Why Quanta, Consciousness, Big Bang

[David Sklansky]

Some of the high falootin philosphers in another thread derided the fact that I would see scientific ignorance of things as a reason to believe in God or even intelligent design by a non omnipotent being. And for the most part I agree with them.

But I didn't make it clear, I guess, that I wasn't just giving examples of things scientists have not yet explained. Rather I was specifically choosing three things that are extremely bothersome, very related to religion, and in at least two out of the three cases, not likely to be understood in the forseeable future, if at all. I don't have time to go into them now but others are welcome to elaborate. Hopefully someone will bring up the DELAYED double slit experiments and their implication.

By the way, the one issue that may be decided fairly soon is human consciousness. We will learn a lot when we find out whether computers can be made conscious. If so, that knocks out pretty much all religions except Sklanskyanity.

[Bodhi]

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Hopefully someone will bring up the DELAYED double slit experiments and their implication.

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Yes, someone please enlighten me.

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By the way, the one issue that may be decided fairly soon is human consciousness. We will learn a lot when we find out whether computers can be made conscious. If so, that knocks out pretty much all religions except Sklanskyanity.

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You're gonna be annoyed with me for this one, but what do you mean by "conscious" and "consciousness?" More specifically, what is your position on the question of privileged access, the notion that only the conscious subject has epistemic access to its own mental content? If someone believes in priveleged access, then they can never be convinced of artificial intelligence.

[BluffTHIS!]

Clearly through history, humans with less scientific knowledge have attributed various things to various deities precisely because they couldn't at that time explain them. And regarding "miracles", I think I have covered my own views in other posts and made the point that God acts mostly when He "interferes" through normal phenomena and coincidences.

Regarding quanta, consciousness and the big bang, and such things as the double slit experiment, even if one day science explains these things through a unified field theory, an explanation of consciousness, and a better understanding of how the big bang took place and might possibly take place again, then what still will be unexplained is the First Cause of all things. This is the primary question. Even Stephen Hawking and other physcists who like him don't believe in a personal god, nonethless frequently use the term "God" for a first cause.

The delayed double-split experiment is one of the most fascinating things in science to me. It surely points out that we don't really grasp something about physics on a subatomic level, something intimately connected with particle/wave duality and possibly the extradimensional nature of subatomic physics. I don't however, believe it or it's eventual scientific explanation if we ever figure it out, to have much religious significance. Religion is not concerned so much with how something in God's creation works, but rather that as stated above, He was the First Cause and that He created us to know and love Him.

Regarding consciousness, this is a deep topic. It is clear however, that humans and other animals like chimpanzees and dolphins that might have an advanced degree of conciousness even if not as great as ours, don't depend for that consciousness on algortithms written by another human. And if even a star trek type of Data android could be constructed, then that would have no religious significance whatsoever, since the divine soul of humans does not depend on consciousness, but on an infusion by God at conception. My post in the extraterrestial thread regarding all sentient beings not necessarily having souls expands on this.

[drudman]

Quantum weirdness is a huge trip. Three years ago, Daryn and I got drunk and talked for hours about it, and we were both pretty freaked out. Delayed double slit experiment might just be the King of quantum weirdness.

The idea is you take a card and put two small slits in it, very very close to each other (we're talking microscopically, the distance between the slits is only about 1000x the wavelength of the light you're going to shoot at it) and you shine light at it. Cover one or the other slit, and you get a single cone of light shining through the open slit. If light were like a particle, when neither slit was covered, one would expect to observe a solid band of light, brightest in the middle where the two light cones overlap. Instead, you get alternating bands of light and dark, like you would if you used ripples of water instead of light. This indicates that light sometimes behaves like a wave.

That was revolutionary, but what is shocking is if you fire individual quantum particles, instead of a steady stream of them. In 1989, some guys from a Japanese electronics company (Hitachi?) fired individual electrons instead of photons. Very oddly, the intereference pattern still showed up! This is highly weird, because with only one electron passing through at a time, how could there be any interference?

[drudman]

In retrospect, I didn't really do justice with my explanation. There is weirder stuff involved in it that I can't really explain too well. I know the gist... the idea is that the interference is caused because the electrons are going through both slits at the same time. There is something that the experimenter can do, however, to detect which slit the electron goes through... when this detection is used, all of a sudden the electron only goes through one slit. By making the observation, we collapse the wave-function, and the electron again behaves like a particle. This is kind of related to EPR paradox, or nonlocality. Hugely fascinating stuff, and I hope that Daryn or someone else with an extensive background in physics will do a better job of explaining what we know about nonlocality.

[gumpzilla]

What you're describing is more basic than EPR and non-locality. The collapse of the wave-function is sort of axiomatic in non-relativistic QM; when you make an observation, it is supposed that the thing that you are observing will return an eigenvalue of whatever operator you are measuring and will assume the eigenstate associated with that eigenvalue. This corresponds roughly to the idea that if we measure the spin of a particle and measure it again moments later, for example, it better be the same. The EPR paradox (and quantum teleportation, etc.) depend on this, and it's at the heart of most of the weirdnesses of quantum. I'm not sure that a satisfactory solution to "the measurement problem," as I think it's generally referred to, has ever been produced. Many-worlds doesn't really appeal to me, and I haven't read Bohm's pilot wave papers but I know that people aren't too wild about those (the pilot wave is a nonlocal hidden variable theory.)

The measurement will destroy the interference because you're now taking it from a system where you have a superposition of two states to a system with one. The superposition is what leads to the interference pattern. Single electron interference is funky, it's true; in QED or the Feynman lectures, I think Feynman talks about these things in terms of path integrals as a way to get some kind of intuitive picture of it.

I've forgotten what delayed single slit is, if somebody wants to remind me I'll take a crack at it. I haven't thought about QM in these terms in quite some time.

[AleoMagus]

Delayed double slit is similar to the double slit experiment described, but somehow (I forget the details), we delay the process of photons hitting the screen until AFTER we have decided whether or not to observe the photons in one way or another.

Whereas before we were faced with the weirdness of our conscious observation apparently 'determining' the behavior of the wave-particle, we are now faced with the even weirder fact that our conscious observation affects this behaviour even AFTER the photons have passed through the slit.

Taken to it's extremes, we could imagine using this kind of experiment on distant celestial objects and essentially determining the paths that photons took billions of years ago.

Regards
Brad S

[K C]

Wow I just noticed this topic area - nice change from poker /images/graemlins/smile.gif

So this is where Sklansky hangs out these days /images/graemlins/smile.gif

I always knew my degrees in philosophy and poker would be somehow related one day /images/graemlins/smile.gif

To even begin to go into these things we need to first make clear what "science" is, along with its limitations. At best it is merely a collection of postuations based upon observed data. Thus, by definition actually, it cannot possibly hope to be the bible of knowledge it so arrogantly presupposes itself to be, as its methods can at best catch only a glimpse of the realm of possibility.

Thus we have all sorts of pompous claims that what science cannot explain cannot be real. This is a circular argument of course, which breaks down to if it doesn't fit the model, it doesn't fit the model.

Topics such as consciousness are even more amusing, since science cannot possibly explain it, other than simply describing it or discovering biochemical processes which affect it. None of this explains it in any way of course. In theory such an explanation is possible, but is far beyond the theories and instrumentation of today.

As to the so called origin of the universe, it may even be presumptuous of us to assume that there ever was one, at least in a temporal sense. One of the more interesting scenarios that you run into when presuming a sequential arrangement of time is at what point did time begin? Once you realize the absurdity of this then things get real interesting /images/graemlins/smile.gif

KC

[Bodhi]

Wow, I have a degree in philosophy too but I don't know where you're coming from.

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At best it is merely a collection of postuations based upon observed data.

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Even the most vitriolic anti-realists in the philosophy of science offer a more charitable view of science than you do here!

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Topics such as consciousness are even more amusing, since science cannot possibly explain it, other than simply describing it or discovering biochemical processes which affect it. None of this explains it in any way of course. In theory such an explanation is possible, but is far beyond the theories and instrumentation of today.

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"Science cannot possibly explain it..." followed by "In theory such an explanation is possible."

Which is it, eh? Also, as someone with a philosophy degree, you should beware of ambiguous terms like 'consciousness.'

Fwiw, I don't see how any of the posts in this thread have to do with evidence for God.

[drudman]

I too was troubled by your post.

[PairTheBoard]

Could someone provide an explanation or link for the "Delayed" double slit experiment.

I thought this was a good link for the experiment using electrons.

http://www.upscale.utoronto.ca/GeneralInterest/Harrison/DoubleSlit/DoubleSlit.html

It does have a sort of "delayed" element to it as a device is set up to see which slit a single electron goes through after it has gone by the slits.

We have had to adjust our conceptual framework for reality many times over the centuries, especially in the last few hundred years. My guess is that this process has only just begun and this phenomenon is just one example of many more yet to come. While our sense of mysticism may be somewhat out of vogue these days amongst those overly impressed with our current crude state of science, I think it will make a big comeback in the future as people get smart enough to once again see its value.

PairTheBoard

[gumpzilla]

I did a little reading about this last night and started finding some references to a delayed quantum eraser experiment; once I've actually read about it some more and have something intelligent to say, I might try commenting on it.

[Bodhi]

We have to remember that even anti-realist positions in the philosophy of science seek to explain the practical success of science. A collection of postulates based on observations leaves a pretty large gap in the story of how we got to mircowave ovens and linear accelerators.

[David Sklansky]

"And if even a star trek type of Data android could be constructed, then that would have no religious significance whatsoever, since the divine soul of humans does not depend on consciousness, but on an infusion by God at conception."

So God would allow beings who were conscious, had feelings, and were aware of him, to not enjoy what he can offer even though they believe in him?

[The Truth]

Yea, in the delayed double slit experiment....
We don't decide weather we are going to "see" which slit the electron goes through until after it has already been detected.
The result is that, if we decide to "see" which slit it goes through then we get a non-interference particle pattern. If we decide not to see which slit it goes through then we get an interference pattern.

It's like we can retroactively determine weather we want to know or not after the electrons have been recorded, and this knowledge some how changes the behavior of the electrons.

<font color="white">and that sucks. I hate my life. </font>

[David Sklansky]

"even if one day science explains these things through a unified field theory, an explanation of consciousness, and a better understanding of how the big bang took place and might possibly take place again, then what still will be unexplained is the First Cause of all things."

An unexplained First Cause does little to argue for the specifics of organized religions or for a god that is intervening in our lives or will give us an afterlife.

Secondly while I personally haven't thought much about this First Cause issue, it is my understanding that a lot of very smart people have thought about it deeply. And most of them do not share your view that it is some kind of slam dunk argument for any sort of god whatsoever. And when very smart people speak, I listen.

[disjunction]

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By the way, the one issue that may be decided fairly soon is human consciousness. We will learn a lot when we find out whether computers can be made conscious. If so, that knocks out pretty much all religions except Sklanskyanity.

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Any evidence for the first statement? If not, I doubt it. I also doubt the "when" implication of the second sentence. I can't even be assured that you are conscious.

[BluffTHIS!]

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So God would allow beings who were conscious, had feelings, and were aware of him, to not enjoy what he can offer even though they believe in him?

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It is possible. I explained further in your Last Question thread.

[BluffTHIS!]

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An unexplained First Cause does little to argue for the specifics of organized religions or for a god that is intervening in our lives or will give us an afterlife.

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Since the biggest "intervention" imaginable is creation itself and all that flows from it, it seems very logical indeed that such a creator would continue to "interfere". Interfering post-creation in fact is not as much interference as the great interference of creation in the first place.

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Secondly while I personally haven't thought much about this First Cause issue, it is my understanding that a lot of very smart people have thought about it deeply. And most of them do not share your view that it is some kind of slam dunk argument for any sort of god whatsoever. And when very smart people speak, I listen.

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If you don't call a First Cause "God", then what would you call it? And if you just want to call Him "The First Cause", I won't object on grounds of semantics. Since even if you project the universe back to a quantum singularity and could figure out everything about the bang, the fact is there is no observable data on what took place before that singularity or whatever, and all the deep thought in the world won't figure it out. Again, if those deep thinkers don't want to call the first cause "God", that's fine, but they can't call someone/something who is the First Cause of Creation anything that wouldn't mean the same thing to religious believers of whatever faith, because those actions signify the omnipotence attributed to "God".

[David Sklansky]

"Since the biggest "intervention" imaginable is creation itself and all that flows from it, it seems very logical indeed that such a creator would continue to "interfere". Interfering post-creation in fact is not as much interference as the great interference of creation in the first place."

As I wrote before, it is quite reasonable that he wouldn't interfere even if he could. Because once he does, he enters a slippery slope that doesn't allow him to judge fairly.
And it once is conceded that it is not impossible that he doesn't interfere, then it is a simple matter of looking at the evidence. Which points overwhelmingly to the conlusion that he doesn't (and even more overwhwelmingly to the conclusion that he hasn't for many hundreds of years at least.)

[MortalNuts]

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Secondly while I personally haven't thought much about this First Cause issue, it is my understanding that a lot of very smart people have thought about it deeply. And most of them do not share your view that it is some kind of slam dunk argument for any sort of god whatsoever. And when very smart people speak, I listen.

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You guys might enjoy reading this essay by Sean Carroll (a physicist at Chicago):

"Why (Almost All) Cosmologists are Atheists" (http://pancake.uchicago.edu/%7Ecarroll/nd-paper.html)

It's not particularly profound or anything, but it does go over some of the relevant issues reasonably well.

-mn