How to prove that GOD exists from a scientific point of view?

[SelfSim]

What if there was no reason to explain why I felt like it?

Then I think that would then qualify as a free will choice then.

 

[Kylie]

Then I think that would then qualify as a free will choice then.

But the real question is... Does it count as a free will decision as well?

 

[SelfSim]

But the real question is... Does it count as a free will decision as well?

Is that just you joining two words together in order to blur the distinction I gave between a choice and a decision?
(That being a choice is for 'no reason' and a decision is 'for reasons').

 

[SelfSim]

... It doesn't even need to be that clear cut. You ever heard of the butterfly effect? A butterfly flaps its wings in Beijing and a month later you get rain instead of sunshine in Central Park New York, just because the flapping wings changed the air currents so slightly, and this change lead to a different weather system in a different part of the world.

Umm .. that might be what non-scientific thinkers think the butterfly effect is .. but that's a misconception about modelling in science.
There is no evidence that a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing causes rain a month later in NY.

 

[Kylie]

Is that just you joining two words together in order to blur the distinction I gave between a choice and a decision?
(That being a choice is for 'no reason' and a decision is 'for reasons').

Hey, you're the one who claimed that choice meant something different to decision.

And there have been plenty of times I have had good reasons for making a choice, so I'd say your proposed definition doesn't work that well.

 

[Kylie]

Umm .. that might be what non-scientific thinkers think the butterfly effect is .. but that's a misconception about modelling in science.
There is no evidence that a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing causes rain a month later in NY.

The Butterfly Effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which small changes can amplify over time to create very large differences at a later point. In the early days of weather modelling using computers, they'd measure things like atmospheric pressure, temperature, etc in the models with numbers. The computers would use numbers to a certain number of decimal places in the calculations, but would actually display fewer decimal places on the screen. So, if the computer calculated the temperature as 26.748765 degrees celsius, it might display it as 26.7488 degrees.

If the scientists would go back and replay the simulation using the numbers they copied down, they discovered that the replayed simulation quickly diverged from the first run through. This happened because even though the initial difference was very small, the difference became amplified over time, and this caused dramatic changes later on.

This is what is commonly known as the butterfly effect. The wiki article gives the same example I used. So I hope you're not trying to suggest that I don't know what I'm talking about.Butterfly effect - Wikipedia

 

[Ken-1122]

Which involves information travelling to the present from the future. How is that not time travel? Information is travelling back in time.

Having the information does not require YOU to be a time traveler. I've noticed you seem to be going through an awful lot of trouble to get out of answering the question; if you don't have an answer just say so.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Prove me wrong by supporting them then.

I've lost the thread. Prove you wrong by supporting what, then?

 

[Mark Quayle]

Which involves information travelling to the present from the future. How is that not time travel? Information is travelling back in time.

Your answer demands that time be the constant, instead of either travel or information.

 

[Mark Quayle]

Just because God is not an option does not mean there can be no first cause.

If you had followed the conversation up to this point, you should have seen that he is claiming that God is not First Cause. I responded in kind, since my claim is that if God is not First Cause there is no God, that he is then denying First Cause.

If anybody else claims a God that is not First Cause, they are denying omnipotence and a good many other attributes without which whatever (or whoever) they are talking about is not God. Those are not God at all --perhaps supermen or something else.

But since he and I were talking about First Cause, if he denies God, he is denying First Cause. If he is merely interjecting that First Cause need not be called God in order to discuss First Cause, he is agreeing with me, but he was being more virulent than that, and moving the goalposts.

 

[SelfSim]

The Butterfly Effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which small changes can amplify over time to create very large differences at a later point. In the early days of weather modelling using computers, they'd measure things like atmospheric pressure, temperature, etc in the models with numbers. The computers would use numbers to a certain number of decimal places in the calculations, but would actually display fewer decimal places on the screen. So, if the computer calculated the temperature as 26.748765 degrees celsius, it might display it as 26.7488 degrees.

If the scientists would go back and replay the simulation using the numbers they copied down, they discovered that the replayed simulation quickly diverged from the first run through. This happened because even though the initial difference was very small, the difference became amplified over time, and this caused dramatic changes later on.

This is what is commonly known as the butterfly effect. The wiki article gives the same example I used. So I hope you're not trying to suggest that I don't know what I'm talking about.Butterfly effect - Wikipedia

So this may be slightly out of the context you were originally arguing, but using the Butterfly Effect, doesn’t work for me as I think you’re relying on your hypothetical ‘ifs’ in order to make what the Butterfly Effect is all about .. to be ‘true’. (Ie post #1194: ’If I saw the actions of people in Hawaii .. If I saw the events of tomorrow where a person … If I saw them sending their children off to school ...’)
Your conclusion was:

So I could change what happens to the people I saw by something as simple as coughing.

I would say there are actually two places where the Butterfly Effect becomes myth instead of 'physical truth’.
The first is: if a butterfly can change the weather, then we should be able to control our own destinies … just find the tiny effects we will need to get things to turn out the way we like. The impossibility of that stems from two places: first, that we would need to control every butterfly, not just one.
But the second way is that even if you did control every butterfly, and know ‘everything there is to know’ about today's weather, you still could not control, or even predict, the weather a month from now.

The butterfly effect is not about the power of butterflies to change the weather, it is about the powerlessness of butterflies, or anything else, to change the weather.

The idea that you can ‘change the future’ requires from the very start, that you be able to predict the future's ‘current path’, such that you have something to change, which is what your hypothetical posited as being true from the outset (admittedly addressed by your ‘if’ conditions).

The way I see it is there are three basic models one can have about the future:

i) the future is inevitable, it is set in stone, and nothing anyone can do could ever change it.
ii) the future is malleable, and if we had enough information, we could change it, possibly with very small adjustments, but it might require an unreasonably vast amount of information.
iii) the future is fundamentally random (or fundamentally undecided), so all we can ever assess is the statistical tendencies of the future. Having more information merely allows us to know the statistical tendencies more accurately, it never reduces their statistical nature. Nothing that we do will have any impact on those statistical tendencies, unless what we do is itself, quite a significant modification (ie: not a butterfly). Having power over the future requires having the ability to effect the statistical tendencies, not the ability to pick among them by the judicious applications of butterflies.

The science-relevant contrast here is between (ii) and (iii). Most people adopt approach (iii), before they hear of the Butterfly Effect. The unfortunate misunderstanding of that effect is that it tends to suggest, if improperly explained, that approach (ii) is actually true.

Mind you, the issue for pages in this thread seems to revolve more around the contrast between (i) and the others, but Physics of weather depends on getting (ii) and (iii) clear.
(I live in the forlorn hope that this sub-topic might eventually get around to science .. so invoking the Butterfly Effect then crosses that divide).

 

[Kylie]

Having the information does not require YOU to be a time traveler. I've noticed you seem to be going through an awful lot of trouble to get out of answering the question; if you don't have an answer just say so.

It may not require me to be the time traveller, but there is time travel involved, so time travel paradoxes are still there.

 

[Kylie]

I've lost the thread. Prove you wrong by supporting what, then?

You claimed that if I am in a situation that has only one outcome, then I still have a choice as long as I think that several outcomes are possible. You also claim that I still have a choice even if someone else has decided for me. See post 1175. Please support these claims.

 

[Kylie]

Your answer demands that time be the constant, instead of either travel or information.

Modern science seems to indicate that time travel into the past is impossible. If we are hypothesising a world where this fundamental law of nature is violated, then there's no way to tell what effects it could have, so there's no way to tell how information from the future could affect that future.

It creates paradoxes. By saying that if we see the future as you suggest that this future MUST come to pass, we are eliminating free will, locking the future into the shape we saw in the vision. But if the future is free to change, then the future we saw would be changed and no longer exists, so it couldn't have existed for us to see it. To claim it was one possible future is meaningless, anything could have happened. I mean, one possible future is me running naked in the streets clucking like a chicken. With an infinite number of futures that could have been seen, why was it THIS particular future that was shown?

It seems you have created a hypothetical situation that plays into one particular answer. In any case, any answer I give isn't likely to be an accurate reflection on the world we actually live in, just the artificial world where information from the future can come back to us in the present.

 

[Kylie]

So this may be slightly out of the context you were originally arguing, but using the Butterfly Effect, doesn’t work for me as I think you’re relying on your hypothetical ‘ifs’ in order to make what the Butterfly Effect is all about .. to be ‘true’. (Ie post #1194: ’If I saw the actions of people in Hawaii .. If I saw the events of tomorrow where a person … If I saw them sending their children off to school ...’)
Your conclusion was:

I'm just saying that if I saw one particular future, then a small change in any event from that timeline can lead to larger changes down the line, just as the example with the weather modelling computers shows.

I would say there are actually two places where the Butterfly Effect becomes myth instead of 'physical truth’.
The first is: if a butterfly can change the weather, then we should be able to control our own destinies … just find the tiny effects we will need to get things to turn out the way we like.

I don't think that's what the butterfly effect idea is saying. Rather, it's saying that a small change can lead to much larger changes which are impossible to predict from looking at the small change that started it in the first place.

I can look at a small change, and I can never tell what the outcome will be until I see the outcome for myself. I may drop a coin and it goes down into the drain in the gutter, and I can never know how my life would have turned out differently if I had not dropped the coin.

And the same happens in reverse - I can look at the outcome of some change, but I can never use the outcome to figure out what the initial change was. I can't say, "I'd never have gotten the job I have now unless I had played that wrong note when I was practicing piano when I was 7."

The impossibility of that stems from two places: first, that we would need to control every butterfly, not just one.

No, I just need to create a small change.

But the second way is that even if you did control every butterfly, and know ‘everything there is to know’ about today's weather, you still could not control, or even predict, the weather a month from now.

That's precisely the point - small changes can lead to big differences, but we can't predict what those differences will be.

The butterfly effect is not about the power of butterflies to change the weather, it is about the powerlessness of butterflies, or anything else, to change the weather.

No, it's about how small changes can lead to large changes later on because they send things down a different road.

The idea that you can ‘change the future’ requires from the very start, that you be able to predict the future's ‘current path’, such that you have something to change, which is what your hypothetical posited as being true from the outset (admittedly addressed by your ‘if’ conditions).

No, I don't need to know where my future is heading. Making a small change is enough to send me on a different path through life, even if the outcome can't be known until I get there.

The way I see it is there are three basic models one can have about the future:

i) the future is inevitable, it is set in stone, and nothing anyone can do could ever change it.
ii) the future is malleable, and if we had enough information, we could change it, possibly with very small adjustments, but it might require an unreasonably vast amount of information.
iii) the future is fundamentally random (or fundamentally undecided), so all we can ever assess is the statistical tendencies of the future. Having more information merely allows us to know the statistical tendencies more accurately, it never reduces their statistical nature. Nothing that we do will have any impact on those statistical tendencies, unless what we do is itself, quite a significant modification (ie: not a butterfly). Having power over the future requires having the ability to effect the statistical tendencies, not the ability to pick among them by the judicious applications of butterflies.

The science-relevant contrast here is between (ii) and (iii). Most people adopt approach (iii), before they hear of the Butterfly Effect. The unfortunate misunderstanding of that effect is that it tends to suggest, if improperly explained, that approach (ii) is actually true.

Mind you, the issue for pages in this thread seems to revolve more around the contrast between (i) and the others, but Physics of weather depends on getting (ii) and (iii) clear.
(I live in the forlorn hope that this sub-topic might eventually get around to science .. so invoking the Butterfly Effect then crosses that divide).

This suggests that if I have perfect information about every single subatomic particle, every scrap of energy in the universe, I could predict everything with 100% accuracy. I don't think this is true. There are random fluctuations that render any attempt to predict the future with 100% accuracy impossible. It's an educated guess at best, and the farther into the future you try to predict, the less accurate you will be.

 

[Mark Quayle]

So this may be slightly out of the context you were originally arguing, but using the Butterfly Effect, doesn’t work for me as I think you’re relying on your hypothetical ‘ifs’ in order to make what the Butterfly Effect is all about .. to be ‘true’. (Ie post #1194: ’If I saw the actions of people in Hawaii .. If I saw the events of tomorrow where a person … If I saw them sending their children off to school ...’)
Your conclusion was:

I would say there are actually two places where the Butterfly Effect becomes myth instead of 'physical truth’.
The first is: if a butterfly can change the weather, then we should be able to control our own destinies … just find the tiny effects we will need to get things to turn out the way we like. The impossibility of that stems from two places: first, that we would need to control every butterfly, not just one.
But the second way is that even if you did control every butterfly, and know ‘everything there is to know’ about today's weather, you still could not control, or even predict, the weather a month from now.

The butterfly effect is not about the power of butterflies to change the weather, it is about the powerlessness of butterflies, or anything else, to change the weather.

The idea that you can ‘change the future’ requires from the very start, that you be able to predict the future's ‘current path’, such that you have something to change, which is what your hypothetical posited as being true from the outset (admittedly addressed by your ‘if’ conditions).

The way I see it is there are three basic models one can have about the future:

i) the future is inevitable, it is set in stone, and nothing anyone can do could ever change it.
ii) the future is malleable, and if we had enough information, we could change it, possibly with very small adjustments, but it might require an unreasonably vast amount of information.
iii) the future is fundamentally random (or fundamentally undecided), so all we can ever assess is the statistical tendencies of the future. Having more information merely allows us to know the statistical tendencies more accurately, it never reduces their statistical nature. Nothing that we do will have any impact on those statistical tendencies, unless what we do is itself, quite a significant modification (ie: not a butterfly). Having power over the future requires having the ability to effect the statistical tendencies, not the ability to pick among them by the judicious applications of butterflies.

The science-relevant contrast here is between (ii) and (iii). Most people adopt approach (iii), before they hear of the Butterfly Effect. The unfortunate misunderstanding of that effect is that it tends to suggest, if improperly explained, that approach (ii) is actually true.

Mind you, the issue for pages in this thread seems to revolve more around the contrast between (i) and the others, but Physics of weather depends on getting (ii) and (iii) clear.
(I live in the forlorn hope that this sub-topic might eventually get around to science .. so invoking the Butterfly Effect then crosses that divide).

We have our part to play in CAUSING the future. We, and everything else, Cause it. But we can't change it. The only thing that can happen is whatever happens.

 

[Mark Quayle]

You claimed that if I am in a situation that has only one outcome, then I still have a choice as long as I think that several outcomes are possible. You also claim that I still have a choice even if someone else has decided for me. See post 1175. Please support these claims.

You misquote me again. I don't care if you think several outcomes are possible. I say that you do have choice if you think OPTIONS are available.

"For" you? I have said that God ("someone else") decided that you would choose what you chose. How does that translate to your vague "for", in "Someone else chose for you" --something I don't think I said --at least, not how you take it. This isn't the first time I have explained this for you, btw. Your argument seems to have migrated from "I disagree with you because", to "you are being sloppy with your English".

 

[Mark Quayle]

Modern science seems to indicate that time travel into the past is impossible. If we are hypothesising a world where this fundamental law of nature is violated, then there's no way to tell what effects it could have, so there's no way to tell how information from the future could affect that future.

It creates paradoxes. By saying that if we see the future as you suggest that this future MUST come to pass, we are eliminating free will, locking the future into the shape we saw in the vision. But if the future is free to change, then the future we saw would be changed and no longer exists, so it couldn't have existed for us to see it. To claim it was one possible future is meaningless, anything could have happened. I mean, one possible future is me running naked in the streets clucking like a chicken. With an infinite number of futures that could have been seen, why was it THIS particular future that was shown?

It seems you have created a hypothetical situation that plays into one particular answer. In any case, any answer I give isn't likely to be an accurate reflection on the world we actually live in, just the artificial world where information from the future can come back to us in the present.

I'm trying to figure out why you said all that. It's not like I disagree with you on it. I don't, but for insignificant points.

Here's how we got here:
↑
Kylie: Which involves information travelling to the present from the future. How is that not time travel? Information is travelling back in time.
Mark: Your answer demands that time be the constant, instead of either travel or information.

Your statement immediately above says information travel (which is not what usually is meant by time travel, in which is meant a person or object --not information). My comment was to show that if information (or object or person, for that matter) is taken for the constant, time would be the variable, or perhaps travel.

All that was meant tongue-in-cheek, by the way. Just having fun with thoughts.

But to go with your post here: "...any answer I give isn't likely to be an accurate reflection on the world we live in...", I agree, (although that is true to some degree with anything answer we give concerning even the present, haha --since not only are we inept at conveying concepts by words, but are even worse at accurately drawing concepts from words) but I'm thinking that if we were privy to the sight of future events they would be largely unintelligible to us, unless we were also privy to their context.

 

[SelfSim]

We have our part to play in CAUSING the future. We, and everything else, Cause it. But we can't change it. The only thing that can happen is whatever happens.

More word salad.

The whole issue of determinism (or predeterminism) is a total red herring in science. All physically useful definitions of determinism boil down to saying that all the information contained in a time series is also contained in any individual 'frame' of that time series. Therefore, all that means is, if you want to have free will and determinism, then all the information required to understand free will must also be encompassed in that single frame. Although that is perfectly possible, it is also perfectly irrelevant .. we already know (from Physics) that not all the information is encompassed in that single frame (see footnote #1).

Attaching some fundamental randomness to the picture, and calling that the source of new information, is equally erroneous, because although technically random digits do contain new information, that's not the kind of information that people are interested in when they talk about free will. So the actual free will that philosophers have been agonizing about over the eons, when projected onto physics, would have to look like some new source of information that is either contained in the present, but does not appear in the quantities physicists have thought how to measure or perceive, or else appears with time in a way that is not fundamentally random (see footnote #2).
If the latter, then 'free will' involves the creation of information.

Now, I have no idea how this new information is created by the application of 'free will', I say only that if this picture is completely compatible with all physics we know, (which it is, because we still have no knowledge of many of the processes we choose to treat as random), then what are so-called compatibilists (and libertarians) arguing about? We, (the physicists), simply have no idea, so for philosophers, citing physics to argue about it, is just outright foolishness.

Footnote #1:
.. that is, unless one attaches non-observable other worlds, expressly to encompass that information like the proverbial angels dancing on the pin .. but that is a totally transparent gambit ..

Footnote #2:
.. if indeed there is any such thing as fundamentally random, which one can personally side with Einstein in doubting, though his particular approach to the alternative was fruitless ..

 

[Kylie]

You misquote me again. I don't care if you think several outcomes are possible. I say that you do have choice if you think OPTIONS are available.

Outcome, options for outcomes... Would you care to explain why you think these are different?

"For" you? I have said that God ("someone else") decided that you would choose what you chose. How does that translate to your vague "for", in "Someone else chose for you" --something I don't think I said --at least, not how you take it. This isn't the first time I have explained this for you, btw. Your argument seems to have migrated from "I disagree with you because", to "you are being sloppy with your English".

A choice was made on my behalf. Thus, it was made for me.

I see that you're reduced to quibbling over wordplay now. If that's all you;ve got, then your argument is falling apart.