Subject: (urth) Information, etc.

From: Kieran Mullen <kieran at ou.edu>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 20:45:04 +0000

> Message: 1
> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 19:46:24 +0000
> From: "Chris" <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Christian relativity
> To: urth at lists.urth.net
> Message-ID: <BAY102-F21EF2C411F60BC596C1F7186CD0 at phx.gbl>
> Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed
>
>>> Check Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen theory and experiments. It has been
>>> conclusively proven that news can spread instanteously, perhaps even
>>> backward in time - but only for the internal purposes of the 
>>> universe.
>>> You cannot transmit information faster than light. Universe can.
>>
>> a) Details.  Cites.
>
> As much as I appreciate an eye for detail, this isn't a physics lists. 
> In
> any event I believe he was not referring to any one particular paper 
> on the
> subject - there is a great deal of talk about EPR and its implications 
> out
> there. You can start with 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_inequality.

The original is:

A. Einstein, B. Podolsky and N. Rosen, “Can Quantum-Mechanical 
Description of Physical Reality Be Considered Complete”, Phys. Rev. 47 
(1935) 777-780.

There are hundreds of papers on this topic, if not thousands.   There 
are books too.   I particularly like:

Speakable and Unspeakable in Quantum Mechanics : Collected Papers on 
Quantum Philosophy  by J. S. Bell

But then, I am a theoretical physicist.   Perusing Amazon.com yielded 
the following book that look a bit more accessible:

The Ghost in the Atom : A Discussion of the Mysteries of Quantum 
Physics (Canto)  by P. C. W. Davies.

> The gist I think of what he was talking about in the paragraph above 
> is that
> there are things that seem to be instantaneous interactions at a 
> distance,
> but that these do not transfer information in any formal sense and 
> thus can
> be considered not to violate relativity. Maybe.

Yep, QM says that when you measure one set of a pair of entangled 
states, you determine the outcome on the other member of the  pair, no 
matter how far they are from you.     OTOH, you can't force a 
particular outcome of your choosing on the pair far away.

You have two pens - a blue and a yellow one.  You randomly separate the 
pens putting each into one of two boxes.   Your friend takes one box to 
Alpha Centauri.   When you look inside your box and see "blue"  you 
instantaneously know that any measurement on Alpha Centauri will 
observe a "yellow" pen.   All is fine and doesn't seem to violate any 
sensibility.

The difficulty is that you can set it up so that you have "green"  (in 
a handwavy sense) in your box - a superposition of "yellow" and "blue" 
that exists until you actually look and see which one it truly is.   
But whatever you measure, your friend will have the other pen.

>
>> b) This is God we're talking about here.  You know - omniscient,
>> omnipotent, omnipresent, creation-ex-nihilo, rising-from-the-dead
>> God.  Is anybody really worried that he couldn't get information
>> out faster than light if He wanted to?
>
> Deists, I would suppose.

Umm.... I suppose it depends upon your form of Deism.   Some would say 
God is bound by the laws of physics.  Others would say that she wrote 
the laws and do whatever she damn well pleases.    Especially since God 
exists outside of time.

Kieran Mullen
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From: David Duffy <david.duffy at qimr.edu.au>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 21:54:23 +0000

I think relativity holds in the NS-SS-LS universe.  Wolfe posits the
presence of FTL and time travel, and makes the breakdown of causality from
our point of view a feature: allowing the miraculous and free will (though
perhaps more for those walking the corridors of time) and determinism, as
well as the mysteries that exceed human understanding.

So, I think for Silkhorn to astral travel "instantaneously" requires time
travel, just not requiring the apparatus many of the others used. Then
it's interesting to compare the fate of Master Ash's attempt to travel
with Severian with that of Silkhorn: viz Ash fades away because "I can
exist [in your world] only if the probability of my existence is high".

David Duffy

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 22:09:46 +0000

Kieran said:
>Umm.... I suppose it depends upon your form of Deism.   Some would say God 
>is bound by the laws of physics.  Others would say that she wrote the laws 
>and do whatever she damn well pleases.    Especially since God exists 
>outside of time.

It's a little more/less complicated than that, and the philosophical problem 
(religion taken for granted) is actually human knowledge/experience. To 
grossly oversimplify, we demand consistency from nature. The religiously 
dangerous course to take is to say that God *can't* violate the laws of 
nature, and some have taken it. The course that has seemed safer to others 
is to say that God can, but *won't*, violate the laws of nature for whatever 
reason - usually because of his benevolence towards us, sometimes because of 
his rationality, etc. Of course to say that God won't violate the laws of 
nature presumes that we can know something - a significant amount, really - 
about God, which is itself kind of a thorny issue.

I have to admit I was just being glib, though.

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2006 22:16:10 +0000

On 4/11/06, Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com> wrote:
> The religiously dangerous course to take is to say that God
> *can't* violate the laws of nature, and some have taken it. The
> course that has seemed safer to others is to say that God can,
> but *won't*, violate the laws of nature for whatever reason - usually
> because of his benevolence towards us, sometimes because of
> his rationality, etc.

Actually, this is (from the Catholic perspective) quite a dangerous
course also, in that it denies miracles, and the Christian (and so
Catholic, and, I presume, Wolfe's) faith is _based_ on miracles,
from the Virgin Birth to the Resurrection, not to exclude (at least
for Catholics) ongoing miracles such as the limited infallibility of
Popes and the transubstantiation of the Host in the Eucharist.

--Dan'l

--
I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
                        -- St Teresa of Avila
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 02:47:22 +0000

> Popes and the transubstantiation of the Host in the Eucharist.

I think Chris is probably thinking more along the lines of Aquinas, 
whose limits to God's power to do the impossible were more about the 
ability of humans to construct paradoxes, prefiguring Godel's Theorem.

As for miracle-based faith, IIRC the only overt miracle formally 
required for Christian belief is Christ's Resurrection. Papal 
infallibility and the incidental qualities of the Host are not 
observable or falsifiable.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 03:29:21 +0000

> ability of humans to construct paradoxes, prefiguring Godel's Theorem.

I see what you mean -- but I read the discussion as being about
physical, as opposed to logical, impossibilities. (Chris? Comment?)
I suppose that you could argue that there's a logical impossibility
in God's violating the physical laws He established, but only if
you assume that He meant for Himself to be bound by them in
the first place.

> observable or falsifiable.

H'mmm. Well, they are required by _Catholic_ (i.e., Wolfe's)
faith, as are the Virgin birth and the Assumption of Mary, plus
miscellaneous miracles Jesus performed along the way. (I'm not
sure what the Church's official position on the various OT miracles
is, or on the miracles in the Acts of the Apostles.) Not to mention
the inspiration of the Bible itself and the Magesterial authority
of, well, the Church (of which Papal infallibility is only a special
case).

Now, if you're talking about "Christian belief," more generally,
then you can find someone who believes or doesn't believe almost
anything and calls himself/herself a Christian. But I think the
vast majority of Christians, even those who like to explain a lot
of the various miracles away by geographical and astronomical
trivia, would agree, at least, on the Virgin birth, miscellaneous
miracles of Christ's ministry, the Resurrection, and at least the
Pentecost miracle (if not some of the healings and freeings and
such) from the Acts.

--Dan'l

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 04:31:38 +0000

David Duffy wrote:

> I think relativity holds in the NS-SS-LS universe. 

Not in any meaningful way, given that the entire premise, that the speed 
of light remains constant relative to all observers, is violated by 
Father Inire's mirrors. '"'Since nothing can exceed the speed of light 
in our universe, the accelerated light leaves it and enters another. 
When it slows again, it reenters ours--naturally at another place.'"'

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:42:47 +0000

>ability of humans to construct paradoxes, prefiguring Godel's Theorem.

Descartes, IIRC, vacillates between indirectly assuming that God can't 
violate natural law or produce true contradictions and that he simply won't. 
If you look for it you'll find some confusion in the Cartesian tradition on 
precisely this point. I'm thinking of Descartes because he had a somewhat 
more direct influence on the modern scientific worldview. In any event Dan'l 
is correct that either way you cut it you find yourself in some trouble, and 
some thinkers spent an awful lot of time trying to work around that, to 
varying degrees of success.

>observable or falsifiable.

There is a general problem with saying that the Christian *faith* is "based 
on" miracles. Basically if you know, by whatever means, that the event is 
possible, then it doesn't require faith at all. In its ideal form, faith 
would admit that the event was rationally impossible, and believe in it 
anyway.

Now Hume assumed just what you and Dan'l have said - that the Christian 
faith is based on miracles - and then gave a tricky little proof that 
miracles were impossible. I say tricky because the main body of the proof is 
mostly handwaving, and the meat of his position is hidden in the definitions 
he uses. A miracle, he says, is something which contradicts the laws of 
nature. Now for Hume a "law of nature" is a customary connection that is 
made when a certain effect is *always*, uniformly, conjoined with a certain 
cause. Thus if we ever *did* have an experience that didn't conform, Hume 
would oblige us to say, not that we had witnessed a miracle, but that we 
were mistaken about the law of nature (since, obviously, the "miraculous" 
event is an experience that breaks the uniformity of the connection). This 
isn't all that different from what we do today with scientific theories, 
except we don't call those "laws of nature" generally. If an experiment 
contradicts theory, we don't say it's a miracle, we say our theory isn't 
complete.

In any event Wittgenstein later said something astute about miracles - which 
I don't think were a matter of general concern to him - that went something 
like: it makes no sense to talk about whether a miracle does or doesn't 
break a law of nature, because to look at an event with an eye to its causes 
is a completely different way of looking at it than the way of looking at it 
as a miracle... when you give an explanation, what you explain is only the 
*event*, and the miracle is nowhere to be found in it.

In any event the same might be said to apply to Wolfe. We can (and are 
driven to) come up with causal explanations for some of the wondrous and 
confusing events in his stories. When we do it seems like we're assuming 
that there was nothing wondrous about the event in the first place; but the 
wonder we experience when first reading the story is nowhere to be found in 
the events we try to explain.

[Please accept that last paragraph as my belated excuse for wandering so far 
afield with this convo. See, it has something to do with Wolfe after all!]

---

From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 19:54:18 +0000

>you assume that He meant for Himself to be bound by them in

Generally yes, although keep in mind that logical and physical 
impossibilities were not clearly separated from each other with a lot of 
these thinkers. What the rationalists really wanted was a way to derive all 
the physical laws from logic, and even some non-rationalists have this 
hidden assumption that there is such a connection... that deep down, if you 
knew enough, you would see that physical impossibilities were also logical 
impossibilities. At the same time they *did* distinguish between physical 
science and logic, and the statements/truths thereof, but on actual 
examination I think most of these boil down to the simple fact that we don't 
know enough about physical science. You'll probably catch me lumping the two 
together in that last post as well - IIRC Descartes sometimes blurs the line 
between logical/physical impossibilities in just that way, in the space of a 
single sentence, and that was what I was echoing.

There are some modern philosophers who blur this line in a different way, 
and with a somewhat more limited scope, but to be honest I don't fully 
understand them and, at first glance I'm not particularly enamored with 
their arguments.

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2006 22:18:15 +0000

I think Chris & I are in violent agreement here.

> would admit that the event was rationally impossible, and believe in it

I think this is more-or-less true; the loophole in it is, "with God all
things are possible." In other words: Event X is a miracle if it is
outside the scope of physical-logical possibility, _and happens
anyway_. (Some scientistic zealots have discussed the idea of
a "thermodynamic miracle," in which something not quite impossible
but wildly improbable occurs; I regard this as a non-miracle, since,
if I'm not mistaken, the odds against any given state of the universe
occurring dwarf the term "astronomical" -- yet the universe continues
having states. Of course, the universe itself is a miracle, but that's
another topic.)

The point being that, if the idea of God is accepted as a premiss,
then miracles are rationally possible. Whether God _does_ pass
miracles or not is (again) another matter, and has more to do with
the purported character of God than with logic. ("You say Jehovah,
I say YHWH -- let's call the whole thing God.") But the rational or
irrational character of God is precisely beyond our ability to determine
-- God is _by definition_ beyond our ability to get at by experiment,
and, while we can reason about God, we cannot prove that the
basis of our reasoning is valid. Ergo, back to the irrational...

But when I say that the Christian faith is predicated on belief in
miracles, I mean something like what CS Lewis said fifty years
and change ago: if one does not believe that Christ was resurrected
from the dead, then one should not refer to oneself as a "Christian,"
no matter how good you think his moral teachings were. It dilutes
the term, which has a fairly clear meaning.

> Now Hume assumed just what you and Dan'l have said - that the
> Christian faith is based on miracles - and then gave a tricky little proof
> that miracles were impossible. I say tricky because the main body of
> the proof is mostly handwaving,

Yep. Agreed completely. I think Hume was by-and-large a very fine
thinker, but not here. (I love the bit where he observes that, having
reached a certain conclusion, there's really nothing for the thinker
to do but go play a game of billiards or have a drink with some friends.)

> A miracle, he says, is something which contradicts the laws of
> made when a certain effect is *always*, uniformly, conjoined with a
> certain cause.

It is worth noting in passing here that one of the things Hume was
after was proving that we do not in fact "know" any laws of nature,
because we can't prove that _any_ effect is _always_ consequent
upon a purported cause: he clearly dismissed the idea of
inductive reasoning...

> In any event Wittgenstein later said something astute about miracles -
> which I don't think were a matter of general concern to him - that went
> something like: it makes no sense to talk about whether a miracle does
> or doesn't break a law of nature, because to look at an event with an eye
> to its causes is a completely different way of looking at it than the way of
> looking at it as a miracle...

I do love Wittgenstein. I don't always agree with him but I do here.

> wonder we experience when first reading the story is nowhere to be found
> in the events we try to explain.

Thus, the cathedral of the Pelerines rising into the air...

--Dan'l

---

From: don doggett <kingwukong at yahoo.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 03:47:16 +0000

> the term, which has a fairly clear meaning.

At least since the time of Constantine. It's funny how
the point of a sword will clarify things. . . around
200 a.d.  the meaning was a little fuzzier. That said,
I agree the term Christian in the modern age belongs
to those who accept the resurrection, though I think
it's unfortunate and leaves the religion poorer as a
whole. Not trying to pick a fight, just throwing one
in for the fringe.

Don

__________________________________________________
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---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 03:56:33 +0000

> you assume that He meant for Himself to be bound by them in

I mean things like disproving God's omnipotence by asking can God make a 
rock so big He can't lift it. This shortcoming is only valid in a 
superficial, rhetorical sense. Mathematically, this is a comparison of 
two infinite quantities, and their lack of finite magnitude is more 
apparent.

> miscellaneous miracles Jesus performed along the way. 

I think this leads to another rhetorical paradox; how can the church be 
truly catholic and universal if they exclude followers of Jesus who 
don't have the same "miracles believed in" boxes checked off?

I am going by the Nicean Creed when I say the miracle of Christ's 
Resurrection is the only overt miracle required for belief. The divine 
and virginal origin of Jesus is not something that would require obvious 
mirqaculous goings on, but an obviously dead first century man gettinng 
up and talking, then floating into the sky, in front of multiple 
witnesses, that would have to be miraculous.

---

From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 04:07:02 +0000

> having states. Of course, the universe itself is a miracle, but that's

The Resurrection would be a non-miracle in this sense, becasue there is 
nothing to prevent the atoms in a body from rearranging themselves into 
a pattern allowing that body to resume living. However, the *proportion* 
of living states to nonliving states is miniscule indeed.

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 13 Apr 2006 05:23:06 +0000

On 4/12/06, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
> superficial, rhetorical sense.

Oh, ayuh. In fact, the paradox is based on a kind of dimbulb definition
of "omnipotence." (Oddly, you can defuse it by using a very folksy
definition: "the ability to do anything one wants." Then, if God wants
to make a stone so heavy He can't lift it, He can make it. To say "He
can't lift it" is irrelevant because, since He wants it to be so heavy
He can't lift it, lifting it is not covered by this definition...)

> Mathematically, this is a comparison of

yep.

> don't have the same "miracles believed in" boxes checked off?

Actually, the position of the Roman Catholic Church -- which understandably
offends some Protestants -- is that all Christians (including "anonymous
Christians," those saved by the grace of Christ though they never in this
life accepted, or even heard, the Gospel) _are_ members of the Catholic
Church. They are sometimes referred to in Catholic documents as
"separated brethren." -- Most Protestants also believe in a single
Church, the supernatural Body of Christ and all that, also; this is what
Credal Protestants refer to in the "one Catholic church" bit of the
Apostle's creed. It's the Roman church's insistence that the Roman
church _is_ that one Catholic Church that offends many Protestants...

> Resurrection is the only overt miracle required for belief.

H'mmm.

This is, I believe, the Lutheran Book of Worship translation:

We believe in one God,
the Father, the Almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
of one Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven:
by the power of the Holy Spirit
he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.
On the third day he rose again
in accordance with the Scriptures;
he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified.
He has spoken through the Prophets.
We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.
We look for the resurrection of the dead,
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

In this I see (at least!) the following miracules specifically
mentioned or referenced:

- Creation
- Incarnation of the eternal Son
- Virgin birth
- Christ's Resurrection
- Christ's ascension
- Prophecy (fulfilled)
- General resurrection (expected, not already happened,
  but belief in it is still part of this definitional Creed)

> The divine and virginal origin of Jesus is not something that would
> require obvious mirqaculous goings on,

Um ... _how's_ that again? On what planet are these things ordinary
occurrences? _Not_ the one I grew up on.

> but an obviously dead first century man gettinng

Well, yes...

--Dan'l

---

From: Iorwerth Thomas <iorweththomas at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 20:44:25 +0000

>Popes and the transubstantiation of the Host in the Eucharist.

Depends on what value one assigns 'miracle', I guess.  (But as a wicked 
Anglican, and hence neither truely Catholic nor Protestant, I _would_ say 
that. :) )

Siding with Wittgenstein here also.  Does this count as a form of argumentum 
ad populum?

---

From: Iorwerth Thomas <iorweththomas at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 21:00:17 +0000

Quick addendum:  A lot depends on the value assigned to 'law of nature', as 
well.  I suspect Whiteheadean Process Theists of having a view that's 
similar to a 'contigent regularity subject to gradual evolution + God' 
concept of the laws of nature, as opposed to the 'stable laws layed down in 
stone' concept that seems to be the norm, so even within broadly defined 
theistic contexts there are quite few options [1].  I'll admit to not being 
entirely sure enough of the relationship between the 'laws of nature in our 
heads' and the ones 'out there' to be able to construct a clear account of 
the term 'miracle' in terms of the violation of either.  Which may just be 
me.

[1]  The former of those two requires that you read Whitehead though, who is 
not what I'd call a great prose stylist...

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2006 21:53:45 +0000

> Anglican, and hence neither truely Catholic nor Protestant, I _would_ say

Heh.

I grew up Episcopal(ian), meaning "Anglican without Queen and
Canterbury." Neither truly Catholic, truly Protestant, or even truly
Anglican -- kind of a Trinitarian version of the Unitarian church. 8*)

> Siding with Wittgenstein here also.  Does this count as a form of
> argumentum ad populum?

Argument from Authority, I think... depending on whether you
think of Wittgenstein as an "authority." I think of him as "very
cool." I still love Prop 7.0

--Dan'l

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 19:36:46 +0000

David Duffy said:
>travel, just not requiring the apparatus many of the others used.

Yes. As I've argued repeatedly in the past, the Rajan's astral travel
definitely permits and includes time-travel. The first evidence of it
was when Silk saw an astral-traveling Oreb fly out of his window and
fade away at a time in the story when the Oreb had a broken wing.
I don't know of another explanation for that event.

That Silk should eventually gain power over Time was prefigured
in the subtle associations of him with Zervan 
(http://www.well.com/~davidu/leontosphere_jp70.jpg):
an association that confused me until I read The Short Sun.
Perhaps there is another such association with Horn somewhere.

J