ComestibleVenom

Once again you are insisting on a totally literal mapping of causation, and it's trivially obvious that such an interpretation is not going to apply. There is an inescapable sense, however, in which quantum mechanics sets out clear (but probabalistic, an element which is quite obviously acceptable) temporal relationships between systems. The probabilities are 'caused' by the previous states of the system, as opposed to saying they come to be the way they are in a totally random fashion.

A conceptual 'mapping' between QM and causation is all that is required for scientists to legitimately speak of it in various theory system. However pedantic you want to be about the connotations of the terms involved, this isomorphism is all that is required to defeat your objection that talk of causation constitutes an unparsimonious addition to our ontological system.

It's not really a paradox at all. Such large scale phenomenon are ubiquitous throughout nature. For a simple example, take the game of life. The description of the actual base-level mechanism is radically different from high-level description of the structures that occur within it like gliders or turing machines.

As Stanislaw Lem points out, the predictability of when any one person will have an orgasm is very low. Yet we can calculate to a fairly good approximation the amount of semen produced per minute. There's nothing mysterious about the fact that large-scale statistical information is predicable in ways different from the small scale. Counter-intuitive, maybe, but it makes sense when you think it through.

My point was that the mistake of attempting to describe the universe in terms of intentionality (the very DEFINITION of god-based explanation) is related to the exportation of other metaphors too literally to domains in which their applicability breaks down.

We may not be able to predict the reaction of particular atoms, but we can predict the rate of reaction under particular circumstances. The systems behaviour is systematically predictable given knowledge of it's state. That's all I'm contending.

Neither human social understanding nor newton's laws are accurate. In both cases, however, we say that the theories are reducible to QM.

[qute]That wouldn't really be a square, it would be an apparent square. Besides that, this is a false analogy, the dots that make oup the square can easily be called partial components of the square. Indeterministic components are making up an apparently deterministic system.[/quote]

It's not a false analogy. Indeterministic components are making up an apparently deterministic system, thus the apparent determinism, like apparent squares, can be reduced to something conceptually different.

The mere unpredicability of the parts does not mean we cannot predict their behavior as a whole. In fact, computers allow us to follow through the consequences of QM theory and demonstrate that predicable system arise from the structure of the theory itself.



Neural networks involve some degree of random behavior. Under the right circumstances, however, they can be highly predictable.

Jinto

Uh Normal... is your entire objection to Quantum Mechanics based on the fact that it involves probability? Because if it is, and I mean this in the best possible way, then you're nuts.

Consider a board game where the number of spaces moved by your piece is determined by the number on the roll of an ideal die. I cannot predict how many spaces my piece will move on any one turn, but I can predict that the average velocity of my piece over the course of a long game will be 3.5 spaces/turn. Order from randomness.

As for your atheism/theism post:

Where God is defined as ___?___.

How does this reasonably follow from the premise? After all, if a God exists we would expect that life would not exist, since life is so poorly engineered that no God would put up with it. Further, we would expect that if life was actually God's goal in creating the universe, said universe would not be composed mostly of empty space, as a God would not want to waste his infinite resources, nor would he want to isolate his creatures from each other (unless of course, he needs an isolated system for his experiments, but the very idea of doing experiments suggests a lack of knowledge, which God doesn't have.) So far it seems that if there is a God, his goal is most assuredly NOT life.

Thanks for disproving your own theory, as I am not involved in a moral crisis. In fact, that would be impossible, since I am inherently amoral. Let the record show that Normal's God has been disproven.

(now watch him try to prove that I must be moral and not know it. This will be interesting.)

And why is that? Really, wouldn't it make more sense for God to design a universe that didn't require his active intereference?

Not really... QM only predicts that individual events are flukes, but the system as a whole remains predictable. What would be more accurate is to say that the existence of life on Earth is a fluke, but the existence of life on some planet would seem to be a nessecary result.

Hardly. God's inexistence would hardly negate the possibility of other universes, and if these universes interact, then there will nessecarily be events that cannot be explained solely through elements in this universe.

I conclude that it is preferred 3:1 over Gilette.

Nobody I know would use that objection. But rephrased as "If Goddidit was not already a popular myth, nobody would infer that Goddidit from the available evidence," it does serve as a valid point, since it illustrates just how unsupported by the evidence that theory is. The fact that you seem to agree that the statement is true suggests that you are aware that your theory has about as much relation to the evidence as Michael Shermer does to Kent Hovind.

Then why try to say "this is the thing" when you have not even proven that hypothesis to be correct? The whole idea of using Goddidit is to avoid giving a useful explanation. Even if God really did do it, then science can still explore the why and how and use the fact to make predictions, just as it can try to make predictions about my actions, yet here you are trying to tell us that the existence of God should place limits on science - things it can't explain, which suggests that you are indeed using Goddidit as a coput. If you instead were to say "Godddidit, now let's find out why, how, and see if we can predict what God will do next (asking him presumably not being an option), then I would have fewer doubts about your honesty, although you would still be wrong.

Not at all. The evidence for atheism is quite strong, not the least of which is the fact that the universe does not appear to be what a sentient being would design, as well as the fact that everything else once thought to be a manifestation of God turned out to be just another natural phenomenon. The evidence strongly favors the absence of Gods.

Just the opposite. If there exists no God, then our lives can have genuine maning because the things th at we accomplish during our lives, even if they are as insignificant as arguing over the existence of a God, have a lasting effect on the universe. On the other hand, if a God exists, then everything we do could concievably be wiped from existence in an instant, with the whole universe being changed to wipe out all evidence that we ever existed, and of course while we do exist we are nothing more than love-slaves (as distinct from sex-slaves, although he might do that too) for some God who is really so full of himself that he thinks that he deserves our unconditional worship for crating a shitty world like this. Because the existence of a God makes it impossible to do anything other than his will, it nessecarily removes all of our rights to self-determination. And I don't even have to tell you how much less meaningful life is if it lasts for an eternity and we have no way to die, dying being only the transition to some "afterlife" that will supposedly be so great or so horrible that this life will be insignificant in comparison. No, I would shudder to think that there is a God, as it renders my very existence pointless.

Waning Moon Conrad

Not necessarily very much quite honestly. I felt compelled to throw it in because the whole thrust of this question that atheists tend to ignore seemed to come from a standpoint that there must be a God, there absolutely must be!

If the cosmos fluffed up like a meringue from a quantum fluctuation then we have natural laws allowing the possibility of a quantum fluctuation causing a universe to pop into being, natural laws which precede the universe and which are as natural as 2 plus 2 equalling 4.

Maybe the universe oscillates, with no particular beginning and it is the collective karma of all sentient beings that drives the process as buddhist thought suggests, or universes eventually die of entropy or continue to expand forever to the extent that it becomes possible to say accurately if somewhat poetically that it dissolves into emptiness and eventually another one fluffs up.

Personally I think that if karma drives it, god drives it or quantum fluffiness without either god or karma drives it, whether it's karma using quantum fluffiness, god using quantum fluffiness or quantum fluffiness that exists just because that's the way the pre-universe alleged nothingness happens to be then there is going to be some kind of order.

I simply don't think that atheists generally are ignoring this question. Some are but there is no shortage of theists who ignore all sorts of other possibilities.

Normal

If you have found a cause for successive states in a quantum mechanical system, you are up for a Nobel Prize my friend.

It's rather inconvienent for your argument then that this "conceptual mapping" doesn't exist.

Actually, that's a good analogy, except the analogous "orgasms" are the things that we can predict (causes).

Well we don't have to assume intentionality so much as we observe it.

HUP defeats this assertion.

Apparent squares are made of apparent components of those squares. Each "dot" is a partial component of said square. Apparent determinism should not inductively be reduced to indeterminism, thus the false analogy.

The computer simulations cannot run accurate simulations of QM because all computer processes are reducable to deterministic processes.

Could you cite a source for these neural networks grounded in random behavior? As far as I know, all neural networks "random behavior" can be reduced to deterministic processes.

Normal

I don't ever remember objecting to quantum mechanics once.

This false analogy has been dealt with before.

You want me to define god when you cannot even define a chair? Definitions always lead to false senses of idealism and fallacious inferences, so why bother? I think you can infer the general concept of god in the same way you can infer the general concept of a chair, so I won't commit to any rigid definitions.

Poorly designed to who? You? What have you designed that compares? Science itself is also nicely contradicting this very point, as it is using things thought useless in the past. Inductively all things that seem useless to us now may have a use in the future.

Could life arise any other way then if it was mostly empty space? What exactly, would life "move through" if the universe was "mostly space". This is a pretty humerous objection.

Paradoxical. And can you really say what is wasted and what is not wasted?

Why not?

You seem to assume a lot about the motives of god. Even if his "goal" is not life, it's a prediction of god existing none the less.

Even if this assertion comes from an honest place (ever hear of the Problem of Evil? That evil exists is an objective fact), the prediction itself does not discount the fact that some people would be unaware of such involvment. IE. Serial Kilers might not be aware of their "moral crisis" either, that does not mean a "moral crisis" doesn't exist.

I don't see why it would make more sense. Besides, the prediction doesn't even mention "active interference", it could be First Cause, or anything.

It's a cosmic fluke none-the-less. There are many "special conditions" required for life to evolve.

I would use a defintion of the word "Universe" such that the Universe can contain multiple universes. Then, all events can be explained through existants in the (big) Universe (or multiverse), if there is no god.

It's not so much a hypothesis as a prediction. I'm not using "Goddidit" to explain anything, I'm predicting that there will always be one unexplainable aspect of the universe.

That's your interpretation of the evidence.

I really don't think heat death will care about this particular argument.

Um, are you saying a stray comet/asteroid can't do the same? An unpredictable sun flare? There are thousands upon thousands of natural phenomena that can wipe us from existence at any possible moment.

This is a straw man of god.

Who said? We are doomed to be free.

Afterlife has nothing to do with it.

So will heat death, which is the current "no god" conclusion to the universe.

Jinto

I remember an entire thread entitled "The one question atheists tend to ignore" based on the fact that you don't understand Quantum Mechanics.

By you demonstrating that you cannot see logic when it slaps you in the face with a wet fish, and that you are very fond of strawmen. Now try dealing with it for real.

You never asked me to define a chair, nor do I see how the definition of a chair relevant to this discussion.

In other words, you want to maintain amphiboly so when I point out that your theory is not consistent with the universe, you can cry "no, you misunderstood." Could you possibly be any more obvious?

Tell me, exactly how many animals are immune to any and all forms of illness? That's right, zero. Thus, by using simpler designs that don't involve large numbers of molecules moving about in a semi-random fashion directed only by probabilistic chemical reactions, we prevent the disruption of these pathways by rna strands in small protien packs, also designed by this "God" of yours. Also, our designs can be manufacutred to exacting specifications (hint: arm lengths that vary by an inch or more, as in humans, is unacceptable in any modern structure), can survive in extremes of temperature and pressure, are able to use a wide variety of power sources, have interchangable parts, can be updated by simple transfer of software, can do perfect math, are far stronger and faster than humans, and very soon we will be seeing designs that are smarter than humans as well. Every single product maufactured in modern times is vastly superior to the human body. No one could have designed this absolute mess.

Oh, we did our designing largely within the last couple of hundred years. Your God took 4.5 billion. Just in case you were harboring any delusions that I couldn't get more smug than I already am.

Uh, the universe IS mostly empty space. Go outside, look up. See all that space? Billions times billions times billions of cubic lightyears, only an infintesimal fraction occupied by any significant concentration of matter. Quite a waste if your God wants to see the universe filled with life, as most of it is NOT filled with life.

Yes, I can.

Because this (presumably) isn't a science experiment, and so there is no reason to isolate his creatures from each other.

I'm not assuming anything, I'm using logic and observation to challenge the unfounded notion that if God exists, life exists. Now, can you back up this bullshit with EVIDENCE (proof if you have it, but even a plausability argument would be more than I have come to expect)?

Well my prediction has come true, Normal is now trying to prove that I must be moral and just not know it. Regrettably, he has yet to produce anything resembling an actual argument to that effect, just assertion.

Or it could not be true. Unless that flows nessecarily from your premise, it is not a prediction of your hypothesis.

I hereby award you the coveted "Daily Award" for FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND STATISTICS.

Then what is your definition of "Universe" then... is it "collection of multiple unconnected domains of space-time" or "sum of all existence?" If the former, then there might still be NON-sentient elements that do not exist in space-time so your prediction does not hold. If the latter, then nessecarily your God will be IN the universe, so it's true regardless of whether there is a God. Unless you specifically define "universe" to be "everything except an omnipotent, omniscient being," you're going to keep running into the same problem.

And then there's the question of "If there is a God, how do you explain HIM?"

No, you are asserting, in your OP, that this particular question of "why do we see underlying chaos give rise to apparent order?" is unaswerable by atheism, which has been (repeatedly) falsified.

One that is based on logic and the absence of strawmen.

That's okay, I don't really care about it either.

The fossils will still remain. The steel skeletons of skyscrapers will remain. No natural phenomenon can achieve a Lain-style reset. God (or Lain, although I actually like Lain) can.

Nope, quite accurate: he created us so that we love him (or go to hell), worship him (or go to hell), obey his laws (or go to hell), and NEVER blashpheme him (or go to hell). Are you noticing a pattern here?

Only if the great slaver in the sky doesn't exist.

I guess that one got to you then.

Jinto: *Notes Normal's wall of ignorance is weak in the relative worth of life/afterlife area*

Naw, my existence has a point. The point of my existence is whatever the hell I want it to be, since I don't have some God who couldn't care less about how I feel deciding it for me. Right now the opint of my existence is to argue with you.

By the way, you still never explained why you are using the alleged existence of God to say that science can't explain something. Are you really so afraid that when we do it will turn out that no God was involved, just like everything else that has been subjected to scientific scrutiny?

Normal

I never claimed to completely understand QM. If you do why are you still avoiding the question?



Can you point out one straw man I committed?

Maybe you should try setting up the analogy in less vague terms. "It's like when I roll a large number of die, and the average comes out to be 3.5", is obscure. You are not lining up the aspects of QM with the dice game, you are stating vagaries. If you use the law of large numbers do it right. But if you do so you claim that QM follows deterministic solutions to u(mu), which it does not.

You can't define a chair without falling prey to idealism, which was my point. Idealism leads to false inferences and easily attackable positions. Anyway you define a chair, I can distort your position to make it seem like an absurd definition.

Define a chair and I'll show you how fallacious definitions are. So far you have been having a hard time showing how my interpretation is at all inconsistant with the universe, and you have resorted to attacking a straw-man god.

Of course you realize all our progress is based off the tools he provided (brains and all)? I guess that point flew over your "smug" attitude.

So you discount the possibility of it being filled with life in the future? Um. Why don't you just admit this assumption is quite flawed. If the universe was not mostly empty space, gravity would make a mess of everything.

Assumptions.

Assumptions.

It's a prediction of the interpretation that god exists.

Did you even read my post? No where did I claim you were moral. Unless you infered from "A serial killer doesn't realize the moral crisis" that "Jinto's moral".

Or it could be true.

It's merely a prediction that my interpretation accounts for.

I give you the award for "Assume own position to be true and argue without reading what the other person is saying"

Multiverse. And that "problem" really has nothing to do with my interpretation.

This nicely fits into the "don't need to" catagory of my interpretation.

Point out to where it has been falsified. And if you link to something related to the law of large numbers, you lose.

Absence of strawmen? That actually made me laugh. You strawman god to be

a) one in need of worship
b) one who has to be in control of you at all times, if he exists
c) one who can be explained away by science
d) one that creates an afterlife for us based on our actions

Actually there are plenty of natural phenomena that can remove all that.

The only pattern is you are attacking an easily dismissed concept of god you defined yourself.

Non sequitir.

Could you explain how an afterlife has anything to do with my arguments? I don't assume one way or the other.

Again, the purpose I posit god to create has nothing to do with Jinto's ability to create his own purpose.

And you nicely avoid the conclusion of our universe in heat death, so your purpose is nullified anyway.

That is merely one of my predictions. Even if it is falsified, my other predictions still stand.

ComestibleVenom

I suggest you re-read what I was asserting, because the fact that quantum mechanics has predictive power is the only reason we accept it.

(But honestly Normal, are you really so ignorant as to think it has no predictive power?)




Perhaps you have discovered a means of predicting when orgasms occur in people. Nobody else can. We can however work out statistical models of how many orgasms are occuring. Similar epistemological limitations apply to quantum mechanics.

The analogy is just fine. Although I understand by now that you insist on totally literal analogies (to the point of utterly misrepresenting what other people say should they focus on certain elements relating ideas).

Intentionality is the sort of process we see in animals like spiders or goats or people. It always, always, involves perceptual aparatus, analysis of that perceptual information, and responses to it germain to goals.

In the overarching sense that you require, however, we have not found life on other planets or any other sort of intentional system. So we do not, in fact, observe intentionality in the sense you require. We see totally blind, impersonal forces that have no opinion on the human species.

(In response to my assertion that information about a system helps us predict future states.)
The order here is significant.
1. No, in fact, it doesn't. This assertion is of the utmost triviality and patent truth.

2. What is HUP and how do you suppose it overthrows all common-sense, all science and everything coherent?

The analogy is just fine. We can define the extent of a nanowire without defining the spacial extent of it's components. The reduction is not merely inductive, we KNOW that macroscopic objects are composed of things like electrions.

This argument is just disenginuous. If it is interpreted in a way that defeats my assertion, you require that scientists have absolutely no idea how to use quantum mechanics and that no prediction is possible.

That is utterly absurd. These computer simulations permit us to predict observable (and lo and behold observed!) consequences. So the fact that macroscopic systems who's statistical composition approximates the properties associated with

The brain is a system made of chemicals, chemicals man! Think on it.

Jinto

Because the question has been ANSWERED. Again and again. And you keep not getting it. Look at your latest bullshit: In response to "The system's behavior is systematically predictable given its state," you replied "HUP defeats this assertion." Do you even know what the Heisenburg uncertainty principle IS? NO? Then let me educate you. The hup is {delta}x*{delta}v*m>=h/2 where h is 6.626176*10^-34 J*s. Take a look at planck's constant again: 10^-34! Do you realize that for a one kilogram object, this lets us affirm it's position to less than the size of an atomic nucleus and simultaneously determine its velocity to less than a quintillionth of a meter per second with uncertainty to spare? Of course no real instrument could hope to approach such awesome precision, but the point is that for massive objects the HUP doesn't even BEGIN to limit our predictions. So before you go spouting off some more bullshit about how we can't make predictions because of quantum mechanics, could you at least take the time to actually understand it first? Jesus, in the event that you actually exist, please slap some sense into this fool.

You confused the prediction of an average of 3.5 for an assertion that the outcome of any one die roll would be 3.5. I thought that using the velocity analogy would manage to get this through your head, but it now seems that you are misrepresenting people deliberately.

QM predicts the position and momentum of any given particle is unpredicatable and probabilistic, which it is. However, macroscopic systems are composed of many many such particles, whose aggregate mass causes a great reduction in uncertainty, until you reach situations like the above where the function of the group reduces to determinism.

Chair: a piece of furniture designed to be sat upon. How the hell is that absurd?

I can't possibly be attacking a straw-man God, since a strawman is a false representation, and my representation conforms perfectly with every definition of your God you have yet presented, as well as with the biblical God, which you being a Christian, is the God you claim to believe in.

I notice that you avoided mentioning the huge list of design flaws in your God's design. I assume you have no answer for it, therefore my point is well made.

God: alters law of gravity.

Or did you forget that he could do that?

Then perhaps you could tell me a logical reason why he should isolate all his creatures from one another. After all, it was this isolation that led to every single american indian prior to 1492 going to hell. Imagine how many unsaved are on other planets (unless you believe the rest of the universe to be entirely barren, in which case see my point about the waste of space).

No, it isn't. A prediction of a theory is something that is nessecarily true if the theory is true. You have not shown that the existence of a God requires life to exist.

An immoral or amoral serial killer wouldn't be in a state of crisis now, would he?

Oh, and I loved the subtle implication that I am a serial killer. Do you always weave ad hominems into your posts?

It's not even a prediction of your interpretation.

No, no, you're far more deserving of it than I am. Besides, your inability to grasp the difference between the outcome of one trial and the outcome of billions of trials has been a marvelous constant, and I don't think that Stephen Hawking could explain it to you.

Sorry, there may be elements which exist but are not confined to the multiverse system which do not constitute a God.

Remember my point about "goddidit" being used as a code word for "don't bother invesitgating it scientifically?" It was based on you.

Now, explain how your God accounts for this phenomenon, AND where HE comes from, and don't claim that this is in any way evidence for God until you have done both of these things.

here. Try reading it this time.

And since the bible defines God as having these properties, and you never offered an alternative definition...

Hey, I would have used your definition of God, but you forgot to provide one.

Exactly how is Jinto's purpose nullified by what happens n billion years into the future? What makes you think Jinto cares?

Sorry, but the whole point of a prediction is that IF the prediction is false, THEN the theory is also false. If you actually made any predictions, then falsifying them would prove the theory invalid. If showing the "predictions" to be inconsistent with the universe does not disprove that theory, then the are not predictions of that theory.
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Now, I'm not interested in recieving a line-by-line reply to this post. What I am interested in is the following:

1. A precise definition of God.

2. Actual predictions of God-theory. And I mean real predictions, not the "may or may not be true" bullshit you keep putting forth.

3. Actual mathematical proof of how the equations of quantum mechanics are inconsistent with observed reality - in particular, a demonstration of how these equations predict a lack of determinism at the macroscopic level.

4. An actual explanation of how God-theory accounts for this alleged problem.

5. A lack of bullshit.

DOLBAC DENIS

Astrophysicists, biologists have replied in detail to the question about thirty years ago, Monod even got a Nobel prize for it.
The reply is "CHANCE AND NECESSITY"