Scientism, Skepticism and the Philosophy of Science

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
101

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Hard science is a philosophical method based on observation. It only requires the existence of a falsifiable premise (hypothesis) and method of measurement that bears repeatable results. [/quote]

Falsifiability requires free will. If we did not have free will, our conclusions about the outcomes of experiments would be predetermined, therefore science requires free will.

Free will puts humans in a special place. Where does free will come from? [/quote]

Free will transcends individual human action. That human beings act proves that free will exists. No human action could occur with out it.[/quote]

Why isn’t it that gravitational forces acting proves that free will exists? Humans are special and science cannot explain why.[/quote]

i bet ants think they are pretty special too. gorillas, chimps and apes too.[/quote]

Who cares what they think? The question is whether they make free will choices that while allowed by the laws of physics do not have to obey probabilistic tendancies.

Lets say we have two and only two probabalistic “choices” in a given situation which are equally probable. There is no energetic difference between the two choices, and quantum physics predicts that each will occur with a 50% probability, but only 1 does occur. When that one occurs by human choice, if we believe that we actually made the choice, then it was 100% probable-in other words, if you believe in human free will, you must believe that humans can shift quantum probability curves.

There is another way around it, which is the multiple universe hypothesis, but no one is defending that model. If you want to believe that, then you should argue that, but I’m not sure you are ready because you have already shown your inability to follow the line of argument that led to my post.[/quote]

First, to attempt to merge QM with human nature is a butchering of QM. QM is the apparent law of the microscopic, [/quote]

Such as the electromagnetic fields around the atoms of the brain? QM does not “disappear” at the macroscopic scale, it just becomes less obvious and important, but the magnitude doesn’t matter.

Does an individual human make choices, and if so, does science have the potential ability to predict those choices with absolute certainty?

Do you call it “butchering” because you don’t think that QM has any effect on the large scale?
[/quote]

why don’t you explain how QM affects our decisions. I’m not playing along until you do. Explain your premise, based on accepted science, and then we’ll discuss it. [/quote]

OK, Newton at one point, and others had said that if we knew the position and momentum of every particle at an instant, and had a complete model, we could predict the future forever, including the actions of humans. QM says we can’t ever have all of that knowledge, and so a given human may have multiple possible future paths which are all completely consistent with even the most complete possible model of physics. In other words, science can tell you what you can’t do, but within those limits what you actually do in the future is not pre-determined.

Now the same is true of elementary particles, but we believe that our choices are not just random, but that we actually insert a will into following one path versus another path, or making one choice over another. If you believe that you can make choices that determine what “path” you follow then you accept something that science can not explain. If you don’t, then everything is predetermined, and since science requires falsifiability, science would fail because if your conclusions were predetermined then outcomes of experiments would not be falsefiable. [/quote]

I still think you’re way off here. I do not believe QM states that that information does not exist (exact position), as you imply but rather, that we cannot measure it due to the limitations of our methods including excitation that occurs with photons (observation) and limitations relative to the planck scale and associated waves. So, QM does not say we cannot have that knowledge (assuming that’s even an accurate description), it says we cannot measure it with our current technology (if ever).

In addition, I’ll reiterate, QM explains the microscopic world much the same way relativity explains scales all the way up to the speed of light- one being a very large scale, and the other being very small. Both the foregoing are not apparent in our macro world.

In my opinion, you’re mixing concepts of consciousness with that of particle physics. The human body and mind are more than the sum total of a bunch of particles obeying the alleged laws of QM (or any other physical law for that matter).

No, I do not believe science can yet fully explain the actual mechanism of our choices, but humans as a whole are very predictable. You introduced “physics” and “free will”. Physics do not explain consciousness and therein is where we make our decision. But many human “decisions” can be plotted according to probability with enough information - the foregoing fact does not obviate “free will”.

102

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
What I described had nothing to do with emotions. I was there.[/quote]

LOL…now come on you know that atheists know better, right?

103

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

Simply: Quantum Mechanics requires that the Universe is not deterministic. It is limited but not every event is pre-determined.

[/quote]

Please provide a reference for this repeated interpretation of yours. I’m not saying the universe is deterministic, I take exception to your interpretation that QM supports that. Even if QM supported that, it has nothing to do with what you have repeatedly referred to as “free will”, which is just an extension of “consciousness”. When science can identify the “consciousness particle”, I might be swayed by your interpretation of QM. :slight_smile:

104

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:<<< You know this how? >>>[/quote]By faith. I do not have faith in myself like you do. I am fully persuaded that I am an entirely unreliable source of ultimate knowledge and that the God who commands the cosmos to exist from nothing and sustains it every second has every answer. He tells me whatever I need to know and what he doesn’t tell me is not mine TO know. BTW, he “tells” me stuff in every last object of knowledge I encounter. Whether it be a blowing leaf or your posts or anything else.
[/quote]

I’m completely honest when I say that your ramblings steel my rejection of religion. In terms you can understand and at harmony with your belief system I say, you sir are doing the “devil’s work”.

105

Sagan tells the truth

106

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

Simply: Quantum Mechanics requires that the Universe is not deterministic. It is limited but not every event is pre-determined.

[/quote]

Please provide a reference for this repeated interpretation of yours. I’m not saying the universe is deterministic, I take exception to your interpretation that QM supports that. Even if QM supported that, it has nothing to do with what you have repeatedly referred to as “free will”, which is just an extension of “consciousness”. When science can identify the “consciousness particle”, I might be swayed by your interpretation of QM. :)[/quote]

QM does NOT support it. As I said before, prior to QM the belief was that if we had all the data we could predict the future forever, not just the long term outcome, but every interaction of every particle. This would mean that even your thoughts are predetermined.

http://linas.org/theory/quantum.html
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/freewill.html

107

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

Simply: Quantum Mechanics requires that the Universe is not deterministic. It is limited but not every event is pre-determined.

[/quote]

Please provide a reference for this repeated interpretation of yours. I’m not saying the universe is deterministic, I take exception to your interpretation that QM supports that. Even if QM supported that, it has nothing to do with what you have repeatedly referred to as “free will”, which is just an extension of “consciousness”. When science can identify the “consciousness particle”, I might be swayed by your interpretation of QM. :)[/quote]

QM does NOT support it. As I said before, prior to QM the belief was that if we had all the data we could predict the future forever, not just the long term outcome, but every interaction of every particle. This would mean that even your thoughts are predetermined.

http://linas.org/theory/quantum.html
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/freewill.html

[/quote]

If it was truly independent though, you wouldn’t observe the pattern predicted by the experiment. The pattern itself is not random, and is predictable.

More to the point, even if true randomness was proven to exist, this says nothing about free will. It’s not like quantum particles have a mind of their own. Randomness is different from free will.

108

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Hard science is a philosophical method based on observation. It only requires the existence of a falsifiable premise (hypothesis) and method of measurement that bears repeatable results. [/quote]

Falsifiability requires free will. If we did not have free will, our conclusions about the outcomes of experiments would be predetermined, therefore science requires free will.

Free will puts humans in a special place. Where does free will come from? [/quote]

Free will transcends individual human action. That human beings act proves that free will exists. No human action could occur with out it.[/quote]

Why isn’t it that gravitational forces acting proves that free will exists? Humans are special and science cannot explain why.[/quote]

i bet ants think they are pretty special too. gorillas, chimps and apes too.[/quote]

Who cares what they think? The question is whether they make free will choices that while allowed by the laws of physics do not have to obey probabilistic tendancies.

Lets say we have two and only two probabalistic “choices” in a given situation which are equally probable. There is no energetic difference between the two choices, and quantum physics predicts that each will occur with a 50% probability, but only 1 does occur. When that one occurs by human choice, if we believe that we actually made the choice, then it was 100% probable-in other words, if you believe in human free will, you must believe that humans can shift quantum probability curves.

There is another way around it, which is the multiple universe hypothesis, but no one is defending that model. If you want to believe that, then you should argue that, but I’m not sure you are ready because you have already shown your inability to follow the line of argument that led to my post.[/quote]

First, to attempt to merge QM with human nature is a butchering of QM. QM is the apparent law of the microscopic, [/quote]

Such as the electromagnetic fields around the atoms of the brain? QM does not “disappear” at the macroscopic scale, it just becomes less obvious and important, but the magnitude doesn’t matter.

Does an individual human make choices, and if so, does science have the potential ability to predict those choices with absolute certainty?

Do you call it “butchering” because you don’t think that QM has any effect on the large scale?
[/quote]

why don’t you explain how QM affects our decisions. I’m not playing along until you do. Explain your premise, based on accepted science, and then we’ll discuss it. [/quote]

OK, Newton at one point, and others had said that if we knew the position and momentum of every particle at an instant, and had a complete model, we could predict the future forever, including the actions of humans. QM says we can’t ever have all of that knowledge, and so a given human may have multiple possible future paths which are all completely consistent with even the most complete possible model of physics. In other words, science can tell you what you can’t do, but within those limits what you actually do in the future is not pre-determined.

Now the same is true of elementary particles, but we believe that our choices are not just random, but that we actually insert a will into following one path versus another path, or making one choice over another. If you believe that you can make choices that determine what “path” you follow then you accept something that science can not explain. If you don’t, then everything is predetermined, and since science requires falsifiability, science would fail because if your conclusions were predetermined then outcomes of experiments would not be falsefiable. [/quote]

I still think you’re way off here. I do not believe QM states that that information does not exist (exact position), as you imply but rather, that we cannot measure it due to the limitations of our methods including excitation that occurs with photons (observation) and limitations relative to the planck scale and associated waves. So, QM does not say we cannot have that knowledge (assuming that’s even an accurate description), it says we cannot measure it with our current technology (if ever).

[/quote]

What you are saying is called local hidden variables theory that the information is there, but fundamentally inaccessable. Local hidden variables is considered to have been disproved. In other words, the information is not present.

Thats why people moved to the infinite universe theory (I should say because the “no hidden variable” suggested that human consciousness affects the quantum world)-that everything happens in some parallel version of the universe and we are just one of billions of parallel human races. I guess that would be the other possibility.

109

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

Simply: Quantum Mechanics requires that the Universe is not deterministic. It is limited but not every event is pre-determined.

[/quote]

Please provide a reference for this repeated interpretation of yours. I’m not saying the universe is deterministic, I take exception to your interpretation that QM supports that. Even if QM supported that, it has nothing to do with what you have repeatedly referred to as “free will”, which is just an extension of “consciousness”. When science can identify the “consciousness particle”, I might be swayed by your interpretation of QM. :)[/quote]

QM does NOT support it. As I said before, prior to QM the belief was that if we had all the data we could predict the future forever, not just the long term outcome, but every interaction of every particle. This would mean that even your thoughts are predetermined.

http://linas.org/theory/quantum.html
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/freewill.html

[/quote]

If it was truly independent though, you wouldn’t observe the pattern predicted by the experiment. The pattern itself is not random, and is predictable.

More to the point, even if true randomness was proven to exist, this says nothing about free will. It’s not like quantum particles have a mind of their own. Randomness is different from free will.[/quote]

Again, that all doesn’t even matter. What matters is whether you believe in free will or not. If you really believe in free will, it either violates a deterministic universe or affects a non-deterministic one.

110

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

Simply: Quantum Mechanics requires that the Universe is not deterministic. It is limited but not every event is pre-determined.

[/quote]

Please provide a reference for this repeated interpretation of yours. I’m not saying the universe is deterministic, I take exception to your interpretation that QM supports that. Even if QM supported that, it has nothing to do with what you have repeatedly referred to as “free will”, which is just an extension of “consciousness”. When science can identify the “consciousness particle”, I might be swayed by your interpretation of QM. :)[/quote]

QM does NOT support it. As I said before, prior to QM the belief was that if we had all the data we could predict the future forever, not just the long term outcome, but every interaction of every particle. This would mean that even your thoughts are predetermined.

http://linas.org/theory/quantum.html
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/freewill.html

[/quote]

If it was truly independent though, you wouldn’t observe the pattern predicted by the experiment. The pattern itself is not random, and is predictable.

More to the point, even if true randomness was proven to exist, this says nothing about free will. It’s not like quantum particles have a mind of their own. Randomness is different from free will.[/quote]

Again, that all doesn’t even matter. What matters is whether you believe in free will or not. If you really believe in free will, it either violates a deterministic universe or affects a non-deterministic one.[/quote]

It matters if you’re trying to use quantum physics to make a case for free will.

If free will did exist, it would still be a deterministic universe…the question is what it is that is doing the determining.

111

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

Simply: Quantum Mechanics requires that the Universe is not deterministic. It is limited but not every event is pre-determined.

[/quote]

Please provide a reference for this repeated interpretation of yours. I’m not saying the universe is deterministic, I take exception to your interpretation that QM supports that. Even if QM supported that, it has nothing to do with what you have repeatedly referred to as “free will”, which is just an extension of “consciousness”. When science can identify the “consciousness particle”, I might be swayed by your interpretation of QM. :)[/quote]

QM does NOT support it. As I said before, prior to QM the belief was that if we had all the data we could predict the future forever, not just the long term outcome, but every interaction of every particle. This would mean that even your thoughts are predetermined.

http://linas.org/theory/quantum.html
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/freewill.html

[/quote]

If it was truly independent though, you wouldn’t observe the pattern predicted by the experiment. The pattern itself is not random, and is predictable.

More to the point, even if true randomness was proven to exist, this says nothing about free will. It’s not like quantum particles have a mind of their own. Randomness is different from free will.[/quote]

Again, that all doesn’t even matter. What matters is whether you believe in free will or not. If you really believe in free will, it either violates a deterministic universe or affects a non-deterministic one.[/quote]

It matters if you’re trying to use quantum physics to make a case for free will.

If free will did exist, it would still be a deterministic universe…the question is what it is that is doing the determining.[/quote]

Deterministic means that every interaction of particles in the universe, past, present and future can be determined by the laws of physics and a set of input variables. This means that there are no real choices.

112

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:<<< Starting with an unproven assumption, and refusing to acknowledge the possibility that the assumption is false, is not what I would call the relentless pursuit of knowledge.[/quote]So when are you gonna knock it off?
[/quote]

Last time I checked, the light turned on when I flipped the switch. It would turn on for you too, and for anybody else flipping the switch. And the resulting light is objectively measurable on a spectrometer.

In other words, it’s a fact, not fiction.[/quote]

Oh FL…How do you know the light switch is real? How do you know anything is real?
If I hallucinated a light switch and turned it on and off with my hand felt it and observed it, would it be real? How do you know?
Perception is damning. We can all observe the something, use the same words to describe it, but we cannot know that the perception I have as the same as you…
It sounds childish, but it’s really a problem. You cannot know reality beyond your perception. You can only rely on deductive truths as absolutes, perception cannot change those.[/quote]

My problem with this line of reasoning is that it is based on the false premise that unless we know everything with absolute certainty, we know nothing, and might as well believe in whatever we want. Any child can see the flaw in that logic, but religionists use it all the time.
[/quote]
It’s not a premise it’s a conclusion, one. Two, it doesn’t mean we know nothing it only puts what can be known in perspective. I would like to see a child find a flaw in that reasoning as it’s just a plain fact. You used it yourself. This has nothing to do with religion, BTW. Don’t bring your personal bias towards my theism into this. We’re not talking religion, we’re talking science.

I have heard good arguments for determinism, but he has never made one. But my point was exactly that, just because you may be 100% convinced of something does not make it true. I could turn it around and say if you believe science is infallible, does that make it true? No, not with out a convincing argument.

I am simply saying your perception of reality may not coincide with actual reality, in truth, nobody’s does. I personally believe nobody is actually aware of actual reality. We only have snippets of what is in which we draw conclusions that ‘X’ must be real, it may not be. Even science tells us that. The most solid of objects is mostly empty space.

[quote]
Some ideas are more likely than others, and the best tools we have for judging those ideas are the tools of logic, reason, and hard empirical evidence. Everything else is fantasy, until proven otherwise.[/quote]

Everything else is just unknown, not fantasy, unless your shooting for fantasy. Otherwise, I cannot argue with the rest. Science gives us the best chance to understand the physical universe, but it is limited to that. If something is proven false with a fairly high empirical certainty, I will believe that it’s false.

113

[quote]ephrem wrote:
A complete history of the universe, from the Big Bang to the Internet, in 18 minutes

Well hell, it must be true!

Sup ephrem? Good to see ya.

114

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

Simply: Quantum Mechanics requires that the Universe is not deterministic. It is limited but not every event is pre-determined.

[/quote]

Please provide a reference for this repeated interpretation of yours. I’m not saying the universe is deterministic, I take exception to your interpretation that QM supports that. Even if QM supported that, it has nothing to do with what you have repeatedly referred to as “free will”, which is just an extension of “consciousness”. When science can identify the “consciousness particle”, I might be swayed by your interpretation of QM. :)[/quote]

QM does NOT support it. As I said before, prior to QM the belief was that if we had all the data we could predict the future forever, not just the long term outcome, but every interaction of every particle. This would mean that even your thoughts are predetermined.

http://linas.org/theory/quantum.html
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/freewill.html

[/quote]

If it was truly independent though, you wouldn’t observe the pattern predicted by the experiment. The pattern itself is not random, and is predictable.

More to the point, even if true randomness was proven to exist, this says nothing about free will. It’s not like quantum particles have a mind of their own. Randomness is different from free will.[/quote]

Again, that all doesn’t even matter. What matters is whether you believe in free will or not. If you really believe in free will, it either violates a deterministic universe or affects a non-deterministic one.[/quote]

It does neither. The existence of freewill does not violate a deterministic universe. It is only relative to that which possesses will and it’s ability to overcome it’s surroundings. True randomness does not exist. It requires something from nothing which also does not exist, because nothingness does not exist.
What I mean is that for something to be random, it has to happen for no reason what so ever…Not to be confused with weird behaviour that is not understood.

115

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:<<< you sir are doing the “devil’s work”.[/quote]Then may the Lord God deal with me ever so severely.

116

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

Simply: Quantum Mechanics requires that the Universe is not deterministic. It is limited but not every event is pre-determined.

[/quote]

Please provide a reference for this repeated interpretation of yours. I’m not saying the universe is deterministic, I take exception to your interpretation that QM supports that. Even if QM supported that, it has nothing to do with what you have repeatedly referred to as “free will”, which is just an extension of “consciousness”. When science can identify the “consciousness particle”, I might be swayed by your interpretation of QM. :)[/quote]

QM does NOT support it. As I said before, prior to QM the belief was that if we had all the data we could predict the future forever, not just the long term outcome, but every interaction of every particle. This would mean that even your thoughts are predetermined.

http://linas.org/theory/quantum.html
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/freewill.html

[/quote]

No. I worded the above awkwardly. I’m saying QM does not support anything one way or the other. We are limited to probabilities in the QM world not because there is no exact position, but because, in part, of our limitations in measurement. Further, things such as “wave interference” and the like do not eliminate predestination. It just means we don’t have the means (if ever) to measure movement at this level.

117

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Hard science is a philosophical method based on observation. It only requires the existence of a falsifiable premise (hypothesis) and method of measurement that bears repeatable results. [/quote]

Falsifiability requires free will. If we did not have free will, our conclusions about the outcomes of experiments would be predetermined, therefore science requires free will.

Free will puts humans in a special place. Where does free will come from? [/quote]

Free will transcends individual human action. That human beings act proves that free will exists. No human action could occur with out it.[/quote]

Why isn’t it that gravitational forces acting proves that free will exists? Humans are special and science cannot explain why.[/quote]

i bet ants think they are pretty special too. gorillas, chimps and apes too.[/quote]

Who cares what they think? The question is whether they make free will choices that while allowed by the laws of physics do not have to obey probabilistic tendancies.

Lets say we have two and only two probabalistic “choices” in a given situation which are equally probable. There is no energetic difference between the two choices, and quantum physics predicts that each will occur with a 50% probability, but only 1 does occur. When that one occurs by human choice, if we believe that we actually made the choice, then it was 100% probable-in other words, if you believe in human free will, you must believe that humans can shift quantum probability curves.

There is another way around it, which is the multiple universe hypothesis, but no one is defending that model. If you want to believe that, then you should argue that, but I’m not sure you are ready because you have already shown your inability to follow the line of argument that led to my post.[/quote]

First, to attempt to merge QM with human nature is a butchering of QM. QM is the apparent law of the microscopic, [/quote]

Such as the electromagnetic fields around the atoms of the brain? QM does not “disappear” at the macroscopic scale, it just becomes less obvious and important, but the magnitude doesn’t matter.

Does an individual human make choices, and if so, does science have the potential ability to predict those choices with absolute certainty?

Do you call it “butchering” because you don’t think that QM has any effect on the large scale?
[/quote]

why don’t you explain how QM affects our decisions. I’m not playing along until you do. Explain your premise, based on accepted science, and then we’ll discuss it. [/quote]

OK, Newton at one point, and others had said that if we knew the position and momentum of every particle at an instant, and had a complete model, we could predict the future forever, including the actions of humans. QM says we can’t ever have all of that knowledge, and so a given human may have multiple possible future paths which are all completely consistent with even the most complete possible model of physics. In other words, science can tell you what you can’t do, but within those limits what you actually do in the future is not pre-determined.

Now the same is true of elementary particles, but we believe that our choices are not just random, but that we actually insert a will into following one path versus another path, or making one choice over another. If you believe that you can make choices that determine what “path” you follow then you accept something that science can not explain. If you don’t, then everything is predetermined, and since science requires falsifiability, science would fail because if your conclusions were predetermined then outcomes of experiments would not be falsefiable. [/quote]

I still think you’re way off here. I do not believe QM states that that information does not exist (exact position), as you imply but rather, that we cannot measure it due to the limitations of our methods including excitation that occurs with photons (observation) and limitations relative to the planck scale and associated waves. So, QM does not say we cannot have that knowledge (assuming that’s even an accurate description), it says we cannot measure it with our current technology (if ever).

[/quote]

What you are saying is called local hidden variables theory that the information is there, but fundamentally inaccessable. Local hidden variables is considered to have been disproved. In other words, the information is not present.

Thats why people moved to the infinite universe theory (I should say because the “no hidden variable” suggested that human consciousness affects the quantum world)-that everything happens in some parallel version of the universe and we are just one of billions of parallel human races. I guess that would be the other possibility.

[/quote]

No. That’s not what I said.

118

[quote]pat wrote:<<< It does neither. The existence of freewill does not violate a deterministic universe >>>[/quote]Lemme see if I got this. You are willing to believe in a “deterministic” universe as long as it doesn’t violate your free will? But, you will not believe in the providence of God which also doesn’t violate your will? Neither of which are actually explicable in strictly logical terms?

119

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:<<< you sir are doing the “devil’s work”.[/quote]Then may the Lord God deal with me ever so severely.
[/quote]

I hear Allah is a merciful God and will likely forgive you. As-Salamu Alaykum Brother Tiribulus :slight_smile:

120

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]forlife wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

[quote]TheBodyGuard wrote:

[quote]mertdawg wrote:

Simply: Quantum Mechanics requires that the Universe is not deterministic. It is limited but not every event is pre-determined.

[/quote]

Please provide a reference for this repeated interpretation of yours. I’m not saying the universe is deterministic, I take exception to your interpretation that QM supports that. Even if QM supported that, it has nothing to do with what you have repeatedly referred to as “free will”, which is just an extension of “consciousness”. When science can identify the “consciousness particle”, I might be swayed by your interpretation of QM. :)[/quote]

QM does NOT support it. As I said before, prior to QM the belief was that if we had all the data we could predict the future forever, not just the long term outcome, but every interaction of every particle. This would mean that even your thoughts are predetermined.

http://linas.org/theory/quantum.html
http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/views/freewill.html

[/quote]

If it was truly independent though, you wouldn’t observe the pattern predicted by the experiment. The pattern itself is not random, and is predictable.

More to the point, even if true randomness was proven to exist, this says nothing about free will. It’s not like quantum particles have a mind of their own. Randomness is different from free will.[/quote]

Again, that all doesn’t even matter. What matters is whether you believe in free will or not. If you really believe in free will, it either violates a deterministic universe or affects a non-deterministic one.[/quote]

It does neither. The existence of freewill does not violate a deterministic universe. It is only relative to that which possesses will and it’s ability to overcome it’s surroundings. True randomness does not exist. It requires something from nothing which also does not exist, because nothingness does not exist.
What I mean is that for something to be random, it has to happen for no reason what so ever…Not to be confused with weird behaviour that is not understood.[/quote]

Why do I hear the footsteps of a now familiar physics discussion? LOL :slight_smile: