[Avodah] laws of nature

Micha Berger via Avodah avodah at lists.aishdas.org
Tue Sep 6 18:47:07 PDT 2016


On Tue, Aug 30, 2016 at 09:39:47PM +0300, Eli Turkel via Avodah wrote:
: He stresses in the book that the purpose of physics is to determine the
: results in the real world, i.e. the how and not the why. Thus, while
: quantum theory is weird and not understood by anyone QED is much more
: strange.....                                                   He stresses
: that we don't know iof all this really happens but the theory matched many
: experimenst to multiple digits of accuracy and so it is "correct".

This is only since QM. Before that, scientists expected to have a "why"
to justify their equations. (String theorists often find that two theproes
about the geometry of space and of the M-brance that occupy it produce
the same math. And they are now considered identcial theories, even when
they disagree on minor things like how many dimaensions space has.)

BTW, this move keeps religion and science even further apart as
seperate magesteria, dealing with very different topics.

: 1) It is impossible to even theoretically create an experiment that would
: prove or disprove the assertion
: 2) It does nothing to help determine the outcome of any experiment and so
: is irrelevant for physics.
: One can argue for G-d and one can argue for an alien race that determines
: everything in the world using their super-super computer.

But...

1- There could well be other ways to justify the conclusion [that ev
"there is nothing as a law of nature but rather G-d continually guides
every single incident to the identical result."

2- Being irrelevant for physics doesn't mean it's irrelevant for
physicists -- or the rest of us.

And if all science does is give the math by which we describe predictable
patterns of events, then "G-d did it" is on the same level playing ground
as any other explanation. (See my comment above about non-overlapping
magesteria.

Tir'u baTov!
-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             We are what we repeatedly do.
micha at aishdas.org        Thus excellence is not an event,
http://www.aishdas.org   but a habit.
Fax: (270) 514-1507                   - Aristotle



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