J. P. Moreland on why minds could not simply evolve somehow

"What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, How infinite in faculty, In form and movement how express and admirable. In action how like and angel, In apprehension how like a god. The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals." William Shakespeare, Hamlet. (Doubtless with some errors - attempt from memory.) Fasteddious

What doesn’t make sense- and which many atheistic evolutionists are conceding -is the idea of getting a mind to squirt into existence by starting with brute, dead, mindless matter.

Even getting a single living cell from non-living matter does not make sense. But I don't think atheistic evolutionists are conceding that the story of mind-from-matter is unreasonable. Everything starts with Faith Propositions presented as indisputable fact: "Evolution is true. We are here because of evolution. Evolution is a fact." Now, the task for science is to fit all observations into that belief system. Silver Asiatic

Excellent post. Love J.P. Moreland. Truth Will Set You Free

This quote,,

"if you begin with an infinite mind, then you can explain how finite minds could come into existence."

,, reminds me of this quote,,

“When I consider what marvelous things men have understood, what he has inquired into and contrived, I know only too clearly that the human mind is a work of God, and one of the most excellent.” Yet the potential of the human mind “… is separated from the Divine knowledge by an infinite interval.” (Poupard, Cardinal Paul. Galileo Galilei. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1983, p. 101.)

Moreover, Mathematics and Physics both give us strong evidence that the consciousness that precedes the universe in its existence is Omniscient, i.e. must possess infinite knowledge. First off, mathematically the quantum wave function requires an infinite amount of information

Explaining Information Transfer in Quantum Teleportation: Armond Duwell †‡ University of Pittsburgh Excerpt: In contrast to a classical bit, the description of a (quantum) qubit requires an infinite amount of information. The amount of information is infinite because two real numbers are required in the expansion of the state vector of a two state quantum system (Jozsa 1997, 1) http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/faculty/duwell/DuwellPSA2K.pdf Quantum Computing – Stanford Encyclopedia Excerpt: Theoretically, a single qubit can store an infinite amount of information, yet when measured (and thus collapsing the superposition of the Quantum Wave state) it yields only the classical result (0 or 1),,, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-quantcomp/#2.1 WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Infinity – Max Tegmark Excerpt: real numbers with their infinitely many decimals have infested almost every nook and cranny of physics, from the strengths of electromagnetic fields to the wave functions of quantum mechanics: we describe even a single bit of quantum information (a qubit) using two real numbers involving infinitely many decimals. - per The Edge

Moreover, besides taking an infinite amount of information to describe, the quantum wave function is also mathematically defined as being in an infinite dimensional state,,,

Wave function Excerpt "wave functions form an abstract vector space",,, This vector space is infinite-dimensional, because there is no finite set of functions which can be added together in various combinations to create every possible function. - Per Wikipedia The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: We now have, in physics, two theories of great power and interest: the theory of quantum phenomena and the theory of relativity.,,, The two theories operate with different mathematical concepts: the four dimensional Riemann space and the infinite dimensional Hilbert space, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html

Now saying something takes an infinite amount of information to describe sounds very much like the Theistic attribute of Omniscience to me. Whereas saying something is in an infinite dimensional state to me, as a Christian Theist, sounds very much like the theistic attribute of omnipresence. Moreover, Richard Feynman was only able to unify special relativity and quantum mechanics into quantum electrodynamics by quote unquote “brushing infinity under the rug” by a technique called Renormalization

THE INFINITY PUZZLE: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe Excerpt: In quantum electrodynamics, which applies quantum mechanics to the electromagnetic field and its interactions with matter, the equations led to infinite results for the self-energy or mass of the electron. After nearly two decades of effort, this problem was solved after World War II by a procedure called renormalization, in which the infinities are rolled up into the electron’s observed mass and charge, and are thereafter conveniently ignored. Richard Feynman, who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga for this breakthrough, referred to this sleight of hand as “brushing infinity under the rug.” http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/tackling-infinity

Moreover, in the following video, Richard Feynman rightly expresses his unease with “brushing infinity under the rug” when he unified special relativity and quantum mechanics together in Quantum-Electrodynamics:

“It always bothers me that in spite of all this local business, what goes on in a tiny, no matter how tiny, region of space, and no matter how tiny a region of time, according to laws as we understand them today, it takes a computing machine an infinite number of logical operations to figure out. Now how can all that be going on in that tiny space? Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do?" - Richard Feynman – one of the founding fathers of QED (Quantum Electrodynamics) Quote taken from the 6:45 minute mark of the following video: Feynman: Mathematicians versus Physicists - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obCjODeoLVw

I don’t know about Richard Feynman, but as for myself, being a Christian Theist, I find it rather comforting to know that it takes an ‘infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do’: The reason why I find it rather comforting is because of John 1:1, which says "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." ‘The Word’ in John 1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos also happens to be the root word from which we derive our modern word logic.

“Why should it take an infinite amount of logic to figure out what one stinky tiny bit of space-time is going to do?" - Richard Feynman John1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." of note: ‘the Word’ in John 1:1 is translated from ‘Logos’ in Greek. Logos is also the root word from which we derive our modern word logic http://etymonline.com/?term=logic

Supplemental notes:

Double Slit, Quantum-Electrodynamics, and Christian Theism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK9kGpIxMRM Gödel, Infinity, and Jesus Christ as the Theory of Everything – video https://youtu.be/x1Jw5Y686jY Albert Einstein vs. Quantum Mechanics and His Own Mind – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxFFtZ301j4

bornagain77

“minds could not simply evolve somehow” Anybody can claim that anything can happen somewhere sometime somehow. The problem is when you ask exactly what, where, when, how? Four friends got drunk the night before. Woke up late. Hangover. Didn’t make it on time to the school. Told the professor that their car had a flat tire. The professor asked them to sit in separate rooms. He gave a sealed envelope to each of them and asked to wait for his sign to open it at the same time. Each envelope contained a sheet of paper with these questions written in it: Which tire, where did it happen, at what time, how did you resolve it? PeterA