He stands by what he wrote on Ebola virus six years ago:
The bottom line is that, while of course the virus is dangerous, the situation can be compared to a strong storm on the ocean. The waves may be huge and the surface roiling, but the deeper waters continue as they always have, essentially undisturbed. In a similar way, although superficially it changes very rapidly, some researchers think that the coronavirus and many other virus types have remained basically the same for tens of millions of years…
So, do I think viruses were designed? Yes, I most certainly do! The viruses of which we are aware — including the coronaviruses, Ebola, and HIV — are exquisitely, purposively arranged, which is the clear signature of intelligent design. Well, then does that mean the designer is evil and wants people to suffer? No, not necessarily. I’m a biochemist, not a philosopher. Nonetheless, I see no reason why a designer even of such things as viruses should be classified as bad on that basis alone.
I started this post with an analogy of a storm on the ocean. Certainly, if we were on a ship in a powerful storm, we might be excused for thinking storms are bad. But in calmer moments we understand that on balance the ocean is very good and that, given an ocean and the laws of nature, storms will arise from time to time. What’s more, we just might get caught in one. In the same way, most viruses do not affect humans and may well have a positive, necessary role to play in nature of which we are currently unaware. (I would bet on it.) From time to time a storm arises in the virosphere and affects humans. But that’s no reason to think either that viruses weren’t designed or that the designer of viruses isn’t good.
Michael Behe, “Evolution, Design, and COVID-19” at Evolution News and Science Today
Ebola six years ago? Ebola six years ago? Behe, M. J. 2014. Evolution and the Ebola virus: Pacing a small cage.
as to:
this is of related interest:
in regards to viruses,
let me repeat the following:
Viruses are the most abundant organism on Earth, viruses outnumber bacteria 10 folds.
yet, evolutionary theory can not explain the origin of the most abundant organism on Earth (viruses).
Also, the common descent concept does not work with viruses, because viruses are a completely different ‘system’, not made of cells.
And it get worse: each virus is unique, so it is like to explain the origin of life thousands of time, over and over…
A few quotes from a mainstream virology-blog at Virology.ws
“In a phylogenetic tree, the characteristics of members of taxa are inherited from previous ancestors. Viruses cannot be included in the tree of life because they do not share characteristics with cells, and no single gene is shared by all viruses or viral lineages. While cellular life has a single, common origin, viruses are polyphyletic – they have many evolutionary origins.”
“No single gene has been identified that is shared by all viruses. There are common protein motifs in viral capsids, but these have likely come about through convergent evolution or horizontal gene transfer.”
“Cells obtain membranes from other cells during cell division. According to this concept of ‘membrane heredity’, today’s cells have inherited membranes from the first cells that evolved, and provides evidence that cells are derived from a common ancestor. Viruses have no such inherited structure.”
http://www.virology.ws/2009/03.....e-of-life/
We could debate whether or not a virus, any virus, is an organism. It doesn’t have the ability to reproduce. There isn’t any metabolism. And growth is only with respect to the population may grow, as long as there is a host.
So viruses were designed? Viruses like:
Ebola
Zika
Polio
Rabies
Yellow Fever
Dengue
Measles
Hantavirus
Marburg
Hepatitis
Influenza
Smallpox
Rotavirus
HIV
To name but a few.
I have to say your designer has an odd way of demonstrating his affection for us.
How far would he have to go before you began to suspect he might not be as favorably disposed towards us as you like to think?
Viruses are dependent on cells and seem to therefore be derivative. Is there good reason to reject such an inference?
Seversky, you wrote:
“How far would he have to go before you began to suspect he might not be as favorably disposed towards us as you like to think?”
so do you finally accept that we and the viruses were designed ? that is a huge progress.
Kairo @5
you wrote:
“Viruses are dependent on cells and seem to therefore be derivative. Is there good reason to reject such an inference?”
you can make up thousands of stories – you guys always been very skilled storytellers …
BUT PLEASE SHOW US SOME SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE ….
SHOW US HOW LIFE ORIGINATED
FINALLY SHOW US HOW PHOTOSYNTHESIS EVOLVED
SHOW US HOW THOUSANDS OF UNIQUE KINDS OF VIRUSES ORIGINATED…
2019: In an unprecedented global survey of the viruses in Earth’s oceans, an international team of scientists has now expanded the number of known marine virus populations to nearly 200,000, most of which don’t match any previously characterized family of virus
In other words, they discovered 200,000 new kinds of viruses never seen before !!! 200,000 !!!!
Your absurd theory can’t explain the origin of one type of virus, let alone 200,000 :)))))))))))
Kairo, isnt it strange?
EVERYTHING HAPPENED IN THE DEEP PAST AND FROM THAT MOMENT, NOTHING…
SUDDENLY, WHEN WE ARE ABLE TO OBSERVE THESE THINGS, EVERYTHING STOPPED EMERGING :)))))
i am tired of all your stories and fairy tales – “how it might” ….
You guys have been telling stories for 150 years… after 150 years, it is time to PROVE SOMETHING…
And the only thing you guys have proved is, that biology is so sophisticated, that only mentally ill person can believe that these things arose by coincidence after coincidence after coincidence….
especially in 21st century …
and once again, let me very briefly repeat a scientific fact:
evolutionary theory can’t explain the origin of the MOST ABUNDANT ORGANISM on Earth – the viruses.
@4 Seversky
From the naturalist POV, affection is an evolutive ‘trick’ to enhance social cohesion for the purpose of achieving… nothing really.
So what is the value of that affection you are mentioning?
– A consistent naturalist knows his/her feelings are a waste of time. A trick or a spandrel, very useful mechanisms to achieve… to achieve…to achieve… no-thing.
No directive, no goal, no purpose,. No-thing.
It’s a small point but it seems to have escaped the attention of some that the theory of evolution was not – and is not – intended as an explanation of the origins of life.
As for purpose, if God can conceive a purpose why can’t we?
Seversky at 4, after listing several pathogenic viruses, states,
To which Martin_r at 6 responds,
As Martin_r alluded to, Seversky simply has no evidence that viruses could arise by evolutionary processes. In fact, as Martin_r alluded to, “Darwinian common descent idea does not work with viruses,” since “More than 95% of the viruses in sewage data have “no matches to reference genomes [in databases],””
Furthermore, as has been pointed out time and again to the Darwinists here on UD and elsewhere, Darwinists simply have no evidence that unguided material processes can create even a single protein,
Nor do Darwinists have any evidence that Darwinian processes can transform one protein of an existing function into new protein of a new function,
Nor do Darwinists have any evidence that Darwinian processes can create new protein “complexes with more than two different binding sites-ones that require three or more proteins.”
In fact, as John Sanford has shown in his book Genetic Entropy, and as Michael Behe has shown in his book “Darwin Devolves”, Darwinian processes are far, far, more likely to degrade a preexisting function in order to gain an adaptive advantage than Darwinian processes are ever likely to create anything new, i.e. Behe’s “First Rule of Adaptive Evolution”: “Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.”
Since Darwinian processes can’t even transform one protein of a preexisting function into new protein of a new function, nor build up the functional complexity of proteins past Behe’s “edge of evolution”, then it is not surprising that Darwinists do not even have any evidence that Darwinian processes can transform one type of bacteria into another type of bacteria, nor transform prokaryotic into eukaryotic cells, much less do they have any evidence that it is possible to transform one multicellular organism into another multicellular organism. As Alan Linton noted, “Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organism”
Since Darwinists have no real time empirical evidence that Darwinian evolution is even remotely feasible, Darwinists, as Seversky has done here in this tread with his comment, i.e. “How far would he have to go before you began to suspect he (God) might not be as favorably disposed towards us as you like to think?”, Darwinists will often, as Seversky has done here, resort to theologically based arguments.
In short, Seversky is resorting to the theologically based “argument from evil”. Yet the ‘argument from evil’ is a blatantly self refuting argument for an atheist, such as Seversky, to make.
For evil to even exist in the first place, as Seversky is presupposing in his argument from evil, then there necessarily must be an objective moral standard of good that has been departed from. As C.S. Lewis noted, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?”
And as David Wood puts it in the following article, By declaring that suffering is evil, atheists have admitted that there is an objective moral standard by which we distinguish good and evil.
In short, if good and evil exist, as the atheist necessarily presupposes in his ‘argument from evil’, then it follows that God necessarily exists:
And as Michael Egnor states in the following article, Even to raise the problem of evil is to tacitly acknowledge transcendent standards, and thus to acknowledge God’s existence. From that starting point, theodicy begins. Theists have explored it profoundly. Atheists lack the standing even to ask the question.,,,
Seversky is hardly alone in making a self-refuting theologically based argument for evolution. Darwin himself, as well as modern day Darwinists, (since they have no real time empirical evidence) are also heavily reliant on these self-refuting theologically based arguments for evolution.
In fact, although Darwinists often claim that theology has no place in science, it turns out that evolutionary biology itself is crucially dependent on these faulty theological presuppositions.
Darwinists, with their vital dependence on faulty theological presuppositions, instead of on any substantiating scientific evidence, in order to try to make their case for Darwinian evolution are, as Cornelius Van Til put it, like the child who must climb up onto his father’s lap into order to slap his face.
Of supplemental note, in keeping with the Christian’s presupposition that we live in a ‘fallen world’, there are now reason to believe that viruses. (and bacteria), and contrary to popular belief, start out as being beneficial and then, from time to time, degrade into being pathogenic.
@10 Seversky
-How one thing develops and how that same thing has being originated are not intimately related?
Of course we can. My life’s goal is to harm as many people/ animals as possible.
There it is. A purpose.
seversky:
And yet how life originated dictates how it evolved. It is only if blind and mindless processes produced life from non-life would we say that those same processes produced its diversity. And the contrary PoV is if life was intelligently designed then it evolved by means of intelligent design. Meaning organisms were intelligently designed with the ability to adapt and evolve.
So the OoL is key to evolution. But we all understand why evos don’t want people to understand that basic fact
Biological warfare is prohibited by the Geneva conventions because it was recognized as evil. Mike Behe is just telling us he doesn’t have that same level of ethics.
And JT, just how does an atheist, since he denies the reality of God, account for the existence of evil?
Jim Thibodeau, Thank you for proving that you have reading comprehension issues. Do you really think that your ignorance is an argument? Really?
No reason the designer of harmful viruses has to be benevolent. Intelligent design is ambivalent about intentions and nature of said designer. All ID can do is detect that design happened.
We are forgetting evolution. Even the best of viruses can mutate to become harmful or lethal.
Hahaha. ‘Biological warfare’ is ‘Natural Selection’ in action. Naturalists are funny.
“Biological warfare is prohibited by the Geneva conventions because it was recognized as evil.”
What method do the Geneva conventions use to determine what’s evil?
Andrew
And as we all know, evil people in charge of evil societies all obey international law. Yeah, right.
-Who are we to oppose ‘Natural Selection’? ‘Coronavirus has rights!’
No rhyme, no reason, no purpose.
Jim Thibodeau, nothing matters, remember?
Stuff happens.
Here is a possible stop gap measure that could be used to combat the coronavirus pandemic while we wait on the development of a vaccine, which is at least a year away.
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/05/how-blood-plasma-from-recovered-patients-could-help-treat-coronavirus/
If the Designer of this virus turned out to be a US Army biologist working under the secret orders of Barack Obama, I suspect Behe would, with Lightning Speed, change his tune about seeing no reason the designer is bad.
EricMH
I agree. If there is a designer, it certainly has not demonstrated that it has our best interests at heart.
Which is the major thing keeping ID from being considered a serious scientific endeavour.
Yet it has failed to do so with respect to biological life.
Jimbo the psychic.
Acartia Eddie:
How do you know? You don’t know what are best interests are.
That doesn’t follow. We don’t know the intentions of most ancient designers and yet we are fully able to detect and study their designs. Clearly you don’t know anything about investigating.
Only in the very limited minds of the willfully ignorant. And all you do is avoid discussing the evidence like it was lethal. Which is true as it would probably kill you to even attempt to discuss it.
It’s very telling that evos are OK with separating abiogenesis from evolution, but when Intelligent DESIGN separates the DESIGN from the designer, they wet themselves in objection.
We don’t even ask about the intentions or nature of the designer until DESIGN is determined to exist. And we get to those by studying the DESIGN in question, along with all relevant evidence. And, according to “The Privileged Planet”, one intention was to Create a universe that can be explored and discovered. That inference is based on the evidence laid out in the book.
That said, it is more than nuts to think that blind, mindless and purposeless processes- those with no intention whatsoever, can produce coded systems from the bottom up. There is no way to test the claim. And it goes against our knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships.
And yes, that extends to viruses. Nature can’t produce them from scratch. Maybe as remnants of a once-living organism, though. So Dr. Behe may be wrong in that aspect.
Given what Behe showed at the Texas A&M debate w/ Swamidass the bacteriophage looks designed as a stand alone structure. It is a purposely arranged set of parts that injects its genetic material into bacteria in order to self replicate
11:45 in he discusses the bacteriophage. https://youtu.be/6Pi5UoZkn4g
Bill Cole @30
i am a mechanical engineer, Biology is my hobby.
How much faith do i have to have to believe that T4 bacteriophage self-designed by some blind unguided natural process? I don’t have so much faith. Atheists obviously do have.
Biologists will never show you how these things self-assembled from scratch.
What biologists are good at, is story telling. Biologists – natural science graduates – believe in miracles, because biologists never made anything.
a special message to Richard Dawkins and associates…
The corona virus. Where is your ‘bad design’ ?
in 21st century, we developed very advanced technologies, our robots fly to Mars, but, a tiny viral particle which can’t be seen with naked eyes or a light microscope, that tiny particle just set the whole World up-side-down.
What i see, is a very clever design …
and, what we humans can do against it, is only sit and wait how it ends :))))
Hi Martin
Although I think adaptive mutations are possible the virus sequence is almost certainly designed given that they can build the sophisticated protein capsules with their DNA using bacterial transcription translation equipment.
Martin
Designed for what? If it is for the long term survival and proliferation of the virus then COVID-19 isn’t particularly well designed.
Jim Thibodeau and Ed George’s supposedly ‘scientific’ argument for the Darwinian origin of pathogenic viruses has this logical structure:
The problem with this supposedly ‘scientific’ argument for the Darwinian origin of pathogenic viruses is that it is not a scientific argument at all. It is, obviously, a Theological argument that presupposes to know the exact intentions and purposes of God. Ed George even went so far as to say that not knowing the exact intentions and nature of God “is the major thing keeping ID from being considered a serious scientific endeavour.”
Really Ed George??? Really???.
The fact that Darwists themselves constantly confuse their Theological arguments as being scientific arguments is what in fact “is the major thing keeping Darwinian Evolution from being considered a serious scientific endeavour.”
Moreover, the theology that Darwinists employ to try to support Darwinian evolution is fundamentally flawed.
As laid previously, in the logical structure of their theological argument, Darwinists presuppose that “If God exists He would not allow pathogenic viruses to exist.” Yet, where do they get that Theological presupposition from? It certainly does not follow from the Bible. For instance, these verses say that God is control of it all, i.e. Both good and evil!
Shoot, God himself allowed Jesus Himself to die a horrid Crucifixion on a cross
Thus, wherever Darwinists got their particular theological presupposition of “If God exists He would not allow pathogenic viruses to exist”, that Theological presupposition certainly does not come from the Bible in general or Christianity in particular.
In their faulty theological presupposition, Darwinists are basically presupposing that there should not be any pain, suffering, or death, whatsoever in this world.
Basically, Darwinists are presupposing that we ought to be living in a heavenly paradise already where there isn’t any pain, suffering, or death.
I don’t know where they get their theological presupposition from. Again, it does not follow from Christianity,
In fact, I don’t know of any religion on the face of the earth that presupposes that we ought to already be living in a heavenly paradise.
Christianity certainly does not presuppose that. Christians have always held that we live in a fallen world that must be ‘endured’ and ‘overcome’.
Thus in conclusion, besides the fact that Darwinists have no ‘scientific’ clue where something as ingenuously designed as the bacteriophage virus came from,
,,, besides that, Darwinists also, in their theological argument, make a theological presupposition that no religion on the face of earth presupposes as being true. Namely, no religion on the face of earth presupposes that we already live in a heavenly paradise.
In short, Darwinian evolution is devoid of any scientific evidence and is also devoid of a coherent Theological foundation.
To needle Ed George for his incoherent phrase,
ED Goerge @34
you wrote
“Designed for what? If it is for the long term survival and proliferation of the virus then COVID-19 isn’t particularly well designed.”
it is pretty clear, that viruses were made to regulate/control a population (e.g. a population of bacteria, or a population of bats, or, humans).
e.g. the often mentioned T4 bacteriophage regulates the population of bacteria.
And i agree with those scientists who say that viruses are not alive. Yes, i agree, viruses are not alive, they are just another type of a nano-machine, in this case, to regulate a population. In biology, we see various types of nano-machines all the time (not alive too).
@26 Ed George
Of course there is abiological life in the non-sensical world of the darwinist.
Bornagain77 @ 11
In the absence of a Designer, what other explanation is there?
Not yet.
A hundred years ago we had no inkling that billions of neutrinos are passing through every square centimeter of our bodies every second. Now we do. Who knows what science might uncover in another hundred years, let alone another million years?
If any of that were true, we would not be here arguing about it. All life would have gone extinct long ago In fact, you’d have to ask how life ever got started in the first place if DNA is so prone to degradation.
In case you hadn’t noticed, my argument was not in support of evolution. It was highlighting the inconsistency of the popular notion of an infinitely good and benevolent God with the existence of deadly pathogens which He must have designed or allowed to come into existence through natural processes. Something you have great difficulty in explaining.
Calling it the argument of evil still doesn’t get you off the hook as far as reconciling the existence of behavior we call evil with the existence of a loving God who could put a stop to it in an instant if He chose or explaining why He ever allowed it to happen in the first place.
For evil to exist in a universe entirely created by a god, it was either directly created by that god or allowed to happen by him/her/it.
And I don’t need some objective moral standard to know that the rape and murder of a child is wrong. Neither should you. The Golden Rule or empathy is all you need.
Nonsense. All you need is to experience suffering and know that it is something you would prefer to avoid and would not wish on others.
Good and evil are, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. They don’t entail a god or any mythical objective moral standards.
Egnor can believe what he wants but discussing the problem of evil does not entail acknowledging transcendent moral standards or that the notion of such standards necessarily entails the existence of the Christian God. They simply don’t follow.
As for theodicy, theologians have made good livings out of concocting ingenious explanations for the inconsistencies, discrepancies and outright contradictions that riddle the faith. Neither atheists nor anyone else needs “standing” to see that.
>Bornagain77@ 12
You know you should really give up on this nonsense about the “Fall”. It’s a fatally-flawed argument.
If God is the all-knowing, all-powerful perfect being Christians claim He is then He designed Adam and Eve in full knowledge of what they were and how they would behave. Yet He punishes them for being how He designed them to be and doing what He designed them to do. If what happened in the Garden of Eden was wrong then it was His fault not theirs. Yet they carry the can for it and so do their descendants in perpetuity. Now tell me how that is just or fair.
Seversky, i got a simple question, will you reply ?
isn’t it embarrassing, that your atheistic evolutionary theory can’t explain the evolutionary origin of the MOST ABUNDANT organism on Earth (viruses) ?
Martin_r at 40,
Seversky’s irrational hostility towards God has made him incapable of being embarrassed by the gargantuan scientific shortcomings of his Darwinian worldview. Case in point, his replies in post 38 and 39.
^^^^^^^^^^
For instance, is response to the fact that “Darwinists simply have no evidence that unguided material processes can create even a single protein,”, Seversky, without a hint of embarrassment, states for all the world to see,
Yet neutrinos, in and of themselves, have been used to falsify ‘realism’, which is the materialistic belief that a physical reality can exist completely separate from our measurement and/or conscious observation of it.
Thus, contrary to what Seversky seems to believe, experiments with neutrinos have actually falsified Seversky’s materialistic worldview.
Moreover, neutrinos play into the fine-tuning of Big Bang nucleosynthesis
Thus we should rightly thank God for neutrinos since if they weren’t around we would not be around.
But I guess Seversky thanking God for neutrinos would kind of defeat Seversky’s entire purpose for mentioning neutrinos in the first place. 🙂
Notice how the Covid 19 virus seems to be targeting the infirm and elderly. Maybe viruses are just nature’s way of “culling the herd.” Maybe then we should just let nature take its course. The young and fit are going to survive and develop immunities. The elderly, sick and infirm– well…
That appears to be the view of bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel who has said he doesn’t to live beyond the age of 75:
Though he wrote this back in October of 2014 he was thinking of how we should respond to pandemics like we’re in the midst of now
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-biden-coronavirus-adviser-ezekiel-emanuel-wants-to-die-at-75/
Sounds a lot like eugenics, doesn’t it? Indeed, the fact is that eugenics never went away. It just got relabeled– something the secular progressive left is good at doing.
@Seversky #39
An inability (or unwillingness) to grasp a reductio-ad-absurdum argument seems to be a common feature of the theist mindset.
BA77
Don’t erect that strawman too night. It might hurt someone when BA(Don Quixote)77 knocks it down.
The only claims I have made are that if viruses are designed it can’t be by a designer who has our best interests at heart, and that COVID-19 is not a particularly well designed virus.
Sev
Egnor May be a good surgeon but I stopped taking anything he says seriously when he claimed that all mass shootings are caused by Democrats.
There’s a rabbi in Israel who is saying this virus is God’s revenge for gay pride parades.
https://deadstate.org/israeli-rabbi-coronavirus-is-gods-revenge-for-gay-pride-parades/
Nobody could possibly base any kind of modern ethics on this kind of nonsense. There’s a reason that the fastest growing group in America is people leaving this absurd stuff behind.
@John_a_designer #43
Do you live in a cave or something?
Is eugenics why liberals champion the poor, the lower class, the minorities, the uninsured sick?
That’s the opposite of eugenics, John boy.
It’s conservatives that seem to be into “winner take all”.
You left out abortion. Why is that.
P.S. Please spare us the smugness.
@Jim Thibodeau
Says who? Your opinion is just that, your opinion. And not a very intelligent one. There is not an objective basis for ‘morals’, so your emotions and baseless assertions are useless.
Oh. The old appeal to numbers fallacy. Is this waste of time, 5-year-old level of reasoning all that you’ve got? Very sad.
Acartia Eddie:
But you are a proven imbecile who couldn’t support what you claim if your life depended on it
@44 Pater Kimbridge 44
Says the materialist with his self-refuting, proven absurd, unable to explain reality philosophy. But hey Pater, faith is faith. And materialism is fanatic.
https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/
Materialists rely on appeal to numbers and appeal to emotions fallacies like the champions they are. And never forget special pleading, because hey, cute materialists have reason even when they do not have reason, and their materialism deserves to be revered.
https://strangenotions.com/naturalisms-epistemological-nightmare/
Martin_r@ 40
…yet.
No.
At least seversky admits that his position is part of science.
@54 Seversky
Promissory materialism, a. k.a. ‘materialism-of-the-gaps’.
I hope that all churches do their part in avoiding the spreading of this virus and cancel all services.
Bornagain77@ 42
You should try reading the science to understand what they are trying to say rather than cherry-picking quotes that conform to your pre-existing religious beliefs.
They are saying that quantum systems can exist in two or more superposed states and only collapse into the one we observe when we observe it.
They are not saying that nothing, not even quantum systems, exist at all until we observe it, probably because they understand that it’s an absurd proposition. If nothing exists until we observe it what are we observing in the first place?
These observations do not falsify realism.
Neutrinos are as much a part of the material world as any other observable phenomenon.
I might have thanked God if he’s told us about neutrinos rather than leaving us to find out about them ourselves.
I might have thanked God if he’d warned us about the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages and explained how to treat it.
I might have thanked God if he’d told us all about COVID-19 in advance so that we could get ahead of it.
But He didn’t. In any of those and many other cases. So even if He’s actually there, He might as well not have been.
Maybe God is a quantum phenomenon. He both exists and doesn’t exist at the same time. He’s only there when you look, a bit like an illusion.
Ed George@ 46
Agreed. Personally, I find clinical neurologist Steven Novella makes a lot more sense.
Seversky, I did read the article and it is you who is cherry picking only the parts you want to listen to.
You apparently do not understand what the Leggett and Garg inequality is all about
Again,
Of related note to Leggett,
LoL! So because mankind chose the route of knowledge that makes God bad? It’s our responsibility to figure out nature. And thankfully we were intelligently designed with the ability and resources to do so.
@Seversky a lot of people get confused into thinking observation means, like, eyeball. Used in QM it really means an interaction with an element outside the system. If your QM system gets hit by a photon and it raises an atom’s energy level, that’s an “observation”. No consciousness required. But there’s a lot of woo woo babble that confuses people who don’t know any QM.
@59 Seversky
This is the neurologist that says that:
‘our perception of reality is an illusion, but an illusion that resembles reality’.
Sorry, but it makes zero sense. I wouldn’t trust such a person at all.
https://mindmatters.ai/2019/07/tales-of-the-mind-a-neurologist-encounters-the-house-of-mirrors/
@62 Jim Thibodeau
Trust me. Philosophy is NOT your field of expertise.
#62
An observation creates a record within an established medium, which is discontinuous to a function within a system. You can’t name an unambiguous instance of observation that is not. There certainly may be some “woo woo babble that confuses people”, but in your case, I wouldn’t be pointing any fingers.
Jim Thibodeau states,
The scenario that Jim Thibodeau is referring to is known as ‘decoherence”. Apparently unbeknownst to Jim Thibodeau, in his rush to label the falsification of ‘realism’ by quantum mechanics as “woo woo babble that confuses people”, is that decoherence has now been falsified as the explanation for quantum wave collapse by ‘interaction free measurements’. As Richard Conn Henry explains, “A common way to evade the mental universe is to invoke “decoherence” – the notion that “the physical environment” is sufficient to create reality, independent of the human mind. Yet the idea that any irreversible act of amplification is necessary to collapse the wave function is known to be wrong: in “Renninger-type” experiments, the wave function is collapsed simply by your human mind seeing nothing. The universe is entirely mental,,,, The Universe is immaterial — mental and spiritual. Live, and enjoy.”
As the following interaction free measurement article explains, “its presence can be detected without interacting with a single atom.”
As well there is now known to be “retrocausality” in Quantum Mechanics that completely undermines the reasoning behind atheists invoking decoherence in the first place, (i.e. that reasoning being atheists trying to save a classical view of the world that is compatible with their atheism). As the following article states, “a decision made in the present can influence something in the past.”
The following video also explains why decoherence does not solve the measurement problem: i.e. The irresolvable dilemma of deriving the “Born rule” within the MWI is discussed at the 4:30 minute mark of the following video,
Even Steven Weinberg himself, an atheist, rejects decoherence as a viable explanation for quantum wave collapse:
Perhaps the simplest way to invalidate decoherence as a viable explanation for quantum wave collapse is to note that a photon is able to survive all the way to detection at the retina.
If decoherence really explained the measurement problem, then how is it remotely possible that a photon is able to survive all the way to detection at the retina whilst avoiding being ‘decohered’ by its interactions with the billions upon billion of molecules in the eye? The following paper found that the human eye can detect the presence of a single photon, the researchers stated that “Any man-made detector would need to be cooled and isolated from noise to behave the same way.”,,,
The retina detecting a single photon simply should not even be possible if decoherence were truly the explanation of quantum wave collapse.
Moreover, they are now seeking to “probe our understanding of quantum reality” by using human eyes themselves as detectors.
I am extremely confident that the results of using humans themselves as detectors, will be, as the experiments always have been in the past with quantum mechanics, extremely disappointing for atheistic materialists.
Thus in conclusion, the only confusion with quantum mechanics as “woo woo babble that confuses people” is with Jim Thibodeau himself when he, (whether purposely or through ignorance), invoked the now refuted mechanism of decoherence to try to ‘explain away’ the ‘spooky’ findings of quantum mechanics that falsify his materialistic worldview.
Supplemental notes:
Verse:
@66 Bornagain77:
Jim Thibodeau does not understand QM. It is patently clear.
Nor does he understand philosophy.
But according to he himself, he is nothing more than a purposeless hyped-up monkey, a residue of ‘evolution’ that can not even trust his thought processes (confirmation bias, blind spots, reality is ‘not real’, morals are a ‘trick’…etc, etc)
-At least he understands what naturalism entails. Lunacy.
@57 Ed George
For those who are stressed/ feel anguish, I have found some words of encouragement:
@Truthfreedom #68
I have some actual words of encouragement from the methodological materialism of science.
1) So far, it looks like at least 97% of people will survive being infected with the virus.
2) We have gotten pretty good at creating vaccines, and there are a number of candidate vaccines that are being tested right now for the corona virus.
3) Proper hygiene and social distancing can help you avoid infection until a vaccine is available.
It’s not a promise of everlasting life, but nobody really expects THAT.
@69 Pater Kimbridge
– So only if you believe in philosophical materialism can you practice science?
https://strangenotions.com/the-big-problems-with-naturalism/
– Another very interesting point: according to you, prolonging a pointless life is something ‘good’/ ‘remarkable’. Makes zero sense.
@ Pater Kimbridge
-Thank the immune system, which is the result of ‘mindless processes’ and that is so ‘imperfect’ according to naturalists.
Thankfully, most churches have cancelled all services. Given the older demographics of church attendees, and the fact that COVID-19 is most deadly for the elderly, this is a wise move. For any that refuse to cancel services after government instruction to prevent gatherings, I hope that they are charged with public endangerment and gross negligence.
@Ed George
Good to know you support homosexuals and promiscuous people who spread AIDS and other STDs charged with public endangerment and gross negligence.
They have killed and harmed millions.
*being charged*.
Eddie George is clueless. The ban is for gatherings of 500 people or more.
TF
If a person knows he/she has an STD and has unprotected sex with someone without informing them, they are charged. There have been plenty of examples. A pastor who proceeds with services when informed of the serious risks involved should also be charged. Especially if the state has imposed bans on gathering of that size. Or are you going to argue that this violates religious freedom?
I haven’t seen a church service with 500 or more people since my Dad died. I doubt it’s an issue
Pater Kimbridge at 69 falsely claims that nobody really expects life after death,
Pater Kimbridge is either ignorant or else he is purposely lying. The fact of the matter is that most Americans (3/4ths of the population) have consistently believed in life after death.
Moreover, whereas atheists have no compelling evidence for all the various extra dimensions, parallel universe and/or multiverse scenarios that they have put forth, Christians, on the other hand, (as is shown in the following video), can appeal directly to the higher dimensional mathematics behind Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity and General Relativity to support their belief that God upholds this universe in its continual existence, as well as to support their belief in a heavenly dimension and in a hellish dimension.
As well, Christians can appeal to recent advances in quantum biology to support their belief in a soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our temporal-material bodies
As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Verse:
@76 Ed George
Bornagain77@ 60
Since you insist on quote-mining, take this quote:
and tell us what you understand “realism” to mean in the context of quantum mechanics. To assist you, I found this discussion:
One other point, if you argue there is no physical reality underpinning our observations then what we see is no more than a figment of our imagination – or an illusion – exactly as Coyne or Novella and others have pointed out. Is that what you believe?
Seversky, it seems that you need far more help in understanding what realism means in quantum mechanics than I do.
You tried to help me understand what realism means in quantum mechanics by referencing an article on Bohmian Mechanics. Yet Bohmian mechanics has been falsified:
A particularly straightforward falsification of pilot wave theory, i.e. Bohmian mechanics, is that it simply doesn’t mesh with Quantum Electrodynamics, (i.e. Quantum Mechanics as applied to Special Relativity), which is regarded as one of our most precisely tested theories ever in the history of science.
Of humorous note:
Bornagain77@ 81
I asked what you understood to be the meaning of “realism” in the context of quantum mechanics and whether you believe that, in the absence of a physical basis for our perceptions of reality, all we are left with is an illusion, as others have argued.
You replied with yet another quote, this time from a Czech theoretical physicist, Lubos Motl, offering a somewhat acerbic critique of Bohmian Mechanics which does not answer either of the questions I asked. if you want a different perspective, try the entry on Bohmian Mechanics in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
If you don’t want to answer the questions that is your choice. I will simply point out that neither of us are quantum physicists and that these issues are far beyond the competence of either of us. For you to argue that quantum phenomena point to the existence of the Christian God or souls is as ill-founded as if I were to claim the same phenomena disprove the existence of your God. As far as I’m able to tell the science does not support either claim. Any assertion to the contrary is either misleading or made out of egnorance.
Seversky, funny you yourself brought up, as the main body of your post, Bohmian Mechanics to try to ‘help me’ understand realism in quantum mechanics and yet when I show Bohmian Mechanics is patently absurd, you get huffy because I did not answer a question you asked after your referenced article.
Perhaps you should not let your emotions dictate your posts?
Motl is a major proponent of string theory, and pretty much thinks anybody who doubts it is an idiot.
@80 Seversky
Could you please explain how does the above quote make sense? (I wouldn’t trust coyne’s non-sensical ramblings at all).
-What we see is ‘a figment of our imagination’?
Jim Thibodeau, Motl is hardly the only major theoretical physicist who has a very strong ‘belief’ in string theory.
That is quite an impressive list for Motl to be associated with.
Thus that Motl strongly believes in string theory, and yet finds Bohmian mechanics to be absurd, is certainly not a defense of Bohmian mechanics. It merely shows that he is strongly committed to finding a purely mathematical theory of everything.
Moreover Jim Thibodeau, since you, an atheist, apparently find string theory to be absurd, exactly what is your mathematical solution to unifying QED and Gravity into a theory of everything if you do not have string theory? You are basically left with nothing without string theory or something akin to it.
As a Christian, I have my own theory, that does not rely solely on mathematics to find the ‘theory of everything, but instead rightly relies on the Mind of God that ‘breathes fire into the equations’ that describe our universe so as to find the ‘theory of everything:
seversky
so, you decided to BELIEVE that one day scientists will figure out where the MOST ABUNDANT organism on Earth (viruses) comes from, because right now they are clueless, because the common descent idea does not work with viruses.
So, Seversky, please explain to me, you are A BELIEVER too… so what exactly is the difference between you and me ? (except the fact that you believe in miracles)
@ Seversky
Is COVID-19 ‘a figment of our imagination’?
According to coyne and novella, it is.
Wow.
An imaginary pandemic.
Darwinism is nuts.
@Seversky My general rule is that I will only talk about quantum mechanics with people who have actually calculated Eigenvalues in multidimensional vector spaces, changed quantum numbers from n, l, ml, ms, etc.
The reason is there is so much woo nonsense out there that the average person just has no idea what quantum mechanics entails. 🙂
@88 Jim Thibodeau
Meaning: you do not have a clue and you do not understand QM.
It is pretty obvious, your posts say it all.
Nor do you understand philosophy.
Oh, but you posted a smiley 🙂
That means you won!
Look, I won 3 times! 🙂 🙂 🙂
@90 Jim Thibodeau
What does QM entail?
Enlighten the plebes, please 🙂
(I added a smile, did I ‘won’?)
Jim, we all left kindergarten long ago.
Try harder 🙂 (look, I won again!)
Maybe next time you will offer an actual argument (I am not holding my breath).
Meanwhile, take a look, materialism is irrational:
https://strangenotions.com/the-big-problems-with-naturalism/
*Did I ‘win’?* 🙂
I guess JT esteems himself to know more than Anton Zeilinger does about quantum mechanics:
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/how-christianity-aided-modern-science/#comment-695226
Jim Thibodeau and MatSpirit are amazingly, jaw-droppingly stupid.
You have to see it to believe it.
Sucks having no edit button. 😀
“There is no royal road to geometry.”
From where I was academically when I decided to study it, it took me probably seven years to get a real comprehension of it. And I still can’t really visualize an electron. But I’m afraid for you the journey would be longer.
On the bright side, it takes considerably less time to get to where special relativity makes a kind of intuitive sense!
I would say it only took two or three years to be able to visualize how time slows down with speed. But then time slowing down with gravity is a short step away.
Jim Thibodeau and exactly how does special, (or general relativity, or quantum mechanics for that matter), support your atheistic worldview?
We now know from special relativity, that time, as we understand it, comes to a complete stop for a hypothetical observer travelling at the speed of light.
To grasp the whole concept of time coming to a complete stop at the speed of light a little more easily, imagine moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light. Would not the hands on the clock stay stationary as you moved away from the face of the clock at the speed of light? Moving away from the face of a clock at the speed of light happens to be the very same ‘thought experiment’ that gave Einstein his breakthrough insight into special relativity. Here is a short clip from a video that gives us a look into Einstein’s breakthrough insight.
That time, as we understand it, comes to a complete stop at the speed of light, and yet light moves from point A to point B in our universe, and thus light is obviously not ‘frozen within time’, has some fairly profound implications.
The only way it is possible for time not to pass for light, and yet for light to move from point A to point B in our universe, is if light is of a higher dimensional value of time than the temporal time we are currently living in. Otherwise light would simply be ‘frozen within time’ to our temporal frame of reference.
And indeed that is exactly what is found. “Hermann Minkowski- one of the math professors of a young Einstein in Zurich—presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions of space into a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space.” and “Einstein fully acknowledged his indebtedness to Minkowski, whose interpretation greatly facilitated the transition to general relativity.”
One way for us to more easily understand this higher dimensional framework for time that light exist in is to visualize what would happen if a hypothetical observer approached the speed of light.
In the first few minutes of the following video clip, which was made by two Australian University Physics Professors, we find that the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape as a ‘hypothetical’ observer approaches the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light. Of particular interest is the ‘headlight effect’ that can be visualized at the 3:06 minute mark of the video.
What is very interesting is that many of the characteristics found in heavenly Near Death Experience testimonies are exactly what we would expect to see from what we now know to be true about Special Relativity.
For instance, many times people who have had a Near Death Experience mention that their perception of time was radically altered. In the following video clip, Mickey Robinson gives his Near Death testimony of what it felt like for him to experience a ‘timeless eternity’.
And here are a few more quotes from people who have experienced Near Death, that speak of how their perception of time was radically altered as they were outside of their material body during their NDEs.
As well, (exactly as we would a-priorily expect from special relativity), Near Death Experiencers also frequently mention going through a tunnel to a higher heavenly dimension:
In the following video, Barbara Springer gives her testimony as to what it felt like for her to go through the tunnel:
And in the following audio clip, Vicki Noratuk, (who has been blind from birth, besides being able to ‘miraculously” see for the first time during in her life during her Near Death Experience), Vicki also gives testimony of going through a tunnel:
And in the following quotes, the two Near Death Experiencers both testify that they firmly believed that they were in a higher heavenly dimension that is above this three-dimensional world, and that the reason that they have a very difficult time explaining what their Near Death Experiences actually felt like is because we simply don’t currently have the words to properly describe that higher dimension:
That what we now know to be true from special relativity, (namely that it outlines a ‘timeless’, i.e. eternal, dimension that exists above this temporal dimension), would fit hand and glove with the personal testimonies of people who have had a deep heavenly NDE is, needless to say, powerful evidence that their testimonies are, in fact, true and that they are accurately describing the ‘reality’ of a higher heavenly dimension that exists above this temporal dimension.
I would even go so far as to say that such corroboration from ‘non-physicists’, who know nothing about the intricacies of special relativity, is a complete scientific verification of the overall validity of their personal NDE testimonies.
Supplemental note: The reality of a soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies is now strongly supported by advances in quantum biology:
Verses:
Supplemental quote: ‘How You Think About Heaven Affects Everything in Life,’
In conclusion, special relativity is of great comfort to Christian Theists in that it strongly points to a heavenly eternal dimension that exists above this one.
@TruthFreedom I’m sorry for whatever has gone wrong in your life that is causing you to act like this, but if I can do anything to help, I will. I don’t have much money free at the moment, given current conditions, but if there’s anything that I can do to help, please email me at my name here with no space at yahoo.com. Maybe you just need a little bit of assistance, and then you can once again be a positive force in the world. I’m willing to help, just let me know.
And do tell Jim Thibodeau, just how do you expect to help Truthfreedom with your nihilistic/atheistic worldview?
Atheism, a worldview that is devoid of any real meaning, beauty or purpose, for life is a severely impoverished, even severely depressing, worldview for anyone to have to hold. Indeed, such an impoverished view of life goes a very long way towards explaining exactly why Christians report being much happier than atheists are,
and also explains why Christians have significantly fewer suicide attempts than atheists do,
and also explains why Christians report having greater life satisfaction than atheists do,
and also explains why Christians having less mental and physical health issues than atheists do,
and also explains why Christians live significantly longer than atheists do.
It seems readily apparent that, contrary to what Jim Thibodeau believe, Jim Thibodeau. an atheist, is the one who is seriously in need of help.
@96 Jim Thibodeau
So you do not understand QM.
MR, a lot has happened. I simply noted the implication of how viruses are replicated, by hijacking the machinery of cells. KF
F/N: It is estimated that at each viral replication for COVID-19, perhaps six errors aka mutations occur. I suspect, for want of cross checks and error correction. The result is that the coded info will wander all over an island of function. KF
@102 Kairosfocus:
According to this darwinian priest :
we conclude then that the COVID-19 is now achieving its ‘higher purpose’.
But then, this same priest
says:
-But COVID-19 has no DNA, it is a ssRNA virus.
Maybe viruses are not ‘part of life’?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/5038734002
What are viruses then?
If there is ‘no purpose’ in life, how is that we humans have the ‘purpose’ of ending the coronavirus ASAP?
– Wait, maybe we are not ‘natural’?
– Or it could be that ‘naturalists’ CAN NOT INTERPRET ‘NATURE’ and their ideology is a non-sensical mess?
Look at this:
– We can not say if viruses are ‘alive’ but they ‘struggle for survival’? Oh my. More non-sense.
– ‘Struggle’ indicates goal/ purpose.
-No goal and not alive BUT ‘boost’ and ‘survival’.
Naturalism has not a leg to stand on.
A barrage of contradictions only supported by blind dogma.
___
More on this crazy darwinian religion:
Well, according to this other darwinian priest:
– Thanks to this old nutty now we know that at least ‘we have more purpose than COVID-19’. Or not? Who knows.
– All life is ‘purposeless’ but we humans ‘have more purpose than COVID-19 but the same purpose as squirrels’?
Goodness gracious.
*a. k.a. meat-robots according to the same mentioned priest:
No merit then for those ‘scientists’. They are ‘obeying’ laws.
And according to this darwiniannguy Novella: ‘we do not perceive reality, it is only our imagination’. Yes, ‘reality’ is not there.
People, do not worry, COVID-19 is not ‘real’:
https://mindmatters.ai/2019/07/tales-of-the-mind-a-neurologist-encounters-the-house-of-mirrors/
BEWARE. DARWINISM IS A DANGEROUS CULT.
Pray Darwin:
– ‘Thank you evolution for our imperfect, almost good Immune System that is fighting against the COVID-19 to help us’. For no purpose. Amen.