same answer that the faithful give to atheists when they say, "Why is God hidden? Where is he?". The answer is "seek faithfully and you will find him".  |
6th November 2009, 02:58 PM
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Reps: 12,567,898,174,147,644 (power: 12,567,898,174,166) | | Originally Posted by Tom Cohoe Just as you have to tolerate many harmless, weird sets of beliefs you should tolerate this harmless, weird set of beliefs. If, in a tolerant way, you can convince sophisticated YECers to drop the literal interpretation of Genesis, the more power to you. In the meantime, the sophisticated YECer is no longer harming Christianity through ignorant attacks on science. These attacks, in their various forms, are the only real problem with YEC.
No, they are not the only problem with YEC. The Fijian is right, It raises massive theological problems as well. And that harms Christianity even more than opposing science. What theological problem? When did I ever say I did not want to address a theological problem? I answered this charge of veiled trickery by God by saying, in concordance with widely received theology, that God wants us to discover him by faith and that we are not to put God to the test, so the truth of creation cannot be discovered by science, which puts everything to the test.
Bait and switch tactic. We are not to put God to the test. And, in fact, science cannot put God to the test. But nowhere are we told we are barred from putting creation to the test. How are we to discover the wonders of creation if we don't explore them? How do we learn to use the resources of creation without understanding them? Science puts everything to the test which it can put to the test. That does not include God. We still discover God by faith.
The question is whether we are really discovering God's creation when we observe and study and test it. Traditionally, Christians have said "yes, we are." Scientists exploring creation felt they were following the footsteps of the Creator, learning about the world God had actually made.
But the answer you propose and want to present as a teaching to be tolerated within the Christian faith is that this is not the case. And you think there is no theological problem with that?
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6th November 2009, 04:44 PM
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Reps: 497,419,071 (power: 497,422) | | Originally Posted by gluadys No, they are not the only problem with YEC. The Fijian is right, It raises massive theological problems as well. And that harms Christianity even more than opposing science.
gluadys, I understand that you have theological problems with sophisticated YEC. Christian sects, in general, have theological problems with what other sects believe. This goes right back to the beginning of Christianity. As long as these differences do not get into the under the principal, "if it bleeds it leads", it does little harm to the image of Christianity in the eyes of non Chritians. OTOH, when Christians attempt to force the teaching of creation "science" as science in classrooms, and in other ways attempt to force false science into the public agenda, they are making Christianity look foolish in the eyes of non Chritians. People like Richard Dawkins get a lot of help from this foolishness when they write their massively best selling tomes which influence tens of thousands of people directly, and more indirectly. You can argue til the cows come home that young Earth creationism (creation "science" aside) does more harm to Christianity, or that sophisticated YEC would do more harm, but you yourself said you didn't give two figs (I believe that's what it was) what they believed, that it was there interference in public institutions that you cared about (I don't remember your exact words). Originally Posted by gluadys Bait and switch tactic.
I'm not engaged in tactics. I'm more used to discussing things with science and engineering types of people. Science and engineering people are not interested in "winning". They want their ideas to correspond with reality. If an engineer designed a bridge, and another engineer said, "look, that won't work, these members here are at risk of buckling," the first engineer might disagree if he couldn't see the problem. The disagreement could get quite vehement. But neither is going to use "tactics" (rhetoric). The instant the first engineer sees the problem, he will concede. Better to concede than build a bridge that falls down.
How did I bait you? What did I swap in? If you can show me a logical difficulty, I am not going to pretend it's not there. Originally Posted by gluadys We are not to put God to the test. And, in fact, science cannot put God to the test.
Of course it can't, so science cannot confirm or disconfirm whether the miraculous creation according to Genesis occurred. If it could confirm it, if it happened, sceptical science would have discovered evidence of God. Science will never be able to prove or disprove God's existence, so science will never be able to investigate true miracles. Originally Posted by gluadys But nowhere are we told we are barred from putting creation to the test.
If creation occurred as in Genesis, we cannot put it to the test, because this would put God to the test. We can be sure, if creation happened as in Genesis, science would be unable to uncover it, precisely because it would uncover God. Originally Posted by gluadys How are we to discover the wonders of creation if we don't explore them?
We uncover the wonders of what is created, not the act of creation. Originally Posted by gluadys How do we learn to use the resources of creation without understanding them?
We use what is created, not the act of creation. Originally Posted by gluadys Science puts everything to the test which it can put to the test. That does not include God. We still discover God by faith.
I am in 100% agreement. Originally Posted by gluadys The question is whether we are really discovering God's creation when we observe and study and test it. Traditionally, Christians have said "yes, we are." Scientists exploring creation felt they were following the footsteps of the Creator, learning about the world God had actually made.
We are. What is different is an interpretation. Every scientist agrees about the truths of quantum mechanics. OTOH, there are many interpretations about reality based on the theory. Scientists do not get hung up on that, or if they do, they realize that it has nothing to do with science. Originally Posted by gluadys But the answer you propose and want to present as a teaching to be tolerated within the Christian faith is that this is not the case. And you think there is no theological problem with that?
About different interpretations of reality from a science theory over which there is no disagreement? No, unless it is part of your theology that a particular interpretation just has to be the right one, in which case you are going to have a theological problem with it.
Physicists widely are aware of two major interpretations of quantum mechanics among many interpretations. In one, the wave function 'collapses' and the world (universe) jumps into one particular state from among a previous continuity of possible future states. In the other, the world splits into multiple universes, each corresponding to a previous quantum mechanical possibility. Physicists all have there favourite interpretations, but for the most part, they agree that science cannot choose from among them.
Here then, is God hiding something. The differences in the two interpretations are very great. Do you have a theological problem with this, that God seems to have hidden the ultimate truth about reality from us, leaving us nothing but the option of choosing the interpretation we like best? You should, according to what you write above. If you raise your theological problem among scientists, you will, ironically, be doing the same thing that YECs do with creation "science". |
6th November 2009, 07:33 PM
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Reps: 12,567,898,174,147,644 (power: 12,567,898,174,166) | | Originally Posted by Tom Cohoe gluadys, I understand that you have theological problems with sophisticated YEC. Christian sects, in general, have theological problems with what other sects believe. This goes right back to the beginning of Christianity.
But not generally about a major doctrine. They may differ over whether or not it is permissible to baptize children, but they don't differ over the fact that baptism is the sacrament of initiation into the Christian community. Creation is a central doctrine of the whole Abrahamic religious tradition. This is not a trivial detail to be monkeying around with. As long as these differences do not get into the under the principal, "if it bleeds it leads", it does little harm to the image of Christianity in the eyes of non Chritians. OTOH, when Christians attempt to force the teaching of creation "science" as science in classrooms, and in other ways attempt to force false science into the public agenda, they are making Christianity look foolish in the eyes of non Chritians. People like Richard Dawkins get a lot of help from this foolishness when they write their massively best selling tomes which influence tens of thousands of people directly, and more indirectly. You can argue til the cows come home that young Earth creationism (creation "science" aside) does more harm to Christianity, or that sophisticated YEC would do more harm, but you yourself said you didn't give two figs (I believe that's what it was) what they believed, that it was there interference in public institutions that you cared about (I don't remember your exact words).
I agree, and this is also a fundamental reason why Christians need to reject YEC. But that is a public reason--a reason to avoid scorn from non-Christians. There are worse things than public scorn. There is presenting as Christian belief what is not Christian belief. That is why most Christians, for example, do not accept the teachings of the Latter-Day Saints as Christian. I have no problem with LDS choosing to believe whatever it wants, but I do have problems if it chooses to claim it is a legitimate Christian belief. Same with your proposal of "sophisticated YEC" Naive YEC is even preferable, because wrong as it is scientifically, and however much scorn it draws, it at least tries to maintain itself as Christian. How did I bait you? What did I swap in?
You substituted creation for God. You took a truth about God and said it applied to God's creation as well. Of course it can't, so science cannot confirm or disconfirm whether the miraculous creation according to Genesis occurred. If it could confirm it, if it happened, sceptical science would have discovered evidence of God. Science will never be able to prove or disprove God's existence, so science will never be able to investigate true miracles.
Not quite true. If a miracle leaves evidence that it occurred that evidence can be investigated. The scientific trail may eventually reach an unexplainable dead end in not being able to find a cause for the evidence, but any evidence can be investigated scientifically. If creation occurred as in Genesis, we cannot put it to the test, because this would put God to the test. We can be sure, if creation happened as in Genesis, science would be unable to uncover it, precisely because it would uncover God.
What do you mean by "if creation occurred as in Genesis?" Do you mean "if the account of creation in Genesis is a literally descriptive report of the historical origin of the creation"? Because if it is not, we don't know what it means to say creation occurred "as in Genesis". And which creation account is the creation "as it occurred in Genesis"?
One reason we can't test creation "as it occurred in Genesis" is that there is no one interpretation of what that means.
I suppose what you really mean is "if creation occurred as in a YEC interpretation of the scriptural accounts." But if creation occurred as YECs claim it occurred, science could certainly uncover that fact. For example, there would be no difficulty in affirming that no rock was more than 6,000 years old, that the earth was covered by flood waters about 4,000 years ago, that all living creatures experienced a genetic bottleneck at that time and all pre-flood civilizations were washed away.
These things would be ascertainable by science because if creation really occurred like that, these would be scientific facts. YEC drifts toward gnostic explanations of reality, in which there is no genuine creation precisely because these are not scientific facts and the only way to reconcile what they choose to believe about how creation happened is to deny the reality of the actual creation. And when you get to denying the reality of the actual creation--you are basically denying that God creates.
That's the first fundamental and central doctrine of Christianity gone. We uncover the wonders of what is created, not the act of creation.
But according to your sophisticated YEC, what we discover is not what was created. It is a hallucination. Scientists are exploring something that has never really existed, never been really created. We are. What is different is an interpretation.
And the issue I am raising is which interpretation is a legitimate Christian interpretation in line with traditional Christian theology about God and creation.
A traditional Christian doctrine of creation requires that there be consistency between the world God created and the created world that we experience. Otherwise to say God created the heavens and the earth is a false statement.
What God created is not the world of our experience through which we can come to an understanding that God is the Maker and Ruler of all that is, but something hidden from us, something inaccessible to our senses and our understanding. How can such a hidden "truth" lead us to the author of all truth? How can a world of experience which is a false front for an actual creation be what scripture declares it to be----the world which God made? Physicists widely are aware of two major interpretations of quantum mechanics among many interpretations. In one, the wave function 'collapses' and the world (universe) jumps into one particular state from among a previous continuity of possible future states. In the other, the world splits into multiple universes, each corresponding to a previous quantum mechanical possibility. Physicists all have there favourite interpretations, but for the most part, they agree that science cannot choose from among them.
Here then, is God hiding something. The differences in the two interpretations are very great. Do you have a theological problem with this, that God seems to have hidden the ultimate truth about reality from us, leaving us nothing but the option of choosing the interpretation we like best?
Just because physicists haven't figured out which interpretation is correct, and may not be able to doesn't mean anything is hidden. Either explanation would still be an explanation of a real world (s?) that has really been in existence for 13 billion years (or more?) It would not be a false front for the world of our experience.
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6th November 2009, 10:05 PM
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Reps: 497,419,071 (power: 497,422) | | | I do accept Mormons as Christians.
I have no idea where you get the idea that if God created the world as in sophisticated YEC that it denies that God creates.
I cannot follow your thinking at all. It seems to be just a rigorous assertion that what you say is right. That's why I haven't been answering you. There seems to be nothing to say. You clearly reject sophisticated YEC as beyond the pale, but there is nothing in what you say that compels me to follow your rejection. There is no intent to offend you here, but it's like we are just talking past each other.
One more thing, though. It is not the public scorn that does the harm to Christianity. It is the loss of converts. I am concerned with converting people to Christianity. Creation "science" does vast harm to that, which is my concern.
The existence of what would be to you, I guess, a bunch of heretics, would do no harm to that at all.
YECs, sophisticated or not, and Mormons, accept Christ as their Saviour. That's all that matters. They are all Christians. |
7th November 2009, 09:29 AM
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Reps: 46,806,994,834,899 (power: 46,806,994,847) | | Originally Posted by Tom Cohoe I do accept Mormons as Christians.
And that is simply not the case, if they are not accepting the Lord as their Savior in order to be saved.  but, that's OT. (sorry)
I have no idea where you get the idea that if God created the world as in sophisticated YEC that it denies that God creates.
I cannot follow your thinking at all. It seems to be just a rigorous assertion that what you say is right. That's why I haven't been answering you. There seems to be nothing to say. You clearly reject sophisticated YEC as beyond the pale, but there is nothing in what you say that compels me to follow your rejection. There is no intent to offend you here, but it's like we are just talking past each other.
Well, YEC isn't based on any real scientific method, I believe is the main issue here, no?
One more thing, though. It is not the public scorn that does the harm to Christianity. It is the loss of converts. I am concerned with converting people to Christianity. Creation "science" does vast harm to that, which is my concern.
Hey, you and I have some thing in common here.
The existence of what would be to you, I guess, a bunch of heretics, would do no harm to that at all.
YECs, sophisticated or not, and Mormons, accept Christ as their Saviour. That's all that matters. They are all Christians.
Unfortunately, not ALL Mormons do. Most of them are trying to earn their way to a higher level of heaven, and do not accept the existance of hell. So, what are they repenting for, in that case?
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7th November 2009, 01:07 PM
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Reps: 60,432,235,365,689,568 (power: 60,432,235,365,700) | | Originally Posted by Tom Cohoe The common assumptions violated by your model of photons changing on the way to the eyes and the assumptions violated by a model with miraculous intervention in the unobservable past (the past prior to reliable cultural memory) are very different, although you have yet to admit it. Anyone who believes in the possibility of miraculous intervention by God (you know - the programmer pulls an interrupt and changes the state vector) should have no logical problem with a sudden start 6000 years ago.
I haven't admitted that the assumptions violated by our models differ because I haven't yet seen that they do differ. Your model requires repeated, large-scale miraculous intervention, apparently for no reason other than to make events that actually didn't happen look like they did. My model requires repeated, large-scale miraculous intervention, apparently for no reason other than to make a text that actually doesn't describe certain events look like it did. If you like, you can place my model in the past too: God altered all copies of Genesis in 500 BC (assuming it existed then), along the memories of everyone who'd read it previously. That's still a lot fewer changes than your model requires.
You refer to "reliable cultural memory". How can there be a reliable cultural memory when God is intervening to change things on massive scales? God can change memories just as easily as anything else, after all. Once you decide that the evidence presented to our senses should be rejected as thoroughly unreliable, you no longer have any basis for knowing anything at all. That applies to the text of Genesis as much as any other piece of evidence. The kind of radical skepticism about knowledge that you recommend is both psychologically and logically inconsistent with the conviction of Genesis's accuracy that prompts it. How do you, sfs, handle the violation of common assumptions in superposition of states and the various models of reality which stem from this extremely standard science, including "Many worlds"? Have you seen all the versions of reality that very serious physicists claim exist? Read Parallel Universes by Max Tegmark, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, in Scientific American, May, 2003. If all the parallel universes (four different kinds of parallelism) exist, which Tegmark, a scientist, explicitly claims exist, then it is an extremely short deduction to: Bugs Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and Frodo Baggins all really exist. Even universes where things don't operate logically exist (all you need is a meta-universe from which the illogical universe is controlled. The meta-controller changes things in the sub-universe in violation of its rules when he feels like it - sounds sort of like God doing miracles, eh).
You're asking about several different kinds of things here, and I handle them differently. Quantum superposition describes physics on a small scale, so I accept it as an accurate model for the way the physical world works. The only assumption it violates is that a classical description should always be the right model; nothing about it involves rejecting physical evidence. (It also violates our intuition, which is based on experience with classical systems, but one can develop a quantum intuition after a while. I was an experimental particle physicist for a number of years, and it does get to be intuitive eventually.)
Tegmark's other universes (which he is not claiming exist, by the way -- he's pointing to evidence for them, but that's a much weaker claim) have different levels of credibility. That the physical universe is larger than the observable universe is probably true; the implication that the physical universe is therefore much larger or infinite, and therefore contains all possible physical states, is not supported by any evidence that I'm aware of. (Tegmark kind of glides over this distinction.) Multiple worlds interpretations of QM solve a real problem with the theory, so they have some justification, but it is impossible to know whether they are accurate or just the result of taking a model too literally. The idea of different inflation bubbles with different states is a couple of layers deep into speculative territory, and doesn't really have any evidence to support it. And his final suggestion is wholly speculative. I'll say right here that neither I nor John Polkinghorne accept Tegmark's idea of reality. The point is, it stems from an interpretation of quantum mechanics, which is every bit as weird as religion with miracles (I hope that by calling quantum mechanics and Christianity weird, it is not seen that I am denigrating them - they just both massively violate common sense).
Rejecting common sense, when we have empirical reasons for doing so, is one thing; simply rejecting empirical evidence, and in an inconsistent way, is quite a different thing. To me, your model has a very different flavor from these ideas. The stranger ideas of physics are forced upon us (or at least suggested) by the evidence we have of the way the world actually behaves. What we learn is that things are stranger than we could have supposed, and that we have to abandon some of our preconceptions. Your suggestion, on the other hand, is that things are actually exactly how we thought they when we were kids in Sunday School, and it's the physical evidence that we should abandon. I don't find a real similarity between the two approaches. Some are, but you may be confusing ignorance reinforced by fear, as well as the willingness to follow, with real stupidity (low IQ).
I was just making a statistical statement: YECs are a broad sample of the population, and therefore include lots of stupid people, as does any broad sample.
Then what basis do you have for picking which set of evidence is false? You don't have to like it. When you see YECers talking about a model like this (as above noted, they already are, and I consider it to be big, big progress over creation "science" - as well as the subtler but equally bogus intelligent design "science"), at the least, tolerate it. Where they adapt a model like this, they are finished attacking science. That is the whole goal.
That may be your only goal, but it's not my only goal. I think that this kind of model would undermine the truth of Christianity in exactly the same way that it undermines the truth of science, if it were applied consistently. I think that's a rotten foundation for building faith. If we're talking about weighing scriptural and scientific evidence, at least we are still talking. If one party decides to reject evidence entirely, then there's no basis for deciding whether anything is true, and nothing left to talk about. |
8th November 2009, 11:46 PM
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Reps: 497,419,071 (power: 497,422) | | Originally Posted by sfs My model requires repeated, large-scale miraculous intervention, apparently for no reason other than to make a text that actually doesn't describe certain events look like it did. If you like, you can place my model in the past too: God altered all copies of Genesis in 500 BC (assuming it existed then), along the memories of everyone who'd read it previously. That's still a lot fewer changes than your model requires.
Actually, I do not understand how your model solves any problem. How is it supposed to operate to solve the problem that certain people who read Genesis find a conflict with science? How does changing photons or changing copies of the bible in the past or the memories of people in the past lead to a solution of this real problem? Originally Posted by sfs How can there be a reliable cultural memory when God is intervening to change things on massive scales?
"Reliable cultural memory" - ad hoc definition - tradition passed down, as a whole, within a cultural group which does not differ significantly from the findings of history, archaeology, and other science based disciplines. Originally Posted by sfs Once you decide that the evidence presented to our senses should be rejected as thoroughly unreliable, ...
I don't of course. Sophisticated YEC rejects, in a metaphysical sense, as unreliable nothing but scientific inferences about events in the past prior to a specific date. The data leading to these rejected inferences are interpreted in a specific but metaphysically different way. Originally Posted by sfs ... you no longer have any basis for knowing anything at all.
That is only true of the generalization you make of my specific assumption which allows you to claim having photons change on the way to the eyes is the same thing as my model (even though you speak of your model and my model). Originally Posted by sfs You're asking about several different kinds of things here, and I handle them differently. Quantum superposition describes physics on a small scale, so I accept it as an accurate model for the way the physical world works.
It doesn't just describe physics on a small scale. By various amplifications, it describes events on every scale. A flash on a screen caused by a particle that has been fired at it is caused by a particle in a superposition of states which, depending on the setup, could have been anywhere in a large region prior to its interception. This is fairly unweird, involving only amplification to flashes in an experiment about wee things whose positions are measured on a macroscopic scale.
Nothing to do with real life, right?
But there is no evidence for any objective collapse theory in quantum mechanics, which means that "measurement" by our best theory, seems to be essential. "Measurement" is just another word for "observation" and is convenient for the avoidance of the uncomfortable mystical implications of a role for "observation" in determining events. "Observation", nonetheless, one way or another, seems to be a requirement. Observations involve minds, so its hard to get away from a role for mind in determining external events. Events, it seems, are not determined until a mind is involved.
Consider mutations in the DNA of the germ cells of placental animals. Will a fetus have a survivable mutation or not? Through amplification of the mutation by growth and of its effect in each cell by the production of multiple proteins, we have a natural version of Schrodinger's cat. Now we are talking about big differences in animals. Decoherence does not get rid of this. Entanglement of the states of the original piece of DNA with the environment just means that larger systems are superposed. Whether or not mutations to an animal's germ cells are serious is indeterminate at the time the radiation is applied. Some kind of observation is required to determine the seriousness of the mutation (do doctors testing fetuses for genetic abnormality 'collapse' wave functions and thereby convert the indeterminate into the determinate?).
The weather, a non linear dynamical system, amplifies quantum uncertainties into the weather we observe. It means that the weather is essentially unpredictable beyond a certain period of time. The more accurately we measure components of the state of the atmosphere at a given time, the more uncertain we make complementary components. The uncertainty in these components leads to uncertainty, through non linear amplification, to the weather x days later. The weather is indeterminate, as is, I suspect, the climate.
Whether or not Harold was killed by an arrow through his eye at Runymede in 1066 was dependant upon whether or not a puff of wind affected the arrow's course to cause it to hit or miss. The superposition of states and the whole future history of England was resolved by the observation of Harold's death. The world's history was determined by the mystical process of "wave function collapse".
Same goes for where the planets are in their orbits today and the particular locations of the galaxies. Originally Posted by sfs It also violates our intuition, which is based on experience with classical systems, but one can develop a quantum intuition after a while.
Yes our intuited common assumptions. One supposes one could develop an intuition for whether or not a scientific model is interpreted one way or the other in sophisticated YEC as well (it's not the 'anything goes' that you claim it is, just as is the the case for quantum intuition). Originally Posted by sfs I was an experimental particle physicist for a number of years, and it does get to be intuitive eventually.
Well, I didn't get to be a particle physicist, but I did find mistakes, which they admitted, in the work of a number of physicists. There was S. K. Sen at the University of Manitoba, one of my professors. I found mistakes in his course notes (how come none of the students who went on to be physicists didn't?) There was the disagreement with Tom LeCompte, a team leader of some sort at Fermilab (at the time - I don't know what he is doing now). We disputed over whether or not a spherically symmetrical electromagnetic wave is possible on the Compuserve Scimath forum. He was too proud to concede to a non physicist until another physicist intervened in my support (so is it possible? why?). Then there was Herbert Bernstein and Anthony Phillip's paper on fibre bundles and quantum theory in Scientific American. Bernstein later denounced his own paper but I see that it is still being used as reading material in some courses, no doubt confusing the poor students who hope to be enlightened by it. Originally Posted by sfs which he is not claiming exist
OK, I hadn't read this paper for a long time. Just glancing at it the other day I read the subtitle "Not just a staple of science fiction, other universes are a direct implication of cosmological observations" and just grabbed that as the basis of my statement, but I see he does not go so far in the text. Whether or not he approved of the blurb is another matter (and yes, I can see that the blurb does not say that all the parallel universe types are a direct implication of cosmological observations, so I am forced to admit carelessness here).
But it's not relevant to my point, which is that it is not beyond the pale of science to consider models of reality that are far beyond our experience. I claim that the existence of the parallel worlds of this paper directly implies the existence of the universe of sophisticated YEC. Originally Posted by sfs the implication that the physical universe is therefore much larger or infinite, and therefore contains all possible physical states, is not supported by any evidence that I'm aware of. (Tegmark kind of glides over this distinction.)
NASA's WMAP mission determined the geometry of the universe to be flat with a 2% margin of error on the measured parameter (I am not yet allowed to put links into my posts here). A flat universe implies an infinite universe. So there's evidence that the universe is infinite or very large. I do not know what radius would be implied by a 2% error on the closed universe side in the measurement of the parameter.
I don't buy his probability calculation on how far it would be to another copy of me. It's based on the equal probability of initial states at the time of the big bang. I suppose at the big bang, there could have been a very hot copy of me somewhere, but considering the temperature, it would be exceedingly unlikely that the copy would exist a femtosecond later, and for each additional femtosecond, the probability would decrease by the same astronomically small factor. OTOH, considering the probability that other copies of me exist today within the distance he calculates, that calculation depends on the assumption that all possible evolutions of an initial state are equally likely. I strongly doubt that as quantum probability densities are not like that. Originally Posted by sfs Multiple worlds interpretations of QM solve a real problem with the theory,
What problem do they solve besides indeterminism from a God's eye point of view (which isn't the point of view of science, tied as it must be to human POV experiments)? Many-worlds doesn't solve the problem of indeterminism so far as doing experments goes. Many-worlds adds not one whit of predictability to measurement, so, while it's an idea some physicists like, it can't be said to be actual physics.
I don't like the "many worlds" interpretation. The only way we can have free will is through some effect of quantum superposition in the brain. (This is not as far fetched as it sounds as quantum superposition is now believed to play a role in the conduction of electrons in chloroplasts, which are structures on the same order of size as synapses.) If we merely split into multiple copies for every possible outcome of a superposition in the brain, with no input from the mystical will, then we have no choice about what we do, we are not responsible for what we do, justice is nonsense, and religion is meaningless bunk. Fortunately, it's metaphysics. I call it the atheist's preferred nihilist qm interpretation of the universe. Originally Posted by sfs taking a model too literally
Hmmm, well that's exactly what I'm not doing when I say that it could be that the scientific model of our past is not what happened. I don't know and I know that I can't know. Originally Posted by sfs And his final suggestion is wholly speculative.
I call it the Pythagorean model. The universe is all number, just a mathematical system. If our universe has nothing mystical about it which would make it real in distinction to all other mathematical systems, then there is no reason to say they do not exist. This is, once again, metaphysics. But it is the kind of thing that scientists like to think about and they do not feel that when they do think about it that they are doing violence to the spirit of scientific truth. Ironically, if mathematics, without supernature, is all there is, then one of these universes exists at the pleasure of a meta universe (running on a computer in the meta universe, for example). In one of these universes a "God" in the meta universe does miracles in the sub universe. His actions are "supernatural" in the sub universe. So, it looks like if there is nothing supernatural there is something "supernatural" which looks very much like the supernatural. So it looks like we can't get away from the supernatural. Of course, this model doesn't imply our universe exists at the pleasure of a meta universe, etc ... Originally Posted by sfs I think that this kind of model would undermine the truth of Christianity in exactly the same way that it undermines the truth of science,
What you assume about truth, of course, you have to conclude. Originally Posted by sfs If one party decides to reject evidence entirely, ...
But they don't, they interpret it in one of two ways, depending on specific criteria. This dual interpretation actually falls within Tegmark's 4th form of parallelism, with the creation done from the metaverse according to the sophisticated YEC model so, hmmm, it's not beyond the pale after all.
The least you could do is tolerate it. |
8th November 2009, 11:54 PM
| | Newbie
| | Join Date: 13th October 2009
Posts: 94
Blessings: 58,098 My Mood
Reps: 497,419,071 (power: 497,422) | | Originally Posted by Pats And that is simply not the case, if they are not accepting the Lord as their Savior in order to be saved. but, that's OT. (sorry)
They do accept the Lord as their Saviour. The Bible is sacred scripture in The Church of Later Day Saints. They are especially fond of The King James Version. The Book of Mormon, A Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenents are extra. Originally Posted by Pats Well, YEC isn't based on any real scientific method,
Neither is the existence of God. |
9th November 2009, 11:43 AM
|  | Chewbacha
| | Join Date: 15th February 2002
Posts: 17,114
Blessings: 45,126,564
Reps: 1,238,051,283,267,514,112 (power: 1,238,051,283,267,541) | | Originally Posted by Tom Cohoe The Book of Mormon, A Pearl of Great Price, and Doctrine and Covenents are extra.
But are on the same level as the Bible.
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