Pseudoskeptism and acceptable versus unacceptable science [split from "infant consciousness"]

Well don't forget the question was completely hypothetical. Without QM the world would be utterly different and chemistry would not be possible. One thing that QM gives us is distinct chemicals with well-defined properties. Without QM an electron in a molecule might acquire a bit more energy and the properties of the molecule would change! Every molecule would be a bit different.

From another POV, the ultraviolet collapse would happen and atoms would not exist - just clumps of nuclear matter and electrons!

David

But whatever "substance" composes the human spirit as a mobile center of consciousness, it isn't material. For instance NDErs report passing easily through solid walls into other physical spaces and into drastically different spiritual realms. If spirit isn't material, it must exist independently of whatever particular way electrons in physical substances behave, and independently of whether the physical reality level of existence even allows atoms to exist or allows living organisms to exist. 

Of course, dualism requires that despite spirit being undamaged even by a nuclear explosion totally vaporizing the body, there is still a strong interaction between embodied spirit and the physical brain neurological structures. That is a problem for another discussion.

Do you have a link?

David

I have added one to my post above.

But whatever "substance" composes the human spirit as a mobile center of consciousness, it isn't material. For instance NDErs report passing easily through solid walls into other physical spaces and into drastically different spiritual realms. If spirit isn't material, it must exist independently of whatever particular way electrons in physical substances behave, and independently of whether the physical reality level of existence even allows atoms to exist or allows living organisms to exist. 

Of course, dualism requires that despite spirit being undamaged even by a nuclear explosion totally vaporizing the body, there is still a strong interaction between embodied spirit and the physical brain neurological structures. That is a problem for another discussion.

LOL - don't forget that once you start with a false premise, reasoning can just go downhill! I just hope we don't end up with an experimental test of what happens in a nuclear explosion.

David

They just can't help themselves and in so doing risk a further erosion in confidence.  If there's one thing we really need from the scientific community in these times of unbridled and often somewhat justified skepticism its intellectual honesty.

Science: Stop stating things you can not demonstrate as refutable and fully testable.  Stay in your lanes bro's.

I feel your attitude has matured enormously after being exposed to this forum and maybe also Skeptiko.

David

I have added one to my post above.

OK, I think I see what you meant in your earlier post. Here is the bit I think you are referring to:

Now imagine that two physicists, Alain and John, each receive a series of coins in the mail. As each pair of coins arrives, the physicists flip them at the same time. Alain might get the sequence heads, tails, tails, heads, tails. And John might get heads, heads, tails, tails, tails. The outcome of Alain’s and John’s coin tosses will have nothing to do with each other.

But if they repeat this experiment with a series of entangled electrons instead of coins, they’ll get a strange result: Each time Alain measures an electron that’s spin-up, John will find that his corresponding half of the electron pair comes out spin-down, and vice versa. The two acts of measurement are connected, almost as if flipping one coin could send out a signal that instantaneously ensured the proper outcome of its distant partner at the precise moment of measurement.

You can't transmit information because A (say) simply measures the spin - he doesn't specify it.  So J (say) measures the corresponding result but the only way for them to detect the entanglement is to compare the measurements that they both made - say by using ordinary communication, or showing each other their notebooks!

Remember that when an entangled pair is created and sent off to A and J each electron is half-up and half-down as it were, but the property of entanglement means that if one is up, the other is down!! It sounds crazy, but that is the way it is!

David

OK, I think I see what you meant in your earlier post. Here is the bit I think you are referring to:

You can't transmit information because A (say) simply measures the spin - he doesn't specify it.  So J (say) measures the corresponding result but the only way for them to detect the entanglement is to compare the measurements that they both made - say by using ordinary communication, or showing each other their notebooks!

Remember that when an entangled pair is created and sent off to A and J each electron is half-up and half-down as it were, but the property of entanglement means that if one is up, the other is down!! It sounds crazy, but that is the way it is!

David

Much better minds than mine have struggled to get to grips with this so I am not beating myself up about being confused. All I can say is that I don't think transmission of information (or anything) comes into the picture. I think the entangled particles are one in some kind of extended dimension that we are not aware of with our current physics.

For those of us who look for spiritual implications, understanding that what seem to be separate entities are really one carries great significance.

Much better minds than mine have struggled to get to grips with this so I am not beating myself up about being confused. All I can say is that I don't think transmission of information (or anything) comes into the picture. I think the entangled particles are one in some kind of extended dimension that we are not aware of with our current physics.

A friend I knew as an undergraduate used to say (about complicated physics stuff in general) if you stare at it long enough it becomes obvious.

For those of us who look for spiritual implications, understanding that what seem to be separate entities are really one carries great significance.

Well of course, Einstein balked at the idea of entanglement! The strange thing is that if you encountered an electron that was entangled, you wouldn't know. Some people speculate that all particles were entangled at the big bang.

Yes, I agree the phenomenon feels creepy, which is probably a sign that it does have spiritual significance!

The point about the transmission of information is that if you could take an entangled pair and set the spin of 'your' electron without losing the entanglement property, you could transfer information to its twin at infinite speed however far away it was. Someone would be bound to find something useful to do with that!

David

You seem to have missed the point entirely. It doesn't matter what  far-fetched idea they come up with, the commitment is to a materialist explanation rather than to a truly open-minded consideration of all possibilities, including design and/or what we are apt to call a spiritual reality. I can't do better than the famed materialist, Lewontin, in making that point:

Why are We Here? : Denis Noble

Ard: Here’s an interesting question: do you think that some of the resistance you’ve faced from the reductionists has been that kind of fear of religion? That they’re worried you are going to sneak God back in?

DN: Yes, and not only that. I found in a Novartis Foundation symposium – organised by one of the great reductionists at UCL in about 1997, Lewis Wolpert – I was one of the few to argue against the reductionist case, and I expected two others to help me. One did, another didn’t, and he came up to me in the coffee break and said, 
‘Denis, I would support you if I didn’t think that that brings God back in.’

David: That’s so weird.

DN: And I looked at him and I could not begin to understand what he was saying. Though I do, now, understand the fear. Of course, in the neo-Darwinist context it’s the fear of all those creationists. Somehow or other, if you let this structure collapse, and I think it is collapsing, incidentally: it’s a house of cards built on some very bad concepts and some very poor science: poor because of the insistence that it is the only truth. If you let that crumble, what then happens? The creationists will have a field day saying you are all wrong.

Why are We Here? : Denis Noble

From Jane Goodall's WaWH? Interview (thread here):

Ard: I think it has to be something that is somehow different from nature, and that’s what these things are pointing to – something transcendent. Just like when you ask yourself, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ You’re asking yourself, ‘What was it that made time and space in the first place?’ And there has to be something outside of time and space.

David: Are you saying something supernatural, though?

Ard: Yeah, if you want to use that word.

David: Really?

Ard: Something supernatural. I think that’s…

David: That’s weird for a scientist, a physicist as well.

Ard: For a physicist, a theoretical physicist to say? No, I don’t think it’s weird at all. I think the great power of science is its ability to ask very specific questions about constrained things. But the minute you think about it for a little while, there are many really important questions that science can’t answer and no conceivable advance of science could answer. Like, what’s the value of a human being? And if you think that science answers all questions, then you’ve evacuated hugely important parts of life.

JG: I agree completely. You know, science should be a tool, and for many, it’s become a god.

Ard: Exactly, that’s right.

Jane Goodall's interview was excellent! I'd somehow assumed that she had died by now!

David