To cut a long story short, it seems to me that what Quantum Mechanics does is what any computer programmer would do when faced with an enormous amount of information that he could not possibly compute in a sensible timeframe.

Why track every particle in the universe if it only matters where it is when you need to know about it?

Could the interference patterns caused by single particles be the result of approximations in the computational algorithms of the universe?

Put it this way… if the universe was in some way ‘pure’. If it existed arbitrarily, independent of anything else, then why would time and space be quantized? Are Xeno’s paradoxes for real? If time and space were not indivisible then I would claim that Xeno’s paradoxes would NOT be paradoxical IF the universe were ‘pure’ and ‘free’ because a smooth calculation over ANY interval would be possible. The paradoxes ONLY become paradoxical if you have to make the calculations! If nothing needs to do any calculations then yes you CAN integrate from 0 to 1 in a finite time. It is ONLY if something has to work something out that an un-quantized space or time will never complete an integral.

So, in the way that I see it, the Universe really works like an enormous computer. There are a huge number of locations, but they are discrete. One planck volume each. And a huge number of times, but discrete. One planck time each. At each time each volume contains information. Nothing more.

And my idea is testable! I learned this in my degree when simulating the n-body problem.

Take two bodies that are falling towards each other under gravity. As they get closer together they get faster and faster. Any computer program that simulates this over discrete time periods will eventually reach a point where the bodies are really close together and the forces on them are enormous, so the accelerations are enormous and so their new velocities are enormous. After one more time period they have passed each other and are racing away at stupendous speeds. You just violated conservation of energy. So you step back one step and you move forwards by a smaller period of time. Now the forces, accelerations and velocities get even higher. And no matter how small you make your unit of time you always face a point where things break down. Even at the planck scale of time and distance conservation of energy will be violated.

So we have a position where either planck scales are real or they are simply descriptive in terms of quantum uncertainty. You can test by conservation of energy which is the case. It may be beyond our detection abilities at the moment but the test is there. If we could prove that energy is not conserved then we would know that time and space are genuinely discrete and therefore we COULD describe the universe as a set of information which is really just like a computer model. Or we would show that energy is conserved and that therefore the planck scales are simply descriptive of our ability to describe the universe using observation. Indeed a place between unit 0 and unit 1 on the planck scale would exist. In which case quantum theory would appear to break down. In fact Xeno would come back to haunt us. After all if you need to make an infinite number of calculations to move an infinitesimal step forward in time and space you could never get anywhere. After all even the tiniest change in the universe requires the propogation of that change to everywhere else in the universe, allbeit at the speed of light of less. In a smooth scaled universe any change, no matter how small, requires an infinite number of propogations of the changes – as per Xeno.

In a way, if I follow this argument to its logical conculsion I have to ask myself again : Why does a single photon interfere with itself in Young’s Double Slit experiment? If I follow this path then the answer is that it does so because the universe doesn’t know where the photon is and therefore it does pass through both slits and that it is not because of intereference with another universe where everything is identical except that the photon went a different way. After all where the bloody hell ARE all these other universes? That’s the hardest question for the multiverse proponents to answer! Myself included!

One answer would be to conclude that the universe itself is a quantum computer but then it would have to exist inside some container which leads to infinite regression.

I’m not happy with any of the answers. How CAN a photon go through both slits? Yet how CAN there be an infinite number of universes (or rather a very very large number representing each possible quantum state)?

I suspect the answer is far more subtle than any of us can realise. I do not want to shed the idea that our universe is mechanistic although including a lack of knowledge that we call the WaveForm, but neither do I wish for a plethora of universes constantly being created.

So it would be so easy just to say the universe is a computer program. But then it’s got to be running somewhere on something and we have to wonder about the rules of the universe in which that computer exists. If that universe was singular and purely mechanistic with not even the concept of a wave-form then where would they come up with that idea from? Indeed without the mechanisms of quantum mechanics what would existence even be like? Everything we know relies on quantum mechanics. Take it away and you are left with a reality that we could not even begin to describe. Could anyone come up with a way to describe a self contained computer that conforms to everything we know? After all… there is such a thing as a wave function that describes the entire universe and if it can be conceptualised (although not solved) inside that universe would it require a larger universe to contain it?

Quantum Mechanics is the most confusing thing human endeavour has EVER come up with.

I made it clear when they asked right at the start that I was an Atheist who had once been a Christian so we had a solid understanding of our starting points. Their first question to me was how I felt about the recent comments from scientists about God in the media. I immediately felt that they did not actually know what was being said by whom especially when they couldn’t remember Richard Dawkins’ name and for the fact that it was actually Hawking who made the press this week with his belief that M-Theory closes the gaps that he said MIGHT exist in ‘A Brief History of Time’. So I didn’t lambaste them for this I merely stated that I broadly agreed with them.

So instead they asked me why I didn’t believe in God. I decided to go with something simple and stated infinite regression as one reason. Unfortunately they couldn’t grasp the idea that if you decide to complicate matters by requiring a God to create a universe then you can equally require a god to create the god and so on… They were quite sure that the God who created this universe doesn’t require a creator. I was getting nowhere so I didn’t even try invoking Occam’s Razor which would just have confused them further.

The lady who was leading the conversation from ‘their’ side pressed me on the fact that God’s word is there for you to see in the bible. I did not mention that their God only represents a tiny proportion of the people on the planet although when pressed I did point out that their version of truth is only as old and only as reliable as the versions espoused by other people. However I did point out repeatedly that this bible was concocted by the Roman Catholic church during various councils from a MUCH larger canon that already existed at the time. They both seemed entirely unaware of the existence of other forms of christianity and neither of them had read any of the other gospels which exist.

In fact they went so far as to say that through God’s influence the proper content of the bible had been formed despite being ignorant of the fact that other versions had existed. I even told them that gnostic christianity seemed much more appealing to me. A religion based on enlightenment seems far more appropriate than one based on sin. Again they had no answer.

When I pressed them on contradictions in the bible they demanded that I find one. Since I didn’t have one at my immediate recall, although there are dozens, I turned the conversation to rules in the bible. I asked if they ate pork or shellfish and when they said yes I pointed out that both are disallowed in the old testament. They said that times had changed and that the bible had to be interpreted in the times we live in. I pointed out that the bible doesn’t say ‘Thou shalt not eat shellfish until such time as you have invented the refrigerator’ and they seemed to shrug this off as inconsequential. They made some mention of the ‘law on blood’ hasn’t changed because it was ‘renewed in the new testament’ and therefore ‘is valid’. In which case why not ignore the WHOLE old testament???

I was really close to asking whether they went to church when they had their periods since the same parts of the O.T. mention not allowing your women to go when they are menstruating but I didn’t want to be offensive to that degree!

I asked them by what mechanism that hypothesised God could work in the Universe since he is outside of it. Indeed I challenged them. They claimed that God works in the world so I claimed that therefore there must be a mechanism that he does so by. Therefore one can hypothesise what that mechanism is and scientists can test it. They quite simply did not understand, even when I promised that if they came up with this hypothesis and proved it then I would accept everything they said.

To move things on a bit I then suggested that in order to be a Christian one would have to have genuine free will. I told them that I was a materialist and that they must be dualists or pluralists. Therefore a simple proposition for them would be to provide a testable hypothesis by which the mechanism of dualism or pluralism could be proven. By this point both looked ready to leave.

And with a few words about how no-one can do anything without hope and how we were clearly ‘coming at the debate from opposite sides’ the Jehovah’s Witnesses gave up and left me to my sin and my damnation.

Next please!!

"As a matter of fact the pope is a head of state, one that conducts diplomatic relations with 178 capitals around the world. As a matter of what foreign-affairs wonks label soft power, he is a force that cannot be ignored. The spiritual leader of a billion people around the world is, for better or worse, somebody with clout. The Catholic church flexed malign muscle within our own politics a few years ago by forcing Labour ministers to drop a scheme that would have encouraged a measure of religious mixing in faith schools. But it has been a force for good, too, in securing the writing-down of poor countries' debt, and is increasingly a useful voice on climate change. London is right to recognise that the pope is in a better position to protect the Brazilian rainforest than the Foreign Office."

"While it has failed on many fronts to engage with social change – the position of women or a reappraisal of its attitudes to sexuality – in other areas it has been strikingly successful. The papacy has been a powerful critic of the arms trade, war, global inequality. Above all, the church has mounted a powerful intellectual critique of capitalism for more than a century, challenging its inequality and instrumentalisation of human beings as a means to achieve profit."

The Reverend Jane Adams Spahr, a Presbyterian minister, violated her church regulations in performing sixteen same-sex marriages in 2008. At that time such marriages were allowed by the law in CA. The Permanent Judicial Commission of the Redwoods Presbytery proclaimed after listening to accounts in a case that started Wednesday.

The judgment found, by a majority vote, that Spahr was accountable of three counts of breaking the church’s Book of Order by performing same-sex ceremonies as marriages, persisting in performing so in a “pattern or practice of disobedience” and violating her ordination vows by carrying out the ceremonies.

Nevertheless, the court rejected the final charge that supposed the minister “failed to further the peace, unity and purity of the church. “We commend Dr. Spahr for helping us realize that peace without justice is no peace,” the panel said with regards to the last charge.

They also thanked the people whose ceremonies Reverend Spahr completed, and who testified for the minister’s benefit, for their “courageous and heart-rending testimonies. “The Presbyterian constitution does not clearly restrict same-sex weddings and, in fact, describes marital life as “a gift God has given to all humankind for the well being of the entire human family.” Yet it also describes spousal relationship as “a civil contract between a woman and a man.”

Unlike the flip-flopping Presbyterian Church the Church of Spiritual Humanism does endorse the right of consenting adults to enter into and celebrate a committed union with each other regardless of their orientation or gender. While we do not presume to claim anything as “a gift God has given,” we do affirm that if marriage is a legal option for a same gender couple our ordained ministers are fully authorized to perform a wedding ceremony sanctified by our church. If such ceremonies are not legal in certain jurisdictions our clergy would never be penalized by the Church for performing them.

IHEU is now calling for expressions of interest from Member Organizations interested in organizing and hosting the 19th World Humanist Congress in 2014. The Congress is an opportunity to strengthen the host organization and the local Humanist movement. IHEU organizes World Humanist Congresses once every three years. Expressions of interest are not a firm commitment, but only an invitation to begin discussions.

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I woke up as usual yesterday in the “geopolitical epicentre of the culture of death” – and very pleasant it was. I fed the cats, read the papers and carried an espresso into the back garden, congratulating myself on being a citizen of a country that doesn’t stone women to death, hang gay men from cranes or murder people who change their religion. I mean, how great is that? I love living in the “selfish, hedonistic wasteland” that is London – both quotes come from one Edmund Adamus, who is apparently a senior British Catholic and an adviser to the Archbishop of Westminster – and I just wish more nations would follow our example.

Frankly, I’m tired of hearing religious bigots running down this country. For all its faults – crap public transport, Nick Clegg popping up everywhere and a national obsession with Simon Cowell – Britain is still one of the most civilised places in the world to live. It’s not Iran, where prisoners are subjected to rape and mock executions; it isn’t Saudi Arabia either, despite Mr Adamus’s downright peculiar belief that we’re more anti-Catholic than the Chinese or the Saudis. (Might I suggest he tries walking along a street in Riyadh carrying a crucifix and a Bible?) The Catholic Church has picked up this habit of dissing secular culture from hardline Muslims, who dislike pretty much the same things: gay relationships, equal rights for women and the freedom to mock religion.

Those of us who aren’t religious conservatives have had to fight every step of the way to create this modern, tolerant, secular Britain, and it’s easy to forget that many of the improvements are very recent. I can just remember the last hangings in British prisons, as well as a time when having an “illegitimate” baby brought shame on a woman and homosexuality was still illegal; even as recently as 10 years ago, when the current Foreign Secretary William Hague was Conservative leader, the party opposed the repeal of an iconic piece of anti-gay legislation known as Section 28.

So it’s good to have this wake-up from Mr Adamus, director of pastoral affairs at the diocese of Westminster, about the need to defend secular values.

Continues: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/joan-smith/joan-smith-in-defence-of-modern-britain-2067886.html

God did not create the universe, Stephen Hawking revealed yesterday. In the flurry of publicity preceding his new book, The Grand Design, to be published next week, he does some serious dissing of the Almighty, declaring him/her/it irrelevant. The point is, he says, that our universe followed inevitably from the laws of nature. But, we might ask, where did they come from?

It is perhaps a bit rich for Hawking to make God redundant after granting him/her/it a celebrity cameo at the end of his multi-million selling A Brief History of Time. In his famous conclusion to the book, Hawking wrote that if scientists could find the most fundamental laws of nature “then we should know the mind of God”. To be fair, he was writing metaphorically – we all know what he meant.

He now suggests that the search for this particular Holy Grail is over, now that scientists have come up with a type of theory, known as M-theory, that may describe the behaviour of all the fundamental particles and force, and even account for the very birth of the universe. If this theory is backed up by experiment, it might perhaps replace all religious accounts of creation – in Hawking’s capacious mind, it already has.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/7979211/Has-Stephen-Hawking-ended-the-God-debate.html

Cardinal Keith O’Brien said the BBC’s news coverage is contaminated by “a radically secular and socially liberal mindset”.

The Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh said the corporation’s intolerance of religion is equivalent to its “massive” political bias against the Conservatives in the 1980s.

He also accused the corporation of plotting a “hatchet job” on the Vatican in a documentary aboutclerical sex abuse on the eve of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Britain.

Cardinal O’Brien believes that atheists like Professor Richard Dawkins are given a disproportionate amount of airtime while mainstream Christian views are marginalised.

Continues: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/7982601/Catholic-church-accuses-BBC-of-anti-Christian-bias.html

The British Humanist Association campaigns for fair representation from the BBC. The BHA wants an end to the privileged status and position of religions and religious broadcasting by the BBC.

Last night, I attended a debate entitled “The Papal visit should not be a State Visit” at London’s Conway Hall, organised by the Central London Humanist Group, along with the BHA and the South Place Ethical Society. Speaking for the motion were the prominent atheist philosopher AC Grayling and the tireless human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, while the two Catholics contesting the motion were the journalist and former press secretary to the Archbishop of Westminster, Austen Ivereigh, and the Benedictine monk Father Christopher Jamison, who appeared on the TV series The Monastery. Ivereigh and Jamison were representing Catholic Voices, a group of 20 speakers formed to put the Catholic side of the debate in the media in the run up to the Papal Visit to the UK, which takes place from 16-19 September.

Polly Toynbee, Guardian columnist and president of the BHA, chaired the debate and it was perhaps a sign of what was to come that the first mention of the Papal Visit during her introduction drew a boo from one member of the audience. After Toynbee had laid out the format – eight minutes for each speaker, followed by audience questions (with no vote, because that would just reflect who had happened to turn up) – we were straight into the debate.

Continues: http://blog.newhumanist.org.uk/2010/09/protest-pope-debate-righteous.html

The British Humanist Association is a founding member of the Protest the Pope campaign, demonstrating against the official nature of the Pope’s state visit later this month.

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NASA has announced plans to send a probe to the Sun in 2018. The probe will be protected by a carbon-composite heat shield that will be able to withstand radiation and heat up to 2,550 degrees, and will be able to approach the Sun at a distance of 4 million miles, which seems like a large distance, but in galactic and scientific terms is quite close. They are looking to answer at least two questions unanswerable to date – “why is the sun’s outer atmosphere so much hotter than the sun’s visible surface and what propels the solar wind that affects Earth and our solar system?”

I was wondering if they could perhaps have the probe manned, but the link says no. Too bad, because Newt Gingrich, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck would be ideal candidates for a trip to the Sun.

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I saw this video over at The Friendly Atheist and thought it was such a good rant/response to Pat Condell (who I usually enjoy, but find he’s getting a bit strident about Islam, perhaps because of his particularly British experience with it)  on the New York Mosque question, that it should be further disseminated around the blogosphere.

Even if it wasn’t a response to Condell, it’s a well stated opinion in its own right. Maybe with a little luck it’ll go viral. It should.

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The justifiably-hated, execrable Westboro Baptist Church has won another Free Speech case in Federal Court, proving once again that the old adage “I may disagree with what you say, but I’ll fight for your right to say it” is still applicable in this country, despite constant onslaughts against the First Amendment. As a child of the Vietnam War/1960s era, I don’t really react adversely to anyone mutilating a flag (such as using it for a bedspread), because, after all, it’s just a piece of cloth, despite its intrinsic symbolism. I found the Phelps family protesting at funerals itself far more repugnant than their flag desecration, but if they want to trample a flag to make a point, the First Amendment allows it, and the Nebraska legislature has no business trying to outlaw it.

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In the Please-Don’t-Think-I’m-Pandering-To-Gideon department, I wanted to point out an instance where science polices itself. A Harvard researcher has been suspended, and may even lose his job, over what appears to be fabricated data in a paper published in 2002. It’s not really clear from the article exactly what happened, but his superiors suspect that the conclusions reached in the paper were based on contrived evidence from an experiment, a test of whether monkeys could distinguish algebraic rules. It appears that control portions of the experiment were not performed. If true, the consequences are serious.

Some forms of scientific error, like poor record keeping or even mistaken results, are forgivable, but fabrication of data, if such a charge were to be proved against Dr. Hauser, is usually followed by expulsion from the scientific community.

This is what science does, and why it is different than religion. Religion decrees truth based on some unprovable and unreproducible revelation, a truth which can never be subsequently revised or replaced. Science, on the other hand, constantly performs error checking, to see if what is now considered true continues to hold true. If it doesn’t, it is jettisoned. Only a process like this can be trusted to give us an accurate representation of reality.

Can you imagine the Pope saying “Oh, wait! I’ve been praying about it, and God now tells me that child buggery is a sin and a crime. My bad.” (OK. That’s not a great example, but you get my drift.)

But the really sad quote in the article is this one, which refers to the fact that the researcher was the only one doing research in his specialized field.

“It’s always a problem in science when we have to depend on one person.”

If we didn’t have so many people being home schooled to avoid science, matriculating at fundeological religious institutions, or attending seminaries to become preachers, some of them might actually be able to become scientists, and use their education to actually help improve the world, rather than suck it dry with superstitious, delusional nonsense.

We need more scientists and less preachers.

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Filed under: Astronomy, Church and State, Constitution, culture, Current events, First Amendment, Glenn Beck, Humor, Islam, Politics, Reading, Religion, Republicans, Science Tagged: Constitution, Earth, flag, Freedom of speech, Glenn Beck, NASA, Newt Gingrich, Pat Condell, Politics, Religion, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Science, Solar wind, Sun, United States, Westboro Baptist Church ]]> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/thehumanist/XNiZ/~3/cFpq_0DH_Us/ 2010-09-03T12:37:04+00:00 Clayton ]]> http://thechapel.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/another-irony-meter-busted/ 2010-09-03T11:42:26+00:00 the chaplain I saw this advertisement in a Christian publication:

You’ll have to excuse me for not taking seriously Mr. Jon Johnston’s message extolling the virtue of anonymity. Why should I, when he didn’t heed his own advice?

– the chaplain

Just a quick note to observe the report over at the National Secular Society site regarding the likely expansion of faith schools under Michael Gove (Michael Gove in religious schools rethink | National Secular Society).  Turns out that our Education Secretary’s grand vision of widespread secession of academies from local authority control has been less successful than he had intended.  To try and rescue this situation, it appears that Mr Gove plans to relax the 50% rule, which meant that 50% of the pupils in a faith-based academy must be from other (or presumably no) faiths.

This is pretty outrageous, and one wonders whether Mr Gove watched Richard Dawkins’ excellent broadcast the other week (More 4) on the dangers of faith schools.  I imagine that even if he did, it would be ignored in the big push to roll out all those Tory policies that have been waiting in the wings since 1997.

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