disarray

Strange: You write that "They are always both wave-like and particle-like. The idea that they switch between being particles and waves is another bit of bad journalism." But doesn't the double slit experiment and the notion of wave collapse suggest that, depending upon the situation, a electron is or behaves very much more like a wave than a particle (and vice versa) suggest that it can shift gears so to speak....Could we say that the electron is neither particle or wave but rather is in neutral (gear) before measured, or, getting back to entanglement, can we say that the card is neither green nor red, but rather in neutral before someone looks in the envelope? In any case, the event of looking at (measuring the state of) the card somehow affects it, does it not, and also apparently affects the state (aka spin, aka color) of the other card, which, like the first card, was, up until then neither red nor green, based on a comment on page 5 that everyone seemed to agree upon: 'The reason that the "spooky action at a distance" thing comes in, is that we know through other means that in the quantum realm neither "card" is in a definite state of being green or red until someone opens their envelop and checks the color.' So I can't see how we can say that looking at the other card does not 'affect' (so yeh, let's say "transfer information" is too strong a phrase) the other one, but merely tells you about whether it is red or green, if the other card was neither until you looked at the first card.

Tar, you write "this particular time and place is significantly different than all the block universe put together, and this reality, with its places and past present and future, is what really matters" Well, yes, I am, as an individual, more concerned about what I am going to have for a snack in five minutes than I am with whether there is another universe, or whether we live in a block universe, or whether everything is happening at once or not, or that if the Earth formed at midnight and the present moment is the next midnight, 24 hours later, we modern humans have only been around since 11:59:59pm, or that the "the sun is slowly expanding and brightening, and over the next few billion years it will eventually desiccate Earth, leaving it hot, brown and uninhabitable.....No, I just want to have a bit of cereal in my favorite bowl with sprinkles of sugar and slices of banana on top, and I will be a happy camper. But even if I weren't a scientist who made money by trying to figure out whether all things are fated to happen or we did or did not have a common ancestor with the gorilla, etc, I like to know when I have a spare moment, I like to think about such things. When discussing such things as the possibility of life in a different galaxy or wherever, I don't really think that the "who cares" factor is all that germane.

well, of course I know that "If explanations involving God sufficed, science would not be necessary." I'm just trying to make the point that we don't really know what happens or perhaps even what we mean when we say that there is a collapse. And yes, it is nice to gain accuracy. But my point is, I guess, that there doesn't seem to be much point in trying to discuss whether or not information is passed between one electron and another if we don't really have any idea what happens when a wave collapses.

Thanks Delta for the non higher-mathematics explanation, but I think that there is a danger of getting hung up on what one means by "information." Perhaps the first person is not sending hard-cold verbal-like information to the other person saying "I have a green card." But the explanation you give suggests that the contents of the second person's envelope's (the indeterminately colored or non-colored card) changes into being something with a definite color. So yes, I get it..the first card does not "cause" the second card to be one thing or another....yet at the same time we say that the second card had no color until we looked at the first one....(You can't have it both ways: either the second card had no definite color before we looked at the first one or else it did.) Don't we indeed 'cause' the first card to pick a color rather than just being indeterminate when we look at it, just as we cause an electron to "collapse" when we measure it in the double slit experiment? And If the second card had to definite color until we looked at the first, how can we say that there was no interaction between the two cards....whether or not we label such interaction as 'communication' or 'changing' or 'causing' or 'affecting' or 'exchanging information'? And what do we literally mean by "looking" in the envelope...does this suggest that a photon is both wave and particle until someone looks at it with the naked eye, and then it becomes one or the other. (I gather that we mean we are using some sort of screen or instrument to "look at" [aka measure] an electrons behavior in the double-slit experiment). If so, can someone please tell me what might be happening in terms of the big picture: are humans causing zillions of electrons to collapse each second as they go about their business....are chemicals interacting in such a way all over the universe in such a way as to cause waves to collapse? What is going on here? And has anyone really ever really had any clear idea as to what happens when a wave collapses? Bohr's interpretation of what happens in the double-slit experiment is often dismissed as saying nothing, because it seems to treat statistics as if it were an actual physical thing. Indeed, the Schrodinger equation implies "that we never deal directly with the quantum objects of the microscopic realm. We therefore need not worry about their physical reality, or their lack of it. An 'existence' that allows the calculation of their effects on our macroscopic instruments is enough for us to consider." http://physics.about.com/od/quantuminterpretations/fl/What-Is-the-Copenhagen-Interpretation-of-Quantum-Mechanics.htm So really, saying that the wave collapses, or other statistical possibilities about an electrons position disintegrate when we "look" at it, does not explain anything per se, (even though it can be described with great accuracy mathematically) and is perhaps not much better than invoking an explanation involving God.

@strange, you say that "I don't think the geometry is a metaphor; that is what the theory is (and what reality is, if you will). The metaphor comes in when this is visualised as a rubber sheet or some "thing" called space being curved." Saying that "what reality is" suggests to me that you think, as even Godel did, that numbers have some sort of Platonic/noumenal/real existence, and that it is only when we try to visualize what the numbers look like in a diagram that we move further away from that reality (even though such illustrations are greatly useful as a teaching tool). But I suspect that the majority of mathematicians and physicists would suggest that numbers just provide a symbolic tool that has its uses, and that different types of mathematics work for different "realities" under investigation, e.g., Newtonian for some things and quantum for others, Euclidean geometry for some and non-Euclidean for others. For example, Einstein remarking that numbers and number-based laws are not reality: “As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.” But yes, this is getting into the area of philosophy and is probably of less interest to scientists who are more focused on the application of knowledge. I have no problem with the "shut up and measure" approach that some quantum physicists advocate, when it comes to asking what is really beyond what we can experience. My question was really an academic one in which I was asking whether it might be possible to make a set of criteria for determining when or whether a scientific model ceased to be representational (e.g., a 5th grade problem about figuring out the area of a football field) and became more counter-intuitive and/or heuristic, (e.g., Bohr's suggestion that we not assume that an electron has a definite pre-measurement position that can be identified by some set of coordinates, and thus can not construct a 'realistic' representational model of where it might be at other than to give some numeric probability).

String-Junky....You write with regards to attempts to discredit the concept of a multiverse on the basis of the meaning of "universe," that "Deeply mathematical" supersedes "deeply etymological", of course." Here, here. I tried to make this point way back, but the idea that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between words and reality (as per early Wittgenstein's logical atomism, which he later rejected in favor of seeing language as a game that may or may not 'hook up' with reality) seems to elude some people. If anything, the development of human ideas is hampered by the fact that the assumptions built into our use of words tends to lag behind new discoveries and ways of thinking. For example, people assume that science only deals with material things, and thus things that everything is just made up of matter (not realizing the ramifications of Einsteins equating of matter and energy, for example)....from there, they argue that, unlike "spiritually" -minded people, scientists must be cold-hearted and greedy and just concerned with acquiring material things in their lives. I am, of course, not arguing about whether scientists are or are not cold-hearted, but just giving an illustration of the way that language tends to discourage new ways of looking at things. Ditto for those who resort to analyzing language in an attempt to dismiss the concept of a multiverse as a logical impossibility.

I confess that I am an amateur here and I gathered that finding out the spin of the first one tells you that the other electron has opposite spin (but does not make the other one have an opposite spin), though I was under them impression that the other that they both had indeterminate spin until someone looked (measured one of them). However, when I read about experiments, I often read that a physicist somehow changed the spin of the first electron and then the other one changed its spin (to the opposite) accordingly. But ultimately, I was wondering about explanations wherein a physicist claims that there is some balance between spin up and spin down if one somehow knew what all the electrons in the universe were doing as a prelude to explaining how entanglement works, as I mentioned earlier with reference to coin arcade. If electron spins are indeterminate (as if there is some sort of superposition of spins) until measured, how can one even say that half are one way and half the other?

With regards to the question as to why nothing can go faster than light, or, to be more precise, why is the speed of light 299,792,458 metres per second and not, for example, 4529553 m/s. I think that it is expecting too much to ask why it is at that particular speed, instead of, say a 100,000 metres faster of slower or whatever. Rather, I think a more fruitful question to ask is why is their a limit to the speed at all. I imagine that the answer has something to do with the physical limit to how fast information can be transported from, say on electron to another, so that if light traveled significantly faster or slower communication or something else would not function properly. Indeed, one might ask the same thing about the other things such the speed of sound, or the wavelength of the color lemonchiffon. The world is full of set numbers, as per, for example, the periodic table. Indeed, the anthropic principle asks why the physical constants are what they are, pointing out, like many a theologian, that if any one of several were any different, that the universe would not have existed, or would have not expanded, and certainly would not have provided the conditions for life to exist. So perhaps we don't know the answer to the question, barring the rather circular answer provided by a theologian that God picked numbers our of 'thin air', or just saying that "it is what it is." I tend to agree with those who suggest that the way that the periodic table "unfolds" is the only possible way that it could, much the same as stating that it is inevitable that irrational numbers will appear once one sets up a system of counting, or that any system will be be incomplete or have results unrelated to its basic axioms (as best as I can paraphrase Goedel). Excuse my philosophizing, but I like Paul Valery's comment that "...the universe is a flaw in the purity of non-being" as if to suggest that they go together like love and marriage, so to speak. In the same sense, it seems to me that other things, such as the qualities of a hydrogen atom and two oxygen molecules. We can't always say why there is a limit to how fast sound goes, etc., but we can see that everything has to coexist in the same universe, and that the various speeds just reflect some kind of "pecking order" of the various forces, as Nietzche claims in the "Will to Power" when trying to discredit the literal belief in cause and effect.

Strange....Yes, that was what I gathered might be the case, but thanks for stating it. As long as we are talking about the relationship between sign and signified, please bear with me as I make a couple of more general points in this regard: I am gathering that one might make a list of those things in which the representative model is like the thing that it is trying to replicate and those that are quite different (aka signs similarity to the signified OR shadows on the wall of Plato's allegorical cave similarity to the objects seen in the light of day). We might have some sort of scale to rate the appropriateness of model to modeled. Of course there has to be some parameters as to what you are looking for. A painting of the Mona Lisa visually looks from the waist up could be mistaken by one of his students as the real woman at a distance of 100, but apart from that, the painting is not alive, is pretty much 2 dimensional, cannot carry on a conversation, etc. Indeed, we go to the movies and can put our entire mind into a "state of belief" by tricking our 5 senses into thinking that what we see on the screen is the "real thing." Onomatopoetic words, as another example, would be higher on the scale that other words....saying the word "buzz" mimics the sound of a bee more than does the word hippopotamus. As another example, a candle would be higher up on the scale when trying to represent a star to someone who had never seen one, than, say, a log. I could list similar examples with respect to smell, taste, movement, touch, etc. I guess the "rub" comes, if I may allude to Hamlet, when we cannot perceive reality with our senses, e.g. in trying to describe a quark, or dark matter, etc. Indeed, we scoff at Viking who thought that thunder was caused when Thor threw his hammer, preferring our own modern day explanation for a thunder waves speed as V = square root of k over p I would suggest that on my verisimilude scale of modeling that the image of thor’s hammer shattering the air with its vibrations might give a person who has never heard thunder a more representational “image,” in terms of what we experience with our sense of hearing, of what thunder is (or is like) than the mathematician’s symbols on a chalkboard. But there sometimes a limit to how close our models get to the actual thing: Da vinci’s picture can only look so much like the Mona Lisa and Dante’s poems only describe Beatrice so well, though at some point there seems to be diminishing returns beyond which further improvement of the picture of the poem does not give you much more significant information as to what the woman was like in person, as a flesh and blood talking human. Ditto for describing light as a wave and a particle….it is neither and we can’t get much better than to say that, beyond that, we don’t know how else to describe it. The concept of gravity is so 'foreign' to anything else that we experience with our senses that the best we can do is show that, for example, there is a tradeoff between distance and time when we have a set ceiling for the speed of light. So, I am guessing that, apart from mathematical/geometric descriptions, we cannot really experience what the concepts of time dilation and length contraction 'mean' in any other way. Perhaps my 'verisimilitude scale' is only of any use when it comes to estimating the degree to which one sensation (e.g., a candle) is 'like' another (i.e., a star), and not for abstract things such as space/time (which, apart from being a measurement) is not something that we can directly experience, especially when we talk about the curvature of space or the dilation of time, though we do experience such things as time and gravity indirectly, e.g.,, we feel time going more quickly when we are bored and we feel what its like when we drop a bowling ball on our foot. Because we can see both a star and a candle, we can make the call that the candle is more like the appearance of a star than is a log. But since we can't experience gravity with any of our senses, we cannot make the call as to whether one model of it is any closer to the real thing than another model. In short, we can comment about the truth of representational models such as a candle or a picture, but not the truth of models about abstract things such as time and gravity, anymore than we can about models of the background field of a multiverse, or some putative God, or what honesty is "like." If it waddles and quacks like a duck, chances are it is a duck, but if you've never seen a graviton, what can you point to and say, "It looks like that" or "It tastes like that" ?

Am an amateur who just read that SCSPL suggests that models of reality can get more and more accurate until the model becomes the reality: "what does the SCSPL coding of a tennis ball look like?";- the answer is the tennis ball itself!" Perhaps SCSPL is used differently in physics, but I wanted to throw my 2 cents in by mentioning that I have read that Kant thought that what the noumena was really like was impossible to know since, to use my metaphor, we can never take off the sunglasses (e.g., the "manifold-like filter," to get back a little to Kant's phrasing) through which we perceive things such as time and space. However, Kant said that, via science, we can make better and better approximations...so that our mental reality "changes with time" as we asymptotically get better and better approximations about what we are trying to describe or "picture." I am gathering that one might make a list of those things in which the representative model (and science is supposed to be one big treasure chest of models) is like the thing that it is trying to replicate and those that are quite different (aka signs similarity to the signified OR shadows on the wall of Plato's allegorical cave similarity to the objects seen in the light of day). We might have some sort of (verisimilitude) scale to rate the appropriateness of model to modeled. Of course there has to be some parameters as to what you are looking for: A painting of the Mona Lisa visually looks, if perhaps put the painting next to Michelangelo's model, from the waist up, just after he painted her, one of hist students perhaps could not tell which one was "real" at a distance of 100, but apart from that, the painting is not alive, is pretty much 2 dimensional, cannot carry on a conversation, etc. So Onomatopoetic words, for example, would be higher on the scale that other words....saying the word "buzz" mimics the sound of a bee more than does the word hippopotamus. As another example, a candle would be higher up on the scale when trying to represent a star to someone who had never seen one, than, say, a log. I could list similar examples with respect to smell, taste, movement, touch, etc. I guess the "rub" comes, if I may allude to Hamlet, when we cannot perceive reality with our senses, e.g. in trying to describe a quark, or dark matter, etc. Indeed, we scoff at Viking who thought that thunder was caused when Thor threw his hammer, preferring our own modern day explanation for a thunder waves speed: v=sqrt of k over p I would suggest that on my verisimilitude scale of modeling that the image of thor’s hammer shattering the air with its vibrations might give a person who has never heard thunder a more representational “image,” in terms of what a person experiences with his/her sense of hearing, and thus of what thunder is, (or is like), than the mathematician’s symbols on a chalkboard. Finally, I would suggest that some symbolic descriptions (aka representational models) just cannot continually get better and better. We can perhaps draw more and more accurate pictures of the Mona Lisa, but they will never be the Mona Lisa, sort of thing. Dante could write better and better poetic descriptions of Beatrice, but at some point his efforts would bring diminishing returns, so that, were I to read his descriptions now, I would never get much better than an extremely vague impression as to what what she was like in person. Hope this side comment is not too far off topic.

robbitybob1: well, I see the discussion as something that motivates me to clarify my own ideas and to do some research, so I kind of learn as I go, but I try to respect everyone's opinion, even if I don't agree. Anyway, I find the topic interesting. I am also interested in the issue of what freedom of religion means. I have had people tell me in all seriousness that freedom of religion means that anyone is free to believe in the God of their choice here in America. When I say, "But what about those who believe that there are more than one god," they reply that they don't know anyone nowadays who believes in that, and then tell me that polytheism is not a "real religion," but rather just the primitive mythology of the Greeks and the Romans and a few hippyish Eastern religions! But I do think that, even if one believes in a particular religion, when one has a discussion about religion with others, one needs to start with the assumption that all religious beliefs are wrong, or at least not facts (e.g., God speaks to people, God performs miracles, etc.)....quite often this does mean that one adopts a rather scientific approach, though it is more accurate I think, to say one takes the approach of an objective and impartial anthropologist, historian, psychologist or whomever. Many if not most people were raised to believe things consistent with a particular church, at least from my generation, and therefore I think the best way to be impartial and objective is to try to wipe or bracket all that out, and just look at the facts that all agree upon. So yes, I think that one can make a list of the reasons that a society ends up adopting monotheism or polytheism. I am trying to keep down the length of my posts, so will just leave it at that for the time being.

Strange: Soooo, we can't get beyond the metaphors, be they interestingly concrete or boringly abstract? (I have read that string theory is beautifully elaborate and explains a lot of things well, but others think that it is just a big numerical model that happens to work in some ways, but is perhaps no better than a lot of other mathematical models, and could just as well be tossed into the waste basket.) So far I get the idea of concrete metaphors (e.g., stories that provide sights, sounds, etc.) not being confused with the real thing, but I find it harder to think of mathematical models in the same way with reference to relativity and quantum theory. I guess I am used to being able to visually see how one can apply geometry to surveying or use it in architecture, but am not sure at just what point one should cease to think of an equation, for example, as anything to that can be visualized. I read recently that some scientists think that there is nothing concrete in the universe at all, despite, as I recall, Victor Stenger's claim that there are irreducible particles (e.g., in his book, "God and the Atom"), and that ultimately everything is just qualities and/or mathematics. In any case, I wonder whether it is misleading for scientists to use words like space and time at all, if they are really using these terms in ways that are quite different from the way the average person thinks of them in everyday life. Perhaps they could say "Shpace" and "Thime" to slightly distinguish the terms, much as we use x' and y'. Similarly, we might speak of "shpin" to remind beginners to the field that we are not talking about spin in the usual sense....just a half-serious suggestion. (In any case, I appreciate those experts who take time and make the effort to explain things to online beginners myself)

swansont: You write that “You have to be careful here. "somehow affected" means that entangled particles are now in a known state, rather than that they have changed from one state to another.” But don’t we say that they are not in any particular state until measured, whether talking about the position of an electron or the spin of entangled electrons or an electron passing through a board with double slits. How can a physicist say that half the electrons in the universe have up spin (of some type of “spin”) and the other half have down spin if they really don’t have any particular spin until measured? How would even a hypothetical God of Einstein know if there was an equal number of electrons with up and downs, so that the total spin balanced out, if they don’t really have any determinate spin…as if they had superposition of spin? I have read that even if we could each particle in a pair of entangled spins to have the same direction, we would still find, if we got them together at a party to compare notes later, that they somehow had opposite spins, as the universe won’t let them have the same spin. (By the way, thanks to those who have the patience to explain things to beginners).

I am tempted to suggest that the conversation is getting to be about religion vs. science, since we are now talking about gods as well as God But I think that it is relevant to ask why anyone should assume , as, I think is often the case in the Western world, that we speak in the singular when discussing religion. So I don't think the issue is really whether science or rationalism offers a better or more accurate "world"-view than monotheism does, but rather, why some cultures come up with a single God and some with many, or even various hybrids, such as a single God with different aspects (e.g., the Trinity of Christianity) and several supernatural entities (e.g., angels and demons). And of course, a good place to answer such questions is to ask when and why one or more gods appeared in various cultures/societies. I am not so sure what robbitybob1 means when he asks if monotheism is here yet. I think that one needs to be aware of assumptions that might be ensconced in the question of this discussion thread: For example, Why do we assume that the so-called monotheistic religions really are monotheistic (e.g, Islam tends to deny that Christianity is). Do we assume that world history is leading inevitably towards some sort of end-game monotheistic spiritual apex (as Hegel declared, with Germany and himself being at the top of the apex)? Why do we not ask in the same breath how polytheism, for example, started, and whether it is here yet? Is monotheism in the mind of the beholder (i.e., is there a human tendency to be reductive about transcendental things, to the point where we are left with one God)?

Robbity: Well, I haven't had any conversations with Webster lately, and he doesn't reply to my emails, but I am guessing that this is some sort of traditional definition and explanation constructed from the way that perhaps Christianity views the term. Let's suppose that is the case. If so, I would suppose that the emphasis is upon what one might find in the Bible: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." John 3:16 " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." (First verse of the Bible) Point being that the conception of the universe at that time was but a limited version of what we now view as our own solar system. Am not what everyone at the time thought the stars were, but, again, the point is that the only thing of any importance was the earth and surrounding sky (heavens, perhaps where angels and God resided). I doubt anyone in ancient times considered the possibility that God would create an Adam and Eve on another inhabitable planet somewhere else in the universe. So its really a matter of emphasis and point of view. I am not a scholar of ancient languages, but I am guessing that even if people of Biblical times referred to the universe, there was little or no difference between this term and the term for "world." Indeed, Hebrews 11:3 uses the word "world" with reference to the creation: "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear", though other versions use alternative terms such as "worlds," "time," "ages" and "universe." http://biblehub.com/hebrews/11-3.htm As for the phrase “immanent yet transcendental,” I take this to refer to the idea that God is everywhere, is always maintaining it from within, is involved in the unfolding of human history (as indeed the portrays him as being). He is transcendental in that he is “supernatural” and thus can do such things as create the world/universe and can operate outside natural laws (aka perform miracles), can stand outside of time and indeed was around before time began, etc. @Strange: I couldn’t agree more with your last comment. There is no need to assume that we need some extraneous, transcendental god or gods to pull the trigger on the gun that gets the cosmos spinning and starts the human race, so to speak.

I always think of learning as often being trying to put together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle when you don't have the picture on the box, so that you fit together a few pieces here and there that seem to make sense, but don't really get the big picture until you have gotten further up the "learning curve" (if I can mix metaphors a bit). I have been trying to get a basic grasp on Relativity, but have not had any real "aha" moments yet. Not being mathematically minded, this makes a little sense to me, and I think you for the explanation.

Phi..In your last post you seem to be making the point that many (minority/disadvantaged) people who become hateful (and perhaps resentful?) have become that way because they are oppressed and unfairly treated. I certainly agree that this says a lot more than claiming that they are just jealous. But, on a deeper level, it is almost as questionable to say that there is such a thing as "hate" per se as it is to say that there is such a thing as "evil." I think that these two terms in particular are political terms of derision, used by those in power to discredit those who resent or rebel against against the "Establishment" (aka "Combine" as mentioned in Keysey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest) e.g., politicians etc. who dismiss their opponents as being led by the devil, evil, malicious, hateful, etc. Ironically, politicians on both sides of an international conflict give each other these same disparaging labels. In reality, the human mind is not ruled by angels and demons, but rather it is a complex set of organized perceptions that sometimes, "rightly or wrongly" fail to function harmoniously within a the social dynamics with which they are faced. I say "complex" because a more specific evaluation would break this general, rather slang-like term, into more clinical phrases such as projection of qualities one does not want in oneself, resentment issuing from unfair treatment, cognitive dissonance, xenophobic reaction, displacement of aggression, fear of association, association with pain, displaced guilt, etc. Hate is a simple term that is relevant to ones point of view, and is often the term used by people who are too lazy to investigate further into the minds of those they are describing, or else a label they use to get others to quickly accept their assessment of someone else as being full of hatred. I say "relevant to ones point of view" because, for example, even an extreme 'hater' such as Hitler believed, from his point of view, that he was a benevolent person trying save Germany (a country that he thought was being mistreated or attacked by others within and without), and to make the world a better place, free of haters and degenerates. I have no reason to think that he saw himself as anything other than this, nor did millions of people at the time, nor do perhaps millions even today. Indeed, we see his kindness towards German children and his dogs: "Blondi (1934 - 29 April 1945) was Adolf Hitler's female German Shepherd dog, given to him as a gift in 1941 by Martin Bormann. Blondi stayed with Hitler even after his move to the underground bunker in January 1945. During the Battle of Berlin in April 1945, she had a litter of five puppies with Gerdy Troost's German Shepherd, Harras. Hitler named one of the puppies "Wolf", his favorite nickname and the meaning of his own first name, Adolf (Noble wolf). By all accounts, Hitler was very fond of Blondi, keeping her by his side and allowing her to sleep in his bedroom in the bunker, an affection not shared by Eva Braun, Hitler's girlfriend, who hated Blondi and was known to kick her under the dining table, according to Hitler's secretary Traudl Junge." http://answers.wikia.com/wiki/Did_Adolf_Hitler_have_any_pets Judging just from the passage quoted above, for example, a reader who knew nothing else about Hitler might conclude that he is a much nicer person than that evil, hateful girlfriend of his...no wonder he made her sleep on the couch!

Yes, Moontanan...I'm just an idle philosopher, but I have recently read that there is no space"outside the universe into which the universe is expanding. I also read recently that the universe could not have come out of a complete "nothingness" since there would be no quantum laws, fields, or whatever that are needed for the universe to "spontaneously" come out of in the first place. Physicists talk about time/space as being curved, and then qualify that statement by saying that the word "curved" is only a metaphor-like verb that helps us to visualize what's going on. An illustration that is then offered is that of balls of various sizes, representing object with mass, sink into the fabric of space/time (thereby curving it) much like a bowling ball and a basketball would sink (to different depths) into the surface of a trampoline. In short, it seems that because space(/time) indeed has all these properties and qualities, (e.g., ripples, responsive to different quantities of mass, etc.), it is not just empty 'nothingness'. Though some things in relativity make some sense to me (e.g., space/time dilation in twin paradox), I wonder whether there is just some sort of shift in the substance of space/time (a space shift much like a red shift) that is consistent with Einsteins mathematical descriptions. As an aside, gravity is sometimes said to such that a satellite is really moving in a straight line around the earth, but it only seems curved because the space around the earth is curved. Surely we know for a fact that the earth is sphere-like, so that the satellites parallel path around the earth must be likewise shaped (into a near circular path) as well. Or am I missing something?

@robbity: I understood your suggestion about a scientific God (e.g., of "variant indeterminacy") being like the monotheism of major religions in the first place. But the only significant similarity is in the spelling of the word “God.” The distinction can clearly be found from Webster’s definition of theism: “a belief in the existence of one[?] God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world.” (By the way, indeterminacy is a concept that pervades quantum theory, and it is sometimes seen by physicists as being a principle that is likely to explain how the universe came into existence without resorting to mention of a creator (aka God). I say, "variant" as the principle of indeterminacy is applied in various slightly different ways depending on the physics topic one is discussing.) A scientific, metaphorical God is neither a creator of the world and humans, nor transcends nature, nor is immanent in the affairs of people, so I am not sure why you think it reasonable to say that a scientific God would represent a form of monotheism. Admittedly, Einstein (as well as his mentor Spinoza in this regard) famously referred to God fairly often, as in "God does not play dice with the universe" and, “I want to know how God created the world.” But Einstein was quite adamant that he was using the word "God" in a metaphorical sense about the impersonal laws of the universe, and that he should in no way be misconstrued as suggesting that he believed in the God that is associated with major religions, as some Christians apparently had suggested at the time and do so to this day. Einstein's mentor in this regard was Spinoza, who said, "“I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings...the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously”. Hawking said he agreed with Einstein in this regard, referred to the "mind of God," himself in his writings. Hawking popularized the concept that the universe was its own creator, so to speak, said, when he was also not poeticizing, said that, ""Because there are laws such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going." I suggest that Einstein and Hawking's use of the word God is misleading, and I think that it was a little naive of them to assume that others would automatically realize that they were speaking metaphorically..... Indeed, Pope John II was at first under the impression that Hawking cosmology was compatible with Catholicism, perhaps because Hawking stated in a2008 event with the Pope that "The laws may have been decreed by God, but God does not intervene to break the laws." When Hawking later clarified his position, the Pope recanted, so to speak, and publicly declared that Hawking's views were not compatible with Catholicism. The moral of all this is, I would suggest, is that scientists, when speaking metaphorically, should not use the word God at all. The scientific, non-conscious, impersonal God of scientists like Hawking and Spinoza is categorically not monotheistic and is definitively different from, and indeed, at odds with the God of major, if not all, monotheistic religions.

Phi stated that "I think most of the little unrelated bits are created by the heavy wealth disparity we have in the world today." Tar stated that "it seems the only thing that makes sense is he hated being hated by himself." Similar comments, it seems to me, connect self-esteem with hatred, and, I would add myself, with anger. Public health studies show that violence and depression (as well as a whole range of health issues) arise for the "poor" in societies where there is a large discrepancy between rich and "poor." Health issues etc., seem to be an outcome of discrepancies in power and sense of worth, which indirectly get back to the issue of self-esteem. This seems to be particularly true for males, which makes sense given their traditional role of being the hunters and "bread winners" and the related notion that males gain attention from women, generally speaking, by displaying their financial success. It is often claimed that low self-esteem, for whatever reason, often leads to frustration and thus to either anger/aggression when the frustration is turned outwards, or to withdrawal/depression when the frustration is expressed turned inwardly. And yes, their are tomes devoted to theories of aggression, but I think it worthwhile to discuss the relationship between cultural attitudes and individual aggression/violence. It seems that the occasional individual is often pushed to the brink of desperation when unable to fit into the expected roles that his culture expects him to squeeze into, and therefore, like the proverbial Procrustes, feels a sense of extreme cognitive dissonance, which is what seems to be what happened in the Orlando case. I say "his" because it seems to be a documented fact that males are statistically more likely to commit violent "hate" crimes than females.

Robbity: Scientists themselves will tell you that the origins of science are found in ancient magic and superstition, so there is no clear cut line between them. Early religion/science just refers to primitive efforts to make sense of natural phenomena such as thunder and lightning, to appease higher powers that might control the growth of crops (often the sun or rain god), to give a tribe a sense of identity, to give people (especially royalty) a means to live after life, to use divine favor and punishment to control the behavior of tribal members, to deal with mysterious events and emotions, to psyche people up for warfare, etc. But yes, many philosophers, psychologists, etc. have argued that religion performs a necessary function in society, and that perhaps individuals even have an instinctual need to believe, e.g., Voltaire's famous statement that "If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." The origins of monotheism go back according to some scholars, to ancient Egypt, e.g., Akhenaton. Many reasons can be adduced for societies to choose monotheism over pantheism. Owing to the abundance/plethora or good and bad things in the world that needed to be explained and controlled, early belief systems tended to be polytheistic/pantheistic, though I see no particular reason to assume that monotheism is more advanced or more accurate than polytheism. If scientists ever become generally convinced that the origin of the universe can be expressed in a single equation or single effect (e.g., perturbation of the Higgs-Boson field by virtue of some variant of indeterminacy), I fail to see that such a theory could logically be labelled as a form of monotheism. Indeed, a key distinction between modern religion and modern science is the issue of whether or not a creative being(s) or power/force is conscious of its own existence, e.g., is like a person. Indeed, it is the tendency for religions to anthropomorphize/project human characteristics (such as consciousness of ones own existence, emotions, plans, etc.) onto divine beings that encourage many scientists to become skeptical about literal religious explanations about the origins of the universe.

@dimreepr: You say that “he was teaching them what it was trying to convey using the NT;” Are you suggesting that the NT was around when Jesus supposedly lived? Are you suggesting that there was a single Bible that an alleged Jesus might have read from? ” The Dead Sea Scrolls—a collection of biblical and other texts from around the first century—have shown that our Old Testament existed in several forms at the time of Jesus… Jesus used different versions of Scripture” http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/1999/april26/9t5098.html In any case, we cannot assume that an actual Jesus, especially a divine one, actually existed, much less whether he actually said what those who wrote about him said that he did, so the question is not really what Jesus meant, but rather what those who wrote about him meant for readers to believe about his life and his connection with the OT. Again, it is commonly accepted that the OT and the NT is considered by theologians to be an integrated whole, e.g., there are several passages in which God states that a descendent of Abraham will be a savior, though Jews see the connection in a slightly different way, and Muslims see scriptures as focusing on Muhammed as the key spiritual descendant. Entertain and contentment are synonyms, e.g., they both have connotations of giving comfort according to the thesaurus.com. I can only paraphrase (make a guess) about what you don’t bother to clarify yourself, so you need not nitpick about this. Spiritual leaders around the world throughout history routinely relate stories to listeners in an entertaining and comforting manner to the effect that they and their culture and/or “race” and/or country is favored by God and that they can, as individuals and/or as a group, be saved by absorbing the message of the stories. It's entertaining to think that you are the Chosen race and people are often so mesmerized that they believe everything they are told. In this sense, Hitler knew that he was entertaining the masses. But, in any case, I don't think that comforting and entertaining was the main thrust of such spiritual stories, but rather (as Weber points out) to get people to behave better, to defend or conquer other people and their land, to take pride in their own culture, to conform to societies rules, etc. @Robbity: Yes, I agree, Jews of the time were anxiously awaiting the appearance of the prophesied savior and there were apparently several people walking around claiming to be such a savior. For all we know, many of them had or were called the equivalent of the word “Jesus” by his followers: “Jesus’ Hebrew name is Yeshua, which is a shortened version of Yehoshua. Yeshua means ‘he will save’, and is translated into English as Joshua. Yeshua translated into Greek is Iesous. Iesous transliterated into Latin is Jesu. Jesu became Jesus in English. Jesus’ name is actually “Joshua”. http://godwords.org/what-does-jesus-mean/ So to claim that Jesus was walking around telling stories to make people content (whatever that is supposed to exactly mean) misses the point that he was trying find them a way out from persecution and a way to gain power: "the focus for many Jews has been looking forward to a political Messiah, one who would finally, irrevocably free them from conflict with other nations. In Jesus' time the Jews were under domination from the Romans. And many Jews were hoping that Jesus was the Messiah who would free them from the Roman government." http://www.everystudent.com/wires/judaism.html Indeed, Nietzsche's main objection to Judaism was that it was essentially a religion in which the weak were full of resentment against those who had more power than they did, and so welcomed the idea of a savior who claimed their persecutors would not be saved. So yes, I agree that discussions about the NT are irrelevant except to show that the character of Jesus was meant to fulfill prophecy of the coming of a savior as predicted in the Abrahamic narrative as found in several specific Biblical passages. (By the way, there are an estimated 300 passages in the OT relating to the coming the Jesus of the NT). So again, if we reject the Abrahamic prediction (God's promise to Abraham) that Abraham's descendant (i.e., as it turns out, Jesus) would come as a savior or if we determine that Abraham didn’t actually exist or that the stories about his conversations with God were fabricated, then such a rejection, of course, tends to detract from the legitimacy of claims that Jesus actually existed as depicted in the Bible. When you remark that “There are these 3 Abrahamic religions but do we share their prophets?” I think a sensible response is that they all three have scriptures that were cut (i.e., via numerous rewritings, revisions, excisions, interpolations, and collations) from the same cultural-narrative cloth over the centuries. That doesn't mean that prophets from areas a great distance from each other had similar visions, I would suggest, but rather that manuscripts and oral stories were passed freely passed around over the decades and centuries, and often revised to suit and favor whatever group was retelling them. However, that in no way means that such a character as Abraham actually existed (as described and portrayed by any scriptural account). Indeed, the name “Abraham” which God allegedly gave to him, means a person who provides strength and protection to many nations, much like, arguably, the name of Jesus and certainly the word “Christ” (meaning messiah or the anointed one), were chosen, arguably, by writers, perhaps even after his death, to reflect his role as a savior What this suggests to an anthropologist making a comparative study of religions is that later writers gave Abraham and perhaps even Jesus their names to suit their role. Different religions use the same stories about the prophets but modify them in a way that 'flatters' their own culture and/or nation. http://www.abarim-publications.com/Meaning/Abraham.html#.V2HfgzUQmUk

@Robbity: You write “What do you reckon, could the Jews and Muslims ever accept that there never was a person called Abraham? “ why not include Christians in that question. And speaking of Christians, I am sure many literalists have been exposed to the arguments of progressive Christians who claim that the stories are just metaphors and even that some characters such as Abraham never really existed. So no, be it Jews, Muslims, or many Christians, they have would, I suspect, be strongly resistant to the idea, and perhaps never accept such a claim. For one thing, questioning the existence of the Patriarchs leads to questioning the existence of Jesus or Muhammed (Christians typically do not claim that Muhammed did not exist or was not a prophet or was not descended from Abraham, by the way). In short, their beliefs depend upon a literal interpretation of scripture, not a metaphorical one, particularly when it comes to questions regarding land ownership, methods to achieve salvation and a delineation of absolute morals…in short, they have a vested interest in believing that Abraham was an actual person and thus are more likely than an disinterested person to reject information that does not support the claim that he was an actual person with miraculous abilities, etc. ….This is called “confirmation bias.” @Dimreepr: Speaking of this particular example, and not vague references to other times, there will usually be a certain amount of inaccuracy when one paraphrases someone elses thought. Indeed, synonyms for "content" range from “reconciliation” to “appeased” to “pleased as punch” and I found that “comforted” was a synonym for both “entertained” and “contented”...so the meaning of the terms "contented" and "entertained" overlap according to the thesaurus I viewed. And aren’t most stories, Biblical or otherwise, meant to entertain in the sense that any “teacher” tries to make their stories entertaining in order to maintain the reader’s attention as they convey some sort of message? I think you are grasping at straws here by claiming I deliberately? misconstrued what you meant. So again, I fail to see any basis for your reaction. I merely made an effort to understand your meaning, as seemed that you were not making an effort to explain what you meant by the word "content" and/or to give actual examples from the Bible. ......................................... You write that “The OT was a bible out of its time, much like the current version” So, are you stating that there were just two Bibles all together, an old what that Jesus had access to and then perhaps another one that we have today? Really? Where are you getting your information? And anything that Jesus said (e.g., what he came to do with respect to the law) is heresay, and hardly the basis for your scholarly? exegesis as if it were literally true that he said something. We have no idea what exact words an actual historical Jesus said, much less that an actual historical Jesus ever existed, much less what religious documents he actually read, even if he was a real person. You stated that, “the inclusion of the OT in the Christian bible seems political (maybe in order to confuse,” but again. What could you possibly mean from this: If your point is that the OT and NT don’t or weren’t meant to make a unified whole, I can provide online quotations from perhaps a hundred theologians that says that it was. You then state that “As time increases and full understanding gradually moves towards no understanding; at some point on the scale politics take over and from that point on the bible becomes a clarion call.” Well perhaps, but there is often a degree of propaganda/persuasion in any scriptural manuscript or document in whatever of its versions, (and arguably in virtually any story ever written), so I don’t think that there is any particular point in time where we say that one version is political and the next is not, if I understand you correctly. But at least you acknowledge that stories can be political as well as something that makes and/or is meant to make readers content. You state that, “my lack of eloquence impairs my ability to convey meaning, sorry about that.” Well I’m pretty sure most if not everyone feels that they can’t adequately express their thoughts from time to time. However, you need not assume, if that is what you are doing, that I am being unreasonable or whatever when I ask you to clarify some statement or give an example. I have merely suggested, for example, that you select a story from the Bible and then explain how it was meant to make people content.

Robbity: I was speaking from a purely linguistic viewpoint (aka speaking of definitions) when I said an atheist couldn't logically believe in angels who conveyed messages from God. Whether such things happened, on the other hand, is, pure speculation, I would suggest, and one that is faith-based at that, so I don't see that I would get involved in discussing such a possibility. Can you be more specific about the situation from Genesis of which you speak.. Genesis is not that long and you might do a little research and pin down the exact quote...otherwise it is hard for me to respond to such a claim. I would acknowledge that many people today are converted by things that happen that seem to defy any other explanation besides a spiritual or religious one, and no doubt, religion to a large extent can be traced back to human's efforts to explain natural phenomena such as lightning. I think a study of African religions is particularly interesting in this regard, with its strong emphasis upon magic, dark spirits, etc.

Ajb: So what do you think of the claim that, as I have mentioned in another thread, "because the total angular moment of the Universe must stay constant, you can then predict that if you measure one of these entangled particles and they have an up spin, then the other one in the pair must have a down spin - otherwise the laws of the Universe would be breached." http://www.sciencealert.com/watch-this-is-how-quantum-entanglement-really-works Hence the explanation that the process of "talking to each other," as you say, is virtually immediate even though, as you also say, no information is transferred. Similarly, here is a quote from Lily Asquith, a physics postdoctoral student at Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago. She works on data from the Atlas particle detector at Cern's Large Hadron Collider, so I wouldn't dismiss the comment as New Age nonsense: "Electrons interact via the electromagnetic field, aka the photon. All the electrons in the universe and all the photons in the universe are talking to each other all the time. They are all connected, no matter how far apart, by the electromagnetic field, which has infinite range**. They can be thought of as little clouds which have a dense foggy core and then misty edges, but that would be wrong because there are no edges. The mistiness goes on for ever, overlapping with every other misty cloud everywhere in the universe." http://www.theguardian.com/profile/lily-asquith