Relda,

You yourself seem a little confused about Schroedinger's gedanken experiment. It is more a word game than anything else.

Quantum events on the scale that they operate have little to no impact on consciousness. Conveniently available sensory tissues show that local feedback mechanisms filter most quantum noise. For instance, lateral inhibition in the retina. Similar microanatomy is present throughout the nervous system. As a pure digression, Sells can probably expound for hours on threshold sensitivity in the cochlea and micranatomical noise correction.
Numerous perceptions and emotions clearly correllate with causal and detectable chemicals and action potentials, all operating on a known scale of transmitter concentrations and currents far exceeding the scale of quantum events. Some can be mimiced by direct stimulation, the only limitation being our obviously crude interface and map. The activity of the brain, "the mind", conciousness itself, is clearly the product of measurably large changes that exceed and functionally exclude quantum noise.

Try again.

You were the one using the faith of historical scientists as some sort of endorsement so your little toy reversal of my valid objection is hardly meaningful. Is that sort of thing what counts as scholarship for you? No wonder science leapt ahead as mysticism was shed.

The point you try to dodge, it being simple, is that scientific enquiry does not have it's seat in religion, but likely has a millstone. Most particularly in the form of otherwise intelligent people who cannot discuss simple things without an extensive mystical preamble.

Rusty

bushbasher,
Perhaps you’ll find, somewhat, in my reply to Pericles and Rusty as to why I believe “religion is not an easy target” – perhaps an attempt to narrow its definition or to over generalise makes it an easy target, but it based on false supposition.

Where have I said you need to be Christian in order to enjoy music? Your presumption that all is 'mumbo jumbo' within Christianity is perhaps understandable but I and others here believe differently – you obviously find that problematic.

Pericles,
As you are a fan of Wiki, look up Micheal Polyani and his ideas on ‘tacit knowledge’. Read again the first paragraph in my previous post and attempt to understand the ‘tacit knowledge’ held by Galileo, apparently unavailable to Brahe. Both men, highly intelligent, were able to observe the same phenomena, but only one actually was able to ‘see’.

Personal Knowledge (i.e., hunches, intuition, and guesses) is a precursor to Polanyi's more direct account of tacit knowledge. There is as an argument for a renewed and expanded epistemology of science rooted in the personal construction of knowledge (often inarticulable knowledge), it is chiefly concerned with the earliest stages of the larger arguments for tacit knowing - exposing the faulty grounds of objectivism.

The cat experiment is a ‘thought experiment’, lying outside the bounds of physical reality i.e. pertaining to the metaphysical. The ‘experiment’ serves to demonstrate the apparent conflict between what quantum theory tells us is true about the nature and behavior of matter on the microscopic level and what we observe to be true about the nature and behavior of matter on the macroscopic level. It is a paradox and quite prone or attuned to philosophical meandering – try to give explanation in hard objective terms otherwise.

cont'd...

History repeating... biannually it seems.

Reactionary malignant anthropomorphism of 'science' may be becomming trendy in conservative circles, but I've little doubt those responsible cannot or will not grasp the consequences of their actions.

Sorry Peter, but such retributive altruism is not traditionally associated with critical thinking, much less being "a scientist". Belief in eternal torment dictates incomplete reciprocative tenure. In short, another expression of anthropic hubris.

With respect, noting you deport yourself, again, as a genuine "one true faith" Christian apologist, I reject your self promotion to science entirely. Particularly with burden of proof and such old chap. Try "Wedge strategist" and I'd agree.

Nonetheless, you ironically by default score one point solely because Muehlenberg outdid you on Creation Ministries with an almost entirely fictional construct he then visciously attacked.

His target? Ockham's Razor, the guest speaker, the subject of over-population and Robyn Williams. Astonishing coincidence, what?

Bill Muehlenberg - Jan. 27th, 2007:

http://creation.com/melbourne-atheist-the-exterminator

"Thanks John Reid and Robyn Williams for giving us in such cold, clinical and chilling detail the fruit of your materialist worldview. It is always refreshing to hear out of the horses’ mouths the savage proposals that flow from an anti-theist worldview."

Above you write, "What sort of limited enclosed world do these people live in that they are ignorant of the intellectual content of Christian theology?"

Astonishing co.. oh, sorry.

Here's the audio and transcript he misrepresents in splendid fashion:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2006/1807002.htm

Despite the speaker not once mentioning violence of any type, and referencing 3rd party hypotheses we read;

"Well folks, there you have (sic) [it]. Half of the human race needs to go. And will Reid be the first volunteer? Or will he be pulling the trigger of the machine gun, or flipping the switch to release the poison gas? Funny, but all this somehow sounds strangely—and eerily—familiar."

Familiar, yes point exactly. Either "science" is portrayed in scurrilous predetermined schemas or "Christianity" is portrayed as the urgent saviour from "science".

And that is the one and only outrage associated with this unfortunate topic.

Looking at the meal you've made of Schroedinger's cat, relda, there's a cautionary tale there for everyone: don't argue using ideas you don't understand on the assumption that no one else understands them either.

At its most basic, Schroedinger's cat means we can't place a definite value on a factor we can't observe. I cannot see relda, so I don't know if her hair is blond or brunette. Therefore, any equation or exercise of logic that I attempt which requires relda's hair colour as a measurable variable is going to be skewed and/or unreliable. It is purely a demonstration of reason and the limitations of measurement.

What Schroedinger's cat DOESN'T mean is that I don't know the colour of relda's hair, therefore anything is possible, and therefore god.

relda, you still fail to respond to simple questions, preferring instead to string a lot of words together in the hope that it gets you off the hook.

Let's get back to the issue that you have spent so much time and energy obfuscating.

>>The ambiguity of history is illustrated by the fact that the church was scientifically correct in saying that Galileo had no proof that Earth moves through space, i.e. he had ‘tacit knowledge’.<<

Galileo presented findings that were accumulated through normal, scientific observations. His "tacit knowledge" may well, if you insist, have separated his insights from those of Brahe, but they certainly had no relevance to the end result.

For the church to be "scientifically correct" to reject Galileo's conclusions as proof, they would need to have addressed them at a scientific level. "Tacit knowledge" does not form part of the conclusion - that is called a "hunch" - whereas it may, if you believe Polyani, inspire the investigative process.

jesus. Pong is more meaningful.

relda:

>> Where have I said you need to be Christian in order to enjoy music?

here is you complete paragraph:

>> In his book Nature and the Greeks Schroedinger states:
>> “Whence came I, whither go I? Science cannot tell us a word about why music delights us,
>> of why and how an old song can move us to tears.”
>> Sells has said something similar –
>> do you lump he and Schroedinger into the same camp?

let's ignore your appeal to authority, and the fact that schroedinger is simply wrong. let's accept that music psychology is difficult, and that science will not tell us all.

so what? what does this have to do with religion, and sellick's "CHRISTIAN" ramblings? are you claiming that "religion" gets credit for anything beyond F = ma? if so, why? if not, then what the hell are you actually claiming?

>> Your presumption

it's not a presumption, it's a tentative conclusion.
you and sellick are doing nothing to challenge that conclusion.

>> that all is 'mumbo jumbo' within Christianity

i didn't say that and wouldn't. all religion reflects real human needs and desires and fears. i respect that. the mumbo jumbo is to mistake the reflection for the reality.

>> is perhaps understandable but I and others here believe differently

god, yes, we know it.

>> – you obviously find that problematic.

not problematic, just totally unsupported by your waffling.

>> Perhaps you’ll find, somewhat, in my reply to Pericles and Rusty as to why I believe “religion is not an easy target”

perhaps, but no.

>> – perhaps an attempt to narrow its definition or to over generalise
>> makes it an easy target, but it based on false supposition.

perhaps. but perhaps it is genuinely an easy target. and perhaps you are using genuinely difficult questions about the philosophy and functioning of science merely to distract from the central question: what is gained by religiously couched thought? perhaps you're simply playing an obvious tactic of bait-and-switch.

and, you're ignoring the elephant: where's sellick?