Why physicists are uniquely qualified to talk about god

[Into the Night]

no thanks.

they are still all employed by the military industrial complex.

Redefinition fallacy (scientist<->military industrial complex, science<->ontology). Bigotry.

 

[Litmus]

The Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy repeatedly describes the ontological consequences of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics:

" (1) everything in the Universe is fundamentally of quantum nature (the ontological component); and (2) everything in the Universe is ultimately describable in quantum mechanical terms (the epistemological component). Thus, we may define quantum fundamentalism to be the position holding that everything in the world is essentially quantized and that the quantum theory gives us a literal description of this nature "


https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/

bunch of bullshit stupid people think is smart.....

 

[Into the Night]

not it isn't.

it's made up horse-shit, meant to dead end brilliant minds into bullshit.

Redefinition fallacy (philosophy<->bullshit).

 

[Into the Night]

yes there is.

I realize you think your hallucination is real to you, but there is no such conscription program.

 

[Hume]

The Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy repeatedly describes the ontological consequences of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics:

" (1) everything in the Universe is fundamentally of quantum nature (the ontological component); and (2) everything in the Universe is ultimately describable in quantum mechanical terms (the epistemological component). Thus, we may define quantum fundamentalism to be the position holding that everything in the world is essentially quantized and that the quantum theory gives us a literal description of this nature "


https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-copenhagen/

A philosopher wrote that. Not a physicist.

 

[Litmus]

Redefinition fallacy (scientist<->military industrial complex, science<->ontology). Bigotry.

 

[Litmus]

I realize you think your hallucination is real to you, but there is no such conscription program.

is there a recruitment program, buttjizzer?

what percentage of physicists work at universities who recieve government grants?

the fascists have compromised science with their fiat currecy devil magic.

 

[Cypress]

A philosopher wrote that. Not a physicist.

Philosophers don't understand quantum mechanics. The discussion is about how physicists were thinking about quantum mechanics.

The Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is an attempt by physicists to understand the ontological consequences of the Schrodinger equation.

Philosophers neither understand the Schrodinger equation, nor how to think about it's ontological implications.

 

[Hume]

Philosophers don't understand quantum mechanics. The discussion is about how physicists were thinking about quantum mechanics.

The Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is attempt by physicists to understand the ontological consequences of the Schrodinger equation.

Philosophers neither understand the Schrodinger equation, nor how to think about it's ontological implications.

And physicists rarely talk about philosophy.

 

[Cypress]

And physicists rarely talk about philosophy.

A lot of physicists don't, but some do.

Physics is, or can be, the most philosophical science, as I argued earlier.

The debate over the ontological of quantum mechanics is not happening in university philosophy departments in any meaningful way, unless they are just riffing off what the physicists are thinking about.

The ontological debate is happening in the physics community. It boils down to whether physical reality really is probabilistic, or whether quantum probabilities are masking a deeper truth we cannot access at this time.

 

[Hume]

A lot of physicists don't, but some do.

Physics is, or can be, the most philosophical science, as I argued earlier.

The debate over the ontological of quantum mechanics is not happening in university philosophy departments in any meaningful way, unless they are just riffing off what the physicists are thinking about.

The ontological debate is happening in the physics community. It boils down to whether physical reality really is probabilistic, or whether quantum probabilities are masking a deeper truth we cannot access at this time.

Never heard a physicist talk about ontology. Maybe one or two occasionally.

 

[Cypress]

Never heard a physicist talk about ontology. Maybe one or two occasionally.

I have. But ontology and epistomology are just fancy words for concepts every educated person intuitively understands.

There's a reason that for one thousand years, physics was called natural philosophy.

Most physicists are interested in what we can know, and what is objectively true about physical reality. That's just epistomology and ontology, without bothering to use the fancy words.

 

[Hume]

I have. But ontology and epistomology are just fancy words for concepts every educated person intuitively understands.

There's a reason that for one thousand years, physics was called natural philosophy.

Most physicists are interested in what we can know, and what is objectively true about physical reality. That's just ontology and epistomology, without bothering to use the fancy words.

Shut up and calculate. Some notable exceptions. but most physicists know nothing about philosophy.

 

[Cypress]

There's a hard wall between what physicists are capable of analyzing and what you imagine they are capable of analyzing.

As noted elsewhere once it gets into the metaphysical/beyond-space-and-time it is all just pure unadulterated speculation. It has no substance or solidity and is just musing.

The neutrino is a good example. It literally fell out of the math but it still took more than 25 years to confirm it even existed.

Wegener saw that the continental margins seemed to line up in places and he proposed a mechanism which was wildly wrong and unworkable but later people figured out how the system really worked.

Just because someone can make up an hypothesis doesn't mean the job is done.

It seems you watched a few science documentaries, and came away believing physical evidence and empirical hypothesis testing are the only systems of human knowledge.

It's unfortunate you do not have the imagination and background to break past the boundaries of your limitations.

When Descartes said Cognito, ergo sum he wasn't hypothesis testing or using physical data. He was using deductive logic.

String theory doesn't have a shred of physical evidence, it only exists as a deduction from higher mathematics.

There isn't a shred of physical evidence for infinity, but we know certain things about infinity through deductive logic.

Aquinas and Anselm had perfectly acceptable deductions for a rational agency underlying the universe, though I don't think the deduction necessarily works well for a god of Abraham.

The Enlightenment was based on an intellectual approach that universal human principles could be deduced. Have you ever touched, felt, or seen a human moral value?


Deductive logic can be flawed, it doesn't always lead to truth (neither does scientific empiricism), but it can be perfectly rational.

Anyone who thinks all knowledge only comes from physical evidence and empirical hypothesis testing has a mind that is seriously limited, unimaginative, and hasn't really been asking the right questions.

 

[Cypress]

Shut up and calculate. Some notable exceptions. but most physicists know nothing about philosophy.

So we agree that some physicists are interested in the philosophical questions that arise from physics.

I don't think it's the majority, it's probably limited to the top tiers of physicists who have extraordinary minds

 

[Hume]

So we agree that some physicists are interested in the philosophical questions that arise from physics.

I don't think it's the majority, it's probably limited to the top tiers of physicists who have extraordinary minds

Other than Sean Carroll, no one as a physicist is discussing philosophy. Of course, there are lots of philosophers talking about physics.

 

[Kafka]

It seems you watched a few science documentaries, and came away believing physical evidence and empirical hypothesis testing are the only systems of human knowledge.

Just more insults.

It's unfortunate you do not have the imagination and background to break past the boundaries of your limitations.

What you are talking about is IMAGINATION. Not knowledge. There's a difference. I'm surprised you don't understand what that difference is.

When Descartes said Cognito, ergo sum he wasn't hypothesis testing or using physical data. He was using deductive logic.

That isn't really quite the same thing as testing an hypothesis which is what we are talking about either here (questions of cosmology) or in the earlier discussion of God's existence.

Descartes imagined a universe in which a cosmic demon could be deceiving him. The only thing he knew for certain was that someone was doing the thinking and that someone was apparently himself.

I would hardly call this an astounding feat of reasoning or even a particularly meaningful conclusion to arrive at. And not really an hypothesis to test. So not really related to things like cosmology or physics.

String theory doesn't have a shred of physical evidence, it only exists as a deduction from higher mathematics.

Which is why it is NOT a science yet. It is merely an hypothesis. Without any evidence it is neither proven nor disproven. It is still a question.

Aquinas and Anselm had perfectly acceptable deductions for a rational agency underlying the universe,

You're just going to ignore Kant's critique of Anselm then because you don't like it?

The Enlightenment was based on an intellectual approach that universal human principles could be deduced. Have you ever touched, felt, or seen a human moral value?

This is kind of meaningless point. Let's talk "fairness" since you raised that the other day. If someone asked you if a certain set of events were "fair" how would you assess the question?

You are, in fact, doing EXACTLY what I'm doing with the claims about "God" or "things beyond reality". You are using evidence to bolster your hypothesis. You claim that there is a reason to believe there might be an "author" or intelligence behind the universe (eg God for lack of a better word) and the evidence YOU rely on are things like the "fine tuning" of the universe.

But at the end of the day it is still evidence you rely on, so you are, indeed, still hypothesis testing. You just prefer one set of evidence that I do not find sufficiently compelling.

You are literally doing the same thing as I'm doing but you have lowered the bar for rejecting the null in a way that I disagree with. Nothing more. Nothing less.

 

[Kafka]

A theory is not a hypothesis. Otherwise correct.

I didn't confuse the two.

 

[ThatOwlWoman]

Interview with Steven Weinberg

Steven Weinberg is a theoretical physicist at the University of Texas at Austin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of electroweak unification.

QUESTION: Over the past decade, many physicists have been making an association between their science and "the mind of God". What do you think of this association being made?

MR. WEINBERG: It makes me nervous when physicists use the word "God" loosely, as talking about the laws of nature as the mind of God, or even Einstein's famous remarks about God playing dice with the cosmos. I think mostly they're just using the word "God" in the metaphorical sense.

By "God" most of them simply mean the laws of nature, the principles that govern everything. And, well, there's nothing wrong with the metaphor, I suppose, but the word "God" is charged with so much meaning, it carries so much historical freight, and I think one ought to be careful about how one uses it.

QUESTION: Why do you think so many physicists in recent years have made such an association?

MR. WEINBERG: It is true that this use of the word "God," this metaphorical use of the word "God" comes naturally to physicists. Theologian Paul Tellich said once that he thought that physicists were the only scientists that found it comfortable to talk about God.

The aim of physics, or at least one branch of physics, is after all to find the principles that explain the principles that explain the principles that explain everything we see in nature, to find the ultimate rational basis of the universe. And that gets fairly close in some respects to what people have associated with the word "God." But I think it is still very different. And I wouldn't refer to the laws of nature as the mind of God, or call anything discovered by physicists the ‘God this’ or the ‘God that’. It's a word that has a lot of punch to it.

QUESTION: Why do you think that over the last decade there has been a whole flurry of books about physics and the mind of God?

MR. WEINBERG: Well, I think the public is generally interested in the deeper meanings of science. I think it's natural that the latest elementary particle raises questions such as what is its mass, what is its charge, et cetera. But that isn't even so interesting -- the point is what does it mean? And if by using words like "God" you can give an impression of some deep spiritual meaning, well, that's naturally going to attract public interest.

QUESTION: What do you think about this new dialogue between science and religion that’s taking place now?

MR. WEINBERG: I know there's been a lot of talk about a reconciliation between science and religion, of ending the old conflict. And in a way it's a good thing. Certainly science in trying to get public support doesn't need to have a conflict with religion going on at the same time. In another sense I tend to deplore it. I think that part of the historical mission of science has been to teach us that we are not the playthings of supernatural intervention, that we can make our own way in the universe, and that we have to find our own sense of morality. We have to find our own sense of what we should love. And I would hate to have those gains made by science vitiated by a misguided reconciliation with religious life.

QUESTION: What do you make of the fact that perhaps the greatest scientist of this century - Albert Einstein - used to talk so often about God and physics?

MR. WEINBERG: Often people talking about science and religion point to the example of Einstein as a deeply religious scientist, but who has certainly seen as far into the laws of nature as any of us. And I think that's really quite wrong. I think that Einstein in his famous remarks about God not playing dice with the cosmos, and wanting to find out whether God had any choice in the way he created the world, was using the word "God" quite metaphorically. He said in a more serious vein that he did not believe in a god who intervened in human affairs, to whom it made sense to pray. For him God was an abstract principle of harmony and order. There have been deeply religious physicists, but I don't think you can count Einstein as one of them.

QUESTION: Do you think religion has value?

MR. WEINBERG: I think there's much to be said on both sides of that. I mean, certainly religion has produced great art. Where would architecture be without the great cathedrals and wonderful Japanese temples, and mosques.

On the moral side, however, I'm less sure about it. Certainly good causes have sometimes been mobilized under the banner of religion, but you find the opposite I think more often the case. It's more often been the motivation for us to kill each other - not only for people of one religion to kill those of another, but even within religions. After all, it was a Moslem who killed Sadat. It was a devout Jew who killed Rabin. It was a devout Hindu who killed Gandhi. And this has been going on for centuries and centuries.

I think in many respects religion is a dream - a beautiful dream often. Often a nightmare. But it's a dream from which I think it's about time we awoke. Just as a child learns about the tooth fairy and is incited by that to leave a tooth under the pillow - and you're glad that the child believes in the tooth fairy. But eventually you want the child to grow up. I think it's about time that the human species grew up in this respect.

It seems to me that with or without religion good people will behave well and bad people will do evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.



full interview:

Interview: Steven Weinberg

www.pbs.org

Thanks for posting this interesting read. The last sentence says it all.

 

[Cypress]

Which is why it is NOT a science yet.

You obviously do not have a well rounded education, especially for someone who claims to have a PhD.


Not all knowledge comes from science and physical evidence.

Any logical deduction, like string theory, or moral theory is valid as long as it follows from the premises. It may or may not be true.

You seem to be laboring under the pretense that experimental science is superior because it's the truth.

I have news for you: almost every scientific theory is ultimately proved to not be true. Aristotle's physics were completely wrong, and that was the best science in the world until the 16th century. Newton's laws of mechanics misinterpreted the nature of time and space. And the wave theory of light had to be replaced.

It's questionable whether any human knowledge is actually ontologically true.

Maybe your high school chemistry teacher convinced you that the only real knowledge comes from science and physical evidence.

But that's a limitation of your background, education, and imagination.

I'm getting off this merry-go-round. I leave you to wallow in your beliefs that only science gives knowledge, and that morality is utterly subjective and relative, only based on opinion and the popular vote.

You seem like the type who can't sleep at night without getting the last word in, so you have my permission to chime in again