“Scientists! If You’re Not an Atheist, You Aren’t Doing Science Right!”
And what exactly are the achievements that the sage of Morris, Minnesota himself boasts, that justify such a pronouncement?
Note the unhinged comments from supporters at YouTube.
Like we said, the big problem with new atheism is not its conflict with traditional religion and philosophy but its growing conflict with liberal democracy and representative government.
See also: He said it: “There is more evidence for evolution than … the idea that things are made up of atoms”
Strange that the father of modern science, Isaac Newton, saw science as a way of understanding God’s Creation.
If a supernatural entity can, at will, interrupt the observed regularities of nature, then science is a pointless exercise.
Why?
If you believe that a supernatural entity can intervene in nature at any time, then no scientific experiment (of any kind!) can reliably tell us that X causes Y. (There is always the chance that the experimental result happened because the supernatural entity intervened to make it turn out that way).
If that is what you think, then you should say so.
Nope, because no one says said agency does so all the time. And anyway science only cares about reality.
Good luck proving that bit of nonsense.
Joe posted this:
“Nope, because no one says said agency does so all the time. And anyway science only cares about reality.”
How are we to tell if godididitty intervened in this particular experiment or did not?
It is you that believes that the regularity of nature can be interrupted by miracles. Fine. Just produce evidence. The point is this: if it is possible that the supernatural entity can interrupt the regularities of nature, then the whole of science is a waste of time (even the bits you like).
How do we tell now?
It is? Evidence please.
Ya see tim, I say YOUR position requires more miracles than mine.
Just saying it does NOT make it so, duh.
Joe
How strange that you would post this:
“Ya see tim, I say YOUR position requires more miracles than mine.”
And then post this:
“Just saying it does NOT make it so, duh.”
I agree.
actually timothya, Joe is completely correct to observe,,,
For ya see tim:
Here is the last power-point slide of the preceding video:
This ‘lack of a guarantee’, for trusting our perceptions and reasoning in science to be trustworthy in the first place, even extends into evolutionary naturalism itself;
timothya- Speaking of miracles, how strange that you are able to post anything. Usually that is limited to people with some understanding of things.
Bjornagain posted this (among other things):
“* In other words, the materialist is forced to believe in random miracles as a explanatory principle.”
Well perhaps (though this little black duck doesn’t feel forced to believe any such thing, and I would not presume to speak for materialists in general).
But an anti-materialist (anyone who believes in the existence of a supernatural entity as an ultimate cause of material reality) must also believe that the entity is capable of randomly and miraculously intervening in nature.
If this is true, then science is a pointless waste of human effort for reasons I explained upthread.
Joe posted this:
“timothya- Speaking of miracles, how strange that you are able to post anything.”
You think information technologies are miraculous? No wonder I have a job for life.
Except you didn’t explain anything. As I said you don’t appear to have a basic understanding of anything. That is why it is a miracle that you can use the internet.
tim you falsely hold:
i.e. hidden in your use of the word ‘randomly’ is the wrong thought that God is somehow capricious in His actions; Yet God, as the ‘maximally great Being’, is incapable of being capricious in His actions for that would be a ‘lesser making quality’:
I like the concluding comment about the ontological argument from the following Dr. Plantinga video:
Further notes:
It should also be carefully noted that materialists/atheists have conceded the necessary premise to the ontological argument in their appeal to the multiverse to try to ‘explain away’ the extreme fine-tuning of the universe
i.e. As well, this hypothetical infinite multiverse obviously begs the question of exactly which laws of physics, arising from which material basis, are telling all the other natural laws in physics what, how and when, to do the many precise unchanging things they do in these infinity of other universes? Exactly where is this universe creating machine to be located? Moreover, if an infinite number of other possible universes must exist in order to ‘explain away’ the extreme fine tuning of this one, then why is it not also infinitely possible for a infinitely powerful and transcendent Creator to exist? Using the materialist same line of reasoning for an infinity of multiverses to ‘explain away’ the extreme fine-tuning of this one we can thusly surmise; If it is infinitely possible for God to exist then He, of 100% certainty, must exist no matter how small the probability is of His existence in one of these other infinity of universes, and since He certainly must exist in some possible world then he must exist in all possible worlds since all possibilities in all universes automatically become subject to Him since He is, by definition, transcendent and infinitely Powerful.,,,
and as weird as it may sound, this following video refines the Ontological argument into a proof that, because of the characteristic of ‘maximally great love’, God must exist in more than one person:
tim as to your thought that materialism somehow has a leg to stand on as far as empirical science in concerned (that material particles are somehow ‘self-sustaining’ entities), well that materialistic presupposition of yours is now shown to be completely false:
Quantum Evidence for a Theistic Universe
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1agaJIWjPWHs5vtMx5SkpaMPbantoP471k0lNBUXg0Xo/edit
Tomothya,
You and PZ don’t have a case here at all. Just because God conceivably can intervene and gum up our ability to do meaningful scientific experimentation, it does not follow that He has to. And, since experimentally we indeed do find repeatability and coherence, your premise is only going to get you as far as concluding that God, for whatever reason, does not intervene, or does so consistently, either of which make scientific exploration meaningful. No further conclusions can be drawn I’m afraid.
I think this is a case of unwarranted and untenable selective skepticism. I.E., since something is logically possible, therefore we cannot (or could not) know. And then you say (by implication), since we do know scientific experiments are a real means of knowledge and understanding, therefore it is logically impossible for God to exist.
I don’t see any other way for your argument to go, and this way will get you exactly nowhere.
Tim, your point goes both ways. If the universe can exist on its own it can stop existing, parts of it can change or anything can happen at any time.
Brent posted this:
“You and PZ don’t have a case here at all. Just because God conceivably can intervene and gum up our ability to do meaningful scientific experimentation, it does not follow that He has to.”
It is you lot that are claiming to know the mind of God, not me. I am making the humble point that if miracles are possible, then you can never know whether you are observing a natural regularity or a miracle.
Butifnot posted this:
“If the universe can exist on its own it can stop existing, parts of it can change or anything can happen at any time.”
Well done, you are starting to get the drift.
timothya,
I would like to develop your idea more if you don’t mind.
What would happen if God was not capricious? That is, if he/she/it made it crystal clear they were doing something extraordinary in nature?
timothya,
You are on my “cannot be taken seriously radar” since you, again, use your own selective way of dealing with a part of what I said.
You are saying:
If God exists, no meaningful science.
Meaningful science.
God doesn’t exist.
Ummm . . .
Doh!
That would be a proper modus-tollens.
But, as per my first post, the problem is that it isn’t sound as a premise, if God, no meaningful science. You will have to establish that first. Good luck.
@ 3:15…
Put another way…
I guess scientists should not have sense of humor, then!
Sad that this is even getting discussed. It is intellectually bankrupt, just a bunch of GOTCHA! philosophy. timothya, you truly believe that if God were to intervene even one time, that would bankrupt all of the value of science? “Sorry little Bobby, we have to throw these chemotherapy drugs in the trash…science has been overturned by God making a firecracker un-explode.”
Okay I made it to the 20 minute mark. Let me know if something Earth shattering was said beyond that. But his main argument for why religion doesn’t matter seems to be “it doesn’t” and his argument for why love has nothing to do with God or the supernatural is “it doesn’t”. What powerful arguments, Dr. Myers. How can my faith survive such strong arguments?
From whatever I’ve read or heard from PZ, it just seems like he doesn’t realize that his worldview is driven by faith just as much as an theists. He compares theists’ faith with his “lack of faith”, not realize that he really has faith in the lack of the supernatural. I’ll just sit back and watch real science obliterate his worldview more and more every year by uncovering the layers of complexity in biology.
Timothya said:
“…then you can never know whether you are observing a natural regularity or a miracle.”
It is a strange notion seeing that ID is all about detecting irregularities in the natural flow of things. The only cause we scientifically (i.e. through experience) know that can cause irregularities is intelligence.
Are you implying that the investigation of irregularities in nature is outside the reach of scientific method. If that is your position then I suppose you have a strong argument to ensure that “tampering with the data” can never be detected.
or
Maybe you just have a strange definition of a miracle?
TA:
I see your claim/boilerplate — it seems to be a pretty standard talking point used to push a priori materialism under the name methodological naturalism or the like:
The main problem is that you have first and foremost offered a strawman caricature, one that actually curs clean across the actual history of the rise of modern science. Should it not give you pause, that the likes of Boyle, Kepler, newton etc believed in a world ordered by the mind of God so that in science we think God’s ordering and sustaining thoughts after him? Surely, the eminence of these thinkers as founders of science should tell you that history is advising us that science is very possible within a theistic worldview that is open to the miraculous.
In short, your assertion fails the actual history of science test.
Why is that so?
C S Lewis offers a key clue: on any reasonable theistic view and definition, miracles are signs that to work as signs, must stand out from the usual course of the world. Where that basic and mundane course of the world is itself sustained by the will of the Deity as a means of governing creation.
(This is for instance very strongly asserted in Newton’s General Scholium to Principia, i.e. the most important book of science written in the past 400 years. So, someone has not done due diligence before making confident manner assertions, and/or is suppressing inconvenient but material evidence. In either case they know or SHOULD know better.)
In short, theism posits a cosmos, not a chaos.
It is indeed true that science is not feasible in a chaos, but it is a caricature of theism to suggest that it teaches or implies that we live in a chaos.
An open universe in which for good reason God may act in other than the usual way (creating a sign that points to realities beyond our mundane world order), is not one that is hostile to genuine science. Science that is humble enough to for instance recognise the provisionality of its findings, and to accept that in the end it offers models made by imperfect people which therefore are likely to be imperfect, but at the same time should seek, value and prize truth about the world.
In that context, it is those who would impose an a priori materialism who are censors and are profoundly anti-scientific. For they are taking science captive to an ideology. And, those induced to become fellow travellers with that ideologisation, are enablers of the undermining of the social consensus that lies behind the credibility of science in our day. if you turn science into politics, eventually enough people will get the message that science will be seen as simply a party-platform label. At least, in the relevant fields.
That is already happening with climate science.
Or, in the words of the child’s story, those who cry wolf wolf when there is no wolf, will one day lose all respect and credibility when a real wolf is tearing the flock.
So, please, think again.
KF
uoflcard:
I feel for you, I sat through about that much of his Junk DNA video, skipping though, along the high points of his powerpoints, to gather his main claims at the end, which, if I remember correctly, he claimed that DNA was something like greater than 50% completely functionless. So much for unbiased science on his part. But here PZ’s primary claim (accusation against Theists) is that:
But as was pointed out so eloquently in a post that came out yesterday in the Christian Post, in a article challenging Lawrence Krauss’s over the top claims about the significance of the Higg’s boson (The ‘God’ particle):
Indeed it seems that PZ Myers, in his irrational, hate filled, war against God refuses to recognize that without God ‘science’, which he claims to love so much, is not even possible in the first place!
Moreover, Myers, with his a-priorily preferred theory of atheistic/materialistic neo-Darwinism, simply has no basis in science from which to work with:
i.e. Although neo-Darwinists are infamous for claiming that Darwinian evolution is as well established as gravity. This claim is patently false! For one thing Gravity, as formulated within General Relativity, can be falsified:
Whereas, neo-Darwinism has no identifiable falsification criteria:
Moreover, General Relativity has been confirmed to stunning degree of accuracy:
Whereas neo-Darwinists have never demonstrated that even a single protein (much less massively integrated protein networks) can arise by purely material processes:
Moreover, not only is Darwinian evolution not even close to being as firmly established as gravity, (General Relativity), a strong case can now be made that Gravity, as described by General Relativity, arises as a ‘entropic force’, and therefore directly opposes the entire concept of Darwinian evolution (opposes the entire concept of random ‘bottom up’ evolution),,,
,,, there is also a very strong case to be made that the cosmological constant in General Relativity, the expansion of space-time (Dark Energy), drives, or is deeply connected to, entropy as measured by diffusion:
Thus, though neo-Darwinian atheists may claim that evolution is as well established as Gravity, the plain fact of the matter is that General Relativity itself, which is by far our best description of Gravity, testifies strongly against the entire concept of ‘bottom up’ neo-Darwinian evolution.
further notes:
In further critique
Even Darwinists are now admitting that their theory has suffered major renovations in order to fit what the evidence is now saying:
also of note, quantum mechanics, which is even stronger than general relativity in terms of predictive power, has some very interesting assumptions built into it that make it so successful as a theory:
Needless to say, finding free will and consciousness to be ‘built into’ quantum mechanics as starting assumptions is VERY antithetical to the entire materialistic philosophy
Plenty of people commenting here are happy to prescribe various ways in which their particular God is supposed or required to behave. Get back to me when you get confirmation from her one way or the other. But Kairosfocus takes the cake. He posted this:
“Should it not give you pause, that the likes of Boyle, Kepler, newton etc believed in a world ordered by the mind of God so that in science we think God’s ordering and sustaining thoughts after him? Surely, the eminence of these thinkers as founders of science should tell you that history is advising us that science is very possible within a theistic worldview that is open to the miraculous.”
But KF, haven’t you noticed something strange about the form of Boyle’s Law (or Keplers’ or Newtons’)? Boyle says:
“pV=K”
Boyle does not say:
“pV=K (except when God intervenes to make sure that pV does not equal K)”
I can only interpret your words, so I must assume that you think the necessary God of your religion is hidden inside the p or the V or the K (or perhaps the equality). Your call.
Certainly Boyle and many other magnificent scientists were deeply religious, but there is no evidence that religion informed their results. They left their prayer book outside the laboratory, as every observant scientist does.
KF also posted this (and then followed it up with some gratuitous fingerwagging):
“It is indeed true that science is not feasible in a chaos, but it is a caricature of theism to suggest that it teaches or implies that we live in a chaos.”
I have no idea what this means, so I can only respond with a well-known quote from Thomas Jefferson:
“Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.”
timothya,
Glad to know my radar is fully operational. You disregard overall points, cherry-picking what is convenient for your agenda.
Get that fixed and then come back for real dialogue. Right now you are just a troll.
Brent: give me an “overall point” to comment on and I will be glad to oblige if I find it interesting. But please don’t ask me to dredge through KF’s and Bornagain’s unreadable sequences of disarticulated quotemines.
Ridicule is the only serious response to that form of argumentation. Your radar may be operational, but it is tuned to the wrong frequency.
Well then, start, please, with making your case that:
1) If God, no meaningful science.
2) Because God can perform a miracle and interfere with the normal operations of nature, that He must.
3) A miracle would even be known as such if they were a regular occurrence (and please stop acting as if you didn’t/couldn’t get that very, very valid and pertinent part of KF’s post. Really!)
Brent:
1. If miracles (arbitrary violations of the regularities of nature) are possible then no reliable science is possible (that is, we can never rely on any experimental result because we can never know whether we are observing the regularity or the miracle).
2. I never imputed any motivations to God (capriciousness, necessity or intentionality etc etc), nor would I (since I don’t anthropomorphise nature). I leave that mode of thinking to people who feel obliged to believe that nature is imbued with a spirit.
3. Regular miracles are a valid point? When? Where? Do you have an actual example of such a thing? Don’t make me tired.
These “answers” make me sure my radar is both functional and properly tuned.
1) This is a simple assertion. I asked you to “make your case”. You simply parroted what you were saying from the beginning. Combined with 3, which you apparently didn’t understand (i.e., you need to make your case that miracles would be even knowable as such if they were regular occurrences. If miracles regularly happened, they would be considered normal and not supernatural. The idea of miracle presupposes regularity. If no regularity, no chance of miracles being known as such. Therefore, regularity, necessarily and experimentally, is the RULE!), shows you have not thought about this very thoroughly at all.
2) This is a total cop-out! You have, by implication, stated clearly that it would be logically impossible for God not to interfere with the normal, regular operations of nature if He existed. MAKE YOUR CASE! If you can rationally hash that out you could have a good argument against theism.
In other words, what you must be saying is that it is not possible, in any possible world, that God could conceivably create a universe that ran without Him performing intervening acts often enough to thwart a scientific enterprise. This is what you need to show, not just assert.
3) We can talk on miracles later if you’d like. I thought it was clear that we were, until now, speaking theoretically, logically, hypothetically. Sorry you missed the “if”.
tim you state:
EXACTLY RIGHT TIM!
Here is the last power-point slide of the preceding video by Dr. Gordon:
Further notes on the (science defeating) irrationality of relying on ‘arbitrary’ random miracles as a explanatory principle:
TA:
I responded to a specific problem in how you portrayed theism in science. You decided to pick a handy point to drag a red herring and head off on a tangent to a strawman, exactly the original problem. And, I have not failed to notice the pouring on of oil of contempt and the snide flash of spark-words of the sort usually intended to ignite a fire and spread poisonous, choking, polarising clouds of confusion and contention.
I notice that was immediately picked up.
In short, the game is no longer working as easily as it once did, after many months of repeated exposure of the trifecta tactic.
Perhaps it has not dawned on you that the orderliness of the cosmos and its fine tuned setting to an operating point that supports C-Chemistry, cell based life are factors that speak in this overall context?
Has it not registered that theism — as the historic examples cited show — sees the general order of the cosmos as the law of its creator, and so that scientific thought on reasoned induction is confidently used as it thinks the thoughts of God after him?
Has it not dawned on you that the same theists, down to today, hold that for good reason miracles will be rare and in particular contexts so that science will be able to confidently proceed on investigating the overall order of the cosmos?
Indeed, has it never dawned on you that for a law there is usually a lawgiver, hence the significance of “laws of nature”?
I guess I should pause to clip what you should have read and seriously reckoned with in the above link from Newton in his General Scholium:
Remember, onlookers, this is in the single most influential scientific work ever written. And, there is much more than I have clipped.
KF
Brent:
1. “If miracles regularly happened, they would be considered normal and not supernatural.”
Are you saying that we wouldn’t even necessarily recognise a miracle if it actually happened? That would come as a surprise for the miracle-hunters of the Catholic church who require such events as justification for canonising saints.
2. “You have, by implication, stated clearly that it would be logically impossible for God not to interfere with the normal, regular operations of nature if He existed.”
What are you smoking? I said this? I don’t think so. Here is what I think: every attempt to suppose a god-like intervention in nature is simply a logical fallacy that humans seem addicted to – imposing on nature an anthropomorphic principle (weird things happen in nature, therefore a human-like intelligence must be involved).
A miracle, by definition, cannot be “normal”. It has to be an observed, verifiable interruption of the regularity of nature. In any case, you are assuming what you are required to demonstrate: that your God exists and intervenes in nature in detectable ways. Ante up evidence.
3. I am happy to make angels dance on pinheads for the sake of a hypothetical discussion. But I simply don’t find that particular discussion interesting.
Oh boy!
Is it logically possible that God (a maximally great being) could have created a universe like this one in such a way that He needn’t interfere, but it would run according to rules “programmed in”? Yes/No
This comment is directed to on-lookers,
The miracles-destroy-science argument put forth by timothya requires that God be capricious and non-revelatory in order to work. Now when asked about the possibility that God could be intentional and revealing about his extraordinary work, we are told that it is defective to claim knowledge of God. We are to “get back” to him when we have confirmed this knowledge. It seems that claiming knowledge of how God works is impossible.
But since timothya’s argument requires God to be capricious and non-revelatory, he has made an implicit knowledge claim. Maybe he should get back to us when he confirms God means to act that way.
TA:
Don’t you see the irony in:
Methinks you have here shown a problem with a question-begging assertion — how do you KNOW that EVERY case of the miraculous as experienced or reported is fallacious? And, you compound it by projection of question-begging unto theists who accept the supernatural and miraculous
And BTW, the fact that I am sitting here next to one of my fav Math teachers, and typing to you, is itself testimony of a miracle. Absent a miracle of guidance, that led my mother to the right doctor whom she would never otherwise have heard of I would be dead these 40 and more years now.
And in fact millions of people have over the centuries experienced God in life-changing,miracle working power. If the human mind is so delusional that this is all fallacious, then in fact you have decisively undercut the credibility of your own mind.
later
KF
PS: It is worth footnoting that in his will Boyle endowed a lecture series in defense of the Christian view, from the sort of arguments above. And of course, there is no explicit statement of an “exception” to the law of the spring of the air, it being understood that science studies the usual course of the world. Or, do you think, say, Joseph was minded to privily put away his espoused wife because he believed there was no usual course of the world, or that Luke gave up his medical knowledge — or even praxis — because he came to believe that one rose from the dead in fulfillment of the promises of God? Etc?
Brent: Yes, but since there can be no information transfer across the singularity, we will never know one way or the other. Such a universe would be indistinguishable from one that poofed into existence on its own. So why prefer a more complicated explanation? Roger of Ockham is your friend.
Steve: My comments have nothing to do with whether miracles actually happen or not (though I admit my rather pointed mode of expression might lead you to think so). I make no claims about whether God acts or thinks in this or that way, only about why people so readily resort to supernatural causes.
It is simply this. Humans are disposed to allocate unusual events to the supernatural (evidence: you’all). This mental trick may even have been evolutionarily adaptive in the distant past, but the decline of miraculous events in recent centuries suggests our species is growing out of the habit.
KF said this: “And in fact millions of people have over the centuries experienced God in life-changing,miracle working power.” This is a fact is it? I daresay millions of people believe they experienced God, but that is a different thing. In saying this, you are using precisely the same argument that you criticise defenders of evolution for: attempting to establish the truth of an idea by popular vote (does the phrase “150 years of criticism” ring a bell?).
timothya,
Ockham is meaningful as a lesson in parsimony. It was never intended to be a tool to avoid critical evidence.
TA:
Remember, this is the context in which your dismissals come to me: I would not be here to converse with you had it not been for a miracle of guidance on the day when my mother cried out in despair to God after nursing me through yet another awful night.
(I also testify to other cases of healings, including of myself. And let’s just say that there is a reason why a recent notorious web skeptic site had to admit that a significant majority of physicians acknowledge the reality of healings.)
Your skeptical dismissals and suggestion that my experiences are “fallacies” therefore ring very hollow to me.
Second, I am astonished that you would imagine that in pointing to my own experience and that of quite literally millions across the world and for thousands of years, I am appealing to blind adherence to authority or to blind adherence to an opinion.
Frankly, whatever you may explain away the vast body of experience and positive life transformation I speak of, that body of experience and how it is understood is a fact with as good a basis of testimony and record as anything you may encounter in any book of history or in any court room.
Lastly, I would not so hastily dismiss the millions — including some of the leading figures of our civilisation who testify to life-transforming encounters and relationships with God. (Pascal’s night of fire, as just one case, is well known in history. Similarly, the whole twelve-step recovery movement pivots on life-transforming experience of God’s help; accounting for thousands and thousands of cases. Remember, those who study such will consistently inform us how delusions are disintegrative, not integrative and healing.)
If the human mind is that prone to delusion, you will find yourself in the same boat in dealing with your own perceptions and beliefs.
It is not helpful to saw off the branch on which you are sitting, too.
Please, think again.
And, oh yes, on Boyle, a founder of the Royal Society, you may profit by reading in his The Christian Virtuoso [= learned scientist], to get a balance to the methodological Naturalism you have been immersed in. Let me clip (cleaning up a messy scan, I will leave in the f = s):
In short, far from your caricature of a theistic chaos that undermines the possibility of science, we see here how theistic thought was a part and parcel of the confidence of founders of modern science in a rational and intelligible cosmos that reflected its Creator.
KF
PS: Onlookers, FYI, my worldview 101 level case on why I take the view I hold is here on in context.
F/N: Nor am I blind to how you would compare an opinion of a dominant school of thought with the EXPERIENCE of millions. FYI, there are no observations of Darwinian or similar macro-evo, for the excellent reason that we were not there. Think about how you are in effect equating a model of the unobserved past, with the experience of millions. The two things are not even in the same epistemic category.
timothya you make a very peculiar claim here:
Now let’s focus in on that word information that you so nonchalantly used and see what we can glean from it:
From the best scientific evidence we now have, from multiple intersecting lines of evidence, we now have very good reason to believe that the entire universe came instantaneously into origination at the Big Bang. Not only was all mass-energy brought into being, but space-time itself was also instantaneously brought into being at the Big Bang!!!
Thus it logically follows that whatever brought the universe into being had to be transcendent of space-time, mass-energy. Yet the only thing that we know of that is completely transcendent of space-time, matter-energy is information. Thus the question becomes did information bring space-time, mass-energy into being?,,, simple enough question, but how do we prove it? It turns out that quantum teleportation breakthroughs have shed light directly on this question!,,, Here are a few experiments establishing the ‘beyond space and time’ ‘information theoretic’ origin, and sustaining, of this universe,;
Quantum Mechanics has now been extended by Anton Zeilinger, and team, to falsify local realism (reductive materialism) without even using quantum entanglement to do it. i.e. one must now appeal to a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, cause to explain the continued existence of photons within spacetime:
The following experiments demonstrate that energy and mass reduce to quantum information;
,,,The following articles show that even atoms are subject to ‘instantaneous’ teleportation:,,,
,,These following experiments offer further confirmation that the teleportation of information is indeed ‘instantaneous’, thus demonstrating transcendence, and even dominion, of space and time;,,,
Here is another experiment which demonstrated quantum information’s dominion over space and time (specifically time);
and this experiment:
Here’s a variation of Wheeler’s Delayed Choice experiment, which highlights quantum information’s transcendence of time so as to effect ‘spooky action into the past’;
,,,Whereas these following experiment shows that quantum information is ‘conserved’,,,
,,,Moreover, when the quantum wave state (superposition), which is defined as a infinite dimensional state, a wave state which can be encoded with pixelated information (University of Rochester), collapses to its particle state, the collapsed state yields only a single bit of information:,,,
,,,moreover, encoded information, such as we find encoded in computers, and yes, such as we find encoded in DNA, is found to be a subset of ‘conserved’ quantum information:,,,
,,,The following logical deduction and evidence shows that consciousness precedes the collapse of the ‘infinite information’ of the quantum wave state to the single bit of the ‘uncertain’ particle state,,,
,,,Wigner stated this in regards to his Nobel Prize winning work on Quantum Symmetries,,,
,,,i.e. In the experiment the ‘world’ (i.e. the universe) does not have a ‘privileged center’. Yet strangely, the conscious observer does exhibit a ‘privileged center’. This is since the ‘matrix’, which determines which vector will be used to describe the particle in the experiment, is ‘observer-centric’ in its origination! Thus explaining Wigner’s dramatic statement, “It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”,,,
The following solidified Wigner’s work from another angle;
And to further solidify the case that ‘consciousness precedes reality’ the violation of Leggett’s inequalities were extended in 2010:
,,,It is important to note that the following experiment actually encoded information into a photon while it was in its quantum wave state, thus destroying the notion, held by many, that the wave function was not ‘physically real’ but was merely ‘abstract’. i.e. How can information possibly be encoded into something that is not physically real but merely abstract?,,,
Here is a more rigorous measurement of the wave function which establishes it as ‘physically real’;
,,,The following paper mathematically corroborated the preceding experiment and cleaned up some pretty nasty probabilistic incongruities that arose from a purely statistical interpretation, i.e. it seems that stacking a ‘random infinity’, (parallel universes to explain quantum wave collapse), on top of another ‘random infinity’, to explain quantum entanglement, leads to irreconcilable mathematical absurdities within quantum mechanics:,,,
Now, I find the preceding to be absolutely fascinating! A photon, in its quantum wave state, is found to be mathematically defined as a ‘infinite-dimensional’ state, which ‘requires an infinite amount of information’ to describe it properly, can be encoded with information in its ‘infinite dimensional’ state, and this ‘infinite dimensional’ photon is found to collapse, instantaneously, and thus ‘non-locally’, to just a ’1 or 0? state, out of a infinite number of possibilities that the photon could have collapsed to instead! Moreover, consciousness is found to precede the collapse of the wavefunction to its particle state. Now my question to materialistic atheists is this, “Exactly what ’cause’ has been postulated throughout history to be completely independent of any space-time constraints, as well as possessing infinite knowledge, so as to be the ‘sufficient cause’ to explain what we see in the quantum wave collapse of a photon???
,,,In my personal opinion, even though not hashed out in exhaustive detail yet, all this evidence is about as sweet as it can get in experimental science as to providing ‘proof’, at least as much ‘proof’ as empirical evidence will allow, that Almighty God created and sustains this universe.,,,
I asked:
You answered:
So you again, very trolly, twist and manipulate my words into as self-serving a meaning as possible. I didn’t say that God could not interfere, but that He need not.
Goodbye, troll.
Public Service Announcement
There are different ways of dealing with people like Tim. One I’m finding effective, after giving the benefit of the doubt, is to ask yes/no questions. I could, of course, repeat my last question to Tim, not leaving him room to slither out of the side of the sandwich, but it is apparent that he isn’t interested in being rational or coherent. He is satisfied with playing games. He is trolling.
He stated his position which, on the surface, is clear. But he either cannot, or will not, show that his reasoning for his position has any rational or coherent foundation. So, in actuality, his position is unclear, which he obviously prefers, and for obvious reasons. He knows he has no foundation for his position. And to try to argue with someone who will not state a clear position is like fighting the wind. In this case, even the wind doesn’t know where it’s blowing.
Brent:
You miss the point of what I said. I agree with you that it is logically possible for your proposed universe to exist (that is, one in which God need not interfere). If God, indeed, did not interfere, then such universe would be indistinguishable from one that was not created by God. We could not tell the difference between the two from any information available within the universe.
Onlookers (and TA),
I think I am going to take a leaf from Brent’s book.
Of course, in so doing, I note how — having raised Boyle’s law of the spring of the air as an example to try to counter the correction that the miraculous is quite consistent with a world that follows a usual course amenable to science — TA studiously ignores the inconvenient truth about Boyle. I think this is a clear case to be put on the table in challenge to his prejudice against theists, that imagines us to be irrational devotees of chaos rather than cosmos, thus enemies of science.
Let us therefore pose a few yes/no Q’s:
1 –> Is is so that Boyle was a pivotal founder of science and especially of the priority of experiment?
2 –> Is it true that he was one of the 12 charter members of the Royal Society, the oldest Scientific Society, that still publishes the longest-running Journal?
3 –> Is it fair to conclude, then, that he was a founding champion of modern science?
4 –> Is it true that in light of a vivid sense of God and our accountability before him, occasioned by a thunderstorm (BTW, this is similar to the life of Luther), he had a clear conversion experience that — never mind the inevitable struggles and stumbles of life — profoundly shaped his life from that time on?
5 –> Is it true that he endowed a course of lectures in defense of the Christian faith from atheists and fellow travellers? (BTW, does this not also show that it was quite possible to be an open atheist or the like as a member of “Society” in those days?)
6 –> Did he or did he not, writing across decades, publish a series of works, not only on science and popular science [including pioneering publishing in the vernacular], but also on theology, philosophy and related apologetics topics?
7 –> Did he or did he not publish as one such work, The Christian Virtuoso, defending the legitimacy of being a serious Christian and a practicing scientist, using as a pivotal argument what Paul wrote in Rom 1 about how the evident order of the universe speaks to one and all so plainly about the Lawgiver of the Laws of nature etc, that those who reject it are without excuse before Him?
8 –> And in particular, is or is not the following an excerpt from this book? To wit:
9 –> Is it not then fair to say:
10 –> If you disagree, why, and on what evident facts?
KF
Kairosfocus:
1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. Yes.
4. No.
5. Pass, you provided insufficient data to establish his motivation.
6. Yes.
7. Pass, I am not competent to judge what constitutes a serious Christian and a practising scientist.
8. Yes. I’ll take your word for it.
9i. Yes.
9ii. No. Only some scientists think this, if I am reading your formulation correctly.
9iii. Pass, you provided insufficient data for me to agree or disagree with the term “many”.
9iv. Pass, depends on 9iii. Insufficient data to hold a reliable opinion, depends on the definition of “many”.
9v. Pass, depends on 9iii. Insufficient data to hold a reliable opinion, depends on the definition of “many”.
10. Agreed with six, disagreed with two, insufficient data to form a judgement on five.
Reason for disagreeing with 4:
Whose characterisation of the experience am I being asked to adjudicate? Yours? His? An independent observer of the event? Who?
Reason for disagreeing with 9ii:
Your formulation conflates the term “scientist” and “apostle”. If you mean scientists in general, then I disagree, since it is trivially true that there have been atheist scientists as long as science has existed as a human activity who denied the existence of a “lawgiver”.
TA:
I shortly have to get out and set up for a coming trop storm. I will be brief.
4 –> I stated a matter of fact. This is the testimony of Boyle, whose life reflected just such a Christian commitment.
5 –> The Boyle Lectures from 1692 on as endowed in Boyle’s will, were a matter of public record. Google it.
7 –> I linked the book, and have cited from it, There are several other works published across DECADES of a reasonably long (for the time) life.
8 –> A Google search will suffice to show that I am in fact citing from the given work. The onward remarks on those who would pretend to use science as a basis for atheism would be helpful to consult even today.
9 ii –> I spoke to scientists who are theists, and gave also an onward linked summary that will show that this is accurate.
9 iii –> In fact there are many scientists (and closely related professionals) who are theists, today and historically.
9 iv –> I am documenting a fact that you need to check out, in duty of care to fairness, before commenting adversely.
9 v –> Documented historically and in the contemporary world. Note the very term law of nature points to there being a lawgiver of nature. This can be seen in the already pointed out General Scholium to Principia and the Query 31 to Opticks, just to give the case with Newton.
Your comment about atheistical scientists, has nothing to do with the fact of theistic scientists, whose position has enough historical impact that we still talk about laws of nature.
KF
Man, how did I miss this thread?
Someone said:
WHAT IS YOUR THEORY OF CAUSATION?
If you believe that a natural entity can intervene in nature at any time, then no scientific experiment (of any kind!) can reliably tell us that X causes Y.
@Mung,
Exactly. Just why is there that “bit” about real science being able to be repeatable? Perhaps someone already thought of the possibility for anomalies??? Just maybe.
Mung said this (and Brent agreed):
What is this comment meant to signify? If a natural entity “intervenes” in its natural environment, then (in principle, at least) science will be able to find evidence of the connection between natural cause and natural effect using the methods of normal science. Or was this meant to be a joke?
Mung shouted this:
That natural effects have natural causes.
“That natural effects have natural causes.”
What is the natural cause of a red plastic ball? The red plastic ball is made of material which is faithfully following physcical law, but is there anything in the plastic that would cause it to form a sphere and dye itself red?
Is there? This is not a question beyond giving an answer.
Upright Biped said this:
No. Red plastic balls do not normally cause themselves to become round and red. Red plastic balls are formed by (natural) physical and chemical processes under the direction of (natural) human engineers and (natural) machine operators. Are you sure you meant to post this?
Timothya,
Do you not understand that when UB uses the term “natural”, it is in contrast to the opposing term “artificial”? Apparently not, since you seem to think that human engineers and machine operators are part of a non-artificial, natural process.
If I were forced to willfully look past the understanding of terms, and simple assume my conclusions instead; if I my arguments required of me a tactical defense where I could not allow the use of a word such as “artificial” as a nominal distinction between the actual existence of, say, a space shuttle and a clump of mud, then I think I would simply change my beliefs.
They would not be worth having.
William J Murray said this:
Yup, you got it in one. Human beings are natural entities (and so are the artefacts they produce from their intelligence). Artificial and natural are not necessarily antonymic, whereas natural and supernatural are. No supernatural causes are required to produce red plastic balls.
Timothya:
Then you don’t understand the argument being presented, and/or are embarked on the same straw man that has been explained and refuted countless times here.
Timothya,
The ID argument is that some phenomena are, for all reasonable purposes, not plausibly explicable without an intelligence guiding events towards an end – such as the existence of red plastic balls. To subsume that necessary intelligence under the term “natural” only evades the point, it doesn’t address it. It doesn’t matter if you call that necessary, pro-active intelligence natural, supernatural, or fig pudding, the point is that without it, one cannot reasonably explain the existence of red plastic balls.
Calling intelligence “natural” doesn’t make a case that it is not necessary for the existence of the red plastic ball.
TA: “Artificial and natural are not necessarily antonymic, whereas natural and supernatural are. No supernatural causes are required to produce red plastic balls.”
No, “natural” can be seen as a subset of of “supernatural”, so if one wishes to equivocate to the point of having terms that are essentially meaningless, then one can go that route as well.
BTW, where did anyone claim that superntural causes are required to produce red plastic balls?
William J Murray asked:
See 58 in response to my 57. Upright Biped clearly thinks my statement of causation is insufficient. If he/she requires other types of cause, they must be supernatural.
Timothya,
When you misrepresent the position of the person you are debating, and they (and others) point it out, and you continue to misrepresent their position, then it becomes obviously you are not interested in honest, meaningful debate.
William J Murray posted:
Talk about misrepresentation. I would never claim such a silly thing. My claim about causation is that human intelligance (as a cause) contains no supernatural elements. Human intelligence combined with natural materials and natural physical processes is sufficient to explain red plastic balls.
Timothy: “My claim about causation is that human intelligance (as a cause) contains no supernatural elements.”
(1) Irrelevant. Nobody here (that I can see) claimed it did. Once again, the error is yours in assuming UB was contrasting “natural” with “supernatural”, when he wasn’t (which he has pointed out). This is called a straw man – you’re making an argument against something nobody here claimed.
(2) Since you have made the claim that human intelligence contains no supernatural elements, I challenge you to support that claim.
William J Murray posted this:
Certainly. I can find no published scientific material on the subject of human neurobiology that supports the presence of any supernatural element in human intelligence. I could be wrong, or I could not have searched hard enough, but so far, none.