--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "authfriend" <jst...@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > > > > ne of the points I was trying to make about > > quantum physicists talking about God > > FWIW, there's an erroneous assumption that because > many of the early (and some of the current) quantum > physicists were into mysticism, they must have > connected quantum physics and mysticism. They didn't. > > Rather, they were into mysticism because quantum > mechanics had conclusively demonstrated the > limitations of science. They had to accept this, > but not being able to give up on the search for > knowledge, they turned away from the dead end and > decided to take a different route they believed > had more possibilities. > > (Not that they gave up science; there was plenty > to work on in terms of the details.) > > or astrophys- > > icists merely *assuming* that the universe had a > > starting point or a moment of "creation" is what > > I'd term "the persistence of early conditioning." > > > > LONG before any of these people were taught math > > and the tents of science, they were taught that an > > all-powerful interfering being named "God" existed. > > Is there any question that they would hold to such > > beliefs while developing theories about the nature > > of the universe, and thus consciously or unconsciously > > "color" their theories with such beliefs? > > > > They were also taught just by dealing with birth and > > death in humans and other life forms that such > > things seem inevitable. Is there any question that > > they would then think "As below, so above," and > > believe that the universe had a starting point > > (the moment of "creation" or the "Big Bang")? > > > > I think it would be interesting to see what a > > scientist who had been raised with *zero* exposure > > to teachings about a sentient God or about the > > *assumability* of a universe that (like humans) > > was "born" and thus someday must "die" would > > come up with. > > It's not the teaching about a sentient God or even > the assumption that the universe must have had a > beginning. It's the constant observation of human > beings that everything changes. There's no way your > hypothetical scientist could avoid those observations. > > Nor would it be necessary to avoid any of this > "conditioning." The steady-state theory of the > universe--that it was never born and would never die-- > was developed by Hoyle, Bondi, and Gold in full > knowledge of, and in fact as a rebuttal to, the Big > Bang theory. > > (Of course, their theory was subsequently disproved. > But they weren't precluded by "conditioning" from > dreaming it up.)
I just finished reading Biocentrism by Robert Lanza. MD. He cites the idea that human awareness of an experiement actually changes the result - an oft-cited idea by New Agers and spiritual folk of many types. In reading a critque of the book, and also talking to a scientist friend, it turns out that the common New Agey notion (which I often quoted in the past) of human awareness having an effect on an experimnent is wrong - at least so far as can be measured now. In the classic quantum experiment, electrons shimmering around a nucleus in a wave form - but not yet collapsed into matter or really locatable - can be affected by any physical interference. Once that interference occurs, they collapse from the wave state into form. But as I understand it (and I could be wrong but this is what scientists are saying) just having someone think about the experiment or the electrons or aware of it, does nothing measurable. You really have to interfere in a physical way, and so far human thought alone does not do that. So this misunderstanding of the experiment by New Agers is pretty huge, and to most scientists it looks like spiritual people grasping for confirmation of their beliefs in a domain they don't accurately understand. The experiment about splitting an electron and having each "aware" of (respionding to) the behavior of the other across huge distances, instantaneously, is true and still puzzling to physicists, from what I have heard. >
