Omniscience and quantum mechanics

[Wiccan_Child]

if that is His will for you to know then absolutely you will know.

How much do you wanna bet it's not his will to know?

 

[98cwitr]

for you to know you mean? Or are you trying to make the point that it's your will and not His?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

for you to know you mean? Or are you trying to make the point that it's your will and not His?

The former. If God exists, I hardly think it would be my will that dictates what knowledge he dispenses.

 

[98cwitr]

you're right...it's God's Will to dispense the knowledge or the ability for you to receive knowledge openly or the lack of such dispersion.

your will is what you would do on your own accord, and that's your free will to go in whatever direction that you decide to go, just know that God is there and His Will will be done over yours.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

you're right...it's God's Will to dispense the knowledge or the ability for you to receive knowledge openly or the lack of such dispersion.

your will is what you would do on your own accord, and that's your free will to go in whatever direction that you decide to go, just know that God is there and His Will will be done over yours.

Then what is my will for, other than to potter about waiting for The Plan™ to override my life? I thought it was a belief of Christianity that God's plan was scuppered by human free will (namely, Eve's wilful disobedience).

 

[98cwitr]

we are influenced by His will, not the other way around. Your will is for you do be able to make your own decisions.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

we are influenced by His will, not the other way around. Your will is for you do be able to make your own decisions.

Until God wills otherwise, right? If my will goes against his, his will win, right?

 

[98cwitr]

no on the first question, right on the second. You must realize that you cannot control external influences that impact your life, you can only make decisions regarding them.

 

[Spoonbill]

Wiccan,

I am not a Christian, nor do I believe in the Bible, but I am going to have be Devils advocate here and side with the majority of Christians on this thread (interesting choice of words, I know),

Just because we live in a completely random and chaotic universe / multiverse does in no way disprove that there could be an all-knowing God.

You simply arn't thinking "bigger picture" my friend. You are talking about 4th dimensions. Whatever dude. String theory suggests 11. Multiple upon multiple simultanious universes existing at the same time, where every conceivable event possible is occuring all at once.

Now for a human, that would be a fairly large amount of data to process or to "know". But if you "zoom out" of our pityful 3D existence, once you get to the 10th spacial dimension, existence as we know it exists as a single point. Now if God created this, and was capable of viewing this 10th dimension as a single point, it would make perfect sense to him, and wouldnt be that hard to calculate, as from this perspective it would be a single event occuring at once.

If God is half as capable as what the Bible suggests, I don't think understanding the concept of a stupid 3D universe would be of much difficulty to him.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Wiccan,

I am not a Christian, nor do I believe in the Bible, but I am going to have be Devils advocate here and side with the majority of Christians on this thread (interesting choice of words, I know),

oo fun

Just because we live in a completely random and chaotic universe / multiverse does in no way disprove that there could be an all-knowing God.

You simply arn't thinking "bigger picture" my friend. You are talking about 4th dimensions. Whatever dude. String theory suggests 11. Multiple upon multiple simultanious universes existing at the same time, where every conceivable event possible is occuring all at once.

Now for a human, that would be a fairly large amount of data to process or to "know". But if you "zoom out" of our pityful 3D existence, once you get to the 10th spacial dimension, existence as we know it exists as a single point. Now if God created this, and was capable of viewing this 10th dimension as a single point, it would make perfect sense to him, and wouldnt be that hard to calculate, as from this perspective it would be a single event occuring at once.

If God is half as capable as what the Bible suggests, I don't think understanding the concept of a stupid 3D universe would be of much difficulty to him.

If quantum mechanics is true, it's not enough that God has better techniques than we mere mortals: the information simply isn't there.

Even God cannot achieve the logically impossible, despite how many dimensions he can see in.

 

[Chesterton]

'Should be' and 'is' aren't the same thing. I'm not saying the world should be any particular way, just that selection pressures favour some traits over others.

I think we started on this point when you said that an act could be seen as moral based on evolutionary principles. A trait getting favoured over another by natural means is not a moral event, unless you just want to re-define "moral". But in that case, you'd have to define gravity and magnetism as moral. Anything that happens naturally would have to retroactively be called the moral thing. In other words, there could be no such thing as "immoral". (Which is at bottom what you sin-loving atheists really want, isn't it? )

Why would you be opposed to that?

Because I believe murder is immoral and wrong.

I disagree. First, money is relatively new, and is effectively a way of ensuring trust between two parties that would otherwise not trust each other.

Well, food is not new, so you could exchange food (or anything valuable) for money in what I said above. It's an interesting point, though I think you misstated it; contemporary money is a way of ensuring that two parties don't have to trust each other.

Second, throughout the animal kingdom, social species trust one another: gorillas trust that nursing females won't kill their young, but they don't trust that other troops won't.

Gorillas can't be said to be "trusting" because, Darwiningly speaking, they don't have a choice in that particular matter; they can't attack nursing females because their offspring would die for lack of nursing.

More importantly, we can't project our human "theory of mind" onto non-humans. We have to be wary of assuming that we are observing our abilities in animals, because there's no evidence that that is what we're observing. It would be like saying that since my computer and I can both perform mathematical addition, we both share the same kind of consciousness. A computer can be programmed to seem to be conscious. We've no way of measuring an act of supposed will in a lower animal, because an act of will depends on there being an "I" to will it. Until the existence of an animal "I" can be determined, I think that the suggestion that animal behavior represents a kind of human cognitive behavior is not science but poetry; it's an anthropomorphic projection of a human value onto a non-human.

There are actually strong experimental and theoretical grounds for why crime arises, and why it takes the form it does. Simple lifeforms, both organic and artificial, have been shown to develop complex behaviour including altruism (calling to others when they find food) and deceit (calling to others pretending to have found food; while the others cluster around the fake find, he runs off to where the real food is).
In other words, crime supports the idea that morality is evolved: it is as flawed and imperfect as any evolved system.

It's well-known that animals can practice deception; we've all seen nature films where the leopard lies low and silent in the grass to pounce on prey, but that does not mean they are "criminal" in the human sense of the word. Anyway, how does that support the idea that human morality is evolved? And how can you say a naturally evolved system has flaws and imperfections? A thing can only be flawed where there is an unflawed ideal for it to be flawed in relation to. And crime is only a word for an idea; my criminal act can only be criminal if my peers say it is; there's no evidence that simpler lifeforms say or think anything about crime, or about right or wrong.

As for free will, you say that you could, at any moment, choose to commit a crime. But could you? Just how much control does someone have over their actions? It could just as easily be that free will is illusory, that we merely think we can do whatever we want; in reality, it could be that the actions we take are predetermined. There was a recent experiment that showed our actions are brewing in our brain before we've made a concious decision as to what to do.; while not a succinct disproof of free will, it does show that there is more going on than we thought.

I believe humans have will. (The term "free will" seems redundant, because having will means having freedom. The idea of an "unfree will" would be meaningless.) Again, if you believe we have no will, you must believe our thoughts are determined by the motions of subatomic particles, in which case you were bound by natural causes to believe that we have no will, and you could not believe otherwise, any more than a compass could choose to point east. If you say that QM has removed the idea of a strict determinism, it doesn't help because your thoughts were still determined irrationally, even if some random actions were involved, and regardless of the fact that your conclusion feels as if it were based in reason.

Let's assume you're correct that we do not possess will. If you had complete and perfect information about the subatomic world, and about my life, and about everything, you could draw up a (unimaginably complex) flow chart or schematic diagram showing every decision I will ever make, correct? You would know what I'd "choose" to have for lunch every day for the rest of my life, and you'd know things such as, I'm going to scratch my left ear at 9:47 p.m. tomorrow night. But, if I were able to look at your schematic and see what I would choose for lunch tomorrow, there is nothing preventing me from deliberately, intentionally (read: willfully) not making that choice. Put simply, if you were God, and I knew that you knew I would have soup for lunch tomorrow, there is not a natural force in the universe which could stop me from defying your knowledge and having salad instead, or having no lunch at all. And I could do it not just one day, but every day for the rest of my life.

In relation to the above, I think it's interesting that in considering time travel, we recognize a "grandfather paradox", but not a "great-great grandson paradox". A paradox only presents itself in one direction; traveling into the past. Traveling into the future presents no paradox because we are not bound to do anything in a future which doesn't yet exist. And lo and behold, traveling into the future is what all of us are doing every minute of every day.

In a Christian country, that's not surprising. But go to India or Tibet, and you'll notice that religious criticism is not as heavy on Christianity as it is on the local, popular religions. Christianity is attacked the way it is because it is ubiquitous and, until recently, seen as a privileged and untouchable behemoth that was only noticed when contrasted with something else (e.g., atheism).

It's like politics. In the US, you can't move for talk of Democratic or Republican politics. In the UK, there is untold attention constantly devoted to the three main parties, but virtually nothing on anything else, especially foreign politics (with the exception of the US). Does that mean Obama is outstanding? No, it just means he's the figurehead of a very large, very objectionable machine. Likewise, criticism of Jesus isn't because he's necessarily outstanding, but because he's a figurehead (much like the Pope and Catholicism, or Chairman Mao and North Korea - not that I'm saying the two are alike ).

I wasn't talking about general criticism of Christianity, I said "refuting the existence, or denying the words of" Jesus. Also, I didn't say Jesus was outstanding because he's attacked, I said he's attacked because he's outstanding. If you say it's because he's the figurehead of the largest world religion, well that is also a function of his being outstanding.

Of course being outstanding also has an opposite result too; people want to claim him for themselves. The socialists say Jesus was a socialist, and the capitalists say Jesus was a capitalist, and as Elton John said just this week to a London newspaper: "I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems." Elton and I certainly disagree as to whether Jesus was gay, and as to whether Jesus was merely a man, but we both agree he was the very good example of what men should be like if men were much better than they are.

We're suffering because he wants to look cool? God doesn't heal those prayed for because he might be seen as predictable? That doesn't sound like a loving god to me.

Then why doesn't he? Why doesn't he swoop down and heal people?

And God-forbid he should lose style. Nevermind that people are dying.

That was just a response as to why the LHC won't cause statues of Mary to bleed. I wasn't offering "style" as theodicy.

But those are, by Christianity's own admission, one off events that occur in violation of, rather than in accordance to, natural law.

But the important point is that they were willful acts done by choice. They could have been different, or not done at all. They weren't necessary reactions to a human action (such as flipping a switch on a man-made machine).

Solidness is the same. Solidness is just EM repulsion between your atoms and the chair's atoms. It's not a thing unto itself, it's just a name we give to a phenomenon.

I guess we agree on that, but I think we started talking about this because I said "red" was real and you said it wasn't. But if you say it's "just a phenomenon", then I'd guess I'd ask why you say phenomena aren't real? If there were no conscious minds on Earth, and a rock was resting on the ground, the atoms of the ground and the rock would be doing the same thing as my hand and a chair. The rock and the ground would experience solidness, even if they're not conscious that they are experiencing it. So whether it's color, or sound or tactileness(?) (tacticity?) I can't see how it's correct to say that the actions of atoms aren't real because they aren't being perceived by a mind.

I'm not a big fan of ancient prophecies. Besides, there is some dispute as to whether Alexander the Great even exist (he probably did ).

I suppose anything can be disputed. Witness the recent flat-earther in the Science forum. I suppose "nice try" would be too generous for him, but it's a try, anyway.

There's a difference between incomprehensibly bizarre, and wholly illogical. Quantum mechanics may play merry hell with our intuitive ideas about location, but that doesn't mean 1+1=3 all of a sudden.

But our ideas about location and space are at bottom the same thing as our ideas about math, aren't they? To say that one thing is in more than one place is as illogical as to say "1=2"; in fact, both are really saying the same thing. And both are not merely counter-intuitive or bizarre; both are illogical.

Intuition is a hunch or supposition or feeling about something for which you don't have complete information. If you have an intuition about something, and better information comes along and shows that your intuition is wrong, it's not intellectually unacceptable the same way that illogic is.

You're saying that certain QM observations are counter-intuitive but are not illogical. I recognize the difference between intution and logic, but I say QM observations are both counter-intuitive and illogical. And I think I have on my side the best and brightest minds in physics (your present company excluded ) I could search the web and give you a page full of quotes to the effect of "the deeper we look into reality, the more it looks like some kind of fairy tale" and "if you think you understand QM, you don't understand QM" and, a nice variation on that I saw once: "If you believe QM, you don't understand it. If you understand it, you don't believe it." Throughout history science has delivered many surprising findings, but the surprises were readily digestible once the relevant facts were understood. QM seems thus far to cause mental indigestion in even the best minds.

The subatomic and the atomic are of one world. If you say that what happens in the subatomic world is not illogical, even though it would be illogical if it happened in the larger world, your only explanation would seem to have to be "the subatomic world is different". Then I think I should also be allowed to say "God is different".

 

[sk8Joyful]

Can you elaborate?

Some people define omniscience as knowing everything that can be known
(making a distinction from knowing that which can't be known, such as how to make a square circle).

I have donated blood, which is about all I can do, to help other people with my ability to heal.

Well, keep on learning... , for I mentioned healing intentionally...

Unfortunately too many Christians, and also atheists, were led to believe (& sorry belief is all that boils down to) that the 'physical/machine-model', is the only game in town.
When in all actuality,
immensely-vast worlds of possibility, and not just in healing, exist...
(Not to be confused with Divine-interventions: where God raises the dead, decomposed; or exponentially enlarges His universe as we speak). -
No, here we are talking healing & further development powers that you, and all others, are by God's grace, endowed with. Using this mind-model, many choose of such chronic-conditions as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. to allow themselves being freed, iow they make new, better choices, and thus changed, live life more to their liking... and since you started this thread with the idea of knowing more, you might well want to explore some of these sciences, quite a few of us are familiar with, using these for our own benefits, as well as to bless others.

Cheers!

 

[Wiccan_Child]

3 months. Does that count as necromancy?

I think we started on this point when you said that an act could be seen as moral based on evolutionary principles.

Ah, I was careful not to say that. And if I did say that, I would very much like to know what cactus I was smoking at the time.

My point is that our sense of morality is evolved: we feel that putting oneself before one's children is morally better because such a feeling benefits the survival of said children (and, thus, the genes that code for said feeling).

A trait getting favoured over another by natural means is not a moral event, unless you just want to re-define "moral". But in that case, you'd have to define gravity and magnetism as moral. Anything that happens naturally would have to retroactively be called the moral thing. In other words, there could be no such thing as "immoral". (Which is at bottom what you sin-loving atheists really want, isn't it? )

That's not entirely true. Just last week, the Atheist Confederacy concluded that Sunday School is tantamount to hate speech .

Because I believe murder is immoral and wrong.

Why? Do you not consider suffering to be wrong? Which is worse? The murdered get to go to Heaven, after all.

Well, food is not new, so you could exchange food (or anything valuable) for money in what I said above. It's an interesting point, though I think you misstated it; contemporary money is a way of ensuring that two parties don't have to trust each other.

Ah, typical Christian, inherently untrusting .

Gorillas can't be said to be "trusting" because, Darwiningly speaking, they don't have a choice in that particular matter; they can't attack nursing females because their offspring would die for lack of nursing.

Well, they can, they just choose not to, because billions of years of evolution have disinclined the individual gorilla from infanticide.

More importantly, we can't project our human "theory of mind" onto non-humans. We have to be wary of assuming that we are observing our abilities in animals, because there's no evidence that that is what we're observing. It would be like saying that since my computer and I can both perform mathematical addition, we both share the same kind of consciousness. A computer can be programmed to seem to be conscious. We've no way of measuring an act of supposed will in a lower animal, because an act of will depends on there being an "I" to will it. Until the existence of an animal "I" can be determined, I think that the suggestion that animal behavior represents a kind of human cognitive behavior is not science but poetry; it's an anthropomorphic projection of a human value onto a non-human.

I disagree. From an evolutionary point of view, the human conciousness, our sentience and sapience, are wholly natural (if baffling) constructs. If they evolved, it's quite likely that they evolved in 'lesser' animals as well. While the other Great Apes aren't as self-reflective as we are (or so we think), there's no reason to suppose they are completely void of conciousness.

After all, how do we know that other humans are concious like we are concious? If you exclude Great Apes from having a similar conciousness to us, then you have to justify your inclusion of other humans.

It's well-known that animals can practice deception; we've all seen nature films where the leopard lies low and silent in the grass to pounce on prey, but that does not mean they are "criminal" in the human sense of the word. Anyway, how does that support the idea that human morality is evolved? And how can you say a naturally evolved system has flaws and imperfections? A thing can only be flawed where there is an unflawed ideal for it to be flawed in relation to. And crime is only a word for an idea; my criminal act can only be criminal if my peers say it is; there's no evidence that simpler lifeforms say or think anything about crime, or about right or wrong.

Ah, I'm not talking about crime as a legal entity. A 'crime' here is just an act that we humans would call immoral or criminal; whether it is or not is irrelevant. Chimps punish and ostracise those who would mate with the Alpha's females; is that a crime, in chimp society?
The point isn't a moral one. It's just that there are evolutionary reasons for why seemingly self-destructive behaviour like altruism and homosexuality evolved, and why organisms engage in murder, theft, and deception. We have even created sets of interacting robots that engage in deceptive behaviour in a way that closely mirrors human and animal behaviour (that is, how, why, and how often they deceive mirrors 'real' behaviour).

I believe humans have will. (The term "free will" seems redundant, because having will means having freedom. The idea of an "unfree will" would be meaningless.) Again, if you believe we have no will, you must believe our thoughts are determined by the motions of subatomic particles, in which case you were bound by natural causes to believe that we have no will, and you could not believe otherwise, any more than a compass could choose to point east. If you say that QM has removed the idea of a strict determinism, it doesn't help because your thoughts were still determined irrationally, even if some random actions were involved, and regardless of the fact that your conclusion feels as if it were based in reason.

Let's assume you're correct that we do not possess will. If you had complete and perfect information about the subatomic world, and about my life, and about everything, you could draw up a (unimaginably complex) flow chart or schematic diagram showing every decision I will ever make, correct? You would know what I'd "choose" to have for lunch every day for the rest of my life, and you'd know things such as, I'm going to scratch my left ear at 9:47 p.m. tomorrow night. But, if I were able to look at your schematic and see what I would choose for lunch tomorrow, there is nothing preventing me from deliberately, intentionally (read: willfully) not making that choice. Put simply, if you were God, and I knew that you knew I would have soup for lunch tomorrow, there is not a natural force in the universe which could stop me from defying your knowledge and having salad instead, or having no lunch at all. And I could do it not just one day, but every day for the rest of my life.

In relation to the above, I think it's interesting that in considering time travel, we recognize a "grandfather paradox", but not a "great-great grandson paradox". A paradox only presents itself in one direction; traveling into the past. Traveling into the future presents no paradox because we are not bound to do anything in a future which doesn't yet exist. And lo and behold, traveling into the future is what all of us are doing every minute of every day.

Since we're having this very discussion elsewhere, I'll drop this.

I wasn't talking about general criticism of Christianity, I said "refuting the existence, or denying the words of" Jesus. Also, I didn't say Jesus was outstanding because he's attacked, I said he's attacked because he's outstanding. If you say it's because he's the figurehead of the largest world religion, well that is also a function of his being outstanding.

Of course being outstanding also has an opposite result too; people want to claim him for themselves. The socialists say Jesus was a socialist, and the capitalists say Jesus was a capitalist, and as Elton John said just this week to a London newspaper: "I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems." Elton and I certainly disagree as to whether Jesus was gay, and as to whether Jesus was merely a man, but we both agree he was the very good example of what men should be like if men were much better than they are.

Ah, there are gay rumours about everyone these days. Always gives me a chuckle.

I guess we agree on that, but I think we started talking about this because I said "red" was real and you said it wasn't. But if you say it's "just a phenomenon", then I'd guess I'd ask why you say phenomena aren't real? If there were no conscious minds on Earth, and a rock was resting on the ground, the atoms of the ground and the rock would be doing the same thing as my hand and a chair. The rock and the ground would experience solidness, even if they're not conscious that they are experiencing it. So whether it's color, or sound or tactileness(?) (tacticity?) I can't see how it's correct to say that the actions of atoms aren't real because they aren't being perceived by a mind.

The rock is real inasmuch as the 'rock' is a conglomeration of atoms. Its solidness, impenetrability, colour, etc, are secondary phenomenons from the atoms. Ultimately, what is real is matter, atoms, molecules, particles, etc. Things made of particles are real, like rock. Things that aren't, like colour and smell, aren't real; they're, well, they're not.

But our ideas about location and space are at bottom the same thing as our ideas about math, aren't they? To say that one thing is in more than one place is as illogical as to say "1=2"; in fact, both are really saying the same thing. And both are not merely counter-intuitive or bizarre; both are illogical.

I disagree that it's illogical. Counter-intuitive, sure, but not illogical.

Intuition is a hunch or supposition or feeling about something for which you don't have complete information. If you have an intuition about something, and better information comes along and shows that your intuition is wrong, it's not intellectually unacceptable the same way that illogic is.

You're saying that certain QM observations are counter-intuitive but are not illogical. I recognize the difference between intution and logic, but I say QM observations are both counter-intuitive and illogical.

OK.

And I think I have on my side the best and brightest minds in physics (your present company excluded ) I could search the web and give you a page full of quotes to the effect of "the deeper we look into reality, the more it looks like some kind of fairy tale" and "if you think you understand QM, you don't understand QM" and, a nice variation on that I saw once: "If you believe QM, you don't understand it. If you understand it, you don't believe it." Throughout history science has delivered many surprising findings, but the surprises were readily digestible once the relevant facts were understood. QM seems thus far to cause mental indigestion in even the best minds.

But that doesn't mean it's inherently illogical. Besides, quotes like that are a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way of talking about the absurdity of QM. Scientists can have a sense of humour too .

The subatomic and the atomic are of one world. If you say that what happens in the subatomic world is not illogical, even though it would be illogical if it happened in the larger world, your only explanation would seem to have to be "the subatomic world is different". Then I think I should also be allowed to say "God is different".

Well, physicists know that classical mechanics is false, but that doesn't mean we can't use it as a good approximation when we need to.

 

[Chesterton]

Ah, I was careful not to say that. And if I did say that, I would very much like to know what cactus I was smoking at the time.

If an act is not seen as moral based on evolutionary principles, what is an act being seen as moral based on? What else is there?

My point is that our sense of morality is evolved: we feel that putting oneself before one's children is morally better because such a feeling benefits the survival of said children (and, thus, the genes that code for said feeling).

So why do we care so much about whether genes survive? I wouldn't even know one if I saw one. I try and imagine the first self-replicating molecule, perhaps. I can try and imagine its "offspring" somehow becoming more and more complex over many generations, just as I can imagine some computer code being written to complicate itself. But I can't imagine how code ever comes to want anything.

And below you mention that gorillas generally don't engage in infanticide, but a male silverback who takes control of a family group will often kill the existing children so he can make his own new ones with the female. So apparently he cares for his genes, but not the genes of his species generally. Yet humans would frown on such selfishness if we did this (well, apart from the murder itself). And it's when you get down to a few core moral ideas, like selfishness; they are so fundamental they can almost be seen as axiomatic, because we can't imagine them being otherwise. Lewis said something like "try and imagine a society where men were admired for betraying their friends. Imagine a country where cowardice was praised." I might imagine the most bizarre things possibly happening through natural selection: jellyfish, kangaroos, etc, but I can't imagine admiring a selfish, back-stabbing man.

That's not entirely true. Just last week, the Atheist Confederacy concluded that Sunday School is tantamount to hate speech.

I hope that's a joke. I'm afraid to Google it.

Why?

Because the logical conclusion of ending suffering through murder would be to actively seek the extinction of all life, since we all suffer sometimes. Plus other reasons, such as it seeming to be a self-evident truth, and that it feels wrong.

Do you not consider suffering to be wrong? Which is worse?

I know we do kill animals who are suffering without hope, so we do recognize cases where suffering is the worse thing. As to people, I guess it comes down to a religious vs. non-religious view, I do view humans as a special type of thing. But even if I weren't religious, I'd still believe that a hard line must be drawn somewhere. If there ever was a dangerous slippery slope this is it. I really don't want my lawmakers adopting the views of some of our more avant garde thinkers like Singer and his ilk.

(I wonder if the shoe were on the other foot? I'm considering starting a website where I'd advocate for giving individuals the right to kill stupid intellectuals. I think I could make a decent case for the utility of it. )

The murdered get to go to Heaven, after all.

Well, you may be intending to go to Disneyworld someday, but I've no right to force you to go there at any given time.

Ah, typical Christian, inherently untrusting .

Well, they can, they just choose not to, because billions of years of evolution have disinclined the individual gorilla from infanticide.

Makes it sound like they have free will.

I disagree. From an evolutionary point of view, the human conciousness, our sentience and sapience, are wholly natural (if baffling) constructs. If they evolved, it's quite likely that they evolved in 'lesser' animals as well. While the other Great Apes aren't as self-reflective as we are (or so we think), there's no reason to suppose they are completely void of conciousness.

I don't think I said they were completely void, I just said our consciousnesses are of a different kind. Honestly, if I were cruising around the universe studying inhabited planets, and came upon Earth, I'd note the 98% genetic similarity between man and monkey, but surely what would be most striking is how dissimilar humans are from the rest of the animals.

Being human ourselves, it can be easy to take being human for granted. The fact that an arrangement of matter, such as a tree or a cat, can physically reproduce itself seems amazing. But to think that some arrangements of matter (humans) can actually produce abstract representations of matter (art), including themselves, is almost astonishing enough to be a bit frightening when you really think about it. It's almost god-like.

After all, how do we know that other humans are concious like we are concious? If you exclude Great Apes from having a similar conciousness to us, then you have to justify your inclusion of other humans.

I don't know, but it seems we have enough evidence in that we can discuss with each other how sad feels like sad, and salt tastes like salt, etc.

Ah, I'm not talking about crime as a legal entity. A 'crime' here is just an act that we humans would call immoral or criminal; whether it is or not is irrelevant. Chimps punish and ostracise those who would mate with the Alpha's females; is that a crime, in chimp society?
The point isn't a moral one. It's just that there are evolutionary reasons for why seemingly self-destructive behaviour like altruism and homosexuality evolved, and why organisms engage in murder, theft, and deception. We have even created sets of interacting robots that engage in deceptive behaviour in a way that closely mirrors human and animal behaviour (that is, how, why, and how often they deceive mirrors 'real' behaviour).

If I agree that there are evolutionary reasons for why all behaviors evolved, that still doesn't address the question of why we form nearly universal value judgments about those behaviors. Actually, the fact that they are evolved should preclude the idea of morality. If murder and altruism both arose because of environmental pressures, then they are amoral actions. Yet no sane man feels or thinks that way about them. Again, we can't really imagine them being equivalent, which they must be if atheistic evolution is true.

The rock is real inasmuch as the 'rock' is a conglomeration of atoms. Its solidness, impenetrability, colour, etc, are secondary phenomenons from the atoms. Ultimately, what is real is matter, atoms, molecules, particles, etc. Things made of particles are real, like rock. Things that aren't, like colour and smell, aren't real; they're, well, they're not.

You say the the qualia is secondary, but I don't see how being secondary equates to being "unreal". You say the matter is real, but isn't the atom just a conglomeration of other things the same as the rock is?

I disagree that it's illogical. Counter-intuitive, sure, but not illogical.

OK.

But that doesn't mean it's inherently illogical. Besides, quotes like that are a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way of talking about the absurdity of QM. Scientists can have a sense of humour too .

Well, physicists know that classical mechanics is false, but that doesn't mean we can't use it as a good approximation when we need to.

Well if you don't think it's illogical I guess you just don't. You're the physicist, so I guess I can't press the point much further. But I think there are some knowledgeable guys, like Penrose recently, who would seem to agree with me.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

If an act is not seen as moral based on evolutionary principles, what is an act being seen as moral based on? What else is there?

The human species has evolved to consider certain things moral, in that the 'gut feeling' that something is 'just wrong' has an evolutionary origin (e.g., protecting our young is felt to be 'right', and that feeling has evolutionary origins). That doesn't mean the theories and principles behind evolution can be used to deduce morality, mind you, just that our gut feelings, our instinctive sense of morality, has an evolutionary origin.

So why do we care so much about whether genes survive? I wouldn't even know one if I saw one. I try and imagine the first self-replicating molecule, perhaps. I can try and imagine its "offspring" somehow becoming more and more complex over many generations, just as I can imagine some computer code being written to complicate itself. But I can't imagine how code ever comes to want anything.

It can't. It's just a collection of molecules. But the evolution of genes is such that the survival of genes is promoted. Those genes which just so happen to code for their own survival are, of course, the ones which survive. So, over time, the genes which survive are ones which are 'selfish' - the gene isn't literally consciously selfish, of course, but it's 'selfish' in that it codes for its own survival, even at the expense of the host organism.

And when I say a gene 'survives', I mean another copy of the same gene exists in the genome of another organism (usually the direct offspring of the host, but not always; lateral gene transfer between bacteria, kin selection between social animals, etc, are other ways).

Anyway, genes don't literally 'want' to do anything, but the traits they code for are such that they increase the probability of themselves being copied into the next generation. This, to us humans, is succinctly (if inaccurately) summarised as the gene being 'selfish' or 'wanting' to 'survive'.

And I just realised that 'genes' + 'is' = 'genesis'. Proof of God, perhaps?

And below you mention that gorillas generally don't engage in infanticide, but a male silverback who takes control of a family group will often kill the existing children so he can make his own new ones with the female. So apparently he cares for his genes, but not the genes of his species generally. Yet humans would frown on such selfishness if we did this (well, apart from the murder itself). And it's when you get down to a few core moral ideas, like selfishness; they are so fundamental they can almost be seen as axiomatic, because we can't imagine them being otherwise. Lewis said something like "try and imagine a society where men were admired for betraying their friends. Imagine a country where cowardice was praised." I might imagine the most bizarre things possibly happening through natural selection: jellyfish, kangaroos, etc, but I can't imagine admiring a selfish, back-stabbing man.

Which is a testament to just how ingrained they are in our society. But consider: we would applaud the man who got close to, and assassinated, Hitler. Isn't that backstabbing? We applaud soldiers who go out and kill people for a living, but the families of the civilians they slaughter would condemn them as murderers. Morality is quite relative. We can be convinced of all sorts of things, sadly.

I hope that's a joke. I'm afraid to Google it.

Ah, Poe's law, my eternal for...

Because the logical conclusion of ending suffering through murder would be to actively seek the extinction of all life, since we all suffer sometimes. Plus other reasons, such as it seeming to be a self-evident truth, and that it feels wrong.

I know we do kill animals who are suffering without hope, so we do recognize cases where suffering is the worse thing. As to people, I guess it comes down to a religious vs. non-religious view, I do view humans as a special type of thing. But even if I weren't religious, I'd still believe that a hard line must be drawn somewhere. If there ever was a dangerous slippery slope this is it. I really don't want my lawmakers adopting the views of some of our more avant garde thinkers like Singer and his ilk.

I think Singer is too post-modern for his own good.

Well, you may be intending to go to Disneyworld someday, but I've no right to force you to go there at any given time.

I think you have both the right and the moral obligation to do so, if the alternative is an eternity of suffering.

Makes it sound like they have free will.

Perhaps they do. Perhaps they don't. Either way, their behaviour is governed (or, at least, heavily influenced) by evolution.

I don't think I said they were completely void, I just said our consciousnesses are of a different kind. Honestly, if I were cruising around the universe studying inhabited planets, and came upon Earth, I'd note the 98% genetic similarity between man and monkey, but surely what would be most striking is how dissimilar humans are from the rest of the animals.

Being human ourselves, it can be easy to take being human for granted. The fact that an arrangement of matter, such as a tree or a cat, can physically reproduce itself seems amazing. But to think that some arrangements of matter (humans) can actually produce abstract representations of matter (art), including themselves, is almost astonishing enough to be a bit frightening when you really think about it. It's almost god-like.

It's distinctly human, I'll give you that, and it's one of the more puzzling aspects of an all-natural worldview (which I subscribe to, if you hadn't guessed ), but I think it's just that: a puzzle. Way back when, lightening and volcanoes were absolutely baffling. We had no idea how something like that could happen, since there was nothing like it in our experience. That doesn't mean it's godly, just god-like.

I don't know, but it seems we have enough evidence in that we can discuss with each other how sad feels like sad, and salt tastes like salt, etc.

But can we? Can we discuss what sadness feels like, what salt tastes like? Can you describe the colour blue to a blind man? Qualitative experience is wholly subjective, and the notion of philosophical zombies just blurs the issue further.

If I agree that there are evolutionary reasons for why all behaviors evolved, that still doesn't address the question of why we form nearly universal value judgments about those behaviors. Actually, the fact that they are evolved should preclude the idea of morality. If murder and altruism both arose because of environmental pressures, then they are amoral actions. Yet no sane man feels or thinks that way about them. Again, we can't really imagine them being equivalent, which they must be if atheistic evolution is true.

They are amoral inasmuch as there is no Absolute Authority telling us otherwise... though this comes dangerously close to precluding God. To clarify, a wholly natural, evolutionary basis for morality precludes an absolutist source of morality: actions are just actions, and evolution has wired us to favour certain actions over others. We feel that murder is bad and altruism is good, but that's just serotonin in our brain; it doesn't reflect some ethereal connection to the Platonic Form of Good, or some such.

At least, assuming a wholly natural, evolutionary origin of morality. Perhaps the widespread agreement that murder is wrong does indeed arise from a magical connection to Plato's Forms.

You say the the qualia is secondary, but I don't see how being secondary equates to being "unreal". You say the matter is real, but isn't the atom just a conglomeration of other things the same as the rock is?

Yeah, but those things are themselves real. The rock is real inasmuch as it is the name we give to a collection of individual things, which are themselves real. The sensations of solidity and redness, though, only exist in our heads as a conceptual aids. What causes those sensations is real (e.g., the EM field that stops our hand at its surface, the light bouncing off it, the molecules that give rise to scent, etc), but the sensation itself is just in our minds.
It's like the number one. It's real inasmuch as it's a valid concept, but it's not real inasmuch as It isn't floating out there in space somewhere: it's just a concept.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Well, keep on learning... , for I mentioned healing intentionally...

Unfortunately too many Christians, and also atheists, were led to believe (& sorry belief is all that boils down to) that the 'physical/machine-model', is the only game in town.
When in all actuality,
immensely-vast worlds of possibility, and not just in healing, exist...
(Not to be confused with Divine-interventions: where God raises the dead, decomposed; or exponentially enlarges His universe as we speak). -
No, here we are talking healing & further development powers that you, and all others, are by God's grace, endowed with. Using this mind-model, many choose of such chronic-conditions as diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc. to allow themselves being freed, iow they make new, better choices, and thus changed, live life more to their liking... and since you started this thread with the idea of knowing more, you might well want to explore some of these sciences, quite a few of us are familiar with, using these for our own benefits, as well as to bless others.

Cheers!

Can you elaborate on these abilities, then? If this phenomenon can cure diabetes, heart disease, cancer, etc, then it can be readily tested (since, at the end of the day, we can test people for those conditions). What is he mechanism by which this healing comes about? How does one heal oneself of diabetes? Is there any evidence or testimony corroborating this? Is there any reason to believe it actually occurs, as opposed to it just being a delusion?

It may seem a callous turn of phrase, but it's important to distinguish genuine healing from delusion; we all know of the stories where people die because they turn to 'alternative' medicine.

On the other hand, if you really have discovered a genuine method of curing diabetes, etc, then you should perhaps think about publishing it in a medical journal. If you can demonstrate that this healing does indeed occur, you will not only save a great many people by making this knowledge widespread, but you will also overturn some of the foundations of modern medicine.

Obviously I'm sceptical of your claim, if only because I've heard things like it before, but I am genuinely interested in hearing more; my questions weren't derisive (my apologies if that's how they came across). And I meant what I said: if this phenomenon really occurs, publish.

 

[razeontherock]

The rock is real inasmuch as the 'rock' is a conglomeration of atoms. Its solidness, impenetrability, colour, etc, are secondary phenomenons from the atoms. Ultimately, what is real is matter, atoms, molecules, particles, etc. Things made of particles are real, like rock. Things that aren't, like colour and smell, aren't real; they're, well, they're not.

Interesting insight into your thinking: only things with particles are real, and;

color and smell have no particles.

Care to re-think any of that?

 

[Wiccan_Child]

Interesting insight into your thinking: only things with particles are real, and;

color and smell have no particles.

Care to re-think any of that?

No. I never said that colour and smell have no particles per se. Well, ostensibly, I did, but I was referring to the qualia, the sensation of colour and the sensation of smell, rather than the particles that cause them. Obviously, there are particles which cause these qualia (namely, photons and large organic molecules, respectively), but these aren't the qualia themselves. A photon of a specific wavelength is 'red' only inasmuch as it causes the eye to send the 'I'm seeing a red thing' nerve signal to the brain, which makes us see a red thing in our mind's eye.

If our bodies couldn't see red light, would we still call it red? No. 'Red' would be, presumably, whatever the lowest wavelength of light is. Indeed, the existence of 'red' as a colour distinct to 'green' to a red-green colour-blind person is only known because there are other people to point out that distinction.

Point is, as I clarified to Chesterton in my later post, was that the sensation a rock's impenetrability isn't real, not in the same way a rock is real.

 

[razeontherock]

No.

A direct answer. I like that! You developed that thought very well. I was so young when I first experienced synaesthesia I thought it was normal, and this was before it was recognized. I've never been able to verbalize that idea as well as you just did, thanks.

 

[Wiccan_Child]

A direct answer. I like that! You developed that thought very well. I was so young when I first experienced synaesthesia I thought it was normal, and this was before it was recognized. I've never been able to verbalize that idea as well as you just did, thanks.

When I wrote that I wondered if the first 'No.' sounded rude... luckily, you saw I was just being direct
And, wow, you have synaesthesia? I'd ask what that's like, but, well...