Posted on 04/05/2009 8:10:35 PM PDT by betty boop
As Penrose noted (paraphrased) we need a new kind of physics, like quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics and Relativity - something that translates between them.
Meanwhile, I keep an open mind to geometric physics and theories of relativity and cosmology (Wesson, Vafa, Fineman, Tegmark et al).
In my view Everett's theory is nearly as untestable as last Thursday-ism, that "all that there is" was created last Thursday.
My bias on such theories would be that of Einstein's, i.e. his dream to transmute the base wood of matter to the pure marble of geometry.
Yep and about the same testability as the God theory : )
As Penrose noted (paraphrased) we need a new kind of physics, like quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics and Relativity - something that translates between them.
Like I said before, there seems to be an emergent properties principle like a phase change that occurs. QM doesn't seem to play by the same rules that Relativity plays by. There doesn't have to be anything that translates between them.
Obviously I was not referring to God TXnMA. I was speaking of the constraints on human knowledge and how one tries to deal with them.
Agreed LeGrande. And very well put! Thank you ever so much for your observation!
It might not be possible for a human brain to grasp the totallity of reality..
Five senses and logic displayed by human language could be inhibited..
Science fiction MUST be logical to the human mind, reality need not be logical at all..
Human arrogance could challenge that though..
Personally, I doubt the human brain has the capacity to grasp the totality of reality. Thus we see "as if through a glass, darkly."
Human science could really be just technical gossip..
Tale bearing about what appears to be so... about what is, and what isn't..
What is sometimes isn't and what isn't sometimes is..
Human scientists may be like two old people discussing the neigborhood.. over a fence..
You know, busybodies overlooking whats really important.. fixed on what isn't..
“I may be a dim-witted, knuckle-dragging Christian, but I have to tell you: I require more substantial evidence than “done, but only once.” We call that a “datum.” It has no meaning whatever in isolation.”
Nothing happens in isolation. Everything has a context.
How many times do you have to burn yourself before you’ll be convinced the fire is hot?
How many atomic bombs must be exploded before you’ll be convince nuclear energy is possible.
Hank
“On the one hand, I am perfectly comfortable with the uncertainty of knowledge. It just reminds me that nothing is complete without God.”
“And thus on the basis of observation and experience, I have no reason to believe that ‘the certainty of knowledge’ is even possible.
But, since the certainty of knowledge is not possible, your “knowledge” that there is God must be uncertain and you are therefore basing your source of comfort regarding uncertainty on something you cannot be certain exists, else...
You really do believe you can be certain about something. Right!
Hank
“It turns out that there is a level of uncertainty to everything, nothing can be known to an arbitrarily precise number.”
You are confusing measurement (an arbitrary mathematical exercise) with counting, which is always certain and absolute. Only discrete existents can be counted. If I want to know how many eggs I have left in the carton, I simply open the carton and count them. If I count six, I know I have six eggs, absolutely and with no uncertainty.
Measurement can never be certain because the units are not discrete existents, but some arbitrary “unit of measure,” which whatever you are measuring may or may not be dimensionally commensurable with. With measurement, it is always, “as precise as needed.”
Within that limit, however, it is real and certain knowledge. Certain enough to be able to perform eye surgery or fly men to the moon.
Hank
“but a lot of very small uncertainties do add up”
In the sciences, uncertainty decreases with the number of repeateable experiments, in other words, uncertainties deminish by the inverse ration of the number of repititions.
Imprecisions can add up (as happens in cumputers), but not uncertainties.
If you think uncertainties can “add up,” can you give an example of how that would happen?
Hank
My "'knowledge' that there is God" rests on faith, not on reason. What is received in faith is not "uncertain." Nor is it unreasonable. In fact, it turns out that reason itself ultimately rests on faith in God.
As René Descartes put it, the idea of God is the prior condition in the human mind for the possibility of any other idea, even that of the ego itself. (You can follow his reasoning in the Meditations.)
Which observation evidently inspired Voltaire's rather waggish remark of a generation later, "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him."
Descartes argued that the idea of God is built into our very souls — it is the evidence of the imago Dei of our created nature. It's there, in-built as it were, whether we acknowledge God or not.
But denial of this can be costly, psychologically and arguably intellectually.
And now you're really gonna yell at me! :^) LOLOL!
Voltaire’s———————Do dat be Jean Marie Arouet ???—LOL..
Dat be the guy!!! LOL!
“And now you’re really gonna yell at me!”
Well, I’m not sure that I should not be insulted, though it is very hard to do that. I don’t yell, ever. And I’m not trying to convince you of anything.
I do have one question. What is the basis of your faith. I mean, it did not simply pop into you head one day to believe in God. What ever suggested to you that there is a God?
I’ll be fair and tell you where this is going. Before you can have faith in anything, you must first have knowledge, and lots of it, such as how to read, and and how to understand a language, and what heaps of words mean. After all, if you have faith in God, you must know what you mean by the word, and you had to know that before you could believe in Him, wouldn’t you?
Did you know the words knowledge and understanding appear in the Bible more the three times more often than faith and believe, in all their Greek and Hebrew forms?
(If I had time, I’d show you that what you call faith, just simply believing without evidence, is actually condemned in the Bible, which teaches that one should be faithful in believing what they know through the God-given ability to “understand” the truth by the God-given ability to “reason.”)
See, I did not yell at you.
Hank
I did have knowledge — a very young child's knowledge, based on what I could see in the world all around me. I used to love to explore Nature — the woods and fields and farms near my home. I had a favorite childhood hangout — a little pond in a clearing in the woods that was inhabited by a bullfrog. I used to love to go there. I'd just sit there with my friend the frog, and think and wonder. To me, that place simply had an aura of holiness and peace about it. It was kind of a little chapel in the forest....
Even as I child, I "knew" that the obvious order I was seeing in the world could not have been accidental. Don't ask me how a child can understand such things. The only way I could answer that question would likely not appeal to you. But here goes — it harkens back to what I've already said. There is something seemingly in-built in human nature itself that just naturally "knows" about God, almost as if this awareness was "programmed" into our individual human nature. It will speak to us if we let it.
Anyhoot, I knew God was there, and this long, long before I formally became a Christian. (I was not permitted to receive religious instruction as a child, because my Dad — a Deist — thought of religious instruction as brainwashing.) My "periagoge" or "born-again" experience came much, much later. That's when things got really "personal." But God Himself has always been there; I could see Him revealed in the order of the natural world and all the things in it. The astonishing symmetry of the patterns on the back of of a humble black beetle to me screamed, "look at what God did!" I could feel His Presence....
I can't explain it any better than that. So I'm sorry if this does not satisfy you.
p.s.: I called the little pond in the clearing The Watering Hole. And I named my friend the frog Freddie. :^) At that time, I was maybe six or seven years old....
The more knowledge... the less faith is needed..
Less knowledge requires more faith..
No knowledge at all requires ALL faith..
Faith is the currency in the economy of God..
What you have faith in..... is an asset or a liability..
We all are accountants.. Some are laundering Gods currency..
Others are investors..
“I can’t explain it any better than that. So I’m sorry if this does not satisfy you.”
Please do not worry about satisfying my interest. You’ve explained yourself very well. I’m very tired now, but will respond to this tomorrow in a way I think you will find interesting, but perhaps not, my knowledge of the future is, as all men’s are (except the vile Al Gore) always uncertain.
Hank
“No knowledge at all requires ALL faith..”
Nope. All faith requires knowledge of that which one has faith in, however spurious that knowledge might be.
I understand your point, but even “faith” is impossible without knowledge—which human nature requires always.
Hank
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