The Case for God

[Robert Tulip]

It is not logically possible that there are many realities. Even if you can imagine some hidden realms in parallel universes or quantum wormholes, these have no evidence, and in any case would be part of the one reality if they were real. All the evidence points to a single universe that began with the big bang and has been expanding for the last thirteen or so billion years. The planet earth is one reality, nested within larger single realities including the solar system, the galaxy and the universe.

Sorry Randall, but my assumption of a single reality accords with all evidence, while your speculation about 'many worlds' has no evidence whatsoever in its support - there is nothing to 'sweep under the carpet' except some imaginative ideas. Claiming status for separate realities is a stratagem sometimes used to defend non-evidentiary claims, such as the existence of supernatural entities. Claiming that quantum indeterminacy opens many worlds may not be supernatural in intent, but the idea of many worlds is simply refuted by the observation that things at all macro levels exhibit obvious natural unity of structure.

[Randall R. Young]

And that unity is that they are quantum in nature. All quantum evidence (which is everything measurable) is subsumed under the Sum-over-Histories treatment of quantum field theory, and it's generalizations. Certainly, the Many Worlds interpretation sits very comfortably into that outlook. Your idea of "refuted" is simply not in accord with mine. If I were you, I would perhaps consider changing that to "refuted to Robert Tulip's satisfaction"--who, I imagine, started out not believing it to begin with. Thus, refuting it to your crowd would be preaching to the choir. Do you have something more general?

"Some imaginative ideas" that are good out to at least 11 decimal places are hard for me to let go of, when all you offer in their place are the vaguest of generalities, and no predictions or utility, except to satisfy some philosophical preconception you suffer from (or enjoy, depending on your POV, I guess...)

[Robert Tulip]

So Randall, you say there is data to eleven decimal places that supports the strange idea that everything possible actually happens simultaneously in an infinite array of parallel universes? Even though only one of these 'possible worlds' is actually seen by us to occur? I don't believe you. It is just speculative dreams. Matter is real and does not continuously split and multiply in parallel universes.

The philosophical preconception that I 'suffer' from is the idea that we have one universe that is internally consistent. That is a simple axiom of logic that is supported by all observation except at the frontier of understanding. As ever in science, inconsistency is a mark of partial understanding. It would take far more than handwaving to make me doubt there is one reality. And in any case, science is far from actually understanding the world we have. In this thread and others I have raised the massive problem of scientific misinterpretation of religious ideas on cultural grounds; for example in the opening post here I mentioned some negative consequences of the Deist movement. Imagining fantasy worlds that link to reality only by the most tenuous string is a waste of time, except as fiction.

[Randall R. Young]

I don't believe you. It is just speculative dreams. Matter is real and does not continuously split and multiply in parallel universes.

Might I suggest that you work out the physics of a diffraction grating using your methodology? Without using quantum logic?

Might I further suggest that it is unimportant whether you believe me. I wouldn't dream of having you take *my* word for anything! I would simply say, do the math. If you don't know how, then I recommend (for what it's worth) that you get a copy of Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, by Richard Feynman. After digesting this material, we might have enough commonality to engage in a useful discussion on this matter. But you'd need to have the math. I'll wait.

If pages and pages of partial differential equations is not your cup of tea, you can also get some of this material from Feynman's lecture series from Auckland, New Zealand. And even if you don't believe him, it is still an entertaining presentation. It's almost like a magic act... Except, in his case, it's magic that actually works--to 11 decimal places.

[Harry Marks]

Redemption can be interpreted in purely evolutionary terms, as the set of behaviors that will sustain a steady increase in universal wellbeing.

Still learning how the software works. Forgive me if this makes no sense.

A case can be made that evolution is moving us toward greater care of our progeny, and away from trying to increase the number of progeny. This may have been a shift underway ever since internal fertilization (see Scientific American, Jan 2011). As such, this creates a tension between a force we might call "Love" and one we might call "the flesh." In the case of humans, it is more direct, conscious and cultural, and perhaps our dim perceptions of this tension have taken form as religion.

The feminist theologians talk of our being "Loved into existence."

[Interbane]

I like it. Love as the force which perpetuates self-organizing matter.

[Robert Tulip]

I don't believe you. It is just speculative dreams. Matter is real and does not continuously split and multiply in parallel universes.

Might I suggest that you work out the physics of a diffraction grating using your methodology? Without using quantum logic?

Might I further suggest that it is unimportant whether you believe me. I wouldn't dream of having you take *my* word for anything! I would simply say, do the math. If you don't know how, then I recommend (for what it's worth) that you get a copy of Quantum Mechanics and Path Integrals, by Richard Feynman. After digesting this material, we might have enough commonality to engage in a useful discussion on this matter. But you'd need to have the math. I'll wait.

If pages and pages of partial differential equations is not your cup of tea, you can also get some of this material from Feynman's lecture series from Auckland, New Zealand. And even if you don't believe him, it is still an entertaining presentation. It's almost like a magic act... Except, in his case, it's magic that actually works--to 11 decimal places.

Randall, you are very condescending for a newbie who is pushing an utterly counter-intuitive claim! But I like your comments, even though I think they are wrong. Even if there are parallel universes, (what you amazingly call "magic that actually works"), we do not live in them, we live in our universe. Parallel universes are not relevant to Armstrong's case for God.

Understanding the unity of our own universe, for example with Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation, actually helps to explain our situation. Dreaming about parallel universes does not. We have one past and one present. There may be many different possible futures, and Feynmann's abstrusity may well be coherent speculation, but I find it of no ontological or ethical interest.

It reminds me of Godel's analysis of the logic of claiming to be lying. A cute mathematical game of no practical or theoretical relevance to anything real.

[Randall R. Young]

Hi Harry!

(I think you'll like it here. Yeah, the software has a higher learning curve, but you gain some power, as a result.)

But what would be the force law for love? Would it be like an inverse square kinda thing?

I often think about a similar issue surrounding prayer. My aunt often engages a prayer circle, whenever people get seriously ill, or have some chronic problem. The idea is that the more people you get praying... Well, what exactly IS the idea, anyway? It's positively incomprehensible to me, except as a social phenomenon. What possible difference can it make to God how many people are praying for this or that particular action to occur? Isn't it guaranteed A) that He listens, regardless, and B) that He's going to answer all prayer, and C) that He's going to take such action as maximizes the good, irrespective of the limited, parochial perspective our prayers by necessity are the expression of?

[Randall R. Young]

How long do I have to be here before condescending? Is that a question I should address to a moderator?

No, "condescending" is when you tell God how the universe must be, and then believe it actually aligns with your presuppositions. That's condescending!

The "parallel universes" you are talking about aren't either dreams or elsewhere. They take the form of all the histories that must be summed for classical trajectories to exist, here & now. Without them, light doesn't travel in straight lines, and nothing we know of is going to work properly at a quantum level.

[Robert Tulip]

Let's look what is going on here. I have said we apparently have one universe, with one history. There was the big bang (one event) followed by universal expansion, in a single linear temporal line, of which we are the grateful beneficiaries, living on our (one) planet. Simple.

Randall comes along and says, oh no, you have to fry your brain with higher mathematics before you can understand that there are actually multiple pasts, that every possible alternative decision actually gets made in an imaginary other realm, and we have to schizophrenize our minds by wallowing in the mysteries of the quark. For all I know he may get going about Nietzsche's eternal return of the same, megaverses, and similar far fetched infinite speculation. I do not care in the slightest about those topics because they are too speculative and irrelevant.

I am saying that any talk about God must conform with experience. This seems to me a simple and logical argument. If experience included the strange ideas Randall has introduced, they might be relevant, but as far as I can tell the theory of multiple realities has only the most tenuous link to human experience.

Correct me if I am wrong Randall, but my impression was that Feynmann said multiple realities may be possible, not that they necessarily exist. If so, the idea has the same speculative status as Descartes' deceiving demon, an entertaining mind game that actually detracts from real understanding.

The real issue around multiple realities is the problem of epistemological relativism, the claim that contradictory statements can be equally true. This is a claim that I reject, but it is widely endorsed as a fallacious inference from observation of cultural relativism. Bringing quantum mechanics into the debate is nothing but a distraction.