Posted on 08/17/2011 6:57:10 AM PDT by Todd Kinsey
For the better part of a century, socialists (Democrats) have been using science as a weapon to destroy the very fabric of American society. Today they propagate the global warming myth, forty years ago they were sounding the global cooling alarm, and theyve used junk science to teach evolution in our nations schools.
To the socialist it is somehow easier to believe that aliens put us here or that we emerged from some primordial sludge than it is to believe in God. Socialist leadership, under the guise of organizing, use the environment, gay rights, immigration, or any number of causes as a form of religion to keep their unwitting masses in line. Their absence of God, and therefore morality, leaves these desperate souls longing to believe in something. How else can you explain a human being that is willing to risk their life to save a tree or a whale, yet they have no qualms about aborting a baby or assisted suicide?
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Which, by contrast, makes MORMONs, who are apologizing for THEIR god, seem almost Einsteinian in their ability to find a cause - other than, "'cause JS said so."
But... but... but I've heard this a ZILLION times!
Though never with any PROOF.
(Perhaps if we just give it a bit more TIME; then THAT will make it come true.)
I think you are talking about our beloved President here...
You just got to the heart of the matter.
What do you think spacetime is?
Do yourself a favor and study a little bit of real science. Maybe a 6th grade primer on the physical sciences?
Too much time spent trying to figure out how many dinosaurs Noah put in his Ark isn't good for you.
Wave function collapse is a causal event.
What is the cause if I may ask?
Evidently you have presumed that a causal event requires an intelligent agent. It does not.
Where did that come from? There is no 'cause' and 'effect'.
Hmm, it is your side that is claiming that everything is 'caused'. Provide evidence of the 'cause'. What exactly is the 'cause' anyway?
Democrats use DISTORTED science, mouthed by fraudulent scientists, as a weapon. Real scientists seek the truth avoiding any agenda. People forget too quickly ClimateGate and other assorted contemporary lies spoken in the name of science.
LeGrande, you were quoting Wheeler here as if you agreed with his statement, or more accurately, as a proof of your position. When bb observes that there is no communication involved between space-time and matter you say that proves your point of no cause and effect and then declare it an "Aha, eureka!" moment. Was your purpose for posting the Wheeler statement to say he was full of it? It didn't seem that way. In keeping with your history you seem once again to be practicing linguistic gymnastics.
Wheeler isn't claiming that spacetime and matter 'talk' to each other any more than the Earth's gravity well 'tells' the Moon how to accelerate. It is a metaphor that was purposely misinterpreted by Alamo Girl I think, not Betty (I am too lazy to check).
Since position is a fixed point and momentum is movement one obviously cannot measure both at the same time because they can't both exist at the same time. Yet, as is always the case, they are both part of the whole.
That is your interpretation of the superposition principle? You need to reread the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.
The two slit experiment also seems elementary to me. If you want to see a particle you experiment with one slit, a wave with two. However, I do not know, and apparently no one else does either, why a wave would not go through a single slit. I assume it has to do with Newton's Law of Conservation of Energy. I guess that is the one, it sounds like it is.
LOL You are clueless about the two slit experiment. The number of slits doesn't determine whether a wave or a particle goes through them it is our attempts to determine which is going through the slits that determines what goes through.
Since it is obvious that subatomic particles are both particle and wave, because they can be seen as both, (they are Newtonian particles and Einsteinium waves) then they adapt to their environment and use whichever form is appropriate to their environment and the task at hand.
True, everything can be described as a wave, but waves and particles interact differently. I don't have a clue regarding what you mean by Newtonian Particles and Einsteinium waves, but the idea that they adapt to their environment and the task at hand is for the lack of a more polite term 'special'?
Since they travel at the same speed a particle cannot split in two when faced with two choices so it converts to waves and accomplishes the goal. I am sure that must be wrong but to the untrained it seems right.
I am laughing, but some brilliant minds actually thought something similar so I can't be too hard on you : )
I don't know why, but I will try and help you out. Think of the matter/wave as a wavefunction in a bowl above your head. Ice cubes are the matter and water are the waves. If you use a fork you will empty the entire container and it will all be ice cubes, or if you use a spoon you can empty the entire container of water, or if you like you can use a fork and get ice cubes and switch to the spoon to get water until the bowl is emptied.
What is in the bowl is determined by the tool that you use to take it out. The observer decides. Einstein hated that answer. It has nothing to do with what the wavefuntion wants, at least we don't think so : )
Just to stay in character and pay you back, let me quote you, "Once again, being unburdened with knowledge seems a blessing." Truly you are blessed.
Not anything that would satisfy vertical denying horizontal flatlanders that are nothing more than grubby chimps poking their joysticks into cyberholes to satisfy their animal impulses.
What's yours? Waves of nothingness caused by nothing? And what do you have to support it. Nothing, unsurprisingly.
So far that's all I've seen you propose.
Can you produce anything except hand waving?
That's all you dish out. Why is it good enough for you to answer with but not good enough to accept as an answer.
That's hypocrisy you know. Having one standard for yourself and another for everyone else.
The level of deception and delusion that accompanies such brainwashing is staggering.
Proverbs 26:12 Do you see a man who is wise in his own eyes?
There is more hope for a fool than for him.
On the contrary. It is Darwinism that is not fundamental to biology.
You've got that bass-ackwards, LeGrande: Usually final cause is listed last, because it is the cause for which the others exist. As Aristotle explains (Metaphysics Book 2, Part 2):
"...the final cause is an end, and that sort of end which is not for the sake of something else, but for whose sake everything else is; so that if there is to be a last term of this sort, the process will not be infinite; but if there is no such term, there will be no final cause, but those who maintain the infinite series eliminate the Good without knowing it (yet no one would try to do anything if he were not going to come to a limit [peras]); nor would there be reason in the world; the reasonable man, at least, always acts for a purpose, and this is a limit; for the end is a limit.The problem seems to be a confusion WRT the categorical distinction between a final cause in the cosmological sense, and a final cause in the phenomenal sense. In the former case, we have to speak of a telos a cosmic, even divine, goal and/or purpose implicit in the primal form and subsequent evolution of the universe. Since this sort of thing can never come within the range of direct observation, it is not an object for science.
But final cause in the phenomenal sense does not invoke the idea of telos on cosmic scale, it invokes the idea of peras, "limit," the idea of finality of a process in nature. Such as a biological function.
As the mathematician Robert Rosen suggested, finality in this sense pertains to the necessary causal closure for efficient causation to depend solely on the resources of the isolated system in which it operates.
Rosen had a profound interest in biological questions, and in particular the ultimate biological question, What is Life? Rosen is coming at these questions from the side of mathematical modeling and complex systems theory. His approach culminates in a theory of relational biology. This theory presupposes that what is truly distinctive about biological organisms is not the stuff out of which they are made, but the way that stuff is organized: That is to say the Whole is never the simple summation of its parts.
Rosen maintained that any organizational system displays a pattern of causal entailment that can be mathematically modeled. And when we do model them, we find that simple, mechanistic systems in nature look very different from complex, biological ones. The network of causation tells the tale between inorganic (mechanical) and organic systems in nature.
Rosen describes causal networks in terms of all four Aristotelian causal categories including final cause. In this, he knew he was breaking the Zeroth Commandment permeating all of theoretical science: Thou shalt not allow the future to affect the present. He wrote,
for centuries past, it has been part of the essential core of science itself that science and finality are incompatible . [And yet] I am suggesting, on formal [mathematical] grounds, the possibility of separating finality from teleology, of retaining the former while, if we wish, discarding the latter.In addition to getting the causal categories backwards, it appears that your use of the ">" sign indicates a temporal flow, or sequence. But Rosen noted that there is a temporal anomaly . Final cause cannot fit within the same temporal sequence in which the other causal categories harmoniously operate.
As Rosen explained,
In completely formal terms, we may note that final causation appears anomalous, when compared with the other categories of causation. Formally, to say that something is a final cause of P is to require P itself to entail something; in every other case, to say that something is a cause of P means only that it entails P. Final cause thus requires something of its effect P; in all other cases, nothing is required of P beyond the passive fact of its entailment.And thus the temporal anomaly remains.
Moreoever, in addition to requiring its effect P to entail something, a final cause of P must entail the entailment of P itself. It is this peculiar reflexive character of final causation that is primarily responsible for its anomalous position .
In any formalism, there is a kind of natural flow from axioms to theorems, very much like the familiar unidirectional flow of time. Indeed, the formal analog of time is embodied in the idea of sequence, the order of application of production rules or inferential operations in proofs and algorithms. This flow of formal time is irreversible, just as real time is, and for exactly the same reasons. In it, the axioms are always earlier than any of their consequents; a proposition P is later than another Q if it is implied by it, if there is a proof of P with Q as hypothesis.
The three traditional causes (formal, material, and efficient causation) always respect this flow of formal time, in the sense that cause Q always precedes effect P. Final causation gives the appearance, at any rate, of violating this flow, in the sense that the effect of P seems to be acting back on the causal process that is generating it; it appears that the future is actively affecting the past. I say appears because this (traditional) interpretation of finality confuses P with its final cause; it is not the effect P, but the final cause of P, that must operate on the process by which P is generated.
First cause (a/k/a "uncaused cause") refers to cosmological concerns with origins. It is needed to obviate the problem of infinite regression just as the cosmological variant of final cause (telos) is concerned with obviating the problem of future infinity (if I might put it that way). Infinity is an extraordinarily valuable concept in mathematics and yet it has been found to be unconstructible in the physical sciences. And thus first cause is not a problem for science.
Well, for whatever the above is worth to you, dear LeGrande. Methinks theres more to final cause than has been dreamt of in your philosophy.
Unless you're actually right about knowing more than Aristotle and Newton.... If so, you have yet to make your theory intelligible to me.
Thank you so much for writing!
Wave function collapse is a causal event.
you: What is the cause if I may ask?
The creation of a fictional story is a causal event. As the observer I would say the will of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is the cause, and the character of Sherlock Holmes is the effect. Pen and paper would be material causes under Aristotle's definition, i.e. but for pen and paper there would be no Sherlock Holmes.
Also as the observer, I would say that photosynthesis is a causal event, with the photon as the cause and the organic compound as the effect. Carbon dioxide is a material cause in photosynthesis.
If I were an observer favoring the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics, I would say that an observation (whether by intelligent or non-intelligent agency) is the cause of a wave function collapse, the event and the effect.
However if I were an observer favoring an objective collapse theory of quantum mechanics, I would say the collapse is independent of the observation, the result of a physical threshold being met and thus the cause is the threshold being met (involuntarily) and the wave function collapse the event and the effect.
As an observer of the "lofty structure of all that there is" (as Einstein termed it) - I testify that the will of God The Creator is the cause, "Creation Week" is the causal event and "the lofty structure of all that there is" is the effect.
“What is the meaning of ‘what’? and you must convince me” or something equally absurd. I think we've been this route before with another (thankfully absent) self important atheist.
Truly, space/time is finite, it doesn't pre-exist but is created as the universe expands.
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