Collapse Of Atheism

[DreadVandal]

solarwind23:

No, but it’s the best thing we have when it comes to understanding the nature of our universe. I would go with science over arm-chair type of philosophy any day. You can philosophize virtually anything. You can think other people and the world away with solipsism and it can all be nice and logically consistent etc.

But the true test for any system of thought is how it bears out experimentally. By their fruits you shall know them, no?

That there are many different models to accomodate the same data, or that physics is incomplete in that we don’t have unified theory, and that who knows what better models lie in the future doesn’t mean we should discount what we presently have.

What would you rather look to for truth? The musings of philosophers or theologians? There are so many of them, all with interesting ideas, interesting ways of looking at the world, and they’re all so different.

And above all there is no proof for any of their thinking. Their systems are untested, they could very well have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. Various philosophical and theological systems make huge claims about the universe, about human beings etc. and the corroboration is nonexistent. In fact those systems are such that they cannot even be tested in principle.

I’ll take incomplete scientific theories which have proven time and time again to predict accurately what happens in the real world over this any day.

Not all philosophy is armchair philosophy. You should read some professional Anglo-American philosophy sometime. Physics is the best at what it does. It describes the characteristics and laws that govern the phenomenal universe. But no empirical science has a method of analyzing what is meant by “cause” or “contradiction” or “existence” or “substance.” These are concepts of metaphysics. There are principles of thinking that must be presupposed by the sciences in order for the sciences to do their work. These include the principle of noncontradiction and the principle of identity. I would also argue that the principle of sufficient reason falls into this category (the principle that for every phenomenon, there must be a rational explanation).

Philosophy works with the way in which different sciences, arts, and other ways of thinking and acting in the world use concepts. Philosophers distinguish between different uses of terms and also distinguish between things that are commonly confused in ordinary experience. When one recognizes, for example, that the empirical sciences are by nature limited to what is, in principle, observable, then one is thinking philosophically. If one asserts that the only reality is observable reality, then one is not being a scientist, one is being a dogmatist (after all, how does one know that there isn’t any reality that is not observable to us?) So the popular caricature of philosophy is inaccurate. I personally think it depends more on foolishness published in the name of the New Age movement and self help books than anything else.

 

[DreadVandal]

solarwind23:

Well, it is one thing to philosophically hold such a belief and quite another to live it.

I can hold all sorts of beliefs that won’t harm me if I don’t act on them!

If they really rejected the world you wouldn’t know them, they’d be sitting alone somewhere meditating.

Actually, the most hard-core are sitting alone in monasteries meditating. That is the highest stage for them (in this life). And given the crappy life that most people have, I can’t say that there’s is any worse.

How do you define harm? Is there an objective definition of harm?

 

[Hubriss]

WOW. That’s some propeganda if I’ve ever seen any.

 

[Contarini]

Collapse of Atheism
Interesting video.
What do you think?
It claims that atheism is collapsing, yet I believe otherwise.

I think atheism has lost any chance it ever had (I think this was always an illusion anyway) of capturing society as a whole. The “secularization theory” is a myth. People at large are going to go on being religious in some way or another.

That may not be good news for traditional Christianity, though.

Edwin

 

[john_doran]

solarwind23:

But like the hidden variables interpretation it is very unpopular and few subscribe to this view.

yes, but keep in mind that the objections to it are philosophical.

solarwind23:

I was talking about the widely accepted Copenhagen interpretation which is held by the overwhelming majority of phycisists.

yes, i know. and, again, keep in mind that the copenhagen interpretation is precisely that: an interpretation of the data, and, as such, is a ***philosophical ***position.

solarwind23:

But quantum mechanics has been tested over and over, look up the EPR paradox and Aspect’s experiments.

If I’m not mistaken Bell made a theorem about measurements (this does not depend on physical theories) and the degree to which results would correlate if 1) logic works 2) information does not travel faster than the speed of light 3) the universe is “real”

Actual experiments performed exceed the limit or whatever, and one or more of those assumptions has to go.

that’s what alain aspect’s experiment was designed to demonstrate: bell’s inequality. which it did, but not uncontroversially (some scientists believe that the experimental constraints were not sufficiently rigorous to have established the conclusion).

the dichotomy is between your #2 and #3 - not sure where you got #1 from: if bell’s inequality is violated, then the universe is either unreal or there are instantaneous (i.e. superluminal) transactions.

solarwind23:

Traditionally 3) is rejected and you get t his fundamental uncertainty/superposition/whatever stuff. “Hidden variables” theories reject 2, they say information can and does travel faster than light. But this goes against all of Einstein’s theories for which there is also plenty of experimental support.

this is also a bit muddled: superluminal reactions are precisely what have received such (allegedly) good experimental confirmation by QM.

it is the fact that QM and general relativity are mutually exclusive that has galvanized a significant portion of the scientific community to try and come up with some kind of theoretical integration of the two, the foremost of which attempts are loop quantum gravity (or quantum geometry, if you prefer), and string theory (or, more precisely, m-theory).

solarwind23:

Anyway, the relevance of all this is that the measurement theorem does not depend on any physical theory and needs to be accounted for by any theory. As far as I know anyway since I am not a physicist

sure: every interpretation needs to explain how the superposition of a plurality of states becomes the one, determinate state that is actually measured…

 

[solarwind23]

DreadVandal:

Not all philosophy is armchair philosophy. You should read some professional Anglo-American philosophy sometime. Physics is the best at what it does. It describes the characteristics and laws that govern the phenomenal universe. But no empirical science has a method of analyzing what is meant by “cause” or “contradiction” or “existence” or “substance.” These are concepts of metaphysics. There are principles of thinking that must be presupposed by the sciences in order for the sciences to do their work. These include the principle of noncontradiction and the principle of identity. I would also argue that the principle of sufficient reason falls into this category (the principle that for every phenomenon, there must be a rational explanation).

Philosophy works with the way in which different sciences, arts, and other ways of thinking and acting in the world use concepts. Philosophers distinguish between different uses of terms and also distinguish between things that are commonly confused in ordinary experience. When one recognizes, for example, that the empirical sciences are by nature limited to what is, in principle, observable, then one is thinking philosophically. If one asserts that the only reality is observable reality, then one is not being a scientist, one is being a dogmatist (after all, how does one know that there isn’t any reality that is not observable to us?) So the popular caricature of philosophy is inaccurate. I personally think it depends more on foolishness published in the name of the New Age movement and self help books than anything else.

What you say makes sense. I don’t know too much about philosophy, but what I do know I appreciate.

The thing is, from what I know there are many philosophical systems. And some question the very ability of human beings to do metaphysics.

How can anyone know whether there is a reality beyond the observable (or more accurately beyond the material)? We can speculate and wonder, but as it stands nobody truly knows. I think in the absence of this knowledge people are justified in living as though it’s not there.

Different people believe different things. Buddhists and Hindus believe in reincarnation, Jews don’t make conclusive statments about the afterlife, for them it may or may not exist. If I’m not mistaken some philosophers have denied the very existence of the material world!

I can see how epistemology and logic-type of philosophy would be very useful in our daily lives, but what about something like Leibniz’ monadology idea?

 

[solarwind23]

DreadVandal:

Actually, the most hard-core are sitting alone in monasteries meditating. That is the highest stage for them (in this life). And given the crappy life that most people have, I can’t say that there’s is any worse.

How do you define harm? Is there an objective definition of harm?

You’re right, and I have this somewhat cynical idea that the notion of “giving up the world” etc. was made up by the have-nots to feel better about their lives.

If you’re poor, have nothing, then what’s it to you to give everything up and become a monk? It might actually be good: you’ll have a place to live, you won’t have to do hard physical labor but will be supported by donations. Plus you can say you have a much better chance of heaven than the rich guy down the street.

As far as harm goes, I guess it depends on how they live. If they take vows of silence, sit alone in a room and pray all day day after day for years, then I can see them going insane, perhaps having various visions of hell/God among other things.

As for an objective definition of harm, I would reference the medical profession, psychology, psychiatry.

 

[LatinCat]

solarwind23:

But the statistics above are not about mindless people who could be indoctrinated to believe something simply because someone else says so.

Those are people who are leading scientists, many of whom have wone Nobel Prizes for their work.

I agree with you that the average person can get indoctrinated to either be secular or to be religious, but those people are highly independent and creative, they’re the ones who make scientific discoveries the rest of us simply learn.

I doubt they’d believe something simply because someone else said so.

Then why do they do that very thing? For example, when physicists suggest that something can come from nothing. Give me a break. They claim to be intelligent but then they buy into every crackpot theory.

 

[solarwind23]

john doran:

yes, but keep in mind that the objections to it are philosophical.

The fact that it goes against Einstein’s theories about the speed of light is hardly philosophical. For hidden variables to work you really need to do away with general and special relativity.

yes, i know. and, again, keep in mind that the copenhagen interpretation is precisely that: an interpretation of the data, and, as such, is a ***philosophical ***position.

You can say that about all scientific theories. So far it’s the generally accepted interpretation. I am not claiming it’s The Truth, but I don’t think we should discount it just because there are other alternative interpretations.

that’s what alain aspect’s experiment was designed to demonstrate: bell’s inequality. which it did, but not uncontroversially (some scientists believe that the experimental constraints were not sufficiently rigorous to have established the conclusion).

This is not what I have heard. Could you provide evidence of legitimate dissent among scientists regarding the lack of rigorousness in the experiment?

the dichotomy is between your #2 and #3 - not sure where you got #1 from: if bell’s inequality is violated, then the universe is either unreal or there are instantaneous (i.e. superluminal) transactions.

1 comes from Bell’s theorem itself. If human logic doesn’t work, then the theorem which was made up by human logic shouldn’t hold either.

this is also a bit muddled: superluminal reactions are precisely what have received such (allegedly) good experimental confirmation by QM.

Not in the traditional interpretation as far as I know. Traditional interpretation keeps the speed of light limit and rejects the idea that things exist with positions, momentums etc. when we’re not measuring those properties. Of course I am going by what I’ve read, I am not a physicist.

it is the fact that QM and general relativity are mutually exclusive that has galvanized a significant portion of the scientific community to try and come up with some kind of theoretical integration of the two, the foremost of which attempts are loop quantum gravity (or quantum geometry, if you prefer), and string theory (or, more precisely, m-theory).

Sure, but the experimental predictions of general relativity have been tested time and again with good results. General relativity is a very strong theory just as QM is. Really we don’t know what a unified theory might say.

Plus, it’s not the speed of light limit that’s the source of incompatibility as far as I know, but “quantum foam” vs. the classical picture of general relativity.

Anyway, just because it’s not final and conclusive doesn’t mean we should discount it.In my opinion it is a much better source of truth than the musings of theologians.

 

[LatinCat]

solarwind23:

The fact that it goes against Einstein’s theories about the speed of light is hardly philosophical. For hidden variables to work you really need to do away with general and special relativity.

You can say that about all scientific theories. So far it’s the generally accepted interpretation. I am not claiming it’s The Truth, but I don’t think we should discount it just because there are other alternative interpretations.

This is not what I have heard. Could you provide evidence of legitimate dissent among scientists regarding the lack of rigorousness in the experiment?

1 comes from Bell’s theorem itself. If human logic doesn’t work, then the theorem which was made up by human logic shouldn’t hold either.

Not in the traditional interpretation as far as I know. Traditional interpretation keeps the speed of light limit and rejects the idea that things exist with positions, momentums etc. when we’re not measuring those properties. Of course I am going by what I’ve read, I am not a physicist.

Sure, but the experimental predictions of general relativity have been tested time and again with good results. General relativity is a very strong theory just as QM is. Really we don’t know what a unified theory might say.

Plus, it’s not the speed of light limit that’s the source of incompatibility as far as I know, but “quantum foam” vs. the classical picture of general relativity.

Anyway, just because it’s not final and conclusive doesn’t mean we should discount it.In my opinion it is a much better source of truth than the musings of theologians.

And yet scientists change their theories every other day. Revelation from God does not. I always find “scientific” reasoning laughable becasue of its use of inductive instead of deductive reasoning. LOGICAL fallacy. Oh well. any way, can you prove to me scientifically, that the only way to find truth is through the scientific method?

 

[john_doran]

solarwind23:

The fact that it goes against Einstein’s theories about the speed of light is hardly philosophical.

you miss my point. the objections to (bohmian) hidden variables theory are not scientific - how could they be, since the theory is formally identical to canonical QM (i.e. it makes the same predictions, has the same experimental success, etc.); it is rejected based on considerations such as parsimony, elegance, etc., which are all philosophical considerations.

solarwind23:

For hidden variables to work you really need to do away with general and special relativity.

i’m not sure i understand this: general relativity and all of QM are incompatible, under any interpretation of QM.

special relativity is almost completely coherent with QM (e.g. the dirac equation). almost: as far as superluminal velocities are concerned, the instantaneous wave collapse over arbitrarily large distances is straightforwardly in conflict with special relativity.

as for your solution of “doing away” with relativity, that’s certainly one way to make everything work: come up with an entirely new theory. others, on the other hand are trying hard to put relativity and QM together in some new formulation.

solarwind23:

This is not what I have heard. Could you provide evidence of legitimate dissent among scientists regarding the lack of rigorousness in the experiment?

see J.D. Franson, and his paper “Bell’s theorem and Delayed Determinsim”, Physical Review D, 31:2529, 1985

M. A. Rowe, D. Kielpinski, V. Meyer, C. A. Sackett, W. M. Itano, C. Monroe, and D. J. Wineland., “Experimental violation of a Bell’s inequality with efficient detection”, Nature, 409:791-794, 2001.

A. Feoli and S. Rampone., “Some remarks on Bell’s Inequality Tests”, Europhysics Letters, 62:154-160, 2003.

solarwind23:

1 comes from Bell’s theorem itself. If human logic doesn’t work, then the theorem which was made up by human logic shouldn’t hold either.

i have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about here.

solarwind23:

Not in the traditional interpretation as far as I know. Traditional interpretation keeps the speed of light limit and rejects the idea that things exist with positions, momentums etc. when we’re not measuring those properties. Of course I am going by what I’ve read, I am not a physicist.

i’m not sure what you mean by “traditional”. all (standard) QM formalisms are non-local; thus, all of them entail instantaneous transactions, and are so far forth non-relativistic, at least for those events.

i’m not sure what you’ve read to the contrary, but it’s pretty straightforward…

solarwind23:

Plus, it’s not the speed of light limit that’s the source of incompatibility as far as I know, but “quantum foam” vs. the classical picture of general relativity.

i’m not sure what you mean by this, but the principal problem as i understand it is that the most obvious way of inetgrating the standard model with general relativity (e.g. by positing gravitons) yields non-renormalizable results (i.e. there are too many infinities to cancel out and yield useful, predictive results).

solarwind23:

Anyway, just because it’s not final and conclusive doesn’t mean we should discount it.In my opinion it is a much better source of truth than the musings of theologians.

this is as may be. my only point is that much of what passes for science is actually philosophy - namely, all of the interpretation of the results. so to dismiss philosophy is myopic and misguided.

 

[solarwind23]

LatinCat:

And yet scientists change their theories every other day. Revelation from God does not. I always find “scientific” reasoning laughable becasue of its use of inductive instead of deductive reasoning. LOGICAL fallacy. Oh well. any way, can you prove to me scientifically, that the only way to find truth is through the scientific method?

General relativity and quantum mechanics have been developed over the past century, and no one is really “changing” the theory.

People acknowledge their limitations, just as we acknowledge the limitations of Newton’s theories. But that doesn’t mean they tell us nothing about the world!

Engineers still use Newton’s theories with great success, you know.

If a better theory is developed, people could very well still use QM and GR.

As far as revelation goes, all I see is speculation by countless numbers of religions/belief systems, none of them provide proof. The Egyptians, the Maya, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Taoists, Bahai, Sikh, the list goes on. Some of them are similar, some strikingly different, all have theology and no proof.

If God wanted to reveal himself he would have done it in a way that had evidence that people would find and appreciate.

 

[solarwind23]

john doran:

you miss my point. the objections to (bohmian) hidden variables theory are not scientific - how could they be, since the theory is formally identical to canonical QM (i.e. it makes the same predictions, has the same experimental success, etc.); it is rejected based on considerations such as parsimony, elegance, etc., which are all philosophical considerations.

i’m not sure i understand this: general relativity and all of QM are incompatible, under any interpretation of QM.

Okay, but the experimental predictions of GR and QM both hold. Whatever theory supercedes them will have to account for the experimental results in some way. Things like time dilation have been measured.

Bell’s theorem doesn’t depend on any physical theory, so whatever theory comes about will have to deal with those assumptions in some way.

i have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about here.

upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/BellsTheorem/BellsTheorem.html

Finally, as we stated, Bell’s original proof was in terms of hidden variable theories. His assumptions were:

Logic is valid.
Hidden variables exist.
Hidden variables are local.

…

What If Logic Is Invalid?
It has been suspected since long before Bell that Quantum Mechanics is in conflict with classical logic. For example, deductive logic is based on a number of assumptions, one of which is the Principle of the Excluded Middle: all statements are either true or false.

But consider the following multiple choice test question:

The electron is a wave.
The electron is a particle.
All of the previous.
None of the above.
From wave-particle duality we know that both statements 1 and 2 are both sort of true and sort of false. This seems to call into question the Principle of the Excluded Middle. Thus, some people have worked on a multi-valued logic that they hope will be more consistent with the tests of Bells’ Theorem and therefore with Quantum Mechanics. Gary Zukav’s The Dancing Wu Li Masters has a good discussion of such a quantum logic; since numerous editions of this book exist and every chapter is numbered 0, I can’t supply a more detailed reference.

Mathematics itself can be viewed as just a branch of deductive logic, so if we revise the rules of logic we will need to devise a new mathematics

You may be interested to know that deductive logic has proved that logic is incomplete. The proof was published in 1931 by Gödel; a good reference is Hofstader’s Gödel, Escher, Bach. The key to Gödel’s work is self-reference; we shall see an example of self-reference in the next sub-section. What he proved was that any mathematics at all, unless it is trivially limited, will contain statements that are neither true nor false but simply unprovable.

i’m not sure what you mean by “traditional”. all (standard) QM formalisms are non-local; thus, all of them entail instantaneous transactions, and are so far forth non-relativistic, at least for those events.

As I’ve said before, I am not a physicist. As far as I know locality means that INFORMATION cannot travel faster than light. If you reject “reality,” might it be that those instantaneous transactions carry no information and therefore cannot have a “faster than light” cause and effect relationship? Would hidden variable theores involve information travelling faster than light? Anyway, I dont’ want to talk out of my because I do not have a formal training in physics.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics (if you scroll down there’s a chart of them, although it doesn’t mention locality it mentions determinism)

The important point is that traditional interpretations are not determinisitc, hence they could very well allow free will to exist in a purely material world.

 

[john_doran]

that’s an odd explanation of the theorem, and not one i’ve ever encountered before - logic has nothing to do with the theorem in and of itself, but rather with all reasoning (i.e. if logic is assumed to be invlaid, then all reasoning is suspect).

 

[john_doran]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interpretations_of_quantum_mechanics (if you scroll down there’s a chart of them, although it doesn’t mention locality it mentions determinism)

it doesn’t mention non-locality because there is (can be?) no quantum theory that isn’t non-local.

solarwind23:

The important point is that traditional interpretations are not determinisitc, hence they could very well allow free will to exist in a purely material world.

not necessarily. i mean, it’s a heck of a stretch to go from infinitessimally brief vaccum fluctuations to macroscopic biological beings making uncaused free choices. for one thing, on the standard interpretation, vacuum fluctuations are random and unpredicatble, whereas human free choices are neither random (they are made by people when people want to make them), and not (necessarily) unpredictable (they typically occur once deliberation has come to an end).

 

[LatinCat]

solarwind23:

General relativity and quantum mechanics have been developed over the past century, and no one is really “changing” the theory.

People acknowledge their limitations, just as we acknowledge the limitations of Newton’s theories. But that doesn’t mean they tell us nothing about the world!

Engineers still use Newton’s theories with great success, you know.

If a better theory is developed, people could very well still use QM and GR.

As far as revelation goes, all I see is speculation by countless numbers of religions/belief systems, none of them provide proof. The Egyptians, the Maya, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Taoists, Bahai, Sikh, the list goes on. Some of them are similar, some strikingly different, all have theology and no proof.

If God wanted to reveal himself he would have done it in a way that had evidence that people would find and appreciate.

Read “New Evidence that demands a Verdict” by Josh McDowell.

 

[MichaelTDoyle]

I wonder if this is proof of this:

Matt.19
[24] Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Certainly scienctists and first worlders are among the richest of the rich, kings of the world so to speak. Man (science) being (assuming) the measure of all things leaves little room for faith.

 

[solarwind23]

john doran:

that’s an odd explanation of the theorem, and not one i’ve ever encountered before - logic has nothing to do with the theorem in and of itself, but rather with all reasoning (i.e. if logic is assumed to be invlaid, then all reasoning is suspect).

Well, from what I’ve read about the theorem it seems that its result are based on (deductive) logic.

If that kind of logic is fundamentally flawed, then out goes the theorem.

 

[solarwind23]

john doran:

it doesn’t mention non-locality because there is (can be?) no quantum theory that isn’t non-local.

Okay, but let me rephrase then, If I am not mistaken this kind of non-locality does not conflict the speed of light limit because it cannot transmit information. If no information can be transmitted there can be no faster-than-light cause and effect.

Does the locality assumption in Bell’s theorem refer to information not being able to travel faster than light?

Is this still true with hidden variables, or can information be transmitted faster than light in this case?

not necessarily. i mean, it’s a heck of a stretch to go from infinitessimally brief vaccum fluctuations to macroscopic biological beings making uncaused free choices. for one thing, on the standard interpretation, vacuum fluctuations are random and unpredicatble, whereas human free choices are neither random (they are made by people when people want to make them), and not (necessarily) unpredictable (they typically occur once deliberation has come to an end).

That’s true, but at the very least it breaks the idea of a strictly deterministic universe as is for example in Newton’s theories.

As it stands, consciousness is something of a mystery. BUT, evidence from research on apes suggests that they have some measure of self awareness and thought. Evidence for the mind/brain connection is pretty strong in my opinion.

We don’t understand consciousness yet. If I’m not mistaken Roger Penrose has an idea about quantum effects in microtubules playing a significant role. Who knows.

One thing we have no evidence of are souls.

 

[solarwind23]

MichaelTDoyle:

I wonder if this is proof of this:

Matt.19
[24] Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."

Certainly scienctists and first worlders are among the richest of the rich, kings of the world so to speak. Man (science) being (assuming) the measure of all things leaves little room for faith.

Then I guess we’re all going to hell, because if we’re rich enough to have computers and the internet we’re pretty darn rich when compared to the way most people live in the third world.