Christian Quantum Physics

[Belk]

I'm going to cross-reference my thread on synesthesia here: an invisible unicorn could be pink if it sounds pink.

As long as it doesn't smell pink it is all good.

 

[sfs]

"Every proposition is either true or not true."

So, we have the proposition "light is a particle". That is both true and not true.

I would echo Wiccan_child's response. Physics doesn't propose that light is a particle; it proposes that light behaves, in some respects, like a particle.

They are conclusions based on data. Data shows that color -- any color -- comes from the wavelengths of visible light that is reflected from an object. Reflect all wavelengths and the color is white. Reflect none and the color is black. What is confusing you is that we use words to describe the summary of the data. You look at the word but forget to look beyond the word to the data that gave rise to how we use the word.

An object is seen when it 1) reflects light and 2) blocks transmission of light from objects behind it. Data again. An invisible object is transparent to light. Data again. So, a unicorn that is both invisible and pink contradicts all the data we have.

No. "Invisible pink unicorns" would have been an incoherent concept before anyone knew anything about the frequency of light. "Pink" and "invisible" refer primarily to human perception, not to the physics of light, and they are inconsistent characteristics. The point of the IPU formulation is that it's supposed to be an intrinsically impossible entity, since the two characteristics are mutually exclusive. No new data can change that fact, since it isn't an empirical result.

 

[janman345]

Google MIT open courseware that will give you the texts and course notes that MIT uses.

 

[tanzanos]

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[lucaspa]

I'm going to cross-reference my thread on synesthesia here: an invisible unicorn could be pink if it sounds pink.

ROFL! That has got to be one of the funniest ducks I have ever seen.

 

[lucaspa]

Is the father the son? I've never heard a Christian say that Jesus is the Father, but rather that both are God yet neither are each other. Or something to that effect.

What you have heard Christians say is what I said. I said "The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God". The original formulation (in Greek) is 3 personas in 1 hypostasis or 3 personas in 1 ousia. The mother of ___ is you, the spouse of ____ is you, and the employee of ___ is you. Now, is the spouse the mother? Or is that an irrelevent question given the statements made?

Well, that's a matter of opinion. You consider it invalid, which it may very well be, while I consider it valid, which it also may be.

Not unless you can counter the argument Lewontin made. You dismissed the argument; you did not counter it.

'Wave' and 'particle' are handy concepts to describe the entity's behaviour. Sometimes it's convenient to model them as waves, sometimes it's convenient to model them as particles. What it actually is is anyone's guess. According to duality, it is both a wave and a particle, inasmuch as the terms mean anything.

Note what I bolded. You said "it is both a wave and a particle". That is how the particle is. So no, I'm not advocating Modalism. You are if you insist that a photon is only what it appears to us. That's Modalism: what God appears to be to us. But you contradicted that when you said what the photon is. You have the photon is a wave; the photon is a particle. That is no different than saying "The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God."

It doesn't say it simultaneously both is and is not a particle.

See what you said that I bolded. That bolded part does say that the photon both is and is not a particle.

The law of excluded middle isn't violated when I turn my tap off, since the truth of the statement "My tap is on" can vary with time.

Look at the part I bolded again. No physicist says that a photon changes into a particle at one point in time and then changes back into a wave at another point of time. It says that we measure the particle properties and measure the wave properties, but the photon in reality is both.

If it wasn't logically impossible, no amount of data would be able to disprove it.

Here you leave science and make logic your god that must be right. It's just what creationists do. They make an interpretation of the Bible such that "no amount of data is able to disprove it". You do the same with "logic".

It is only logic that tells us something can't be both pink and invisible - someone with no concept of the EM spectrum could, in principle, come to the same conclusion.

You contradicted yourself there. You acknowledge that, with a concept fo the EM spectrum and how we see color, you can come to the same conclusion that something can't be both pink and invisible. So it is not only logic that tells us this.

But really, without knowledgte of the EM spectrum and how we see color, how would logic tell us that the unicorn can't be both pink and invisible? What logical contradiction would there be in that without knowledge of the EM spectrum?

Data are the facts. Light exists, it comes in spectra, etc, are all conclusions drawn from the data. Data tells us what does exists, logic tells us what can exist. Thus, if logic tells us it can't exist, then the data cannot tell us that it does

Why not? As you say, data are facts. Are you saying logic can dictate what the facts are?

Logic trumps data.

Nice to know you don't accept science. In science, data trumps everything. So logic is your god that can't be denied. I refuse to have a god in that sense. If the data shows that something "impossible" by logic, then the logic is wrong.

Let me demonstrate by one example: bumblebees. Logic said the bumblebee could not fly. Bumblebees did not all fall to the ground because of that. There are other examples within science.

Which is exactly what I said: belief in Newtonian mechanics was a probability call, inasmuch as the evidence garnered hitherto supported it. It was the most probable explanation for how things behaved, and alternatives (such as Aristotelian mechanics that preceded it, or quantum mechanics that would come after it) were less probable, based on the evidence at the time.

First, Newtonian mechanics were not replaced by quantum mechanics. It was replaced by Relativity. Relativity is not QM and, in fact, is inconsistent with it.

Second, what you are calling "probability" is not the probability used in QM. Rather, you are talking about the tentativeness of any positive conclusion from deductive logic. Strictly speaking, you cannot prove by deductive logic. You can disprove absolutely, but you cannot prove absolutely. Inductive logic can neither prove nor disprove absolutely.

What Newton did was disprove Aristotlean mechanics. It wasn't "less probable" but rather "not possible". Nor was Relativity "less probable" because it was not even considered! It had no probability. Newtonian mechanics falsified all the alternative hypotheses people could think of. It was supported by all the data at the time. Later, anomalous data was found -- the precession of Mercury. Einstein was able to think about conditions not then found on earth and thus, data that was then unknown. So Einstein did think of an alternative hypothesis. What decided it was true? As you say, data.

My tentativeness is based on the evidence. I don't think wave-particle duality is a necessary explanation for given phenomena, when particle-only explanations suffice.

But particle-only explanations don't suffice for other phenomena, do they?

Granted, most other scientists disagree with me, but there you go. I don't consider this to be a religious or faith-based thing at all; I'm not affirming the existence of spirits/souls (i.e., religion), nor am I affirming anything to be true without due rationale (which may or may not be out-of-date).

If your rationale is out of date and contradicted by data, yet you cling to it, what other reason do you have but "faith-based"? In this case it is your faith in logic.

Obviously my views could be false. I'd be an idiot not to see that.

Are you referring to your views on deity?

 

[lucaspa]

I would echo Wiccan_child's response. Physics doesn't propose that light is a particle; it proposes that light behaves, in some respects, like a particle.

All the physics I have read says what Wiccan_child stated: light is both a particle and a wave. In fact, there are experiments where both can be demonstrated at the same time. The Dual Nature of Light as Reflected in the Nobel Archives Scroll down to "Wave-particle duality demonstrated in one experiment".

No. "Invisible pink unicorns" would have been an incoherent concept before anyone knew anything about the frequency of light. "Pink" and "invisible" refer primarily to human perception, not to the physics of light, and they are inconsistent characteristics.

How do we know they are "inconsistent"? Because they are not just about human perception, but about the physics of light. The "human perception" is only the detector of the physics.

The point of the IPU formulation is that it's supposed to be an intrinsically impossible entity, since the two characteristics are mutually exclusive. No new data can change that fact, since it isn't an empirical result.

But the existing data show such a creature is impossible. As such, it is an "empirical" result. In this case what the IPU is supposed to do is not what it actually does. It has become a dogma within atheist circles but atheists have not really thought thru the dogma. The idea is that you can't falsify the IPU by data. What is overlooked is that IPU has already been falsified by existing data.

 

[tanzanos]

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[Wiccan_Child]

What you have heard Christians say is what I said. I said "The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God". The original formulation (in Greek) is 3 personas in 1 hypostasis or 3 personas in 1 ousia. The mother of ___ is you, the spouse of ____ is you, and the employee of ___ is you. Now, is the spouse the mother? Or is that an irrelevent question given the statements made?

The spouse is the mother is the employee. Three different names for the same entity. My cube is also a marshmallow. Is the cube the marshmallow? Yes.

However, Trinitarianism seems to say that the spouse is not the mother. The son is God, the Father is God, but the Son is not the Father:

Not unless you can counter the argument Lewontin made. You dismissed the argument; you did not counter it.

I dismissed it because it was moot: it rests upon duality, which is not something I believe in. It's like presenting a criticism of the Trinity to a non-Trinitarian Christian.

Note what I bolded. You said "it is both a wave and a particle".

No. I said "according to duality, it is both a wave and a particle, inasmuch as the terms mean anything". Those are the key parts. I reject duality, but not because it is inherently illogical, and especially not for the same reasons I reject the validity of the concept of the Trinity. The concept of duality is valid, but unsound, in my opinion. The concept of the Trinity is both invalid and unsound, in my opinion.

That is how the particle is. So no, I'm not advocating Modalism. You are if you insist that a photon is only what it appears to us. That's Modalism: what God appears to be to us. But you contradicted that when you said what the photon is. You have the photon is a wave; the photon is a particle. That is no different than saying "The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God."

As I said, I have no problem with Modalism. Modalism says the spouse is the mother is the employee, three different names for the same person. But Modalism contradicts traditional Trinitarianism; the shield above represents the latter.

See what you said that I bolded. That bolded part does say that the photon both is and is not a particle.

No, it doesn't. It says that, according to duality (i.e., not according to me), the photon is both a particle and a wave, inasmuch as the terms mean anything (i.e., we are not talking about a classical particle and a classical wave). You do something to it in one way, it reacts like a particle, you do something else to it, it reacts like a wave. Which is it? Well, it's both, or neither. It behaves like a particle and like a wave. What is actually is, as far as we can tell, is a quantum mechanical wavefunction over all of space that obeys the Schrödinger equation. Thus, it acts as we expect a wave would behave in situations X, Y, and Z, and it acts as a particle in situations A, B, and C.

But duality says the photon is both a particle and a wave. I say it is fundamentally a particle that behaves in wave-esque ways under certain circumstances. I say it is convenient, but incorrect, to model it as a wave. Duality says it is equally correct to model it as either a wave or a particle.

But in any case, duality doesn't say that it both is and is not a particle, only that a 'particle' is a 'wave' looked at from a funny angle.

Here you leave science and make logic your god that must be right. It's just what creationists do. They make an interpretation of the Bible such that "no amount of data is able to disprove it". You do the same with "logic".

Ah, but the difference is I'm right!
And to be fair, they also say we evolutionists (i.e., yourself and I) make time/science/mother nature/Darwin/etc our god. Obviously we don't, but I'm surprised you would use the same ad hominem.

You contradicted yourself there. You acknowledge that, with a concept fo the EM spectrum and how we see color, you can come to the same conclusion that something can't be both pink and invisible. So it is not only logic that tells us this.

But really, without knowledgte of the EM spectrum and how we see color, how would logic tell us that the unicorn can't be both pink and invisible? What logical contradiction would there be in that without knowledge of the EM spectrum?

I said without the concept of the EM spectrum, though I was more thinking of something that couldn't detect or sense it in any way - the same way a blind person has no concept of sight, nor a deaf person sound. Such a being, when presented with the facts about the EM spectrum, could conclude that something cannot be both pink (i.e., emitting and absorbing EM radiation) and invisible (i.e., neither emitting nor absorbing EM radiation). It is logic and logic only that tells us something can't be both pink and invisible.

Obviously, in practice, if photons didn't exist, we would almost certainly not bother coming to that conclusion: we would have no reason to even come up with such a concept as electromagnetic radiation, let alone talk about 'pink'. Data tells us what actually exists, logic tells us what cannot exist. The two are complimentary, in that reality is logical.

Why not? As you say, data are facts. Are you saying logic can dictate what the facts are?

Yes. If logic says that a closed system will always decrease in entropy, then that is what every closed system will do.

Nice to know you don't accept science. In science, data trumps everything. So logic is your god that can't be denied. I refuse to have a god in that sense. If the data shows that something "impossible" by logic, then the logic is wrong.

Let me demonstrate by one example: bumblebees. Logic said the bumblebee could not fly. Bumblebees did not all fall to the ground because of that. There are other examples within science.

First, this is an urban legend - no one ever showed that bumblebees shouldn't be able to fly. Second, I would very much like to see the logical argument that concludes that bumblebees cannot fly, or that anything that does happen cannot happen. A part of me is hoping you will cite a perpetual motion machine...

Second, what you are calling "probability" is not the probability used in QM. Rather, you are talking about the tentativeness of any positive conclusion from deductive logic. Strictly speaking, you cannot prove by deductive logic. You can disprove absolutely, but you cannot prove absolutely. Inductive logic can neither prove nor disprove absolutely.

I never said any of those things. The tentativeness of any claim is a probability; quantum mechanics is probably true, or, at least, it's more likely to be true than classical mechanics.

What Newton did was disprove Aristotlean mechanics. It wasn't "less probable" but rather "not possible".

First, what's the difference? Something with a possibility of zero is less probable than something with a probability of 0.1, wouldn't you say?

Second, if we're going to be technical, Newton didn't disprove Aristotlean mechanics: you cannot prove or disprove anything outside of pure logic (something which ties in eerily well to the rest of our dialogue ). What he did was propose something better. Epsitemologically speaking, Aristotle could be completely and utterly right in all things, and what we think is contrary evidence is, in fact, a fabrication my magic, invisible gnomes. Or aliens. Or God. Or Descartes' Demon.

As far as science is concerned, Newton disproved Aristotle. Classical mechanics was proven beyond all reasonable doubt... until the late 19[sup]th[/sup] / early 20[sup]th[/sup] century, when that doubt became reasonable. Scientific proof is not the same as logical proof.

Nor was Relativity "less probable" because it was not even considered! It had no probability. Newtonian mechanics falsified all the alternative hypotheses people could think of. It was supported by all the data at the time. Later, anomalous data was found -- the precession of Mercury. Einstein was able to think about conditions not then found on earth and thus, data that was then unknown. So Einstein did think of an alternative hypothesis. What decided it was true? As you say, data.

Agreed.

But particle-only explanations don't suffice for other phenomena, do they?

I believe they do. I don't know of any phenomenon that cannot be explained by just particles. I admit I'm in the minority, but, hey ho.

If your rationale is out of date and contradicted by data, yet you cling to it, what other reason do you have but "faith-based"? In this case it is your faith in logic.

First, if logic said something was true, I would follow it. Logic, and logic alone, says that 0.999... is numerically equivalent to 1. Thus, I believe that 1 = 0.999... . This is proof. This is knowledge in the purest sense, untainted by your grubby empiricism. Bleh.
Second, I never said my rational was out-of-date. I was simply acknowledging that it might be. As far as I'm aware, it's not, but it might be. Something might be discovering something right at this very minute as I'm writing this that disproves something I believe in. As of now, that belief becomes out-of-date, though I am not aware of that fact.

Are you referring to your views on deity?

I was referring to my views on pretty much anything and everything.

 

[AV1611VET]

Anyone know what time the restaurant at the end of the universe opens?

4:04

 

[Tiberius]

However, Trinitarianism seems to say that the spouse is not the mother. The son is God, the Father is God, but the Son is not the Father:

If A is equal to C, and if B is equal to C, then A and B must be equal to each other.

Two things which are equivilent to a third muist also be equal to each other.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

If A is equal to C, and if B is equal to C, then A and B must be equal to each other.

Two things which are equivilent to a third muist also be equal to each other.

Except for God. Obviously.

 

[AV1611VET]

Except for God. Obviously.

Yup --

Job 9:10 Which doeth great things past finding out; yea, and wonders without number.

Ro 11:33 ¶ O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!

Science is myopic.

 

[Tiberius]

So when you can't explain it, you bring out the "... but God doesn't count" card.

All these special exceptions for God that you make...

 

[AV1611VET]

So when you can't explain it, you bring out the "... but God doesn't count" card.

All these special exceptions for God that you make...

Are you talking to me?

If so, what are you talking about?

 

[tanzanos]

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[Wiccan_Child]

I think he means that if you use science to prove the existence of God then the same rule applies to all supernatural beings. Since we know that you do not accept such things as fairies and pink unicorns; you always apply the "God doesn't count" so as not to be in a position to have to accept one or the other in their entirety.

Now for the trinity; Tiberius is right when he states "If A is equal to C, and if B is equal to C, then A and B must be equal to each other.

Two things which are equivalent to a third must also be equal to each other".

Elementary my dear AV, elementary!

Logic can take a hike

 

[tanzanos]

..........

 

[AV1611VET]

Thank you, Tan -- he apparently wasn't talking to me, then.

I think he means that if you use science to prove the existence of God then the same rule applies to all supernatural beings.

I don't use science to prove the existence of God -- science is myopic.

Since we know that you do not accept such things as fairies and pink unicorns; you always apply the "God doesn't count" so as not to be in a position to have to accept one or the other in their entirety.

I have boolean standards that dictate what I consider "counts" and "don't count".

Now for the trinity; Tiberius is right when he states "If A is equal to C, and if B is equal to C, then A and B must be equal to each other.

Two things which are equivalent to a third must also be equal to each other".

Elementary my dear AV, elementary!

I wasn't in on that discussion --

 

[Tiberius]

Are you talking to me?

If so, what are you talking about?

Okay...

Wiccan Child posted this image:

I said, "If A is equal to C, and if B is equal to C, then A and B must be equal to each other. Two things which are equivilent to a third muist also be equal to each other." I said this because the image is saying that two things can be equal to a third thing without being equal to each other. The image says that The Father is equal to God and the Son is equal to God, and yet the Father is not equal to the Son.

Still with me?

Wiccan Child then replied wryly, "Except for God. Obviously." I assume that he said this because often believers invoke God to explain things they don't understand, and yet when inconsistancies in God are brought up, the believers respond by saying "Oh, but that doesn't count for God. he's different."

And then you agreed with WC, proving the point he made so wryly.

I then posted, pointing out how you were behaving exactly the way WC said, stating that you were saying, "Oh, but that doesn't count for God. he's different."

Then you start saying that you don't know what we are talking about.

So it seems to me that you obviously know enough about what WC and I were talking about to agree with a point he made with his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, and yet now you turn around and plead ignorance!