Does anyone remember the microflap a while back when physicist Adam Becker decided to attack Inference Review as an ID-friendly rag over (so it seems) a less-than-flattering review of his book, What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics (Basic Books, 2018)?
Things haven’t fared that much better for Becker at The New Atlantis:
In What Is Real? the physicist and science writer Adam Becker offers a history of what his subtitle calls “the unfinished quest for the meaning of quantum physics.” Although it is certainly unfinished, it is, as quests go, a few knights short of a Round Table. After the generation of pioneers, foundational work in quantum mechanics became stigmatized as a fringe pursuit, a career killer. So Becker’s well-written book is part science, part sociology (a study of the extrascientific forces that helped solidify the orthodoxy), and part drama (a story of the ideas and often vivid personalities of some dissenters and the shabby treatment they have often received).
The publisher’s blurb breathlessly promises “the untold story of the heretical thinkers who dared to question the nature of our quantum universe” and a “gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth.” But What Is Real? doesn’t live down to that lurid black-and-white logline. It does make a heartfelt and persuasive case that serious problems with the foundations of quantum mechanics have been persistently, even disgracefully, swept under the carpet.David Guaspari, “Make Physics Real Again” at The New Atlantis
Or two different carpets at once? Perhaps no one quite knows how to deal with the problems and everyone implicitly agrees not to raise the subject?
He summarizes the state of quantum mechanics as “a wildly successful theory, an embarrassment of interpretations, and a major challenge in moving past our theory to the next one.” The small but vigorous community doing work on foundations is less marginal than it used to be. The book’s final section sketches some of its current research and concludes modestly that the wisest course at present is accepting a pluralism of interpretations, or “at least humility.” “Quantum physics is at least approximately correct…. We just don’t know what that means yet. And it’s the job of physics to find out.” David Guaspari, “Make Physics Real Again” at The New Atlantis
Maybe quantum physics is only “approximately correct” and we can’t get more correct down at that level? If so, then what?
Okay, so Becker’s book didn’t satisfy a lot of people. Now back to Inference Review for a minute. Not everyone hates Inference Review:
As for the dark and powerful forces at Inference, the list of their editors is now public (and quite distinguished). Yes, it seems to be Thiel’s money, but, if it’s paying for good science writing (modulo some early dubious choices), so what? Peter Woit, “On Inference” at Not Even Wrong
But Sabine Hossenfelder, author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, and frequent quote-ee around here tells Peter Woit in the combox that she had a bad experience there:
I was contacted by someone from Inference some years ago. They asked me to write an essay for them and made a pretty good financial offer. I put a lot of effort in this and submitted the piece as requested.
After some while I received a revision from an anonymous editor who had garbled up my argument so badly and misrepresented my opinion so much that I could see no common ground and just refused to agree it be published. Luckily I hadn’t signed the letter of agreement, so I had no trouble pulling out of this. (Otoh, I didn’t get the kill fee either.) I then shortened the piece and published it elsewhere. Sabine Hossenfelder, “comment at February 2, 2019 to On Inference” at Not Even Wrong
That’s too bad. We always try to read what Hossenfelder writes.
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See also: Inference Review did not set out to make a fool of Adam Becker (Needless effort, say the editors.)
and
The origin of language remains obscure Some thoughts on two items from Inference Review, one co-authored by Noam Chomsky.
Of related interest:
I don’t think I have seen a single paper (besides the “Many worlds” interpretation) attempting to at least touch on the subject of where the randomness in QM could be coming from. Who rolls the dice?
Speaking of Inference Review, here’s what Sabine Hossenfelder says about it:
February 2, 2019 at 11:43 pm
I was contacted by someone from Inference some years ago. They asked me to write an essay for them and made a pretty good financial offer. I put a lot of effort in this and submitted the piece as requested.
After some while I received a revision from an anonymous editor who had garbled up my argument so badly and misrepresented my opinion so much that I could see no common ground and just refused to agree it be published. Luckily I hadn’t signed the letter of agreement, so I had no trouble pulling out of this. (Otoh, I didn’t get the kill fee either.) I then shortened the piece and published it elsewhere.
By now I have dealt with quite a number of editors at many different publications and let me just say I have never seen anything remotely like this. Normally they are are little more… restrained. Also, while it’s rather common that fact checkers and copyeditors remain anonymous, I don’t know any other place where they don’t tell you who is the editor.
In any case, if you have been wondering why I never share or comment on anything from that magazine, now you know why. I got away with the impression that this magazine’s editors have a rather heavy hand.
http://www.math.columbia.edu/~.....s/?p=10814
By the way, what’s that about a “kill fee”? I remember when Barry was triumphantly telling us that he got money out of the journal that decided that publishing Granville Sewell’s piece on the Second Law of Thermodynamics would be too painful for the reputations of all involved, theirs and Dr. Sewell’s. Do you suppose Dr. Sewell had signed a “letter of agreement”?
Does it not make sense from a Christian perspective that the deeper that physicists penetrate the nature of matter at the quantum level, the more paradoxical it will become, until it can no longer be recognised as belonging to any area of empirical science ? Or do you all think that it will continue to progress, albeit haltingly ?
MatSpirit,
My 2017 Physics Essays article includes a little history of my 2011 AML article:
http://www.math.utep.edu/Facul.....ewell.html
I did not ask for or receive any money for myself from Applied Mathematics Letters, just wanted them to acknowledge publicly what the editor told me in his e-mail, that it was not withdrawn because of errors, but because he “concluded that the content was more philosophical than mathematical.” And they did acknowledge this.
One thing is certain: Quantum Physics utterly demolishes determinism.
http://nonlin.org/free-will
In the double slit experiment, one can have a perfectly deterministic setup, yet every time the experiment is repeated, it cannot be known (except statistically) where the particle will end up even if the setup is calibrated to the n-th degree. This is totally different than the deterministic systems (hereby invalidated!) where the normal distribution of outputs can be narrowed by tightening the inputs / set-up with the theoretical conclusion that perfect inputs / set-up will result in perfect outputs (determinism).
Eugene@2:
There are several interpretations of QM that address the origin of randomness (whether it’s real or illusory). In the transactional interpretation, the amplitude of the offer and confirmation waves provides a fairly natural explanation of the Born probability rule. (I seem to recall that the Born rule was actually the original inspiration for this interpretation.)
In the De Broglie–Bohm (/pilot wave) interpretation, on the other hand, the randomness is only apparent and is really due to not knowing the actual position of the particles involved (this is known as a “hidden variable” in the lingo). According to this interpretation, the wave function evolves pretty much like standard QM, and the way the particles follow the wave, they spend most of their time in the densest part of the wave, so if you sample many similar setups you’ll find that the proportion of times you find a particle at a position is proportional to the square of the wave amplitude at that point (i.e. the Born rule).
BTW, this also refutes Nonlin.org@7’s claim that quantum physics “utterly demolishes determinism.” We cannot know if we “can have a perfectly deterministic setup”, because we don’t necessarily control (or know about) all the variables. If there are hidden variables, they’re likely to be different for each run of the experiment, and can thus explain why we get different results each time.
And this isn’t the only deterministic explanation consistent with the QM results. The Many-Worlds interpretation is objectively deterministic (i.e. the evolution of the universal wavefunction is deterministic) but subjectively random (because which part of the wavefunction — which “world” — each of us sees is subjectively random).
There’s also the possibility of superdeterminism, which basically denies that it’s meaningful to talk about what could happen, just what actually does happen. This means that questions like “why did we detect the particle here instead of over there?” are meaningless, and you can’t ask the relevant questions. Pretty much everyone (including me) rejects this idea, but we can’t actually prove it’s wrong.
Gordon Davisson @8
Except there’s no experimental basis whatsoever for the Pilot Wave interpretation as there is none for the Many-Worlds interpretation.
The scientific method requires experimental evidence, not wishful thinking. You can’t just posit “hidden variables” and “evolution” when all known evidence is to the contrary and most certainly CAN’T REFUTE something without said experimental evidence. Determinism may have looked good to Laplace, but IS DEAD as of today. Don’t hold your breath for it’s return.
Meanwhile:
Determinism is self-defeating as lack of Free Will would render all decisions illusory. The Sun, the dead, and the rocks do not decide anything, so why would a determinism proponent decide any more than these entities? And without decisions, ‘good’, ‘bad’, ‘worry’, ‘fair’, ‘guilt’, ‘self’, and so on do not make any more sense either. Convincing others that Free Will is not true makes absolutely no sense if Free Will were indeed illusory.
Free Will is a function of the living. Randomness and Determinism apply equally to the inorganic, but only the living (organic) has Free Will. Anything less than 100% combination of Randomness and Determinism is not sufficient to disprove Free Will.
That’s right, 100% is your Mission Impossible!
Nonlin.Org at 9, contrary to what Brother Brian may say about your posts, that was a very nice response. Short, sweet, and concise.
Over the years here on UD, Gordon Davisson has also often times tried to unsuccessfully defend his Darwinian belief that the second law of thermodynamics, entropy, is somehow not incompatible with Darwinian evolution, (or at least defend the possibility that entropy is not directly defeating to Darwinism). Yet, Quantum Mechanics has now, in no uncertain terms, recently further defeated any possibility that Gordon Davisson, and other Darwinists, had of finding a workaround between the contradictory notions of ‘downhill’ Entropy and ‘uphill’ Darwinian evolution.
In short, experiments in Quantum Mechanics have now demonstrated that, (directly contrary to what Gordon Davisson and other Darwinists apriorily believe), entropy is not a property of a system, but is a property of an observer who describes a system.
As the following article states, “In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.”
And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,,
quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,,
Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
Again to repeat that last sentence, “we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”
Of course Gordon Davisson, being the faithful Darwinist that he is, will completely ignore these recent experimental results that directly falsify his apriori belief about entropy being a property of a system and not of an observer, but regardless of his apparent religious devotion to Darwinism, quantum mechanics, or more specifically quantum information theory, has now shown, in no uncertain terms, that entropy is not a property of a system, as reductive materialists a-priorily believe, but is a property of an observer who describes a system.,,,
The implications of these recent experimental findings also go to the heart of the Intelligent Design vs. Darwinism debate. The following video, starting around the 17:00 minute mark, goes into a bit more detail as to exactly how these recent findings from quantum information theory defeat the Darwinian worldview:
Nonlin.0rg @ 10:
You say there’s no “experimental basis” for either the de Broglie-Bohm or Many-Worlds interpretations; you’re sort-of right, but the same is true for all of the viable interpretations of QM. Including yours. Basically, the situation is that we have a number of very different interpretations of QM that all make indistinguishable predictions, and hence there’s (at present) no experimental way to choose between them. To claim that this is a huge problem for dBB or MWI but somehow not a problem for your favorite interpretation is straight-up special pleading.
There’s no evidence for either of them (relative to any of the other still-viable interpretations), but there’s no evidence against them either, so the only reasonable conclusion we can draw is that we just don’t know. As the quoted review says
So, you might be right about determinism, or you might be wrong. But the claim that you do know, or that the other possibilities have been somehow ruled out, is clearly and unambiguously wrong.
Gordon Davisson may not consider it possible to experimentally distinguish which interpretation in Quantum Mechanics is correct, but I certainly consider it possible to do so.
For instance,
The irresolvable problem of deriving the “Born rule” within the MWI is discussed at the 4:30 minute mark of the following video:
Moreover, Many Worlds (MWI) denies the actuality of wave-function collapse:
Yet, contrary to MWI, the following experiment shows that the collapse of the wave function is a real effect,,
As well, besides that experimental refutation of MWI, MWI is just plain insane.
If sanity is to count for anything in science, then MWI should rightly be rejected. But Darwinian atheists have never let sanity stand in their way before, so I hardly think they will do so now
As to pilot wave theory:
As well a new experiment (re)confirmed that “entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do.”
Of related interest:
Another insurmountable problem for 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.
A more detailed critique of Bohmian Mechanics (Pilot Wave theory) is here,
And whereas the atheist has been stymied time and again in his preferred MWI and hidden variable theories by advances in quantum theory, On the other hand, recent advances in the experiments of Quantum Mechanics fit hand in glove with what we should apiori expect if consciousness and information is the ultimate substratum of the universe:
Thus contrary to what Gordon Davisson believes, we have very good experimental reason to favor the consciousness and/or information theoretic interpretation of Quantum Mechanics over his atheistic/materialistic interpretations:
Thanks to News for posting about Becker’s book, and to Gordon Davisson for his posts. I decided to buy Becker’s book and will try reading it. (I just read Rovello’s “Reality Is Not What It Seems”, so this will be an interesting comparison, perhaps.)
Bornagain77 @ 10:
“Unsuccessful” only in the sense that I haven’t convinced you. But is that due to my not making a solid case, or you you refusing to accept anything that doesn’t fit your views? Funny thing is that almost all of the competent physicists and chemists agree with me, and not you. I think you should take a serious look at the possibility that it might be you that’s being blinded by your biases.
But you’re actually talking about something completely different here:
This has nothing to do with evolution or “uphill” vs. “downhill”; the second law has essentially the same implications no matter which definition you use (or rather, it had better be the same, or else you’re going to have trouble matching the last century-and-a-half of research, usage, and testing). You appear to be arguing that it does have something to do with consciousness having a special role in the universe, which is a completely different question from evolution.
But you’re wrong about it implying a special role for consciousness, because:
A) It implies that observers are special to themselves, not in any objective sense. That is, to me, my observations and knowledge are special but yours aren’t; you’re just another part of the universe. To you, yours are special, but mine aren’t; I an just another part of the universe. To a third observer, neither one of us is anything special.
B) Even more importantly, there’s no implication that the observers being talked about are conscious observers. A non-conscious observer might seem like nonsense to you, but to the physicists actually working on this it seem to consider it entirely normal. Worse, when they run experiments to test these ideas, they actually use non-conscious “observers”. This means that they are specifically not showing something special about consciousness.
Let’s look at some examples of non-conscious “observers”. In your video (or at least, the linked paper version), you cite the quantum zeno effect, in which continuous “observation” prevents something from changing state. You cited two experimental demonstrations of this effect. In the first experiment (phys.org summary, actual paper), they used used a laser beam to “observe” atoms’ positions via fluorescent scattering:
…I don’t see anywhere that they bother to mention whether they actually captured the emitted photons or what the detector’s efficiency (if any) was, let alone whether they had a conscious observer watching the detector’s output. If conscious observation were required, all of these things would’ve been critical elements of the experiment, but they left them out. Furthermore, to show that conscious observation is a critical part of this, they would’ve had to compare runs where they had the laser on but no (running) detector vs. runs where the laser and detector were both on but no conscious observer was watching the detector vs runs where laser, detector, and conscious observer were all there. Instead, they just looked at how the effect depended on the laser’s intensity (and hence the “position measurement rate” defined in the quote).
In the second experiment you cited, an interaction-free version of the quantum Zeno effect (paper) they also used a laser beam as the “observer”. The descriptions are a bit hard to follow, since they sort of turn the observer/observed relation backward, and use whether a Bose-Einstein condensate remains in an unstable state to detect whether it’s being “observed” by a laser:
Again, the quantum Zeno effect happened without any sign that a conscious observer was involved, let alone necessary. In fact, it’s pretty clear that they didn’t have an actual conscious observer watching the laser, because they were using the Bose-Einstein condensate to tell whether the laser was on or off.
The last example I’ll discuss is one you cited in your comment #11 where “quantum knowledge” can allow deleting data to absorb heat rather than producing it (ScienceDaily summary, actual paper). Here there are explicit (if hypothetical) observers involved. Three of them: Alice, who knows something classical about the state of the system; Bob, who doesn’t, and Quasimodo, who has a quantum memory that’s entangled with the state of the system. But they never discuss whether these “observers” are actually conscious, only how their states relate to the system. When analysing Quasimodo’s interactions with the system, “he” is treated as a normal quantum system. Furthermore, there’s a (somewhat fanciful) picture of “him” in figure 2, where he’s shown as a rectangular box with two robotic-looking arms (and the desciption starts “An observer, here represented by a machine with a quantum memory, Q, erases a system, S.”).
So, basically, you’ve latched onto the term “observer” and assumed it has to do with consciousness, but the actual physics — in all of these cases — is the same whether the “observer” is conscious or not.
Here’s an interesting quote from Rovello’s book:
His book does not mention consciousness once. The quote above supports Gordon’s point: that is the interaction of different quantum events that produces the “things” we experience. It doesn’t take a conscious observer to “collapse the wave form” (or whatever understanding one has of what happens): it just takes an interaction with some other part of the world.
I agree that mostly likely the quote News offers is correct: “that the wisest course at present is accepting a pluralism of interpretations, or “at least humility.”, but I offer Rovello as a legitimate voice in the discussion.
Gordon Davisson @11
I have not given you my interpretation of QM – maybe I have none. Hence “we’re all in the same boat” (your claim) won’t work. Btw, perhaps there’s no such thing as “wave-particle duality”. What’s a QM particle anyway? What about s a QM wave?
Of course I’m right about determinism – it’s 100% and most definitely dead AS OF TODAY – no ifs and buts. You’re also glossing over your mission impossible: free will is compatible with up to 99.(9)% determinism, but determinism [philosophy] is not compatible with ANY free will.
I need not rule out any fantasy out there. The burden is on you to prove, not on anyone else to disprove.
Thanks BA. You keep up the good work too.
Gordon Davisson states
Really??? Too funny, a Darwinian atheist, of all people, asking someone else to consider the possibility that they may be blinded by their apriori biases? Speaking of which, since in your atheistic materialism there is no “I” and/or “you”, (i.e. no agent causation and/or no immaterial minds), in the first place to take a serious look at anything, perhaps you care to tell us exactly how a person taking a serious look at anything can even be possible in your worldview?
Or perhaps you would care to try to explain how it is even possible in your atheistic worldview for the material brain to even contemplate immaterial mathematics in the first place?
As Berlinski rightly noted, “There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time…
And as Godel himself noted, “Either mathematics is too big for the human mind or the human mind is more than a machine.”
As well, Albert Einstein, of relativity fame, and Eugene Wigner, who won a Nobel prize for quantum symmetries, are both on record as to considering it a miracle that man is able to accurately model the universe using mathematics: Specifically, Einstein stated “You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way,,, That is the ‘miracle’ which is constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.”
And along that same line, Eugene Wigner stated “,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,,
It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here,,,, The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve.”
Here is a question for you Gordon Davisson, “How many miracles are allowed in your atheistic worldview?”
Let me help you with the answer, the answer is zero miracles! As Lewontin stated, “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door”
Zero miracles are allowed in your worldview and yet here we have two giants of science, Einstein and Wigner themselves, openly claiming that it is an outright miracle that the human mind is able to comprehend the universe with immaterial mathematics.
The funny thing about miracles, is that once you are forced, by the applicability of mathematics itself, to allow that ‘divine foot’ in the door then there is absolutely no reason, scientifically speaking, why miracles, (i.e. the Agent causality of God and even the agent causality of man), should be forbidden as a rational explanatory principle in science. Only someone with a severe irrational apriori bias against God would even try to attempt to argue otherwise….. Enter Gordon Davisson and his atheistic Darwinian brethren.
Moreover, although there is much confusion in the genral public over various interpretations in quantum mechanics, as Steven Weinberg points out in the following article, those various interpretations in quantum mechanics all boil down to just two possible interpretations. The realist approach and the instrumentalist approach respectively.
Weinberg, after dismissing decoherence as a plausible explanation, states that, “Today there are two widely followed approaches to quantum mechanics, the “realist” and “instrumentalist” approaches, which view the origin of probability in measurement in two very different ways. For reasons I will explain, neither approach seems to me quite satisfactory.”
Weinberg rightly rejects the ‘realist approach’ to quantum mechanics because of the many irresolvable problems inherent within the ‘many worlds interpretation’ (such as properly deriving the Born rule), but, on the other hand, it is interesting to note the main reason why he rejects the ‘instrumentalist approach’ to quantum mechanics:
In short Weinberg, an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
For instance, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
Moreover, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last remining major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
And yet now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that insured the complete independence of the measurement settings in a Bell test by using the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a super fast randomizer determine the measurement settings (as is usually done in these quantum experiments).
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
Of one final note, the denial of the reality of free will by atheists has always been a self-defeating argument for atheists to try to make.
But alas, even though the denial of the reality of his own free will renders any claim from the atheist that he is even making a logically coherent argument in the first place null and void, the atheist is apparently more than willing, so as to prevent a ‘divine foot in the door’, to forsake rationality itself just so that he does not have to accept the reality of God into his life.
Basically, atheists, with their rejection of free will, have chosen insanity over sanity because of their apriori bias against God.
So much for Godon’s claim that I was being unfairly biased in my weighing of the evidence.
Moreover, not only does the mental attribute of free will make its presence known in present day experiments is quantum mechanics, but also the mental attribute of the ‘persistence of self identity through time’, and/or ‘the experience of the now’ also makes its presence known in present day experiments in quantum mechanics, and indeed is what gives us a hand and glove fit for inferring that immaterial mind must be central to any correct understanding of quantum mechanics that we may wish to have.
You can see that hand and glove fit between consciousness and quantum mechanics starting around the 9:30 minute mark of the following video:
Moreover, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
BA77
GD
I think this is a very accurate statement of the case. In my experience, those who think that the second law of thermodynamics and evolution are incompatible either have a very poor understanding of thermodynamics and/or a very poor understanding of the mechanisms behind evolution. Rather than try to find BA77’s argumement as to why they are incompatible maybe BA77 could summarize his argument in a couple short paragraphs.
Brother Brian- No one says that the second law of thermodynamics and evolution are incompatible. It refers to BLUIND WATCHMAKER evolution. And anyone who thinks that BWE can produce new proteins via new genes has a very poor understanding of the mechanisms behind BWE.
Also the claims of BWE are untestable and as such outside of science. The point is it doesn’t matter about the second law. BWE is total nonsense.
And it is always deceitful and equivocating cowards who switch the context from “Darwinian evolution” to “evolution”.
Apparently some people with a self-proclaimed good understanding of the second law somehow think that the general principle behind the second law,,, i.e. the “natural tendency of any isolated system to degenerate into a more disordered state.,,,”
Apparently some people with a self proclaimed good understanding of the second law somehow think that the general principle behind the second law does not contradict the general principle behind Darwinian evolution,, of “complex creatures evolve from more simplistic ancestors naturally over time.”
If some people with a self proclaimed good understanding of the second law really think that those two principles do not contradict each other, might I suggest their supposedly ‘good understanding’ of the second law is not nearly as good as they have deluded themselves into believing it is?
As Granville Sewell asks, “So, how does the spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into human brains and spaceships and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and libraries full of science texts and novels, and supercomputers running partial differential equation solving software , represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law—or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law—than tornados turning rubble into houses and cars? Can anyone even imagine a more spectacular violation?”
And please note that the principle behind the second law, i.e. entropy, actually IS A LAW of science whereas the principle behind Darwinian evolution, i.e. simple to more and more complex, certainly IS NOT A LAW of science. In fact, there have never been any known universal laws in science that have ever corresponded to what Darwinists claim for their theory. And is thus other primary reason why Darwinian evolution fails to even qualify as a testable, potentially falsifiable, science.
As Ernst Mayr himself conceded, “In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.”
In the following article, Roger Highfield makes much the same observation as Ernst Mayr and states, ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology.
Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated that “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”
Darwinists try to get around the obvious contradiction in principles, between the second law and Darwinism, by appealing to what is known as the ‘compensation argument’. To say that the compensation argument is less than satisfying is to make a severe understatement,
Moreover, unlike the evidence free just-so story telling of Darwinists, Dr. Sewell actually has empirical evidence backing up his claim that the compensation argument is without any true foundation in science.
Specifically, empirical evidence and numerous numerical simulations tell us that “Genetic Entropy”, i.e. the tendency of biological systems to drift towards decreasing complexity, and decreasing information content, holds true as an overriding rule for biological adaptations over long periods of time:
In their compensation argument, Darwinists claim that the second law of thermodynamics does not contradict Darwinian evolution as long as you have energy entering the ‘open system’. In this case the open system is the Earth. Yet, one of things that Darwinists do not tell you is that the energy allowed to enter the atmosphere of the Earth is constrained, i.e. finely-tuned, to 1 trillionth of a trillionth of the entire electromagnetic spectrum:
Moreover, even though the energy allowed to enter the atmosphere of the Earth is constrained, i.e. finely-tuned, to 1 trillionth of a trillionth of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, that still does not fully negate the disordering effects of pouring raw energy into an open system. The disordering effect of raw energy is made evident by the fact that objects left in a warm sunny environment are known to deteriorate much more quickly than objects that are left in a cold environment.
The following video, at the 46 minute mark, clearly illustrates that just pouring raw energy into a ‘open system’ actually accelerates the rate in which a system deteriorates
To offset this disordering effect that raw energy has on objects, the raw energy from the sun, which I remind is already finely-tuned to 1 in 10^24, must be further processed to be of biological utility. This harnessing of raw energy is accomplished in biology by the elaborate process of photosynthesis which converts sunlight into ATP.
To say that the elaborate process of photosynthesis defies Darwinian explanations is to make another dramatic understatement:
Moreover, in regards to how entropy relates to biology in particular, advances in quantum biology have now shown that Darwinists are not even on the correct theoretical foundation to properly understand biology and entropy in the first place
As Jim Al-Khalili at the 6:52 minute mark of the following video states, “living organisms have a certain order. A structure to them that’s very different from the random thermodynamic jostling of atoms and molecules in inanimate matter of the same complexity. In fact, living matter seems to behave in its order and its structure just like inanimate matter cooled down to near absolute zero. Where quantum effects play a very important role. There is something special about the structure, about the order, inside a living cell.”
Thus not only do Darwinists apparently not have nearly a good understanding of the second law as they falsely imagine themselves to have, but their supposedly ‘good understanding’ of exactly how the second law was suppose to operate within biology, i.e. “the random thermodynamic jostling of atoms and molecules”, has now been empirically shown to be completely wrong.
It is amazing how easily, and how often, Darwinists are led completely astray into completely false foundational presuppositions by their apriori acceptance of Darwinian evolution as a somehow unquestionable axiom within science.
Extreme gullibility must be a prerequisite for being a Darwinist.
As the bible itself states,,,
How interesting that that second law of thermodynamics should be so quintessentially Judaeo-Christian. Drawing order from chaos – a duty delegated to us. Even the ‘2’ is evocative of the second Person of the Most Holy Trinity ; a figure that I believe even atheist Linus Pauling noted cropped up with extraordinary regularity in biology.
BA77 @ #12
‘The issue is psychiatric. We have a highly accomplished physicist, who regards the existence of God as preposterous, asserting that the unceasing creation of infinite numbers of new universes by every atom in the cosmos at every moment is actually happening (as we speak!), and that it is a perfectly rational and sane inference. People have been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs for less.
Now of course Carroll isn’t crazy, not in any medical way. He’s merely given his assent to a crazy ideology — atheist materialism.’
Same difference ! Crazy is as crazy does. You were right the frst time. He’s as mad as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking-chairs, BA. Don’t take my word for it. Ask his dear, old, long-suffering granny in County Tipperary.
A few more thoughts.
I use to naively assume that the information content of a fertilized human egg cell, specifically the information encoded on the DNA of a fertilized human egg cell, was enough in and of itself to explain the entirety of embryological development. But I have now realized that I was wrong in my naive assumption.
In making this point clear, it is first important to learn that many lines of evidence have now revealed that the biological form and/or shape of any particular organism is not reducible to the sequential information on DNA.
In fact, not only does the sequential information on DNA not control the biological form and/or shape of any particular organism, the sequential information on DNA does not even control the shape of the DNA molecule itself. As the following article states, “Our results demonstrate that the spatial organization of genomes is tissue-specific and point to a role for tissue-specific spatial genome organization in the formation of recurrent chromosome arrangements among tissues.”
Likewise, the sequential information of any particular protein molecule does not even explain what final form and/or shape that a specific protein molecule may ultimately take. The following article reveals that the same sequence of amino acids can be folded differently to produce proteins with different three-dimensional shapes. Conversely, proteins with different amino acid sequences can be folded to produce similar shapes and functions.
Moreover, protein folding itself is an unresolved enigma for the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists. As the following article states, “the Levinthal paradox states that when one calculates the number of possible topological (rotational) configurations for the amino acids in even a small (say, 100 residue) unfolded protein, random search could never find the final folded conformation of that same protein during the lifetime of the physical universe.”
But as the following article states, the unresolved enigma for how a protein might achieve its basic 3-dimensional form, can be easily explained if the process of folding is a quantum affair.
What makes this ‘quantum affair’ of protein folding troubling for Darwinists, or more particularly, troubling for the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists, is that “quantum correlations somehow arise from outside space-time, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,,,”
Simply put, Darwinists, with their reductive materialism, have no cause that they can appeal to whereas I, as a Christian Theist, do have a cause that I can appeal to.
In fact, besides proteins, “quantum criticality is now found in a wide range of important biomolecules,,,”
Moreover, due to there being a massive amount of quantum entanglement and/or quantum information within the molecular biology of living organisms, it is now known that there is far less ‘random thermodynamic jostling’ within living organisms than was originally presupposed within the reductive materialistic framework that undergirds Darwinian thought:
As Jim Al-Khalili states in the following video, “living matter seems to behave in its order and its structure just like inanimate matter cooled down to near absolute zero.”
Moreover, the failure of reductive materialism to be able to give an adequate account for the basic form of any particular living organism occurs at a very low level. Much lower than DNA itself.
In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remarked that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings “challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
As is hopefully clear to see by now, the, what is termed the ‘positional information’ of any particular organism simply is not reducible to the sequential information that is encoded on DNA as is presupposed within the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian thought. In fact, as is also hopefully clear to see by now, we must appeal to a ‘beyond space and time’ cause in order to give an adequate account for massive amount of quantum entanglement/information that characterizes this non-reducible positional information within organisms.
To develop this line of thought further, at about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, ‘positional information’ must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, in order to explain the transdifferentiation of cells into multiple different states during embryological development.
The amount of ‘positional information’ that is somehow coming into a developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method is immense. Vastly outstripping, by many orders of magnitude, the amount of sequential information that is contained within DNA itself. As Doug Axe states in the following video, “there are a quadrillion neural connections in the human brain, that’s vastly more neural connections in the human brain than there are bits (of information) in the human genome. So,,, there’s got to be something else going on that makes us what we are.”
And as the following article states, the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.
As to how thermodynamics itself relates to this immense amount of positional information that is somehow coming into the developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method, work done on bacteria can give us a small glimpse into just how far out of thermodynamic equilibrium multicellular organisms actually are.
The information content that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be around 10 to the 12 bits,,,
,,, Which is equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
Thus since Bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.
And since there are conservatively estimated to be around 30 trillion cells in the average human body,
Then that gives us a rough ballpark estimate of around 300 trillion times 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Or about 300 trillion times the information content contained within the books of the largest libraries in the world. Needless to say, that is a massive amount of positional information that is somehow coming into a developing embryo from the outside by some non-material method.
Moreover, this ‘positional information’ that is somehow coming into the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, and that is also constraining organisms to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium during their lifetime, is also now found to be optimal.
As the following recent 2019 article stated, “It’s now known that some form of positional information makes genes variously switch on and off throughout the embryo, giving cells distinct identities based on their location.,,, when researchers have been able to appropriately determine what cells are doing, many have been surprised to see clear indications of optimization.,,,”
“Optimal” is not just some word that they are carelessly tossing around. When they describe a biological system as being in a ‘optimal’ state, they mean exactly what they are saying. As the following article states, “Scientists have identified and mathematically anatomized an array of cases where optimization has left its fastidious mark, among them;,, the precision response in a fruit fly embryo to contouring molecules that help distinguish tail from head;,,, In each instance, biophysicists have calculated, the system couldn’t get faster, more sensitive or more efficient without first relocating to an alternate universe with alternate physical constants.”
Moreover, as the following article states, “There are a surprisingly limited number of ways a network could be constructed to perform perfect adaptation.”,,, Moreover, the “amazing and surprising” outcome of the study is applicable to any living organism or biochemical network of any size.,,,”
On top of all that, and most importantly, this massive ammount of ‘optimal’ positional information that is somehow coming into the developing embryos “from the outside by some non-material method’, and which is constraining our bodies to be so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium, is also found to be a property of an observer who describes the system.
In establishing this point, in the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, it was demonstrated that knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position turns information into energy.
And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”
And as the following 2011 article states, “In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,,”
And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,,
quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,,
Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
Again to repeat that last sentence, “we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”
That statement is just fascinating! Why in blue blazes should the finely tuned entropic actions of the universe, entropic actions which happen to explain time itself, even care how I am describing them unless consciousness and/or immaterial mind really is more foundational to reality than the finely tuned 1 in 10^10^123 entropy of the universe is? To state the obvious, this finding of entropy being “a property of an observer who describes a system” is very friendly to a Mind First, and/or to a Theistic view of reality.
Moreover, since some ‘outside observer’ who is outside the space-time of the universe, is required in order to give us an adequate causal account so as to explain how it is even possible for this immense amount of positional information to somehow be coming into the developing embryo ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, then the reductive materialism explanations of Darwinism are further found to be a grossly inadequate in order to account for biological life.
On the other hand, Christian Theism just so happens to give us an adequate causal account for exactly Who this outside observer might be Who is imparting this immense amount of positional information into developing embryos. As Hebrews chapter 4 verse 13 states, “And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
And as Psalm 139:13-14 states,
Here are few more verses to further get this point across:
BA77
This isn’t exactly groundbreaking news. When I was at university, well over 40 years ago, we were taught that embryonic development and the subsequent end product were not determined by the DNA alone. And given that much that is taught st school was discovered many years earlier, I can only assume that this was well understood long before I was introduced to it.
Brother Brian:
Know we know that DNA only influences and helps control development. We still do not know what determines the subsequent end product. And that is just one reason why universal common descent is untestable.
“, well over 40 years ago, we were taught that embryonic development and the subsequent end product were not determined by the DNA alone.”
If these facts are well known, One is forced to wonder why neo-Darwinism has such a hegemony on education still today.
A few more semi-related notes:
BA77
Are you referring to the neo-Darwinism in the 1890s, or the neo-Darwinism in the 1940s, or the neo-Darwinism in the 21st century? The teaching of evolution, like all good sciences, changes with the times as new information is discovered and the theories adjusted to account for it.
Brother Brian:
And yet the “evidence” for the alleged evolution of eyes/ vision systems has remained pretty much the same-> there exist populations with differing complexities of eyes/ vision systems in organisms of differing complexities.
For the most part the teaching of evolution has always been a story-telling venture. That “new information” goes into the new narratives. And the narratives always fail the science test.
BB claims ” The teaching of evolution, like all good sciences, changes with the times as new information is discovered and the theories adjusted to account for it.”
That statement is a joke. Good scientific theories do not change. Newton’s theory of Gravity has not changed one iota since Newton first formulated it way back in the late 17th century. When evidence came in that Newton’s theory could not explain, particularly the anomalous orbit of Mercury, physicists knew, after a couple of blind alleys, that Newton’s theory, although approximate, was incorrect. Newton’s theory was not modified in any way, shape, or form, (though some may have tried), but was eventually entirely replaced by the entirely new theoretical framework of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.
Evolution, in contrast to a good scientific theory, such as Newton’s theory of Gravity which could be falsified and discarded for a better scientific theory, simply refuses falsification.
Or more precisely I should say, (since the foundational precepts of Darwinism are indeed falsifiable), that Darwinists themselves refuse to accept falsification of their theory since they would then have to accept the correct theoretical framework of Intelligent Design.,, And that is simply unacceptable for them no matter what scientific evidence contradicts their preferred atheistic theory, i.e. Darwin’s theory.
Like I said, it is not that Darwinian evolution is not falsifiable, it is that Darwinists themselves refuse to accept falsification of their theory.
Here are a few more falsifications of Darwinian evolution that Darwinists simply refuse to accept as falsifications of their theory:
On top of all that, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on intelligent design and is certainly not based on methodological naturalism as is presupposed by Darwinists.
From the essential Christian presuppositions that undergird the founding of modern science, i.e. that the universe is rational and that the minds of men, being made in the ‘image of God’, can dare understand that rationality, to the intelligent design of the scientific instruments and experiments themselves, to the logical and mathematical analysis of experimental results, from top to bottom science itself is certainly not ‘natural’.
Not one scientific instrument would ever exist if men did not first intelligently design that scientific instrument. Not one test tube, microscope, telescope, spectroscope, or etc.. etc.., was ever just found laying around on a beach somewhere which was ‘naturally’ constructed by nature. Not one experimental result would ever be rationally analysed since there would be no immaterial minds to rationally analyze the immaterial mathematics that lay behind the intelligently designed experiments in the first place.
In fact, (as I have pointed out several times now), assuming (Methodological) Naturalism instead of Theism as the worldview on which all of science is based leads to the catastrophic epistemological failure of science itself.
Thus, although the Darwinist may firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Bottom line, by any reasonable measure by which someone may wish to judge whether a proposition is even scientific or not, Darwinian evolution fails to qualify as a science:
In short, Darwinian evolution, since it fails to even qualify as a science in any meaningful sense, is much more realistically classified as a pseudoscientific religion for atheists.
Darwinists, (and I have no doubt that many of them are sincere in their belief that Darwinism is truly ‘scientific’), are simply profoundly deceived in their belief that Darwinian evolution even qualifies as a science in the first place.
Verse:
ba77 writes,
In general, I disagree with that. Many theories incrementally improve in their ability to accurately describe the world, to describe parts of the world that originally were not considered, to interact with other theories, etc. To say that is “not change” doesn’t seem accurate to me.
For instance, our theories about the nature of the inside of the earth have changed since it was first shown that the earth has a solid core about 80 years ago. Since then improvements in various type of measurements have improved many details about the theory.
Or take the theory of atomic structure: it has a fascinating history ending in the current quantum picture of quarks, etc accounting for the more classical element s of proton, electrons, neutrons, nuclei, electron shells, etc. It would be wrong to say that that theory hasn’t changed.
I think most theories do change: few have had as radical an overhaul as Newton’s theory of gravity.
BA77
The best response to this is a concatenation. Of a male bovine and solid excrement. If you don’t realize this, you have little to add to this conversation.
Hazel, your attempted dodge of the “refusal to accept falsification of their theory by Darwinists issue” which I clearly laid out, is without merit. You appealed to “the nature of the inside of the earth” and “the theory of atomic structure”. Yet, both of those theories you cited, as more evidence has been gathered, (just like what has happened with Darwinism as more evidence has been gathered), now support ID, not atheistic materialism as you apparently falsely imagine and/or presuppose.
Moreover, the atom is far, far, more complex than the materialists/atheists, since the Greeks, had originally envisioned or ever anticipated with their fallacious ‘billiard ball’ model!
Moreover, atoms are not self existent and/or self sustaining as was originally presupposed by atheistic materialists. Here is a delayed choice experiment that was done with atoms,
Moreover, the interior of the earth is now known to be extremely fine tuned so as to allow a long term magnetic field to exist (which is necessary for life to exist on earth)
Moreover, contrary to what you falsely believe, Darwin’s theory is certainly NOT improving. It is adding ad hoc theories to cover up its failed predictions. Imre Lakatos and also Thomas Kuhn, of ‘paradigm shift’ fame, considered such a characteristic of a theory to be a sure sign of a pseudoscience:
Imre Lakatos stated that “In degenerating programmes, however, theories are fabricated only in order to accommodate known facts”
Thomas Kuhn, who introduced the term ‘paradigm shift, also noted that when faced with an anomaly, a theory’s defenders “will devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory in order to eliminate any apparent conflict.”
And in regards to a theory making predictions that are shown to be false and then making up ad hoc theories to try to cover up those falsified predictions, then by that ‘predictability’ falsification criteria set out by Lakatos and Kuhn, Darwinian evolution more than qualifies as a pseudoscience rather than a real science. Here is a site, that was put together by Dr. Cornelius Hunter, that goes over many of the failed predictions of Darwinian evolution.
As Dr. Hunter states in the following article,,, “With each new absurdity another new complicated just-so story is woven into evolutionary theory. As Lakatos explained, some theories simply are not falsifiable. But as a result they sacrifice realism and parsimony.”
Of humorous note, in regards to a theory adding ad hoc theories to cover up embarrassing findings, the only thing that anyone can ever seem to catch ‘evolving’ in the real world,,
,,, the only thing that anyone can ever seem to catch ‘evolving’ in the real world is the theory of Darwinian evolution itself. As Dr. Hunter notes in the following article, Darwin’s pseudo-theory is forever plastic and is able to explain completely contradictory results with equal ease.
And as William James Murray quipped in the following quote, “Who would have thought that it would be biologists that came up with the first Theory of Everything? – Evolution explains everything. –”
Thus Hazel, you entire rebuttal collapses in on itself.
Moreover, to add further insult to injury, you have, or all people, the troll BB agreeing with you.,,, That in and of itself should let you know that you are on the completely wrong path.
ba77, all I said was that theories change. I said nothing about ID, or materialism, or evolution.
You write, “Moreover, the atom is far, far, more complex than the materialists/atheists, since the Greeks, had originally envisioned or ever anticipated with their fallacious ‘billiard ball’ model!”
Absolutely, I agree that the atom is far different than our beginning theories about it, going back to the Greeks. This supports my point that theories change.
You write, “Moreover, contrary to what you falsely believe, Darwin’s theory is certainly NOT improving. ”
I said absolutely NOTHING about “Darwin’s theory” Where the heck did you get that from? My remark was simply disagreeing with your statement that “Good scientific theories do not change.”
You certainly read into things much more than are there!
LOL Hazel states:
So you do not want to defend the indefensible proposition that Darwin’s theory is improving? 🙂 LOL
Anyways Hazel, since my original post, the post that you jumped into the middle of to comment on, was precisely about Darwinism, I was well justified to assume you were trying to defend that theory in particular. You certainly did not make a caveat that you thought Darwinism was not improving and make an exception for it. Again, I was well justified to believe your assertion was inclusive of Darwinism. You criticize me for reading more into what you actually wrote but it seems fairly obvious that you are the one trying to avoid what I actually wrote in my post that you commented on.
I could get into nuances to show how Darwinism should, if it were true, line up with the ‘hard sciences’ such as Newton’s theory, but you actions thus far have dissuaded me of doing so.
Bottom line, nuances aside, Darwinian evolution, since Darwinists refuse to accept any reasonable falsification criteria for their theory, does not even qualify as a real science in the first place, but is more realistically classified as a pseudoscientific religion for atheists.
ba, I, like most people here I imagine, do not read your posts very thoroughly or completely, if at all, for various reasons. I saw, in the first paragraph of 34, the sentence “Good theories do not change,” and I commented on that. Other than that point, I’ve paid no attention to whatever else you’ve written on this thread (which at one time was about quantum mechanics, as I recall.)
Hazel
Is it too late to ask for a “read more” button? 🙂
Well maybe it would have behooved you to fully understand what you were trying to comment on before you actually commented?
Off topic, what do you think happens to “you”, the real “you”, when your material body dies Hazel?
Is it too late to request a read more button. 🙂
But I understood what I was commenting on, ba: you said good theories don’t change, and I know quite enough about the history of science to know that is not true. In fact, I gave two examples, and you agreed with me that both of them have changed. That’s all that I addressed.
Hazel, if the scientific theories you cited had to change to become better then obviously they were ‘not so good’ scientific theories’ to begin with.
Moreover, I showed that both of the ‘not so good’ scientific theories that you cited, as they have changed as our understanding has become better, now support ID not atheistic materialism. That our understanding of atoms in particular would now support ID instead of atheistic materialism, I would call that a rather stunning falsification of atheistic materialism.
You may want to hold that your stated theories started out as ‘good’ scientific theories but I hold that would be merely subjective opinion on your part.
I hold that until a scientific theory has some sort of rigid mathematical basis to experimentally test against, (such as we currently have with our present understanding of atoms), then the theory is ‘not so good’ as a scientific theory to begin with.
Let’s just say that a scientific theory, if it has to change as our understanding becomes better, has not achieved the level of mathematical maturity necessary to be considered a ‘good’ scientific theory yet.
Hmmm. This sounds sort of a “no true Scotman’s” argument now: it couldn’t have really been a good theory if in fact it changed. Many theories which I think we would say are good continue to get refined: good things can get better. Also, I agree that theories have to be testable, although I don’t think they have to be limited to “rigid mathematical” tests.
From ba’s point of view, there are almost no good scientific theories, because virtually all theories are going to change to some extent in the future, I am sure. This doesn’t seem like a realistic or useful definition of “good theory.”
BA77
They were the theories that best explained the evidence of the day. Just as current evolutionary theory is the one the best explains the evidence we see today.
But if we take your claims as being true, that older theories must be bad, does that also mean that the Christianity contemptuously with Christ’s life was poor because we have developed countless variations on it since his death?
Hazel
According to BA77, Newton’s gravitation theory must be a poor theory because we know it to be incorrect. Yet NASA continues to use it to put probes on Mars. Or that relativity must be wrong because some believe that it contradicts quantum entanglement. Even if this is true, relativity is good enough to allow us to use our GPS.
Brother Brian:
Nonsense- for one there still isn’t any scientific theory of evolution. That is because evolutionism makes untestable claims. Which means it doesn’t explain anything.
Methinks you don’t know what science is nor what a scientific theory entails.
hazel:
And that is why there isn’t any scientific theory of evolution.
Hazel, like I said before,
And right on cue you appeal to subjective opinion. Which ironically, empirical science itself could care less about subjective opinions.
And as I also stated, the very fact that the ‘not so good’ scientific theories you listed have had to change as our understanding has improved in and of itself proves that they were ‘not so good’ scientific theories in the first place as you want to falsely believe.
And again, the criteria of a scientific theory being mature enough to be based on a rigid mathematical basis so as to enable empirical testing against its claim, is certainly not an unreasonable measure in orders to regard something as a ‘good’ scientific theory. Indeed, falsifiablity is considered the gold standard of discerning whether something is truly a good scientific theory or not.
And also again, Darwinian evolution, since Darwinists refuse to accept any reasonable falsification criteria for their theory, does not even qualify as a real science in the first place, but is more realistically classified as a pseudoscientific religion for atheists.
And also again, here are a few falsifications of Darwinian evolution that Darwinists simply refuse to accept as falsifications of their theory:
On top of all that, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on intelligent design and is certainly not based on methodological naturalism as is presupposed by Darwinists.
From the essential Christian presuppositions that undergird the founding of modern science, i.e. that the universe is rational and that the minds of men, being made in the ‘image of God’, can dare understand that rationality, to the intelligent design of the scientific instruments and experiments themselves, to the logical and mathematical analysis of experimental results, from top to bottom science itself is certainly not ‘natural’.
Not one scientific instrument would ever exist if men did not first intelligently design that scientific instrument. Not one test tube, microscope, telescope, spectroscope, or etc.. etc.., was ever just found laying around on a beach somewhere which was ‘naturally’ constructed by nature. Not one experimental result would ever be rationally analysed since there would be no immaterial minds to rationally analyze the immaterial mathematics that lay behind the intelligently designed experiments in the first place.
ba, are there any good scientific theories today, based on both your criteria: 1) that they are unlikely to change for the better in the future (how would we know that?), and 2) they are based on rigidly mathematical empirical testing?
Give an example, please.
Hazel
And perhaps support it with several 500 word irrelevant quotes, links to some obscure YouTube videos and a couple bible verses. 🙂
Hazel asks,
Sure. Science has a history of looking for ‘platonic perfection’. and assuming the Mind of God to be behind that ‘platonic perfection’. That is to say, that science has a history of reaching for perfect agreement between the immaterial mathematics that describe a facet of this universe and the experimental results that measure those mathematical predictions.
Copernicus, (who was heavily influenced by Platonic thinking), imagined (incorrectly) that the planets move in perfect circles (rather than ellipses). Later, Newton, for allowing God could adjust the orbits of the planets, was chastised by Leibniz, (and Laplace) for having a “very narrow ideas about the wisdom and the power of God.”.. i.e. For having a narrow view of the perfection of God.
It is also important note that ‘normally’ mathematical concepts do not have a precise instantiation in nature,,
And indeed for most of the history of modern science in the Christian west, finding ‘platonic perfection’ for the mathematical descriptions of the universe has been a very elusive goal. This all changed with the discoveries of Special Relativity, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. That is to say, as far as experimental testing will allow, there is no discrepancy to be found between what the mathematical descriptions of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics predict and what our most advanced scientific testing of those predictions are able to measure.
As well, quantum electrodynamics (QED), which is a combination of special relativity and quantum mechanics, also now joins the list of perfect mathematical descriptions of the universe in which we can find no deviation from what the mathematics predict and what our best experimental testing can discern. In other words, as far as we can tell, ‘platonic perfection’ is reached for QED:
As Nima Arkani-Hamed, the discoverer of the amplituhedron, stated “It seems inconceivable that this intricate web of perfect mathematical descriptions is random or happenstance. This mystery must have an explanation.”,,,
Another very important place where ‘platonic perfection’ is now shown to be ‘perfectly reached’ in the universe, (as far as our most precise testing will allow), is for the ‘flatness’ of the universe.
Moreover, this ‘insane coincidence’ of ‘plantonic perfection’ being reached for the axiomatic ‘primitive object’ of the line just so happens to be necessary for us to even be able to practice math and science, (and apply technology in our world), in the first place:
Simply put, if the universe were not ‘ever-so-boringly’ flat (and if the universal constants were not also ‘ever-so-boringly’ constant), but the universe were instead governed by randomness, as atheists presuppose, or governed by some other of the infinitude of ‘platonic topologies’ that were possible, modern science and technology would have never gotten off the ground here on earth.
Nor, if platonic perfection were not present for the flatness of the universe would we have eventually been able to deduce the ‘platonic perfection’ that is revealed in the ‘higher dimensional’ mathematics that lay behind Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
More interesting still, these findings of ‘platonic perfection’ for the higher dimensional mathematics that lay behind Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are VERY friendly to overriding Christian presuppositions of life after death as well as the presupposition of God upholding this universe in its continual existence:
Of supplemental and final note, Allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
Verse:
You called it, Ed.
Hazel
A trained monkey could have called it. Que ET with a comment about me being stupider than a trained monkey. 🙂
BA77
Who is calling names? All I have seen is people pointing out predictable, and distracting, behavior. And, if you are honest with yourself, your behavior is very predictable. My only criticism of it, as I think Hazel would agree, is that very few people actually read your comments because of the way you present them. And I say this as a fellow theist.
I don’t believe anyone called anyone names. Yes, there are places where we have parts of theories that are very accurate mathematically, but in general your responses were largely irrelevant to the points I was making, did have a Bible quote, and included one of your Youtube videos, so Ed’s prediction was accurate.
The trolls Hazel and Ed George claim they have not engaged in logical fallacies. And yet my argument remains untouched. Go figure.
Hazel’s belief that ‘better theories’ may come along than relativity and Quantum Mechanics has no empirical warrant thus far. i.e. My argument for ‘platonic perfection’ being reached in GR and QM stands.
She does not like it. I don’t care what she (or Ed George or BB or Seversky) likes!
Empirical science itself could care less for their likes or dislikes.
I’ll point out that at the current time there is no theory which unites QM and the general theory of relativity and gravity. Therefore, a theory which does unite the two will be a better theory. Thus, according to ba, in that case QM and the general theory of relativity are not good theories now, because they would then have changed, and according to ba good theories don’t change.
That doesn’t make sense to me. Virtually all, if not all, scientific theories can be refined, at least to some extent, as new evidence comes in and new ideas are developed. Saying that good theories don’t change is in fact antithetical to what science is all about.
It seems there are good theories now that may become, and in fact are likely to become, better theories as they change in the future.
Well, this has been entertaining. One perspective is that good scientific theories don’t change over time. The other is that good scientific theories change as new evidence is amassed. One perspective is consistent with good scientific process. The other is…well, I don’t want to be accused of name calling.
Hazel states,
Hazel presupposes that there should be a unification of QM and General Relativity into a single overarching mathematical theory of everything. Not only Hazel holds this presupposition, but this presupposition is pervasive throughout the entire scientific community. In fact, it can be forcefully argued that such a hypothetical mathematical unification between QM and General Relativity is the number one goal within science today.
But where does her presupposition come from?
The mathematics itself certainly does not hint that there should be such a unification. Peter Woit states that string theory’s math is “a gory mess.”
Dr Bruce Gordon states that “string theory and its extension, M-theory,, is a mathematical fantasy.”
Roger Penrose said that “M-theory isn’t even a theory. It’s a collection of ideas, hopes, aspirations.”
In fact, general relativity and quantum theory are formulated in two very different mathematical languages, differential geometry and functional analysis.,,,
Moreover, there are an infinite number of mathematical theorems that could have described the universe instead of just Quantum Theory and Relativity:
On top of all that, mathematics itself, via Godel, is now shown to be ‘incomplete’. Hawking himself stated that, due to Godel’s incompleteness theorem, “Kurt Gödel halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything in his theorem.”
Thus mathematics itself certainly does not give us any hint that there should be a single mathematical theory of everything.
Likewise, the empirical evidence itself certainly does not hint that there should be such a unification between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics:
Thus both mathematics and empirical evidence give us no hint that there should even be just one overarching mathematical theory of everything. So again, “just where does this presupposition of Hazel’s come from?” I hold that the reason that Hazel, and everybody else, automatically presupposes that there should even be just one overarching mathematical theory of everything is because they (we) are operating on hidden theistic presuppositions.
As John D Barrow stated “Our monotheistic traditions reinforce the assumption that the universe is at root a unity, that is not governed by different legislation in different places.”
Professor Steven Fuller articulates the hidden Theistic presumption, that undergirds the belief that there should even be a single overarching mathematical ‘theory of everything’, very well in the following quote;
Likewise, Father Robert Barron weighs in here:
Thus since neither mathematics or empirical evidence give us any hint that there should even be just one rational form of all things, then atheists, and everybody else working on string theory, whether they are even aware of their hidden Theistic presuppositions or not, in so far as they “blithely assume that there is or is even likely to be one unifying rational form to all things,” are, in reality, instinctually presupposing that God should be behind the single unifying rational order of the universe.
Moreover, as was mentioned previously at the end of post 55,
Verse:
Colossians 1:15-22
ba writes, “Hazel presupposes that there should be a unification of QM and General Relativity into a single overarching mathematical theory of everything.”
No, I didn’t presuppose that. All I said was that if such a unification were found, then according to your logic, the current theories of QM and general relativity would not have been “good theories”, because you claim that good theories don’t change.
All the rest of the stuff that you wrote is not relevant to your claim that “good theories don’t change.” My claim is that both QM and General Relativity are good theories, in the light of the great deal that we know that support them, but that like all scientific theories they are provisional and tentative – that is, subject to change – and if and when they do change they will be even better theories.
Hazel@66, excellent point.
“My claim is that both QM and General Relativity are good theories, in the light of the great deal that we know that support them, but that like all scientific theories they are provisional and tentative – that is, subject to change”
And you let me know when you have a whiff of a hint that they disagree with empirical observation. Til then all empirical evidence produced thus far supports my claim that the empirical results perfectly match the predictions of the mathematical models of QM and General Relativity, and that we thus have reached ‘platonic perfection’ with those two mathematical models. i.e. As far as all the empirical evidence we have thus far is concerned, no further improvement of those two theories is needed. Moreover, I remind you that they are now confirmed to almost absurd levels of accuracy (14 or 15 decimal places) undreamt of for previous theories.
Whereas your conjecture that the two theories are merely ‘provisional and tentative’ is based on nothing more than your apriori bias and/or imagination. i.e. You have no empirical warrant for your claim!
In other words, I’m being ‘scientific’ and following the evidence where it leads, and you got nothing except your only personal subjective opinion as to how you prefer science to operate,,, Empirical science could care less about your druthers.
ba writes,
I understand that there are aspects of both theories that match empirical evidence to an extremely accurate degree. However, you seem to be saying that because of that the entire theories of both QM and General Relativity are done – that the theories themselves are perfect. Do you really mean that we are not going to improve or add to QM or General Relativity in any way in the future?
Yep, as far as the math itself is concerned, , prove me wrong with empirical evidence instead of your apriori assumption.
So you believe that no further mathematical advances are going to be made in QM or the General Theory of Relativity, which includes no mathematics that might tie them together in ways that are now unknown – true?
Do you therefore think that scientists that are working in these fields should quit looking further on the grounds that you think no further improvements can be made?
I’m not going to argue with you about your personal opinions as to how you prefer science to operate that have no empirical support.
The empirical science is what it is. Take it or leave it. I don’t care what you do.
Moreover, the correct solution to the ‘theory of everything’, (which you apparently disingenuously previously claimed that you do not presuppose), as I have referenced for you twice now, is found in Christ’s resurrection from the dead:
Make it three times now:
ba writes, “Moreover, the correct solution to the ‘theory of everything’, as I have referenced for you twice now, is found in Christ’s resurrection from the dead:”
Well, I’m sure that will bring all further research in QM, General Relativity, and their potential unification to a screeching halt.
This has been enlightening conversation, but obviously not one where there is room for anything further to be said.
“Well, I’m sure that will bring all further research in QM, General Relativity, and their potential unification to a screeching halt.”
Never claimed that it would. But there certainly are louder and louder voices growing, i.e. (for example Woit and Hossenfelder), saying that all attempts thus far at finding a purely mathematical theory of everything have been a fool’s errand.
From what I can tell from the trend in empirical evidence, it will only get worse and worse for those who insist on going that route.
Whereas ‘my route’, i.e. that Christianity is literally and empirically true, to put it mildly, has a far more promising future.
BA77
Can you provide the mathematic proof of this? Or does that requirement only apply to theories you don’t agree with?
No need to answer. We already know the answer.
“Can you provide the mathematic proof of this?”
Too funny. I argue for I don’t know how many posts that there will never be a purely mathematical theory of everything, and the first thing that BB wants is a mathematical proof for Christ’s resurrection from the dead providing the correct solution for the theory of everything..
That kind of would defeat everything I’m being arguing for thus far would it not BB?
Moreover, better than a mathematical proof, I can provide actual empirical evidence, via the shroud of Turin, that both gravity and Quantum Mechanics were dealt with in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
I put this evidence out there for the Darwinian atheists, such as BB, hoping that they will be reasonable,,, but who am I kidding, these guys can’t even accept the fact that God created their very own ‘beyond belief’ brain ,,,
,,, so. if Darwinists can’t even accept that their very own ‘beyond belief’ brain was intelligently designed by God, much less will they ever be willing to accept the fact that God raised Christ from the dead so as to provide a propitiation for our sins.
BA77
That would assume that I, or anyone, actually reads all of your posts. However, I do rememember you saying something about evolution not being a valid theory because it doesn’t have a robust mathematical model supporting it (which, of course it does).
So, where is the robust mathematical model of Christ and his resurrection?
As to:
Really??? And apparently it is beneath you to reference this robust mathematical model for Darwin’s theory???
BB then goes on to ask this very simplistic question
That is as nonsensical as asking where is the mathematical model of “Hamlet”? and not only of “Hamlet” but where is the mathematical model of the author of “Hamlet”, William Shakespeare himself? Or better yet, as nonsensical as asking where is the mathematical model of Einstein the author of General Relativity?
Question for you BB, since you are a reductive materialist who believes in Darwinian evolution, and therefore do not believe in free will and/or in agent causation, who or what wrote “Hamlet”, Shakespeare or the laws of physics? and/or who or what wrote the mathematical formulation of Einstein’s General Relativity, Einstein or the laws of physics?
And just as we can be certain that both Shakespeare and Einstein were in fact responsible for what they wrote, and just as we can be certain that every book ever written on the face of earth has a author, so to can we be certain that there was an original Author who “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.”, as well we can also be certain that there is an original Author behind the billions of letters of information that are encoded on human DNA:
And the bible, long before DNA was ever discovered, claimed that life (and the universe) does indeed have an author:
As Eric Metaxas pointed out in his recent talk at the Science and Faith conference, finding such a massive amount of information encoded in every cell of our bodies must really be a bummer for atheists. It is like having tattoos of the name of Jesus printed all over your body. For an atheist, having Jesus tattooed all over your body simply must be embarrassing.
Thus, the atheist in order to deny that life has an author, and that the equations of the universe have an author, must also hold that books and/or mathematical equations somehow wrote themselves minus any authors writing them.
Simply put, atheist have chosen to embrace sheer insanity rather than ever believing in God.
Of supplemental note to the irresolvable ‘infinity problem’ in mathematics between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (and how the resurrection of Jesus bridges that ‘infinite divide” between the two theories):
Brother Brian:
Evolution is not a valid theory because it posits untestable claims. And no, it does NOT have a robust mathematical model supporting it. You are lying.
BA77
BA77
So, as a logical extension of these two statements I asked:
Perhaps I should have worded it differently. Something like, “Can you provide me with the rigid mathematical basis to experimentally test your “theory of everything” (i.e., Christ’s resurrection) against.
Earth to Brother Brian- Stop worrying about what other people say and focus on your position, which still has nothing for support beyond deceitful humans.
Brother Brian,
As to a ‘mathematical proof’ that God must be the author of the equations that describe the universe and therefore must ultimately be central to any ‘theory of everything’ we devise, I reference Godel’s incompleteness theorem:
As for a falsification criteria, I reference conservation of information theorems.
To falsify my claim all you must do is violate conservation of information theorems and thereby prove that Godel’s incompleteness theorem for mathematics is false and thereby prove that God is not the ‘miracle’ behind the applicability of mathematics to the physical universe (Einstein; Wigner).
In short, you must demonstrate that that which is not intelligent can do what only intelligence can do.
There you go, a mathematical proof and falsification criteria backing up my claim that God must be behind any coherent theory of everything that we may put forth.
What mathematical proof and falsification criteria can Darwinism offer in comparison so as to put itself on equal scientific footing?
In fact, to prove Darwinism plausible, you must meet the very same falsification threshold that I just laid out for you trying to prove that God is not the author behind the mathematical equations that describe the universe. i.e. You must violate conservation of information theorems.
There you go BB, you can kill two birds with one stone.
I will not hold my breath waiting for you to do so.
You gave plenty of mathematical evidence of the historicity of Christ’s death and resurrection in this YouTube video-clip of yours, BA77, Godel’s Incompleteness theorem, notwithstanding.
BB wants you to deposit the sun, the moon and the stars in his lap, but he’ll have to ‘make do’ with the known universe qua the Shroud of Turin :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=F-TL4QOCiis
For ba: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implicate_and_explicate_order
ba77 @ 82 –
I’m afraid a a proof that leaves out a lot of detail – you need to more than reference something, you need to use it to demonstrate the theorem you are trying to prove. Can you fill in the gaps for those of us unable to see the leap from Gödel to God?
Bob- You are afraid. You are afraid of trying to support your anti-ID position. And you are afraid of science.
Focus on your lame position. And if you ever come up with the science to support it, you will be the first.
After rreading so much material here pointing out the birth and development of empirical science under the aegis of Christian culture, I was absolutely intrigued to realise that the exploitation, at least of such mysteries of QM as have currently been established with impeccable precision mirrors the methodology, the paradigm, of the Roman Catholic theologians’ acceptance of the Christian mysteries as plain, ineluctable realities, and then having recourse to them, as springboards and staging posts on the path to further discoveries by pursuing orthodox logic. It was, in fact, what prompted me to view successful QM in that light.
On the other hamd, the A/Mats, at least when addressing the public, always seem to speak of QM dismissively as being hopelessly crazy and mysterious – effectively challenging the reality of their own favoured, much more manageable (until the branch they’re sitting on snaps off) reductionist, mechanistic Lego paradigm of pre-QM classical physics.
Remember, paradoxes are not ostensibly oxymoronic, repugnant to logic, counter-rational ….. they’re just ‘counter-intuitive’….. just a ‘gut feeling’ from time to time that waves and particles gotta be one or the other….. cain’t be both at the same time, d-yer see ?.
Brother Brian, Singularities such as the absence of gravity attested to by the markings of the body delineated on the Holy Shroud of Turin, ensuing from the incredibly bright flash of UV radiation, virtually by definition, would hardly be susceptible to mathematical analysis, although the intensity of the radiation necessary for it to be caused was calculated.
Moreover, the scientists discovered a wealth of 3-dimensional, digital information relating to the markings left by the body, that is never been found on any other picture. Pedantry will get you nowhere sensible on a subject such as this. It’s like asking whether any ash-trays were damaged after an airliner crashed.