Re: Predeterminism and parallel universes

From: Howard J. Van Till (hvantill@chartermi.net)
Date: Fri Jul 04 2003 - 11:25:16 EDT

  • Next message: Glenn Morton: "RE: Probabilities and Protons"

    And a happy 4th to you, Glenn99.

    > I certainly am not a quantum expert, and would have agreed with you years
    > ago. However, now there is the feature of the world, which you haven't
    > addressed and that is entanglement. Entangle pairs of particles sent in
    > different directions and being disjoint causally still know what the other
    > is doing. Below are a couple of press reports on the phenonmenon which has
    > been seen in the lab.

    Thanks for the reports. I'll read them, but I will not guarantee you that I
    will know how to apply them to the situation we're wondering about.

    > As you read these, remember that Glenn1 (somewhere in
    > a galaxy far, far away) and Glenn99 speaking to you here had a common
    > causal origin at the Big Bang. The question is, am I an entangled pair or a
    > 99-tuplet?

    You're one of a kind, Glenn. No doubt about it. Rest assured that you need
    not spend any emotional energy worrying about entanglement with other
    versions of You. Your job is to enjoy life -- not the trivial meaning of
    taking superficial pleasure, but the more profound meaning, "en-joy life" --
    live life in such a way as to fill it with authentic joy, the kind you
    experience, for example, when you sense the presence of the Holy or work
    toward the good of another.

    I had asked you earlier,

    >>Meanwhile back at the ranch of earlier issues, do you really want a God who
    >>predetermines all things? Is the coercive power to predetermine
    >>all things a quality to admire in a Deity?

    You replied,

    > I see no other way for the Deity to be able to predict the future. How
    > could the predictions of Christ's advent have occurred without
    > foreknowledge? Without control, I see no way to have foreknowledge.

    I know that omniscience and omnipotence are attributed to God in traditional
    Christian theology. However, given all of the problems that these concepts
    cause, requiring all manner of additional clever theological constructions
    to protect them, I'm of a mind to reexamine them and to look at other
    portraits of the Sacred, the Holy, traditionally personified as God.

    I'm not asking you to go there, just being candid about where I am.

    Howard

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