Eric Holloway at Mind Matters News: Can the “physical world” be wholly physical? Physical at all?

_{Denyse O'Leary

November 19, 2021

Intelligent Design, Naturalism, Philosophy, Science}

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Not if you follow the logic of Epicurean materialist thinking:

Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BC – ca. 55 BC) — a Roman poet and philosopher

Let’s wind the clock back to the first century BC, when a Roman poet and philosopher named Lucretius wrote the poem On the Nature of Things.” In this poem, Lucretius outlines a philosophy known as Epicureanism in order to demonstrate the world can be explained without reference to a deity. In the Epicurean philosophy, only three things exist: atoms, the void, and the universe. Consequently, everything we see in the physical world can be reduced to atoms bumping into each other.
You may notice that Epicurean philosophy sounds similar to modern day physics. This is not an accident. Through the influence of chemist Robert Boyle (1627–1691) and the Royal Society, the view, directly derived from Epicurean philosophy, that the physical world could be reduced to atoms became the dominant view. However, the moderns made different assumptions about atoms. They did not consider them eternal, for example, as Lucretius did.
Eric Holloway, “Can the “physical world” be wholly physical? Physical at all?” at Mind Matters News (November 19, 2021)

You may notice a problem. It is a very big problem. We now know that the physical world consists of more than atoms bumping into each other. There is energy. There is gravity. There is magnetism. There are electrical fields. None of these physical phenomena can be reduced to atoms bumping into each other.

In fact, atoms do not even bump into each other. Instead, they are repulsed by field effects. Nothing ever physically touches anything else in the physical world.

So, taken seriously, simple Epicurean materialism would show that almost all of nature is non-physical. That’s not really where an Epicurean would want to end up.

Takehome: The Epicurean philosophy of pure physicalism is attractive to many but the logic of it, followed consistently, refutes itself.

You may also wish to read: Why physicalism is failing as the accepted approach to science. The argument that everything in nature can be reduced to physics was killed by the philosophical Zombie, as Prudence Louise explains. Physicalism which depends on a mechanistic view of the universe, was challenged by observer-dependent quantum mechanics. Then the Zombie started walking…”

Comments

Of further note, and right on time I might add, On this new ID the Future podcast, Stephen Meyer sits down with talk show host and bestselling novelist Andrew Klavan to discuss Meyer’s Return of the God Hypothesis. In this fast-paced conversation the pair touch on the Judeo-Christian roots of science, how fine tuning in physics and cosmology point to intelligent design, etc.. etc.. https://idthefuture.com/1530/bornagain77_{November 22, 2021
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Well Ram, that is the usual reply from people who would like to distance modern science from its Christian roots, but the fact remains that "modern science—not an occasional flash of insight here and there, but a systematic, programmatic, ongoing way of studying and controlling the world—arose only once in history, and only in one place: medieval Europe, once known as “Christendom,” where that Biblical worldview reigned supreme. That is no accident. Science could not have arisen without that worldview."
The Threat to the Scientific Method that Explains the Spate of Fraudulent Science Publications - Calvin Beisner | Jul 23, 2014 Excerpt: As such diverse historians and philosophers of science as Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Duhem, Loren Eiseley, Rodney Stark, and many others have observed,, science—not an occasional flash of insight here and there, but a systematic, programmatic, ongoing way of studying and controlling the world—arose only once in history, and only in one place: medieval Europe, once known as “Christendom,” where that Biblical worldview reigned supreme. That is no accident. Science could not have arisen without that worldview. http://townhall.com/columnists/calvinbeisner/2014/07/23/the-threat-to-the-scientific-method-that-explains-the-spate-of-fraudulent-science-publications-n1865201/page/full Several other resources backing up this claim are available, such as Thomas Woods, Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant, J.L. Heilbron, and Christopher Dawson. The Christian Origins of Science - Jack Kerwick - Apr 15, 2017 Excerpt: Though it will doubtless come as an enormous shock to such Christophobic atheists as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and their ilk, it is nonetheless true that one especially significant contribution that Christianity made to the world is that of science.,,, Stark is blunt: “Real science arose only once: in Europe”—in Christian Europe. “China, Islam, India, and ancient Greece and Rome each had a highly developed alchemy. But only in Europe did alchemy develop into chemistry. By the same token, many societies developed elaborate systems of astrology, but only in Europe did astrology develop into astronomy.”,,, In summation, Stark writes: “The rise of science was not an extension of classical learning. It was the natural outgrowth of Christian doctrine: nature exists because it was created by God. In order to love and honor God, it is necessary to fully appreciate the wonders of his handiwork. Because God is perfect, his handiwork functions in accord with immutable principles. By the full use of our God-given powers of reason and observation, it ought to be possible to discover these principles.” He concludes: “These were the crucial ideas that explain why science arose in Christian Europe and nowhere else.” https://townhall.com/columnists/jackkerwick/2017/04/15/the-christian-origins-of-science-n2313593 No False Gods Before Me: A Review of Rodney Stark’s Work by Terry Scambray (December 2018) Excerpt: The distinguished philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, astonished a Harvard audience in 1925 when he said that science is a “derivative of medieval theology [since it arose] from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher.” Whitehead’s thesis was but another bolt from out of the blue because the notion that medieval philosophy, scholasticism, led to the development of science was astonishing! Though it should not have been, since scholasticism was complex, diverse, penetrating and devoted to reasoning from the two books that undergird Christianity: the book of God, Scripture, and the book of nature, Creation. As Stark writes, “Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable—the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious, Christian scholars.”,,, So Christianity, then and now, never was antithetical to science. And this is because European Christians believed in a rational God whose imprint could be discovered in nature; thus, they confidently looked for and found natural laws. As Johannes Kepler, the venerable 17th century cosmologist, wrote, “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world” is to discover this harmony imposed by God in the language of mathematics. Stark concludes, “That the universe had an Intelligent Designer is the most fundamental of all scientific theories and that it has been successfully put to empirical tests again and again. For, as Albert Einstein remarked, the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” which Einstein called a “miracle.” And this “miracle” confirms the fact that creation is guided by purpose and reason. https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=189497&sec_id=189497
Stephen Meyer (who has a PhD in the Philosophy of Science from Cambridge University, i.e. Isaac Newton's alma mater), in his recent book, “Return of the God hypothesis (2021)”, lists the three necessary Christian presuppositions that lay at the founding of modern science in Medieval Christian Europe as such.
“Science in its modern form arose in the Western civilization alone, among all the cultures of the world”, because only the Christian West possessed the necessary “intellectual presuppositions”. – Ian Barbour Presupposition 1: The contingency of nature “In 1277, the Etienne Tempier, the bishop of Paris, writing with support of Pope John XXI, condemned “necessarian theology” and 219 separate theses influenced by Greek philosophy about what God could and couldn’t do.”,, “The order in nature could have been otherwise (therefore) the job of the natural philosopher, (i.e. scientist), was not to ask what God must have done but (to ask) what God actually did.” Presupposition 2: The intelligibility of nature “Modern science was inspired by the conviction that the universe is the product of a rational mind who designed it to be understood and who (also) designed the human mind to understand it.” (i.e. human exceptionalism), “God created us in his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts” – Johannes Kepler Presupposition 3: Human Fallibility “Humans are vulnerable to self-deception, flights of fancy, and jumping to conclusions.”, (i.e. original sin), Scientists must therefore employ “systematic experimental methods.” – Stephen Meyer on Intelligent Design and The Return of the God Hypothesis – Hoover Institution https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_8PPO-cAlA April 2021: Defense of all 3 presuppositions 1 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/brian-keating-on-the-problem-with-follow-the-science/#comment-727893 2 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/brian-keating-on-the-problem-with-follow-the-science/#comment-727959 3 https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/brian-keating-on-the-problem-with-follow-the-science/#comment-727980
Verse:
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast what is good.
bornagain77_{November 22, 2021
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The Great Courses has several courses on the history of science
History of Science: Antiquity to 1700
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-science-antiquity-to-1700
History of Science: 1700-1900
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/history-of-science-1700-1900
Science in the 20th Century: A Social-Intellectual Survey
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/science-in-the-20th-century-a-social-intellectual-survey
Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/great-scientific-ideas-that-changed-the-world 144 lectures in all. That’s a lot of it. Most of it in a few places in the world.jerry_{November 22, 2021
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BA77, . It did not spring out of a single mind and religion. Modern science has many contributors to thank for its existence, including atheists, deists, Jews, Christians, Muslims and Greeks and was a progressive development over many centuries with a lot of people standing on the shoulders of those who had gone before. --Ramram_{November 22, 2021
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If everything must necessarily exist in space & time, then space & time itself must exist in space & time. If that is correct, then that would be another space & time, so that space & time A exists in space & time B. If so, then space & time B must exist in space & time C. .... And so on.Origenes_{November 22, 2021
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Ram states, "So do Hindus,,, I would imagine Muslims and just about any other religionist would agree." (that they have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to). But alas, out of all the religions of the world, only Christianity can lay claim to founding modern science itself.
The War against the War Between Science and Faith Revisited - July 2010 Excerpt: …as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation. (Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos),,, Jaki notes that before Christ the Jews never formed a very large community (priv. comm.). In later times, the Jews lacked the Christian notion that Jesus was the monogenes or unigenitus, the only-begotten of God. Pantheists like the Greeks tended to identify the monogenes or unigenitus with the universe itself, or with the heavens. Jaki writes: Herein lies the tremendous difference between Christian monotheism on the one hand and Jewish and Muslim monotheism on the other. This explains also the fact that it is almost natural for a Jewish or Muslim intellectual to become a pa(n)theist. About the former Spinoza and Einstein are well-known examples. As to the Muslims, it should be enough to think of the Averroists. With this in mind one can also hope to understand why the Muslims, who for five hundred years had studied Aristotle’s works and produced many commentaries on them failed to make a breakthrough. The latter came in medieval Christian context and just about within a hundred years from the availability of Aristotle’s works in Latin,, If science suffered only stillbirths in ancient cultures, how did it come to its unique viable birth? The beginning of science as a fully fledged enterprise took place in relation to two important definitions of the Magisterium of the Church. The first was the definition at the Fourth Lateran Council in the year 1215, that the universe was created out of nothing at the beginning of time. The second magisterial statement was at the local level, enunciated by Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris who, on March 7, 1277, condemned 219 Aristotelian propositions, so outlawing the deterministic and necessitarian views of creation. These statements of the teaching authority of the Church expressed an atmosphere in which faith in God had penetrated the medieval culture and given rise to philosophical consequences. The cosmos was seen as contingent in its existence and thus dependent on a divine choice which called it into being; the universe is also contingent in its nature and so God was free to create this particular form of world among an infinity of other possibilities. Thus the cosmos cannot be a necessary form of existence; and so it has to be approached by a posteriori investigation. The universe is also rational and so a coherent discourse can be made about it. Indeed the contingency and rationality of the cosmos are like two pillars supporting the Christian vision of the cosmos. http://www.scifiwright.com/2010/08/the-war-against-the-war-between-science-and-faith-revisited/
Moreover, presupposing a rational universe, (which is necessary to even 'do science' in the first place), necessarily presupposes that the universe must also have some teleological purpose behind, and for, its existence in the first place. And Christianity can lay claim to providing the correct teleological purpose for the universe in that Christ's resurrection from the dead, via evidence gleaned from the Shroud of Turin, provides a coherent solution for the much sought after 'Theory of Everything",
Jesus Christ as the correct "Theory of Everything" - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vpn2Vu8--eE
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.
bornagain77_{November 22, 2021
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Someone tell me what it means for something to exist "beyond space and time." Until you can do that, you might as well be saying that a square circle exists.William J Murray_{November 22, 2021
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BA77: Christians readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to so as to explain quantum entanglement. So do Hindus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman I would imagine Muslims and just about any other religionist would agree.ram_{November 22, 2021
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Ultimately, what are so-called "natural laws?" They are models that describe the behavior of various phenomena in our experience. Where does that experience occur? In mind/consciousness. There's a difference between "physical" and "material." We experience a physical, apparently external world in dreams, but few here would assert that dreams constitute our being in an external, material world. Usually, gravity also appears to be governing our dream world. Does gravity actually exist in a dream world? Or is it just a pattern of behavior of phenomena we experience while dreaming? Extracting a non-materialist language from a materialist conceptual framework is a very difficult process at best. One of the key issues is the difference between "having a physical experience" and "living in an external, material world." Physical and material are the same thing under materialism/dualism; they are two entirely different things under Idealism/MRT. BTW, dualists may not realize it, but their perspective has been killed by the same quantum gun as materialism.William J Murray_{November 22, 2021
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Seversky said:
And another fairly and pleasantly obvious implication is that, if quantum information can be neither created nor destroyed then it must always have existed, hence there was no creation event and no creator.
I agree. The idea that space-time was "created" is nonsensical even without the eternal nature of information. I mean, if there is no time, there was no "before" the creation event, and no space in which it could have occurred.William J Murray_{November 22, 2021
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Thanks AaronS1978. Quantum Mechanics is not now, nor has it ever been, your friend Seversky!
Quantum Physics Debunks Materialism (v2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM0IKLv7KrE&t=1s
bornagain77_{November 20, 2021
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Hahahahahahaha! Rethink your logic there Sev You’re just splitting hairs. You’re assuming it always existed based on immutability, you cannot guarantee that, and for something to be effectively indestructible and seem like it can neither be created or destroyed could solely depend on the physics of that universe and the rules that dictate it, these rules/physics could have been created by a creation event and a creator. You would know no different, other than it’s part of the system that makes us upAaronS1978_{November 20, 2021
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Bornagain77/4
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, cannot be created nor destroyed, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
And another fairly and pleasantly obvious implication is that, if quantum information can be neither created nor destroyed then it must always have existed, hence there was no creation event and no creator.Seversky_{November 20, 2021
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We now know that the physical world consists of more than atoms bumping into each other. There is energy. There is gravity. There is magnetism. There are electrical fields. None of these physical phenomena can be reduced to atoms bumping into each other.
And let us not forget about the "physical" laws which are also irreducible to matter.Origenes_{November 20, 2021
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And this follow up 2018 article stated that “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”
Quantum Critical Proteins – Stuart Lindsay – Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Arizona State University – 2018 Excerpt: The difficulty with this proposal lies in its improbability. Only an infinitesimal density of random states exists near the critical point.,, Gábor Vattay et al. recently examined a number of proteins and conducting and insulating polymers.14 The distribution for the insulators and conductors were as expected, but the functional proteins all fell on the quantum-critical distribution. Such a result cannot be a consequence of chance.,,, WHAT OF quantum criticality? Vattay et al. carried out electronic structure calculations for the very large protein used in our work. They found that the distribution of energy-level spacings fell on exactly the quantum-critical distribution, implying that this protein is also quantum critical. There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,, http://inference-review.com/article/quantum-critical-proteins
If Darwinian evolution were a normal science instead of being, basically, an unfalsifiable religion for atheists, this should count as yet another powerful empirical falsification of Darwin's Theory. One final note, it is also important to realize that quantum information is conserved. As the following article states, In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.
Quantum no-hiding theorem experimentally confirmed for first time - 2011 Excerpt: In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed. This concept stems from two fundamental theorems of quantum mechanics: the no-cloning theorem and the no-deleting theorem. A third and related theorem, called the no-hiding theorem, addresses information loss in the quantum world. According to the no-hiding theorem, if information is missing from one system (which may happen when the system interacts with the environment), then the information is simply residing somewhere else in the Universe; in other words, the missing information cannot be hidden in the correlations between a system and its environment. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-quantum-no-hiding-theorem-experimentally.html
The implication of finding 'non-local', beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, cannot be created nor destroyed, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, “the quantum information,,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.”
Leading Scientists Say Consciousness Cannot Die It Goes Back To The Universe - Oct. 19, 2017 - Spiritual Excerpt: “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) (of note, this video is no longer available for public viewing) https://radaronline.com/exclusives/2012/10/life-after-death-soul-science-morgan-freeman/
Personally, I consider these recent findings from quantum biology to rival all other scientific discoveries over the past century. Surpassing even the discovery of a beginning of the universe, via Big Bang cosmology, in terms of theological, even personal, significance. As Jesus once asked his disciples along with a crowd of followers, “Is anything worth more than your soul?”
Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?
Of supplemental note to the fact that, "atoms don't ever physically touch each other",
Information is Quantum - Charles Bennett - video 39:30 minute mark: “Entanglement is ubiquitous: Almost every interaction between two systems creates entanglement between them… Most systems in nature… interact so strongly with the environment as to become entangled with it almost immediately.”… 44:00 minute mark: “A classical communications channel is a quantum communication channel with an eavesdropper (maybe only the environment)… A classical computer is a quantum computer handicapped by having eavesdroppers on all its wires.” https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/philip-cunningham-offers-information-is-quantum/
bornagain77_{November 20, 2021
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Darwinian atheists, with their reductive materialistic framework, and especially with the falsification of 'hidden variables', simply have no beyond space and time cause that they can appeal so as to be able to explain the non-local quantum coherence and/or entanglement that is now found to be ubiquitous within biology.
“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 https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/quantum-physicist-david-bohm-on-why-there-cannot-be-a-theory-of-everything/#comment-662358
Whereas on the other hand, Christians readily do have a beyond space and time cause that they can appeal to so as to explain quantum entanglement. As Colossians 1:17 states, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
Colossians 1:17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Moreover, ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, quantum entanglement can be used as a ‘quantum information channel’ in order to perform quantum computation,
Quantum Entanglement and Information Quantum entanglement is a physical resource, like energy, associated with the peculiar nonclassical correlations that are possible between separated quantum systems. Entanglement can be measured, transformed, and purified. A pair of quantum systems in an entangled state can be used as a quantum information channel to perform computational and cryptographic tasks that are impossible for classical systems. The general study of the information-processing capabilities of quantum systems is the subject of quantum information theory. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-entangle/ Quantum Information and Entanglement - 2010 Excerpt: ,,, quantum entanglement, which can be traced back to the EPR paradox in 1935 and gave rise to the discussions on the foundations of quantum mechanics related to reality and locality, plays crucial roles in quantum information processing such as quantum computation, quantum teleportation, dense coding, quantum error correction, quantum cryptographic schemes, entanglement swapping, and remote states preparation. Many striking achievements have been witnessed for the past ten years. https://www.hindawi.com/journals/amp/2010/657878/
And quantum computation in biology would go a very long way towards solving Levinthal's paradox and explaining how it is even possible for proteins to find their final folded shape as quickly as they do,
The Humpty-Dumpty Effect: A Revolutionary Paper with Far-Reaching Implications Paul Nelson - October 23, 2012 Excerpt: Put simply, the Levinthal paradox states that when one calculates the number of possible topological (rotational) configurations for the amino acids in even a small (say, 100 residue) unfolded protein, random search could never find the final folded conformation of that same protein during the lifetime of the physical universe. Therefore, concluded Levinthal, given that proteins obviously do fold, they are doing so, not by random search, but by following favored pathways. The challenge of the protein folding problem is to learn what those pathways are. https://evolutionnews.org/2012/10/a_revolutionary/ Physicists Discover Quantum Law of Protein Folding – February 22, 2011 Quantum mechanics finally explains why protein folding depends on temperature in such a strange way. Excerpt: First, a little background on protein folding. Proteins are long chains of amino acids that become biologically active only when they fold into specific, highly complex shapes. The puzzle is how proteins do this so quickly when they have so many possible configurations to choose from. To put this in perspective, a relatively small protein of only 100 amino acids can take some 10^100 different configurations. If it tried these shapes at the rate of 100 billion a second, it would take longer than the age of the universe to find the correct one. Just how these molecules do the job in nanoseconds, nobody knows.,,, Today, Luo and Lo say these curves can be easily explained if the process of folding is a quantum affair. By conventional thinking, a chain of amino acids can only change from one shape to another by mechanically passing through various shapes in between. But Luo and Lo say that if this process were a quantum one, the shape could change by quantum transition, meaning that the protein could ‘jump’ from one shape to another without necessarily forming the shapes in between.,,, Their astonishing result is that this quantum transition model fits the folding curves of 15 different proteins and even explains the difference in folding and unfolding rates of the same proteins. That's a significant breakthrough. Luo and Lo's equations amount to the first universal laws of protein folding. That’s the equivalent in biology to something like the thermodynamic laws in physics. http://www.technologyreview.com/view/423087/physicists-discover-quantum-law-of-protein/
As well, quantum computation would also go a long way towards explaining DNA search problems, such as DNA repair. A search problem which has been likened to "spotting potholes on every street all over the country and getting them fixed before the next rush hour."
Quantum Dots Spotlight DNA-Repair Proteins in Motion - March 2010 Excerpt: "How this system works is an important unanswered question in this field," he said. "It has to be able to identify very small mistakes in a 3-dimensional morass of gene strands. It's akin to spotting potholes on every street all over the country and getting them fixed before the next rush hour." Dr. Bennett Van Houten - of note: A bacterium has about 40 team members on its pothole crew. That allows its entire genome to be scanned for errors in 20 minutes, the typical doubling time.,, These smart machines can apparently also interact with other damage control teams if they cannot fix the problem on the spot. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100311123522.htm
Besides DNA and Proteins, quantum entanglement, and/or quantum information channels, has now also been found in wide range of biomolecules, In the following 2015 paper entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules” it was found that “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552
bornagain77_{November 20, 2021
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As to,
"In the Epicurean philosophy, only three things exist: atoms, the void, and the universe. Consequently, everything we see in the physical world can be reduced to atoms bumping into each other.,,, ,,, atoms do not even bump into each other. Instead, they are repulsed by field effects. Nothing ever physically touches anything else in the physical world.,,, Let’s return to Epicureanism. As we saw, the reasoning seemed very logical. The information relevant for physical interactions can only be transmitted physically by touching. We now know that nothing ever physically touches.,,, Consequently, an Epicurean such as Lucretius, when faced with modern scientific evidence, would be forced to the very counterintuitive conclusion the operations of the physical world are almost entirely non-physical!" Eric Holloway - Can The Physical World be Wholly Physical? Physical at All? - Nov. 19, 2021 https://mindmatters.ai/2021/11/can-the-physical-world-be-wholly-physical-physical-at-all/
And to back up Eric Holloway's claim that atoms don't ever physically touch each other, (and to bring all this closer to home in the ID vs. Darwinism debate), in the following video Dr Rieper states, "What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information,,,"
"What happens is this classical information (of DNA) is embedded, sandwiched, into the quantum information (of DNA). And most likely this classical information is never accessed because it is inside all the quantum information. You can only access the quantum information or the electron clouds and the protons. So mathematically you can describe that as a quantum/classical state." Elisabeth Rieper – Classical and Quantum Information in DNA – video (Longitudinal Quantum Information resides along the entire length of DNA discussed at the 19:30 minute mark; at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper remarks that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it) https://youtu.be/2nqHOnVTxJE?t=1176
In fact, Quantum Entanglement is what gives DNA its helical structure,
Quantum entanglement holds together life’s blueprint – 2010 Excerpt: When the researchers analysed the DNA without its helical structure, they found that the electron clouds were not entangled. But when they incorporated DNA’s helical structure into the model, they saw that the electron clouds of each base pair became entangled with those of its neighbours. “If you didn’t have entanglement, then DNA would have a simple flat structure, and you would never get the twist that seems to be important to the functioning of DNA,” says team member Vlatko Vedral of the University of Oxford. http://neshealthblog.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/quantum-entanglement-holds-together-lifes-blueprint/
Moreover, it is now known that classical information, such as the information encoded on DNA, is a subset of quantum information. In the following site entitled “Quantum Information Science”, a site where Charles Bennett, (of quantum teleportation and reversible computation fame), himself is on the steering committee,
Quantum Information Science Steering Committee C. H. Bennett IBM D. P. DiVincenzo IBM N. Gershenfeld MIT H. M. Gibbs University of Arizona H. J. Kimble Caltech J. Preskill Caltech U. V. Vazirani UC/Berkeley D. J. Wineland NIST C. Yao Princeton University https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf00101/nsf00101.htm
On that site, they have this illustration showing classical information to be a subset of quantum information
Classical Information is a subset of Quantum information – illustration https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2000/nsf00101/images/figure1.gif below that illustration they have this caption, “Figure 1: The well-established theory of classical information and computation is actually a subset of a much larger topic, the emerging theory of quantum information and computation.”
The thing that is so antagonistic for modern day Epicureans/materialists with quantum entanglement in biology, (and elsewhere), is that it takes a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, cause in order to explain quantum entanglement, As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012 Excerpt: “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php
Moreover, to make the 'outside spacetime' problem all that much worse for Darwinian atheists, and as the following study found, the greater the number of particles in a quantum hypergraph state, (which is exactly the type of quantum coherence that we have with protein and DNA molecules), the more strongly it violates local realism, with the strength increasing exponentially with the number of particles.
Physicists find extreme violation of local realism in quantum hypergraph states - Lisa Zyga - March 4, 2016 Excerpt: Many quantum technologies rely on quantum states that violate local realism, which means that they either violate locality (such as when entangled particles influence each other from far away) or realism (the assumption that quantum states have well-defined properties, independent of measurement), or possibly both. Violation of local realism is one of the many counterintuitive, yet experimentally supported, characteristics of the quantum world. Determining whether or not multiparticle quantum states violate local realism can be challenging. Now in a new paper, physicists have shown that a large family of multiparticle quantum states called hypergraph states violates local realism in many ways. The results suggest that these states may serve as useful resources for quantum technologies, such as quantum computers and detecting gravitational waves.,,, The physicists also showed that the greater the number of particles in a quantum hypergraph state, the more strongly it violates local realism, with the strength increasing exponentially with the number of particles. In addition, even if a quantum hypergraph state loses one of its particles, it continues to violate local realism. This robustness to particle loss is in stark contrast to other types of quantum states, which no longer violate local realism if they lose a particle. This property is particularly appealing for applications, since it might allow for more noise in experiments. http://phys.org/news/2016-03-physicists-extreme-violation-local-realism.html
bornagain77_{November 20, 2021
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Physicalism which depends on a mechanistic view of the universe, was challenged by observer-dependent quantum mechanics.
Challenged and defeated.William J Murray_{November 20, 2021
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