Michael Egnor: Jerry Coyne just can’t give up denying free will

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 27, 2020

Darwinism, Human evolution, Intelligent Design, Mind}

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Neurosurgeon Michael Egnor can’t understand how Darwinian biologist Jerry Coyne can use science to deny free will:

Someday, I predict, there will be a considerable psychiatric literature on the denial of free will. It’s essentially a delusion dressed up as science. To insist that your neurotransmitters completely control your choices is no different than insisting that your television or your iphone control your thoughts. It’s crazy.
Having gotten the neuroscience wrong, Coyne goes on to flub physics: “But to someone who’s science minded, determinism is the only game in town. Setting aside pure indeterminism—which would obtain if quantum processes affected our decisions—our choices and behaviors are the results of the laws of physics, and at any one time (leaving aside quantum factors) we could have made only one decision. – Jerry Coyne, “A very short story on (the absence of) free will” at Why Evolution Is True”
No. The laws of physics are indeterminate. This has been confirmed experimentally by the work of Aspect and others, based on Bell’s Theorem. Nature, at its most basic level, is indeterminate—the outcomes of quantum possibilities are not determined (at least not locally). – Mind Matters News

Egnor has taken issue with Coyne on a number of occasions in the past, for example:

Jerry Coyne hasn’t got a prayer: He understands neither natural theology nor natural science.

Why prayer is wise during a pandemic. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne thinks that only fools would pray about Coronavirus. He is wrong and here is why: If God is real, then prayer is probably the first thing you want to do in a crisis. A plea to the Boss is a fine preamble to the grunt work of managing a crisis. I’m a neurosurgeon, and I pray before each operation. It really helps.

Comments

Did any of them ever think that when they say “we can’t hold someone responsible for their actions it was only choice they could have made” that you can’t hold the people that hold others responsible form their actions, because it was the only choice they could makeAaronS1978_{April 28, 2020
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Besides Quantum Mechanics, via the falsification of 'realism', falsifying Coyne's atheistic materialism, Darwnian Materialists, in their claim that consciousness in merely a 'neuronal illusion', have forsaken any ability that they may have had to try to define what 'reality' actually is in the first place. Simply put, if consciousness is merely a 'neuronal illusion', as Coyne holds, then there can be no proper description of reality that anyone can possibly put forth.
“Simply enough, you cannot suffer the illusion that you are conscious because illusions are possible only for conscious minds. This is so incandescently obvious that it is almost embarrassing to have to state it.” – David Bentley Hart - The Illusionist – Daniel Dennett’s latest book marks five decades of majestic failure to explain consciousness. – 2017
Eugene Wigner, who was a leading pioneer in the field of quantum mechanics, put the situation as such,
“The principal argument against materialism is not that illustrated in the last two sections: that it is incompatible with quantum theory. The principal argument is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied. On the contrary, logically, the external world could be denied—though it is not very practical to do so. In the words of Niels Bohr, “The word consciousness, applied to ourselves as well as to others, is indispensable when dealing with the human situation.” In view of all this, one may well wonder how materialism, the doctrine that “life could be explained by sophisticated combinations of physical and chemical laws,” could so long be accepted by the majority of scientists." – Eugene Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, pp 167-177.
As well, Max Planck and Erwin Schroedinger, who are also founding pioneers of quantum mechanics, are both also on record in regards to holding consciousness itself to be a fundamental prerequisite in any coherent definition of reality that we may try to put forth.
“No, I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” Max Planck (1858–1947), the main founder of quantum theory, The Observer, London, January 25, 1931 “Consciousness cannot be accounted for in physical terms. For consciousness is absolutely fundamental. It cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else.” Schroedinger, Erwin. 1984. “General Scientific and Popular Papers,” in Collected Papers, Vol. 4. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences. Friedr. Vieweg & Sohn, Braunschweig/Wiesbaden. p. 334.
Of related interest to properly differentiating what is real from what is illusory, here is a very interesting piece of evidence. Materialistic researchers who had a bias against Near Death Experiences being real, set out to prove that they were merely ‘products of imagination'’ by setting up a clever questionnaire that could differentiate which memories a person had were real and which memories a person had were merely imaginary. Simply put, they did not expect the results they got. To quote the headline of the article 'Afterlife' feels 'even more real than real”
'Afterlife' feels 'even more real than real,' researcher says - Wed April 10, 2013 Excerpt: "If you use this questionnaire ... if the memory is real, it's richer, and if the memory is recent, it's richer," he said. The coma scientists weren't expecting what the tests revealed. "To our surprise, NDEs were much richer than any imagined event or any real event of these coma survivors," Laureys reported. The memories of these experiences beat all other memories, hands down, for their vivid sense of reality. "The difference was so vast," he said with a sense of astonishment. Even if the patient had the experience a long time ago, its memory was as rich "as though it was yesterday," Laureys said. http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/09/health/belgium-near-death-experiences/ Memories of Near Death Experiences (NDEs): More Real Than Reality? - Mar. 27, 2013 Excerpt: University of Liège ,,,researchers,, have looked into the memories of NDE with the hypothesis that if the memories of NDE were pure products of the imagination, their phenomenological characteristics (e.g., sensorial, self referential, emotional, etc. details) should be closer to those of imagined memories. Conversely, if the NDE are experienced in a way similar to that of reality, their characteristics would be closer to the memories of real events. The researchers compared the responses provided by three groups of patients, each of which had survived (in a different manner) a coma, and a group of healthy volunteers. They studied the memories of NDE and the memories of real events and imagined events with the help of a questionnaire which evaluated the phenomenological characteristics of the memories. The results were surprising. From the perspective being studied, not only were the NDEs not similar to the memories of imagined events, but the phenomenological characteristics inherent to the memories of real events (e.g. memories of sensorial details) are even more numerous in the memories of NDE than in the memories of real events. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/03/130327190359.htm
And now my question to Atheistic materialists, such as Jerry Coyne, is this, “how in blue blazes is it even possible for something to become even ‘more real than real’ in your materialistic worldview when you guys claim that consciousness itself is merely a neuronal illusion of the material brain? Of course, since Coyne unquestionably accepts Darwinian materialism as being true, regardless of what the scientific evidence says to the contrary, Coyne's knee jerk reaction is to deny the validity of Near Death Experiences. Yet, the scientific evidence for the validity of Near Death Experiences is far more robust than the evidence for Darwinian evolution is,
Near-Death Experiences: Putting a Darwinist's Evidentiary Standards to the Test - Dr. Michael Egnor - October 15, 2012 Excerpt: Indeed, about 20 percent of NDE's are corroborated, which means that there are independent ways of checking about the veracity of the experience. The patients knew of things that they could not have known except by extraordinary perception -- such as describing details of surgery that they watched while their heart was stopped, etc. Additionally, many NDE's have a vividness and a sense of intense reality that one does not generally encounter in dreams or hallucinations.,,, The most "parsimonious" explanation -- the simplest scientific explanation -- is that the (Near Death) experience was real. Tens of millions of people have had such experiences. That is tens of millions of more times than we have observed the origin of species , (or the origin of life, or the origin of a protein/gene, or of a molecular machine), which is never.,,, The materialist reaction, in short, is unscientific and close-minded. NDE's show fellows like Coyne at their sneering unscientific irrational worst. Somebody finds a crushed fragment of a fossil and it's earth-shaking evidence. Tens of million of people have life-changing spiritual experiences and it's all a big yawn. Note: Dr. Egnor is professor and vice-chairman of neurosurgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/near_death_expe_1065301.html
Moreover, as the following video highlights, the physical reality of 'immaterial' quantum information, that is now found to be ubiquitous within molecular biology, directly supports the physical reality of the immaterial soul:
Darwinian Materialism vs. Quantum Biology – Part II - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSig2CsjKbg
As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article: “the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed, it’s possible that this (conserved) quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
“Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it’s possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” – Stuart Hameroff – Quantum Entangled Consciousness – Life After Death – video (5:00 minute mark) https://www.disclose.tv/leading-scientists-say-consciousness-cannot-die-it-goes-back-to-the-universe-315604
Verse:
Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?
Moreover, as is shown in the following video, atheists also have no scientific evidence for all the various extra dimensions, parallel universe and/or multiverse scenarios that they have put forth to try to ‘explain away’ the beginning, fine-tuning, and quantum nature of the universe,,
Multiverse Mania vs Reality - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQJV4fH6kMo
Whereas Christians, on the other hand, (as is shown in the following video), can appeal directly to the higher dimensional mathematics behind Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity and General Relativity, (which are, by far, our strongest theories in science), to support, number one, their belief that God upholds the universe in its continual existence, as well as to support, number 2, their belief in a heavenly dimension and in a hellish dimension.
Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, General Relativity and Christianity - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4QDy1Soolo March 2020 - ,,, that what we now know to be true from special relativity, (namely that it outlines a ‘timeless’, i.e. eternal, dimension that exists above this temporal dimension), would fit hand and glove with the personal testimonies of people who have had a deep heavenly NDE is, needless to say, (very) powerful evidence that their testimonies are, in fact, true and that they are accurately describing the ‘reality’ of a higher heavenly dimension that exists above this temporal dimension. I would even go so far as to say that such corroboration from ‘non-physicists’, who know nothing about the intricacies of special relativity, is a complete verification of the overall validity of their personal NDE testimonies. https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/michael-behe-muses-on-design-and-covid-19/#comment-695282
Thus, the Christian can rest assured that the most powerful theories in science today, i.e. Quantum Mechanics, and General and Special Relativity, respectfully, strongly support his belief in God and also strongly support his belief in an afterlife. Whereas atheists, on the other hand, besides being contradicted by the science at every turn, are found to be adrift in an ocean of illusion and fantasy with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to. Again, it would hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than atheistic materialism has turned out to be,
1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test everything; hold fast what is good. 2 Corinthians 12:2-4 I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body I do not know—God knows. And I know that this man—whether in the body or apart from the body I do not know, but God knows— was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell.
Supplemental notes:
"More real than anything I've experienced since. When I came back of course I had 34 operations, and was in the hospital for 13 months. That was real but heaven is more real than that. The emotions and the feelings. The reality of being with people who had preceded me in death." - Don Piper - "90 Minutes in Heaven," 10 Years Later - video (2:54 minute mark) - per youtube “I was in the spiritual dimension. And this spiritual dimension, this spiritual world, that’s the real world. And this spiritual man that I was seeing and perceiving, that was the real me. And I instantly knew it. The colors are brighter. The thoughts are more intense. The feelings have greater depth. They’re more real. In the spirit world instantly I knew that this is the real world.,,,” – The Near Death Experience of Mickey Robinson – video (testimony starts at 27:45 minute mark) - per youtube A Doctor's Near Death Experience Inspires a New Life - video Quote: "It's not like a dream. It's like the world we are living in is a dream and it's kind of like waking up from that." Dr. Magrisso - per nbc chicago
bornagain77_{April 28, 2020
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Jerry Coyne has claimed that, "Free will is an illusion so convincing that people simply refuse to believe that we don’t have it."
THE ILLUSION OF FREE WILL - Sam Harris - 2012 Excerpt: "Free will is an illusion so convincing that people simply refuse to believe that we don’t have it." - Jerry Coyne https://samharris.org/the-illusion-of-free-will/
My Junior High School English teacher, Mrs. Hastings, would have had a fit if Jerry Coyne had written that sentence in her class. When it comes to writing blatantly self-refuting sentences, Jerry Coyne does not stop with free will, Jerry Coyne also holds that our sense of self is merely a 'neuronal illusion' and writes this beauty of a self-refuting sentence,,,,
"What you’re doing is simply instantiating a self: the program run by your neurons which you feel is “you.”" - Jerry Coyne https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/04/04/eagleton-on-baggini-on-free-will/
Again, poor Mrs. Hastings would have been beside herself if Jerry Coyne had written that sentence in her class. The claim that free will and consciousness are illusions is simply insane, But alas, Jerry Coyne simply can't help himself. I'm sure that he does not want to write blatantly self-refuting sentences, it is that Coyne's atheistic materialism, which he refuses to question, forces him into writing such blatantly self-refuting sentences.
The Confidence of Jerry Coyne - Ross Douthat - January 6, 2014 Excerpt: then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant:,,) Read more here: http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?_r=0 Sam Harris's Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It - Martin Cothran - November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state -- including their position on this issue -- is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn't logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html
In fact, besides Consciousness and Free Will being illusions, Coyne's atheistic materialism forces him into claiming that many other things are illusions.
"Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris), who has unreliable, (i.e. illusory), beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the reality of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Who, since beauty cannot be grounded within his materialistic worldview, must hold beauty itself to be illusory (Darwin). Bottom line, nothing is truly real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, beauty, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,," - Darwinian Materialism and/or Methodological Naturalism vs. Reality – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaksmYceRXM
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to. Of related interest to the fact that Darwinian atheists have no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to, advances in quantum mechanics have now falsified Coyne's atheistic materialism. Quantum mechanics simply debunks Coyne's atheistic materialism at every turn,
Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism (v2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM0IKLv7KrE
In fact, quantum mechanics has now falsified 'realism', which is the belief that material reality exists apart from our conscious observation of it. The following experiment found that "Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing 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: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell's inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell's inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics. Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization. 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
And the following Delayed Choice experiment, which was done with atoms instead of photons, proved that, "It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” and “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,”,,,
New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It - June 3, 2015 Excerpt: Some particles, such as photons or electrons, can behave both as particles and as waves. Here comes a question of what exactly makes a photon or an electron act either as a particle or a wave. This is what Wheeler’s experiment asks: at what point does an object ‘decide’? The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts. “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,, “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said. Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer. http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html
bornagain77_{April 28, 2020
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Folks, attempting to deny significant human freedom is tantamount to denying human rationality and responsibility. KFkairosfocus_{April 27, 2020
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Disclaimer: All rage, hate, and sarcasm is directly solely and only at Coyne, none was directed at Seversky for number 2. I also apologize to anyone else I am sorry I wasn’t able to fix it before the time ran outAaronS1978_{April 27, 2020
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@2 well if your right what’s the point of arguing about? No one can really choose to change and that’s a two way street. Further more very few will argue that your decisions aren’t influenced be the choice and other factors, if not, it’s not a choice, for the choice holds no value. Choices generally need value between to opposing factors @ Coyne’s commentary I noticed Coyne is a Wikipedia ninja, and obviously has nothing to do but waste people’s time with his bull and nonsense. It’s really to bad the school wastes a salary on him for any reason Sooo since the super star is ALL about quoting the research on freewill correctly from the endless scores of accurate information from the great and almighty Wikipedia that is never wrong, I shall help him by pointing out the many bits of research that he missed during his needless rant. I should give him some slack though, after all he can’t help being biased or dishonest, he never had a choice...........Nope, it’s a two ways street, I can’t help being an ass, neither can the rapist, or the murder, or any other but I digress. So here’s a quick overview of all the things he decided to omit 1.) any research done by Alfred Mele, and criticisms on the topic, even Dennett criticizes Libet’s experiments. Easy find under all experiments he mentions on the wiki 2. 60% average over all on the prediction experiments. Latest done in Australia on the visual cortex. Magicians can do better without a 250000 dollar piece of equipment and overpaid professionals, nice saying “not perfectly” so you don’t have to mention the numbers. But hey you get paid the big moneys to be inaccurate Mr. scientists man 3.) scores of new research outing all the above mentioned experiments putting them into question, due to bias, conflicting results, and even failed replication. There is a pair of free will researchers from New Zealand also conveniently not mentioned that directly contradicted prediction results and showed that the RP was present regardless of choice. Coyne also failed to mention the fact that all of the above experiments trying to predict your choice all used a binary choice hmmmmmmmmmm add, subtract, left, right, picture set 1 or 2 Kind of important when you’re trying to predict the flip of a “Coyne” 4.) He mentions nothing of Aaron Schurger’s results most recent experiment with RP. His experiments fixed the criticisms for most of the Libet paradigm, and his results condemned and debunked almost all of the interpretations of Libet’s experiments that Coyne supports 5.) John Dylan Hanes “point of no return” mentioned right on the wiki where Coyne’s endless knowledge on the topic springs. It’s confirmed experimental evidence of free won’t. As it was put we have freedom in degrees So I guess Coyne could be right, but why believe him not like he can help telling you the truth But remember there’s no such thing as truth is there’s no such thing as free well it’s just the results of your unfortunate chemistry neurobiology and physics so Coyne really honestly who the hell gives a shit if this is what your opinion is actually composed of. By the way there is also experimental evidence showing proving people don’t have free will has ill effect on them with a few experiments that claim it might not In most cases it really hurts somebody to convince them that they have no control over their choice but you can’t help that not to consider other people you’re just a jerk that can’t help himself And since nobody else can help themselves why does Coyne care if anybody agrees with him? It’s not like his perspective is going to help anyone, why try to help somebody in prison they have something wrong with them that they can’t fixed, neither can you. You might as well just put them down, it’ll save time, money, and resources By the way there’s tons of research showing that when somebody believes that they can’ control their choices, they recover quicker or they change their behaviors but again the Coyne don’t care about that And if you wonder why I care about it so much, here’s why I am excessive compulsive, I struggle with it in a day-to-day basis and I came real close to committing suicide, and it was philosophy like Coyne’s that really pushed me over the edge. Taught me everything was hopeless. It sent me into a depression that I haven’t truly recovered from 100% and it lasted for years. So take a hike Coyne!AaronS1978_{April 27, 2020
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Seversky, leaving aside the fact that your atheism is a hopelessly and utterly false worldview, what possible motivation would Dr. Egnor have to become an atheist? Is it the 'charming' hopeless nihilism inherent in your worldview that you find so becoming of your atheistic worldview?
nihilism noun - the belief that life is meaningless. Atheism and mental illness Contents 1 Atheism and depression 2 Atheism and suicide 3 Atheism and narcissism 4 Atheism and psychopathy https://www.conservapedia.com/Atheism_and_mental_illness
bornagain77_{April 27, 2020
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Could Michael Egnor become an atheist by an effort of will?Seversky_{April 27, 2020
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Jerry Coyne stated,
"Setting aside pure indeterminism—which would obtain if quantum processes affected our decisions—our choices and behaviors are the results of the laws of physics, and at any one time (leaving aside quantum factors) we could have made only one decision." – Jerry Coyne
I can see why Jerry Coyne, an atheist, would want to be "leaving aside quantum factors". It completely undermines his atheistic worldview from the inside out. While 'quantum indeterminism' and/or 'the uncertainty principle' is certainly bad enough, in and of itself, for Darwinian atheists who would prefer to maintain a deterministic worldview in which the reality of free will did not exist,,,
Why Quantum Physics (Uncertainty) Ends the Free Will Debate - Michio Kaku - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFLR5vNKiSw
While 'quantum indeterminism' and/or 'the uncertainty principle' is certainly bad enough for atheists, things have recently gotten far worse for Darwinian atheists in regards to 'quantum factors'. As Steven Weinberg, an atheist himself, states in the following 2017 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/466-17/QuantumMechanicsWeinberg.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 he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave. For instance, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
More Than One Reality Exists (in Quantum Physics) By Mindy Weisberger – March 20, 2019 Excerpt: “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”. https://www.livescience.com/65029-dueling-reality-photons.html Experimental test of local observer-independence - 2019 Excerpt: The scientific method relies on facts, established through repeated measurements and agreed upon universally, independently of who observed them. In quantum mechanics, the objectivity of observations is not so clear, most dramatically exposed in Eugene Wigner’s eponymous thought experiment where two observers can experience seemingly different realities. The question whether these realities can be reconciled in an observer-independent way has long remained inaccessible to empirical investigation, until recent no-go-theorems constructed an extended Wigner’s friend scenario with four observers that allows us to put it to the test. In a state-of-the-art 6-photon experiment, we realise this extended Wigner’s friend scenario, experimentally violating the associated Bell-type inequality by 5 standard deviations. If one holds fast to the assumptions of locality and free-choice, this result implies that quantum theory should be interpreted in an observer-dependent way. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.05080.pdf
Moreover, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
Closing the ‘free will’ loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell’s theorem – February 20, 2014 Excerpt: Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as “setting independence,” or more provocatively, “free will.” This loophole proposes that a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure — a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting. Such a scenario would result in biased measurements, suggesting that two particles are correlated more than they actually are, and giving more weight to quantum mechanics than classical physics. “It sounds creepy, but people realized that’s a logical possibility that hasn’t been closed yet,” says MIT’s David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and senior lecturer in the Department of Physics. “Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112515.htm
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that 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 Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time measurements of the wavelength of photons from high-redshift quasars, whose light was emitted billions of years ago; the experiment simultaneously ensures locality. Assuming fair sampling for all detected photons and that the wavelength of the quasar photons had not been selectively altered or previewed between emission and detection, we observe statistically significant violation of Bell’s inequality by 9.3 standard deviations, corresponding to an estimated p value of approx. 7.4 × 10^21. 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 such as Jerry Coyne would prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.” Moreover allowing free will and/or Agent causality into the laws of physics at their most fundamental level has some fairly profound implications for us personally.
First and foremost, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim: January 2020 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/welcome-to-the-brave-new-world-of-science/#comment-690569
Supplemental notes, As leading experimentalist 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
As well, with contextuality 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. - per physorg
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.
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