Re: [asa] Review of Behe in Books and Culture

"...The underlying Schrodinger equation for the wave function IS completely deterministic...."

Solutions to the Schroedinger equation give the wave functions but say nothing about how the wave functions collapse in particular cases. What this means, according to the accepted interpretation, is that the probability distribution is indeed strictly determined, but how the event turns out is undetermined: Where the event will lie on the probability distribution cannot be predicted.

It's the probability distribution that is determined, not the outcome of a given event.

The argument is that God can then force an outcome--cause the event to lie at a location he desires--without violating any law of physics. Those who prefer that God restrict his activity to this sort of manipulation do so because they like to have God controlling outcomes but don't like to have him violating laws of nature.

Don

  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Iain Strachan<mailto:igd.strachan@gmail.com>
  To: Michael Roberts<mailto:michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
  Cc: Ted Davis<mailto:TDavis@messiah.edu> ; asa<mailto:asa@calvin.edu> ; Louise Margaret Freeman<mailto:lfreeman@mbc.edu>
  Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2007 1:11 PM
  Subject: Re: [asa] Review of Behe in Books and Culture

  I must say I have a problem with this idea of God intervening "at the quantum level" - perhaps subtly biassing the dice throws in ways we can't detect.

  Despite the fact that from the observer's point of view it looks like the collapse of the wave function is probabilistic, nonetheless the underlying Schrodinger equation for the wave function IS completely deterministic (it's just a second order PDE) and it could therefore be argued that the time-evolution of the wave-function of the universe is not subject to being tweaked.

  Iain

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Received on Thu Jul 12 07:17:30 2007