In physics we have a saying, why do you need to prove it if it works?

chrisd:

In physics we have a saying, why do you need to prove it if it works?

And how exactly is that relevant? What exactly works?

And how exactly is that relevant? What exactly works?

It works for them...

It may lack credible evidence but some people have been so well indoctrinated that they convince themselves (and their like-minded friends help with this) that it works.

Hence thanking God when something goes well instead of thanking the people who made the good deed happen.

exu:

Hence thanking God when something goes well instead of thanking the people who made the good deed happen.

Yeah, typical

Some ideas that worked cannot be proved

chrisd:

Some ideas that worked cannot be proved

And that leads you to what conclusion?

Have you heard of Schrodinger's cat in Quantum Mechanics

chrisd:

Have you heard of Schrodinger's cat in Quantum Mechanics

I have, but how is that relevant?

Has a lot to do

Experimental evidence in the early part of this century have led that objects remain in wave-like quantum superposition until observed by a conscious human being--consciousness causes collapse of the wave function! The absurdity of this conclusion, in the 1930's Schroedinger devised his famous thought experiment. Schroedinger's point was that the conscious observer interpretation was incorrect.

The above suggests a quantum mind. While we can determine the probability of certain quantum events, we cannot give an answer as to which particular event will take place, or rather which event will have taken place after the experiment once the path has been recorded. This leaves a window for apparently random events, completely escaping our classical philosophy that tells us everything must be caused by something else.

Other explanations have been developed. David Bohm's theory avoids collapse (but raises other problems), and the "multiple worlds" view holds that each possibility in a superposition evolves into a new and separate universe. Modern physics describes environmental "decoherence," essentially saying that any interaction between a quantum system and the outside world causes loss of the quantum superposition with random choice of particular classical states. However there is no explanation for the fate of quantum superpositions which remain isolated from environment.

We now believe that intermediate between tiny quantum-scale systems and "large" cat-size systems some objective factor disturbs the superposition to cause collapse, or "objective reduction (OR)." For example the GRW theory (after its proponents Ghirardi, Rimini and Weber) suggests that as a quantum superposition grows to a critical number of particles in superposition (~1017), the system spontaneously reduces to classical states. Experimental evidence has not supported GRW. According to Roger Penrose the objective factor causing reduction is an intrinsic feature of space-time itself (quantum gravity).

So for now, we all have personal freedom about God.

What does we all have personal freedom about God actually mean? Even if causality as we intuitively understand it is not valid, how does that say anything about God or the fact that 'it works' (whatever that means)?

Beacuse some people say the notion of God is false until proven. Others say science gave us the answer that God is bunk. Never understood that. I admit that some christians are only intertested in their convictions rather than their attitudes, which is a shame. Why should one only because he/she believes in God find any reason to be at best of their energies and skills.

chrisd:

Beacuse some people say the notion of God is false until proven. Others say science gave us the answer that God is bunk. Never understood that. I admit that some christians are only intertested in their convictions rather than their attitudes, which is a shame. Why should one only because he/she believes in God find any reason to be at best of their energies and skills.

No, the notion of God is not false until proven, it is just and unreasonable and unnecessary notion. It serves no rational purpose.

Science (and philosophy and/or logic) never could give answers that a generic God is bunk, it only gives evidence of the fact that a specific God is bunk. The specific God of the 3 great monotheistic religions, as described in their foundational texts is bunk, not the God concept in it's broadest terms.

Faith is a substitute for thinking.

No, the notion of God is not false until proven, it is just and unreasonable and unnecessary notion. It serves no rational purpose.

Science (and philosophy and/or logic) never could give answers that a generic God is bunk, it only gives evidence of the fact that a specific God is bunk. The specific God of the 3 great monotheistic religions, as described in their foundational texts is bunk, not the God concept in it's broadest terms.

Faith is a substitute for thinking.

Is not unreasonable if you are doing Physics. That it is an unnecessary notion I don't know. That it is unnecessary to do things perhaps, but even so we must work with the restrictions and not really understanding how and why. I agree while science in no way disproves God, it does disprove a particular fundamentalist view of religions. In my opinion many people err in that they make the assumption that if the foundational texts are not inerrant then they fall apart. To base everthing on just one old musty book is not the right way to do things. Many people don't understand that.

chrisd:

Is not unreasonable if you are doing Physics.

Probably only if you take a god-of-the-gaps stance. Things that currently have no explanation are ascribed to a supreme being. If this is not the reason you use, please explain, because I haven't come across one yet. I would be very interested, though.

chrisd:

That it is an unnecessary notion I don't know.

Does it have any explanatory power apart from the god-of-the gaps argument? If so there might be a necessity. Care to elaborate?

chrisd:

That it is unnecessary to do things perhaps, but even so we must work with the restrictions and not really understanding how and why.

I don't understand your point here

chrisd:

I agree while science in no way disproves God, it does disprove a particular fundamentalist view of religions.

Logic disproves God in his properties of omniscience, omnipotence and omnibenevolence. What is left of the God concept without these properties?

chrisd:

In my opinion many people err in that they make the assumption that if the foundational texts are not inerrant then they fall apart. To base everthing on just one old musty book is not the right way to do things. Many people don't understand that.

What then is the unique value of these texts, apart from the fact that they are memetically speaking very successful?

You should quit your job and do real physics, the ones you cannot read in books. Books are only for students or laymen.
No not God of the Gaps really and further analysis will not solve the problem.

Probably only if you take a god-of-the-gaps stance. Things that currently have no explanation are ascribed to a supreme being. If this is not the reason you use, please explain, because I haven't come across one yet. I would be very interested, though.

I was not saying that. It is not the point that things that currently have no explanation are ascribed to a supreme being, that's not science, that's like a witchdoctor. However some of our understanding of the qualtum worls are like nothing that you have ever seen. People here want certainty, well forget about that. The notion of God does not give answers but some aspects of how things are gives us a specific type of God is the notion exists. That's how we can get at truth. At this moment it points to the type of God mentioned by Catholics and Muslims. The other types are all wrong.

During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas--which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact, that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked--or very little of it did.

But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFO's, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.

Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk that I'm overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how MUCH there was.

At Esalen there are some large baths fed by hot springs situated on a ledge about thirty feet above the ocean. One of my most pleasurable experiences has been to sit in one of those baths and watch the waves crashing onto the rocky slope below, to gaze into the clear blue sky above, and to study a beautiful nude as she quietly appears and settles into the bath with me.

One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beatiful girl sitting with a guy who didn't seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, "Gee! How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude woman?"

I'm trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, "I'm, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?" "Sure," she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby. I think to myself, "What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!" He starts to rub her big toe. "I think I feel it," he says. "I feel a kind of dent--is that the pituitary?" I blurt out, "You're a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!" They looked at me, horrified--I had blown my cover--and said, "It's reflexology!" I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating.

So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science.

chrisd:

You should quit your job and do real physics, the ones you cannot read in books. Books are only for students or laymen.

That's exactly what I am. I really need to get a good basis before I can even touch on the stuff real physicist are studying

chrisd:

No not God of the Gaps really and further analysis will not solve the problem.

chrisd:

I was not saying that. It is not the point that things that currently have no explanation are ascribed to a supreme being, that's not science, that's like a witchdoctor. However some of our understanding of the qualtum worls are like nothing that you have ever seen. People here want certainty, well forget about that. The notion of God does not give answers but some aspects of how things are gives us a specific type of God is the notion exists. That's how we can get at truth. At this moment it points to the type of God mentioned by Catholics and Muslims. The other types are all wrong.

Can you either explain it to me or point me to the sources I need to read? This would be the most life changing thing that happened to me, if it were true.

No not God of the Gaps really and further analysis will not solve the problem.

What I meant by that was that some aspects of experimental results it distorts our notions of philosophy, that things either are or are not. It's all chaos out there. So if someone will try to show God exist or does not exist shall fail. We cannot have that type of certainty. What is important for me is some of the things christianity teaches. And mystic revelations are not part of that ok

We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.

A great deal of their difficulty is, of course, the difficulty of the subject and the inapplicability of the scientific method to the subject.

We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.

But this long history of learning how to not fool ourselves--of having utter scientific integrity--is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of his work were. "Well," I said, "there aren't any." He said, "Yes, but then we won't get support for more research of this kind." I think that's kind of dishonest. If you're representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you're doing-- and if they don't support you under those circumstances, then that's their decision.

One example of the principle is this: If you've made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish BOTH kinds of results.

chrisd:

What I meant by that was that some aspects of experimental results it distorts our notions of philosophy, that things either are or are not. It's all chaos out there. So if someone will try to show God exist or does not exist shall fail. We cannot have that type of certainty. What is important for me is some of the things christianity teaches. And mystic revelations are not part of that ok

Thx chrisd, now we're getting somewhere (although our previous ramblings were highly informative and amusing nonetheless )
That brings us back to the question of necessity. What does the God concept add to all of this?

If you go to the moral teachings of Christianity, you will indeed find a lot of things that are highly comendable, but, what then sets it apart from a secular ethic? Why would Christian morality be superior to e.g. Peter Singer's utilitarianism?

That brings us back to the question of necessity. What does the God concept add to all of this?

Nothing really. I don't like the idea of God as necessity.

If you go to the moral teachings of Christianity, you will indeed find a lot of things that are highly comendable, but, what then sets it apart from a secular ethic? Why would Christian morality be superior to e.g. Peter Singer's utilitarianism?

[quote][/quote]

There are some aspects of utilitarianism that I have problems with.

There has been the continuous shift that

Adam Smith: The best results come from doing what's best for myself.
So our role is: The maximization of pleasure with the minimization of pain.
or The maximization of pleasure for a sector or group of people with the minimization of discomfort to the same group.

Utilitarianism puts the emphasis on the usefulness (or otherwise) of any and every human activity.
The useful is whatever gives pleasure and excludes its opposite, for pleasure is the essential ingredient of human happiness.
Utilitarianism's real mistake is the recognition of pleasure in itself as the sole or at any rate the greatest good.
For me pleasure is essentially incidental, contingent, something which may occur in the course of action.

Pleasure (as opposed to pain) cannot be the only factor affecting my decision to act or not to act.
Quite obviously, that which is truly good, that which morality and conscience bid me do, often involves some measure of pain and requires the renunciation of some pleasure.

Others try to obtain the maximum benefit for someone else and not just for themselves, which would be blatant egoism, then they put a value on the good of other persons only in so far as it gives benefit to them. If, however, they cease to experience that, or it does not tally with their calculus of happiness then that good to the other person ceases to be my obligation.

A person must not be merely the means to an end for another person. Anyone who treats a person as the means to an end does violence to the very essence of the other. Freedom is embraced by society, and quickly allies itself with varied forms of human weakness, it soon proves a systematic and permanent threat to persons.

The point is that we must strive to what is objectively good. And sometimes what is objectively good involves the acceptance of some pain.
Although it is easy to draw up a set of rules in the social sector, the need to validate these rules makes itself felt at every step. For the rules often run up against greater difficulties in practice than in theory, and we should be concerned above all with the practical, must seek ways of justifying them.

For the task is not only to command or forbid but to justify, to interpret, to explain, relying on the most elementary and incontrovertible truths and the most fundamental goods.

Why do you use the individual as your only unit of analysis? happines, as a result of actions should rather be be looked at at the level of society or community.

You assume that there is something objectively good. How do you determine that?

Why do you use the individual as your only unit of analysis? happines, as a result of actions should rather be be looked at at the level of society or community.

Result of actions should rather be be looked at at the level of society or community. I talked about that, but I started from the individual first and is very easy to project iot to some group of people. Trivial really.

You assume that there is something objectively good. How do you determine that?

Of course I assume that there is something objectively good. Look at all the human made pain in the world, think of the concentration camps or Bosnia, Yugoslavia, the gulags in Russia. I think we can do much better.

chrisd:

Result of actions should rather be be looked at at the level of society or community. I talked about that, but I started from the individual first and is very easy to project iot to some group of people. Trivial really.

Why then bring in Adam Smith?

chrisd:

Of course I assume that there is something objectively good. Look at all the human made pain in the world, think of the concentration camps or Bosnia, Yugoslavia, the gulags in Russia. I think we can do much better.

I don't dispute there is something objectively good, but how do you capture it? Good is a result of actions, it does not exist in itself. How do you arrive at good and what standard do you apply?

Why then bring in Adam Smith? What you mean? Organizations are based on Adam Smith Theory right, of course right.

chrisd:

Why then bring in Adam Smith? What you mean? Organizations are based on Adam Smith Theory right, of course right.

Peter Singer's ideas have evolved a little beyond what Adam Smith came up with.

I mean all these personal philosophies, all of them have been corrupted.

Don't tell me about animal liberation.

Lots of people think the wealth and food distribution is a problem because the western world have taken that from African countries. What loads of nonsense. It,s because of the new methods in the western world in food production, genetic engineering, modyfying crops and western technology that have contributed.