gordon@uw-june (Gordon Davisson) (09/08/86)
[I will be away until October, so please mail me a copy of any followups, and don't expect an immediate response.] In article <5160@decwrl.DEC.COM>, arndt@lymph.dec.com (Ken Arndt) writes: >In my posting of the dialogue from the Christian science fiction book, >WHEELS OF HEAVEN I made the point that there is ROOM for God even in >the current 'secular' view of matter. Surely a reasonable position. >Gordon Davisson seemed to think I was saying modern chemists didn't know >about QM. Rather the point I was making, and the point of the book, was >that the QM does not NECESSARILY rule out room for God to act in the world. You seem to have misunderstood me rather thoroughly. I *agree* that science does not "rule out room for God to act in the world" (ever hear the term "God of the Gaps"?). In fact, it is theoretically impossible to rule out God, by science or anything else. What I objected to in the book was the chemist character saying that "one of the great tacit assumptions that permeates and undergirds all of science [is] that how matter behaves in the lab when I am watching it, is how matter behaves OUTSIDE the lab when I am NOT watching it." The reason I objected to this was that QM contains explicit violations of this assumption, and a chemist should have known this (there was some discussion of this in net.physics a while ago under the subject "Does the moon go away when I don't look at it". The best answer I saw was something like "No, but it does get kinda fuzzy"). My unstated implication was that the author of the book (and probably you as well) did not know what he was talking about. >[lots of flameage about how meaningless life is without God] There's been a lot of this stuff going around net.religion lately, and I'm not sure I agree. Why must everything be meaningless without God? (or, if you prefer, how can anything be meaningful even with God?) I find my life to be meaningful (at least to me), even without God. do you and I mean different things by "meaningful"? > Morals become a joke. Like what is taught in public schools today. >"How do YOU feel about it?" As long as you 'feel good' about your choices. >(Everyone DOES realize, do we not, that this viewpoint of each person making >his own choices rather than defering to a 'higher' authority - Humanism - IS >a itself a moral position!!! But isn't deciding to follow a "Higher" authority (as well as what constitutes one) also your own choice, or is it some sort of logical necessity? And if it is a logical necessity, can you also rule out morals, meaning, etc. being logical necessities even without God? (As I said above, please mail responses...) -- Human: Gordon Davisson HASA: new member, "S" division ARPA: gordon@uw-june.ARPA UUCP: {ihnp4,decvax,tektronix}!uw-beaver!uw-june!gordon Bitnet: gordon@uwaphast "What do I mean by the word 'mean'? What do I mean by the word 'word'? What do I mean by 'What do I mean'? What do I mean by 'do', and what do I do by 'mean'? What do I do by do by do, and what do I mean by wasting your time like this?" -- Monty Python