virus

fate/predestination is usually associated with spiritual types. but in the end, science is theology. i've been thinking about this a lot lately.

let's say i'm an atheist (that's not too far off the mark from most perspectives). i believe the universe was created in whatever way, and a chain reaction continued until life was made. it could not have happened any different way, because the forces in the universe are natural, and life existing is just how shit works.

the chain reaction continued to occur, life evolved eventually into humans. now here's where i have difficulty holding on to atheism: if the universe flows in a natural untouched order, so did evolution. so did the movements of the wind, the growing plants, and the migration of animals. animals' developed ways to survive and understand their environment, 5 senses.

our synapses fire, my hand strikes this keyboard, i turn on my espresso machine. it could not have happened any other way.

so all this complicated feeling exists, but even my contemplating it now is simply a course in nature that could not have resulted differently. though i have a point of view, and "i think ... i am" it's really just an illusion because, despite my assumption that i can make a choice and change an outcome, that decision was made for me an infinite amount of time before the first organism was born.

either way, what i do with this knowledge leads me to the same road. i live my life, i believe in human law, and i try to do the best i can for myself and my family. i do this because i want to, but i want to because of an endlessly complicated chain reaction.

to be a true atheist means i have to accept that however complicated i think i am, i'm really just the result of an equation. that's a pretty tough leap of faith for me to make.

no point, just sharing.

Johnny Rotten

You're presupposing linearity, when in fact it's entirely possible that our reality is just a particular branch of infinite branches. In other words, it *didn't* actually have to happen the way it has. Imagine our current reality as only a more likely point in space-time, while flawed realities gradually prune themselves off. We may be a flawed or incomplete reality as well--or a figment of someone else's imagine, I suppose.

The rabbit hole always goes a bit deeper than you think .

__________________
"The idea that money doesn't buy you happiness is a lie put about by the rich, to stop the poor from killing them." -- Michael Caine

shAzb0t

Aye, it wasn't all predetermined laws of nature, most of it happened at random. Humans aren't the great achievement of evolution and life, and we could of easily ended up as some type of society of giant intelligent anteaters (although having a 4 foot long tongue would be interesting). Nothing is predetermined, it's your actions that set who you are, not some equation.

chavos

i used to think much the same way. Stupid heisenburg's uncertainty principle fucked that irrevocably. I say stupid only because he's hella smarter than i am, btw.

But, it is still intresting to think about how much of the brain's operation is simply a product of programming we don't control, and if our decision making is really under our conscious control. but that may be another thread...

CSflim

"atheist predestination" is reffered to as determinism. But ultimately its not true. Pick up a good Quantum Physics for n00bs to find out why!

As for the free will argument, there has been a lot said about that in the Free Will thread, some pertaining to God, some not.

__________________

hfw01

Because the world is the way it is and things happened the way they did does not mean it was the only possible way. Just think if the first "human" had not reproduced, maybe he falls off a cliff and dies instead of faliing in love and mating. Instead of us having this conversation over the computer the antieater in the previous conversation is typing furiously away with his four foot long tongue...

hobo

Like Kevin Sorbo likes to say all the time "A man makes his own fate".

GrayWolf

I prefer to think that all life is derived from a basic chaos govered by light rules of order. So no, I don't believe in predestination.

__________________
They are too young when you start worrying that they might be too young. 18 is my lowest limit. I'm going to be 25 next month.. No piece of ass is worth getting pounded in my own. - Johnny Rotten (I laughed for so long when I read this...)

Dragonlich

I agree with some other posters: as long as quantum mechanics is based on pure chance, there's no way in hell anything can ever be deterministic. Sure, you can predict the larger things (movement of planets, the sun), but the more detailed your predictions become, the larger the influence of chance...

firebirdta

I am from the belief system that things didn't have to happen the way that they did. Things aren't predetermined. It is impossible to know what is going to happen until it actually does. The movie Minority Report had a scene in it in which Tom Cruise rolls a ball down the desk and Colin Farrell catches it before it hits the ground. Tom Cruise says something along the lines of "just because you stopped it from happening doesn't mean it wouldn't have..." (Not a direct quote) I strongly disagree with this thought process, because while example may prove that millions of times, the ball would have hit the ground, there is always that possible exception waiting to occur. Nothing is known until it is known and even then, there is room for argument.

__________________
"Even if you prove me wrong, I'm not going to believe you." - A. McGill

Ubermensch

Personally. I think that quantum uncertainty can be sucessfully employed to argue against scientific predestination. Given that the movements of miniscule particles in the brain would have a significant effect on neuronic activity, I think it is possible to argue from micro to macro. The down side is that while this ay defeat determinsts it leaves you open to chaos theorists. Choose your poison, fellow atheists...

__________________
"Man is a rope, fastened between animal and superman - a rope aver an abyss."
Thus spake Zarathustra

filtherton

Doesn't quantum uncertainty essentailly boil down to the idea that you can't at the same time know where exactly something is, and it's velocity.
Maybe i'm a dummy, but how does our inability to currently understand the behavior of certain subatomic particles have to do with determinism?
As i understand it determinism has to do with the idea that everything that will ever happen was set in motion unchangably by the big bang at the beginning of the universe, while quantum uncertainty simply states that we can't know exactly what is going on down there.
I guess that i don't understand how our ability to understand the behavior subatomics has anything to do with the idea that everything that will ever happen was determined the moment the universe exploded.
The universe does what it does regardless of whether we can understand it.

CSflim

Hmmmm...depends who you ask.
David Bohm would liken the randomness of quantum mechanics to the pseudo-randomness of Brownian motion: i.e. apparent randomness occurring due to (deterministic) occurrences at a deeper level.

This is what led Bohm to put forward his theory of Hidden Variables i.e. that the randomness apparent in quantum mechanics is only a manifestation of some deeper reality at a sub quantum level. However the hidden variables theory has been largely discounted, most notably by Niels Bohr and John Von Neumann, who disproved the possibility of a hidden variables system as originally put forward by Bohm.
Because of this most physicists do not accept Bohm's conjecture.
However, Bohm describes a system of hidden variables that do not suffer from the same assumptions that allowed Von Neumann and Bohr to discredit his previous proposal. However to me this revised hidden variables seems to really stretch the boundaries of believability, as it requires such a radical change in our picture of reality. To be honest with you, I would reject Bohm's theory on the basis of Occam's razor...for now.
Bohm's theory could be validated. He describes possible experiments to carry out to verify his theory. One of these would break Heisenberg's Law...which would certainly shake up the quantum physics community! However Bohm did not describe a means to carry out these said hypothetical experiments, and they are currently beyond our means.
So for the moment at least it seems that randomness is an inherent property of nature!

So to answer your question: For the vast majority of the physicist community, yes quantum events are random, and not just random to the extent of our inability to measure accurately enough.

To give a solid example, take a radioactive atom. We know that in time it will disintegrate, giving out radiation. The question is when. It seems that there is no way to predict this...it is random.

For more information on Bohm's Hidden Variable's theory, check out Order and The Implicate Wholeness by David Bohm. (requires at least a layman’s understanding of quantum mechanics, and gets a bit heavy on the maths at times, but for the most part, the maths can be skimmed over without any major loss to the overall narrative).

__________________