Where was God?’ ask refugees from Georgia warBy MANSUR MIROVALEV ?ALAGIR, Russia (AP) ? Sarmat Kapisov ran all night through the forest with his family, fleeing the fighting in South Ossetia and headed for the Georgia-Russia border. On his back, the 17-year-old carried his brother, who has cerebral palsy.”It wasn’t easy,” Kapisov said, huddled alongside his mother and seven siblings, who have taken refuge here at an Orthodox convent across the Russian border.The convent director, known as Mother Nonna, said thousands have passed through since the bloodshed began one week ago in the pro-Russian separatist province claimed by Georgia.Most were South Ossetian women and children on their way to a refugee center set up inside a summer camp by Russian authorities. Many of the fathers and older brothers stayed behind to fight.Mother Nonna said she had never seen so many terrified children clinging to their mothers’ skirts.”The most difficult thing was to answer their question: Where was God?” she said. “They had so much fear in their eyes.”
I am not trying to diminish the horror felt by anyone who is displaced from a war being waged by or on their government. However, I did want to mention the whole idea of people being unprepared for real tragedy because they think an invisible man in the sky is somehow in charge.So here is the assertion du jour — religion IS harmful even at a moderate level because it allows the believer to avoid reality, thereby being unprepared for when reality hits. If they expect a miracle, and one never comes, how can they be prepared? There is hope, but then there is crushing disappointment when reality sets in.
Hmmm… where was their god here? They go to church to praise it, and then it takes their child:
http://www.wgal.com/news/17223479/detail.html
just me
The video said “in the hustle and bustle of collecting their belongings and herding the older children into the house, they forgot their 15 month old daughter sleeping in the van.”
HOW do you collect other belongings, but forget your baby?!
And no charges are being filed? Not even negligence? It could be negligent homicide! Are they being easy on them because the dad is an asst. pastor? Or because the family is devastated?
If they had left the baby in the bathtub alone and she drowned, it would be no different. I’ll bet someone would be charged then. Why do people get off for baking their children alive in a hot car?
But I guess it’s OK, because she wasn’t a fetus.
It’s wearing off a little, but when I was a newer parent, reading stories about people forgetting their children in cars used to scare me because I sort of see myself doing it. It’s like locking your keys in the car (only far more horrible). You’d have to be an idiot to do it, but you know, it happens.
Cynic
Really? Show me philosphy text that defines philosophy as such.
Wrong again. Theories answer the question “What predicts?”. The “Why?” question is for folks, like religious freaks, that like to contemplate the untestable and therefore less than wrong hypotheses.
Point out where I have ignored a logical fallacy and under which logic it is a fallacy?
Learn about two state quantum systems (eg. a spin 1/2 particle in a magnetic field) and then get back to me about the “is or isn’t” question. It isn’t difficult to understand and I could help you if you like
.
What,
We have a system of thought that produces proof. It’s called science. Time was, most of what we call science today used to be lumped into “philosophy”, but gradually the distiction became clear. To most.
In science, a theory attempts to explain why one thing happens and not some other thing. A law merely explains what does happen, as it has been observed. Note the relationship between the laws of gravitation and the theory of relativity — and the notable lack of a coherent theory of gravitation. Laws cannot tell you why things happen, only that they do. Theories attempt the why.
What?
Law: An apple will bonk you on the head if you sit under it long enough.
Why?
Theory X: Because the collective mass of the planet has warped space-time, producing an potential energy gradient in which you were sitting at a lower point before the stem disconnected.
Sure, there’s always another “why” to ask, but that doesn’t make them all some philosophical nonsense questions.
Given your propensity for generating said logical fallacies (fallacies of defintion, hasty generalization, slippery slope, Loki’s wager — just to name a few recent ones), I needn’t bother looking any further than your own words. Either you commit them without knowing it, or you know it and ignore them. Damned either way, yes?
The fundamental problem with most QM scientists (and, apparently, you) is that they fail to recognize that just because they don’t know the answer to both location and trajectory doesn’t NECESSARILY imply that it doesn’t have one. It only means that because they can’t know that, they have to resort to other methods of investigation.
Somehow along the way to learning all of this, people get turned around and start thinking that because the results are seemingly chaotics, that they underlying reality must be, in fact, chaotic. But you cannot prove that logically. Randomness is an illusion, the number 12345 being potentially equally “random” as 14253.
That’s why, if you’re going to play the lottery, it’s a waste of time to pick the number by hand. And that’s why it’s a waste of your time to throw quantum physics at me in a futile attempt to explain why logic fails: because the only path that leads to such a conclusion is via logical fallacy in the first place!
Cynic
Where do I start. You are wrong about the difference between laws and theories. They are all theories.
Thanks for clearing that up for all us physicists. Read about the Stern Gerlach experiment and get back to me about your profoundly ignorant statement “doesn’t NECESSARILY imply that it doesn’t have one” and “It only means that because they can’t know that, they have to resort to other methods of investigation”. I realize that QM is difficult for some people.
Cynic
The “underlying reality” is not chaotic. It is governed by the DETERMINISTIC Schrodinger equation (for NRQM).
This one is funny:
Count the things that you have stated above that are simply not factual. There are multiple consistent logics. Do a little work and read up on them.
Do yourself a favor and don’t bother communicating with me about QM until you have taken a few graduate courses or have read Dirac, Messiah, and Cohen-Tannoudji’s books on nonrelativistic QM. Then read Mandels and Zee’s books on QM Field Theory. Then get back to me to talk.
Actually, you can’t prove that the universe is deterministic or nondeterministic. I expect determinism is a reasonable default assumption supported by parsimony, but an assumption it is and must be.
I’m not going to chase after every QM bone you choose to throw until you can state in a logical argument — using whatever bit of physics you want, but no hand-waving shortcuts — how it is that logic has been ever shown to been falsified.
If you want to cite a bit of evidence, go ahead — but don’t just assert the thing, demonstate how it implies something. I expect when we’re done here that what this is all going to come down to is you’ve assumed something so deeply and so thoughly that even you don’t realize it.
Cynic
QM is deterministic. I don’t know what you mean by prove. The word has little precise meaning outside of mathematics.
I didn’t say that logic has been falsified. What I have said is that there exist alternative logics each will be judged by their utility in our quest for predictive power. I brought up the Stern Gerlach experiment simply to demonstrate that your understanding of QM, as demonstrated in your above statements, is to put it plainly severely lacking.
Since you don’t know QM or the language of QM it will be difficult but not impossible to do this here. How would you suggest I proceed? Should I spend a few months here making posts with the hope that you will learn the basics of CM and QM? Should you do some assigned reading as I suggested and then get back to me? What is your mathematical background? What is your physics background?
That is a bizarre statement coming from someone that has made numerous unfactual statements about QM.
To be 100% clear,
Deterministic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism
Prove:
To show with 100% logical certainty. (Math and formal logic are offshoots of the same line of thinking, even if they appear to be unrealated.)
Most physicists point to QM and swear up and down that it shows that that universe MUST NOT be deerministic. You’re different, which is curious. I’m wondering how it is you know.
Cynic
That statement is meaningless.
Once again what I said was that the Schrodinger equation is deterministic. The Schrodinger equation governs the dynamics of a QM system (ie. how a system evolves temporally). This was written in response to your assertion that “Actually, you can’t prove that the universe is deterministic or nondeterministic.”.
Anybody that tells you that the dynamics of QM is not deterministic should have there degree taken away. Ask, if you can, the person/persons that have told you otherwise the following question. If you are given the Hamiltonian of a NRQM system for all time and the initial state of the system will the Schrodinger equation allow you to calculate the state at any time? That is what a physicist means by deterministic and the answer to the question is yes. If they give you any other answer make them a huge bet.
In the interest of straightening this out once and for all I have the following questions for you. Do you know what it means for a system to be in a superposition of states? Do you know the difference between a statistical mixture of states and a superposition of states?
One more thing with respect to Quantun Logic. Imagine yourself to be a microscopic being and your are observing your daily surroundings. What QM tells us is that what you would see is systems in superpositions of states. “Is” and “Is not” states would not be separate states with an excluded middle. What you would usually see are superpositions of is and isn’t states. Now why would such a microscopic being adopt anything but a quantum logic?
The finally part of my post was not to suggest that classical logic is invalid. It is merely a “thought experiment” to open ones mind to the realization that classical logic is not self evident – nothing is – and that more than one consistent logic s possible. The question for logicians and mathematicians is are these alternative logics anymore useful than classical logic. This is a very difficult question to answer and only a few researchers with the propensity to ask such questions and the balls (sorry ladies) to spend there time investigating them.
With certainty, there is no god, there never was a god, and there never will be a god except within some peoples minds. With certainty, I tell you, there are no leprichans at the end of any rainbow anywhere. With certainty, I tell you there are no demons pushing me to error. There are no guardian angels maneuvering me to be a good human being. I assure you, I am responsible for my actions. With certainty I tell you, religion represents insanity. Lunatics rule the world. All war is a byproduct of economics. The economics of today are biblical. You don’t need interpretations of definitions or locations or trajectories and quantum physics don’t reveal anything about the reality of economics. With certainty this is not the American Gnostic blog. God does not exist.
Mark Farris
Please give me an operational definition of the “god” and “exist”. In order to make your claim that gods don’t exist we/you must know the operational definition of those things that you say do not exist.
I don’t mean to keep hand-waving all that, but after all of these posts, I’m still not sure what you’re opinion on this is:
Do you think 100% for certain that the universe as a whole is deterministic with that determinism implies (no freewill, everything that has happened or will happen is set, every circumstance results from the prior circumstance, etc.
If you’re not 100% certain, do you think that there is more evidence for or reason to think this is the case versus the alternatives?
Cynic
I would not have a clue how to test the hypothesis that the universe is deterministic. Without a test a hypothesis is less than wrong. Maybe cosmologists have proposed such tests. I simply don’t know.
What I can say is that the dynamics expressed in CM, EM, and QM are deterministic and reversible. The dynamics expressed in our theories of thermodynamics are causal but not reversible.
Thanks for the question and thanks for helping me change the tone of the discussion.
From an existential point of view, we’re born, we live and we die. Us individual humans don’t really account for much except to the people who know us when whe’re born and when we die. Unless we accomplish something in life it’s not likely we end up in a history book anywhere.
If a big old comet were to just be looping around entering its approach path on planet Earth, and, let’s say reach impact in a few hundred years destroying planet Earth, nothing in the universe, of consequence, will have happened. Absolutly nothing would change on the grand scale.
Now, is the universe deterministic? Of course not. Neither would a god have flipped his thumb to deliver that comet. And neither would that be an irreversable event. This is where alienation slips in the window. As long as humanity clings to the concept we have dominion over nature we are the problem. We will have to at some point learn to reintegrate ourselves with the natural environment or destroy ourselves.
The concept god is subject to interpretations of others definitions. There have been many different gods. Not in human history have there been as many gods as there are today though. The human mind fabricates much. The subject is malarky. God only exists in the minds of confused people who attribute extreme coincidence to the magic of their particular god.
Is all human activity just a result of prior human activity? Well, if that were the case I would have no choice but to give up and adhere. There would be no original ideas and that is pretzel logic. When in Rome speak as the Romans do. Where I live god doesn’t exist any more than the tooth fairy.
Quantum physics is explored with the language of mathematics but mathematics probably does a poor job clarifing what is going on in Iraq or Georgia. The mathematics of the Christian economic structure bestowed upon us has nothing to do with the mathematics used to examine the cosmos. Two plus two does not equal five. Infinite economic growth on a finite planet is impossible. That is logic. That is as clear as the sunshine in China.
Why you Christians would come to this site and suggest I should wonder if the bogeyman exists is absurd. You really should be wondering why pews are empty at your church.
You’ll have to excuse the poor spelling. I’m not looking to get a paper graded here. I’m sure you get my drift.
and the comet event WOULD BE irreversable.
Mark
Please explain.
What
Excuse my delayed response, just did an Atheist two day campout. Fifteen adults, four kids, four dogs, plenty of skunks. Gonna be a whole lot bigger next year.
I’m under the impression, too often, when someone refers to the universe as deterministic they are suggesting consciousness is involved as if there may be some sort of intelligent design. I am not suggesting that is your point.
A cue ball is deterministic like that big old comet would be deterministic. Of course the xians would argue the person holding the cue stick determines the outcome of the game or at least sets it all into motion. The xians do argue god is holding the cue stick. That is my point.
Determinism when applied to humanity implies a reactionary mindset from humanity. If we are all just reacting to each other then no one is proactionary. If that were the case there would be no use in struggling. We may as well be xians waiting for our slice of pie in the sky.
You will have to overlook my constant use of the word god because I’m usually just trying to get under the skin of the xians. Like the time I ran god over in the dark with my car and threw it into reverse backing over him smacking him right in the head with the muffler leaving an indentation of the Midas logo above his right brow. Ouch!
For my part, when I say the universe is deterministic, I mean that there is a cue ball behind every action, and stick behind every cue ball, and another cue ball behind every stick.
Cynic
Thats good enough.
Just to add a bit more clarity to the above discussion. As I mentioned earlier the dynamics of NRQM, as expressed by the Schrodinger equation, are deterministic. That is, the state of the system evolves in time in a deterministic manner.
When some folks say that QM is indeterministic they are referring to the quantum measurement problem. Whether you refer to the measurement process as deterministic or not is a matter of interpretation and there are many physicists that do not understand that it is indeed a matter of interpretation. It’s all about the “questions” we ask of systems through our measurements. I could go into more detail on this if you like.
Mark
Not me!
What
I never doubted you for a moment.
Dave
This blog is like trying to carry on a conversation on a fast moving escalator. I think when a thread takes off with many posts, wait a day or two to post a new topic. That may even reduce spelling and grammatical errors by many of us.
Furthermore, I wonder, rather than kicking around esoteric arguments about metaphysical reality amongst ourselves, shouldn’t we be debating the masses of confused people in our local newspapers. The majority of people are on the edge in regards to belief and the handful of xians hanging around an Atheist site looking for converts are wasting our and their time.
Mark
Cynic and I were talking about physics – not metaphysics. It is important for people to understand what is known about their universe. Such knowledge is a filter to nonsensical thinking. How many times have you heard an ignorant theist try to misuse the Second Law of Thermodynamics in an argument for ID? How many times have you heard a theist misuse the word random in connection with evolution? The list goes on and on.
Its just a point of view, nothing more, but reading your posts is like trying make sense of chaos.
And that is my argument. As a thinking, open minded individual, to ask me to look at nature and conclude it is an accident, I will not, especially since no evidence exists to prove it.
But, to ask where was god in Georgia?? It’s kinda like where was god when my grandma died? Why not ask where god was when one hundred thousand people died in Thailand and Malasia in the tsunami.
If you are one of those free thinkers open to the idea that nature is not an accident, you may find me standing with you. If you think he gives a damn whether we live or die as a species, you stand alone. Ninety eight percent of the species who have ever existed on this planet are extinct. Our turn is coming up next. Free thinkers are the last hope and the most irrelevent question you could ask is “where is god?”
NeoWolfe
Neowolfe
What does this mean:
For the life of me I can’t make sense of it.
Neo,
I’ll second What’s statement!
Sounds like you haven’t given up the tenets of religion quite yet – as if there is some “purpose” to the universe.
666
Did you see the movie “The Jerk”. I don’t think I can hear the word “purpose” without thinking “special purpose” because of that movie? Damn I hate that.
“special purpose” and “Jerk” in one paragraph. Too funny.