How is there reality without God?

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EarthScienceguy
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How is there reality without God?

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Post by EarthScienceguy »

Neils Bohr
"No Phenomenon is a phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon." Or another way to say this is that a tree does not fall in a forest unless it is observed.

The only way for there to be an objective reality is if God is the constant observer everywhere.

Physicist John Archibald Wheeler: "It is wrong to think of the past as 'already existing' in all detail. The 'past' is theory. The past has no existence except as it is recorded in the present."

God is everywhere so He can observe everywhere and produce objective reality.

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #291

Post by DrNoGods »

[Replying to William in post #289]
It may be false that high intelligence does not suit the individual as well as we think. It may be false not to assume intelligence is THE direction evolution should point to.
It depends on whether higher intelligence confers an advantage in survival and reproduction. In the genus Homo it seems to be the case that it does. We are the only extant member of the genus, and we have a high intelligence level relative to prior members based on everything we know about them (and us), and much higher than any other primate or other animal. Evolution appears to have favored higher intelligence for humans. For a gazelle that might not be the case ... speed and maneuverability may be more advantageous then intelligence.
It may be false to think that the interpretation of the evidence points to evolution having no direction, no goal, no purpose. It may be false that it is just a random process, which allows mutations to survive if they are suited to the current environment of an organism.
Mutations can be random with no goal or purpose, while natural selection can shape the end result of an evolutionary process by determining which pass down through generations and which do not. I don't think any evolutionist would argue with the second sentence of the above quote because the process which "allows mutations to survive" is not "just a random process" (like mutations), but decidedly nonrandom (ie. natural selection).
In human affairs the sources of success are ever to be found in the fountains of quick resolve and swift stroke; and it seems to be a law, inflexible and inexorable, that he who will not risk cannot win.
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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #292

Post by William »

[Replying to DrNoGods in post #291]
It depends on whether higher intelligence confers an advantage in survival and reproduction. In the genus Homo it seems to be the case that it does. We are the only extant member of the genus, and we have a high intelligence level relative to prior members based on everything we know about them (and us), and much higher than any other primate or other animal. Evolution appears to have favored higher intelligence for humans. For a gazelle that might not be the case ... speed and maneuverability may be more advantageous then intelligence.
Intelligence is intelligence and is included the activity of speed and maneuverability as in knowing when and where et al.

Thus, it appears in all activity of life, that evolution has thoughtfully made it so and intelligence cannot be separate from the process.
Mutations can be random with no goal or purpose,
I would correct that by stating it another way..."Mutations can appear to be random with no goal or purpose"
It might take more intelligence than we care to use, to notice, 'tis all.


while natural selection can shape the end result of an evolutionary process by determining which pass down through generations and which do not.
Sounds as if this natural selection is sentient, as it uses determining processes.

I don't think any evolutionist would argue with the second sentence of the above quote because the process which "allows mutations to survive" is not "just a random process" (like mutations), but decidedly nonrandom (ie. natural selection).
As observed, it is not necessary to think mindless randomness is involved in what are referred to as "mutations", even that we can't as easily recognize intelligence in a stage of the overall process.

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #293

Post by The Barbarian »

William wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 2:37 am [Replying to DrNoGods in post #291]
It depends on whether higher intelligence confers an advantage in survival and reproduction. In the genus Homo it seems to be the case that it does. We are the only extant member of the genus, and we have a high intelligence level relative to prior members based on everything we know about them (and us), and much higher than any other primate or other animal. Evolution appears to have favored higher intelligence for humans. For a gazelle that might not be the case ... speed and maneuverability may be more advantageous then intelligence.
Intelligence is intelligence and is included the activity of speed and maneuverability as in knowing when and where et al.

Thus, it appears in all activity of life, that evolution has thoughtfully made it so and intelligence cannot be separate from the process.
Mutations can be random with no goal or purpose,
I would correct that by stating it another way..."Mutations can appear to be random with no goal or purpose"
It might take more intelligence than we care to use, to notice, 'tis all.
As St. Thomas Aquinas noted, divine providence can use contingency just as easily as necessity. So irreducibly random events can be part of God's intentions.
Sounds as if this natural selection is sentient, as it uses determining processes.
No different than Adam Smith's "hidden hand" of free markets. The sentience, IMO, is in creating a world where such things happen naturally.
As observed, it is not necessary to think mindless randomness is involved in what are referred to as "mutations", even that we can't as easily recognize intelligence in a stage of the overall process.
Seems unlikely. Evidence shows that favorable mutations do not show up in response to environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luria%E2% ... experiment

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #294

Post by William »

[Replying to The Barbarian in post #293]
I would correct that by stating it another way..."Mutations can appear to be random with no goal or purpose"It might take more intelligence than we care to use, to notice, 'tis all.
As St. Thomas Aquinas noted, divine providence can use contingency just as easily as necessity. So irreducibly random events can be part of God's intentions.
Correct. And no matter that we say "it is providence" or "it appears to be random" these are simply Human expressions - and the expression "random" simply identifies a misunderstanding based upon a lack of understanding.

Mutations appear to be, and are thus called "random", because it is far more difficult to delve into them studiously, whereas evolution [which sprang from mutations] is easier to show lack of randomness.
It shouldn't be a difficulty accepting that IF evolution is not a random process, THEN there is no reason to think that which it came out of, was a random process.
As observed, it is not necessary to think mindless randomness is involved in what are referred to as "mutations", even that we can't as easily recognize intelligence in a stage of the overall process.
Seems unlikely. Evidence shows that favorable mutations do not show up in response to environment.
Unfortunately there is no succinct summery re the link. Can you summarize the article?

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #295

Post by The Barbarian »

William wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 12:51 pm [Replying to The Barbarian in post #293]
As St. Thomas Aquinas noted, divine providence can use contingency just as easily as necessity. So irreducibly random events can be part of God's intentions.
Correct. And no matter that we say "it is providence" or "it appears to be random" these are simply Human expressions - and the expression "random" simply identifies a misunderstanding based upon a lack of understanding.
Well, there are certainly irreducibly random events, like radioactive decay. At the quantum level, the universe is not deterministic. The reason it appears to be so, is due to the law of large numbers.
Mutations appear to be, and are thus called "random", because it is far more difficult to delve into them studiously, whereas evolution [which sprang from mutations] is easier to show lack of randomness.
Darwin's great discovery was that it isn't random.
It shouldn't be a difficulty accepting that IF evolution is not a random process, THEN there is no reason to think that which it came out of, was a random process.
In systems, it's axiomatic that a random process, with a non-random process, is a non-random process. Since a mutation can be caused by a single quanta of energy, and because these can be released by radioactive decay (which is random), mutation can be completely random. Suppose that like Earth Science Guy's example, some parts of the genome are better protected by error-correction functions. In that case, even though the mutation itself is random, the resulting genotype is not random.
As observed, it is not necessary to think mindless randomness is involved in what are referred to as "mutations", even that we can't as easily recognize intelligence in a stage of the overall process.
Seems unlikely. Evidence shows that favorable mutations do not show up in response to environment.
Unfortunately there is no succinct summery re the link. Can you summarize the article?
"The two possibilities tested by the Luria–Delbrück experiment. (A) If mutations are induced by the media, roughly the same number of mutants are expected to appear on each plate. (B) If mutations arise spontaneously during cell divisions prior to plating, each plate will have a highly variable number of mutants."

Image

The method requires a pure culture, initially from a single cell. This is easy to do by serial dilution.
https://www.corning.com/catalog/cls/doc ... otocol.pdf

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #296

Post by Purple Knight »

Jose Fly wrote: Mon Jan 23, 2023 2:58 pm
Purple Knight wrote: Mon Jan 23, 2023 2:46 pm Because it exists in every industry in the capitalist world.
Not in mine. Thus, anyone who blindly assumes such a thing about me and my colleagues is sorely mistaken.
By profit motive I don't mean any particular person succumbs to it. I just mean that the carrot is there. Similar to how you can have a "motive" for a suspect in a murder case which just means the person has a valid reason to have committed it. He gains something by doing the act. And you would gain something by being corrupt, unless the mechanism to stop it was airtight. Instead of one person who clearly decided all on his own to do a bad, imagine if it were a horde of them who crept in with corporate backing until they quietly outnumbered you, and only then do they show their true colours.
Jose Fly wrote: Mon Jan 23, 2023 2:58 pm
They're just being silly by outing themselves. They're discrediting themselves.
Not to their target audience they aren't. Fundamentalist Christians see that sort of thing and it makes them love AiG all the more.
Right. They think they're being honest. They really believe their religion. That's the only reason they out themselves. If they knew what the heck they were doing, they'd try to hide it.
Jose Fly wrote: Mon Jan 23, 2023 2:58 pm
Suppose they did what every other dishonest organisation does, and hid their dishonesty?
If all this dishonesty is hidden, how do you know it exists?
It's a reasonable assumption, because some people are dishonest and caught after they try to hide it. I also have personal experience with people being dishonest and hiding it, and never being caught, because I'm the only person in the room smart enough to see through their act while not being quite smart enough or nearly charismatic enough to convince anyone else of it, so I'm powerless to do anything but meaninglessly shoot myself in the foot, and perhaps offer meaningless consolation to the people exploited and thrown under the bus by these deceivers, meaningless because I still can't do anything about it.

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #297

Post by William »

[Replying to The Barbarian in post #295]

The Luria-Delbrück experiment is a test that was designed to determine whether mutations occur randomly or if they are induced by the environment. The experiment is designed to test two possibilities: that mutations are induced by the media (environment) or that mutations arise spontaneously during cell divisions prior to plating.

The results of the experiment show that the number of mutants that appear on each plate is highly variable, indicating that mutations arise spontaneously rather than as a result of environmental factors.

However, it should be noted that the experiment is not able to conclusively prove that mutations occur completely randomly, as other factors such as time may also play a role in the mutation process. In conclusion, the experiment suggests that mutations occur spontaneously and are not induced by environment but it does not prove that the mutations are completely random.

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #298

Post by The Barbarian »

William wrote: Thu Jan 26, 2023 7:44 pm [Replying to The Barbarian in post #295]

The Luria-Delbrück experiment is a test that was designed to determine whether mutations occur randomly or if they are induced by the environment. The experiment is designed to test two possibilities: that mutations are induced by the media (environment) or that mutations arise spontaneously during cell divisions prior to plating.

The results of the experiment show that the number of mutants that appear on each plate is highly variable, indicating that mutations arise spontaneously rather than as a result of environmental factors.

However, it should be noted that the experiment is not able to conclusively prove that mutations occur completely randomly, as other factors such as time may also play a role in the mutation process. In conclusion, the experiment suggests that mutations occur spontaneously and are not induced by environment but it does not prove that the mutations are completely random.
Again, by "random" biologists mean that favorable mutations don't happen in response to selective pressure. And that's what the tests shows. We can alter mutation rates of organisms by various chemical and physical means. But useful mutations still don't happen in response to need. Indeed, the common assumption that different mutation rates in different species are optimal and produced by natural selection, appears to be wrong:

Current Biology
Volume 28, Issue 19, 8 October 2018, Pages R1149-R1151
Summary
Mutation rate variation is often explained by varying optimal rates, or through effective population sizes determining the effectiveness of selection. But a rate difference between humans and owl monkeys is now explained mechanistically as a consequence of differing reproductive longevities.

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #299

Post by AquinasForGod »

Difflugia wrote: Wed Nov 30, 2022 1:01 pm
EarthScienceguy wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 2:53 pmGod is everywhere so He can observe everywhere and produce objective reality.
If that were true, then the double-slit experiment wouldn't produce the results it does because God would be observing the particle along its entire path. There would be no interference pattern. If your argument means anything, then the double-slit experiment is proof that God doesn't exist.

Does your argument mean anything?
You are not showing why this follows necessarily, and it doesn't. Here is why.


God doesn't observe the universe in a way that he comes to know new things. He knows all things as one eternal act. God's observation thus would have no effect on waveforms. Waveforms are affected by observations which change the knowledge base of the system. We are part of the system, not eternally all knowing, so if the observation makes available data to us, then that affects the system.

God is not part of the system. God eternally knowing how the system works doesn't change the knowledge base of the system.

Also, God can create the system in such a way that our observations affect the system but his never do.

With all that being said, I am not convinced that the argument works. I can imagine a physical system spontaneously arising that doesn't need to be observed in order to exist. Of course, spontaneous existence is absurd, but that takes a different argument to defeat.

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Re: How is there reality without God?

Post #300

Post by William »

[Replying to The Barbarian in post #298]
Again, by "random" biologists mean that favorable mutations don't happen in response to selective pressure.
So yes, biologist are using the word "random" not to portray true randomness as the explanation, but that "it looks random, therefore we shall refer to it as "random"".

This works for me. It is the same process I use re Generating Messages. The messages are built up through a process that is undeniably 'random' but the result of the random-like process always delivers coherency, no matter what type of random-like selection process I use.

The consistency of the coherency delivered through this random-like process of generating messages signifies that - while a Generated Message cannot be predictable re content, it can be predictable re "it will work every time" because it has shown to work every time, over the course of 20 years of consistent message generating, almost on a daily basis.

The unknown is WHY it will work every time, if indeed there is such a thing as "truly random".

Which begs the question "How can anything coherent, derive from an incoherent source?"

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