Science + God = ?, You decide. Options

[Wingmaster05]

Aleister Crowley is known to have conjured up this intriguing quip: The method of science, the aim of religion.

Wouldn't that be something? The application of the scientific method, constantly renewing and reviewing your accepted knowledge, coupled with the reverence and grace that comes with religions...my extremities tingle and twitch at the possibilities for humankind!

Anyway, this post is a lobby/religion hybrid, i could have gone either way. A lot of our discussion across the board has considered this very question. We have two distinct camps in human thought, that of science and that of religion. Who is right? Who is wrong? Wouldn't it be the cats pajamas if they were BOTH right and wrong at the same time?

(IMG:http://pilotsfor911truth.org/forum/style_emoticons/default/blink.gif)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7955846.stm

Question: What do you get if you divide science by God?

(one) Answer: "Being"

Note: he isn't the first physicist to get all philosophizer with us...

(from the link)

A prize-winning quantum physicist says a spiritual reality is veiled from us, and science offers a glimpse behind that veil. So how do scientists investigating the fundamental nature of the universe assess any role of God, asks Mark Vernon.

The Templeton Prize, awarded for contributions to "affirming life's spiritual dimension", has been won by French physicist Bernard d'Espagnat, who has worked on quantum physics with some of the most famous names in modern science.

Quantum physics is a hugely successful theory: the predictions it makes about the behaviour of subatomic particles are extraordinarily accurate. And yet, it raises profound puzzles about reality that remain as yet to be understood.

WHAT IS QUANTUM PHYSICS?
Originated in work conducted by Max Planck and Albert Einstein at start of 20th Century
They discovered that light comes in discrete packets, or quanta, which we call photons
The Heisenberg Uncertainty principle says certain features of subatomic particles like momentum and position cannot be known precisely at the same time
Gaps remain, like attempts to find the 'God Particle' that scientists hope to spot in the Large Hadron Collider. It is required to give other particles mass

The bizarre nature of quantum physics has attracted some speculations that are wacky but the theory suggests to some serious scientists that reality, at its most basic, is perfectly compatible with what might be called a spiritual view of things.

Some suggest that observers play a key part in determining the nature of things. Legendary physicist John Wheeler said the cosmos "has not really happened, it is not a phenomenon, until it has been observed to happen."

D'Espagnat worked with Wheeler, though he himself reckons quantum theory suggests something different. For him, quantum physics shows us that reality is ultimately "veiled" from us.

The equations and predictions of the science, super-accurate though they are, offer us only a glimpse behind that veil. Moreover, that hidden reality is, in some sense, divine. Along with some philosophers, he has called it "Being".

In an effort to seek the answers to the "meaning of physics", I spoke to five leading scientists.

1. THE ATHEIST

Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg is well-known as an atheist. For him, physics reflects the "chilling impersonality" of the universe.

He would be thinking here of, say, the vast tracts of empty space, billions of light years across, that mock human meaning.

He says: "The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless."

So for Weinberg, the notion that there might be an overlap between science and spirituality is entirely mistaken.

2. THE SCEPTIC

The Astronomer Royal and President of the Royal Society, Martin Rees, shows a distinct reserve when speculating about what physics might mean, whether that be pointlessness or meaningfulness.

He has "no strong opinions" on the interpretation of quantum theory: only time will tell whether the theory becomes better understood.

"The implications of cosmology for these realms of thought may be profound, but diffidence prevents me from venturing into them," he has written.

In short, it is good to be humble in the face of the mysteries that physics throws up.

3. THE PLATONIST

Oxford physicist Roger Penrose differs again. He believes that mathematics suggests there is a world beyond the immediate, material one.
Spider in moonlight
Can science explain all of life's meaning?

Ask yourself this question: would one plus one equal two even if I didn't think it? The answer is yes.

Would it equal two even if no-one thought it? Again, presumably, yes.

Would it equal two even if the universe didn't exist? That is more tricky to contemplate, but again, there are good grounds for a positive response.

Penrose, therefore, argues that there is what can be called a Platonic world beyond the material world that "contains" mathematics and other abstractions.

4. THE BELIEVER

John Polkinghorne worked on quantum physics in the first part of his career, but then took up a different line of work: he was ordained an Anglican priest. For him, science and religion are entirely compatible.

The ordered universe science reveals is only what you'd expect if it was made by an orderly God. However, the two disciplines are different. He calls them "intellectual cousins".

"Physics is showing the world to be both more supple and subtle, but you need to be careful," he says.

If you want to understand the meaning of things you have to go beyond science, and the religious direction is, he argues, the best.

5. THE PANTHEIST

Brian Swimme is a cosmologist, and with the theologian Thomas Berry, wrote a book called The Universe Story: From the Primordial Flaring Forth to the Ecozoic Era.

It is avidly read by individuals in New Age and ecological circles, and tells the scientific story of the universe, from the Big Bang to the emergence of human consciousness, but does so as a new sacred myth.

Swimme believes that "the universe is attempting to be felt", which makes him a pantheist, someone who believes the cosmos in its entirety can be called God.

Mark Vernon is author of After Atheism: Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life

[Sanders]

NO ONE really understands the results of the double-slit experiment. Us humans, as smart as we think we are, are pretty un-sophisticated that way.

[Omega892R09]

NO ONE really understands the results of the double-slit experiment. Us humans, as smart as we think we are, are pretty un-sophisticated that way.

I keep thinking, often as I drift of to sleep, about this problem, being more interesting than counting sheep, that I am about to grasp the true meaning and then I awake in the middle of the night with the usual excruciating pain in my back and realize that Feynman was right after all.

It's that old wave-particle duality business. As a particle it cannot work, maybe because we think of a particle as a small ball, or other fragment but as a wave it can. A wave can act through both slits at once and yes create interference patterns behind.

But what really gets me is the Schrödinger bit, the single act of enabling a sensor to detect the passage of a particle through one of the slits ensures that the particle 'choses' the other slit. But then of course it is the wave function which does it. Or is it?

Here I went looking for an online version of the description by Professor Markus Arndt and Professor Anton Zelinger of the Department of Physics, University of Vienna under the heading of Buckyballs and the Dual-Slit Experiment on page 24 of:

Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed by Jim Al Khalili

I could type it out without the explanatory diagrams, which later would take a little longer to implement if, requested.

EDIT:

I have found this for now:

Double-slit experiment

This post has been edited by Omega892R09: Oct 2 2009, 11:19 AM

[Sanders]

...It's that old wave-particle duality business. As a particle it cannot work, maybe because we think of a particle as a small ball, or other fragment but as a wave it can. A wave can act through both slits at once and yes create interference patterns behind.

But what really gets me is the Schrödinger bit, the single act of enabling a sensor to detect the passage of a particle through one of the slits ensures that the particle 'choses' the other slit. But then of course it is the wave function which does it. Or is it?...

I think if you could figure out what was "waving" then it would start to make sense.

Since light travels fine through empty space, that's difficult (so far, impossible) to answer.

There was an Australian physicist, specialist in neurology I think, named 'Bass', can't remember the first name, who was named at the end of a book I read many years ago, can't remember the book name. I can't remember much of anything, except his last name, and his hypothesis...

He pointed out that the molecule which regulates whether a neuron fires or doesn't fire can be oriented one of three ways, and is so small (made up of three small atoms) that this orientation is open to quantum weirdness. He claimed that "something" was causing the quantum wave function to collapse and allow these molecules to "commit" and subsequently fire and create, collectively, "consciousness", and that "consciousness" was what really was observing these events and causing the collapse of the wave function in the first place, in a feedback loop which essentially CREATES consciousness, bringing a whole new meaning to the word "bootstrapping".

I would give anything to read what that Bass guy said again to refresh my memory, I have done searches looking for him, but in vain. Maybe I just imagined it?

[Omega892R09]

I would give anything to read what that Bass guy said again to refresh my memory, I have done searches looking for him, but in vain. Maybe I just imagined it?

Here you go Sanders, I found this first search:

Goswami continues and notes that Australian physicist L. Bass and American Fred Alan Wolf have observed that for intelligence to operate, the firing of one neuron must be accompanied by the firing of many correlated neurons at macroscopic distances--as much as ten centimeters (the width of the cortical tissue, apparently). Goswami writes: In order for this to happen, notes Wolf, we need nonlocal correlations (in the manner of Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen, of course) existing at the molecular level in our brain, at our synapses. Thus even our ordinary thinking depends on the nature of quantum events.

at:

Barbelith Underground

and also this which provides a quick run through the history of the topic:

Science's Last Frontiers

I have some books by the physicist Paul Davies here but I only get a part way through them before he starts to irritate. Not quite sure why this is, maybe its because I wasn't that impressed by him at Beyond Belief 2006. Perhaps I should give him another chance.

This post has been edited by Omega892R09: Oct 3 2009, 12:59 PM