Posted on 12/07/2005 3:31:28 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
I know, and my comment was directed to the object of your joke, not to you.
The precise moment of radioactive decay is not a cause. It's an outcome. The cause lies in the underlying physics. Decay is an event that is driven by particle interacitons(force, dynamics...) and the uncertainty principle. The important forces can be IDed for any particular particle decay. It's the force and dynamics of the interactions that detemine the particle, or State lifetimes and widths and are the identified cause.
It's somewhat like a mortality table. You can predict results for the entire population, but not for individuals.
So you are saying that for two atoms, one of which decays in a given interval and one of which does not, there is an intrinsic difference between them at the start of the observation?
But for objects the size of humans, you can detect indivisual differences and make distinctions.
Quantum theory posits there is no distinction between atoms. Could be wrong, but QM has not been wrong yet.
Quantum theory posits there is no distinction between atoms.
That we know of, of course.
Planck time is simply the smallest delta t measurable. Space is smooth, so there's no quantized t.
There are many reasons, theoretical as well as observational, why decay and other quantum phenomena are considered to be truely random.
True randomness defies inuitition, but it slices right through the infinite regress of causation. Steady state creation. Not what Hoyle had in mind, but interesting.
Evidently the "laws of physics" as understood by Dawkins stop far short of including statiscal physics.
Steady state creation.
That's interesting. I never thought about QM in that way.
Thanks. I needed that.
My statement was an observation. Throughout the history of science, the realm of God has been shrinking. At one time God was just above our heads and was the direct cause of everything of any real influence in human lives. He was responsible for the wind, the rain, the snow, even drought. Since then his residence has receded farther and farther from the physical domain of Earth and his control of physical events has decreased dramatically in number. We no longer consider God to be the cause of the wind, or rain or any other event science has been able to explain. Whether I want this to happen is irrelevant, it is what is happening. In response, theists have placed God farther from direct view and contact, so he is just out of reach of science. Note that I am not saying science is attempting to find, threaten or replace God, nor that science can necessarily even test for God. It is the theists that are moving God, not science. Science simply investigates those areas that God used to inhabit and finds nature inhabiting the area instead.
"By now we have something like 39 millennia of human testimony/experience that God exists. That testimony (in some form or other) seems to be universal to all human cultures, at all times and places, throughout human history.
I will ignore the appeal to popularity. Your contention is that since past peoples have always believed in God this implies that the concept of God is somehow innate in humans. I suspect you believe the innateness, since God is the prime mover\initial cause\uncaused cause, was placed by God in our genetic make up.
What does seem to be innate in our make up is the need to explain events around us. If we have no method of determining the true cause, we make up causes. We assume that since we can make things happen, we can be the cause of events, albeit not as impressive as a hurricane for example, the thought occurs to us that someone or something very much like us, but more so, must be causing those events for which we have no explanation. What I find interesting in your universal concept of God, is that most cultures have created a multitude of Gods, not just a single cause as looks to be required by your 'uncaused cause'.
"If you were a half-decent empiricist, I think you'd have to qualify such testimony as directly admissible in the evaluation of the question of whether God exists.
The implication being that if I don't agree to your little appeal to emotion, I'm less than a half-decent empiricist. This is silly. An empiricist would not accept such anecdotal evidence on its face, he/she would require much more than a fuzzy idea many people adhere to. Should astrology be considered true simply because most humans have believed in it, or something similar, for thousands of years?
"To do otherwise amounts to the claim that humanity has been totally irrational, the whole human race just a gang of superstitious morons, easily misled, prior to the Enlightenment.
You do have the appeal to emotion down well, but it isn't convincing. Refusal to accept your appeal to poularity does not imply that I believe humanity has been irrational or that they have been suckers, simply that I know they did not have the information available to them to believe anything else. The innate need to be able to explain things is a result of our need to explain that scary rustle in the leaves that could mean some animal desires to make us its dinner, or that it may be the death throws of a tree about to collapse on us. Nothing mystical about it.
"And then -- and only then -- did humankind acquire the habits of reason and start to get things "right" -- for the first time in the history of Homo sapiens sapiens.
See above.
"Instead, because you can't stick God under the microscope and subject him to direct empirical tests, or observe him through a high-power telescope, you simply say he does not exist.
Here comes some 'Tit for Tat'.
Simply because you fear there is no God, you invent some void to place him in and powers beyond the physical limits of our universe to give him. Simply because you fear science makes your faith questionable you desire to change science to something unable to do so.
"And you accuse me of telling "just-so stories!" It is inconceivable to me that something outside of spacetime that is not physical can have a physical cause that arises in spacetime. And I gather that "physical cause" is what you mean by "cause."
I'll ignore the argument by incredulity this statement presents. I find it inconceivable that something that is outside of spacetime and that is not physical can affect our physical world and yet be unaffected by same. I find it inconceivable that some force within that non-physical world cannot have been designed and created by another force outside that non-physical world.
Remember this is all about your insult to atheists implicitly claiming they don't have the courage to examine the origin of the laws of nature.
I understand the distinction, but I would say that given the overwhelming documented causal relationships demonstrated already, it is rather the quantum physics people to come up with a model to adequately explain "uncaused events" rather than expect the whole Newtonian world to bow simply because they have not been able to draw the same relationships between activities we see in the "big" world.
There always is. An atom is a system. If you measure it's energy several times, you'll get some average value, +/- some random spread. If you shorten the time of the measurement, you'll get some value with an increased spread due to the uncertainty principle.
The particles are indistinguishable though, because they'll all give the same E +/- delta E under the same conditions. You can never know what is going on at any particular short time in that +/- window, because as you attempt to look in more precise time slices, the E blows up. Their are huge numbers of virtual interacitons going on. They sum up to the average E over a sufficiently long time.
"It's not clear to me why one should fear the judgment of an infinitely wise and infinitely merciful deity."
because He's also infinitely just and unless you live a much holier life than i do, there is reason to fear. also, His standard for what constitutes righteous behavior is a little different than the secular humanist standard. i could be wrong and we may never have to answer to the God of the Bible. we may just die and the great evolution of life will continue on. if so, it's still to my benefit to take the scripture seriously and apply it to my life to the best of my ability. however, if i'm not wrong, then ignoring the Bible is just not very wise.
Science takes what God is doing, assigns it's own explanation in human terms, and carries on. Science is wholly engaged in exploring the supernatural. Just because a phenomena occurs regularly and is capable of human, or scientific, explanation does not nullify the nature of creation as it stands.
phenomena = phenomenon
You assume the quantum world is deficient in some way, but physics assumes that the rest of the world, including relativity, will be assimilated into QM.
You think this is relevant to whether one of two atoms decays? I'd like to see a citation for this, aside from your personal word.
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