Information, etc.

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.

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.

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

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

Kieran said:

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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.'"'

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.

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!]

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.

I think Chris & I are in violent agreement here.

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.

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.)

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...

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

Thus, the cathedral of the Pelerines rising into the air... --Dan'l

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

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.

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.

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.

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...)

yep.

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...

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)

Um ... how's that again? On what planet are these things ordinary occurrences? Not the one I grew up on.

Well, yes... --Dan'l

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?

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...

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*)

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

David Duffy said:

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