I'm not smart enough to be...

[_Aristotle Smith]

Agreed.
But if a subject has no evidential backing, it doesn't somehow 'help' that it's 'incomprehensible'. As far as believing it's true I mean. Would you agree...?

No, being incomprehensible is not does not aid in believability. My point has been that they are orthogonal.

I won't try and explain it any further, because if you haven't gotten into the guts of quantum mechanics you really can't grasp what I am getting at.

Sorry if the above came across as condescending. I just realized that it doesn't read as coming across as very charitable.

* Incomprehensible 'now'
...or...
* Will always be 'incomprehensible'.

I think the question is actually relavent to this conversation...

Anything is possible, but given that QM is over a century old at this point I think the incomprehensibility is essential, not accidental.

Compare this to general relativity, discovered around the same time. At the time of its discovery, General Relativity is was also deemed incomprehensible. But, the incomprehensibility here was mainly accidental, most physicists at the time were clueless about the mathematics Einstein was using. As education in physics has incorporated that mathematics (Tensor Calculus/Differential Geometry), General Relativity has become more and more comprehensible to more and more physicists.

However, the trouble in QM has never been the math. Physicists have never had any trouble with the math of classical QM. It's always been the underlying concepts that are incomprehensible. Since there really aren't any mathematical or experimental barriers to understanding QM, I take the incomprehensiblity to be essential.

[_Ren]

Sorry if the above came across as condescending. I just realized that it doesn't read as coming across as very charitable.

No problem - I didn't take it as uncharitable. And I agree that you need at least a minimum understanding here to tackle the issue. Whether I meet that requirement is another matter... ;)

Anything is possible, but given that QM is over a century old at this point I think the incomprehensibility is essential, not accidental.

It may be 'essentially' incomprehensible, but I don't think that can be determined just by the fact that we haven't comprehended it within a century of discovering it...

I think the example of General Relativity is a good example for your side of the argument - granted.

..but how about this example...

Ptolemy constructed a 'framework' for predicting the movements of the planets (at least accurate enough for the human eye) that went 'uncomprehended' (in the sense that no-one could explain the 'driving force' behind all the strange loops of the planets - all we could do was predict them...) for pretty much a millennium!
It wasn't until Copernicus / Galileo that our entire viewpoint shifted in a way that then made sense of all the data and predictive power.

Or - in other words - we could make the observations and predictions a thousand years before we could 'comprehend the reasons'.
Do you think this example might have decent relevance to QM...?

[_Phillip]

(my wife is obsessed with the series, it drives me insane)

by the way, I meant to commiserate with you on this. My wife suffers the same affliction. I just love her and try to support her through this trying time in our lives together.

I think that good old LDS phrase 'the spirit of contention' about sums up the show for me. The mere fact that Housewives is on the air would be enough to make me question the existence of God. The problem of evil in spades.

[_Phillip]

But if you think about what God must be if there is a God, it seems to me that there also must be some mysteries involved, some limit to our comprehension of God.

The key phrase in there is "if there is a God..."

OK, so let's go with this line of reasoning. Why is it perfectly ok to maintain room for mysteries about god but it's incomprehensible (or at least, uncomfortable) that we feel the same way about the universe itself? There are things about the universe we just don't understand (how on earth did life get started? What makes mass pull other objects toward it? etc.) Why fill those mysteries with god, the mother of all mysteries? Why attempt to explain mysteries with additional mysteries? It seems to me we could save a step and take out the middle man (or middle mystery, as it were).

Any way you slice it, people believe in god essentially because they want to more than any other reason. God is not needed to explain anything.

"I have no need of that hypothesis" as Laplace was supposed to have said about not including God in his models.

I would agree that some kind of God is not needed in our models of the day to day workings of the physical universe. God as an immediate explanation for how the moon orbits the earth or why there are thousands of species of spiders is unnecessary and scientists of a Christian persuasion (like Kepler or Newton or Maxwell) don't normally invoke God in that way: God did it, so there! Rather, it is assumed that there is an order to the cosmos that we are capable of discovering precisely because it is the creation of a rational God and we, as rational creatures, are made in that God's image. God isn't the explanation for any particular physical process; rather God is the explanation for why we can explain things at all. Or why there is even something that needs explaining. The Oxford mathematician John Lennox has a recent little book called 'God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?' that gets into some of these problems. It was written in response to Hawking's book that claimed that the universe created itself and hence there is no need for a Creator. Even if one disagrees with Lennox's analysis, I think he still makes some points that are worth considering.

[_Some Schmo]

God isn't the explanation for any particular physical process; rather God is the explanation for why we can explain things at all. Or why there is even something that needs explaining.

But doesn't the universe/nature do that as well?

The Oxford mathematician John Lennox has a recent little book called 'God and Stephen Hawking: Whose design is it anyway?' that gets into some of these problems. It was written in response to Hawking's book that claimed that the universe created itself and hence there is no need for a Creator. Even if one disagrees with Lennox's analysis, I think he still makes some points that are worth considering.

I appreciate the recommendation.

[_Phillip]

God isn't the explanation for any particular physical process; rather God is the explanation for why we can explain things at all. Or why there is even something that needs explaining.

But doesn't the universe/nature do that as well?

That's the million dollar question and where the real debate is.

[_Aristotle Smith]

Ptolemy constructed a 'framework' for predicting the movements of the planets (at least accurate enough for the human eye) that went 'uncomprehended' (in the sense that no-one could explain the 'driving force' behind all the strange loops of the planets - all we could do was predict them...) for pretty much a millennium!
It wasn't until Copernicus / Galileo that our entire viewpoint shifted in a way that then made sense of all the data and predictive power.

Or - in other words - we could make the observations and predictions a thousand years before we could 'comprehend the reasons'.
Do you think this example might have decent relevance to QM...?

Like I said, anything is possible.

However, I don't think the comparison works with Ptolemy. Notice you had to put the word "framework" in scare quotes above. I think this is where the comparison fails. It was a framework. All pre-Newtonian astronomy had this problem, it was a data mining operation, not a theory which allowed predictive data based on first principles (there were predictions derived from the math, but they were mostly cases of "Well, it's happened this way in the past"). There was no theoretical framework which allowed for novel predictions.

Because of this there were two kinds of questions that Ptolemaic astronomy couldn't answer: 1) Will more data give us more information? and 2) Will better data give us more information? Without a theory you can't answer those types of questions. Historical hindsight shows that the answers to both of those questions were, "Yes."

The difference with QM, at least classical QM, is that the answers appear to be, "No." And because the theory can make certain types of predictions, you know where to look for more data and what quality in new data you require. QM could be explained or disrupted by new data, such as data at smaller scales or at larger energies. The problem there is that, at least for now, physicists and humanity in general has hit a plateau when it comes to our abilities to detect things at ever smaller scales or to produce ever larger energies. Physicists know the scales and energies we have to hit to get novel data, and the technology to do that isn't anywhere on the horizon. So while one can always retort that it will be possible in hundreds of years to do something, that's both cold comfort for now and a bit like a believer's faith.

[_Some Schmo]

But doesn't the universe/nature do that as well?

That's the million dollar question and where the real debate is.

So I suppose from here, I'd point out that we can all agree about the fact that this universe of ours exists, and since it explains just as much as the god explanation does (if not more, and better), it wins by default. The only way the debate can go any further is if we devalue empirical evidence by putting it on par with personal, subjective evidence (something which is obviously highly susceptible to cognitive error).

[_Phillip]

So I suppose from here, I'd point out that we can all agree about the fact that this universe of ours exists, and since it explains just as much as the god explanation does (if not more, and better), it wins by default. The only way the debate can go any further is if we devalue empirical evidence by putting it on par with personal, subjective evidence (something which is obviously highly susceptible to cognitive error).

Since the brute fact that the universe exists explains nothing in terms of why it exists or how it came into being, you are assuming that God explains nothing about why the universe exists or why it has the particular form that it does. But that is exactly where a theist would disagree with you, that the existence of God does offer a unifying explanation of the cosmos and our place in it as rational, sentient beings, and that God is less contingent than our apparently contingent and particular universe.

Personal spiritual experiences don't neccesarily have anything to do with the inference that the existence of a Creator God is plausible.

[_Ren]

All pre-Newtonian astronomy had this problem, it was a data mining operation, not a theory which allowed predictive data based on first principles (there were predictions derived from the math, but they were mostly cases of "Well, it's happened this way in the past"). There was no theoretical framework which allowed for novel predictions.

Yeap - I see what you mean with the above.
You're right, the Ptolemy framework could not produce novel predictions. And QM can.

I accept this point - Ptolemy isn't as analogous to QM as I thought...

The problem there is that, at least for now, physicists and humanity in general has hit a plateau when it comes to our abilities to detect things at ever smaller scales or to produce ever larger energies. Physicists know the scales and energies we have to hit to get novel data, and the technology to do that isn't anywhere on the horizon. So while one can always retort that it will be possible in hundreds of years to do something, that's both cold comfort for now and a bit like a believer's faith

Well, OK. Yes, we may be centuries away from developing the technology we need to attempt to 'break the barriers'. Or maybe we will never get there.
But - as you say above - we know on a practical basis what we would need to achieve and what we would be looking for.

I have a suspicion that QM may be comprehended in the long term. But I accept that I might not have good enough reason to believe that. (Talking to you in this thread has adjusted my thinking on that - thanks!)
And my stance that QM is worth teaching / believing in (and the Trinity isn't) isn't dependent on QM being 'eventually comprehensible'.


Let's go back to your first post in this thread and look at how this discussion between us started:

Richard Feynman was fond of saying that no physicist understands quantum mechanics. I guess that means no physicist should teach anything about quantum mechanics.

Of course that's absurd, many physicists teach quantum mechanics and many students profitably take those courses every year. Likewise, I don't think any orthodox Christian really gets the Trinity. But that doesn't mean that the Trinity can't be true, nor that orthodox Christians should not believe something because none of them can understand it.

...why should we teach Quantum Mechanics, even if the underlying reality of it is 'incomprehensible'?

1. Because it has direct, practical application in the real world.
2. We have very good reason to believe it is true (empirical verification), therefore even if in the end it turns out to be 'essentially incomprehensible', there is very good reason to continue to spend man-power, money and resources to at least try and comprehend it.


Now - what's the point of 'grappling' with the concept of the Trinity...?

As far as I can tell, the reasons are:

1. Because some people believe in it - for purely religious reasons
2. Some people are interested in the history of the idea (how it came into being, developed etc.)

Why should I believe that the Trinity is anything other than a rather ad-hoc attempt to justify the deification of Christ whilst simultaneously claiming to be a monotheistic belief system...?


I understand that all the above questions aren't directly relavent to the point you were originally making in this thread.

Tarski's OP essentially said: "I can't even understand the concept of the Trinity -therefore how can I be expected to believe it".
Your response was: "Just because a concept cannot be understood, doesn't mean it isn't true".

I agree with the above. But if we have NO good reason to believe something is true, what is the point of talking about it like it might be? Or maybe there is good reason to believe the Trinity is true? (If so, what is it...?)
I understand that that question isn't the question asked in the OP, but I'm asking you anyway :)