> From: george murphy <gmurphy@raex.com>
> To: Tim Ikeda <tikeda@sprintmail.com>
> Subject: Re: What does the creation lack?
> Date: Mon, Oct 29, 2001, 7:41 AM
>
> Tim Ikeda wrote:
>
> About the "collapsing of wave functions"
> and "quantum tweaking" notions
> of extra-natural guidance in biological
> evolution...
>
> How is this any different from moving a
> rock from point-A to point-B
> or dropping that rock on a couple slugs
> as part of an effort at cosmic
> animal husbandry? If one can tweak wave
> functions such that one nucleotide
> base can be substituted, why couldn't
> one tweak a few more and have
> all the air surrounding a slug jump one
> centimeter away until it expires?
> That's got to beat Maxwell's demon
> anytime. Star Trek-style transporters
> would be a snap.
>
> Counselor Troi: "Captain! A giant space
> slug is about to engulf the ensign!"
> Captain Picard: "LaForge, get a
> transporter lock on that and set
> coordinates
> to beam it into a wall!"
> LaForge: "Oh no! The quantum molecular
> overthruster unbalanced the
> pattern buffers and tunnelled a
> new set of chromosomes into the
> slug in an energy-less information
> transfer event. It's evolving
> into a telemarketer!
> Expendable crew member: "Iyeeee!"
>
> The mechanism is irrelevant, possibly
> even in the case of natural,
> extra-terrestrial designers because we'd
> probably never know the details.
> The question isn't about which back door
> a "designer" would use to futz
> with a system, but whether a particular
> system can make the transformation
> from state-X to state-Y without help
> from outside the immediate system.
> If the system can't make the transition
> to where you want it to go without
> your tweaking, then I wouldn't say that
> it had "all requisite formational
> capabilities" or that such action
> wouldn't be "violating or overpowering
> the natural capabilities of any
> creaturely system." If you change
> probabilities to determine which slugs
> will live and serve your ultimate
> goals by evolving into the perfect,
> live-animal prop for a particular
> Star Trek episode (perhaps evolving
> photogenic beauty was at one time
> outside the formational capabilities of
> "pre-intervention" slugs),
> you're messing with natural capabilities
> big time.
>
> So what we're talking about here sounds
> like a classic variant of
> progressive creationism. Let's just call
> it that.
>
> Tim -
> The idea that God influences the direction
> of evolution at the quantum level does differ from
> the idea of intervention at the classical level.
> Somehow wave functions do get collapsed in
> measurement processes & conventional QM doesn't
> describe how that happens other than to say that
> the measurement process accomplishes it. (Of
> course there have been a lot of speculations about
> this.)
> E.g., consider the bases along one strand
> of a particular DNA molecule as detectors for an
> energetic electron directed toward the molecule.
> The wave function of the electron is spread out
> as it approaches the DNA, but when it is
> "detected" by one base, the wave function has
> collapsed. In the process, the base has been
> changed or removed in some way that results in a
> mutation.
> The model could use a lot of refinement &
> the whole idea of wave function collapse can be
> debated but that's at least one standard QM way of
> describing things. & the critical question is,
> what determines that the electron is detected at
> that particular site rather than another?
> Standard QM has no answer to that but only gives
> a statistical prediction of the likelihood of
> various outcomes. The claim that God operates at
> the quantum level is that God wanted that mutation
> to take place & collapsed the wave function in the
> appropriate way. This goes beyond standard QM but
> doesn't require any violation of it.
> If I were formulating this claim I would
> insist that God is also active in a continuous way
> in the world, so that such collapsing of the wave
> function would not be the only thing God did.
> I.e., God also concurs with the time evolution of
> the wave function described by the Schroedinger
> equation between measurements.
I agree. I would add that God may also use genuine chance when he
doesn't care about a particular outcome. Peter
> Concerning your statement that this is
> simply a variant of PC: I've pointed out before
> that PC and TE (to use a crude term) become
> indistinguishable (as far as observation is
> concerned) if the interventions required by PC are
> small enough & frequent enough. The appeal to QM
> amounts to saying that the interventions need not
> be vanishingly small to make the two
> indistinguishable, but that they just have to be
> reduced below the limit set by the uncertainty
> principle.
> I have my own concerns about the idea
> that God intervenes at the quantum level, but I
> don't think your criticism here holds up.
>
> Shalom,
>
> George
>
> George L. Murphy
> http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
> "The Science-Theology Interface"
>
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