Atheist kids these days...

[Seli]

But what causes this entanglement at one of the slits? Is it not still observation that changes multiple potential pathways into one actual pathway (or creates the wavefunction node at one of the slits if you prefer)?

Local overlap between the wavefunctions of physical detector and passing particle.

[Ser Greguh]

"I don't know" is just as good as a "no" as far as faith is concerned.

The rest of your post is spot on, but this statement is fuzzy. While it's certainly true that there are a lot of people that are certainly philosophically atheist but that hesitate to embrace the label (for understandable social reasons, mostly), someone who answers the question "Do you believe in God?" with "I don't know" isn't answering in the negative, they're simply changing the subject (whether they know that's what they're doing or not). There are lots of agnostic theists out there that profess faith.

The colloquial understanding of "agnostic" as a kind of "atheism-lite" is certainly wrong, however. Lots of self-described agnostics are in actuality soft atheists that certainly lack positive belief but that either don't want to engage in any kind of debate or are just hesitant to accept a label that carries a significant stigma with it.

You sound alot like a gay person telling someone who's bi to pick a side.

While I agree that pushing someone to "pick a side" isn't the best approach, this is a false equivalency. Belief vs. disbelief is binary (though not necessarily static). You either believe or you don't. It's not logically dissimilar from asking someone if, say, they own a Camaro. "No, but I drove a Camaro once" is still "no." Sexual orientation is a more complex concept, involving levels of attraction to two different genders that vary considerably from person to person and where the labels used to describe various identities are inevitably categories that encompass a significant spectrum on that continuum. Kinsey's 0-6 scale is more descriptive, but still just a slightly more narrow set of categories.

[Wicked Woodpecker of West]

You either believe or you don't.

It's really not that easy.

[TerraPrime]

It's really not that easy.

Depends on the what it is that the person is being asked about.

Do I believe the Christian God is real? No. <--- easy

Do I believe that there are events of the universe that are beyond our current capacity to detect and annotate? Yes. <--- easy

Do I believe that there are deities? That depends on what you mean by "deity". <--- harder

[Wicked Woodpecker of West]

Indeed. But even if you belong to some religion willingly, it doesn't means that your faith will have 100% firmness.

[TerraPrime]

it doesn't means that your faith will have 100% firmness.

Aren't there pills for that now? Unless you are already taking nitrate class drugs for heart conditions...? :-p

[~ZombieWife~]

Jumping in late.

My family was Christian (Lutheran). Grandparents were super religious. Parents, not so much, but they did the church thing on special occasions. I do believe in a higher power, but I'm not cool enough to name it something specific, I guess. I'm okay with that.

Our child is 6 and she'll be able to make these decisions herself when she is old enough. I feel like her spirituality is hers. All hers. We're raising her to respect what other people believe, even if she doesn't agree/believe. There is nothing I loathe more than someone who has to be a complete asshole about others' religious preferences. I don't want my child to be an asshole. Period.

[Sordelor]

I'm raised atheïst, none of my parents or grandparents is Christian so I'm raised entirely atheïst.

[Happy Ent]

While I agree that pushing someone to "pick a side" isn't the best approach, this is a false equivalency. Belief vs. disbelief is binary (though not necessarily static). You either believe or you don't.

Hm… I disagree. The reason that perfectly rational, intelligent, and decent people continue to express faith is entirely social, because the opposite leads to social ostracism.

Take a similar claim, about the operational significance of inert cognitive difference between individuals (or worse, groups). Most people have very well developed facilities for what Orwell calls Crimestop:

Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

This is an essential psychological mechanism that overrides our rational facilities. And for a good reason.

Test it for yourself: Do you really believe that IQ 85 and IQ 115 people are cognitively equivalent, or children are born with the same cognitive features, or intelligence has zero neurobiological components? Do you really believe that in spite of the clearly observable differences in heritable traits in various groups, the most significant human trait (our intelligence) is somehow outside the constraints of evolution? (Maybe because it’s invisible to sexual selection? Or to natural selection? Or because intelligence is for free?)

Do you really believe that our species developed according to the rules of evolution for 5 million years, but then, 30,000 years ago, all our brains were made identical and have not reacted to evolutionary pressures since?

I write the above to explain how monstrous evolution is. It is simply incompatible with the most basic axioms of human decency. For the American Christian Right, evolution stops at macroevolution. For most of the enlightened West, evolution stops at the neck of homo sapiens. But almost everybody will instinctively reject the idea that we are not all created equal. And that idea is creationism and a rejection of the (unbearable) truth that science and rationality presents to us.

Thoughtcrime works. Most people do not grasp how anyone could be decent without lying about how homo sapiens was created. No decent person can believe in evolution.

The argument “but if God does not exist then what stops you from killing people” is the same as “but intelligence is heritable then racism and sexism must be morally right” are epistemologically the same. They reject and obvious truth on the basis of an unbearable moral consequence of said truth. We’re all doing this, Left and Right, American and European, religious and liberal. And it’s always, at its core, because we must believe that we’re all created equal.

[Eyron]

Hm… I disagree. The reason that perfectly rational, intelligent, and decent people continue to express faith is entirely social, because the opposite leads to social ostracism.

The pressure is the opposite here. How would you explain that rational, intelligent and decent people express faith when the social pressure is for atheism? Are they not rational, intelligent and decent, but only appear to be?

For anyone who is interested in how a society that is greatly atheist can still yield believers, I can say that faith is a most private matter here. It's taboo to ask about faith or try to convert someone, and generally it takes a long time before the matter is up for discussion between friends. We contemplate in our solitude, and read about what may have caught our interest. Many are like me, believing there could be something supernatural or godly, but not having a name for it, and not feeling sure, and having no reason to 'stick to' any faith or system of belief, we are free to wonder. Perhaps that's why.

The scandinavian countries seems to often be seen as the great atheist nations, but people here are highly superstitious, and with a rich tradition of story telling of supernatural powers and creatures. Long after Christianity was widely accepted, people still had their pagan beliefs intact besides, and the traditions lasted. Many people here still like to think there are supernatural elements in our world, believing in ghosts or spirits, a higher consciousness, fate, minerals, telepathy, out of body experiences, healing etc. Generally this has no to little impact on how people go about their daily lives, and it appears more like personal curiosity than organized religion.

[Wicked Woodpecker of West]

But almost everybody will instinctively reject the idea that we are not all created equal

Roman Catholic Church was against equality in times when no one ever dreamed about Darwinism. It's not an instinct, it's an idea that spread through all Western countries and many of the others.

How would you explain that rational, intelligent and decent people express faith when the social pressure is for atheism? Are they not rational, intelligent and decent, but only appear to be?

Maybe this social pressure is to clumsy? Anyway from Christian perspective trying to convert the others is definitely natural thing. Quite, of ultimate order from Jesus Christ. So, how do they express their faith if social interactions based on it, are considered as breaking of taboo?

[Olvyr]

They reject and obvious truth on the basis of an unbearable moral consequence of said truth.

And that is the core of the problem I have with all kinds of religious people. I'm an atheist, though my wife's a muslim, and if there's one subject we better never touch, it's religion. Even my mother (a christian) and her have teamed up against me some times...

Well, our son is not educated one way or the other until now. He's 3. When he's older and my wife feels incligned to teach him about her faith, I'll do the same about critical thought, rationalism and evolution. He's a smart kid, so my chances are not all that bad...

[Happy Ent]

The scandinavian countries seems to often be seen as the great atheist nations,

My point is that Scandinavians in particular will become very uncomfortable talking about, say, heritability of intelligence. There is strong societal pressure to treat this topic as a moral question rather than a question about reality. It’s a proper taboo, eliciting the exact same psychological mechanisms as questions about the existence of God is in other societies.

Scandinavians are no more scientific or rational than Americans. Their societies just use different claims about reality as signals for social cohesion.

[sologdin]

We&rsquo;re all doing this, Left and Right, American and European, religious and liberal. And it&rsquo;s always, at its core, because we must believe that we&rsquo;re all created equal.

huh? we can have political egalitarianism without creationism and without denying heritability of brainstuffs.

[Happy Ent]

huh? we can have political egalitarianism without creationism and without denying heritability of brainstuffs.

You, of course, are among the few who realise this.

As am I.

Everybody else is blind to the psychological mechanisms that are the agents of their delusion.

[IheartTesla]

Local overlap between the wavefunctions of physical detector and passing particle.

Yes, I think there doesnt need to be a consciousness based reason for collapse of the wavefunction. Its more like that Zen parable "If a wavefunction of an electron collapses after interacting with a detector and no one was around to observe it, did it really happen?"

[thistlepong]

Request clarification:

The argument “but if God does not exist then what stops you from killing people” is the same as “but intelligence is heritable then racism and sexism must be morally right” are epistemologically the same. They reject and obvious truth on the basis of an unbearable moral consequence of said truth. We’re all doing this, Left and Right, American and European, religious and liberal. And it’s always, at its core, because we must believe that we’re all created equal.

The construction of the first sentence is... odd. I think it's causing me some dissonance with regard to the second. Either that or I just don't get it.

Anyway, would you clarify whether these unbearable moral consequences are, like, real and necessary? Are you saying heritable intelligence makes racism morally right? Or is that just some fantasy that spins out when you're afraid of what heritable intelligence might mean?

[Eyron]

We&rsquo;re all doing this, Left and Right, American and European, religious and liberal. And it&rsquo;s always, at its core, because we must believe that we&rsquo;re all created equal.

huh? we can have political egalitarianism without creationism and without denying heritability of brainstuffs.

I agree.

The psychologists that said it's all environment are not mainstream anymore, as far as I know. Equal treatment and opportunity is another matter.

HE, I have heard one person say he thought we are all created equally intelligent, but that is not commonly believed in my experience and he who said it was not known as the sharpest tool in the shed. I didn't even know there was any sort of debate on this at this point. But you are very right it's taboo to speak about intelligence as a trait when it comes to groups of people, and I have never seen any indications that there is a difference (of course I don't search for studies on it either). Morally, I don't see why we should debate it since it has no impact on anything relevant to how we structure society or to how we treat individuals, so, a point to your argument.

We do speak about individuals' intelligence, and how he/she probably got his/her brains from the mother/father/grandmother etc. It's not a very common subject perhaps but there is no taboo.

Coming from a typical leftwing background the issues of human rights and equal treatment are very important, and the basis for this point of view has nothing to do with people being equally intelligent. Maybe it had at some point, but things have shifted since in that case.

But, you were saying that it's social pressure that makes intelligent, rational and decent people still express faith. Which could be true, in many cases. I was just pointing out that there are people who do the opposite. They become religious or believe in the supernatural, in spite of the social pressure to be atheist. I think those could be intelligent, rational and decent as well, even though they 'give up' atheism. That's what I was wondering about.

[Weeping Sore]

Any serious proves for that assumption?

Carl Jung spent a lot of time documenting religious/shamanistic ceremonies in pre-modern tribes of Africa and the Americas- I am paraphrasing him here. Perhaps he's a bit to woolly to constitute a "serious prove". (When did "prove' become a noun, btw?)

Local overlap between the wavefunctions of physical detector and passing particle.

So a physical detector, not a ham sandwich or a rock. The detector also has to be turned on and functional, essentially placed with the intention of observing/recording the result.Consciousness playing a role was first suggested by John von Neumann, and later Eugene Wigner who, to be fair, later abandoned the theory. Physicists would rather avoid anything that would imply dualism even to the point of positing the "many worlds" theory that says all quantum realities are equally (un)real and that universes are in effect multiplying at a nearly infinite mind-boggling rate.

Dualism is a problem, because if consciousness and matter are separate, how can they possibly interact? Goswami eliminates dualism by making the radical claim that consciousness is the only reality, and further resolves the problem of multiple consciousnesses coming into conflict by claiming that all conscious beings are partaking in a single consciousness. It's not surprising that the scientific community has found this claim a little hard to swallow.

I happened to be reading a lot of Carl Jung at the time I encountered Goswami, and it connected very well with Jung's theory of collective unconscious. (Side note, I have a psychiatrist friend (strict materialist, not a Jungian) working at a mental facility who was struck by certain commonalities in the ravings of schizophrenics- "legions of demons" was a recurring phrase among patients that had had no contact with each other- we had discussed that it might lend credence to a collective unconscious).

It's fine if people decide a priori that consciousness can play no role, or that it's simply an epiphenomenon of the physical body. And it's okay to run screaming from anything that smacks of New Age philosophy, which admittedly this does. The strict materialist interpretations of quantum phenomena, not the math, but the articulations of what actually is happening, are so tortured and obfuscatory that plenty of people would embrace a radical paradigm shift that would explain what is happening in a non-paradoxical way (as Einstein explained relativity with clear visualizations) but throwing out matter completely is probably a bridge too far for most.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Seli,

This seems to be a perfect GIGO candidate. Consciousness is not needed to collapse a wave function, so everything based on that premise is faulty to start with.

How can something without consciousness observe anything? If there is no observation how can the wave function collapse?