daemon

Actually, there are truly random number generators online--they use radioactive decay data. It is truly random.

You may wish to revise this, then, because it doesn't require even a supercomputer to generate an indefinitely long string of random numbers.

John Page

Am I really an atheist? God, yes.

Back to Albert's previous posting. Our Universe "is". Its perceived order is within our minds, this mental faculty contributing to our success in Darwinian-style competition with other life-forms. Chaos, too, is within our minds when we cannot perceive the order.

God is the anthropomorphism of cause because our poor minds don't understand everything - we need a convenient place to park problems so we can get back to reality.

Albert Cipriani

Wow, Thanks Daemon,
I'll take your word for it. Random generators are truly random now. Does this mean that encryption has come of age, that truly unbreakable codes can now be devised? I wonder.

I'll decline your invitation, tho, to retract my statement about the innate orderliness of our universe. You see, we must distinguish between actual chaos and sequential ("logical equivalent of") chaos.

For example, numbers are the epitome of orderliness and the antithesis of chaos. It's only how they are sequenced over time (random number generation) that enforces upon them a self-referenced apparent chaos.

Like a cousin once removed, this sequential chaos is not actually chaos. It is an artificial construct whereby we superimpose the template of temporality upon an orderly process to tease out a disorderly sequence of numbers unrelated to the orderly process.

In other words, there's nothing chaotic about a string of random numbers or the half life of the radioactive material those random numbers are based upon. Rather, it's only the nonexistent relationship BETWEEN those numbers when read sequentially that conjures up an analogy of chaos, "the logical equivalent of chaos," but not chaos itself.

Allow me one more attempt at clarification. Consider the half-life of a radioactive material as me walking to the store. If cartwheels and skipping and back stepping in a totally random manner accompanied my walking, you could call my motion sequence chaotic. But as long as the sequential chaos led to my arrival at the designated store by the predicted time, the apparent chaos was not actual chaos.

Likewise, the apparent chaos of blowing a building up is actually as orderly a process as building the building up. Real chaos (which doesn't really exist) may be defined as motion that no amount of knowledge renders predictable. The only entity that qualifies as chaotic, therefore, would be living entities exercising their free will. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[ February 25, 2002: Message edited by: Albert Cipriani ]</p>

daemon

I fail to understand what you think the two of these have to do with each other. Truly random sequences are not, AFAIK, required for any form of unbreakable encryption.

But you don't have to just take my word for it. Do a search online.
The invitation was to revise your statement, not retract it, because it seems ludicrous to base anything on a statement that has been shown to be false.
Frankly, I dislike discussions about order and chaos because, ultimately, what they are is a matter of opinion. What is chaotic to one person is orderly to another, and vice versa. You make a lot of claims about what chaos is not, but give no counterexamples. If there are no examples of what chaos is, how can order be considered meaningful in any way?
These two are in no way analogous because the time of the decay is not known. It remains indeterminate.
So why is there any meaning in order or chaos? By your reasoning, I would conclude that there is not, and thus, talking of order as meaningful in anyway is a strawman by your own standards.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Daemon,
Universal order is meaningful in that it begets a variant form of the Unmoved Mover argument for the existence of God.

To illustrate. If all things are in motion and all motion must be caused, then there must be an eye in the middle of the Big Bang hurricane, an Unmoved Mover, i.e., God. Likewise, if each thing is ordered in relationship to all other things, then all things as a whole ought to be related to something other than itself, the Ultimate Relationship, i.e., God Our Father.

If there is no such thing as chaos save for our free will to sin, then immorality can be better seen as the disorganizing force it is. Conversely, morality can be better appreciated as the integrating force it is.

Furthermore, if chaos cannot exist in our universe, then evolution, which makes a god out of "chance" mutations will be dethroned. All mutations would have to be seen as pre-determined at the commencement of the Big Bang. Ergo, people could get back to worshiping the Foreknowledge responsible for so far-reaching a design instead of the merely tipping our hat to Chance as our surrogate father. Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

daemon

This appears to be a variant of the popular first cause argument, which has been thoroughly thrashed as far as I've seen. You may assert this is the case, but where is your proof?
I fail to see the relevance of this. Furthermore, many people argue that our behavior is no less deterministic than the orbits of the planets about the sun--can you even prove that that little bit of chaos even exists?
Tsk, tsk, Albert, I should think you'd have at least some knowledge of evolution by now, but perhaps you've missed the point: evolutionary theory DEPENDS on order. It is, in fact, an explanation of natural ordering.
This is just a strawman, Albert.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Daemon,
You disappoint me. I offer the Reader's Digest version of St. Thomas Aquinas’s Unmoved Mover argument and you have the temerity to say:


An argument is an argument. One may prove an argument valid or invalid. But for you to ask me to prove that an argument is an argument, well, that's just absurd. Just the same, I guess cuz I've more time on my unemployed hands, I will comply.

Here follows proof of the Unmoved Mover proof for the existence of God. It is drawn from St. Aquinas’s Summa Theologica, Question 2, Article 3. Hold onto your seat:


Now don't you wish you accepted my abridged version? Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

[ February 25, 2002: Message edited by: Albert Cipriani ]</p>

jj

I'm finding some of this conversation a bit presumptive. Why would a restatement of a thoroughly debunked first-cause claim create any value for either the original or the restated?

As to quantum mechanics, I think (note, I said think) that it's a mistake to assume determinism at any level is involved with QM. While you might get somewhere with some particles, etc, some seem to be entirely elementary and their behavior acts as though there it is purely probabilistic. Now you can marvel that a rather simple equation (albiet one that is (*&(* hard to solve) can describe things so well, but that's another thing altogether.

In short, I would submit that it would be at least as reasonable to state that QM shows that at small scales, all is probabilistic, and that's it. At Planck scales, the rules really do change, and "where" and "how fast" are very vague ideas indeed.

Automaton

Hello Albert. I just thought I'd rear my ugly head here.
The unmoved mover argument has been thoroughly refuted. In its original form, it asserts that all movement is begated by some other movement. Well, all except God, that is. The exceptions (ie, God), are only arbitrarily asserted, and it is not established in the argument what prevents other exceptions. Furthermore, other forms of energy can be converted the kinetic energy (a spectacular example being the ignition of gunpowder), even spontaneously (the emission of an alpha particle from the atomic nucleus), or from pretty much nothing at all (virtual particles). Saying movement is only begat by cause is no help. What cause is there for say, virtual particles? Why limit yourself to one specific form of causation, why not simply say "effects must always be caused... except for X and Y". Again, it is not established why there are exceptions for X and Y. It is not even established, a priori, why "everything" must be caused. It is an inferential argument, based on events observed within the universe, when one is trying to apply it to the universe itself.
This strikes me as a very naive viewpoint. Do you view Hitler as a moral or immoral person? How disorganized and chaotic was Nazi Germany?
Do you believe the mutations that cause bacteria to become resistant to all treatments were predisposed to happen by a loving God?

Draygomb

The problem with Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreat Grandfather Aquinas's thinking is time. In order for time to have been started it must have been caused from a point with no time. And without time there can be no change, so whatever caused time must be unchangeable. It must continually exist in the state of continual creation like somesort of little machine kicking out a prepetual stream of universes. Such a thing could never know it had created anything because it would always be stuck in the process of trying to create. Such a thing would never be able to think about what it was doing or try to do anything different. It would in fact be unable to think at all because no change of thought could occur.

If such a thing exists I see no reason to call an unconscious object God.