Posted on 08/17/2011 6:57:10 AM PDT by Todd Kinsey
LOLOL!
Which obviates the question: If the "first cause" is "first," then how can it have an antecedent cause?
But as noted elsewhere, that is a problem for cosmology (and theology), not for the physical sciences per se.
Precisely so!
Thank you ever so much for the outstanding insight, dearest sister in Christ! And also for your kind words of encouragement.
But what could a wavefunction "want?" Are you saying that the wavefunction is an intelligent agent, with "wants?"
It seems that only intelligent agents can have "wants," a/k/a desires....
No matter whose ideology is being promoted, trying to make science fit an ideology never works. It doesn't matter if it's Lysenkoism or creationism; ideologically driven science does not and cannot work.
The only people I've ever seen trying to assign a moral component to the theory of evolution are literal creationists. Science itself has no morality; it is merely a tool. The people using the tool supply the morality.
Let me get this straight, you are asserting that the common sense notion and, in fact, scientific notion that events have causes needs to be proved? That is precisely why scientists reject supernatural things. You are a jerk. Oh, I'm sorry. You are being fatuous.
The question is rather specific. You asserted that wave collapse is uncaused. Prove it.
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.
Penetrating insights here, dearest sister in Christ!
RE: the "objective collapse theory," I get the strange impression that Richard Feynman has attempted to model this with his path integral formalism. It seems to me that he has taken very great pains to obviate any role for the observer. But then, it turns out that, without the observer, "I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics. So do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, 'but how can it be like that?' Nobody knows how it can be like that." [from: "The Character of Physical Law," (Messenger Lectures, 1964, by Richard Feynman {2001}).]
But Feynman describes "the threshold being met" as calculatable by summing all possible paths....
But how does he/we know what paths/how many paths are possible?
But that's an epistemic problem, I suppose — a problem relating to "understanding." I know of many scientists nowadays who don't care so much about understanding things — what they care about is that scientific formalisms/theories actually work in scientific applications. And it turns out that the path integral formalism does work. (We just don't know why; and as Feynman admonishes, we shouldn't even ask.)
Of course, I am always interested in the "Why???" question!
Thank you ever so much, dearest sister in Christ, for your outstanding essay/post!
Well now, you’ve been just as categorical in declaring, there is no ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ (#406). It seems, after all, that the burden falls equally on you.
Dear Texas Songwriter, I totally agree with you here — and with my dearest sister in Christ!
It's simply that I'm addressing my remarks to scientists, or people who purport to be scientists. I'm trying to keep the cosmological/theological implications — which they mainly reject anyway — out of the picture as much as possible. There is probably no way such folks are going to find the Alpha and Omega scientifically relevant. That's the method of my madness....
But I oh! so completely agree with the absolutely vital point you made: "the proposition is not 'Everything has a cause,' but rather, 'Everything which comes to be has a cause.'" Scientists are generally quite blind to the problems of being and existence, and their relations.
As for me, I believe that my very existence is contingent on God, that my existence is a participation in divine Being — in the I AM.
But that's why we need philosophers — and theologians. :^)
Thank you so very much for your most welcome observation!
Wrong again! If you weren't being such a jerk I would let you off as having a faulty memory but your frequent logical slights of hand and linguistic tap dancing requires me to know you are simply lying to evade blame.
Evade blame? LOL I believe in personal responsibility unlike you Born Againers who take no responsibility and lay all of your indiscretions at the feet of Christ. What hypocrisy!
We said our God contains ALL attributes as He created the whole thing and still resides in and supervises every aspect of it. You told be to name an attribute and you would falsify it. When I said He was all attributes you responded that my God was full of crap since that is an attribute, another of your purposeful misdirections, and I said that was not an attribute of God since He is above all that but He did create a world in which you could be full of crap. Perhaps that will refresh your memory.
All attributes is just that, so I am free to give any example I feel like. If I say your GOD is a fuzzy dice (that is an attribute) then he is. Or if I say your GOD doesn't exist that must be his attribute too. See how this make believe game is played?
You also use the term that you will "falsify" a point of view, i.e. Au contraire. My God is all attributes so just pick one and disprove it.
Okay, I pick the attribute that your GOD is boogger on my desk. There is no boogger on my desk, therefore your GOD doesn't exist, because if he really was all attributes he would be a booger on my desk.
I reference this for your consideration, "More recently, however, postmodern relativism has invaded science as well, threatening to undermine the objectivity of scientific enterprise. Old-line historical relativists prized the objectivity of science because is served them well as a foil for exposing what they considered to be the comparative non-objectivity of historical constructions. But during the 1960s proponenents of so-called Weltanschauung analysis of scientific theories, such as Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend, radically challenged the old, positivistic view of science. According to these thinkers, scientific work takes place within the context of an all-embracing worldview (Weltanschuung) or paradigm, which is so intimately linked with a given scientific theory that for scientists working within that paradigm, their observations are not neutral, but theory-laden; the very meanings of terms used by them are determined by the theory so that scientists working within a different paradigm aren't even talking about the same things; and what counts as a fact is determined by a scientist's Weltanschauung), so that there are no neutral facts available for assessing the adeaquacy of two rival theories. On this analysis, scientific change from one theory to another becomes fundamentally arational and is to be explained sociologically. On, Weltanschauung analysis scientist find themselves in the same boat sith historical relativist, for scientific theories are constructions which are not based on objective facts and cannot claim to describe the world as it actually is. Ironically, then the old-line relativists' complaint that scientist (unlike the historian) has direct access to the objeects of his study has been undercut by postmodernist relativists who challenge the positivists idea that scientists neutrally observe the uninterpreted world around them. The scientist's understanding of the present is just as much a theoretical construction as is the historian's understanding of the past, a construction which cannot be checked for its correspondence with the objective facts, since one's Weltanschauung determines what the facts are.(Frederrick Suppe, "The Search for Philosphic Understanding of Scientific Theories," in Structure of Scientific Theories, 218-20.)
As Suppe explains, it is false that there is a different Weltanschauung uniquely correlated with each scientific theory. If the notion of a Weltanschauung is difined too broadly, then it just becomes equivalent o one's total-background, experience, beliefs, training, and so forth, in which case the striking fact is that scientist possessing widely different Weltanschauung do employ the same theories and come to agreemnt on the testing, articulation, and use of such theories. On the other hand, if one tries to narrow the definition of a Weltanschauung, then the fact is that scientist involved in research programs on different theories to not necessarily have different Weltanschauung, but clearly understand the competing theory, the observations and evidence that support it, and regularly communicate with one another about such matters. It would be bizarre, for example, the say that all proponents of the standard Big Bang theory have a unique and different Weltanschauung than cosmologists who advocated the old Hoyle "Steady-State" theory, rather than to say they just disagreed on which theory offered the best explanation of the evidence.
IN OTHER WORDS, everyone has a worldview and ideology and cannot but help insinuate it into their view of science, politic, history, sociology, economics, etc. So, by what criteria do we adjudicate these positions? ? ? We should go back to a point where we all agree on what is proper and fit...Is that point, "what did our parents say is right"? ? "Is that point, what do the most people agree to say about a given subject"? ? "Is that point what a cleric says about said subject" ? ? "Is that point what any individual says about that subject"? ? Or should we agree to begin the examination by asking, "What is truth?" "Does 'TRUTH' exist"? "How do we come to know truth"? " Can we all agree to approach the subject with logic, rational thought, and reason". As a Christian theist, I would agree with that last profered approach,....but does the scientist agree?
Boy you are dense. All means all, not part. And my statement is not to affirm any of yours only to show that you are dense. By your logic, basketball is played with something picked off of a tree in Florida since the something is round and orange.
You have committed the fallacy of composition.
If an assertion is made without any evidence, I don't need to provide any evidence in denying their assertion.
And yet you criticize the assertion. You just will not tell us on what basis you criticized it. If you criticize it — for lack of evidence acceptable to you — then surely you must have some "evidence" by which the false premise can be "falsified."
So please, dear LeGrande: Just speak up and tell us what that "evidence" is.
That’s one of my all time favorite movies.
So please, dear LeGrande: Just speak up and tell us what that "evidence" is.
Let me put it in a manner that you might understand : )
I testify that God is a pink Leprechaun. If you disagree with that assertion (and I fervently hope that you do) then please provide evidence supporting your denial of my assertion.
Do you now see how ludicrous your position is?
Which, in a nutshell, means that he expects us to believe that he is *right*-whatever that is as he has not yet defined it nor given us any reason to believe that to be the case, and take it by faith, which he also condemns when we do it with God.
LG, until you can present your case and provide substantial evidence of why we should believe either you or what you say, nobody is buying. You are violating the very principles that you claim must be met in order for us to accept any of your pronouncements.
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