_Physicalism_
- From: Jeff_Relf <Me@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 23 Nov 2005 06:24:29 GMT
Hi Lefty, This is the postulate that Einstein and I subscribe to:
Physical processes determine absolutely everything.
I call that _Physicalism_, others might call it atheism or determinism.
Most of the confusion on Usenet is over what such terms mean.
Stephen Hawking wrote:
In summary, the title of this essay was a question:
Is_Everything_Determined ?
The answer is yes, it is.
But it might as well not be, because we can never know what is determined.
...
In relativity,
there is no real distinction between the space and time coordinates,
just as there is no difference between two space coordinates.
...
The boundary condition of the universe is that it has no boundary.
The universe would be completely self-contained
and not affected by anything outside itself.
It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just _Be_.
What place, then, for a creator ?
As I said recently elsewhere:
God is relative. Sentience is notional and subjective, not physical.
Glomming_On, i.e. gravity and consumption, only happens in the Short_Term,
in the Long_Term each simply dissipates... i.e. is itself consumed.
Births and deaths are notional, and mostly the product of outside forces.
While I'm God to the ant in the palm of my hand,
because I'm able to control it, to kill it...
likewise, God is an ant compared his society, to his environment.
But comparisions that make us look like ants or monkeys are often censured,
because the Zoomed_Out view is too scary for kids.
Einstein wrote:
But the scientist is possessed by the sense of universal causation.
The future, to him, is every whit as necessary and determined as the past.
...
People like us, who believe in physics, know that
the distinction between past, present, and future is
only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
...
Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end,
by forces over which we have [ little knowledge of and ] no control.
It is determined for the insects as well as the star.
Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to
a mysterious tune intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.
...
A human being is a part of a whole, called by us _Universe_,
a part limited in time and space.
He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings,
as something separated from the rest...
a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
...
The more a man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events
the firmer becomes his conviction that there is no room left by the side of
this ordered regularity for causes of a different [ supernatural ] nature.
...
Every true theorist is a kind of tamed metaphysicist,
no matter how pure a _Positivist_ he may fancy himself.
[ ... He believes in ]
a conceptual system built on premises of great simplicity.
...
If [ God ] is omnipotent, then every occurrence,
including every human action, every human thought,
and Every human feeling and aspiration is also His work ;
how is it possible to think of holding men responsible for
their deeds and thoughts before such an almighty Being ?
In giving out punishment and rewards he would,
to a certain extent, be passing judgment on Himself.
How can this be combined with
the goodness and righteousness ascribed to Him ?
.
- Follow-Ups:
- Re: _Physicalism_
- From: Dogma Discharge
- Re: _Physicalism_
- References:
- Gravity -- Fundamental Force or Space-Time Geometry?
- From: Uno Lapideus
- Things consume, glom on, gravitate, in the sort term.
- From: Jeff_Relf
- Re: Things consume, glom on, gravitate, in the sort term.
- From: LEFTY
- Order_Randomness is notional, not physical.
- From: Jeff_Relf
- Re: Order_Randomness is notional, not physical.
- From: LEFTY
- Gravity -- Fundamental Force or Space-Time Geometry?
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