lpetrich

I think that the Copenhagen interpretation is interpreted by some as implying that the Universe's continued existence is due to an overall Universe-observer -- which is Bishop Berkeley's well-known viewpoint:

beastmaster

While the implications of QM may suggest the existence of a Universal Perceiver, it seems to undermine the existence of a Omnimax (or quasi-Omnimax) Intentional Being. When most people talk about God, they mean the latter.

I think atheism is open to the possibility of the universe having the characteristic of self-perception. What atheists typically deny is the claim that the universe has the characteristics of intentionality. And it is this very claim of intentionality -- that God has a plan or a purpose -- that is central to Western theism.

demoninho

I just did high school physics but I found this article in Nature . I think it means that the bigger the system is the sooner it looses it dualistic properties and behaves normally. And it's the system itself that causes it ,no need for an outside "consciousness" or god.

lpetrich

That's right -- the bigger the system, the quicker its wavefunction becomes incoherent, thus producing that wavefunction collapse.

Thus, in that two-slit experiment, the photon stays coherent over the size of the apparatus until it hits the photographic film -- which is a complicated system that makes that photon go decoherent.

And what holds true of photographic film also holds true of other arrays of light detectors, like CCD's and retinas.

Lobstrosity

The implication is that there are no "hidden variables," that two non-commuting observables (such as position and momentum or any two orthogonal components of spin/orbital angular momentum) do not simultaneously exist with exact precision (note that this is not saying that we simply can't measure them without perturbing the system--it is more fundamental than this, as Bell's inequalities demonstrate). So what does this have to do with atheism? If anything, these findings are the nail in the coffin of classical causality, in which perfect application of action A infallibly produces result B time and time again. There are no hidden variables. There is no clock in little radioactive isotopes that tells them when to decay. Aspect's experiments shoot the "first-cause"/"prime-mover" argument all to hell. They simply tell us that the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics mirrors the true nature of our universe at its most fundamental level (i.e. it is not just merely a mathematical formalism meant to aid in calculations as Einstein believed). I'm an atheist and such a universe doesn't bug me any...why should it? Perhaps you should ask this guy what he thinks the theistic interpretations of Aspect's experiments are.

Nic Hautamaki

I think it more likely that we simply currently lack the ability to accurately describe quantum mechanics, not that it actually is merely probability based. My thought is that once we uncover the 'hidden variables' and reformulate a more accurate description of the physics involved, it will remove the randomness. What we are describing as random in this case may be just a lack of a complete picture.

Wyz_sub10

There is definitely an EoG aspect to this discussion, but the content is better suited to S&S.

Plus, I think the specifics of the discussion will get more play there.

Off it goes...