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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: E who wrote (2920)10/29/2000 1:47:48 AM
From: cosmicforce  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 28931
 
Hi E:

The initial value of dynamical systems basically says that the future is unknowable because very small disturbances now give rise to huge effects later (the wings of a butterfly in Africa initiating a hurricane that hits Florida a week later). These uncertainties are known to exist in Quantum Mechanics (QM). It is impossible to know simultaneously the position and energy (motion) of every particle in the Universe. This is something that an omniscient God must have the ability to do and it can't be done only here on Earth because it is all connected.

I have always maintained that a Supreme Deity would have to be bound by the laws of physics because if it wasn't we'd see the effects where a capricious God was throwing a monkey wrench in the works. These disturbances would be widespread and persistent due to initial value principles above. If we accept that omniscient only means knowing now and past, to know these completely can only be done using information in that exists only in the future.

God's laws of physics seem to provide a direct prohibition of this process in any large or sustained way. It has been posited (by me and others) that the "randomness" we see would be the only space in which such a God could work without producing wholesale disturbances that would appear to actuarials. Despite this huge limitation, profound effects could rarely manifest with enough upstream "planning" or "memory" (move this atom here, push that fly, hit that bird, surprise the driver, swerve the car, kill next Hitler). On average, except though processes that possess memory (this includes some physical systems), it has to be invisible.



To: E who wrote (2920)10/29/2000 5:47:58 PM
From: TigerPaw  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 28931
 
a distinction without a difference,
There is a difference. I maintain that even if your knowledge base included everything, absolutely everything, that the future would be unpredictable. Much of this comes from QM but it basicly says that every action leads to a re-action plus a bit of random change. It more precisely says that actions lead to a probability of reactions and the outcome is not known until it actually happens. This random change not only cannot be predicted, but it can't be repeated. It's not just an error in measurement or an inability affect multiple items at the same instant, it really means that part of the effect in a cause-effect relationship is unknowable and well, random, and must be unknowable even by superbeings whether or not they use the information, or the future is in fact fixed.