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

So much intellectual energy has been devoted to correcting our perceived "God
of the gaps" inclinations that perhaps we tend to fall off the horse in the
other direction. If we will never understand Schrodinger's cat or other QM
confusions, then fine. God is still a God of those too. But it is also fine
for the scientific mind to never give up trying to understand them. They may
succeed -- maybe not. There's plenty of excitement either way. Meanwhile, we
(scientists especially included) live as if the world was an objective place.
Faith serves us well.

--Merv

Quoting Iain Strachan <igd.strachan@gmail.com>:

> The collapse of the wave function is one of those deep philosophical
> questions that are unresolved.
>
> Some hold that it is to do with consciousness. The collapse (or partial
> collapse) of the wave function would correspond to a sampling of the
> probability distribution at any given time. But that sampling and what is
> sampled depends on the observer. In the Schrodinger's cat paradox, if a
> person inside the room opens the door and observes the state of the cat
> (dead or alive) then for that observer, the wave function has collapsed.
> But for a person outside the room in which the person is observing the cat,
> the wave function has not yet collapsed.
>
> I suppose one might say that if there is an objective reality at all, it
> might correspond to an omnipotent observer sampling the probability
> distribution of the entire universe? But I must admit the subject is very
> confusing. Is it God who seeds the random number generator that samples the
> distribution to give the state of the universe as it is? If so, then if so
> desired, the omnipotent sampler could make anything happen, no matter how
> improbable, provided the probability was finite.
>
> Iain
>

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Received on Thu Jul 12 11:43:35 2007