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At 1/11/07 09:22 PM, MortifiedPenguins wrote: May I ask which theory of physics describes this.

I don't know; I'm not an expert on physics. It's just common sense -- I simply know that the result between a physical interaction between two particles is not randomly determined. When you throw a ball, it doesn't just "happen" to fall back to the ground. There are laws which govern everything about our world, whether we have discovered all of them or not, and they do not involve random chance. If you disprove random chance, you disprove free will. I accept the fact that everything can be determined by physical law. Therefore, there is no place for free will in a universe where physical law reigns supreme.

At 1/12/07 03:42 PM, Enders-Army wrote: I suppose you didn't even bother to read the rest of my post. oh well.

Irrelevant- unrelated to matters being discussed. Two "r"s there buddy.

Hey! Looks like you HAVE found the enter key after all! Congratulations!
(paragraphs are your friend if you want someone to read beyond 2 sentences)

And while you're nitpicking on spelling, the past tense of "to pay" is "paid", not "payed". Try writing that one off as a typo, like forgetting an r. I'd keep quiet about spelling mistakes if I were you, seeing as though you're unable to properly format a post and haven't even realized that after a period there is a capital letter in most cases. Not to mention the many spelling mistakes you made yourself. Unless being a hypocrite is part of your beliefs?

And as Poxpower already said, your post is completely irrelevant to the matter at hand. In the 'off chance' you don't get it: it's not about proving God in one way or another, nor about disproving him. And least of all about what you believe. It's about whether God can actually interact with our physical world or not, given the assumption of free will.

To quote David Sosa from the film "Waking Life"

"In a way, in our contemporary world view, it's easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem has been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free if God already knows in advance everything you're gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they're so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We're just physical systems too, right? We're just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We're mostly water, and our behavior isn't gonna be an exception to these basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether its God setting things up in advance and knowing everything you're gonna do or whether it's these basic physical laws governing everything, there's not a lot of room left for freedom.
So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say "Oh, well, it's just an historical anecdote. It's sophomoric. It's a question with no answer. Just forget about it." But the question keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty, or you can only be admired or respected for things you did of your own free will. So the question keeps coming back, and we don't really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all our decisions are really just a charade.
Think about how it happens. There's some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. It looks like it's a free action on your part, but every one of those - every part of that process is actually governed by physical law, chemical laws, electrical laws, and so on.
So now it just looks like the big bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of human history, and even before, is really just the playing out of subatomic particles according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we're special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. I mean, that's really challenged by this picture.
So you might be saying, "Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it's not really like that. It's really a probabilistic theory. There's room. It's loose. It's not deterministic." And that's going to enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, it's not really going to help because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that its unpredictable and we can't understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that going to help with freedom? I mean, should our freedom be just a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That starts to seem like it's worse. I'd rather be a gear in a big deterministic physical machine than just some random swerving.
So we can't just ignore the problem. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons with all that that entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility, and trying to understand individuality."

At 1/12/07 04:05 PM, Begoner wrote:

At 1/11/07 09:22 PM, MortifiedPenguins wrote: May I ask which theory of physics describes this.

I don't know; I'm not an expert on physics. It's just common sense -- I simply know that the result between a physical interaction between two particles is not randomly determined. When you throw a ball, it doesn't just "happen" to fall back to the ground. There are laws which govern everything about our world, whether we have discovered all of them or not, and they do not involve random chance. If you disprove random chance, you disprove free will. I accept the fact that everything can be determined by physical law. Therefore, there is no place for free will in a universe where physical law reigns supreme.

Grr, did you pay any attention at all? Random chance isn't disproven in any way, it's a fundamental property of matter. It's called the Heisenberg principle. Check it out, it's very interesting :) In any case, random chance doesn't make much for free will either. I'd like to think it's my own decision to write this post, but probably it's just some quantummechanical flip of the coin. See me care, I still have my illusion of free will.

At 1/12/07 04:23 PM, Togukawa wrote: Grr, did you pay any attention at all? Random chance isn't disproven in any way, it's a fundamental property of matter. It's called the Heisenberg principle.

I'm I remember correctly from my chemistry class, that principle states that both the position and the velocity of a particular electron cannot be measured at one point in time, as ascertaining one will invariably affect the other. It does not mean that there is not a definite position and velocity, simply that it cannot be determined. It doesn't involve random chance.

At 1/12/07 05:00 PM, Begoner wrote:

At 1/12/07 04:23 PM, Togukawa wrote: Grr, did you pay any attention at all? Random chance isn't disproven in any way, it's a fundamental property of matter. It's called the Heisenberg principle.

I'm I remember correctly from my chemistry class, that principle states that both the position and the velocity of a particular electron cannot be measured at one point in time, as ascertaining one will invariably affect the other. It does not mean that there is not a definite position and velocity, simply that it cannot be determined. It doesn't involve random chance.

It means there's an intrinsic uncertainty on the velocity and position of matter. You'd think the particle must be "somewhere", but even that turns out to be false. The same particle can be in two places at once, and even interfere with itself.

Fire an electron at 2 slits, through which one does it go? There's no way to tell, it's random. All you can do is give a probability to each slit. In quantum mechanics particles are represented by waves, the square of the modulus of which is the probability density. You can only talk about the behaviour of particles in terms of probability

Cool stuff to check out if it interests you:
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,si d9_gci815065,00.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program. html

At 1/12/07 06:09 PM, Togukawa wrote:

In short, quantum mechanics is some trippy shit. For example, the fact that the "electron cloud" around the atom is literally a cloud of probability representing where the electron(s) could be at any given time...man, it makes my head hurt.

At 1/12/07 08:32 AM, Togukawa wrote:

At 1/12/07 08:01 AM, JackLee wrote: So in that sense, there is not going to any definite arrangement of lego at any future time, because there are different probabilities any particular outcome. In that sence, free will can exist.

If everything we do is random, how is that free will? I wouldn't say quantum mechanics gives the possibility of free will...

I think as long as there is any degree of randomness in our universe, its impossible to disprove free will.

But to add fire to the debate, I think one of the more solid arguments supporting that we don't have free will is related to semiotics as apposed to physics. Basically the notion of semiotics is that we go about living our daily lives according to "signs". The amount of information we see everyday is enormous, but when we come across a "sign", or something that our brain considers significant, we react in a certain manner. Just like how an ant will do a specific action when it comes across the right chemical, we to may be acting on instinct only in a more complicated way.

At 1/12/07 06:09 PM, Togukawa wrote: It means there's an intrinsic uncertainty on the velocity and position of matter. You'd think the particle must be "somewhere", but even that turns out to be false. The same particle can be in two places at once, and even interfere with itself.

According to Wikipedia, "In its simplest form, it applies to the position and momentum of a single particle, and implies that if we continue increasing the accuracy with which one of these is measured, there will come a point at which the other must be measured with less accuracy." It doesn't mention anything about any sort of intrinsic uncertainty of the position of an electron. Also, just because we can't predict where a given electron may go doesn't mean that physical law cannot. If it turns out that it is truly random, then "free will" is simply, as you previously stated, a quantum mechanical flip of the coin, although the extent to which one random electron will affect your decisions is probably minuscule, if it affects them at all.

At 1/12/07 06:14 PM, Peter-II wrote: In short, quantum mechanics is some trippy shit. For example, the fact that the "electron cloud" around the atom is literally a cloud of probability representing where the electron(s) could be at any given time...man, it makes my head hurt.

My grade in that particular unit in chemistry made my head hurt, what with all the orbital hybridization and resonant structures. :(

At 1/12/07 04:05 PM, Begoner wrote: I don't know; I'm not an expert on physics. It's just common sense -- I simply know that the result between a physical interaction between two particles is not randomly determined. When you throw a ball, it doesn't just "happen" to fall back to the ground. There are laws which govern everything about our world, whether we have discovered all of them or not, and they do not involve random chance. If you disprove random chance, you disprove free will. I accept the fact that everything can be determined by physical law. Therefore, there is no place for free will in a universe where physical law reigns supreme.

You ignore the possibility of transcendence. If there is a transcendent reality (a higher dimension, another universe, etc.), then this other reality could interact with our own. For instance, I could hypothesize that our consciousness lies in another reality completely, but relies on our physical brains for stimuli of the physical world. Can you find a problem with this hypothesis?

BTW, I am not saying this is plausible, just possible. If it is possible, then it does seem to contradict your argument.

At 1/12/07 06:27 PM, Altarus wrote: BTW, I am not saying this is plausible, just possible. If it is possible, then it does seem to contradict your argument.

There is no proof with which to substantiate that assertion. It certainly is plausible, in the same vein that God wielding absolute control over us is possible. However, it is an unverifiable claim of which, by definition, there can neither be proof for or against. It is therefore not a scientifically valid hypothesis but rather falls in the same category as religion.

At 1/12/07 06:20 PM, Begoner wrote:

At 1/12/07 06:09 PM, Togukawa wrote: It means there's an intrinsic uncertainty on the velocity and position of matter. You'd think the particle must be "somewhere", but even that turns out to be false. The same particle can be in two places at once, and even interfere with itself.

According to Wikipedia, "In its simplest form, it applies to the position and momentum of a single particle, and implies that if we continue increasing the accuracy with which one of these is measured, there will come a point at which the other must be measured with less accuracy." It doesn't mention anything about any sort of intrinsic uncertainty of the position of an electron.

Wikipedia isn't God :)
Take this site for example: http://staff.science.nus.edu.sg/~parwani/htw/ c2/node99.html

The most important bit is at the end: "
It is very important to note that the uncertainties discussed above are NOT due to imperfect apparatus but are intrinsic to the quantum nature of the particle: It is necessarily described by an extended wavefunction and hence probabilities rather than precise postion and velocities which would have given rise to precise classical trajectories (but an eventual disagreement with experimental data!)"

The references wikipedia gives should be good too, I checked the first one and it was very elaborate.

Also, just because we can't predict where a given electron may go doesn't mean that physical law cannot. If it turns out that it is truly random, then "free will" is simply, as you previously stated, a quantum mechanical flip of the coin, although the extent to which one random electron will affect your decisions is probably minuscule, if it affects them at all.

What is physical law? You mean newtonian physics? Well, it can try to predict, but it'll be wrong :)

At 1/12/07 06:37 PM, Togukawa wrote: What is physical law? You mean newtonian physics? Well, it can try to predict, but it'll be wrong :)

No, I mean the discovered and undiscovered laws which government particle interactions and properties within our universe. It is possible that one set of equations, which mankind has not yet determined, dictate how any particles would act in a given scenario. It is possible that the laws binding the universe are incredibly complex and mankind cannot hope to ever ascertain them all. However, the fact that our present interpretation of our universe is flawed does not imply that there is not a correct interpretation.

At 1/12/07 06:43 PM, Begoner wrote: No, I mean the discovered and undiscovered laws which government particle interactions and properties within our universe. It is possible that one set of equations, which mankind has not yet determined, dictate how any particles would act in a given scenario. It is possible that the laws binding the universe are incredibly complex and mankind cannot hope to ever ascertain them all. However, the fact that our present interpretation of our universe is flawed does not imply that there is not a correct interpretation.

Alright. It is indeed possible that quantum mechanics is wrong and that there will be another theory that won't need probability coming later. But that's all speculation. Or with your own words: "It is an unverifiable claim of which, by definition, there can neither be proof for or against." As far as we know now, the universe can only be described in terms of probabilities.

And quantum mechanics applies to all matter in general, not only electrons. It even applies to non-matter like photons. So it definitely does affect your decisions.

At 1/12/07 06:50 PM, Togukawa wrote: As far as we know now, the universe can only be described in terms of probabilities.

Does an electron "choose" where it wants to go or is it driven there by some sort of physical law? And if it is driven there by a physical law, how can such a law be random? It's not like the force of gravity differs from one minute to the next; how can any other physical law allow for two possible outcomes given an identical situation?

At 1/12/07 06:55 PM, Begoner wrote: Does an electron "choose" where it wants to go or is it driven there by some sort of physical law? And if it is driven there by a physical law, how can such a law be random? It's not like the force of gravity differs from one minute to the next; how can any other physical law allow for two possible outcomes given an identical situation?

Essentially, as I said before, quantum mechanics is trippy shit. When one is dealing with electron behaviour, one has to discount all of the laws of physics they're used to.

At 1/12/07 06:55 PM, Begoner wrote:

Does an electron "choose" where it wants to go or is it driven there by some sort of physical law? And if it is driven there by a physical law, how can such a law be random? It's not like the force of gravity differs from one minute to the next; how can any other physical law allow for two possible outcomes given an identical situation?

That's why quantum mechanics is trippy stuff that makes one's head hurt :) And string theory is even worse. Because yes, there are a multiverse of possible outcomes given an identical situation. And according to string theory, all of the possible outcomes happen, but in parallel universes.

At 1/12/07 04:05 PM, Togukawa wrote:

Hey! Looks like you HAVE found the enter key after all! Congratulations!

(paragraphs are your friend if you want someone to read beyond 2 sentences)

And while you're nitpicking on spelling, the past tense of "to pay" is "paid", not "payed". Try writing that one off as a typo, like forgetting an r. I'd keep quiet about spelling mistakes if I were you, seeing as though you're unable to properly format a post and haven't even realized that after a period there is a capital letter in most cases. Not to mention the many spelling mistakes you made yourself. Unless being a hypocrite is part of your beliefs?

And as Poxpower already said, your post is completely irrelevant to the matter at hand. In the 'off chance' you don't get it: it's not about proving God in one way or another, nor about disproving him. And least of all about what you believe. It's about whether God can actually interact with our physical world or not, given the assumption of free will.

Ah yes, I do apologize about that. I didn't know there was a grammatical system for posting responses on Newgrounds. Could you show me? And I also do apologize if I did not make the intention of my original post clear. I posted that response because I felt like it. Occasionally I have the feeling to write about something that i've been thinking over for a while, in this case God. I'm sorry that you all felt that my post had no relevance to the specific topic that I'm sure you all hold very dear. I do still have a question if you don't mind answering it. If your not a Christian, why would you even care about whether God can affect our free will or not? Unless you are all Christians. Unlikely but possible. Oh, and may I point out that Poxpower started this topic by saying that, hypothetically, everything is made of little bricks, and that those little bricks also make up our free will in our minds, and that by saying God can not affect free will, he can not affect anything. I'm sorry if i saw that as trying to disprove the existence of God. Are you saying that God still exists, but has no power over us whatsoever?

One last thing. I apologize if the way I post responses does not follow a commonly used pattern. I suppose if you actually took the time to read it, you might actually be able to see the sentences I have used without have two spaces in between each one. Unless it just hurts your eyes. If this is the case, I suggest going outside, or reading a book instead. Something away from the computer screen.

At 1/12/07 09:03 PM, Enders-Army wrote: If your not a Christian, why would you even care about whether God can affect our free will or not?

Its spelt "you're", jerck.

And mostly because it's really really funny and cool stuff to think about. And also because some people base their lives on it. And even worse, some people are forced to base their lives on it.

Are you saying that God still exists, but has no power over us whatsoever?

I'm saying IF he exists, and IF he's supposed to be able to affect free will and IF free will is based on altering basic building blocks for existence, then there is a logical problem IF there is no "astral plane" sorta shit going on.
That's 4 "ifs".

And stop being a douche. You pick on grammar and spelling while making mistakes yourself, and you wrote a giant illegible block of text, just stop doing it and move on. No one gives a shit about spelling on this site, as long as you can spell most words right, but no one will read giant blocks of texts.
So if you want people to reply to what you have to say, then just space out your ideas. No big deal.

At 1/12/07 07:22 AM, DingoTheDog wrote: If god created the universe then god must also be the creator of time. In which case everything we do is pre planned.

Why dont you put this in General, will be good a for few laughs.

Time is nothing more than an invention of mankind to measure...err, well, time.

Besides, if god would be a universal power, he'd have to be obedient to the laws of the universe, including Newton's Third Law. If god created the universe (action), there would have to be an equal and opposed reaction. If the reaction is impossible, or did not occur, than neither did the action.

At 1/13/07 09:02 AM, poxpower wrote:

At 1/12/07 09:03 PM, Enders-Army wrote: If your not a Christian, why would you even care about whether God can affect our free will or not?

Its spelt "you're", jerck.

And mostly because it's really really funny and cool stuff to think about. And also because some people base their lives on it. And even worse, some people are forced to base their lives on it.

Are you saying that God still exists, but has no power over us whatsoever?

I'm saying IF he exists, and IF he's supposed to be able to affect free will and IF free will is based on altering basic building blocks for existence, then there is a logical problem IF there is no "astral plane" sorta shit going on.
That's 4 "ifs".

And stop being a douche. You pick on grammar and spelling while making mistakes yourself, and you wrote a giant illegible block of text, just stop doing it and move on. No one gives a shit about spelling on this site, as long as you can spell most words right, but no one will read giant blocks of texts.
So if you want people to reply to what you have to say, then just space out your ideas. No big deal.

Yes, you are correct. I mistakenly used the possessive "your" instead of using the contraction of "you are". My apologizes.

I do agree that almost all religious topics can be very interesting once you dive down a little deeper into them. And yes, some people do base their lives on the principles of the Bible. Most of the time, in the wrong way. I'm not so sure i agree with you with how some people are forced to base their lives on it. Elaborate please.

Not to offend, but personally I think that might be a tad too many "if"s in one topic. Lets see, as far as I know, the Bible does not say that God can affect our free will, directly I suppose. With that, i'm also assuming that he exists, so that He can be there, but not affecting our free will. The rest of what you said, i'm a little lost on. About how free will is based on altering basic building blocks for existence. Hypothetically speaking.

I'm sorry to say so, but how is it me thats being a douche while I am and have apologized for my mistakes. I did pick on your spelling of "irrelevant". once. But I see that you have also done the same to me with my improper use of "your". So if everythings ok, i guess we can put all that behind us. truce? ^_^

I hope the spaces have helped.

At 1/11/07 10:45 PM, Freemind wrote:

At 1/11/07 09:22 PM, MortifiedPenguins wrote:

I don't think it is a theory, really, but I believe he is correct. Everything in the universe is a chemical reaction and everything behaves as it does for a reason. If you technically knew the precise location of every atom, how energy was flowing through it, all other factors, etc, you could technically tell the future because the patterns are set. The same goes for human behavior since we are just another part of the physical universe.

Couldn't all of this be a basis for a creator spirit.

Besides that, I really don't believe in any of that because basically it has no connection to reality. We'll never find a way to tell it or prove it. And the fact that I'm still able to chose decisions on my own choice still gives me the basis of free will.

At 1/11/07 08:29 AM, poxpower wrote: In conclusion, since everything is made out of those little blocks, if God can't affect free will, then God can't affect ANYTHING.

no bible referances say he can't influence free will...

He just gives us free will. It's a privelidge...

At 1/13/07 03:01 PM, Enders-Army wrote:
Yes, you are correct. I mistakenly used the possessive "your" instead of using the contraction of "you are". My apologizes.

I do agree that almost all religious topics can be very interesting once you dive down a little deeper into them. And yes, some people do base their lives on the principles of the Bible. Most of the time, in the wrong way. I'm not so sure i agree with you with how some people are forced to base their lives on it. Elaborate please.

Indeed, religion quite an interesting phenomenon indeed.

Not to offend, but personally I think that might be a tad too many "if"s in one topic. Lets see, as far as I know, the Bible does not say that God can affect our free will, directly I suppose. With that, i'm also assuming that he exists, so that He can be there, but not affecting our free will. The rest of what you said, i'm a little lost on. About how free will is based on altering basic building blocks for existence. Hypothetically speaking.

I think it's more of a philosophical curiousity that a deep meaningful debate over the possibilities of God and His involvement in our world.

I'll try to explain it one more time. Everything in our world is basically built of the same things: atoms and smaller elementary particles. Even our brain. And our brain is what creates our thoughts, changing stuff in the brain, would change our thoughts. If something can mess with our thoughts, then obviously we don't have free will.

Second part. Since everything in the world is built of the same things, there's no fundamental difference between a brain and a brick. A brain is a bunch of atoms, a brick too. If you can screw around with the atoms in a brick, then you can screw around with the atoms in a brain. There's no fundamental difference in the kind of atoms.

Hence, we conclude that if something can't mess around with the brain, it can't mess around with anything physical at all. So if anyone assumes that we have free will, that means that God can't screw with the brain. Because of the previous, that means that God can't affect our world in any way.

The reason for this argument is that many people say that God has given us free will. It's the common answer to "why is there so much evil and suffering in the world, if God loves us?". Many people answer that it's because we have free will. But poxpower's argument proves that this defense to that question means that God pretty much can't change anything about this world.

I'm sorry to say so, but how is it me thats being a douche while I am and have apologized for my mistakes. I did pick on your spelling of "irrelevant". once. But I see that you have also done the same to me with my improper use of "your". So if everythings ok, i guess we can put all that behind us. truce? ^_^

I hope the spaces have helped.

That they have.

At 1/11/07 08:29 AM, poxpower wrote: Religious topic number 25 823 948 923
Sub-category: God vs Free will
Sub-sub-category: Omnipotence vs free will
sub-sub-sub category: pseudo-scientific babble

=======
Alright here me out homies.

1. Free will assumes we make choices for ourselves.
2. the choices we make take place in our brains
3. our brains are composed of electric currents, and tiny little LEGO bricks.
4. everything is basicaly made with these same bricks.
SO --- if you took a rock and a brain, separated the pieces and put them in a big jar, it would be impossible to know which piece belonged to what in the first place.

5. Influencing the brain would be a matter of moving the bricks around.
6. If God can't influence free will, then it must mean he cannot move the bricks in our brain.
7. Those bricks are exactly the same as all other bricks

In conclusion, since everything is made out of those little blocks, if God can't affect free will, then God can't affect ANYTHING.

yay

can you find the loopholes?
bonus activity ( ask your parents ): you and a friend each pick a household appliance and start praying to it. Whichever appliance grants the most wishe... er prayers is your new God!

Actually the difference between the atoms of the brain, which are mainly composed of muscles, and fat, which is mostly oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, as well as some lesser atoms like sulfur and phosfurus. rocks and minerals are made of similar atoms, such as oxygen and carbon, but also have different atoms such as magneesium, silicon, and iron.

If you take chemistry, you'll also note that the atmos of one particular atom are not always the same. [tridium, deterium, are both hydrogen, but are different]

if you take chemistry, you'll also note that a molecule can be a universe in difference from another molecule if the simplest changes are made to it's atomic arrangement and structure.

Scientists understand how things work, but we are far from understanding why things work.

Another thing, all molecules in the universe are said to be made of energy, modern theologists beleive that this energy is how certain super-natural occurences can be explained in a more scientifical manner. These theories havn't been fully discredited, and shouldn't be discredited for trivial reasons such as inconsistency, as science has always been inconsistent, do you know that there have been dozens of different models for the structure of the atom, they become more accurate with each model.

At 1/13/07 03:01 PM, Enders-Army wrote:

At 1/13/07 09:02 AM, poxpower wrote: Its spelt "you're", jerck.

Yes, you are correct. I mistakenly used the possessive "your" instead of using the contraction of "you are". My apologizes.

XD

LMAO... funniest thing I've read in WEEKS.

I resubmit my request for you to have my babies, pox.

At 1/12/07 06:55 PM, Begoner wrote: Does an electron "choose" where it wants to go or is it driven there by some sort of physical law?

As far as we can tell it goes everywhere it CAN go. And no I'm not making that up.

Take the double-slit experiment mentioned earlier. While it was intended to determine the duality of light as a wave and a particle (which it did with amazing efficiency), it's second purpose (though unintended) allowed us to experimentally conclude that a photon (or electron) if fired on it's own, will go through BOTH slits at the same time.

Situation is thus: When light is shined (shone, whatever) through a single slit the shadow it creates is well-defined. When it is shone through a pair of slits, an interference pattern happend, making the shadows ill-definied and ripple-like. We expect this of a wave. Now we can create photon particles one at a time (the method escapes me). If we fire them (one at a time) through a single slit, the same well-defined image appears. If we fire them (one at a time) through a card with two slits, the interference pattern appears. But, a photon is a particle, and if it goes through but a single slit (as a particle must do) there is nothing with which to interfere, and we should see two well-defined shadows.

what do you call the opposite of a shadow, anyway?

But no, we see an interference pattern, which means that the photon MUST go through both slits at the same time, so that it can interfere with itself.

And if it is driven there by a physical law, how can such a law be random? It's not like the force of gravity differs from one minute to the next; how can any other physical law allow for two possible outcomes given an identical situation?

Welcome to quantum mechanics. Take a gander at Schroedinger's Cat... alive and dead at the same time.

Like someone else already mentioned... trippy shit. Wait till we get to the part of the class that deals with imaginary time... o.O

At 1/14/07 12:02 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote: If you take chemistry, you'll also note that the atmos of one particular atom are not always the same. [tridium, deterium, are both hydrogen, but are different]

He was referring to fundamental particles, not atoms. Everything, absolutely everything that exists can be described as a collection of fermions bound together by bosons. Which is why Pox is making the point that everything is essentially the same, only with a different structure, which leads to the point that if God can't affect the physical properties of free will, he can't affect anything, etc.

At 1/14/07 07:06 AM, Peter-II wrote:

At 1/14/07 12:02 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote: If you take chemistry, you'll also note that the atmos of one particular atom are not always the same. [tridium, deterium, are both hydrogen, but are different]

He was referring to fundamental particles, not atoms. [...]

To cover myself in advance: in my latest explanation I did use atoms, but it was to try and give a more simple (albeit slightly incorrect) version.

In any case, your argument still doesn't fly. Both are hydrogen, but there's a difference, tritium has two neutrons, and the other is one. Both isotopes are built of protons, electrons and neutrons. Which you should know even if you haven't taken anything beyond basic chemistry.