Michele Bachmann officially leaves her church

[Lagboltz]

Rules For Radicals:

RULE 5: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

Rules For Conservatives:
RULE 5B: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

What I'm saying is that two wrongs make two wrongs, not a right.

 

[Lagboltz]

"Spontaneous" in a quantum sense does not mean "without cause"; at least certainly not as a matter of necessity.

At any rate, isotopes decay precisely something imbued them with matter in the first place; to say that radioactive decay is evidence of a causeless actualization of potency is like saying the same thing about a wound-up spring unspringing.

You are not addressing what TA posited.
TA said "Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion"
Spontaneity is not the critical concept to apply here. An non-moving isotope has no actual motion in the first place although there is plenty of potential energy. The decay leads to actual motion of decay particles from a non-moving isotope. TA is thinking in terms of classical physics where stuff simply bangs into other stuff.

My understanding of Schrodingers cat is that it was the exposition of a logical fallacy stemming from a particular interpretation of QM -- the fallacy stemming from the fact that matter being in two different states simultaneously is obviously a logical absurdity, and that any presumption or appearance of this is artifactual of the observer being situated in a different inertial frame than the being observed. The cat is objectively either alive or dead; not both.

There is no fallacy. Matter can coexist in multiple states simultaneously. Schrodingers cat is a exposition of just how counterintuitive QM is to the human mind.

Again, "spontaneous" in QM does not mean "uncaused" but something more like "indeterminate."

That's rather like a man on a plane saying that the plane will land spontaneously because he's unsure when it will land.

In this case "spontaneous" is the critical word. In a pure vacuum an electron and it's antiparticle, the "positron" will be spontaneously created out of literally nothing. They will then collide and disappear. This is called spontaneous creation of virtual particles. How can something with energy be created out of nothing? There is an uncertainty principle of energy vs. time. The higher the energy of the electron/positron pair, the shorter the time they can exist. Don't let the word "virtual particle" throw you. This effect is critical in explaining many observations.

In simplistic terms, energy is borrowed from the future to create the particle pair, then the particles annihilate each other, and return that energy back to the past. Simplistically time can go forward or backward at quantum levels.

This phenomenon is contrary to TA's statement "If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results." Cause and effect does not always work at quantum levels.

The point is not that this could happen but that consequentialism furnishes no sound moral basis to condemn the murderer.

State laws furnishes a basis, and that is good enough for me for your particular example. I'm not totally a consequentialist. I borrow my moral basis from many sources.

 

[Openmind]

Rules For Conservatives:
RULE 5B: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

What I'm saying is that two wrongs make two wrongs, not a right.

I respect your fairness and common sense. You are right.

 

[Lagboltz]

I respect your fairness and common sense. You are right.

Thank you, but I think too much fairness would take the fun out of the anonymous head bashing that everyone does here.

 

[PLC1]

We already have sex ed and easy access to BC products, so when is this "curb" in population going to take place?

And after sex ed and BC fail to curb population growth, what will you do then?

I dunno... spay and neuter clinics?

Seriously, the population will grow a lot more slowly with sex ed and easy access to BC than it will without.

Access to education by females is a good way to go, too. Maybe we could convince some of the more backward nations to go along with that somewhat radical idea.

 

[ProudLefty]

I dunno... spay and neuter clinics?

Seriously, the population will grow a lot more slowly with sex ed and easy access to BC than it will without.

Access to education by females is a good way to go, too. Maybe we could convince some of the more backward nations to go along with that somewhat radical idea.

As a family's standard of living rises the desire/need to have lots of children becomes lesser and lesser. A woman who is financially stable is going to make sure she does not spend 15 years of her life having babies. There is no need to impose harsh and unrealistic rules about birthrates.

Need an example? Ask the women around you if they are prepared to give birth to 9 children. Watch their expressions. The frosty look will be all the BC they need.

 

[Lagboltz]

As a family's standard of living rises the desire/need to have lots of children becomes lesser and lesser. A woman who is financially stable is going to make sure she does not spend 15 years of her life having babies. There is no need to impose harsh and unrealistic rules about birthrates.

Need an example? Ask the women around you if they are prepared to give birth to 9 children. Watch their expressions. The frosty look will be all the BC they need.

I am glad you have optimism about how things will smoothly and naturally work out, but I think the population problem is a real dilemma.

I have a more pessimistic view. The dynamics of economics today requires a growing population of people in the consumer pool. The aging of population will require new young workers to support them. On the other hand a population continually increasing will stress the resources of arable land, energy, and compromised environment to a point where some day things will break. Population control will require a new economic paradigm.

I think population control can only happen naturally only through war, plagues, starvation, etc. or unnaturally by very invasive legislation on deep human instincts, or some combination of both. Neither of these options are palatable. . It is a real dilemma.

 

[GenSeneca]

Rules For Conservatives:
RULE 5B: "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon." There is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.

What I'm saying is that two wrongs make two wrongs, not a right.

Where in this thread have I ridiculed Openmind?

Only one wrong has been committed, by Openmind.

 

[GenSeneca]

Seriously, the population will grow a lot more slowly with sex ed and easy access to BC than it will without.

Once again, we already have sex ed and BC. Are the current population rates in the US acceptable to you, or do you think we need further reductions?

 

[ThisTooShallPass]

You are not addressing what TA posited.
TA said "Only an actual motion can convert a potential motion into an actual motion"
Spontaneity is not the critical concept to apply here. An non-moving isotope has no actual motion in the first place although there is plenty of potential energy. The decay leads to actual motion of decay particles from a non-moving isotope. TA is thinking in terms of classical physics where stuff simply bangs into other stuff.

Aquinas did not use motion in the sense that modern physicists do (i.e., a change in position) but in an Aristotelian sense, analagous to how we might use the word "event."

In essence what you're saying is that isotopic decay is evidence that motion occurs causelessly, provided entropy is at work. But entropy is itself a cause. The thing that causes isotopic decay is the thing that caused the isotope to form in the first place, just as surely as the thing that causes a compressed spring to "burst" is the removal of the force that caused it to compress in the first place.

There is no fallacy. Matter can coexist in multiple states simultaneously. Schrodingers cat is a exposition of just how counterintuitive QM is to the human mind.

Again, the appearance of matter existing in multiple states simultaneously, as well as the appearance of spontaneous virtual particles, are evidence of the extreme bias of our infertial frame. This is understood to be a problem in quantum mechanics, not an answer to anything.

If you could observe the particle in its own inertial frame, it would exist in one state only.

In simplistic terms, energy is borrowed from the future to create the particle pair, then the particles annihilate each other, and return that energy back to the past. Simplistically time can go forward or backward at quantum levels.

This phenomenon is contrary to TA's statement "If a previous efficient cause does not exist, neither does the thing that results." Cause and effect does not always work at quantum levels.

I don't see it as contrary at all. The "firstness" of Aquinas' "first cause" refers to primacy of logical, not temporal, priority.

And again, our observation of the bizarre behavior of particles at the quantum level is itself an artifact of our situation in a biased inertial frame.

This, incidentally, is why the gross caricature of the First Cause argument advanced by most modern atheists ("everything that exists has a cause, the universe exists, therefore the universe must have had a cause") falls short. Aquinas himself famously refused to assert that the universe had a beginning because he felt (a) it was unnecessary to assert it, and (b) it was probably not demonstrable, anyway.

State laws furnishes a basis, and that is good enough for me for your particular example.

Civil law cannot provide a moral basis for judging the offender. And at any rate, again, I am not concerned with whether the physician would get away with his crime or if he'd be caught and punished, but whether or not he is morally in the wrong. According to consequentialism, he acted in the right: he is not only not a villain but must be lauded as a hero.

I'm not totally a consequentialist. I borrow my moral basis from many sources.

I gathered as much, but that's irrelevant (as is the discussion on QM; I asked for an objection to natural law, not the Five Ways). The problem here is that your basis for objecting to natural law is that you a priori object to natural law -- because it does not provide a means for reaching the conclusions you've reached a priori.

 

[Lagboltz]

Aquinas did not use motion in the sense that modern physicists do (i.e., a change in position) but in an Aristotelian sense, analagous to how we might use the word "event."

Out of curiosity I looked up what Aristotle considered as motion. According to Wikipedia he has a number of concepts where motion is involved: Natural motion, Terrestrial motion, Rectilinear motion, Celestial motion, and Speed, weight and resistance. None of his concepts come near to what we call an "event." Is there another source that defines motion as an event?

In essence what you're saying is that isotopic decay is evidence that motion occurs causelessly, provided entropy is at work. But entropy is itself a cause. The thing that causes isotopic decay is the thing that caused the isotope to form in the first place, just as surely as the thing that causes a compressed spring to "burst" is the removal of the force that caused it to compress in the first place.

Entropy is not a cause of anything. It is a measure of a state of a system. Your spring example is not caused by spontaneous quantum tunneling as in isotopic decay. A spring release requires an action.

Again, the appearance of matter existing in multiple states simultaneously, as well as the appearance of spontaneous virtual particles, are evidence of the extreme bias of our infertial frame. This is understood to be a problem in quantum mechanics, not an answer to anything.

Again, existence of a superposition of multiple states simultaneously in matter is experimentally verified and is the basis for the emerging field of "quantum computing." Look it up. A simple example in wiki: "a bit must be either 0 or 1, a qubit can be 0, 1, or a superposition of both"

It really is not a problem in QM. Yes, it is unintuitive like most of QM. Maybe that is why you think it is a problem. It's not. Why do you think it is?

If you could observe the particle in its own inertial frame, it would exist in one state only.

This statement makes no sense. It is not a problem in any inertial frame. That follows easily from the special theory of relativity. Look up "inertial frame of reference."

I don't see it as contrary at all. The "firstness" of Aquinas' "first cause" refers to primacy of logical, not temporal, priority.
And again, our observation of the bizarre behavior of particles at the quantum level is itself an artifact of our situation in a biased inertial frame.

Again that is not true at all. Where did you get this "information".

This, incidentally, is why the gross caricature of the First Cause argument advanced by most modern atheists ("everything that exists has a cause, the universe exists, therefore the universe must have had a cause") falls short. Aquinas himself famously refused to assert that the universe had a beginning because he felt (a) it was unnecessary to assert it, and (b) it was probably not demonstrable, anyway.

I agree with Aquinas in that.

Civil law cannot provide a moral basis for judging the offender. And at any rate, again, I am not concerned with whether the physician would get away with his crime or if he'd be caught and punished, but whether or not he is morally in the wrong. According to consequentialism, he acted in the right: he is not only not a villain but must be lauded as a hero.

As I said, in that regard I am not a consequentialist.

I gathered as much, but that's irrelevant (as is the discussion on QM; I asked for an objection to natural law, not the Five Ways). The problem here is that your basis for objecting to natural law is that you a priori object to natural law -- because it does not provide a means for reaching the conclusions you've reached a priori.

I already gave you an analysis of natural law, but you equivocated and didn't provide a clear picture of how we disagreed on a point that I thought we did agree.

I simply don't abide by a formal and theoretical moral basis. It seems that every moral theory has holes in it, in the same way that all economic theory, psychiatry, and the hard sciences have holes. Research in these fields progress with minds open to new ideas.

The theology that you are espousing is based on very very old concepts of the physical laws of nature that have been discredited long ago. Basing theology on Aristotle and Aquinas is as intellectually bankrupt as trying to design a mission to Jupiter using Aristotle's geocentric "crystal spheres".

As far as current physics, you put together sentences with physical terms that are either wrong or don't make sense. I am trying to be serious in this discussion, but I am beginning to think you are just pulling my leg.