"
"The starting point is that there is no hope. We're all gonna die. Now what?"
That's the stepping off point for many spiritual practices. They are not parachutes to avoid mortality, but practices to go with during our numbered days.
"
I know of no facts to accept immortality other than perhaps a long time
in stone or written word. Yes. I think some religions teach all go
through hell or hades prior to heaven.
If we could discuss free will a bit more, please. It is been a while since I gave it a thought, but let me try to give you my take on free will.
I know that to some of you what I am going to say is very basic, but maybe for some of you it will be something new.
When I was a teenager I was introduced to Newtonian mechanics. It was clear to me that in the Newtonian world there was no place for free will. Why? Well, imagine a simple setup of three marbles on a pool table. Once set in motion, they will follow their predetermined trajectories (regardless if we can calculate it or not). That is a deterministic Newtonian world. It is important to add that since the world is more complicated than in my example, Newtonian world is unpredictable. That is due to the fact that we may never know the initial conditions with 100% accuracy. Still, even if we can’t calculate the outcome, but every move is predetermined, there is no place for free will in this kind of (Newtonian) world. It was surprising to me because I believed in free will. I decided that Newton must have missed something. To the rescue came quantum mechanics. I had learned about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and I got my free will back. What is says is that the world has a built in mechanism that prevents as from knowing everything about a small particle, i.e. the more precisely we try to determine the position of a particle, the more we lose information about its momentum. It is not because we don’t have good enough methods and instruments, it is because that is the property of this world. Later on I learned that my conclusions were not shared by some people. Although most interpretations of quantum mechanics include nondeterministic reality, some prominent physicists didn’t think that it would automatically give us free will (Stephen Hawking is one of them).
There is also chaos theory that can give us a “sort of” free will. Since it is deterministic but unpredictable, we just can’t know the future, but there is only one possible future.
At the moment I don’t have a strong opinion on free will.
I was also serious before saying that it doesn’t matter to me whether I have free will or not. I act as if I have one. I am glad, though that science doesn’t exclude it.
P.S. I didn’t want to get into casualty, locality, Bell Theorem, etc. because I am not a physicists and my understanding of those subjects is quite limited.
My goodness, if Fox News and the Republican Party gave just half the attention they give to their sex stories (with eye-grabbing pics) they could solve their science illiteracy problem.
If consciousness is not of the brain, what about memories? Are they part of the meat or not? And what is consciousness without memories? And how free is our will if are our decisions are based on memories which are mutable on every access.
Religion is inflexible. Science is not. I'm not saying that science will cure all of society's ills, since that is not its purpose. Its purpose is to understand the natural world.
Understanding The Natural World….. Something that the Religious cannot say they hold any part of, or care for.
Unless Ed helps us we have trouble talking about questions like this in the context of physics. The assumption that all questions have answers which we all can understand is suspect. I think that the possibility of "hidden variables" that would explain why quantum mechanics works the way it does has been eliminated but I am not sure. Quantum mechanics requires a lot of study to understand.
Fortunately(??), we still have these philosophical versions of questions long debated by better minds than ours but which continue to fascinate us.
There is some fun. I am amused by Werner's mind or possibly his spirit denying that it has anything at all to do with free will. He'd make a good Bernard Samson if he'd only learn to operate on a need-to-know basis.
edit:
Going back to the 3 marbles. If 2 of them are in contact at rest and you roll the third one towards them, if it hits both of the resting kissing marbles at the same time, Newton's laws don't tell us what happens.
How can anyone claim that we have a firm grasp on reality when the best understanding of physics, i.e. the standard model, is a complicated mess of subatomic particles and lacks discovery of an observable key piece, the Higgs Boson, without which the standard model collapses? And at best the standard model only explains 4% of the physical universe; leaving the rest to an unobserved speculation about dark matter and dark energy. How can anyone claim that we understand 'reality'??
IMHO Werner Braun has already transcended this level of 'reality' and just finds it amusing to occasionally go slumming here
Newtonian systems can be unpredictable even in principle
Unpredictable, yes. But they are deterministic. That is what chaos theory tells us. Even though we can't calculate the outcome, their "faith" is determined.
In contrast, since quantum mechanics is based on probability we can only calculate probable outcomes. Hence, it may not be deterministic.
Almost confirmed (a boson exists, but is it Higgs - Ed?)...
From Wiki: In 2012 a previously unknown boson was discovered; its properties are still being studied in 2013 to confirm whether or not it is the Higgs boson. Proof that the Higgs boson exists would be monumental since it would finally prove the existence of the Higgs field, the Standard Model's explanation of why some fundamental particles have mass when 'naive' theory says they should be massless, and - linked to this - why the weak force has a much shorter range than the electromagnetic force. Its discovery would validate the final unconfirmed part of the Standard Model, guide other theories and discoveries in particle physics, and – as with other fundamental discoveries of the past – potentially over time lead to developments in "new" physics, and new technology.
Psalm 146:5 Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help,
Whose hope is in the Lord his God,
Ecclesiastes 2:24 Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor. This also, I saw, was from the hand of God.
Ecclesiastes 12:13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter:
Fear God and keep His commandments,
For this is man’s all.
14 For God will bring every work into judgment,
Including every secret thing,
Whether good or evil.
Romans 14:22 Do you have faith? Have it to yourself before God. Happy is he who does not condemn himself in what he approves.
John 14:15 “If you love Me, keep My commandments.
Ephesians 5:18 but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, 20 giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, 21 submitting to one another in the fear of God.
Matthew 6:9 In this manner, therefore, pray:
Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
10 Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts,
As we forgive our debtors.
13 And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one.
For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.
Luke 11:28 But He said, “More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”
Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
I am no philosopher and I just wing it in these discussions. I am puzzled over whether there is a difference between 'determinism' and 'determined.' When an -ism comes up in a conversation I balk.
For an example from your link:
Determinism: The world is governed by (or is under the sway of) determinism if and only if, given a specified way things are at a time t, the way things go thereafter is fixed as a matter of natural law.
The use of a phrase like, "the way things go" compresses too many possibilities into too few words it seems to me. However, by the above definition of determinism, there are situations in classical Newtonian mechanics wherefrom the way things go thereafter is not fixed and therefore not deterministic. However, I am not talking about natural law, whatever that is, but only about solutions to the equations used in classical mechanics to predict an outcome in a particular case.
edit:
I didn't read far enough in your link. I'll take another look.
OK, Figure 4 in your link is the sort of thing I'm talking about.
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Understanding The Natural World….. Something that the Religious cannot say they hold any part of, or care for.
Let us know!