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

To: TigerPaw who wrote (14588)	1/17/2003 3:38:06 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Yeah, I think we agree. I don't believe in determinism except as a probabilistic function. Consider the 3-body problem in physics. Even IF I could really, really, really carefully measure all the parameters of the Earth, Moon and Sun 1 Billion years ago, the higher order derivatives gang up on me (dark matter, etc.) I simply would not be able to predict EXACTLY in absolute cartesion coordinants where the earth would be today. So as a practical matter there is short term determinism, but as a long term matter there isn't. The "determinism" of me finishing this sentence is probabilistic, as is your reading it. We are one gamma ray burst from a major break from Newtonian mechanics and 17th century determinism. But I wouldn't bet on it without 100 Billion to 1 odds. Ironically, I wouldn't be here to collect one my winnings! That's a most extreme case, but there are many little ones where 100:1 might be a good bet over the course of a year.