Big Bang Intelligent Design

Is there a center of the universe?

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Asked at ZME Science:

This very homogeneous image of the early universe is proof of two things we discussed. First, that the ‘bang’ was not triggered by something, and second, if there is no point of origin for an explosion, there is no center of the universe, no privileged spot.

There is another important characteristic of the universe, it does not indicate any relevant direction. In fancy words, the universe is isotropic in the big picture, meaning it doesn’t have a preferred direction. Roads are not isotropic, you have to be going in a direction, a sink is not isotropic, the water moves to the drain. – Paula Ferreira* (March 8, 2023)

How do we know that the Big Bang was not “triggered by something”? Do we know anything about what went on before that?

*Ferreira is a PhD student in physics.

95 Replies to “Is there a center of the universe?

  1. 1
    Querius says:

    The concept of inflation/expansion of the universe as well as Einstein’s general theory of relativity (specifically, spacetime distortion near massive objects) would indicate that ALL points in the universe are indeed the “center” of the universe.

    The idea that there was no cause for the universe . . .

    (a) breaks causality, without which everything is magical, and

    (b) that the universe (which includes space-time, mass-energy, etc.) was caused by space-time inflation is wildly illogical, equivalent to a snake regurgitating itself into existence (eww) as a sort of Ouroboros in reverse.

    (c) That the universe popped into being by a probabilistic quantum fluctuation doesn’t make sense since probability doesn’t exist without the passage of time.

    -Q

  2. 2
    bornagain77 says:

    From the article,

    “Our current understanding of the universe is guided by the Big Bang Theory.,,,
    Our universe went through different ‘moods’. First, a sudden accelerated expansion (called inflation).,,,
    The CMB is the relic that we can observe today to understand the structure of the universe. The Planck Satellite mission observed, with high precision, those CMB photons and concluded the universe is nearly the same on large scales.,,,
    No privileged place
    This very homogeneous image of the early universe is proof of two things we discussed. First, that the ‘bang’ was not triggered by something, and second, if there is no point of origin for an explosion, there is no center of the universe, no privileged spot.”

    Funny, a spokesman for Planck from the European Space Agency had a VERY different take on what Planck has revealed,

    New Planck Findings Challenge the Big Bang Theory – (Disconfirms inflationary models) – video
    Quote at 2:00 minute mark: “What’s surprising in Planck’s latest findings and is inconsistent with prevailing theories, is the presence of unexpected large scale anomalies in the sky. Including a large cold region. Stronger fluctuations in one half of the sky than the other. And less light signals than expected across the entire sky.”
    Planck spokesman: “When we look at only the large features on this (CMBR) map you find that our best fitting theory (inflation) has a problem fitting the data.”
    “Planck launched in 2009,, is the 3rd mission to study the Cosmic Microwave Background to date. While these unusual features in the sky were hinted at the two previous US missions, COBE and WMAP, Planck’s ability to measure the tiniest of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background has made these so called anomalies impossible to ignore.”
    Planck spokesman: “Because of these features that we are finding in the sky, people really are in a situation now where they cannot ignore them any more. ,,, We’ve established them (the anomalies) as fact!”.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2CWaLU6eMI

    In fact, these ‘anomalies’ in the CMB have done more than just cause problems for inflation theory, these anomalies have, directly contrary to what Ferreira claimed her article, revealed a “privileged spot” in the universe.

    “The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Radiation contains small temperature fluctuations.
    When these temperature fluctuations are analyzed using image processing techniques (specifically spherical harmonics), they indicate a special direction in space, or, in a sense, an axis through the universe. This axis is correlated back to us, and causes many difficulties for the current big bang and standard cosmology theories. What has been discovered is shocking.
    Two scientists, Kate Land and João Magueijo, in a paper in 2005 describing the axis, dubbed it the “Axis of Evil” because of the damage it does to current theories, and (tongue in cheek) as a response to George Bush’ Axis of Evil speech regarding Iraq, Iran and, North Korea.,,,
    The “Axis of Evil” correlates to the earth’s ecliptic and equinoxes, and this represents a very unusual and unexpected special direction in space, a direct challenge to the Copernican Principle.
    – Robert Sungenis – What Is Evil About The Axis Of Evil? – February 17, 2015

    Here is an excellent clip from “The Principle” that explains these ‘anomalies’ in the CMB in an easy to understand manner.

    Cosmic Microwave Background Proves Intelligent Design (disproves Copernican principle) (clip of “The Principle”) – video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2AwSIbtv38

    Also of note, the cosmological principle, (which is a main assumption behind the standard model of cosmology), is now being brought into question,

    “Two years ago I told you about a new quasar measurement that came out completely wrong. A stunning 4.9 sigma away from the prediction. What they did in this work was to calculate the motion of our galaxy relative to all the other matter in the universe, and relative to the radiation from the cosmic microwave background. According to the currently accepted standard model of cosmology the two results should agree. They do not. “This analysis has now independently been repeated by a second group, which just reported their results on the pre-print server. The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, but they confirm the anomaly and indeed they find an even higher statistical significance of 5.7 sigma. “I really think that cosmologist should pay more attention to this anomaly, … – Sabine Hossenfelder – – New Cosmology Anomaly Confirmed, Particle Physics Anomaly Vanishes (2:24 minute mark – January 11, 2023)
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/sabine-hossenfelder-on-an-anomaly-that-no-one-seems-to-be-investigating/#comment-773797
    A Test of the Cosmological Principle with Quasars (2021)
    and
    Testing the Cosmological Principle with CatWISE Quasars: A Bayesian Analysis of the Number-Count Dipole (December 2022)

    Our model of the universe has been falsified
    The cosmological standard model is wrong – Feb. 14, 2023
    Excerpt: “The standard cosmological model also assumes the cosmological principle, according to which the universe looks the same in every direction. Using these assumptions, scientists can calculate how the initial smoothness of the cosmic microwave background evolved into an increasingly clumpy and moving distribution of matter, made of filaments, galaxy clusters and galaxies. The measurement of this process allows astronomers to test if the model is correct.,,,
    What we do we know about the smoothness, or the lack thereof, of the matter distribution in the universe, from more direct measurements, is that it’s much clumpier and faster-moving in parts than the standard cosmological model allows. In fact, the observations tell us that the Universe is structured on every scale, amounting to a falsification of the standard model of cosmology with extreme (more than 5 sigma) statistical confidence. A serious physicist would never again touch a theory that has been ruled out at such a significance level.
    (Concluding sentence),, Thus, rather than discarding the standard cosmological model, our scientific establishment is digging itself ever deeper into the speculative fantasy realm, losing sight of and also grasp of reality in what appears to be a maelstrom of insanity.
    https://iai.tv/articles/our-model-of-the-universe-has-been-falsified-auid-2393?_auid=2020

    It is important to note that the cosmological principle, (which is a main assumption being challenged by these anomalies), derives from the Copernican Principle. (And the Copernican principle has been one of the main arguments used by atheists to try to argue that earth, and man, are not to be considered ‘privileged’ in this universe)

    Copernican principle
    Excerpt: The standard model of cosmology, the Lambda-CDM model, assumes the Copernican principle and the more general cosmological principle.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copernican_principle#Physics_without_the_principle

    Here another recent finding which also implies “an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon.”,,,

    Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky? – Ashok K. Singal – May 17, 2013
    Abstract: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) observations from the WMAP satellite have shown some unexpected anisotropies (directionally dependent observations), which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the ecliptic\cite {20,16,15}. The latest data from the Planck satellite have confirmed the presence of these anisotropies\cite {17}. Here we report even larger anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars and some other sub-classes of radio galaxies in the 3CRR catalogue, one of the oldest and most intensively studies sample of strong radio sources\cite{21,22,3}. The anisotropies lie about a plane passing through the two equinoxes and the north celestial pole (NCP). We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations. Further, even the distribution of observed radio sizes of quasars and radio galaxies show large systematic differences between these two sky regions. The redshift distribution appear to be very similar in both regions of sky for all sources, which rules out any local effects to be the cause of these anomalies. Two pertinent questions then arise. First, why should there be such large anisotropies present in the sky distribution of some of the most distant discrete sources implying inhomogeneities in the universe at very large scales (covering a fraction of the universe)? What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon.
    A large anisotropy in the sky distribution of 3CRR quasars and other radio galaxies
    http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.4134.pdf

    And it is the large scale structures of the universe, on top of the CMB anomalies, which drive the final nail in the coffin for the belief that the earth does not have a ‘privileged’ position in the universe.

    As the following article explains,

    Debunking Palm and MacAndrew on the CMB Evidence”, p. 8
    Excerpt: “Of course to have an exact position, (or what we would call an ‘exact center’ in the universe), we would need an X axis, a Y axis, and a Z axis, since that will give us three dimensions in Euclidean space. The CMB dipole and quadrupole gives us the X axis and Y axis but not a Z axis. Hence, the X and Y axis of the CMB provide a direction, but only an approximate position. That is why we have continually said that the CMB puts Earth “at or near the center of the universe.”
    For the Z-axis we depend on other information, such as quasars and galaxy alignment that the CMB cannot provide. For example, it has been discovered that the anisotropies of extended quasars and radio galaxies are aligned with the Earth’s equator and the North celestial pole (NCP)4.,,, Ashok K. Singal describes his shocking discovery in those terms:
    “What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth’s rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon.”
    – Ashok K. Singal4 “Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky,” Ashok K. Singal, Astronomy and Astrophysics Division, Navrangpura, Ahmedabad, India, May 17, 2103,..
    Signal states: “We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations.”
    – R. Sungenis – (“Debunking Palm and MacAndrew on the CMB Evidence”, p. 8).
    – article
    http://debunkingalecmacandrew......mb_22.html

    Thus, far from the small temperature variations in the CMBR being a product of random quantum fluctuations, (as they falsely presupposed with their inflation model), the small temperature variations in the CMBR combine with the ‘largest scale structures of the observable universe’ to reveal teleology, (i.e. a goal directed purpose, a plan, a reason), that specifically included the earth and solar system from the very start of the creation of the universe itself.,,, The earth and solar system, (from what our best science can now tell us), is not just the result of some random quantum fluctuation as atheists had erroneously presupposed with their ad hoc inflation model, (a model which, by the way, was ‘invented’ solely to ‘explain away’ the fine-tuning of the flatness of the universe and the homogeneity of the CMB).

    Isaiah 45:18-19
    For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, ‘seek me in vain’; I, the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.”

    Of supplemental note,

    Moreover, it is not just these findings from cosmology that are signaling “an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle”, there are multiple lines of scientific evidence that converge to overturn the Copernican principle.

    Dec. 2022 – In fact, when other lines of scientific evidence are brought forth on top of this evidence from General relativity, such as what Michael Denton has brought forth, and such as evidence from quantum mechanics, CMBR anomalies, life existing at the ‘geometric mean’,, etc, etc.. then we do indeed find that the Copernican principle, (and/of the Principle of Mediocrity) has been thoroughly and impressively, overturned.
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/michael-denton-the-miracle-of-man/#comment-772161

    As much as it may hurt an atheist’s feelings to know this, and as far as our best science can now tell us, we are not merely to be considered “chemical scum” as Stephen Hawking, via the erroneous assumption of the Copernican Principle, tried to imply that we were.

    “The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can’t believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.,,,”
    – Stephen Hawking – 1995 TV show, Reality on the Rocks: Beyond Our Ken,

    Hopefully atheists will soon get over the ‘sad’ fact that they are not to be considered merely ‘chemical scum’ in short order.

    Romans 8:20-22 – Common English Bible
    Creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice—it was the choice of the one who subjected it—but in the hope that the creation itself will be set free from slavery to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of God’s children. We know that the whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now.

  3. 3
    buffalo says:

    We are left with two choices: the center can be anywhere we wish, even the center of the earth, or the center of the earth. Hmmmmm.

  4. 4
    PyrrhoManiac1 says:

    How do we know that the Big Bang was not “triggered by something”? Do we know anything about what went on before that?

    Within the framework of general relativity, it is logically impossible for the “Big Bang” to have “triggered” by anything.

    This is because what we call “the Big Bang” is a badly chosen term for a mathematical truth — more precisely, a mathematical truth within the framework of general relativity.

    As I understand GR, the universe is a four-dimensional object. As one approaches the “edges” of this object, the value for the curvature of space-time approaches infinity. The so-called “singularity” is the name for the parameter that is asymptotically approached by the value of the curvature of space-time.

    Since we can only asymptotically approach the singularity, the question “what caused the Big Bang?” is meaningless — as long as one is working within the basic assumptions of general relativity.

    Hence, until such time as general relativity is replaced by a successor theory, the question “what caused the Big Bang?” has no meaningful scientific answer.

    If one wishes to insist that it’s a meaningful question, by all means — as long as we’re clear that it is at that point that one has crossed over the border between science and metaphysics.

  5. 5
    Origenes says:

    PM1 @

    Within the framework of general relativity, it is logically impossible for the “Big Bang” to have “triggered” by anything.

    I take it “triggered” means “caused.” So, this means that it is (somehow) “logically impossible” that our universe has a cause. Does this mean that the existence of our universe is necessarily unrelated to any proposed multiverse? IOW is it “logically impossible” for a proposed multiverse to have any causal relationship with our universe?

  6. 6
    jerry says:

    Was the original explosion homogeneous?

    Somehow I doubt it because what would cause it to become extremely heterogeneous now unless there were small differences present immediately after the initial expansion. These differences may be too small to discern with any measurement of the theoretical beginning.

    If it was different at the beginning, why? Were there any teleological objectives in these differences?

    Remember, the concept of infinity is an impossibility so everything is taking place within a finite time framework.

  7. 7
    PyrrhoManiac1 says:

    @5

    So, this means that it is (somehow) “logically impossible” that our universe has a cause. Does this mean that the existence of our universe is necessarily unrelated to any proposed multiverse? IOW a proposed multiverse cannot be causally related to our universe.

    This is all way outside my (very small) wheelhouse, so all I can do is respond based on my very limited understanding.

    My understanding of the situation is that the answer is “yes”: as long as we are working within the conceptual framework of general relativity, the question “what caused the universe?” has no mathematically meaningful answer, hence nothing that could be confirmed or disconfirmed by any measurement.

    There have been some interesting speculations about how to make the question “what caused the universe?” into a scientifically tractable answer, but all of those speculations involve going beyond the limits of general relativity — either by using quantum mechanics, or by using all sorts of advanced mathematics with a tenuous connection to physics.

    My main worry about using quantum mechanics to go beyond the limits of general relativity is that we would need a theory that explains how to unify them, and right now we just don’t have any such theory (to the best of my very limited knowledge!). There are some intriguing proposals being floated by physicists, but I’m not sure any of them have convinced the intellectual community that the problem has been solved.

  8. 8
    chuckdarwin says:

    Researchers have just determined that the center of the universe is in the DI parking garage in downtown Seattle…..

  9. 9
    Origenes says:

    How a theory about gravity can show that it is “logically impossible” for the universe to have an external cause, is far beyond my imagination.

  10. 10
    PyrrhoManiac1 says:

    How a theory about gravity can show that it is “logically impossible” for the universe to have an external cause, is far beyond my imagination.

    Perhaps that’s because general relativity is not just a theory about gravity. It is a theory about the geometry of space-time. That theory can be used to explain gravitational attraction in terms of how mass affects the curvature of space-time.

    Since it is a theory about the geometry of space-time, it has logical entailments about what happens as one gets closer to the ‘edges’ of this four-dimensional object. One of those entailments is that the value of the curvature asymptotically approaches infinity.

    That is what allows physicists to conjecture that the initial state of the universe was an almost-infinitely small, almost-infinitely dense, and extremely hot region of space-time.

    General relativity does not have the conceptual resources to make any claims about what “preceded” this initial state. That’s why it’s not possible, within the framework of general relativity, to say anything at all about what “caused” the universe.

  11. 11
    bornagain77 says:

    As to establishing “true centrality’ in the universe, and as far as Einstein’s general relativity is concerned, Albert Einstein himself stated, The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS [coordinate systems].”

    “Can we formulate physical laws so that they are valid for all CS [coordinate systems], not only those moving uniformly, but also those moving quite arbitrarily, relative to each other? […] The struggle, so violent in the early days of science, between the views of Ptolemy and Copernicus would then be quite meaningless. Either CS could be used with equal justification. The two sentences: “the sun is at rest and the earth moves” or “the sun moves and the earth is at rest” would simply mean two different conventions concerning two different CS.”
    – Einstein, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics, p.212 (p.248 in original 1938 ed.);

    And as George Ellis, (a former close colleague of Hawking), stated, “I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds…”

    “People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations… For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds… What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.”
    – George Ellis – W. Wayt Gibbs, “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No.4, p. 55

    And as Fred Hoyle, who discovered stellar nucleosynthesis, himself stated, “Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.”

    “The relation of the two pictures [geocentrism and geokineticism] is reduced to a mere coordinate transformation and it is the main tenet of the Einstein theory that any two ways of looking at the world which are related to each other by a coordinate transformation are entirely equivalent from a physical point of view…. Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.”
    – Hoyle, Fred. Nicolaus Copernicus. London: Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1973.

    Shoot even Stephen Hawking himself stated that ‘our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.,,, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.’

    “So which is real, the Ptolemaic or Copernican system? Although it is not uncommon for people to say that Copernicus proved Ptolemy wrong, that is not true. As in the case of our normal view versus that of the goldfish, one can use either picture as a model of the universe, for our observations of the heavens can be explained by assuming either the earth or the sun to be at rest.
    Despite its role in philosophical debates over the nature of our universe, the real advantage of the Copernican system is simply that the equations of motion are much simpler in the frame of reference in which the sun is at rest.”
    – Stephen Hawking – The Grand Design – pages 39 – 2010

    In fact, in the 4 dimensional spacetime of Einstein’s General Relativity, we find that each 3-Dimensional point in the universe is central to the expansion of the universe,,,

    Where is the centre of the universe?:
    Excerpt: There is no centre of the universe! According to the standard theories of cosmology, the universe started with a “Big Bang” about 14 thousand million years ago and has been expanding ever since. Yet there is no centre to the expansion; it is the same everywhere. The Big Bang should not be visualized as an ordinary explosion. The universe is not expanding out from a centre into space; rather, the whole universe is expanding and it is doing so equally at all places, as far as we can tell.
    http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/.....entre.html

    ,,, and since any 3-Dimensional point can be considered central in the expanding 4-Dimensional space time of General Relativity, then, as the following articles make clear, it is now left completely open to whomever is making a model of the universe to decide for themselves what is to be considered central in the universe,,,

    How Einstein Revealed the Universe’s Strange “Nonlocality” – George Musser | Oct 20, 2015
    Excerpt: Under most circumstances, we can ignore this nonlocality. You can designate some available chunk of matter as a reference point and use it to anchor a coordinate grid. You can, to the chagrin of Santa Barbarans, take Los Angeles as the center of the universe and define every other place with respect to it. In this framework, you can go about your business in blissful ignorance of space’s fundamental inability to demarcate locations.,,
    In short, Einstein’s theory is nonlocal in a more subtle and insidious way than Newton’s theory of gravity was. Newtonian gravity acted at a distance, but at least it operated within a framework of absolute space. Einsteinian gravity has no such element of wizardry; its effects ripple through the universe at the speed of light. Yet it demolishes the framework, violating locality in what was, for Einstein, its most basic sense: the stipulation that all things have a location. General relativity confounds our intuitive picture of space as a kind of container in which material objects reside and forces us to search for an entirely new conception of place.
    http://www.scientificamerican......locality//

    How Einstein Lost His Bearings, and With Them, General Relativity – March 2018
    Excerpt: Einstein’s field equations — the equations of general relativity — describe how the shape of space-time evolves in response to the presence of matter and energy. To describe that evolution, you need to impose on space-time a coordinate system — like lines of latitude and longitude — that tells you which points are where.
    The most important thing to recognize about coordinate systems is that they’re human contrivances. Maybe in one coordinate system we label a point (0, 0, 0), and in another we label that same point (1, 1, 1). The physical properties haven’t changed — we’ve just tagged the point differently. “Those labels are something about us, not something about the world,” said James Weatherall, a philosopher of science at the University of California, Irvine.,,,
    The Einstein field equations we have today are generally covariant. They express the same physical truths about the universe — how space-time curves in the presence of energy and matter — regardless of what coordinates you use to label things.,,,
    as Einstein discovered,,, the universe doesn’t admit any one privileged choice of coordinates.
    https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-einstein-lost-his-bearings-and-with-them-general-relativity-20180314/

    In fact, again according to the four-dimensional space-time of General Relativity, even individual people are allowed to be considered central in the universe,,,

    You Technically Are the Center of the Universe – May 2016
    Excerpt: (due to the 1 in 10^120 finely tuned expansion of the 4-D space-time of General Relativity) no matter where you stand, it will appear that everything in the universe is expanding around you. So the center of the universe is technically — everywhere.
    The moment you pick a frame of reference, that point becomes the center of the universe.
    Here’s another way to think about it: The sphere of space we can see around us is the visible universe. We’re looking at the light from stars that’s traveled millions or billions of years to reach us. When we reach the 13.8 billion-light-year point, we’re seeing the universe just moments after the Big Bang happened.
    But someone standing on another planet, a few light-years to the right, would see a different sphere of the universe. It’s sort of like lighting a match in the middle of a dark room: Your observable universe is the sphere of the room that the light illuminates.
    But someone standing in a different spot in the room will be able to see a different sphere. So technically, we are all standing at the center of our own observable universes.
    https://mic.com/articles/144214/you-technically-are-the-center-of-the-universe-thanks-to-a-wacky-physics-quirk

    And to support the claim that even individual people can be considered central in the four-dimensional space-time of General Relativity, I note that when Einstein first formulated both Special and General relativity, he gave a ‘hypothetical’ observer a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements in the universe.

    Introduction to special relativity
    Excerpt: Einstein’s approach was based on thought experiments, calculations, and the principle of relativity, which is the notion that all physical laws should appear the same (that is, take the same basic form) to all inertial observers.,,,
    Each observer has a distinct “frame of reference” in which velocities are measured,,,,
    per wikipedia

    “At that moment I got the happiest thought of my life in the following form: In an example worth considering, the gravitational field has a relative existence only in a manner similar to the electric field generated by magneto-electric induction. Because for an observer in free-fall from the roof of a house there is during the fall—at least in his immediate vicinity—no gravitational field.[36] Namely, if the observer lets go of any bodies, they remain relative to him, in a state of rest or uniform motion, independent of their special chemical or physical nature.5[37] The observer, therefore, is justified in interpreting his state as being “at rest.” The extremely strange and confirmed experience that all bodies in the same gravitational field fall with the same acceleration immediately attains, through this idea, a deep physical meaning. Because if there were just one single thing to fall in a gravitational field in a manner different from all others, the observer could recognize from it that he is in a gravitational field and that he is falling. But if such a thing does not exist—as experience has shown with high precision—then there is no objective reason for the observer to consider himself as falling in a gravitational field. To the contrary, he has every right to consider himself in a state of rest and his vicinity as free of fields as far as gravitation is concerned.”
    – Einstein
    https://einsteinpapers.press.princeton.edu/vol7-trans/152

    And whereas Einstein, when he first formulated both Special and General Relativity, gave a ‘hypothetical’ observer a privileged frame of reference in which to make measurements in the universe, In Quantum Mechanics we find that it is the measurement itself that gives each observer a privileged frame of reference in the universe.

    As the following article states, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”,,,

    Experiment confirms quantum theory weirdness – May 27, 2015
    Excerpt: Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe wave like behavior (interference) or particle behavior (no interference) depends only on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey. This is exactly what the ANU team found.
    “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.
    http://phys.org/news/2015-05-q.....dness.html

    Likewise, the following violation of Leggett’s inequality stressed ‘the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.’

    Quantum physics says goodbye to reality – Apr 20, 2007
    Excerpt: They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell’s thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it. “Our study shows that ‘just’ giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics,” Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. “You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism.”
    http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

  12. 12
    bornagain77 says:

    On top of all that, and completely contrary to the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity, in quantum mechanics we also find that humans, (via their free will), are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.

    As the late Steven Weinberg, who was an atheist himself, stated in the following article, “In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”

    The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017
    Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,,
    In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11
    Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,,
    Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,
    http://quantum.phys.unm.edu/46.....inberg.pdf

    In fact Weinberg, again 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 Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.

    As recent Nobel Laureate Anton Zeilinger states in the following video, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”

    “The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in a certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
    Anton Zeilinger –
    Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437

    In fact, Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘freedom of choice 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, (as common sense dictates), 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.

    Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018
    Abstract: This experiment pushes back to at least 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today.
    https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403

    Thus regardless of how the late Steven Weinberg, and other atheists, may have preferred the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining ‘freedom of choice’ loophole in quantum mechanics, it is now empirically demonstrated that “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.”

    As well, to state the glaringly obvious, this is yet another VERY powerful line of empirical evidence that directly falsifies the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity.

    Because of such consistent and repeatable experiments like the preceding from quantum mechanics, Richard Conn Henry, who is Professor of Physics at John Hopkins University, stated “It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.”

    “It is more than 80 years since the discovery of quantum mechanics gave us the most fundamental insight ever into our nature: the overturning of the Copernican Revolution, and the restoration of us human beings to centrality in the Universe.
    And yet, have you ever before read a sentence having meaning similar to that of my preceding sentence? Likely you have not, and the reason you have not is, in my opinion, that physicists are in a state of denial, and have fears and agonies that are very similar to the fears and agonies that Copernicus and Galileo went through with their perturbations of society.”
    – Richard Conn Henry – Professor of Physics – John Hopkins University
    http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/quantum.enigma.html

    Proverbs 15:3
    The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good.

    Moreover, when we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally held with the presupposition of ‘contingency’), and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the “freedom-of-choice” loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), then 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 bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and provides us with an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”

    Oct. 2022 – although there will never be a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’ that bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between quantum mechanics and general relativity, all hope is not lost in finding the correct ‘theory if everything’.
    https://uncommondescent.com/cosmology/from-iai-news-how-infinity-threatens-cosmology/#comment-766384

    Colossians 1:15-20
    The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

    To go a but further, and to further solidify the fact that humans have far more significance in this universe than atheists have falsely presupposed, (with their erroneous presumption of the Copernican principle and/or principle of mediocrity), in the following video physicist Neil Turok states that “So we can go from 10 to the plus 25 to 10 to the minus 35. Now where are we? Well the size of a living cell is about 10 to the minus 5. Which is halfway between the two. In mathematical terms, we say it is the geometric mean. We live in the middle between the largest scale in physics,,, and the tiniest scale [in physics].”

    “So we can go from 10 to the plus 25 to 10 to the minus 35. Now where are we? Well the size of a living cell is about 10 to the minus 5. Which is halfway between the two. In mathematical terms, we say it is the geometric mean. We live in the middle between the largest scale in physics,,, and the tiniest scale [in physics].”
    – Neil Turok as quoted at the 14:40 minute mark
    The Astonishing Simplicity of Everything – Neil Turok Public Lecture – video (12:00 minute mark, we live in the geometric mean, i.e. the middle, of the universe)
    https://youtu.be/f1x9lgX8GaE?t=715

    The following interactive graph, gives very similar ‘rough ballpark’ figures, of 10 ^27 and 10-35, to Dr. Turok’s figures.

    The Scale of the Universe
    https://htwins.net/scale2/

    And while that finding by Dr. Neil Turok is certainly very interesting, that finding is a bit disappointing in that is just gives life in general a ‘middle’ position in the universe, and still does not give humanity in particular, a ‘middle’ position in the universe.

    Yet, Dr. William Demski, (and company), in the following graph, have refined that estimate of a ‘geometric mean’ with better data, and have given us a more precise figure of 8.8 x 10^26 M for the observable universe’s diameter, and 1.6 x 10^-35 for the Planck length which is the smallest length possible.

    Magnifying the Universe
    https://academicinfluence.com/ie/mtu/

    And that more precise figure for a ‘geometric mean’ does indeed give humanity in particular a ‘central’ position in the universe.

    Specifically, Dr. Dembski’s more precise interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as the size of a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which ‘just so happens’ to be directly in the exponential center, and/or geometric mean, of all possible sizes of our physical reality. This is very interesting for the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions rather than directly in the exponential middle and/or the geometric mean. Needless to say, this empirical finding severely challenges, if not directly overturns, the assumption behind the Copernican Principle and/or the Principle of Mediocrity.

    Jeremiah 29:11
    For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

  13. 13
    Origenes says:

    PM1@

    General relativity does not have the conceptual resources to make any claims about what “preceded” this initial state. That’s why it’s not possible, within the framework of general relativity, to say anything at all about what “caused” the universe.

    Not being able to “say anything at all about what ’caused’ the universe”, is a far cry from saying that it is “logically impossible” for the universe to have a cause, wouldn’t you agree?

  14. 14
    relatd says:

    CD at 8,

    No, no. That’s wrong. It’s in a garage owned by two Welfare cheats in New Jersey… 🙂

  15. 15
    critical rationalist says:

    @BA77 # 11

    And here I wasn’t sure if BA had an understanding of how multiple theories can be empirically indistinguishable from another.

    Whether BA has just grasped the concept, while collecting these quotes, is unclear, but he is appealing to it in #11. For example…

    And as George Ellis, (a former close colleague of Hawking), stated, “I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds…”

    However, BA seems to have a rather short memory when it suits his purpose.

    And this comment is no exception, as he has totally forgotten about it mid-comment! Specifically, he turns around and claims that experiments in quantum mechanics proves that consciousness is prior to physical reality.

    Likewise, the following violation of Leggett’s inequality stressed ‘the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.’

    But, the appearance of collapse is precisely what we would predict if the many world interpretation of quantum mechanized is true. It too is empirically indistinguishable from the Copenhagen interpretation.

    So, where are the quotes that point out how the MWI can explain the same outcomes? There are none. BA just continues to ignore this inconvenient fact going forward. In multiple subsequent comments.

    Is his memory really that short?

    Or perhaps, not unlike how he thinks reality doesn’t exist if no one is looking at it, he thinks the concept of being empirically indistinguishable doesn’t exist if unless it suits his purpose?

  16. 16
    Origenes says:

    Bornagain @2

    Thank you for yet another very informative post. I especially enjoyed the video:

    Cosmic Microwave Background Proves Intelligent Design (disproves Copernican principle) (clip of “The Principle”) – video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2AwSIbtv38

  17. 17
    bornagain77 says:

    CR, don’t you think your criticism of my post might carry much more weight with me if you yourself did not cling to MWI? i.e. a worldview where an infinitude of other CR’s are constantly being created every time an electron and/or photon is simply observed? 🙂

    Atheist Physicist Sean Carroll: An Infinite Number of Universes Is More Plausible Than God – Michael Egnor – August 2, 2017
    Excerpt: as I noted, the issue here isn’t physics or even logic.
    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 —,,,
    What can we in the reality-based community do when an ideology — the ideology that is currently dominant in science — is not merely wrong, but delusional? I guess calling it what it is is a place to start.
    https://evolutionnews.org/2017/08/atheist-physicist-sean-carroll-an-infinite-number-of-universes-is-more-plausible-than-god/

    Of note: In order to try to avoid the Theistic implications that are inherent in quantum wave collapse, many times atheists will appeal to the ‘Many-Worlds’ interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics.

    In the ‘Many-Worlds’ interpretation of quantum mechanics the reality of the wave function collapse is simply denied as being a real effect.

    Many-worlds interpretation
    Excerpt: The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is objectively real, and that there is no wave function collapse.[2]
    – per wikipedia

    Quantum mechanics – Philosophical implications
    Excerpt: Everett’s many-worlds interpretation, formulated in 1956, holds that all the possibilities described by quantum theory simultaneously occur in a multiverse composed of mostly independent parallel universes.[52] This is a consequence of removing the axiom of the collapse of the wave packet.
    – per wikipedia

    Yet, directly contrary to what MWI holds, wave function collapse is now experimentally shown to be a real effect.

    As the following article states, experiments have now demonstrated “the non-local, (i.e. beyond space and time), collapse of a (single) particle’s wave function”,, “the collapse of the wave function is a real effect”,, “the instantaneous non-local, (beyond space and time), collapse of the wave function to wherever the particle is detected”,, and “Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.”,,

    Quantum experiment verifies Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’ – March 24, 2015
    Excerpt: An experiment,, has for the first time demonstrated Albert Einstein’s original conception of “spooky action at a distance” using a single particle.
    ,,Professor Howard Wiseman and his experimental collaborators,, report their use of homodyne measurements to show what Einstein did not believe to be real, namely the non-local collapse of a (single) particle’s wave function.,,
    According to quantum mechanics, a single particle can be described by a wave function that spreads over arbitrarily large distances,,,
    ,, by splitting a single photon between two laboratories, scientists have used homodyne detectors—which measure wave-like properties—to show the collapse of the wave function is a real effect,,
    This phenomenon is explained in quantum theory,, the instantaneous non-local, (beyond space and time), collapse of the wave function to wherever the particle is detected.,,,
    “Einstein never accepted orthodox quantum mechanics and the original basis of his contention was this single-particle argument. This is why it is important to demonstrate non-local wave function collapse with a single particle,” says Professor Wiseman.
    “Einstein’s view was that the detection of the particle only ever at one point could be much better explained by the hypothesis that the particle is only ever at one point, without invoking the instantaneous collapse of the wave function to nothing at all other points.
    “However, rather than simply detecting the presence or absence of the particle, we used homodyne measurements enabling one party to make different measurements and the other, using quantum tomography, to test the effect of those choices.”
    “Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.”
    http://phys.org/news/2015-03-q.....tance.html

    So, regardless of how atheistic materialists may feel about not splitting into a infinitude of new copies of themselves every time a particle is simply observed, wave function collapse is now shown to be a real effect and, as such, the MWI is now experimentally shown to a false interpretation of quantum mechanics.

    1 Thessalonians 5:21
    but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.

  18. 18
    critical rationalist says:

    CR, don’t you think your criticism of my post might carry much more weight with me if you yourself did not cling to MWI?

    My criticism carries weight because it’s accurate. It’s independent of your belief. What you think is irrelevant, as your comment reflects a flawed understanding of science.

    Specially on one hand, you appealed to multiple theories predicting the same empirical outcomes. Yet, on the other hand, you continue to claim that experiments in quantum mechanics prove conciseness is prior to physical reality. But the empirical outcome in the experiment is also what the MWI predicts, given that observers also evolve according to the wave function. It’s simply the results of taking the wave function seriously.

    For example, you referenced…

    Yet, directly contrary to what MWI holds, wave function collapse is now experimentally shown to be a real effect.

    As the following article states, experiments have now demonstrated “the non-local, (i.e. beyond space and time), collapse of a (single) particle’s wave function”,, “the collapse of the wave function is a real effect”,, “the instantaneous non-local, (beyond space and time), collapse of the wave function to wherever the particle is detected”,, and “Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.”,,

    March 24, 2015 Quantum experiment verifies Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’ – March 24, 2015
    Excerpt: An experiment,, has for the first time demonstrated Albert Einstein’s original conception of “spooky action at a distance” using a single particle. Professor Howard Wiseman and his experimental collaborators….

    Yet Howard Wiseman, who you just referenced, has help develop the many interacting worlds theory of quantum mechanics. Which, you guessed it, proposes the existence of many worlds in which there is no collapse. Specifically, Wiseman has come up with yet another way to explain Born Rule in quantum mechanics without collapse. Here is a video where Wiseman himself gives a talk about the theory in more detail.

    This is in addition to the MWI’s explanation of the Born rule. See this overview, which includes links to entries on how the use of decision theory and the MWI explanation of the “Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser” experiment. So we have at least three theories that are empirically indistinguishable.

    IOW, your own reference explicitly acknowledges this false dilemma. It’s just inconvenient for you. So, you’ve just claimed there is proof to the contrary, while ignoring alternatives. At best, this reflects a flawed, arbitrary understanding of science. At worst, it’s a disingenuous presentation of a falsehood.

    Again, you continue to pick and choose references, apparently unable to tell when they actually support your position. You didn’t even check to see if Wiseman’s position supposed your own. Apparently, you’re wiling to appeal to Wiseman as a logical, sane physicist that proves consciousness is prior to reality, until such time that you discover he disagrees with you, in which point he will become a crazy person?

    So, it seems you have the question backwards. Why should your criticism hold weight?

    And, no, BA. The MWI does not propose that atoms are constantly being created. You might want to take the time to actually understand the theory you’re criticizing. After all, I posted the link to a video that points out this is a misconception. Apparently, you haven’t watched it.

    How is energy conserved is completely clear in the math the energy of the whole wavefunction is a hundred percent super-duper conserved. But there’s a difference between the energy of the whole way function and the energy that people in each branch perceive so what you should think of is not duplicating the whole universe but taking a certain amount of the universe and sort of subdividing it
    slicing it into two pieces the pieces look identical from the inside except that one has spin up the one has spin down or something like that. But they’re really contributing less than the original to the total energy of everything.

    Then again, presenting an accurate version of the theory is yet another thing that does not suit your purpose.

  19. 19
    relatd says:

    CR at 18,

    “Then again, presenting an accurate version of the theory is yet another thing that does not suit your purpose.”

    ‘your purpose’? Can you explain what that is?

  20. 20
    bornagain77 says:

    CR, MWI apparently does not explain the evidence. Elsewise Wiseman would not have postulated the new “Many-Interacting Worlds” approach.

    “In the well-known “Many-Worlds Interpretation”, each universe branches into a bunch of new universes every time a quantum measurement is made. All possibilities are therefore realised – in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonised by the Portuguese.

    “But critics question the reality of these other universes, since they do not influence our universe at all. On this score, our “Many Interacting Worlds” approach is completely different, as its name implies.”

    Professor Wiseman and his colleagues propose that:

    The universe we experience is just one of a gigantic number of worlds. Some are almost identical to ours while most are very different;
    All of these worlds are equally real, exist continuously through time, and possess precisely defined properties;
    All quantum phenomena arise from a universal force of repulsion between ‘nearby’ (i.e. similar) worlds which tends to make them more dissimilar.
    Dr Hall says the “Many-Interacting Worlds” theory may even create the extraordinary possibility of testing for the existence of other worlds.
    https://phys.org/news/2014-10-interacting-worlds-theory-scientists-interaction.html

    So I still hold the wave function collapse experiment to be a falsification of the original MWI.

    Of note, Dr. Wiseman, with his new model, still holds that he exists in an infinitude of other universes and that his consciousness somehow ‘supervenes’ in each of those universes, (but not all of them at the same time).
    24:42 mark
    https://youtu.be/92lCzlBCNgU?t=1482
    This is insane. And I don’t care if a PhD is saying he exists in an infinity of other places. It is simply bark raving mad.

    And please note, MWI was postulated first and foremost to avoid God. So apparently it now comes down to choosing between God or insanity, And the atheist has apparently chosen insanity.

    The Atheist War Against Quantum Mechanics – Nov 28, 2021
    Excerpt: A dyed-in the-wool nihilist, Everett is known for ordering that his ashes be dumped into a trashcan when he died—a practice that Everett’s daughter later copied upon committing suicide. Everett brought this same dedication to bear in his scientific career. Today, Everett’s disciples praise him for bringing an atheistic scorn of the immaterial back to quantum mechanics.
    As a graduate student in the 1950s, Everett was alarmed to discover that traditional quantum mechanics did not line up with his materialist commitments. He was repulsed by the fact that the human mind seemed to be given a special role—a conclusion that Everett thought smacked of the supernatural. There seemed to be “a magic process in which something quite drastic occurred, while in all other times systems were assumed to obey perfectly natural continuous laws.”[4] In Jonathan Allday’s words, Everett firmly believed that such a “‘magic process’… should not be considered in quantum physics.”
    Everett therefore devised the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics—perhaps the most widely-known interpretation in contemporary popular culture. The purpose of the interpretation was, in essence, to create a consistent model of quantum mechanics that would preserve Thomas Huxley’s materialistic dismissal of the mind. Everett’s model continues to be extremely influential.
    David Deutsch, a militantly atheistic contemporary physicist, regards himself as a sort of apostle of Hugh Everett. “Everett was before his time,” says Deutsch. Before Everett, “things were regarded as progress which are not explanatory, and the vacuum was filled by mysticism and religion and every kind of rubbish. Everett is important because he stood out against it.”[5] Deutsch’s words of praise are important: Everett’s greatest achievement is not the elegance of his mathematical model, but that the fact that his model pushed back against “religion,” which is of course false.
    https://www.staseos.net/post/the-atheist-war-against-quantum-mechanics

    Of further note, Since Dr. Wiseman apparently relies on Bohmian Mechanics to try to support his new model, here is a critique of Bohmian Mechanics

    A Critique of Bohmian Mechanics (Pilot Wave theory) – (2018) video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn2hoU4jaQQ

    June 2019 – Here are some of the ‘killer blows’ to Bohm’s pilot wave theory that the author failed to mention in his romanticized characterization of Bohm’s ideas:
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-science-writer-considers-the-cost-of-science-functioning-as-an-inquisition/#comment-679138

  21. 21
    Querius says:

    Great observations, PyrrhoManiac1.

    Within the framework of general relativity, it is logically impossible for the “Big Bang” to have “triggered” by anything.

    Exactly. The SOURCE of space-time cannot have involved space or time.

    This is because what we call “the Big Bang” is a badly chosen term for a mathematical truth — more precisely, a mathematical truth within the framework of general relativity.

    Yes, “Big Bang” was initially a pejorative term. It would be more accurate to call it the stretching out of space-time by an unknown agent, postulated as “dark energy.” But that’s simply a way of giving a name to something about which we’re clueless.

    Since we can only asymptotically approach the singularity, the question “what caused the Big Bang?” is meaningless — as long as one is working within the basic assumptions of general relativity.

    In traditional physics, events can be reversed in time. So one can imagine the Big Bang in reverse as a “big shrink” to a point. At T=0 (or more precisely at Planck time), causality as we know it from a naturalism world view stops at Nothing (haha). There’s no cause to non-existence, so something outside of nature intervened.

    Those who don’t believe in God, resort to “the multiverse,” as an alternative. However, there’s still no way to apply any scientific measurements or observations to the multiverse, so it’s really no different than a different version of theism.

    Hence, until such time as general relativity is replaced by a successor theory, the question “what caused the Big Bang?” has no meaningful scientific answer.

    Yes, but I’d strongly question whether any scientific theory could be applicable. To have a change in the state of non-existent, one would need a source of time outside nature–a “supernatural” clock.

    If one wishes to insist that it’s a meaningful question, by all means — as long as we’re clear that it is at that point that one has crossed over the border between science and metaphysics.

    Nicely stated. And it leaves a massive, unanswered question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It’s provocative, but not subject to any scientific investigation.

    -Q

  22. 22
    Origenes says:

    CR @18 What would a real fallibilist say about the first few lines of your post?

    Allow me to give it a try:

    My criticism carries weight because it’s accurate.

    By claiming that your criticism is accurate (not fallible) you go against the laws of fallibilism (which are also fallible, but a metacontext nonetheless). How do you know that your criticism is “accurate”? All knowledge is fallible, therefore all your criticism is fallible.

    It’s independent of your belief.

    How can be certain that it is independent of BA’s belief? How do you know what BA’s belief is? Maybe BA is lying to you about his beliefs. You are probably a very gullible person, easy to fool (not sure).

    What you think is irrelevant …

    Implicit is the claim to know what is relevant and what is not. No such infallible knowledge exists (not sure). And irrelevant to what? This claim is not clear and again does not make clear that all statements are fallible. Maybe you do not understand fallibilism (not sure).

    … as your comment reflects a flawed understanding of science.

    Here you assume that a perfect understanding of science exists by which you can measure the understanding of science by others. All understanding of science is fallible, therefore, according to fallibilism, only a flawed understanding of science exists (not sure).

  23. 23
    Sandy says:

    Science is credible only about proximate causes that can be studied or repeated in lab. Big Bang and all other “scientific” hypotheses about the origin of the universe are just a secular type of religions that want to compete with theistic religions.

  24. 24
    bornagain77 says:

    23:50 mark: “We’ve thought about how you generalize this beyond simple one particle in one dimension , and it becomes a lot more complicated. We don’t have any explicit form of the potential that we know would work but the basic idea would be is captured by this equation here that every world again obeys a newtonian, this is this is just newton’s equation, so the only thing which we’re doing is adding some quantum force which is exactly the force from Bohm’s quantum potential, but we’re imagining that that quantum force is determined by some sort of local averaging of the the density of worlds uh in in the region for the where that particular world is”
    – Wiseman
    https://youtu.be/92lCzlBCNgU?t=1427

    Here are a few more problems with Bohmian mechanics, that Dr. Wiseman did not mention,

    Bohmian mechanics, a ludicrous caricature of Nature – Lubos Motl – July 15, 2013
    Excerpt: There’s no way out here. If you attempt to emulate a quantum field theory (QED) in this Bohmian way, you introduce lots of ludicrous gears and wheels – much like in the case of the luminiferous aether, they are gears and wheels that don’t exist according to pretty much direct observations – and they must be finely adjusted to reproduce what quantum mechanics predicts (sometimes) without any adjustments whatsoever. Every new Bohmian gear or wheel you encounter generally breaks the Lorentz symmetry and makes the (wrong) prediction of a Lorentz violation and you will need to fine-tune infinitely many properties of these gears and wheels to restore the Lorentz invariance and other desirable properties of a physical theory (even a simple and fundamental thing such as the linearity of Schrödinger’s equation is really totally unexplained in Bohmian mechanics and requires infinitely many adjustments to hold – while it may be derived from logical consistency in quantum mechanics). It’s infinitely unlikely that they take the right values “naturally” so the theory is at least infinitely contrived. More likely, there’s no way to adjust the gears and wheels to obtain relativistically invariant predictions at all.
    I would say that we pretty much directly experimentally observe the fact that the observations obey the Lorentz symmetry;,,, and lots of other, totally universal and fundamental facts about the symmetries and the interpretation of the basic objects we use in physics. Bohmian mechanics is really trying to deny all these basic principles – it is trying to deny facts that may be pretty much directly extracted from experiments. It is in conflict with the most universal empirical data about the reality collected in the 20th and 21st century. It wants to rape Nature.
    A pilot-wave-like theory has to be extracted from a very large class of similar classical theories but infinitely many adjustments have to be made – a very special subclass has to be chosen – for the Bohmian theory to reproduce at least some predictions of quantum mechanics (to produce predictions that are at least approximately local, relativistic, rotationally invariant, unitary, linear etc.). But even if one succeeds and the Bohmian theory does reproduce the quantum predictions, we can’t really say that it has made the correct predictions because it was sometimes infinitely fudged or adjusted to produce the predetermined goal. On the other hand, quantum mechanics in general and specific quantum mechanical theories in particular genuinely do predict certain facts, including some very general facts about Nature. If you search for theories within the rigid quantum mechanical framework, while obeying the general postulates, you may make many correct predictions or conclusions pretty much without any additional assumptions.
    https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/07/bohmian-mechanics-ludicrous-caricature.html

    A few more insurmountable problems with Bohm’s pilot wave theory are clearly elucidated in the following video:

    A Critique of Bohmian Mechanics (Pilot Wave theory) – video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn2hoU4jaQQ

  25. 25
    bornagain77 says:

    Bohm’s “quantum potential” can be considered falsified by experiment
    Antoine Suarez – Oct. 2014
    Abstract: A Michelson-Morley-type experiment is described, which exploits two-photon interference between entangled photons instead of classical light interference. In this experimental context, the negative result (no shift in the detection rates) rules out David Bohm’s postulate of an infinite-speed time-ordered “quantum potential”, and thereby upholds the timeless standard quantum collapse.,,,
    Page 3: 4. Discussion.—David Bohm’s assumption of an “infinite-speed time-ordered quantum potential” is generally supposed to reproduce the experimental predictions of quantum mechanics, and, so far, considered a possible causal alternative to the standard interpretation of the timeless wavefunction collapse at detection (see for instance [3, 5, 10–12]). Strictly speaking, Bohm’s time- ordered quantum potential implies disappearance of the quantum correlation in case the decisions at the beam- splitters BSA and BSB happen simultaneously in the assumed “preferred frame”, and hence it is actually at odds with standard quantum physics [13]. Nonetheless this prediction cannot be tested by a real experiment.
    By contrast, in the experiment presented in the preceded section Bohm’s assumption implies the shift in the counting rates predicted by (7). This prediction conflicts with relativity and is testable. Although a real experiment would be “nice to have”, it does not seem required if one considers that the falsification of the prediction (7) results by induction from the Michelson- Morley experiments repeatedly performed in the past. To this extent the negative result of these experiments can be straightforwardly extended to the entanglement version presented in the precedent section to conclude that shift predicted by (7) will not be observed. And this means that the Michelson-Morley entanglement experiment (Figures 1 and 2) rules out Bohm’s “infinite-speed time-ordered quantum potential”.,,
    Page 4: 5. Conclusion.—It is noteworthy that Bohmian mechanics conflicts with both, standard quantum mechanics and relativity. Whereas the conflict with quantum mechanics is not testable, the conflict with relativity can be tested through the experiment we have presented in this paper. Therefore Bohm’s “preferred frame” assumption can be considered falsified by experiment to the same extent as relativity is considered to be confirmed by it.
    By contrast, the standard quantum collapse at detection ignores the “preferred frame” (time-order) and thereby implicitly contains relativity. The proposed experiment confirms this view and highlights that relativity and quantum physics are two inseparable aspects of one and the same description of the physical reality. These two theories neither are incompatible with each other nor have a “frail peaceful coexistence”, but rather imply each other: we can’t have one without the other.
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.2014.pdf

  26. 26
    bornagain77 says:

    As to “David Bohm’s postulate of an infinite-speed time-ordered “quantum potential”,

    Yet, “These predictions (of quantum mechanics) are completely independent of the relative arrangements of measurements in space and time. That tells you something about the role of space and time. There’s no role at all.”,,,”
    – Zeilinger

    “There’s one important message I want to say here. When you look at the predictions of quantum mechanics for multi-particle entanglement,, so you could have one measurement here, one (measurement) there, an earlier (measurement), a later (measurement), and so on. These predictions (of quantum mechanics) are completely independent of the relative arrangements of measurements in space and time. That tells you something about the role of space and time. There’s no role at all.”,,,
    – Anton Zeilinger
    – 2022 Nobel Prize lectures in physics – video (1:50:07 mark)
    https://youtu.be/a9FsKqvrJNY?t=6607
    Alain Aspect: From Einstein’s doubts to quantum technologies: non-locality a fruitful image
    John F. Clauser: Experimental proof that nonlocal quantum entanglement is real
    Anton Zeilinger: A Voyage through Quantum Wonderland
    – Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.

    Verse:

    Colossians 1:17
    He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

    As to free will,

    “The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
    Anton Zeilinger –
    Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437

    Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018
    Abstract: This experiment pushes back to at least approx. 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today.
    https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403

  27. 27
    Origenes says:

    BA @20

    Of note, Dr. Wiseman, with his new model, still holds that he exists in an infinitude of other universes and that his consciousness somehow ‘supervenes’ in each of those universes, (but not all of them at the same time).
    24:42 mark
    https://youtu.be/92lCzlBCNgU?t=1482
    This is insane. And I don’t care if a PhD is saying he exists in an infinity of other places. It is simply bark raving mad.
    And please note, MWI was postulated first and foremost to avoid God. So apparently it now comes down to choosing between God or insanity, And the atheist has apparently chosen insanity.

    BA, in your estimation, what is the more insane attempt to avoid God: Paul Davies’s proposition that human beings created the universe backward in time or the MWI?

  28. 28
    bornagain77 says:

    Well Origenes, besides those two, there are a few more attempts by atheists to avoid God that are also certainly in the running for the most insane postulation from atheists to avoid God.

    As Sheldon Glashow remarked to Max Tegmark’s postulation of a mathematical multiverse, (i.e. a “set of all mathematical structures, each of them constituting a universe unto itself”), “there must exist a slightly different mathematical structure, whose equations are emblazoned on another T-shirt, wherein I am Tegmark’s psychiatrist rather that a physicist. I do not believe a word of it. Paraphrasing Danny, I may be a blockhead but I am certainly not a mathematical structure akin to a triangle.”

    A Hand-Waving Exact Science – Sheldon Lee Glashow
    In response to “It’s You, Again”
    Excerpt: And our ToE is just one among an infinity of mathematical structures, each of them its own universe. If Tegmark is correct, there must exist a slightly different mathematical structure, whose equations are emblazoned on another T-shirt, wherein I am Tegmark’s psychiatrist rather that a physicist. I do not believe a word of it. Paraphrasing Danny, I may be a blockhead but I am certainly not a mathematical structure akin to a triangle.
    – Sheldon Glashow
    https://inference-review.com/letter/a-hand-waving-exact-science

  29. 29
    Origenes says:

    BA @28

    Their insane behavior indicates they are in some perceived existential struggle with Christianity. Christianity is absolutely unacceptable to them, so gloves are off. What fuels them is the underlying assumption that if atheism fails, Christianity is true.

  30. 30
    bornagain77 says:

    Well Origenes, although many Darwinian atheists here on UD are certainly overtly hostile towards Christianity in particular, I wouldn’t hold that hostility towards Christianity in particular is driving all these atheists in cosmology who are making these insane postulations. For instance, Lawrence (something from nothing) Krauss hates all religions, not just Christianity.

    “So Judaism, Christianity, Islam, all of those are from a scientific perspective, nonsense.”
    – Krauss
    https://iscast.org/watch-and-listen/interview-with-lawrence-krauss/

    Likewise, with MWI, I would hold that Everett and Deutsch are just hostile towards God in general and not towards Christianity in particular.

    The Atheist War Against Quantum Mechanics – Nov 28, 2021
    Excerpt: A dyed-in the-wool nihilist, Everett is known for ordering that his ashes be dumped into a trashcan when he died—a practice that Everett’s daughter later copied upon committing suicide. Everett brought this same dedication to bear in his scientific career. Today, Everett’s disciples praise him for bringing an atheistic scorn of the immaterial back to quantum mechanics.
    As a graduate student in the 1950s, Everett was alarmed to discover that traditional quantum mechanics did not line up with his materialist commitments. He was repulsed by the fact that the human mind seemed to be given a special role—a conclusion that Everett thought smacked of the supernatural. There seemed to be “a magic process in which something quite drastic occurred, while in all other times systems were assumed to obey perfectly natural continuous laws.”[4] In Jonathan Allday’s words, Everett firmly believed that such a “‘magic process’… should not be considered in quantum physics.”
    Everett therefore devised the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics—perhaps the most widely-known interpretation in contemporary popular culture. The purpose of the interpretation was, in essence, to create a consistent model of quantum mechanics that would preserve Thomas Huxley’s materialistic dismissal of the mind. Everett’s model continues to be extremely influential.
    David Deutsch, a militantly atheistic contemporary physicist, regards himself as a sort of apostle of Hugh Everett. “Everett was before his time,” says Deutsch. Before Everett, “things were regarded as progress which are not explanatory, and the vacuum was filled by mysticism and religion and every kind of rubbish. Everett is important because he stood out against it.”[5] Deutsch’s words of praise are important: Everett’s greatest achievement is not the elegance of his mathematical model, but that the fact that his model pushed back against “religion,” which is of course false.
    https://www.staseos.net/post/the-atheist-war-against-quantum-mechanics

  31. 31
    Origenes says:

    BA 30

    I would hold that Everett and Deutsch are just hostile towards God in general and not towards Christianity in particular.

    Suppose you are right, why would anyone be hostile (to the point of accepting the most insane proposals) towards God in general?

  32. 32
    bornagain77 says:

    “Suppose you are right, why would anyone be hostile (to the point of accepting the most insane proposals) towards God in general?”

    LOL, if you had the simple and pat answer for that question, I reckon you could cure much of ill, not only in science, but in the world. 🙂

    But alas, I am not a psychologist.

    “I maintain that whatever else faith may be, it cannot be a delusion.
    The advantageous effect of religious belief and spirituality on mental and physical health is one of the best-kept secrets in psychiatry and medicine generally. If the findings of the huge volume of research on this topic had gone in the opposite direction and it had been found that religion damages your mental health, it would have been front-page news in every newspaper in the land.”
    – Professor Andrew Sims former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists – Is Faith Delusion?: Why religion is good for your health – preface

    “In the majority of studies, religious involvement is correlated with well-being, happiness and life satisfaction; hope and optimism; purpose and meaning in life; higher self-esteem; better adaptation to bereavement; greater social support and less loneliness; lower rates of depression and faster recovery from depression; lower rates of suicide and fewer positive attitudes towards suicide; less anxiety; less psychosis and fewer psychotic tendencies; lower rates of alcohol and drug use and abuse; less delinquency and criminal activity; greater marital stability and satisfaction… We concluded that for the vast majority of people the apparent benefits of devout belief and practice probably outweigh the risks.”
    – Professor Andrew Sims former President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists – Is Faith Delusion?: Why religion is good for your health – page 100

  33. 33
    Origenes says:

    BA @32
    I guess we will never know. It’s not that they are able to articulate what’s driving them.

  34. 34
    PyrrhoManiac1 says:

    @21

    Those who don’t believe in God, resort to “the multiverse,” as an alternative. However, there’s still no way to apply any scientific measurements or observations to the multiverse, so it’s really no different than a different version of theism.

    I think that’s basically right: choosing to believe in a Creator God or a multiverse would be a “leap of faith” either way. (This is why I like to call the belief in a multiverse “faitheism”.) If one were to limit oneself to what is warranted by science, agnosticism is the only reasonable option.

    Nicely stated. And it leaves a massive, unanswered question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” It’s provocative, but not subject to any scientific investigation.

    Agreed. And I suspect that even a change in scientific theory would not really answer the metaphysical question. That is, even if we were to solve the problem of quantum gravity with a theory that replaced both general relativity and quantum mechanics, it is doubtful that such a theory would bring us any closer to a scientifically tractable answer to “why is there something rather than nothing?”

  35. 35
    whistler says:

    I think that’s basically right: choosing to believe in a Creator God or a multiverse would be a “leap of faith” either way.

    Nonsense.

  36. 36
    relatd says:

    Origenes at 31,

    I think the answer should be put in simple words.

    “Suppose you are right, why would anyone be hostile (to the point of accepting the most insane proposals) towards God in general?”

    The answer is, who do I worship? Myself? Or “great men”?

    If someone decides that only I can control myself. That only I get to choose, without outside interference from religion/god, what to do today and the rest of my life, then the answer is obvious. Man worships himself. No, not in a religious sense but certainly in a “I am free from everything, including god” sense.

    The critics of ID are more concerned about keeping people ignorant about the fact that they, and all living things, were designed. That means God to many, many people as far as who the Designer is.

    I think they fear the pressure to believe, and the behavior of believers. I heard the following: “Don’t shove your religion down my throat!”

    John 3:19

    “And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.”
    =================================================================

    “Satan, formerly called Lucifer, is the first major character introduced in the poem. He is a tragic figure who famously declares: “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven” (1.263). Following his vain rebellion against God he is cast out from Heaven and condemned to Hell.”

    – Paradise Lost by John Milton.

  37. 37
    Origenes says:

    Relatd

    The answer is, who do I worship? Myself? Or “great men”?

    If someone decides that only I can control myself. That only I get to choose, without outside interference from religion/god, what to do today and the rest of my life, then the answer is obvious.

    I would say that if one allows oneself to be led by others (great men) then one still bears full responsibility. It is your choice to follow someone else and to give him a position of authority. One remains responsible. If the “authority” errs the follower shares equal responsibility.
    My point is, you are free, in control, and responsible. That responsibility cannot be delegated by following others.

  38. 38
    PyrrhoManiac1 says:

    @31

    Suppose you are right, why would anyone be hostile (to the point of accepting the most insane proposals) towards God in general?

    I don’t think it makes any sense to say that they are hostile towards God. They are hostile towards organized monotheistic religions.

  39. 39
    relatd says:

    Origenes at 37,

    I saw the following on a sign outside a Christian Church:

    “Who or what influences you?”

    The following was said by Pope Francis:

    “Pope Francis, in his homily at the daily Mass at Casa Santa Marta, reflects on the hypocrisy of the “just,” who treat their Christianity “like a social habit.” They do not bring Jesus into their daily life, and so they cast him from their hearts. When we act like that, the Pope says, “we are Christians, but we are living like pagans!”

    “We who are born in a Christian society risk living out our Christianity as “a social habit,” in a purely formal manner, with the “hypocrisy of the just,” who are afraid to allow themselves to love. And when Mass is over, we leave Jesus in the Church; He does come with us when we return home, or in our daily lives. Woe to us! When we do this, we cast Jesus from our hearts: “We are Christians, but we live as pagans.” ‘

    So, all of us live in societies that value God and religion less and less. We must choose to live out our beliefs daily, not leave them in Church. Those who reject God and religion are working very hard to remove both from public life and to replace it with perversion. Perversions of the truth. To convince many to keep their religion to themselves and only practice it in their Church building.

    The critics of ID fear a religious revival – a turning back to God. If ID is linked to God – well, that’s unthinkable for some.

    We are responsible first to God, followed by civil authority. But recently, civil authority has been declared evil. That is not rational. No, I’m not saying that bad things never happened, but cooperation as opposed to conflict, needs to be promoted.

  40. 40
    relatd says:

    PM1 at 38,

    They are hostile toward religions but not God? You make no sense.

  41. 41
    Origenes says:

    Relatdt @39

    Pope Francis, who lectures you on hypocrisy, remained silent when in 2021 the CCP arrested the bishop of Xinxiang along with 10 priests. And when, in 2022, the Cardinal in Hong Kong was arrested by the new head of the country who is a CCP plant, Pope Francis said nothing.

    You are responsible for your choice to follow others.

  42. 42
    relatd says:

    Origenes at 41,

    The Pope was “lecturing” ALL Catholics about their attitude toward God, not just me. It is very important to point out that Catholics, in particular, are singled out for criticism, both in the past and today. I also heard the following: “You know what the problem is with you Catholics? All you do is listen to the Pope.” So who should I listen to? You? Some total stranger? Who the heck are you? I heard that in the 1960s.

    Your criticism of Pope Francis is incorrect and reflects a lack of research on your part.

    https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2022/05/22/without-mentioning-zens-arrest-pope-francis-says-he-is-praying-for-the-church-in-china/

  43. 43
    PyrrhoManiac1 says:

    @40

    They are hostile toward religions but not God? You make no sense.

    Why doesn’t this make sense to you? It seems straightforward enough to me: they are hostile towards the institutions, social practices, and social and political functions of organized religions, to the point of thinking that these cause a good deal of harm and that humanity would be better off without them.

    That’s perfectly consistent with these people not being hostile towards God, since no one cannot be angry at something that one doesn’t believe exists. An atheist could no get more angry at God than I could get angry at the Loch Ness Monster.

    There is, interestingly enough, a phenomenon seen in literature and philosophy called “misotheism“: a misotheist being someone who accepts that God exists, but that He lacks the competence or goodness that merit worship or praise.

    Needless to say, the New Atheists like Krauss are not misotheists. They are just old-school unsophisticated evidentialists.

  44. 44
    relatd says:

    PM1 at 43,

    Not hostile towards God? You missed a number of posts by Seversky? I doubt that.

    In the atheist world, only politics and power are real. These things are temporary. Eternity is eternal.

  45. 45
    critical rationalist says:

    CR, MWI apparently does not explain the evidence. Elsewise Wiseman would not have postulated the new “Many-Interacting Worlds” approach.

    How did BA reach the conclusion that the MWI doesn’t explain the evidence? By what Wiseman would postulate. But, according to BA, Wiesman is crazy. Why would he appeal to what a crazy person postulates? Because it suits his purpose.

    Specially, BA appealed to someone who he would consider a crazy person without knowing it. He was more than happy to appeal to what Wiesman thought, when he thought it supposed his position. Had I not pointed this out, he could have happily continued to appeal to him.

    But it gets better. After I revealed this to him, apparently, this doesn’t matter! He has still decided to appeal to Wiesman!

    Wiesman:

    “But critics question the reality of these other universes, since they do not influence our universe at all. On this score, our “Many Interacting Worlds” approach is completely different, as its name implies.”

    BA:

    So I still hold the wave function collapse experiment to be a falsification of the original MWI.

    The question is why?

    First, those other universes are implied by simply taking the wave function seriously. It predicts we will only observe one universe. This is why it is empirically indistinguishable from collapse and non-collapse theories, such as the many interacting worlds.

    But, BA is perfectly aware of this as he just appealed to empirical indistinguishability in an earlier comment, implying it excluded falsification. So, what gives?

    So, again, this does’t follow. It’s a non-sequitur.

    IOW, BA keeps selectively appealing to Wiesman, despite calling him crazy. Apparently, Wiesman is sane when he says something BA agrees with, but crazy when he doesn’t? How convenient?

    Being transparent, I’d note Wiseman’s quote was referring to is the Born rule.

    The Born rule was added as an after thought and I’ve already addressed it in an earlier video / comment. Regardless, I’ve previously referenced a video that criticizes probability in physics as a whole, which is fundamental to the Born rule.

    That would do away with the Born rule all together. So, it’s not even clear that the Born rule actually needs to be explained at all.

    Furthermore, even if we ignore this, the same sort of criticism could be applied to ID, as there is plenty of evidence that ID does not explain, but Neo-darwnism does. For example, what is the origin of the knowledge in organisms a designer would have put there as a consequence of designing them? Why did a designer design things in the very specific way it did, etc.? At best, the ID proponent can say “that’s just what the designer must have wanted.”

    So, does BA consider ID falsified as well? I mean, if we try to take BA’s own criticism seriously, isn’t that it’s true in reality, and that all our observations should conform to it, isn’t that what we should expect? But, of course not. This is simply par for the course. It’s only somehow a falsification when it suits BA’s purpose.

  46. 46
    critical rationalist says:

    Their insane behavior indicates they are in some perceived existential struggle with Christianity. Christianity is absolutely unacceptable to them, so gloves are off.

    Or they’re not insane and the have adopted explanation that best explain the phenomena in question.

    As for Christianity, and theism in general, supposedly God is an inexplicable mind, that exists in an inexplicable realm, which operates using inexplicable means and methods and is driven by inexplicable goals. From the perspective of an explanation, it’s unclear how adding God to the equation improves things.

    Theism is a special case of justifcationism. So criticisms of justifcationism are criticisms of theism. This includes the criticism of arbitrarily deciding to end criticism, there, rather than here, etc.

    What fuels them is the underlying assumption that if atheism fails, Christianity is true.

    Which is yet another false dilemma. I mean, come on guys. Where do yo get this stuff from?

  47. 47
    browntim says:

    “How do we know that the Big Bang was not “triggered by something”? Do we know anything about what went on before that?”

    According to current theory, there were no “before that” since time didn’t exist before Big Bang. Human mind has harder time to comprehend that there was something “before” time existed.

  48. 48
    jerry says:

    What fuels them is the underlying assumption that if atheism fails, Christianity is true

    Obviously no logical.

    But

    What fuels them is the underlying assumption that if atheism fails, Christianity is possibly true

    This is likely true for a lot of atheists.

    And

    As for Christianity, and theism in general, supposedly God is an inexplicable mind, that exists in an inexplicable realm, which operates using inexplicable means and methods and is driven by inexplicable goals. From the perspective of an explanation, it’s unclear how adding God to the equation improves things

    Gos was not added so this is backward.

    God was a conclusion or a given. Tying to explain God led to some of these explanations.

    ID just says there was a creator who had a purpose. One of those purposes was life. this creator had immense intelligence and immense power. No one knows how the creation happened. But was in the finite past.

    ID was not as formal as now as science has revealed a lot especially in the last 125 years. But the conclusion of a creator was prevalent from the beginning for probably most.

  49. 49
    bornagain77 says:

    Let’s just simply observe that Critical Rationalist, in desperately clinging to a insane worldview that insists he is endlessly splitting into a veritable infinity of new versions of himself, is not being very ‘critical’ nor is he being very ‘rational’.

    “In the well-known “Many-Worlds Interpretation”, each universe branches into a bunch of new universes every time a quantum measurement is made. All possibilities are therefore realised – in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonised by the Portuguese.
    https://phys.org/news/2014-10-interacting-worlds-theory-scientists-interaction.html

    Moreover, since all possibilities are realized in MWI, (i.e. some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonised by the Portuguese), then it necessarily follows that in some universe CR agrees with me and thinks that MWI is insane and that Christian theism is true.

    To point out the obvious, that is NOT a ‘rational’ position for a person to hold. So again, CR is simply not being very ‘critical’ nor is he being very ‘rational’ in his clinging to MWI.

    Yet, CR insists that he is not being crazy but that “those other universes are implied by simply taking the wave function seriously”. ,,, So CR readily believes he exists in a veritable infinity of other places simply because some mathematical equation written on a piece of paper can be contrived as implying he exists in a veritable infinity of other places? 🙂 Gullibility thy name is CR!

    While MWI may indeed take the wave function ‘seriously’, to rehash, MWI denies the reality of wave function collapse,

    Many-worlds interpretation
    Excerpt: The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is objectively real, and that there is no wave function collapse.[2]
    – per wikipedia

    Quantum mechanics – Philosophical implications
    Excerpt: Everett’s many-worlds interpretation, formulated in 1956, holds that all the possibilities described by quantum theory simultaneously occur in a multiverse composed of mostly independent parallel universes.[52] This is a consequence of removing the axiom of the collapse of the wave packet.
    – per wikipedia

    And while Wiseman may indeed deny the reality of wave function collapse in his new many ‘interacting’ worlds model,

    “so there’s no way function so of course there’s no wave function collapse”
    – Wiseman – 25:00 mark
    https://youtu.be/92lCzlBCNgU?t=1500

    I note that Wiseman himself, and via empirical evidence, directly contradicts himself and states, “the non-local, (i.e. beyond space and time), collapse of a (single) particle’s wave function”,, “the collapse of the wave function is a real effect”,, “the instantaneous non-local, (beyond space and time), collapse of the wave function to wherever the particle is detected”,, and “Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.”,,

    Quantum experiment verifies Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’ – March 24, 2015
    Excerpt: An experiment,, has for the first time demonstrated Albert Einstein’s original conception of “spooky action at a distance” using a single particle.
    ,,Professor Howard Wiseman and his experimental collaborators,, report their use of homodyne measurements to show what Einstein did not believe to be real, namely the non-local collapse of a (single) particle’s wave function.,,
    According to quantum mechanics, a single particle can be described by a wave function that spreads over arbitrarily large distances,,,
    ,, by splitting a single photon between two laboratories, scientists have used homodyne detectors—which measure wave-like properties—to show the collapse of the wave function is a real effect,,
    This phenomenon is explained in quantum theory,, the instantaneous non-local, (beyond space and time), collapse of the wave function to wherever the particle is detected.,,,
    “Einstein never accepted orthodox quantum mechanics and the original basis of his contention was this single-particle argument. This is why it is important to demonstrate non-local wave function collapse with a single particle,” says Professor Wiseman.
    “Einstein’s view was that the detection of the particle only ever at one point could be much better explained by the hypothesis that the particle is only ever at one point, without invoking the instantaneous collapse of the wave function to nothing at all other points.
    “However, rather than simply detecting the presence or absence of the particle, we used homodyne measurements enabling one party to make different measurements and the other, using quantum tomography, to test the effect of those choices.”
    “Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.”
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/is-there-a-center-of-the-universe/#comment-777575

    To point out the obvious, Wiseman. and MWI adherents in general, can’t have it both ways. Either “there’s no wave function collapse” or else, “the collapse of the wave function is a real effect”.

    Moreover, I point out that it is the evidence itself that is forcing Wiseman to say “the collapse of the wave function is a real effect” and that it his theory which is forcing him to say “there’s no wave function collapse”.

    How does Wiseman reconcile the direct conflict between empirical evidence and his theory? I have no idea. And frankly, after watching his conclusions, I find Wiseman to be all over the map with his new theory. There are several questions I would like to ask him about many of the presuppositions of his theory that he simply accepts as given.

    But anyways, as I pointed out previously, since Wiseman’s new theory is reliant on Bohmian mechanics, then his new theory can now be considered experimentally falsified,

    23:50 mark: “We’ve thought about how you generalize this beyond simple one particle in one dimension , and it becomes a lot more complicated. We don’t have any explicit form of the potential that we know would work but the basic idea would be is captured by this equation here that every world again obeys a newtonian, this is this is just newton’s equation, so the only thing which we’re doing is adding some quantum force which is exactly the force from Bohm’s quantum potential, but we’re imagining that that quantum force is determined by some sort of local averaging of the the density of worlds uh in in the region for the where that particular world is”
    – Wiseman
    https://youtu.be/92lCzlBCNgU?t=1427

    Bohm’s “quantum potential” can be considered falsified by experiment
    Antoine Suarez – Oct. 2014
    Abstract: A Michelson-Morley-type experiment is described, which exploits two-photon interference between entangled photons instead of classical light interference. In this experimental context, the negative result (no shift in the detection rates) rules out David Bohm’s postulate of an infinite-speed time-ordered “quantum potential”, and thereby upholds the timeless standard quantum collapse.,,,
    Page 3: 4. Discussion.—David Bohm’s assumption of an “infinite-speed time-ordered quantum potential” is generally supposed to reproduce the experimental predictions of quantum mechanics, and, so far, considered a possible causal alternative to the standard interpretation of the timeless wavefunction collapse at detection (see for instance [3, 5, 10–12]). Strictly speaking, Bohm’s time- ordered quantum potential implies disappearance of the quantum correlation in case the decisions at the beam- splitters BSA and BSB happen simultaneously in the assumed “preferred frame”, and hence it is actually at odds with standard quantum physics [13]. Nonetheless this prediction cannot be tested by a real experiment.
    By contrast, in the experiment presented in the preceded section Bohm’s assumption implies the shift in the counting rates predicted by (7). This prediction conflicts with relativity and is testable. Although a real experiment would be “nice to have”, it does not seem required if one considers that the falsification of the prediction (7) results by induction from the Michelson- Morley experiments repeatedly performed in the past. To this extent the negative result of these experiments can be straightforwardly extended to the entanglement version presented in the precedent section to conclude that shift predicted by (7) will not be observed. And this means that the Michelson-Morley entanglement experiment (Figures 1 and 2) rules out Bohm’s “infinite-speed time-ordered quantum potential”.,,
    Page 4: 5. Conclusion.—It is noteworthy that Bohmian mechanics conflicts with both, standard quantum mechanics and relativity. Whereas the conflict with quantum mechanics is not testable, the conflict with relativity can be tested through the experiment we have presented in this paper. Therefore Bohm’s “preferred frame” assumption can be considered falsified by experiment to the same extent as relativity is considered to be confirmed by it.
    By contrast, the standard quantum collapse at detection ignores the “preferred frame” (time-order) and thereby implicitly contains relativity. The proposed experiment confirms this view and highlights that relativity and quantum physics are two inseparable aspects of one and the same description of the physical reality. These two theories neither are incompatible with each other nor have a “frail peaceful coexistence”, but rather imply each other: we can’t have one without the other.
    https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.2014.pdf

    And in empirical science, evidence falsifies theory all the time.

    And also to remind, here are a few more ‘small’ problems with Bohmian mechanics

    Bohmian mechanics, a ludicrous caricature of Nature – Lubos Motl – July 15, 2013
    Excerpt: There’s no way out here. If you attempt to emulate a quantum field theory (QED) in this Bohmian way, you introduce lots of ludicrous gears and wheels – much like in the case of the luminiferous aether, they are gears and wheels that don’t exist according to pretty much direct observations – and they must be finely adjusted to reproduce what quantum mechanics predicts (sometimes) without any adjustments whatsoever. Every new Bohmian gear or wheel you encounter generally breaks the Lorentz symmetry and makes the (wrong) prediction of a Lorentz violation and you will need to fine-tune infinitely many properties of these gears and wheels to restore the Lorentz invariance and other desirable properties of a physical theory (even a simple and fundamental thing such as the linearity of Schrödinger’s equation is really totally unexplained in Bohmian mechanics and requires infinitely many adjustments to hold – while it may be derived from logical consistency in quantum mechanics). It’s infinitely unlikely that they take the right values “naturally” so the theory is at least infinitely contrived. More likely, there’s no way to adjust the gears and wheels to obtain relativistically invariant predictions at all.
    I would say that we pretty much directly experimentally observe the fact that the observations obey the Lorentz symmetry;,,, and lots of other, totally universal and fundamental facts about the symmetries and the interpretation of the basic objects we use in physics. Bohmian mechanics is really trying to deny all these basic principles – it is trying to deny facts that may be pretty much directly extracted from experiments. It is in conflict with the most universal empirical data about the reality collected in the 20th and 21st century. It wants to rape Nature.
    A pilot-wave-like theory has to be extracted from a very large class of similar classical theories but infinitely many adjustments have to be made – a very special subclass has to be chosen – for the Bohmian theory to reproduce at least some predictions of quantum mechanics (to produce predictions that are at least approximately local, relativistic, rotationally invariant, unitary, linear etc.). But even if one succeeds and the Bohmian theory does reproduce the quantum predictions, we can’t really say that it has made the correct predictions because it was sometimes infinitely fudged or adjusted to produce the predetermined goal. On the other hand, quantum mechanics in general and specific quantum mechanical theories in particular genuinely do predict certain facts, including some very general facts about Nature. If you search for theories within the rigid quantum mechanical framework, while obeying the general postulates, you may make many correct predictions or conclusions pretty much without any additional assumptions.
    https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/07/bohmian-mechanics-ludicrous-caricature.html

    A Critique of Bohmian Mechanics (Pilot Wave theory) – video
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn2hoU4jaQQ

  50. 50
    bornagain77 says:

    To call Bohemian mechanics ‘contrived’ is an understatement. Moreover, it is contradicted by mathematical and empirical evidence.

    “When Bohm expressed “hope” that violations of QM (Quantum Mechanics) would be found later and hidden variables supported, Bohr responded that the strange sentence is almost isomorphic to “I hope that 2×2=5 will be proven at some point which will have a good effect on our finances.”
    – motls – blogspot

    The One Theory of Quantum Mechanics That Actually Kind of Makes Sense – But most physicists don’t buy it. – Dec 1, 2016
    Excerpt: pilot-wave theory requires that “hidden variables” exist,,,
    But despite Einstein’s reservations, multiple mathematical theorems have all but proven that hidden variables cannot explain away all of the bizarre behaviors seen in quantum mechanics.
    http://www.popularmechanics.co.....cs-theory/

    “hidden variables don’t exist. If you have proved them come back with PROOF and a Nobel Prize.
    John Bell theorized that maybe the particles can signal faster than the speed of light. This is what he advocated in his interview in “The Ghost in the Atom.” But the violation of Leggett’s inequality in 2007 takes away that possibility and rules out all non-local hidden variables. Observation instantly defines what properties a particle has and if you assume they had properties before we measured them, then you need evidence, because right now there is none which is why realism is dead, and materialism dies with it.
    How does the particle know what we are going to pick so it can conform to that?”
    per Jimfit

    Experimental test of nonlocal causality – August 10, 2016
    DISCUSSION
    Previous work on causal explanations beyond local hidden-variable models focused on testing Leggett’s crypto-nonlocality (7, 42, 43), a class of models with a very specific choice of hidden variable that is unrelated to Bell’s local causality (44). In contrast, we make no assumptions on the form of the hidden variable and test all models ,,,
    Our results demonstrate that a causal influence from one measurement outcome to the other, which may be subluminal, superluminal, or even instantaneous, cannot explain the observed correlations.,,,
    http://advances.sciencemag.org.....00162.full

    But anyways, putting Wiseman’s direct contradiction in claims to the side, (and putting the falsification of Wiseman’s new theory by empirical and mathematical evidence to the side), the insanity of MWI, (to repeat), was postulated, first and foremost, as a way for atheists to avoid God.

    Specifically, “(Everett) was repulsed by the fact that the human mind seemed to be given a special role—a conclusion that Everett thought smacked of the supernatural.”

    The Atheist War Against Quantum Mechanics – Nov 28, 2021
    Excerpt: A dyed-in the-wool nihilist, Everett is known for ordering that his ashes be dumped into a trashcan when he died—a practice that Everett’s daughter later copied upon committing suicide. Everett brought this same dedication to bear in his scientific career. Today, Everett’s disciples praise him for bringing an atheistic scorn of the immaterial back to quantum mechanics.
    As a graduate student in the 1950s, Everett was alarmed to discover that traditional quantum mechanics did not line up with his materialist commitments. He was repulsed by the fact that the human mind seemed to be given a special role—a conclusion that Everett thought smacked of the supernatural. There seemed to be “a magic process in which something quite drastic occurred, while in all other times systems were assumed to obey perfectly natural continuous laws.”[4] In Jonathan Allday’s words, Everett firmly believed that such a “‘magic process’… should not be considered in quantum physics.”
    Everett therefore devised the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics—perhaps the most widely-known interpretation in contemporary popular culture. The purpose of the interpretation was, in essence, to create a consistent model of quantum mechanics that would preserve Thomas Huxley’s materialistic dismissal of the mind. Everett’s model continues to be extremely influential.
    David Deutsch, a militantly atheistic contemporary physicist, regards himself as a sort of apostle of Hugh Everett. “Everett was before his time,” says Deutsch. Before Everett, “things were regarded as progress which are not explanatory, and the vacuum was filled by mysticism and religion and every kind of rubbish. Everett is important because he stood out against it.”[5] Deutsch’s words of praise are important: Everett’s greatest achievement is not the elegance of his mathematical model, but that the fact that his model pushed back against “religion,” which is of course false.
    https://www.staseos.net/post/the-atheist-war-against-quantum-mechanics

    The late Steven Weinberg, an atheist, put to irresolvable dilemma for Darwinian atheists like this, ““,,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,,”

    The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017
    Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,,
    In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11
    Thus the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,,
    Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,
    http://quantum.phys.unm.edu/46.....inberg.pdf

    In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, (and like Everett), 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.

    As Anton Zeilinger stated, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”

    “The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
    Anton Zeilinger –
    Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437

    Moreover, Anton Zeilinger and company have now, as of 2018, pushed the ‘freedom of choice’ 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 the 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.

    Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018
    Excerpt: This experiment pushes back to at least approx. 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today.
    https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403

    Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining ‘freedom of choice’ 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 admitted, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”

    Moreover, when we rightly allow the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, (as the Christian founders of modern science originally held with the presupposition of ‘contingency’), and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands with the closing of the “freedom-of-choice” loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), then 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 bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics and provides us with an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”

    Oct. 2022 – although there will never be, (via Godel), a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’ that bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between quantum mechanics and general relativity, all hope is not lost in finding the correct ‘theory of everything’.
    https://uncommondescent.com/cosmology/from-iai-news-how-infinity-threatens-cosmology/#comment-766384

    Verse:

    Colossians 1:15-20
    The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.

  51. 51
    bornagain77 says:

    Of supplemental note, a major part of the reason that atheists were driven to postulate the insanity of MWI in order to avoid God is that, prior to collapse, the wave function is mathematically defined as being in an ‘infinite dimensional’ state which takes an infinite amount of information to describe properly.

    Why do we need infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces in physics?
    You need an infinite dimensional Hilbert space to represent a wavefunction of any continuous observable (like position for example).,,,
    However, these are all ugly and artificial schemes, and there is very little reason to prefer them over the perfectly reasonable standard Schrödinger theory, which is why we use infinite-dimensional Hilbert spaces in everyday quantum mechanics.
    https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/149786/why-do-we-need-infinite-dimensional-hilbert-spaces-in-physics

    Why does describing a quantum state take an infinite amount of information?
    Excerpt: Intuitively, things look pretty bad for Alice. She doesn’t know the state (of the wave function) of the qubit she has to send to Bob, and the laws of quantum mechanics prevent her from determining the state when she only has a single copy of (the wave function) in her possession. What’s worse, even if she did know the state (of the wave function), describing it precisely takes an infinite amount of classical information since (the wave function) takes values in a continuous space. So even if she did know (the wave function) it would take forever for Alice to describe the state to Bob.
    https://quantumcomputing.stackexchange.com/questions/14324/why-does-describing-a-quantum-state-take-an-infinite-amount-of-classical-informa

    As is fairly obvious, the ‘infinite dimensional’ Hilbert space corresponds to the Theistic attribute of omnipresence. And the infinite information required to describe the ‘infinite dimensional’ wave function prior to collapse to its finite particle state corresponds to the Theistic attribute of omniscience.

    Of supplemental note, It is also very interesting to note that the collapse of the wave function, (which, I remind, has now been experimentally shown to be a real effect), fits very well into Aristotle and Aquinas’s ancient ‘first mover’ argument for the existence of God, i.e. (reduction of potency to act).

    Stephen Hawking: “Philosophy Is Dead” – Michael Egnor – August 3, 2015
    Excerpt: The metaphysics of Aristotle and Aquinas is far and away the most successful framework on which to understand modern science, especially quantum mechanics. Heisenberg knew this (Link on site). Aristotle 2,300 years ago described the basics of collapse of the quantum waveform (reduction of potency to act),,,
    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....98261.html

    What Is Matter? The Aristotelian Perspective – Michael Egnor – July 21, 2017
    Excerpt: Heisenberg, almost alone among the great physicists of the quantum revolution, understood that the Aristotelian concept of potency and act was beautifully confirmed by quantum theory and evidence.,,,
    Heisenberg wrote:
    ,,,”The probability wave of Bohr, Kramers, Slater… was a quantitative version of the old concept of “potentia” in Aristotelian philosophy. It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality…The probability function combines objective and subjective elements,,,”
    Thus, the existence of potential quantum states described by Schrodinger’s equation (which is a probability function) are the potency (the “matter”) of the system, and the collapse of the quantum waveform is the reduction of potency to act. To an Aristotelian (like Heisenberg), quantum mechanics isn’t strange at all.
    https://evolutionnews.org/2017/07/what-is-matter-the-aristotelian-perspective/

    Frankly, I consider it nothing less than astonishing that Aristotle and Aquinas would deduce the basics of quantum wave collapse millennia before it would be confirmed by modern science.

    Colossians 1:17
    He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.

    So thus in conclusion, the insanity of MWI was desperately postulated by atheists, first and foremost, to avoid God. Yet the insanity of MWI is contradicted by mathematical and experimental evidence. Moreover, the experimental demonstration that wave function collapse is a ‘real effect’ confirms Judeo-Christian presuppositions that lay at the founding of modern science, (namely contingency), and also confirms the ancient unmoved mover, and/or first mover, of Aristotle and Aquinas.

    Not a bad track record for Christians and for Theists in general! Not a bad track record at all!

    1 Thessalonians 5:21
    but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.

  52. 52
    critical rationalist says:

    First, note that BA hasn’t, even remotely acknowledged or addressed the issue of selectively appealing to people he deems crazy, to prove and disprove things. Nor has he addressed the issue of arbitrarily appealing to empirically indistinguishable experimental results.

    Does he just think we’re not paying attention?

    Second, BA wrote:

    To point out the obvious, Wiseman. and MWI adherents in general, can’t have it both ways. Either “there’s no wave function collapse” or else, “the collapse of the wave function is a real effect”.

    But this is where the above comes into play. Experimentally, the wave function not collapsing is empirically identical to it collapsing. Observers would have the same experience. This is exactly what BA previously appealed to as a means to avoid falsification. Observers would have the same experience regardless of where the center of the universe is.

    From an earlier comment….

    And as George Ellis, (a former close colleague of Hawking), stated, “I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds…”

    “People need to be aware that there is a range of models that could explain the observations… For instance, I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds… What I want to bring into the open is the fact that we are using philosophical criteria in choosing our models. A lot of cosmology tries to hide that.”
    – George Ellis – W. Wayt Gibbs, “Profile: George F. R. Ellis,” Scientific American, October 1995, Vol. 273, No.4, p. 55

    And as Fred Hoyle, who discovered stellar nucleosynthesis, himself stated, “Today we cannot say that the Copernican theory is ‘right’ and the Ptolemaic theory ‘wrong’ in any meaningful physical sense.”

    If this isn’t an appeal to empirically indistinguishable results, then what is it?

    It seem that BA has inadvertently conceded the very criticisms I’ve made of his own position on the MWI, has teeth. He just didn’t realize it would also bite his own claim that MWI supposedly has been falsified by the results of those experiments.

    Whoops!

    Moreover, I point out that it is the evidence itself that is forcing Wiseman to say “the collapse of the wave function is a real effect” and that it his theory which is forcing him to say “there’s no wave function collapse”.

    But it’s not. that’s the point. BA has somehow picked up the mistaken idea that ether Einstein was right or the MWI is false. This is, well, a false dilemma.

    How does Wiseman reconcile the direct conflict between empirical evidence and his theory? I have no idea. And frankly, after watching his conclusions, I find Wiseman to be all over the map with his new theory. There are several questions I would like to ask him about many of the presuppositions of his theory that he simply accepts as given.

    Yes, apparently, BA has no idea. But, thankfully, we’re not dependent on whether BA can reconcile the results of those experiments and theories. Phew!

    From this article on the The Notorious Delayed-Choice Quantum Eraser…

    The electron is simply part of the wave function of the universe. It doesn’t make choices about whether to be wave-like or particle-like. But a number of serious researchers in quantum foundations really do take the delayed-choice quantum eraser and analogous experiments (which have been successfully performed, by the way) as evidence of retrocausality in nature — signals traveling backwards in time to influence the past. A form of this experiment was originally proposed by none other than John Wheeler, who envisioned a set of telescopes placed on the opposite side of the screen from the slits, which could detect which slit the electrons went through long after they had passed through. Unlike some later commentators, Wheeler didn’t go so far as to suggest retrocausality, and knew better than to insist that an electron is either a particle or a wave at all times.

    There’s no need to invoke retrocausality to explain the delayed-choice experiment. To an Everettian, the result makes perfect sense without anything traveling backwards in time. The trickiness relies on the fact that by becoming entangled with a single recording spin rather than with the environment and its zillions of particles, the traveling electrons only became kind-of decohered. With just a single particle to worry about observing, we are allowed to contemplate measuring it in different ways. If, as in the conventional double-slit setup, we measured the slit through which the traveling electron went via a macroscopic pointing device, we would have had no choice about what was being observed. True decoherence takes a tiny quantum entanglement and amplifies it, effectively irreversibly, into the environment. In that sense the delayed-choice quantum eraser is a useful thought experiment to contemplate the role of decoherence and the environment in measurement.

    But alas, not everyone is an Everettian. In some other versions of quantum mechanics, wave functions really do collapse, not just the apparent collapse that decoherence provides us with in Many-Worlds. In a true collapse theory like GRW, the process of wave-function collapse is asymmetric in time; wave functions collapse, but they don’t un-collapse. If you have collapsing wave functions, but for some reason also want to maintain an overall time-symmetry to the fundamental laws of physics, you can convince yourself that retrocausality needs to be part of the story.

    Or you can accept the smooth evolution of the wave function, with branching rather than collapses, and maintain time-symmetry of the underlying equations without requiring backwards-propagating signals or electrons that can’t make up their mind.

    Of course, I’ve alluded to this at length, repeatedly. And I’ve posted a reference to it in this thread. But this is inconvenient for BA, so he has either chosen to remain ignorant of it, disingenuously choose to exclude it, or some combination of the above. Perhaps he thinks if he doesn’t observe it by reading it, it doesn’t exist?

    But anyways, as I pointed out previously, since Wiseman’s new theory is reliant on Bohmian mechanics, then his new theory can now be considered experimentally falsified,

    Again, this doesn’t follow. It’s a non-sequitur. If Wiseman’s theory is falsified, then why not some other theory of the center of the world because it too is empirically indistinguishable from some other center of the world. Again, this is a flawed conception of science. What gives?

    Apparently, not unlike suggesting physical reality doesn’t exists unless someone is looking at it, BA thinks being empirically indistinguishable “does not exist” unless it suites his purpose.

  53. 53
    critical rationalist says:

    Again, for full transparency, this blog entry expands on the problem of deriving the Born rule, and gives multiple solutions, including one from Deutsch and the author of the post.

    Of note: probably was originally introduced to refer to games of chance in 1565 by Gerolamo Cardano. From there it started to find its way into physics. But Deutsch argues probability can be expunged from physics and science in general because it doesn’t actually speak about the actual physical world. Rather it just speaks of probable physical worlds, etc. See the talk Physics Without Probability

    As such, if probability can be removed from physics then probability, in the form of the Born rule, would be a non-issue.

  54. 54
    bornagain77 says:

    CR: “Experimentally, the wave function not collapsing is empirically identical to it collapsing.”

    In what world? Oh yeah, you have the insanity of an infinity of worlds to choose from. 🙂

    What George Ellis’s comment has to do with Wiseman directly contradicting himself I have no idea, but alas, being rational is apparently not a high priority in CR’s MWI. (which pretty much goes without saying) 🙂

    What Sean Carroll’s article on quantum eraser has to do with Wiseman directly contracting himself, I again have no idea either. But alas, in the fevered imagination of zillions of parallel CR’s, I guess, logically speaking, anything is allowed as long as God is avoided.

    CR rambles on incoherently about other issues, Born’s rule, etc.., that also have nothing to do with Wiseman directly contradicting himself.

    In short, CR, much like his belief that he exists in an infinity of parallel universe, has nothing but incoherence rambling to try to address my main points at 48-50.

    In short, I’ll gladly stand behind my posts at 48-50, and see no need to modify or edit anything that I have written from CR’s incoherent ‘rebuttal’, (if his response can even be called a proper ‘rebuttal’ of my claims).

  55. 55
    Origenes says:

    CR
    How seriously do you take the many-worlds interpretation (MWI)? Do you think that it is likely that you exist in an infinite number of parallel universes? Or does the idea strike you as counterintuitive?

  56. 56
    critical rationalist says:

    CR: “Experimentally, the wave function not collapsing is empirically identical to it collapsing.”

    In what world? Oh yeah, you have the insanity of an infinity of worlds to choose from.

    It’s empirically identical because that what the theory predicts. If observers evolve according to the wave function, which is what Schrodinger’s theory implies, when we take it seriously, then observers also split and end up in one of the possible outcome branches. This would give the appearance of collapse from each branching observer.

    But, again, this is outlined in the blog entry I just referenced. Apparently, BA cannot be bothered to read it. I guess I need to do his job for him?

    The status of the Born Rule depends greatly on one’s preferred formulation of quantum mechanics. When we teach quantum mechanics to undergraduate physics majors, we generally give them a list of postulates that goes something like this:

    – Quantum states are represented by wave functions, which are vectors in a mathematical space called Hilbert space.
    – Wave functions evolve in time according to the Schrödinger equation.
    – The act of measuring a quantum system returns a number, known as the eigenvalue of the quantity being measured.
    – The probability of getting any particular eigenvalue is equal to the square of the amplitude for that eigenvalue.
    – After the measurement is performed, the wave function “collapses” to a new state in which the wave function is localized precisely on the observed eigenvalue (as opposed to being in a superposition of many different possibilities).

    It’s an ungainly mess, we all agree. You see that the Born Rule is simply postulated right there, as #4. Perhaps we can do better.

    Of course we can do better, since “textbook quantum mechanics” is an embarrassment. There are other formulations, and you know that my own favorite is Everettian (“Many-Worlds”) quantum mechanics. (I’m sorry I was too busy to contribute to the active comment thread on that post. On the other hand, a vanishingly small percentage of the 200+ comments actually addressed the point of the article, which was that the potential for many worlds is automatically there in the wave function no matter what formulation you favor. Everett simply takes them seriously, while alternatives need to go to extra efforts to erase them. As Ted Bunn argues, Everett is just “quantum mechanics,” while collapse formulations should be called “disappearing-worlds interpretations.”)

    Like the textbook formulation, Everettian quantum mechanics (MWI) also comes with a list of postulates. Here it is:

    – Quantum states are represented by wave functions, which are vectors in a mathematical space called Hilbert space.
    – Wave functions evolve in time according to the Schrödinger equation.

    That’s it! Quite a bit simpler — and the two postulates are exactly the same as the first two of the textbook approach. Everett, in other words, is claiming that all the weird stuff about “measurement” and “wave function collapse” in the conventional way of thinking about quantum mechanics isn’t something we need to add on; it comes out automatically from the formalism.

    In response to this, the best we can get from BA is ad-hominems. The claim of being “crazy” is extremely vague criticism, as it could be applied to virtually anything. That would be like me saying BA is crazy for thinking physical reality doesn’t exist when he’s not looking at it.

    Suggesting something being unintuitive is not the same as crazy. After all, the idea of physical realty not existing unless someone is looking at is itself, unintuitive. You don’t see me calling BA crazy.

    This is in contrast to the criticism that collapse based theories are a convoluted elaboration of the MWI. They would requite adding something to the theory, such as an “observer function” that explains what observers do other than evolve according to the wave function. The theory puts the Born rule in at the outset! See above.

    As for Wiseman’s contraction, apparently, BA didn’t actually read the paper, which was focused on loopholes in Einstein’s views on quantum mechanics, the EPR experiment, etc.. Specially Einstein thought quantum mechanics was incomplete, which would exclude spooky action at a distance-like phenomena. This is explicitly addressed by the summary of the paper.

    We have demonstrated, both rigorously and in the easy visualized form of nonclassical Wigner functions, the nonlocality of a single particle using a modern and simplified version of Einstein’s original gedankenexperiment. That is, we demonstrated Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’ in that Bob’s quantum state (of his half of a single photon) was probably dependent on Alice’s choice of measurement (on the other half), and could not have been pre- existing. Quantitatively, we violated a multisetting nonlinear EPR-steering inequality by several s.d.’s (0.042±0.006).
    This EPR-steering experiment is a form of entanglement verification, for a single-photon mode-entangled state, which does not require Bob to trust Alice’s devices, or her reported outcomes. It was possible only because we used a high-fidelity single-photon state and very high-efficiency homodyne measurements, to perform the steering measurements on Alice’s side and the tomographic state reconstruction on Bob’s. Our results may open a way to new protocols for one-sided device-independent quantum key distribution10 based on the DLCZ protocol employing single-rail qubits46.

    Again, Einstein’s gedankenexperiment experiment, which is the target of this paper, is about hidden variables that would retain a classical characterization to reality. On the other hand, the many worlds interpretation isn’t local in a classical sense, yet presents an alternative means of restoring locality.

    But don’t take my world for it. Here are several excerpts from this paper co-authored by, you guessed it, Wiseman, which indicates he is quite familiar with multiple conceptions of locality, and that one of them is not applicable to, you guessed it, the many worlds interpretation.

    “Locality” is a fraught word, even within the restricted context of Bell’s theorem. As one of us has argued elsewhere, that is partly because Bell himself used the word with different meanings at different stages in his career. The original, weaker, meaning for locality was in his 1964 theorem: that the choice of setting by one party could never affect the outcome of a measurement performed by a distant second party. The epitome of a quantum theory violating this weak notion of locality (and hence exhibiting a strong form of nonlocality) is Bohmian mechanics.

    […]

    The answer to this EmQM17 focus question hinges, of course, on what one means by the term “local” (assuming that “nonlocal” is simply its complement). Perhaps surprisingly, it seems [2,6] that the word was not used in the context of interpreting EPR quantum correlations prior to the 1964 paper of Bell [7]. In that paper, Bell proved his 1964 Bell’s theorem; to quote [7]:
    In a theory in which parameters are added to quantum mechanics to determine the results of individual measurements, without changing the statistical predictions, there must be a mechanism whereby the setting of one measuring device can influence the reading of another instrument, however remote.

    In other words, some quantum phenomena are incompatible with the joint assumption of predetermination (or causality; Bell used both terms) and locality (or separability; Bell used both terms). In the above quote, it is the negation of locality that is characterised, in a way consistent with Bell’s earlier definition of locality; to quote [7]:
    It is the requirement of locality, or more precisely that the result of a measurement on one system be unaffected by operations on a distant system with which it has interacted in the past, that creates the essential difficulty.
    Thus, Bell intended to be (somewhat) precise about what he meant by locality. Unfortunately he did not give a general mathematical definition, nor did he define terms like “unaffected” or (in the first quote and elsewhere) “influence”.

    However, the obvious meaning, Equation (1), does not work in the EPR argument. Even one of Bell’s most ardent admirers [13] was forced to admit this [14]:
    It is simply not clear how to translate Bell’s words here (about locality) into a sharp mathematical statement in terms of which the EPR argument might be rigorously rehearsed.

    …[I]t must be admitted that Bell’s recapitulation of the EPR argument in this paragraph leaves something to be desired.

    Bell clearly (and, I think [2,3], rightly) thought local causality to be a more natural concept than locality as per Equation (1), as he never used the latter concept again. Regrettably, however, he did not abandon the word “locality”. Rather, beginning even in 1976 [19], he sometimes used “local” as short-hand for “locally causal”, and, a few years later, was apparently convinced that local causality was the concept that he (and EPR) had always used [21] (for details, see [2]). However, at least in his final word on the subject [20], Bell showed his preference unequivocally for the terminology “local causality” over “locality”.
    Thus we may return to the primary question posed above—Is the universe local or nonlocal? If by “locality” one means “locally causal”, the concept Bell promoted for most of his career in quantum foundations [22], then the answer (barring more exotic possibilities such as “superdeterminism” [20], retrocausality [23], and the subjectivity of macroreality [24]) is that the universe is nonlocal; it violates local causality. To avoid confusion, we might agree to say that the universe is Bell-nonlocal [2]. If, on the other hand, one adopts the definition of “local” indicated by Bell’s 1964 paper and commonly used in text books [25,26], then the answer is that we cannot say whether the universe is local or nonlocal. Operational quantum mechanics satisfies this weaker sense of locality, simply because it does not feature signalling faster than light, and denies the need for giving any account for quantum correlations beyond an operational one. We can only say that the universe is nonlocal, in this strict sense, if we make some other assumptions about its nature, such as determinism.

    […]

    Why Bell considered Bohm’s interpretation to be “grossly nonlocal”, rather than nonlocal simpliciter, is unclear. Perhaps it was because the theory is nonlocal even in situations where there is an obvious local hidden variable theory, as in the EPR-correlations [15], or the EPR-Bohm correlations [27].
    Unlike operational quantum mechanics, Bohm’s theory is a precise and universal physical theory. Restricting to the case of interacting nonrelativistic scalar particles for simplicity of discussion, it takes the universe to be described by a universal wavefunction ?(q)
    , obeying Schrödinger’s equation, where q
    is the vectorised list of the coordinates of all the particles. However, it also postulates a single point in configuration space, x
    , which encodes the real positions of all these particles. This “marvellous point” [28] or “world-particle” [29] has a deterministic equation of motion x?=v?(x)
    guided vicinally by ?(q)
    . (Note that “vicinal” is a synonym of “local” in the latter’s quotidian sense, introduced here to avoid any possible confusion with “local” in the technical sense defined in Section 2.) Here, “vicinal guiding” means that the world-particle’s velocity v?(x)
    depends on ?(q)
    and finitely many derivatives, evaluated at q=x
    . However, vicinal in configuration space is not vicinal in 3D space—the positions of Bohmian particles in one region of 3D space can affect the motion of an arbitrarily distant particle if entanglement is present. Since it is the position of Bohmian particles that encodes what an experimenter decides to measure, this gives rise to the `gross’ nonlocality of Bohmian mechanics which Bell noted in 1964.
    Bohm’s original proposal [4,5] actually used a second-order dynamical equation x¨=avicinal(x)+a?(x) The 3D-vicinal acceleration avicinal(x)
    is given by Newton’s laws, involving inter-particle potentials which drop off with 3D-distance. The nonlocal effects in Bohm’s theory arise from a separate, 3D-nonvicinal, quantum acceleration a?(x) Bohm’s publication of an explicitly nonlocal theory seems to have made it acceptable for other physicists to publish realist approaches to quantum mechanics in direct opposition to the Copenhagen interpretation. This included: de Broglie in 1956 [30], reviving his unpublished idea from 30 years earlier which prefigured much of Bohm’s work and used the first-order dynamics described earlier; and Everett in 1957 [31], introducing the relative state interpretation, more popularly known as the many worlds interpretation

    Here, the paper co-authored by Wiseman explicitly discusses the various conceptions of locality, how the many worlds interpolation presents a realists approach to quantum mechanics, which is distinct from the realism suggested by Einstein.

    As such, it’s unclear how Wiseman contradicts himself as BA claimed. IOW, again, BA’s objection assumes the false dilemma that, if Einstein was wrong, then the MWI is false. But this doesn’t follow.

    What George Ellis’s comment has to do with Wiseman directly contradicting himself I have no idea…

    What Sean Carroll’s article on quantum eraser has to do with Wiseman directly contracting himself, I again have no idea either.

    BA has made that painfully clear. I don’t have much to add.

    Fortunately, we’re not limited to what BA can comprehend, what work he’s willing to do to improve his comprehension, etc. If it merely sounds like something supports BA’s position, he’ll quote it without actually understanding it, look for clarifying references, etc.

    In short, I’ll gladly stand behind my posts at 48-50, and see no need to modify or edit anything that I have written from CR’s incoherent ‘rebuttal’, (if his response can even be called a proper ‘rebuttal’ of my claims).

    My supposed “incoherent rambling” isn’t even remotely controversial. Someone with a basic understanding of quantum mechanics, who actually bothered to do more than search for what appear to be confirming quotes, would make the distinction between the various kinds of locality, the various interpretations of quantum mechanics, which experimental results would conflict with them, etc.

    Apparently, this continues to go over BA’s head and he is bound and determined to keep it that way. Which is why he sees no need to edit or modify anything.

    Again, BA understands the concept of being empirically indistinguishable, as he appealed to it earlier in this thread regarding multiple centers of the universe resulting in the same empirical experiences for an observer. He still hasn’t explained why that was, other than an appeal to empirical indistinguishability.

    And as George Ellis, (a former close colleague of Hawking), stated, “I can construct you a spherically symmetrical universe with Earth at its center, and you cannot disprove it based on observations… You can only exclude it on philosophical grounds…”

    Given that The MWI is also empirically indistinguishable, surely BA thinks the MWI cannot be proved by observations. After all, this is precisely the criticism I’ve presented in regards to BA’s claim that the MWI has been falsified by, you guessed it, observations. Right?

    Of course, not. It doesn’t suit his purpose.

    IOW, BA continues to declare that the MWI has been falsified for reasons that don’t actually hold up under scrutiny.

  57. 57
    bornagain77 says:

    Critical Rationalist, is talking nonsense again. As referenced, MWI denies the reality of wave-function collapse. Yet, the empirical evidence itself says that wave function collapse is a real effect. As far as empirical science is concerned, MWI is falsified. Appealing to an infinity of branching universes does not negate the fact that wave function collapse is now shown to be a real effect in this universe.

    Moreover, I referenced papers that further falsified Wheeler’s new model via the falsification of Bohmian mechanics, but CR ignored them and rambled on about locality. But alas, I also provided a link to a paper that falsified non-local hidden variables. Thus falsifying that angle of non-local hidden variables as well.

    All to no avail. CR and his zillions of compatriots in parallel universes could apparently care less about actual empirical science and he is apparently more than willing to believe any insanity, even believing in a zillion parallel CRs, just so long as he can avoid believing in God.

    Sad.

    CR then has the audacity to claim that his basic understanding of quantum mechanics is much better than mine. But alas, I think CR is confusing his atheistically driven gullibility to believe in a zillion parallel CRs with a basic understanding of quantum mechanics. I disagree with his belief that his atheistic gullibility equals a basic understanding of quantum mechanics.! 🙂 In fact, I hold that his atheism is the primary thing that hampering him, big time, in ever achieving a proper, and basic, understanding of Quantum Mechanics.

    Romans 1:20-22
    For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools,

  58. 58
    critical rationalist says:

    Critical Rationalist, is talking nonsense again. As referenced, MWI denies the reality of wave-function collapse. Yet, the empirical evidence itself says that wave function collapse is a real effect.

    Note how BA hasn’t actually addressed any of my follow ups

    Which references? Which evidence? What form of locality? As they say, the devil is in the details and this clam falls apart under scrutiny. BA hasn’t even acknowledged there are different forms of locality in various interpretations of quantum mechanics, which would be falsified by different empirical evidence.

    Moreover, I referenced papers that further falsified Wheeler’s new model via the falsification of Bohmian mechanics, but CR ignored them and rambled on about locality.

    Note that BA hasn’t explained how Bohmian mechanics is actually related to the many worlds interpretation. Apparently, he’s read some passage or popular science article and reached this conclusion by some yet to be explained means. For example, from this paper on Wiseman’s many interacting worlds.

    The role of the wave function differs markedly in various formulations of quantum mechanics. For example, in the Copenhagen interpretation it is a necessary tool for calculating statistical correlations between a priori classical preparation and registration devices [1]; in the de Broglie-Bohm interpretation it acts as a pilot wave that guides the world’s classical configuration [2]; in the many-worlds interpretation it describes an ever-branching tree of noninteracting quasi-classical worlds [3]; and in spontaneous collapse models its objective ‘collapse’ creates a single quasiclassical world [4].
    In other formulations the wave function does not even play a primary role. For example, in Madelung’s quantum hydrodynamics [5], Nelson’s stochastic dynamics [6], and Hall and Reginatto’s exact uncertainty approach [9], the fundamental equations of motion are formulated in terms of a configuration probability density P and a momentum potential S (or the gradient of the latter), with a purely formal translation to a wave function description via ? := P1/2 exp[iS/~]. These approaches can describe the evolution of any scalar wave function on configuration space, which includes any fixed number of spinless particles, plus bosonic fields. In this paper we will similarly treat spinless and bosonic degrees of freedom.

    […]

    Here we take a different but related approach, with the aim of avoiding the ontological difficulty of a con- tinuum of worlds. In particular, we explore the possibility of replacing the continuum of fluid-elements in the Holland-Poirier approach by a huge but finite number of interacting ‘worlds’. Each world is classical in the sense of having determinate properties that are functions of its configuration. In the absence of the interaction with other worlds, each world evolves according to classical Newtonian physics. All quantum effects arise from, and only from, the interaction between worlds. We therefore call this the ‘many interacting worlds’ (MIW) approach to quantum mechanics. A broadly similar idea has been independently suggested by Sebens [14], although without any explicit model being given.

    So, Wiseman is quite aware of the nuances present in formalisms of each interpretation of quantum mechanics. Later, Wiseman even explains how his many interacting worlds is different from, you guessed it, Bohmian quantum mechanics!

    We now take the crucial step of replacing the Bohmian force (6), which acts on each world-particle xn(t) via (5), by the approximation rN (xn(t); Xt). Thus, the evolution of world-configuration xn(t) is directly determined by the other configurations in Xt. This makes the wave function ?t (q), and the functions Pt (q) and St (q) derived from it, superfluous. What is left is a mechanical theory, referred to as MIW, which describes the motion of a ‘multiverse’ of N co-existing worlds x1(t), . . . xn(t), . . . xN (t), where each world-configuration xn(t) is a K-vector specifying the position of J = K/D particles.

    Did BA actually bother to read the paper before making his claim? Apparently not.

    IOW, Wiseman’s many interacting worlds can be inspired by aspects of Bohemian mechanics, without actually being dependent on bohemian mechanics. After all, it’s also inspired by the MWI, despite the wave function playing a different role. Specifically it comes after, instead of being fundamental in the many interacting worlds interpretation, but still has multiple universes. The formalism is different.

    Furthermore, making a distinction regarding locality isn’t rambling. it’s crucial to understanding how to interpret the results of the experiments BA has referenced.

    And I’m the one who doesn’t care about evidence and science? What gives?

    All to no avail. CR and his zillions of compatriots in parallel universes could apparently care less about actual empirical science and he is apparently more than willing to believe any insanity, even believing in a zillion parallel CRs…

    This is rather odd, given that I’ve addressed the specifics about the evidence. If I didn’t care about, the evidence, then I’d just start calling BA crazy for believing physical reality doesn’t exist when he’s not looking at it, then call it a day, instead of posting references to papers, etc.

    … just so long as he can avoid believing in God.

    Again, this is a false dilemma. God couldn’t have decided to create the multiverse? How does BA know the mind of an infinite being? Why should God conform to what BA does or does not think is crazy?

    CR then has the audacity to claim that his basic understanding of quantum mechanics is much better than mine. But alas, I think CR is confusing his atheistically driven gullibility to believe in a zillion parallel CRs with a basic understanding of quantum mechanics.

    Then why does BA keep claiming experiments falsify the many worlds interpolation? Surely, if he had a better understanding, he’s be able to pick references to papers that actually align with his position. There is no substance, just more ad-hominems.

    In fact, I hold that his atheism is the primary thing that hampering him, big time, in ever achieving a proper, and basic, understanding of Quantum Mechanics.

    Then, by all means, BA should enlighten us. I mean, we have yet to hear why I only think the MWI isn’t falsified based on my follow ups, but it actually is. Where am I mistaken?

    Surely, If BA is correct, he should be able to reference some deeper understanding of quantum mechanics he can appeal to and elaborate on to clear things up. Right?

    For example, how did I pick the wrong form of locality for the evidence he’s referring to? But, before BA could even start, he’d have to concede there actually are different conceptions of locality, depending on which theory of quantum mechanics is in question, which would implicitly concede that his claim reflects a false dilemma.

    So, no, I won’t be holding my breath. But, by all means. Feel free to show me I’m wrong.

  59. 59
    bornagain77 says:

    CR is now resorting to flat out lying to defend the insanity of his belief that he exists in zillions of parallel universes.

    One of CRs zillions of compatriots claims “Note that BA hasn’t explained how Bohmian mechanics is actually related to the many worlds interpretation.”

    For crying out loud, I quoted Wiseman himself as to how Bohmian mechanics is related to his theory.

    23:50 mark: “We’ve thought about how you generalize this beyond simple one particle in one dimension , and it becomes a lot more complicated. We don’t have any explicit form of the potential that we know would work but the basic idea would be is captured by this equation here that every world again obeys a newtonian, this is this is just newton’s equation, so the only thing which we’re doing is adding some quantum force which is exactly the force from Bohm’s quantum potential, but we’re imagining that that quantum force is determined by some sort of local averaging of the density of worlds uh in in the region for the where that particular world is
    – Wiseman
    https://youtu.be/92lCzlBCNgU?t=1427

    Will one of the zillions of CRs apologize to me for lying? I have scant hope that there is enough integrity in any of the zillions of parallel CRs to do so.

    CR goes on to falsely claim “IOW, Wiseman’s many interacting worlds can be inspired by aspects of Bohemian mechanics, without actually being dependent on bohemian mechanics.”

    Yet, to repeat Wiseman, “the only thing which we’re doing is adding some quantum force which is exactly the force from Bohm’s quantum potential, but we’re imagining that that quantum force is determined by some sort of local averaging of the density of worlds uh in in the region for the where that particular world is

    So Wiseman theory, directly contrary to what CR is trying to claim, actually is dependent on Bohmian mechanics. Specifically, it is reliant on “the force from Bohm’s quantum potential”. It is just that Wiseman IMAGINES that the force is determined by “some sort of local averaging of the density of worlds”

    Wiseman’s words, not mine, Wiseman IMAGINES,, “SOME SORT” of local averaging of the density of worlds” that will get him “the force from Bohm’s quantum potential”.

    Thus, since Wiseman’s theory is dependent on Bohm’s quantum potential, then the empirical falsification of Bohm’s quantum potential that I listed still applies to Wiseman’s new theory.

    CR further claims, “making a distinction regarding locality isn’t rambling.”

    Yet, seeing that I referenced a paper in which ALL hidden variable theories are falsified, then it is certainly superfluous, and further demonstrates that CR, (whichever of the zillions of parallel CR I am talking to right now), does not know what he is talking about.

    Experimental test of nonlocal causality – August 10, 2016
    DISCUSSION
    Previous work on causal explanations beyond local hidden-variable models focused on testing Leggett’s crypto-nonlocality (7, 42, 43), a class of models with a very specific choice of hidden variable that is unrelated to Bell’s local causality (44). In contrast, we make no assumptions on the form of the hidden variable and test all models ,,,
    Our results demonstrate that a causal influence from one measurement outcome to the other, which may be subluminal, superluminal, or even instantaneous, cannot explain the observed correlations.,,,
    https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600162

    Then when it was pointed our that MWI was invented, first and foremost, to avoid God, CR claims that “God couldn’t have decided to create the multiverse? How does BA know the mind of an infinite being? Why should God conform to what BA does or does not think is crazy?”

    So CR’s imagines his god to be some kind of cosmic trickster that creates zillions of parallel CRs every-time a photon is simply observed? No wonder CR does not believe in God. He imagines god to be a capricious, even a malevolent, cosmic trickster

    But alas, the Judeo-Christian God that lay behind the origin of modern science itself is certainly no cosmic trickster, nor is He capricious and malevolent, as CR falsely imagines his god to be. But is instead trustworthy and rational. Indeed, that trustworthiness and rationality of the living Christian God is a huge reason why modern science was born in the Judeo-Christian culture of medieval Christian Europe, and in no other culture

    New Book: For Kepler, Science Did Not Point to Atheism – Stephen C. Meyer – January 17, 2023
    The Conflict Myth Unmade,,,
    As historian Ian Barbour says, “science in its modern form” arose “in Western civilization alone, among all the cultures of the world,” because only the Christian West had the necessary “intellectual presuppositions underlying the rise of science.”2
    So, what were those presuppositions? We can identify three. As Melissa Cain Travis shows, (in her book: “Thinking God’s Thoughts: Johannes Kepler and the Miracle of Cosmic Comprehensibility”), all have their place in Kepler’s seminal works. More generally, all find their origin in the Judeo-Christian idea of a Creator God who fashioned human beings and an orderly universe.
    (1) Intelligibility
    First, the (Christian) founders of modern science assumed the intelligibility of nature. They believed that nature had been designed by the mind of a rational God, the same God who made the rational minds of human beings. These thinkers assumed that if they used their minds to carefully study nature, they could understand the order and design that God had placed in the world.,,,
    (2) The Contingency of Nature
    Second, early pioneers of science presupposed the contingency of nature. They believed that God had many choices about how to make an orderly world. Just as there are many ways to design a watch, there were many ways that God could have designed the universe. To discover how He did, scientists could not merely deduce the order of nature by assuming what seemed most logical to them; they couldn’t simply use reason alone to draw conclusions, as some of the Greek philosophers had done.,,,
    (3) The Fallibility of Human Reasoning
    Third, early scientists accepted a biblical understanding of the power and limits of the human mind. Even as these scientists saw human reason as the gift of a rational God, they also recognized the fallibility of humans and, therefore, the fallibility of human ideas about nature.,,,
    Such a nuanced view of human nature implied, on the one hand, that human beings could attain insight into the workings of the natural world, but that, on the other, they were vulnerable to self-deception, flights of fancy, and prematurely jumping to conclusions. This composite view of reason — one that affirmed both its capability and fallibility — inspired confidence that the design and order of nature could be understood if scientists carefully studied the natural world, but also engendered caution about trusting human intuition, conjectures, and hypotheses unless they were carefully tested by experiment and observation.11,,,
    https://evolutionnews.org/2023/01/new-book-for-kepler-science-did-not-point-to-atheism/

    CR then finishes with this false claim “he’d have to concede there actually are different conceptions of locality,”

    Since I did reference a paper that falsified all hidden variable theories, I will simply let CRs lie hang there for all to see.

  60. 60
    bornagain77 says:

    Since CR did not touch upon Zeilinger’s closing of the ‘freedom of choice loophole’ which I listed at post 49, and yet the Theistic implications of free will was one of the primary motivations for the atheist Hugh Everett to formulate MWI, i.e. “(Everett) was repulsed by the fact that the human mind seemed to be given a special role—a conclusion that Everett thought smacked of the supernatural.”
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/is-there-a-center-of-the-universe/#comment-777605
    ,, since CR neglected to touch upon free will and quantum mechanics, I will go further into how consciousness and quantum mechanics are tightly correlated.

    First a little background.

    In 1922 there was a heated debate between Albert Einstein and Henri Bergson, (who was a prominent philosopher), over what the proper definition of time should be.

    Einstein bluntly stated, to an audience of prominent philosophers that he was invited to speak to, that, “The time of the philosophers did not exist”. And in fact, that disagreement with those philosophers, and with Henri Bergson in particular, over what the proper definition of time should actually be was one of the primary reasons that Einstein failed to ever receive a Nobel prize for his work on relativity:

    Einstein vs Bergson, science vs philosophy and the meaning of time – Wednesday 24 June 2015
    Excerpt: The meeting of April 6 was supposed to be a cordial affair, though it ended up being anything but.
    ‘I have to say that day exploded and it was referenced over and over again in the 20th century,’ says Canales. ‘The key sentence was something that Einstein said: “The time of the philosophers did not exist.”’
    It’s hard to know whether Bergson was expecting such a sharp jab. In just one sentence, Bergson’s notion of duration—a major part of his thesis on time—was dealt a mortal blow.
    As Canales reads it, the line was carefully crafted for maximum impact.
    ‘What he meant was that philosophers frequently based their stories on a psychological approach and [new] physical knowledge showed that these philosophical approaches were nothing more than errors of the mind.’
    The night would only get worse.
    ‘This was extremely scandalous,’ says Canales. ‘Einstein had been invited by philosophers to speak at their society, and you had this physicist say very clearly that their time did not exist.’
    Bergson was outraged, but the philosopher did not take it lying down. A few months later Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for the discovery of the law of photoelectric effect, an area of science that Canales noted, ‘hardly jolted the public’s imagination’. In truth, Einstein coveted recognition for his work on relativity.
    Bergson inflicted some return humiliation of his own. By casting doubt on Einstein’s theoretical trajectory, Bergson dissuaded the committee from awarding the prize for relativity. In 1922, the jury was still out on the correct interpretation of time.
    So began a dispute that festered for years and played into the larger rift between physics and philosophy, science and the humanities.
    Bergson was fond of saying that time was the experience of waiting for a lump of sugar to dissolve in a glass of water. It was a declaration that one could not talk about time without reference to human consciousness and human perception. Einstein would say that time is what clocks measure. Bergson would no doubt ask why we build clocks in the first place.
    ‘He argued that if we didn’t have a prior sense of time we wouldn’t have been led to build clocks and we wouldn’t even use them … unless we wanted to go places and to events that mattered,’ says Canales. ‘You can see that their points of view were very different.’
    In a theoretical nutshell this, (disagreement between Einstein and Bergson), expressed perfectly the division between lived time and spacetime: subjective experience versus objective reality.,,,
    Just when Einstein thought he had it worked out, along came the discovery of quantum theory and with it the possibility of a Bergsonian universe of indeterminacy and change. God did, it seems, play dice with the universe, contra to Einstein’s famous aphorism.
    Some supporters went as far as to say that Bergson’s earlier work anticipated the quantum revolution of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg by four decades or more.
    Canales quotes the literary critic Andre Rousseaux, writing at the time of Bergson’s death.
    ‘The Bergson revolution will be doubled by a scientific revolution that, on its own, would have demanded the philosophical revolution that Bergson led, even if he had not done it.’
    Was Bergson right after all? Time will tell.
    http://www.abc.net.au/radionat.....me/6539568

    Henri Bergson, as the preceding article pointed out, championed the primacy of ‘lived time’ over and above Einstein’s ‘spacetime’, Which is to say that Bergson championed ‘subjective experience’ over and above ‘objective reality’ in providing the proper definition of time. As the preceding article stated, the subjective experience of “duration”, was “a major part of his (Bergson’s) thesis on time”.

    In support of Bergson’s main thesis, and as Dr. Egnor, (a brain surgeon), has pointed out, “Duration, and/or “persistence of self identity”, is one of the main defining attributes of the immaterial mind that is irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian atheists.

    The Mind and Materialist Superstition – Michael Egnor – 2008
    Six “conditions of mind” that are irreconcilable with materialism: –
    Excerpt: Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,,
    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....13961.html

    Likewise, J. Warner Wallace also lists “Persistent self-identity through time”, i.e. ‘duration’, as a property of the immaterial mind that is irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian atheists.

    Six reasons why you should believe in non-physical minds – 01/30/2014
    1) First-person access to mental properties
    2) Our experience of consciousness implies that we are not our bodies
    3) Persistent self-identity through time
    4) Mental properties cannot be measured like physical objects
    5) Intentionality or About-ness
    6) Free will and personal responsibility
    http://winteryknight.com/2014/.....cal-minds/

    In more clearly defining what Henri Bergson actually meant by ‘duration’, and/or “persistence of self identity through time”, it is important to note that we each have a unique perspective of being outside of time. In fact we each seemingly watch from some mysterious ‘outside of time’ perspective as time seemingly passes us by. Simply put, we very much seem to be standing on a ‘tiny’ island of ‘now’ as the river of time continually flows past us.

    In the following video, Dr. Suarez states that the irresolvable dilemma for reductive materialists as such, “it is impossible for us to be ‘persons’ experiencing ‘now’ if we are nothing but particles flowing in space time. Moreover, for us to refer to ourselves as ‘persons’ (experiencing now), we cannot refer to space-time as the ultimate substratum upon which everything exists, but must refer to a “Person” who is not bound by space time. (In other words) We must refer to God!”

    Nothing: God’s new Name – Antoine Suarez – video
    Paraphrased quote: (“it is impossible for us to be ‘persons’ experiencing ‘now’ if we are nothing but particles flowing in space time. Moreover, for us to refer to ourselves as ‘persons’, we cannot refer to space-time as the ultimate substratum upon which everything exists, but must refer to a Person who is not bound by space time. i.e. We must refer to God!”)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOr9QqyaLlA

    In further defining the immaterial mind’s attribute of ‘the experience of the now’, in the following article Stanley Jaki states that “There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows.”

    The Mind and Its Now – Stanley L. Jaki, May 2008
    Excerpts: There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,,
    Three quarters of a century ago Charles Sherrington, the greatest modern student of the brain, spoke memorably on the mind’s baffling independence of the brain. The mind lives in a self-continued now or rather in the now continued in the self. This life involves the entire brain, some parts of which overlap, others do not.
    ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows.
    ,,, the now is immensely richer an experience than any marvelous set of numbers, even if science could give an account of the set of numbers, in terms of energy levels. The now is not a number. It is rather a word, the most decisive of all words. It is through experiencing that word that the mind comes alive and registers all existence around and well beyond.
    ,,, All our moments, all our nows, flow into a personal continuum, of which the supreme form is the NOW which is uncreated, because it simply IS.
    http://metanexus.net/essay/mind-and-its-now

    Several years after Einstein’s heated exchange with Bergson, which resulted in Einstein failing to ever receive a Nobel prize for his work on relativity, Einstein had another encounter with another prominent philosopher,, Rudolf Carnap.

    In particular, and around 1935, (and on a train no less), Einstein was specifically asked by Rudolf Carnap, “Can physics demonstrate the existence of ‘the now’ in order to make the notion of ‘now’ into a scientifically valid term?”

    “Can physics demonstrate the existence of ‘the now’ in order to make the notion of ‘now’ into a scientifically valid term?”
    – Rudolf Carnap

    According to Stanely Jaki, Einstein’s answer to Carnap was ‘categorical’, he said: “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics.”

    “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics.”
    – Albert Einstein

    Carnap and Einstein quotes are taken from the last few minutes of this video:
    Stanley L. Jaki: “The Mind and Its Now”
    https://vimeo.com/10588094

  61. 61
    bornagain77 says:

    Einstein’s ‘categorical. denial that ‘the experience of the now’ can be a part of physical measurement was a very interesting claim for Einstein to make since “The experience of ‘the now’ has, from many recent experiments in quantum mechanics, established itself as very much being a defining part of our physical measurements in quantum mechanics.

    For instance, the following delayed choice experiment, (that was done with atoms instead of photons) demonstrated that, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”

    Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it, (Delayed Choice) quantum experiment confirms – Mind = blown. – FIONA MACDONALD – 1 JUN 2015
    Excerpt: “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott said in a press release.
    http://www.sciencealert.com/re.....t-confirms

    Likewise, the following violation of Leggett’s inequality stressed the quantum-mechanical assertion “that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.”

    Quantum physics says goodbye to reality – Apr 20, 2007
    Excerpt: They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell’s thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it. “Our study shows that ‘just’ giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics,” Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. “You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism.”
    http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

    The Mind First and/or Theistic implications of quantum experiments such as the preceding are fairly obvious. As Professor Scott Aaronson of MIT once quipped, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”

    “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”
    – Scott Aaronson – MIT associate Professor quantum computation – Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables

    Moreover, advances in quantum mechanics even goes one step further and show us, via “quantum entanglement in time”, that “a decision made in the present can influence something in the past.” and, “Quantum correlations come first, space-time later.”

    Physicists provide support for retrocausal quantum theory, in which the future influences the past
    July 5, 2017 by Lisa Zyga
    Excerpt: retrocausality means that, when an experimenter chooses the measurement setting with which to measure a particle, that decision can influence the properties of that particle (or another particle) in the past, even before the experimenter made their choice. In other words, a decision made in the present can influence something in the past.
    https://phys.org/news/2017-07-physicists-retrocausal-quantum-theory-future.html

    Quantum Weirdness Now a Matter of Time – 2016
    Bizarre quantum bonds connect distinct moments in time, suggesting that quantum links — not space-time — constitute the fundamental structure of the universe.
    Excerpt: Not only can two events be correlated, linking the earlier one to the later one, but two events can become correlated such that it becomes impossible to say which is earlier and which is later.,,,
    “If you have space-time, you have a well-defined causal order,” said Caslav Brukner, a physicist at the University of Vienna who studies quantum information. But “if you don’t have a well-defined causal order,” he said — as is the case in experiments he has proposed — then “you don’t have space-time.”,,,
    Quantum correlations come first, space-time later. Exactly how does space-time emerge out of the quantum world? Bruner said he is still unsure.
    https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160119-time-entanglement/

    And in regards to quantum entanglement in time, Professor Elise Crullis draws out the implications and provocatively states that “entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted,,, it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.”

    You thought quantum mechanics was weird: check out entangled time – Feb. 2018
    Excerpt: Just when you thought quantum mechanics couldn’t get any weirder, a team of physicists at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reported in 2013 that they had successfully entangled photons that never coexisted. Previous experiments involving a technique called ‘entanglement swapping’ had already showed quantum correlations across time, by delaying the measurement of one of the coexisting entangled particles; but Eli Megidish and his collaborators were the first to show entanglement between photons whose lifespans did not overlap at all.,,,
    Up to today, most experiments have tested entanglement over spatial gaps. The assumption is that the ‘nonlocal’ part of quantum nonlocality refers to the entanglement of properties across space. But what if entanglement also occurs across time? Is there such a thing as temporal nonlocality?,,,
    The data revealed the existence of quantum correlations between ‘temporally nonlocal’ photons 1 and 4. That is, entanglement can occur across two quantum systems that never coexisted.
    What on Earth can this mean? Prima facie, it seems as troubling as saying that the polarity of starlight in the far-distant past – say, greater than twice Earth’s lifetime – nevertheless influenced the polarity of starlight falling through your amateur telescope this winter. Even more bizarrely: maybe it implies that the measurements carried out by your eye upon starlight falling through your telescope this winter somehow dictated the polarity of photons more than 9 billion years old.
    Elise Crullis assistant professor in history and philosophy of science at the City College of New York.,,,
    https://aeon.co/ideas/you-thought-quantum-mechanics-was-weird-check-out-entangled-time

    Moroever, as if that was not provocative enough, with “quantum contextuality”, (which is integral for quantum computing), we find that “In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation”

    Contextuality is ‘magic ingredient’ for quantum computing – June 11, 2012
    Excerpt: Contextuality was first recognized as a feature of quantum theory almost 50 years ago. The theory showed that it was impossible to explain measurements on quantum systems in the same way as classical systems.
    In the classical world, measurements simply reveal properties that the system had, such as colour, prior to the measurement. In the quantum world, the property that you discover through measurement is not the property that the system actually had prior to the measurement process. What you observe necessarily depends on how you carried out the observation.
    Imagine turning over a playing card. It will be either a red suit or a black suit – a two-outcome measurement. Now imagine nine playing cards laid out in a grid with three rows and three columns. Quantum mechanics predicts something that seems contradictory – there must be an even number of red cards in every row and an odd number of red cards in every column. Try to draw a grid that obeys these rules and you will find it impossible. It’s because quantum measurements cannot be interpreted as merely revealing a pre-existing property in the same way that flipping a card reveals a red or black suit.
    Measurement outcomes depend on all the other measurements that are performed – the full context of the experiment.
    Contextuality means that quantum measurements can not be thought of as simply revealing some pre-existing properties of the system under study. That’s part of the weirdness of quantum mechanics.
    http://phys.org/news/2014-06-w.....antum.html

    Quantum contextuality
    Quantum contextuality is a feature of the phenomenology of quantum mechanics whereby measurements of quantum observables cannot simply be thought of as revealing pre-existing values. ,,,
    Contextuality was first demonstrated to be a feature of quantum phenomenology by the Bell–Kochen–Specker theorem.[1],,,
    1. S. Kochen and E.P. Specker, “The problem of hidden variables in quantum mechanics”, Journal of Mathematics and Mechanics 17, 59–87 (1967)
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_contextuality

  62. 62
    bornagain77 says:

    And as the newly minted, (Oct. 2022), Nobel Laureate Anton Zeilinger stated, “what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”

    “The Kochen-Speckter Theorem talks about properties of one system only. So we know that we cannot assume – to put it precisely, we know that it is wrong to assume that the features of a system, which we observe in a measurement exist prior to measurement. Not always. I mean in certain cases. So in a sense, what we perceive as reality now depends on our earlier decision what to measure. Which is a very, very, deep message about the nature of reality and our part in the whole universe. We are not just passive observers.”
    Anton Zeilinger –
    Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism – video (7:17 minute mark)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4C5pq7W5yRM#t=437

    In fact, at his Nobel lecture Zeilinger stated, “When you look at the predictions of quantum mechanics for multi-particle entanglement,, so you could have one measurement here, one (measurement) there, an earlier (measurement), a later (measurement), and so on. These predictions (of quantum mechanics) are completely independent of the relative arrangements of measurements in space and time. That tells you something about the role of space and time. There’s no role at all.”,,,

    “There’s one important message I want to say here. When you look at the predictions of quantum mechanics for multi-particle entanglement,, so you could have one measurement here, one (measurement) there, an earlier (measurement), a later (measurement), and so on. These predictions (of quantum mechanics) are completely independent of the relative arrangements of measurements in space and time. That tells you something about the role of space and time. There’s no role at all.”,,,
    – Anton Zeilinger
    – 2022 Nobel Prize lectures in physics – video (1:50:07 mark)
    https://youtu.be/a9FsKqvrJNY?t=6607
    Alain Aspect: From Einstein’s doubts to quantum technologies: non-locality a fruitful image
    John F. Clauser: Experimental proof that nonlocal quantum entanglement is real
    Anton Zeilinger: A Voyage through Quantum Wonderland
    – Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 2022 “for experiments with entangled photons, establishing the violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science”.

    Thus from multiple lines of experimental evidence, (i.e. Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment with atoms, the violation of Leggett’s inequality, Quantum entanglement in time, and quantum contextuality, not to mention the Quantum Zeno effect and Quantum information theory), Einstein’s belief that “The experience of ‘the now’ cannot be turned into an object of physical measurement, it can never be a part of physics” has been thoroughly, and impressively, falsified.

    In fact, I hold that it would now be much more appropriate to rephrase Einstein’s answer to the philosopher Rudolph Carnap in this way; “It is impossible for “the experience of ‘the now’” to ever be divorced from physical measurement, it will always be a part of physics.”

    Verse:

    1 Thessalonians 5:21
    Test all things; hold fast what is good.

    Thus in conclusion, besides free will, via Zeilinger’s closing of the ‘freedom of choice’ loophole, being shown to be integral to quantum mechanics, the ‘experience of the now’ is also now shown, via multiple lines of evidence, to also be integral to quantum mechanics. i.e. fundamental aspects of the immaterial mind are shown to be extremely tightly correlated with the actions we are seeing in our quantum experiments.

    Personally, as a Christian, I consider the fairly direct Theistic implications of all these experiments to be VERY good news. Whereas, on the other hand, I have no idea how the zillions of parallel CRs may react to having their nihilistic atheism pretty much completely destroyed by these lines of evidence from quantum mechanics. My gut feeling is that anyone who is willing to believe in the insanity of a zillion parallel versions of himself just so in order to avoid God will not have a very pleasant reaction to this evidence. 🙂

    Why the Quantum? It from Bit? A Participatory Universe?
    Excerpt: “In conclusion, it may very well be said that information is the irreducible kernel from which everything else flows. Thence the question why nature appears quantized is simply a consequence of the fact that information itself is quantized by necessity. It might even be fair to observe that the concept that information is fundamental is very old knowledge of humanity, witness for example the beginning of gospel according to John: “In the beginning was the Word.”
    – Anton Zeilinger – Nobel Laureate 2022 – Quantum Physics
    http://www.metanexus.net/archi.....linger.pdf

    49:28 mark: “This is now my personal opinion OK. Because we cannot operationally separate the two. Whenever we talk about reality, we think about reality, we are really handling information. The two are not separable. So maybe now, this is speculative here, maybe the two are the same? Or maybe information constitutive to the universe. This reminds me of the beginning the bible of St. John which starts with “In the Beginning was the Word”.,,,
    Prof Anton Zeilinger speaks on quantum physics. at UCT – video
    https://youtu.be/s3ZPWW5NOrw?t=2969

    John 1:1-4
    In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

  63. 63
    Origenes says:

    BA @59

    Will one of the zillions of CRs apologize to me for lying? I have scant hope that there is enough integrity in any of the zillions of parallel CRs to do so.

    LOL

  64. 64
    critical rationalist says:

    I wrote…

    For example, how did I pick the wrong form of locality for the evidence he’s referring to? But, before BA could even start, he’d have to concede there actually are different conceptions of locality, depending on which theory of quantum mechanics is in question, which would implicitly concede that his claim reflects a false dilemma.

    Note that, as I predicted, BA still hasn’t addressed this. Nor do I expect him to for the above reason.

    Again, see the quote from Wiseman on the various characterizations of Bell’s locality…

    The most famous quantum theory which does make the assumption of determinism is of course David Bohm’s [4,5]. Indeed, Bohm’s theory was an inspiration to Bell who summarized the result of his 1964 paper in the introduction-cum-abstract as [A] hidden variable interpretation of elementary quantum theory [4,5] has been explicitly constructed. That particular interpretation has . . . a grossly nonlocal structure. This is characteristic, according to the result to be proved here, of any such theory which reproduces exactly the quantum mechanical predictions.

    Why Bell considered Bohm’s interpretation to be “grossly nonlocal”, rather than nonlocal simpliciter, is unclear. Perhaps it was because the theory is nonlocal even in situations where there is an obvious local hidden variable theory, as in the EPR-correlations [15], or the EPR-Bohm correlations [27].

    IOW, Wiseman’s theory is both non-local, despite having hidden variables. They’re just not the kind of hidden variables implied that Einstein was referring to in regards to excluding quantum phenomena, EPR, etc.

    However, BA keeps referring to evidence targeting EPR / hidden variables that would make QM local, then claiming they falsify the many worlds interpretation, etc. This just doesn’t add up.

    For example, BA wrote…

    For crying out loud, I quoted Wiseman himself as to how Bohmian mechanics is related to his theory.

    23:50 mark: “We’ve thought about how you generalize this beyond simple one particle in one dimension , and it becomes a lot more complicated. We don’t have any explicit form of the potential that we know would work but the basic idea would be is captured by this equation here that every world again obeys a newtonian, this is this is just newton’s equation, so the only thing which we’re doing is adding some quantum force which is exactly the force from Bohm’s quantum potential, but we’re imagining that that quantum force is determined by some sort of local averaging of the density of worlds uh in in the region for the where that particular world is”

    But, he hasn’t. To do this, BA would need to explain how the MIW theory being inspired by some aspect of Bohmian mechanics actually results in the theory having exposure to the same criticism he referenced. Specifically, he has yet to explain how the mere reference of the value of Bohm’s quantum force from Bohmian mechanics / pilot wave theory is problematic in MIW.

    In fact, it’s it seems that Bohm’s quantum force is actually used as a way to test MIW.

    While the MIW approach was motivated above as an approximation to the dBB interpretation of quantum mechanics, we have the opposite in mind. We regard MIW as the fundamental theory, from which, under certain conditions, dBB can be recovered, as an effective theory provided N is sufficiently large; see Sec. II B. Note that the MIW approach is conceptually and mathematically very different from dBB. Its fundamental dynamics are described by the system of N × J × D second-order differential equations.

    This is why Wiseman’s interpretation isn’t, well, Bohmian mechanics! If it was just Bohmian mechanics, it’s unclear why Wiseman would need to develop another theory.

    Also, note that BA ignored when I quoted Wiseman where he “[Takes] the crucial step of replacing the Bohmian force (6), which acts on each world-particle xn(t) via (5), by the approximation rN (xn(t); Xt)” in an earlier comment.

    So again, to summarize, the elephant in the room is BA equivocating on locality, in regards to falsification.

    But If he’s not equivocating, then he should explain how I’ve got the wrong kind of locality in regards to the many worlds interpretation, Wiseman’s many interacting worlds, etc., which has exposure to the evidence he keeps referring to.

    Again, I won’t be holding by breath for reasons I’ve already outlined.

  65. 65
    bornagain77 says:

    CR: I’m quite happy to let my posts stand as stated. All hidden variable theories, including Wiseman’s current one, are shown to be false. I could care less how many gears and knobs he attaches to his current theory to try and make it a little less insane than MWI is.

    As to: “I won’t be holding my breath for reasons I’ve already outlined.”

    But alas, in one of the veritable infinity of parallel universe, with zillions upon zillions of parallel CR’s, there is a CR who happens to be holding his breath. Moreover, there is a CR who happens to be holding his breath while he is riding on a pink unicorn. 🙂

    Why Most Atheists (must) Believe in Pink Unicorns – May 2014
    Excerpt: Given an infinite amount of time, anything that is logically possible(11) will eventually happen. So, given an infinite number of universes being created in (presumably) an infinite amount of time, you are not only guaranteed to get your universe but every other possible universe. This means that every conceivable universe exists, from ones that consist of nothing but a giant black hole, to ones that are just like ours and where someone just like you is reading a blog post just like this, except it’s titled: “Why most atheists believe in blue unicorns.”
    By now I’m sure you know where I’m going with this, but I’ll say it anyway. Since we know that horses are possible, and that pink animals are possible, and that horned animals are possible, then there is no logical reason why pink unicorns are not possible entities. Ergo, if infinite universes exist, then pink unicorns must necessarily exist. For an atheist to appeal to multiverse theory to deny the need of a designer infers that he believes in that theory more than a theistically suggestive single universe. And to believe in the multiverse means that one is saddled with everything that goes with it, like pink unicorns. In fact, they not only believe in pink unicorns, but that someone just like them is riding on one at this very moment, and who believes that elephants, giraffes, and zebra are merely childish fairytales.
    Postscript
    While it may be amusing to imagine atheists riding pink unicorns, it should be noted that the belief in them does not logically invalidate atheism. There theoretically could be multiple universes and there theoretically could be pink unicorns. However, there is a more substantial problem for the atheist if he wants to believe in them and he wants to remain an atheist. Since, as I said, anything can happen in the realm of infinities, one of those possibilities is the production of a being of vast intelligence and power. Such a being would be as a god to those like us, and could perhaps breach the boundaries of the multiverse to, in fact, be a “god” to this universe. This being might even have the means to create its own universe and embody the very description of the God of Christianity (or any other religion that the atheist otherwise rejects). It seems the atheist, in affirming the multiverse in order to avoid the problem of fine-tuning (and/or quantum wave collapse), finds himself on the horns of a dilemma. The further irony is that somewhere, in the great wide world of infinities, the atheist’s doppelganger is going to war against an army of theists riding on the horns of a great pink beast known to his tribesman as “The Saddlehorn Dilemma.”
    https://pspruett.wordpress.com/2014/05/12/why-most-atheists-believe-in-pink-unicorns/

    Atheist Accepts Multiverse Theory Of Every Possible Universe Except Biblical One – February 9th, 2017
    Excerpt: The ardent Multiverse proponent went on to state that he readily accepts that a universe governed by Mr. T riding a cyborg ostrich is possible. Also, one with floating, flaming bears instead of stars, one that contains planets full of hairy toasters made out of grape-flavored pudding, a universe that is just one humongous chicken in a bikini, and a universe that is literally a zit wearing a chef’s hat with the “@” symbol tattooed on its face.
    “I like to think there is a universe where Richard Dawkins has 20 heads, waffles rain from the sky covered in ice cream, the only plant that grows is pot and weiner dogs are the most socially progressive and advanced animal there is,” Hemsworth said with a cheerful glimmer in his eye. “Also there are only ponies, no horses.”
    When asked if this means that the universe outlined in the Bible might be one of these infinite possibilities, Hemsworth scoffed and said, “I am a scientist. I don’t have the luxury of engaging in that kind of wishful thinking.”
    https://babylonbee.com/news/atheist-accepts-multiverse-theory-every-possible-universe-except-biblical-one

  66. 66
    Origenes says:

    Bornagain, CR

    BA: … in one of the veritable infinity of parallel universe, with zillions upon zillions of parallel CR’s, there is a CR who happens to be holding his breath. Moreover, there is a CR who happens to be holding his breath while he is riding on a pink unicorn.

    Baffling that there is someone who actually believes this MWI madness and dares to call himself a “critical rationalist.”

  67. 67
    bornagain77 says:

    Origenes,

    “The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything.”
    – Chesterton – paraphrased quote
    https://www.chesterton.org/ceases-to-worship/

  68. 68
    critical rationalist says:

    Then when it was pointed our that MWI was invented, first and foremost, to avoid God, CR claims that “God couldn’t have decided to create the multiverse? How does BA know the mind of an infinite being? Why should God conform to what BA does or does not think is crazy?”

    So CR’s imagines his god to be some kind of cosmic trickster that creates zillions of parallel CRs every-time a photon is simply observed? No wonder CR does not believe in God. He imagines god to be a capricious, even a malevolent, cosmic trickster

    First, some kind of dualism could be true, despite God not existing. It’s unclear why he thinks these things are joined at the hip. Regardless, BA’s claim that “MWI was invented, first and foremost, to avoid God” appears to be a false dilemma that is pulled out of thin air.

    It’s unclear why God, being infinite, couldn’t have some good reason why he created the multiverse that we mere mortals cannot understand. After all, theists make this kind of appeal all the time, when it suits their purpose. If God created the biosphere, where is he now? Why didn’t he leave a signature in the designs of organisms? Why didn’t he explicitly reference other conscious beings, like Shakespeare did in his works? Why did he create organisms in a way that is radically incompatible with Neo-darwinism? Why didn’t the knowledge he supposedly put in living things also contain explanatory knowledge, which only people can create? Should I go on? Of course, the answer to this is that God could have but he must have had some good reason we cannot comprehend.

    It’s funny how God conveniently becomes comprehensible that theists can rule out

    Second, apparently BA didn’t get the right emphasis, which is “Why should God conform to what BA does or does not think is crazy?” Apparently, BA thinks reality not existing unless someone is looking at it isn’t crazy. But, fortunately, we’re not limited to BA’s conclusions on unintuitive phenomena.

    Third, the MWI is the most direct interoperation of QM. Everything evolves according to the wave function. The observer splits, along with everything else and has the same experience as if the wave function collapsed.

    This goes back to empirical indistinguishability, which BA appealed to earlier in this thread. You can propose different centers of the universe, and those theories predict the same empirical observations. From the perspective of the observer, their experience will be same, despite the fact that each of those theories suggest the underlying, unseen realities that explain them are materially different.

    After all, astronomy isn’t the science of what astronomers will experience. It’s about what the universe is really like, out there, in reality. It wasn’t that long ago that astronomers experienced stars as tiny white lights in the sky, not the massive “spheres of incandescent gas, millions of kilometres in diameter and light years away” that are necessary consequences of out theories of optics, physics, geometry, etc.

    This is why BA’s view of science is flawed.

    “Instrumentalism, even aside from the philosophical enormity of reducing science to a collection of statements about human experiences, does not make sense in its own terms. For there is no such thing as a purely predictive, explanationless theory. One cannot make even the simplest prediction without invoking quite a sophisticated explanatory framework.”

    You can’t even look at anything directly in front of you without implicitly invoking theories about optics, physics, electrochemical reactions, etc. This is because, it turned out our senses, which were supposed to be the infallible source of knowledge we could always turn to, of last resort, to not lead us into error, are actually based on highly complex, systems that reflect long chains of hard to vary explanatory theories.

    So much for Empiricism.

  69. 69
    critical rationalist says:

    CR: I’m quite happy to let my posts stand as stated. All hidden variable theories, including Wiseman’s current one, are shown to be false.

    And how did BA reach this conclusion? Surely, it was due to that evidence he was referring to, he can show how I was using the wrong concept of locality, etc? Right?

    I could care less how many gears and knobs he attaches to his current theory to try and make it a little less insane than MWI is.

    IOW, it’s false because BA think it’s insane. Not because of empirical evidence from some experiment, like he claimed. Go figure.

    Why didn’t he just come out and say that in the first place?

  70. 70
    bornagain77 says:

    CR:,,, “despite God not existing.”,,,

    Confidently claims the man who, apparently without any hesitation, imagines himself to be a veritable god who exists in an infinitude of parallel universes. 🙂

    CR, not to spoil the delusions of grandeur that zillions of parallel CRs must possess for you, but you do realize that the arguments against God’s existence are paper thin, and even self-refuting, do you not?

    Elite Scientists Don’t Have Elite Reasons for Being Atheists – November 8, 2016
    Excerpt: Dr. Jonathan Pararejasingham has compiled video of elite scientists and scholars to make the connection between atheism and science. Unfortunately for Pararejasingham, once you get past the self-identification of these scholars as non-believers, there is simply very little there to justify the belief in atheism.,,,
    What I found was 50 elite scientists expressing their personal opinions, but none had some powerful argument or evidence to justify their opinions. In fact, most did not even cite a reason for thinking atheism was true.,,,
    The few that did try to justify their atheism commonly appealed to God of the Gaps arguments (there is no need for God, therefore God does not exist) and the Argument from Evil (our bad world could not have come from an All Loving, All Powerful God). In other words, it is just as I thought it would be. Yes, most elite scientists and scholars are atheists. But their reasons for being atheists and agnostics are varied and often personal. And their typical arguments are rather common and shallow – god of the gaps and the existence of evil. It would seem clear that their expertise and elite status is simply not a causal factor behind their atheism.
    Finally, it is also clear the militant atheism of Dawkins is a distinct minority view among these scholars.
    https://shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/elite-scientists-dont-have-elite-reasons-for-being-atheists/
    March 2021 Since Atheists have no real scientific evidence to support their belief in Darwinian evolution, or to support their belief that the universe spontaneously arose, ‘elite’ atheistic scientists are stuck with fallacious philosophical arguments against God that, upon close inspection, fall apart.
    Two of these fallacious philosophical arguments against God, that Atheists are dependent on, are the ‘God of the gaps argument’, and the ‘argument from evil’.
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/free-excerpt-from-steve-meyers-new-book-return-of-the-god-hypothesis/#comment-726833

    Whereas, on the other hand, the arguments for God’s existence are extremely deep, multifaceted, and even compelling.

    20 Arguments For God’s Existence – Dr. Peter Kreeft
    1. The Argument from Change
    2. The Argument from Efficient Causality
    3. The Argument from Time and Contingency
    4. The Argument from Degrees of Perfection
    5. The Design Argument
    6. The Kalam Argument
    7. The Argument from Contingency
    8. The Argument from the World as an Interacting Whole
    9. The Argument from Miracles
    10. The Argument from Consciousness
    11. The Argument from Truth
    12. The Argument from the Origin of the Idea of God
    13. The Ontological Argument
    14. The Moral Argument
    15. The Argument from Conscience
    16. The Argument from Desire
    17. The Argument from Aesthetic Experience
    18. The Argument from Religious Experience
    19. The Common Consent Argument
    20. Pascal’s Wager
    http://www.strangenotions.com/god-exists/

    Over 100 Arguments for the Existence of God – (Lecture starts around the 12 minute mark)
    https://youtu.be/Qi7ANgO2ZBU?t=723
    In this video, Dr. Chad McIntosh presents over 100 arguments for the existence of God. Each argument is presented in visual form followed by recommended sources for further research. At the end, we discuss what a similar list of arguments for atheism would look like (and what it would imply for the theistic list of arguments).

    Baylor ISR- Plantinga Conference: (2 Dozen or So Arguments) – (Nov. 7, 2014) – video playlist
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPuZYzfOgzY&list=PL0JmtbsEea3gcN5eNq-0JXq2qTwDg7L_Q&index=12

    Table Of Contents for TWO DOZEN (OR SO) ARGUMENTS FOR GOD: THE PLANTINGA PROJECT
    I. Half a Dozen (or so) ontological (or metaphysical) arguments
    (A) The Argument from Intentionality (or Aboutness)
    • Lorraine Keller, Niagara University
    • “Propositions Supernaturalized”
    (B) The Argument from Collections
    • Chris Menzel, Texas A&M
    • “The Argument from Collections”
    (C) The Argument from (Natural) Numbers
    • Tyron Goldshmidt, Wake Forest
    • “The Argument from (Natural) Numbers”
    (D) The Argument From Counterfactuals
    • Alex Pruss, Baylor University
    • “Counterfactuals, Vagueness and God”
    (E) The Argument from Physical Constants
    • Robin Collins, Messiah College
    • “The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability”
    (F) The Naive Teleological Argument
    • C. Stephen Evans, Baylor University
    • “An Argument from Design for Ordinary People”
    (H) The Ontological Argument
    • Elizabeth Burns, Heythrop College
    • “Patching Planting’s Ontological Argument by Making the Murdoch Move”
    (I) Why is there anything at all?
    • Josh Rasmussen, Azusa Pacific; and Christopher Gregory Weaver, Rutgers University
    • “Why is There Anything?”

    II. Half a dozen Epistemological Arguments
    (J) The argument from positive epistemic status
    • Justin Barrett, Fuller Seminary
    • “Evolutionary Psychology and the Argument from Positive Epistemic Status”
    (K) The Argument from the confluence of proper function and reliability
    • Alex Arnold, The John Templeton Foundation
    • “Is God the Designer of our Cognitive Faculties? Evaluating Plantinga’s Argument”
    (L) The Argument from Simplicity and (M) The Argument from Induction
    • Bradly Monton, Independent Scholar
    • “Atheistic Induction by Boltzmann Brains”

    (N) The Putnamian Argument (the Argument from the Rejection of Global Skepticism)[also, (O) The Argument from Reference and (K) The Argument from the Confluence of Proper Function and Reliability]
    • Even Fales, University of Iowa
    • “Putnam’s Semantic Skepticism and the Epistemic Melt-Down of Naturalism: How Defeat of Putnam’s Puzzle Provides a Defeater for Plantinga’s Self-Defeat Argument Against Naturalism”

    (N) The Putnamian Argument, (O) The Argument from Reference, and (P) The Kripke-Wittgenstein Argument from Plus and Quus
    • Dan Bonevac, University of Texas
    • “Arguments from Knowledge, Reference, and Content”

    (Q) The General Argument from Intuition.
    • Rob Koons, University of Texas at Austin
    • “The General Argument from Intuition”

    III. Moral arguments
    (R) Moral Arguments (actually R1 to Rn)
    • David Baggett, Liberty University
    • “An Abductive Moral Argument for God”

    (R*) The argument from evil.
    • Hud Hudson, Western Washington University
    • “Felix Culpa!”

    IV. Other Arguments
    (S) The Argument from Colors and Flavors
    • Richard Swinburne, Oxford University
    • “The Argument from Consciousness”
    (T) The Argument from Love and (Y) The Argument from the Meaning of Life
    • Jerry Walls, Houston Baptist University
    • “The God of Love and the Meaning of Life”
    (U) The Mozart Argument and (V) The Argument from Play and Enjoyment
    • Philip Tallon, Houston Baptist University
    • “The Theistic Argument from Beauty and Play”
    (W) Arguments from providence and from miracles
    • Tim McGrew, Western Michigan University
    • “Of Miracles: The State of the Art and the Uses of History”
    (X) C.S. Lewis’s Argument from Nostalgia
    • Todd Buras, Baylor University and Mike Cantrell
    • “A New Argument from Desire”
    (Z) The Argument from (A) to (Y)
    • Ted Poston, University of South Alabama
    • “The Argument from So Many Arguments”

    V. “Or so”: Three More Arguments
    The Kalam Cosmological Argument
    • William Lane Craig, Houston Baptist University
    • “The Kalam Cosmological Argument”
    The Argument from Possibility
    • Brian Leftow, Oxford University
    • “The Argument from Possibility”
    The Argument from the Incompleteness of Nature
    • Bruce Gordon, Houston Baptist University
    • “The Necessity of Sufficiency: The Argument from the Incompleteness of Nature”
    – Two Dozen (or so) Arguments for God: The Plantinga Project – Paperback
    https://www.amazon.com/Two-Dozen-Arguments-God-Plantinga/dp/0190842229

    Feb. 2023 – Moreover, I hold that if we take the artificial blinders off of science, specifically take the artificially imposed blinder of ‘methodological naturalism’ off of science, and let the scientific evidence speak for itself, then the scientific evidence itself is also very good at pointing us to Theism, even to Christianity, not to atheistic naturalism, as the true explanation for reality.
    https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/massive-early-galaxies-defy-prior-understanding-of-the-universe/#comment-776610

  71. 71
    Origenes says:

    CR:

    Several authors, including Wheeler, Everett and Deutsch, call many-worlds a theory or metatheory, rather than just an interpretation (…) Deutsch dismissed the idea that many-worlds is an “interpretation”, saying that to call it an interpretation “is like talking about dinosaurs as an ‘interpretation’ of fossil records.” [wiki]

    For a fallibilist, a “metatheory” is close to beyond criticism. So, here is Deutsch, a guy who is more than willing to doubt that cogito ergo sum is true, proclaiming that MWI is a “metatheory.” Talking about selective hyper skeptics ….

  72. 72
    bornagain77 says:

    Of related note, through the last decade or so, I have really appreciated Dr. Egnor explaining some of the more ancient arguments for God’s existence,

    The Divine Hiddenness Argument Against God’s Existence = Nonsense – Michael Egnor – Oct. 4, 2021
    Excerpt: We will set aside Scriptural revelation and personal experience (given that atheists like Dillahunty discount these anyway) and consider the ways in which God shows Himself in nature (i.e., the ten ways that God’s existence can be known that I listed during my debate with Dillahunty. Here are three excellent references for the details of these various arguments: Aquinas: A Beginner’s Guide, (Edward Feser), Five Proofs of the Existence of God (Edward Feser), and Letters to an Atheist (Peter Kreeft).
    These and other works cover evidence such as Aquinas’ First Way (by change in nature), Aquinas’ Second Way (by cause in nature), Aquinas’ Third Way (by contingent existence), Aquinas’ Fourth Way (by degrees of perfection), and Aquinas’ Fifth Way (by design in nature) as well as the Thomistic argument from existence, the Neoplatonic argument (from the order of things), the Augustinian argument (from abstract objects), the rationalist argument (from the principal of sufficient reason), and the argument for Moral Law (from the reality of objective moral obligation).
    Each of these proofs of God’s existence is revealed to us through our intellect.
    Is the information that God provides in these ways sufficient to convince a reasonable person of His existence? Consider the ten ways that simple everyday experience provides inexhaustible evidence for His existence:
    Every change in nature proves His existence. Every cause in nature proves His existence. Everything that exists in nature proves His existence. Every degree of perfection in nature proves His existence. Every manifestation of natural design proves His existence. Every realization of possibility in nature proves His existence. Every manifestation of organization in nature proves His existence. Every abstract concept proves His existence. Every reason for anything in nature proves His existence. And every twinge of human conscience proves His existence.
    Natural science provides massive evidence for His existence as well. The Big Bang — i.e., the creation of the universe from nothing in an immense primordial flash of light — is a remarkable confirmation of the beginning of the book of Genesis. Astrophysicists have discovered dozens of physical forces and properties in the universe that must have very specific values to permit human life — and of course these forces and properties do have exactly the values necessary for our existence (as if Someone rigged physics just for us). The DNA in living things is an actual code — in every meaningful sense like a computer code with letters and words, grammar and phrases, sentences and punctuation. And life forms’ intracellular metabolism is run by an astonishingly intricate and elegant system of biological nanotechnology.
    So my question to Dillahunty and to other atheists who endorse the Divine Hiddenness argument against God’s existence is this: What is it about God’s existence that you still consider hidden?
    https://mindmatters.ai/2021/10/the-divine-hiddenness-argument-against-gods-existence-nonsense/

  73. 73
    critical rationalist says:

    CR: I’m quite happy to let my posts stand as stated. All hidden variable theories, including Wiseman’s current one, are shown to be false.

    First, just a reminder: the many worlds interpretation doesn’t have any hidden variables, including the kind in the MIW / Pilot wave theory or the kind that Einstein proposed. But, again, details like this are irrelevant to BA. It’s just crazy.

    Second, in regards to the appeal to “good reasons we cannot comprehend” I’d also point out that, on one hand, God supposedly heals patents of cancer and other diseases, etc., but he won’t heal amputees.

    Why not?

    After all, if we take the claims of creationists seriously, God supposedly created human beings. So, restoring limbs would be child’s play. (Even less than child’s play, as God is supposedly infinite, exists outside of time, knows everything that could possibly be known, etc. Saying God wouldn’t even “break a sweat” wouldn’t even come close.) But, even then, God wouldn’t need to perform some great miracle time after time. After all, we know regrowing limbs wouldn’t violate the laws of physics because some species of salamanders do it So, God could just make a few changes in the human genome to give us the ability to regrow limbs as well. Or better yet, he could just reveal that knowledge to us, along with the knowledge of how to make those changes in human beings. Right? I mean, assuming we do not destroy ourselves first, it’s something we can figure out eventually, like how to cure cancer. So why heal cancer patients, but not amputees?

    If you doubt this, we can again take creationism seriously. If it’s true that God created the biosphere, then God also intentionally created that species of salamanders with the necessary genes (but not other species of salamanders?). So, he must already possess the knowledge of exactly which genes are necessary, to result in just the right proteins that will result in just the right features to regrown limbs. And he must already possess the knowledge of how to bring about those changes in living things. Otherwise, how did that knowledge end up in salamanders, giving them that ability, in the first place? Of course, this also means the opposite is true. When God created human beings, he intentionally omitted that knowledge. .

    Now, let’s let that sink in for a few moments, shall we? When we do this, creationists are left with an implicit theory that we’re supposed to accept.

    Specifically, I’m supposed to believe is that God intentionally gave some species of salamanders (but not others?) the ability to regrow their limbs, despite the fact that salamanders cannot conceive of disability. They don’t feel awkward, left out, frustrated, incapacitated, depressed, inadequate and even suicidal. All of those reflect concepts that only people (which includes human beings) can experience. Salamanders cannot experience them. Yet, God decided not to give those genes to human beings, who can and do experience them.

    So, if we take creationism seriously, God could have given those genes to human beings. Which is something he supposedly already knows how, has already done and could do without performing miracle after miracle (which is supposedly something God does when he heals cancer and other diseases.) So why didn’t he?

    The best the theist can do is, God must have some good reason we cannot comprehend.

    Of course, should someone apply this to God and the MWI, theists like BA apparently somehow knows God couldn’t possibly have some good reason to create the multiverse that we cannot comprehend. Rather, they’re crazy.

    Doesn’t this strike you as being, well, a bit arbitrary and even hypocritical?

  74. 74
    critical rationalist says:

    I wrote….

    First, some kind of dualism could be true, despite God not existing. It’s unclear why he thinks these things are joined at the hip. Regardless, BA’s claim that “MWI was invented, first and foremost, to avoid God” appears to be a false dilemma that is pulled out of thin air.

    BA:

    CR:.. “despite God not existing.”…

    Of course, this is a figure of speech. My point was, it could be that God does not exist, yet dualism could be true. I don’t have to actually believe God doesn’t exist to take that theory seriously for the purpose of criticism. But if BA didn’t already knew that, then why did he quote mine me? What gives?

    Apparently, dualism is just flat out crazy talk, if God doesn’t exist, but it’s peachy keen if he does?

    Perhaps a better question is, what doesn’t BA think is crazy if God doesn’t exist, and why?

  75. 75
    bornagain77 says:

    Oh my gosh. One of the zillions of parallel CRs tries his hand at theology, (supposedly to disprove God and prove that he exists in a zillion parallel universes), and it ain’t pretty, i.e. “on one hand, God supposedly heals patents of cancer and other diseases, etc., but he won’t heal amputees.”

    And yet,

    Craig Keener: “In terms of the specific kind of example like God healing amputees,,, There are some reports of limbs growing back, actually, or especially, more specifically, of withered limbs, shriveled limbs, within a day, or sometimes within an hour or so, filling out. ”
    https://apologetics315.com/2012/10/craig-keener-interview-on-miracles-transcript/

    Why Won’t God Heal Amputees?? (#5) response
    Excerpt: Dr. Craig keener notes, in his massive two-volume work on miracles, restoration accounts of limbs are rare but they do get reported. In one of these reports a leg severed below the knee grew back and in other reports shriveled limbs sort of like miraculously filled out and started to work again,,,
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAH-3nDRSdo

    You would think that one of the zillions of parallel CRs would have known something simple like that. Oh well.

    CR. one last word, I’ll gladly let my posts speak for themselves. I feel I have more than made the case for Theism. This is my last post to you on the subject. Far be it from me to try to be reasonable with someone who really does believe he is existing is a zillion different universes simultaneously.

  76. 76
    Querius says:

    Browntim @47,

    “How do we know that the Big Bang was not “triggered by something”? Do we know anything about what went on before that?”

    According to current theory, there were no “before that” since time didn’t exist before Big Bang. Human mind has harder time to comprehend that there was something “before” time existed.

    Yes, exactly! According to the current consensus among astrophysicists and cosmologists, space and time (space-time) BEGAN 13.8 billion years ago. As far as science is concerned, space-time simply popped into existence from nothing (non-existence).

    Bornagain77 @75,

    You would think that one of the zillions of parallel CRs would have known something simple like that. Oh well.

    And all these magical parallel universes, multiverses, and multiple universes are conjured as “explanations” without the slightest concern that conjuring entire universes is probably the most egregious violation of Occam’s Razor or the parsimony principle imaginable to science!

    This is apparently not a problem at all for a lot of die-hard atheists.

    -Q

  77. 77
    Origenes says:

    CR

    Would you say that MWI is deterministic in the sense that things in each Universe are (super)deterministic? IOW if MWI is true, each universe is fully determined.

  78. 78
    critical rationalist says:

    First…

    You would think that one of the zillions of parallel CRs would have known something simple like that. Oh well.

    CR. one last word, I’ll gladly let my posts speak for themselves. I feel I have more than made the case for Theism. This is my last post to you on the subject. Far be it from me to try to be reasonable with someone who really does believe he is existing is a zillion different universes simultaneously.

    Yes. They do speak for themselves. BA cannot even keep the many worlds interpretation straight between subsequent paragraphs in the same comment! If BA doesn’t actually care about accurately presenting the details, then it’s unclear how the actually cares about the details in his rejection of it.

    Second, we still haven’t heard BA explain how I’m using the wrong kind of locality in regards to the evidence he is referring to.

    So, apparently he is walking way from his claim that evidence has falsified the MWI.

    After all the MWI is a competing interpretation of quantum mechanics, not a theory that competes with quantum mechanics itself, which is what Einstein was trying to develop for in regards to his hidden variables approach. Loopholes for some competing theory is what has been closed by the evidences BA is referring to, not the MWI.

    IOW, if the experiments that BA is referring to really had falsified the MWI, then it would have falsified quantum mechanics as a whole. Yet, I’m guessing this isn’t what BA believes. Why not? It doesn’t suit his purpose. Will he stop making this claim?

    The Many Worlds Interpretation (MWI) is a philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics that suggests that all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual “world” or “universe.” This interpretation is one way to address the peculiarities of quantum mechanics, such as superposition and wave function collapse.

    The EPR (Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen) paradox is a thought experiment that involves non-locality, or “spooky action at a distance,” as Einstein called it. This non-locality is observed in entangled particles, where a change in the state of one particle seems to instantaneously affect the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them. This phenomenon appears to violate the principles of locality and realism, as well as the speed-of-light limit in Einstein’s theory of relativity.

    In the years since the EPR thought experiment, various experiments have been conducted to test the predictions of quantum mechanics, such as the Bell tests. These experiments aim to close the so-called “loopholes” that might allow for alternative explanations for the observed correlations between entangled particles. As these loopholes are closed, the results continue to support the predictions of quantum mechanics, including the phenomenon of non-locality.

    However, it’s important to note that these experiments do not directly falsify the Many Worlds Interpretation. The MWI is an interpretation of quantum mechanics, not a competing theory. It agrees with the standard predictions of quantum mechanics and does not make different predictions that could be experimentally tested. Instead, it offers a way to understand the underlying nature of reality in light of the results of experiments like the EPR tests and the Bell tests.

    In summary, while the removal of loopholes in non-locality in EPR experiments provides further evidence supporting the predictions of quantum mechanics, it does not directly falsify the Many Worlds Interpretation. The MWI remains one of several interpretations of quantum mechanics, and its acceptance or rejection is often a matter of personal philosophical preference rather than empirical evidence.

    Want some online references?

    Wallace, D. (2003). Everett and Structure. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 34(1), 87-105.
    https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0107144
    This paper provides an overview of the MWI and its implications for understanding the structure of quantum mechanics, including entanglement and EPR-type experiments.

    Tegmark, M. (1997). The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics: Many Worlds or Many Words? Fortschritte der Physik, 46(6-8), 855-862.
    https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9709032
    This paper discusses the MWI in the context of various interpretations of quantum mechanics and presents an argument for why the MWI is a viable interpretation that is consistent with experimental results, including those from EPR tests.

    Vaidman, L. (2014). Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. In Zalta, E. N. (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition).
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/
    Although not a paper, this encyclopedia entry provides an extensive overview of the MWI and its implications, including a discussion of entanglement and non-locality. It also addresses how the MWI is consistent with the results of EPR experiments.

    Deutsch, D. (1997). The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes—and Its Implications. Penguin Books.
    http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm
    While not strictly an academic paper, this online chapter from Deutsch’s book provides an accessible introduction to the MWI and its compatibility with experimental results in quantum mechanics, including EPR tests.

    As for God healing amputees, why is this supposedly such a rare occurrence? After all God supposedly heals cancer patients at a significantly greater rate. So, why doesn’t God heal amputees as often as, say, cancer patients or other diseases? Also, wouldn’t regrowing limbs be at the top of the list to report? It seems that there would be a greater correlation between limb regrowth and reports than, say, curing cancer, etc.

    Furthermore, neither of those references includes specifics from my comments such as as….

    – God doesn’t need to perform miracles on a case by case basis.
    – Regrowing limbs doesn’t violate the laws of psychics. We grow limbs in the womb and some species of salamanders can regrown them when lost
    – God could simply give us the knowledge to achieve this.
    – If we take creationists seriously, God supposedly already gave salamanders the ability to regrow limbs
    – Salamanders cannot conceive of having a disability. We can.

    IOW, my criticism was BA’s arbitrary appeal to “God could have some good reason to do x, which we cannot comprehend.”

    We could just as well appeal to that in regards to God creating the multiverse. It’s unclear how BA knows that God has some good reason to give salamanders the ability to regrow limbs, but couldn’t have some good reason to create the multiverse. What gives?

    Of course, I don’t want to put words into his mouth. Does BA not think God must have had some good reason to give salamanders the ability to regrow limbs, but not human beings?

  79. 79
    critical rationalist says:

    How seriously do you take the many-worlds interpretation (MWI)?

    I think it’s our current, best interpretation of quantum mechanics. For example…..

    Like the textbook formulation, Everettian quantum mechanics (MWI) also comes with a list of postulates. Here it is:

    – Quantum states are represented by wave functions, which are vectors in a mathematical space called Hilbert space.
    – Wave functions evolve in time according to the Schrödinger equation.

    That’s it! Quite a bit simpler — and the two postulates are exactly the same as the first two of the textbook approach. Everett, in other words, is claiming that all the weird stuff about “measurement” and “wave function collapse” in the conventional way of thinking about quantum mechanics isn’t something we need to add on; it comes out automatically from the formalism.

    So, I’ve tentatively adopted it, like everything else. This means taking it seriously, including necessary consequences of the theory itself. But, I don’t think that knowledge is justified, true belief. Which seems to be the context in which you asked your question. So, we seem to be comparing oranges and apples.

    For example, I don’t think science proves things are true. It just proves things are false. And, even then tentatively. Even then, before a new theory replaces another, it must not only explain everything the current theory does, just as well, but also explain why we thought the theory was true in the first place.

    A concrete example of this is the OPERA experiment, in which observations suggested that neutrinos traveled faster than light. However, this didn’t result in falsifying Einstein’s speed limit in a vacuum. Why? Because that observation didn’t automatically result in a replacement theory, which explained everything else, just as well, but also explained why neutrinos traveled faster than light in the OPERA experiment, but not all other experiments.

    Do you think that it is likely that you exist in an infinite number of parallel universes?

    No. That’s a misconception of the theory. Each version of me would be, well, separate at the level of the multiverse. There are other “universes” where other versions of you asked the same question and other versions of me are responding in the same way. But there are other differences in which they diverge.

    However, one key point is that use of the term “universe” is that it’s a convenience for us. It’s a helpful way of understanding the multiverse, which is more fundamental. To quote Sean Carroll…

    That’s what you have to agree on if you believe in many worlds. You notice that many worlds never appeared in that characterization, that’s because how we take the quantum state of the universe and divide it up into worlds is a human convenience, it is a human convenience in exactly the same way that talking about the box of gas as a fluid or a gas with a temperature and a density is a human convenience, we don’t have to do it.

    There’s not even as comprehensive and detailed description as talking about all the individual molecules, but it is still true, it’s a higher level emergent description. And there’s a reason why David Wallace, who is the leading many worlds guy, former podcast guest, his book on everybody in quantum mechanics is called The Emergent Multiverse, because that multiverse description that dividing the wave function into branches is an emergent thing. And in that case, the whole thing about emerging phenomena is they provide a true handle on what is going on, but at a approximate level, at a way that you ignore some information or don’t need to know all the information and can still get some truth about what is going on.

    Or does the idea strike you as counterintuitive?

    Why should something be rejected for currently seeming counterintuitive? Or, to flip the question on its head, why should reality, nature, or even God, hinge on what we find intuitive? It seems to me that you’re including some implicit assumption about knowledge to reach that conclusion.

    For example, I’m guessing you believe in the Trinity. If so, do really find that intuitive?

  80. 80
    Origenes says:

    CR @
    If MWI is true, is each universe fully determined? IOW do we find ourselves in a fully determined universe?

  81. 81
    Querius says:

    Origenes @80,

    The MWI is the end of science . . . anything and everything with a non-zero probability can be explained by the MWI. It’s functionally equivalent of God to atheists.

    -Q

  82. 82
    critical rationalist says:

    If MWI is true, is each universe fully determined? IOW do we find ourselves in a fully determined universe?

    I’m not sure if that is the right question in regards to free will, which I’m assuming you’re alluding to. Specifically, In the MWI, the multiverse is more fundamental than each universe that emerges from it.

    For the sake of argument, let’s pick some convenient initial conditions to assume the multiverse is uniform., such as the Big Bang. At which point, the multiverse would start to branch and the first distinct “universes” would emerge. Those branches would branch. And those branches would branch, etc. From that distant past, all the way to the present moment, no resulting branch would have diverged in a way that violated the laws of physics.

    So, how could any choices we would have made have an influence on the resulting branching that occurred since then? IOW, I’d suggest the question is: do our choices make a difference in the multiverse, which then impacts which universes emerge as branches?

    Imagine If anything like what we call life had not appeared? Everything that could happen, within the limits of the laws of physics, would happen. A splits into A and B, which then split into A, B, C, and D, and so on, a forever-branching tree with no differentiation whatever.

    However, let’s add a living thing into the multiverse. If life is knowledge, in that knowledge is information that plays a causal role in being retained when embedded in a storage medium, then the resulting tree of branches will no longer be distributed in the same way. From the perspective of what causes a branch, a plant effectively makes choices. Plants are not people, so those variations are random, to any particular problem to solve, but they still reflect the growth of knowledge. Variation reflects conjecture and natural selection reflects criticism. So, there will be more “universes” with plants that have survived, than would have been otherwise.

    The same can be said with people, who also create knowledge via conjecture and criticism. Those choices are more likely the kind you appear to be alluding to. For example, if someone contemplates jumping off a cliff, there will be universes where they actual do jump. But there will be more resulting universes in which they chose not to jump, than would be expected otherwise. Rather, they are different in other ways.

    So, it’s by looking beyond just a single branch that we would see how our choices affect the multiverse, despite the MWI being deterministic. The multiverse makes the crucial difference, in that good choices can have a key impact. This simply isn’t possible in a classical world, or even other interpretations of quantum mechanics.

    This is in contrast to suggesting someone’s choice is undermined. If that refers to some kind of random collapse, this just means someone’s choice is random. IOW, if choice really is based on randomness, based on QM or something else, it’s unclear how our choice wouldn’t actually be an illusion. It would just be, well, unpredictable.

  83. 83
    critical rationalist says:

    The MWI is the end of science . . . anything and everything with a non-zero probability can be explained by the MWI. It’s functionally equivalent of God to atheists.

    Given that anything that would falsify the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics would also falsify the MWI, is the Copenhagen interpretation the end of science as well?

  84. 84
    critical rationalist says:

    I’d note BA still yet to explain how I’m referring to the wrong kind of locality in regards to the evidence he is claiming refutes the MWI. What gives? If he is more knowledgable, then he should have no problem doing so. But if he did, he would need to concede that there are different kinds of locality, even proposed by Bell himself, which I’ve elaborated on at length. And that would be highly problematic for his claim, as it’s based on a false dilemma.

    However, despite this, it will just be a matter of time before BA make the same claim regarding this evidence, as if this thread had never happened. Details are only relevant when they suit BA’s purpose.

  85. 85
    jerry says:

    Given that anything that would falsify the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics would also falsify the MWI, is the Copenhagen interpretation the end of science as well?

    There is an obvious logical flaw here.

    Making this logical mistake disqualifies the individual from any common sense discussion. He posts a logical non-sequitur.

  86. 86
    Origenes says:

    CR @84

    Ori: If MWI is true, is each universe fully determined? IOW do we find ourselves in a fully determined universe?

    I’m not sure if that is the right question in regards to free will, which I’m assuming you’re alluding to. Specifically, In the MWI, the multiverse is more fundamental than each universe that emerges from it.

    My question was not: “what is more fundamental the multiverse or each universe that emerges from it?”

    For the sake of argument, let’s pick some convenient initial conditions to assume the multiverse is uniform., such as the Big Bang …

    Forget about the multiverse nonsense for a moment. Let me try it one more time: If MWI is true, do we find ourselves in a fully determined universe?

  87. 87
    critical rationalist says:

    Forget about the multiverse nonsense for a moment. Let me try it one more time: If MWI is true, do we find ourselves in a fully determined universe?

    If the MWI is true, then all of that “multiverse nonsense” is true. That’s a necessary consequence of the interpretation. The multiverse is the most fundamental part, not universes, which emerge from it.

    “Universes” are convenient ways for human beings to think about specific aspects of the multiverse. So, there is no singular, most fundamental “The Universe” as implied in your question.

    The many worlds theory is completely deterministic theory of quantum mechanics. But that doesn’t add to anything to what I’ve already said.

    Perhaps you mean, would the particular universe we happen to inhabit appear deterministic to us? But, again, I’d suggest evaluating that on a universe basic would be unnecessarlly narrow. Adding randomness of some kind to our universe, quantum or otherwise, doesn’t help as our choices would be, well, random.

  88. 88
    Origenes says:

    CR @

    Perhaps you mean, would the particular universe we happen to inhabit appear deterministic to us?

    What I mean is, if MWI is true, would the particular universe we happen to inhabit, considered on its own, be deterministic?

  89. 89
    critical rationalist says:

    There is an obvious logical flaw here.

    Would the obvious logical flaw of not actually indicating what the logical flaw in in question, disqualify an individual from any common sense discussion.

    Given that the MWI is an interception of quantum mechanics, not a competing theory, perhaps you could explicitly indicates exactly what logical flaw you’re referring to?

    anything and everything with a non-zero probability can be explained by the MWI. It’s functionally equivalent of God to atheists.

    First, this seems to be a concession that God could be used to explain anything and everything. So, God is indeed a bad explanation?

    Second, it’s not clear what you mean by “anything and everything with a non-zero probability.” For example, unlike the Copenhagen interpretation, probability is not the way to think about outcomes in many worlds interpretation, because there is no collapse. So, this reflects a kind of category category error. Furthermore, from some existing branch in the tree, the multiverse could only branch in ways that does not violate the laws of physics.

    This is significantly more limiting than explaining “anything and everything with a non-zero probability.” Specifically, it prohibits branches evolving in ways that leap to some point in the tree only possible several steps down the branching path, etc. How does this reflect “anything and everything with a non-zero probability”?

    IOW, it’s unclear how the many worlds interpretation could anymore reflect “the end of science” than the Copenhagen interpretation. But, by all means, feel free to elaborate on this further.

  90. 90
    critical rationalist says:

    What I mean is, if MWI is true, would the particular universe we happen to inhabit, considered on its own, be deterministic?

    As soon as you stop considering the multiverse, you stop considering the MWI. Which is what you seem to be asking.

    However, as I’ve indicated, all branches evolve according to the same laws of physics. For example, an electron will never convert into a proton, as it would violate conservation of mass, the conservation of charge, etc. That will never happen in the MWI.

    But, in a more fundamental sense, the laws of physics includes quantum mechanics. So the entire multiverse evolves according to the wave function, which is deterministic. That’s what it means to say the MWI is just taking the wave function seriously. You’d have to add something to the wave function to explain why observers can cause collapse, how they can stand outside it to observe it, etc.

    To flip the question on its head, why don’t observers evolve according to the wave function?

  91. 91
    Querius says:

    As I said in @81,

    The MWI is the end of science . . . anything and everything with a non-zero probability can be explained by the MWI. It’s functionally equivalent of God to atheists.

    There’s a branch for every interaction, every probability, and nothing that happens isn’t absolutely deterministic in its own branch.

    Essentially an infinite number of complete universes appear every microsecond. Let me assure you that this is the most egregious violation of the parsimony principle imaginable! How could you possibly falsify it?

    -Q

  92. 92
    critical rationalist says:

    Essentially an infinite number of complete universes appear every microsecond.

    Except, that’s not what the MWI suggests.

    I’d point you to a video that clears this up, but a link has already been posted, already. Multiple times. In this very thread.

    For example, see #18. What gives?

    Again. It’s unclear how this reflects the end of science.

    Apparently, because that’s the way you prefer it, and you’re bound and determined to remain ignorant of it?

  93. 93
    Querius says:

    Critical Rationalist @92,

    Except, that’s not what the MWI suggests.

    Yes, it does:
    https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-many-worlds-interpretation-has-many-problems-20181018/

    -Q

  94. 94
    critical rationalist says:

    No, it doesn’t. From your own reference…

    In this view, splitting is not an abrupt event. It evolves through decoherence and is only complete when decoherence has removed all possibility of interference between universes. While it’s popular to regard the appearance of distinct worlds as akin to the bifurcation of futures in Jorge Luis Borges’ story “The Garden of Forking Paths,” a better analogy might therefore be something like the gradual separation of shaken salad dressing into layers of oil and vinegar. It’s then meaningless to ask how many worlds there are — as the philosopher of physics David Wallace aptly puts it, the question is rather like asking, “How many experiences did you have yesterday?” You can identify some of them, but you can’t enumerate them.

    So, universes do not get created. They already exist. They become differentiated when a branching occurs. And they appear from our perspective when we branch as well.

    You might want to actually read the articles you reference, as this one doesn’t say what you think it says.

  95. 95
    Querius says:

    Critical Rationalist @94,

    Nice try, but no cigar. You forgot to mention that Philip Ball acknowledges that Hugh Everett, who proposed the MWI interpretation of quantum mechanics did indeed propose the branching off of the many worlds and that he himself considers the MWI incoherent.

    For all possible worlds to exist before any one of them is instantiated seems like a complete cop-out into pure fantasy, populated by Greek gods, Disney characters, and anything/everything else one can dream up. As Philip Ball put it,

    The science-fiction vision of a “duplicated quantum self” has nevertheless delivered some fanciful, and undeniably entertaining, images.

    Apparently, you didn’t read the rest of Philip Ball’s article that pointed out the problems with MWI, including “splitting” (as also mentioned by Max Tegmark). Philip Ball asks:

    For starters, about this business of bifurcating worlds. How does a split actually happen?

    So, are you suggesting that Philip Ball didn’t read his own article? Why don’t you read the whole thing?

    -Q

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