When you mix the most "spiritually transformative" substance described with the most "spiritually inhibitory" substance... something weird's probably going to happen.;)
Referring to the 17th-century French philosopher who wrote, "I think, therefore I am," Tonegawa says, "Rene Descartes didn't believe the mind can be studied as a natural science. He was wrong. This experimental method is the ultimate way of demonstrating that mind, like memory recall, is based on changes in matter."
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. The Mind-Body Problem isn't going down quite that easily.
This issue isn't whether the brain participates in mental phenomena (that's been clearly known since the first time a caveman hit another one in the head with a rock), but whether physical processes are sufficient in themselves to capture the range of capabilities of "mind". To support that, one would need to, on some level, show an equivalency of a broad set of mental abstraction to a set of brain processes. That is, basically, to be able to use the abstraction and the supposed brain mapping essentially interchangably for the purposes of description or logic.
Take, say, "freedom", as one of a broad range of "mental entities". It's insufficient to show, say, an EEG representation of a brain with an individual "thinking about freedom", and claim you've captured the content materially. Apart from the difficulties of teasing apart the concept itself from the feelings about it generated in his brain by the concept, his personal mental associations with it, associatable but not definitionally-equivalent memories, etc., which we cannot presently do on at minimum a technological level, there is a bigger issue here of whether this is even theoretically, or logically, possible--ever. Those neurochemical activities occurring when "contemplating freedom", even constraining ourselves to one particular individual, are -not- the same meaning and content as "freedom". If they were, we should be able to interchangeably say, "Ron Paul is for freedom" and "Ron Paul is for..." and hold up an EEG of test subject thinking about freedom, and have these two approaches be equivalent in content for all uses of the concept "freedom" in all contexts of discussion and logical inference. That is the criteria by which one could know they have fully and accurately mapped mental concepts to brain processes. In reality, this example fails right out of the gate, in that we would have, at best, the mapping for one or a few individuals (which, in the distinctions between the individual brains would break equivalence another way...), not something that could answer "point to a complete physical description of the concept 'freedom' as it exists in the world". Thinking of other possible examples of attempts to retain equivalence between the concept and the picture quickly make it clear claiming equivalence would be absurd, e.g. "Would you sacrifice that freedom for a million dollars?". Hence, they are not equivalent, and a physical mapping cannot be claimed for at least a broad class of this type of mental phenomena.
Really, this dilemma has been around for a couple thousand years in philosophy, and not because people didn't understand the brain was associated with mental processes, or had not investigated neurobiology to our current degree of breadth and specificity. The questions the Mind-Body Problem poses are not fundamentally technological and will not be solvable by that means, however headline-grabbing finding another thinking-or-feeling associated process may be for neuroscience. Quite simply--"is associated with", materially in the brain, is not equivalent to "is", conceptually in the mind.
Lest I be accused of worldview bias here, here's a good overview, presented, incidentally, by a Professor of Philosophy who is also quite vocally atheist. Further references from over the last 2000 years of Western Philosophy, forwarded from people of all manner of metaphysical presuppositions, can be googled at will.
The "meat" is just a substrate for the information and state--if you've ever successfully installed Linux on a flash drive, and later booted it up on another body... I mean, computer... the religious concepts shouldn't pose too much of a metaphysical dilemma for you.
There is a strong argument that the possibility of eternal life was first provided to humanity by Jesus, as a significant part of what made his teaching quite revelatory within the context of Judaism. It's well codified in the positions of most Protestant beliefs: sin means everyone has fallen short of the glory of God, hence when you die, you aren't entitled to eternal life, and don't get it. Previous to Jesus, that would have been the (at least near-term) end of the story, as he was crucified as universal atonement and that alone makes it possible to modify that outcome.
So, in fact, though you seem to be an odd candidate for a fundamentalist, the progressive nature of man's knowledge and circumstances over time must be taken into account beyond simple reading of words found anywhere in the bible in any context. It is, in brief, quite non-surprising to an informed student of Christianity that the Old Testament makes such statements.
Further, one should note that it can be quite true that certain things are characteristic of the nature of being dead, so long as one is dead, and it is specifically the possibility of "ceasing to be dead" that Christianity proposes--and this does not mean a preceding assertion about the nature of being dead, applying so long as one is dead, is contradicted.
tl;dr: These quotes are not characteristic of conclusions drawn from the overall content and thematic direction of the bible, and do not suffice as a contradiction, either. Sorry if your hope and demand for your "natural deselection", and resulting irrelevance, is impeded by this post. I'll make it up with your associates, afterward.
If that isn't clear enough, try a few sentences down:
For example, the population of a city might only be known to the nearest thousand and be stated as 52,000, while the population of a country might only be known to the nearest million and be stated as 52,000,000. The former might be in error by hundreds, and the latter might be in error by hundreds of thousands, but both have two significant figures (5 and 2).
Same situation. The trailing zeros are -not- significant, only the 5 and the 2, as directly stated, applying to both examples.
Somewhere between "allegory" and "direct contradiction a few paragraphs apart that the whole history of Judaism somehow amazingly missed", is the proper division and understanding of what's literal and what's not, I suggest.
No, it says three. This is, per how significant digits works, specifying a value between 3.0 and 3.49 (...999999...).
Nowhere does it say "3.0", and if it did say "3.1", you'd just assert that's wrong, it should have said "3.14". And if it said that, no, it's 3.141... ad infinitum.
Nice touch adding the direct lie about the bible's content to the standard absurd hypocrisy of this parroted claim, though.
So, it can not ever be calculated absolutely, even when dealing with a mathematically-ideal, rather than real-world, "circle", but the bible should have stated it as calculated absolutely, otherwise it's wrong?
I'm just trying to convey basic mathematical principles, as applied to real-world objects here, not even getting into the incredible hypocrisy of setting your expectations at what you already know, and directly say yourself, would be impossible to put down in text with a precision that wouldn't make it "wrong". Can we at least agree on the first part here?
But the Bible says Adam and Eve were created at the same time (as well as the story of Eve's later creation with the rib thing).
Actually... it doesn't. Review the exact words used with respect to Adam and how he came to be in the Garden, and which allegorical "day" female (and male) humans per se were created on, and which "day" Eve was.
"Sin" is, to be specific, disobedience to God. This creates a specific metaphysical scope. The previous humans would not have been, within this model, moral agents in the same sense as Adam and Eve. I suggest, considering for yourself carefully what the implications of this would be.
But, I phrase things relatively poorly. Here's something better said:
"When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom."
A better way to get a fundamentalist confused is to ask them "Who was created first, Adam and Eve or the animals?"
1. Animals per se
2. Pre-adamic humans
3. -Eve-.
4. Adam's animals
Next?
Note: 4 requires understanding that definition and creation are quite similar things, per long-standing note in Western Philosophy (see subjective identity versus objective identity). 3 is stated that way by me so you don't veer from failing to open your mind enough for a critical insight that answers vast tracts of the moral dilemmas 99% of the population is, and you will remain, permanently stuck on. Don't worry, I'll clarify later for you (disclaimer: may be personally catastrophic for you at that time), since right now you aren't making the effort to -deserve- to understand 3.;)
So you're suggesting that if this was stated as having been found in a population of insects, having evolved that leg configuration over the last 3000 -hours-, by BioScience Journal, you'd doubt the claim for a second?
So, you're saying if I measured anything somebody referenced as a "circle", say, something made out of bricks--when I measured the radius and diameter, by some approximate means, I should come up with exactly pi?
Wait. I mean, -has this ever been the case for anything in physical reality-, -ever in time-, regardless of my specified means of "measuring", from most accurate possible through least accurate possible, where this would happen, even leaving aside the fact that nowhere is making and/or providing an exact measurement anywhere proposed by the verse?
Wait, I mean, has there ever been a "circle" constructed of anything, in actual reality, rather than mathematical abstraction, where measured circumference divided by measured diameter is correctly stated as precisely pi?
Sorry, your idea is so unreal I'm having difficulty even finding the best of many ways to express your expectation as being completely erroneous.
Number of legs on an insect being the one thing evolution couldn't have changed, then?
Species are people naming things, even with the added air of authority of using Latin. Linnaean Taxonomy is not "how things really are", it is people naming stuff, according to largely-subjective criteria. Naming conventions rarely do, and never have to, fully correspond, as is the case with "species" and "kind".
The overall concept of evolution is no longer a theory. Surely even the staunchest of Creationists must acknowledge the so called "short-term" evolution that gives us the ability to manipulate plants or breed wolves into dogs.
Since nothing in science ever actually "graduates" from a highly-tested "theory" into "fact" (yes, it's become remarkably popular to claim lately--still, as always, completely invalid science to claim any theory ever becomes absolute and non-provisional with respect to future data, NAS claims or no), I'd have to call this in particular "observable fact" (and, incidentally, well-known and described in terms of hybridization in Really Old Theistic Book).
On the other hand, the usual equivocation of "evolution", that is "evolutionary processes as the sole post-abiogenesis causal determinant of biological characteristics", isn't a theory, because it can't even be a scientific hypothesis--because it's wholly untestable.
Yes, atheists, I know you could care less about what you can validly say per valid science and which constrains your research and/or teaching of it in no way whatsoever, "evolution occurs"--and are only interested in advancing, essentially, the particular qualification "only evolution occurs". Unfortunately, that is not a scientific hypothesis, but a hopeful non-sequitur epistemologically equivalent to an inference from anecdotal information. Still not science when you -really-, -really- wish it was because of the inference you so want to make.
You cannot test for an absence of design, with respect to the distant past, any more than you can if I handed you a test-tube, noted it contains a virus, and refused to say whether me walking toward you from the Genetic Engineering Lab means that's where I got it, however much you're free to examine it afterward.
When it's said and done
I'll have my fun
I can chew anything I bite
--Ted Nugent
Many, many blank assertions and semantic rescoping here, but, to address just the one notion, there is precisely -zero- difference between the plausibility of the Interpretations by reference to science. That you may prefer, say, the Copenhagen Interpretation is purely your personal predispositions as to what you consider more plausible, or equally likely in this case, what you will tell yourself is more plausible due to having implications you like, while knowing you have no basis for your preference which has any basis in science. I am glad you teach quantum physics. I again suggest you review David Deutsch's (greater) qualifications, and his stances (which, should be comfortably harmonious as a baseline for you, as he is an ardent supporter of Dawkins)--so that you can teach quantum mechanics well. Suggesting that science judges Everett more "exotic", in the face of no scientific basis at all for such a relative characterization, gives me pause in that regard. Certainly, the notion that mere observation causes waveform collapse has its own issues of intuitive plausibility, even if preferred by you because it seems more pleasant to your preference in worldview.
...real precognition, as opposed to insight brought about by deep study and knowledge, doesn't just bridge a gap of incomplete information with a brilliant guess, it leaps a gap of no knowledge, an impossible gap, to make a prediction that simply cannot be supported by the available evidence.
So... merely semantically and tautologically true, then. If we specify that we are talking about the proposable methods of precognition that would be impossible, indeed, they would be impossible. This has, however, nothing to do with the discussion or the communicable heuristics and -subset- of "all knowledge" necessary for any actual proposed case of precognition.
As for your Universe/multiverse argument, well, this mirrors the standard semantic argument that "there is no supernatural, because if there were, it'd be natural". The terminology used is irrelevant here, it is the scope of content we are each using that matters. In that respect, if there is another dimension/universe, the limitation of information representation of -our- universe, within the wider scope inclusive of that one, goes away entirely. Once again, this statement I'm making -as if- I had made your hoped-for assertion that "omniscience" is necessary for "precognition"--what I haven't, and it isn't.
That's fine, but neither you nor anyone else should give credence to the real objective existence of this additional complexity without solid evidence
I have solid evidence. You do not. It really is that simple--evidence does not have to be reproducible, universally known, or universally assented to, for it to be evidence. You are quite capable of -knowing-, say, that your wife is cheating on you if you directly observe her doing so, even in the face of her and his denials, and an utter non-reproducibility for others of the -fact- you know -empirically- (that is, via sense data). Would, for the general case, I be as skeptical as you given a claim such as mine, and for the general case, would I prefer broadly-reproducible evidence? Yes, definitely. However, I'm also willing to recognize that entities exist (say, thousands of individuals and groups) that a) cause effects in the world, and b) prefer that their actions and methods are not broadly analyzed, and have the means to accomplish that. That is why I decided to test this question by the long-established methodology--that is, as you may have heard/guessed, the method of asking the relevant entity for demonstration. If you can pause to recognize that this not being -your- preferred methodology actually matters in no way at all, you may wish to try the same test at some point.
Sure, so next, provide me with evidence that any sort of multiverse model is correct.
No.
Well, that was easy. You may, though, want to look into the history of the Everett Interpretation and/or the particular qualifications of the person I quoted. It has a well, and long, established inferential plausibility.
provide me with the double blind, statistically significant evidence and you can take the quotes off of the word "empirical".
No.
Net facts about reality altered by either of the above responses: None. Degree to which "fact" and "demonstrable by scientific method" have changed from the usual actual reality of being discrete sets: None.
Finally, your assertion that e.g. the NSA could conceivably predict the kind of stuff that would count as "precognition" simply demonstrates that you don't understand computational complexity.
No, you simply don't understand a straightforward alternate -means- of making the determination from the one you are fixated on to fit your preloaded argument, or you choose not to acknowledge it.
The Universe is its own basically irreducible information theoretic representation, which is the fundamental reason an information-theoretic Laplace Demon argument is a proof that if God exists, God must be the Universe itself.
Again, per your scoping of "Universe", and presuming that we are aware of all forms of information representation, and presuming only "material" existence exists, and assuming that "precognition" requires this in the first place. Has all of the foregoing simply been an awkward means for you to insert an atheistic argument?
Slashdot Mirror
Wake me when the verse widens the scope it's addressing to "lesser, lesser lights".
For the record, I'm an Old Earth Creationist (OEC), not a Young Earth Creationist (YEC).
Some arguments against "creationism" are just too lame to not address, though.
Yes, because the bible says it does.
Oh wait, it doesn't.
But, you should probably inform these guys they are no longer allowed to call their products "lights"...
http://commercial.veluxusa.com/commercial/products/
Bonus points: What percentage of light from the original source, as opposed to reflected light, do you see from a standard frosted light bulb?
Probably had a theist on staff.
When you mix the most "spiritually transformative" substance described with the most "spiritually inhibitory" substance... something weird's probably going to happen. ;)
Referring to the 17th-century French philosopher who wrote, "I think, therefore I am," Tonegawa says, "Rene Descartes didn't believe the mind can be studied as a natural science. He was wrong. This experimental method is the ultimate way of demonstrating that mind, like memory recall, is based on changes in matter."
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. The Mind-Body Problem isn't going down quite that easily.
This issue isn't whether the brain participates in mental phenomena (that's been clearly known since the first time a caveman hit another one in the head with a rock), but whether physical processes are sufficient in themselves to capture the range of capabilities of "mind". To support that, one would need to, on some level, show an equivalency of a broad set of mental abstraction to a set of brain processes. That is, basically, to be able to use the abstraction and the supposed brain mapping essentially interchangably for the purposes of description or logic.
Take, say, "freedom", as one of a broad range of "mental entities". It's insufficient to show, say, an EEG representation of a brain with an individual "thinking about freedom", and claim you've captured the content materially. Apart from the difficulties of teasing apart the concept itself from the feelings about it generated in his brain by the concept, his personal mental associations with it, associatable but not definitionally-equivalent memories, etc., which we cannot presently do on at minimum a technological level, there is a bigger issue here of whether this is even theoretically, or logically, possible--ever. Those neurochemical activities occurring when "contemplating freedom", even constraining ourselves to one particular individual, are -not- the same meaning and content as "freedom". If they were, we should be able to interchangeably say, "Ron Paul is for freedom" and "Ron Paul is for..." and hold up an EEG of test subject thinking about freedom, and have these two approaches be equivalent in content for all uses of the concept "freedom" in all contexts of discussion and logical inference. That is the criteria by which one could know they have fully and accurately mapped mental concepts to brain processes. In reality, this example fails right out of the gate, in that we would have, at best, the mapping for one or a few individuals (which, in the distinctions between the individual brains would break equivalence another way...), not something that could answer "point to a complete physical description of the concept 'freedom' as it exists in the world". Thinking of other possible examples of attempts to retain equivalence between the concept and the picture quickly make it clear claiming equivalence would be absurd, e.g. "Would you sacrifice that freedom for a million dollars?". Hence, they are not equivalent, and a physical mapping cannot be claimed for at least a broad class of this type of mental phenomena.
Really, this dilemma has been around for a couple thousand years in philosophy, and not because people didn't understand the brain was associated with mental processes, or had not investigated neurobiology to our current degree of breadth and specificity. The questions the Mind-Body Problem poses are not fundamentally technological and will not be solvable by that means, however headline-grabbing finding another thinking-or-feeling associated process may be for neuroscience. Quite simply--"is associated with", materially in the brain, is not equivalent to "is", conceptually in the mind.
Lest I be accused of worldview bias here, here's a good overview, presented, incidentally, by a Professor of Philosophy who is also quite vocally atheist. Further references from over the last 2000 years of Western Philosophy, forwarded from people of all manner of metaphysical presuppositions, can be googled at will.
Very ergonomically designed, and responsive, too.
Oh wait. Were still doing analogy.
If you can be on Slashdot and somehow still not get that correlation isn't causality, sure.
The "meat" is just a substrate for the information and state--if you've ever successfully installed Linux on a flash drive, and later booted it up on another body... I mean, computer... the religious concepts shouldn't pose too much of a metaphysical dilemma for you.
There is a strong argument that the possibility of eternal life was first provided to humanity by Jesus, as a significant part of what made his teaching quite revelatory within the context of Judaism. It's well codified in the positions of most Protestant beliefs: sin means everyone has fallen short of the glory of God, hence when you die, you aren't entitled to eternal life, and don't get it. Previous to Jesus, that would have been the (at least near-term) end of the story, as he was crucified as universal atonement and that alone makes it possible to modify that outcome.
So, in fact, though you seem to be an odd candidate for a fundamentalist, the progressive nature of man's knowledge and circumstances over time must be taken into account beyond simple reading of words found anywhere in the bible in any context. It is, in brief, quite non-surprising to an informed student of Christianity that the Old Testament makes such statements.
Further, one should note that it can be quite true that certain things are characteristic of the nature of being dead, so long as one is dead, and it is specifically the possibility of "ceasing to be dead" that Christianity proposes--and this does not mean a preceding assertion about the nature of being dead, applying so long as one is dead, is contradicted.
tl;dr: These quotes are not characteristic of conclusions drawn from the overall content and thematic direction of the bible, and do not suffice as a contradiction, either. Sorry if your hope and demand for your "natural deselection", and resulting irrelevance, is impeded by this post. I'll make it up with your associates, afterward.
Did you even read -that one sentence-?
Notice the word "EXCEPT".
If that isn't clear enough, try a few sentences down:
For example, the population of a city might only be known to the nearest thousand and be stated as 52,000, while the population of a country might only be known to the nearest million and be stated as 52,000,000. The former might be in error by hundreds, and the latter might be in error by hundreds of thousands, but both have two significant figures (5 and 2).
Same situation. The trailing zeros are -not- significant, only the 5 and the 2, as directly stated, applying to both examples.
Ah, "30", and "10", without a trailing decimal, are both -one- significant digit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Significant_figures
There you go, enjoy. Grade school, if you insist.
Somewhere between "allegory" and "direct contradiction a few paragraphs apart that the whole history of Judaism somehow amazingly missed", is the proper division and understanding of what's literal and what's not, I suggest.
Good luck.
No, it says three. This is, per how significant digits works, specifying a value between 3.0 and 3.49 (...999999...).
Nowhere does it say "3.0", and if it did say "3.1", you'd just assert that's wrong, it should have said "3.14". And if it said that, no, it's 3.141... ad infinitum.
Nice touch adding the direct lie about the bible's content to the standard absurd hypocrisy of this parroted claim, though.
So, it can not ever be calculated absolutely, even when dealing with a mathematically-ideal, rather than real-world, "circle", but the bible should have stated it as calculated absolutely, otherwise it's wrong?
I'm just trying to convey basic mathematical principles, as applied to real-world objects here, not even getting into the incredible hypocrisy of setting your expectations at what you already know, and directly say yourself, would be impossible to put down in text with a precision that wouldn't make it "wrong". Can we at least agree on the first part here?
Okay, yes, I already know more about all the philosophy terms you've mentioned than you do.
But let's back up. Are you saying the bible should, or should not, have expressed this measurement of a circle-like, real-world object, as being pi?
But the Bible says Adam and Eve were created at the same time (as well as the story of Eve's later creation with the rib thing).
Actually... it doesn't. Review the exact words used with respect to Adam and how he came to be in the Garden, and which allegorical "day" female (and male) humans per se were created on, and which "day" Eve was.
"Sin" is, to be specific, disobedience to God. This creates a specific metaphysical scope. The previous humans would not have been, within this model, moral agents in the same sense as Adam and Eve. I suggest, considering for yourself carefully what the implications of this would be.
But, I phrase things relatively poorly. Here's something better said:
"When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom."
2.5.
Though, for further consideration, from a scientific viewpoint, when would a clone be -first- "created"?
He said, "O Lord, there are many around the drinking trough, but there is nothing in the cistern."
--Thomas
Eh, couldn't resist.
A better way to get a fundamentalist confused is to ask them "Who was created first, Adam and Eve or the animals?"
;)
1. Animals per se
2. Pre-adamic humans
3. -Eve-.
4. Adam's animals
Next?
Note: 4 requires understanding that definition and creation are quite similar things, per long-standing note in Western Philosophy (see subjective identity versus objective identity). 3 is stated that way by me so you don't veer from failing to open your mind enough for a critical insight that answers vast tracts of the moral dilemmas 99% of the population is, and you will remain, permanently stuck on. Don't worry, I'll clarify later for you (disclaimer: may be personally catastrophic for you at that time), since right now you aren't making the effort to -deserve- to understand 3.
So you're suggesting that if this was stated as having been found in a population of insects, having evolved that leg configuration over the last 3000 -hours-, by BioScience Journal, you'd doubt the claim for a second?
So, you're saying if I measured anything somebody referenced as a "circle", say, something made out of bricks--when I measured the radius and diameter, by some approximate means, I should come up with exactly pi?
Wait. I mean, -has this ever been the case for anything in physical reality-, -ever in time-, regardless of my specified means of "measuring", from most accurate possible through least accurate possible, where this would happen, even leaving aside the fact that nowhere is making and/or providing an exact measurement anywhere proposed by the verse?
Wait, I mean, has there ever been a "circle" constructed of anything, in actual reality, rather than mathematical abstraction, where measured circumference divided by measured diameter is correctly stated as precisely pi?
Sorry, your idea is so unreal I'm having difficulty even finding the best of many ways to express your expectation as being completely erroneous.
Number of legs on an insect being the one thing evolution couldn't have changed, then?
Species are people naming things, even with the added air of authority of using Latin. Linnaean Taxonomy is not "how things really are", it is people naming stuff, according to largely-subjective criteria. Naming conventions rarely do, and never have to, fully correspond, as is the case with "species" and "kind".
Weird. You don't believe souls exist in reality, but believe ideal mathematical circles do. How does that work?
The overall concept of evolution is no longer a theory. Surely even the staunchest of Creationists must acknowledge the so called "short-term" evolution that gives us the ability to manipulate plants or breed wolves into dogs.
Since nothing in science ever actually "graduates" from a highly-tested "theory" into "fact" (yes, it's become remarkably popular to claim lately--still, as always, completely invalid science to claim any theory ever becomes absolute and non-provisional with respect to future data, NAS claims or no), I'd have to call this in particular "observable fact" (and, incidentally, well-known and described in terms of hybridization in Really Old Theistic Book).
On the other hand, the usual equivocation of "evolution", that is "evolutionary processes as the sole post-abiogenesis causal determinant of biological characteristics", isn't a theory, because it can't even be a scientific hypothesis--because it's wholly untestable.
Yes, atheists, I know you could care less about what you can validly say per valid science and which constrains your research and/or teaching of it in no way whatsoever, "evolution occurs"--and are only interested in advancing, essentially, the particular qualification "only evolution occurs". Unfortunately, that is not a scientific hypothesis, but a hopeful non-sequitur epistemologically equivalent to an inference from anecdotal information. Still not science when you -really-, -really- wish it was because of the inference you so want to make.
You cannot test for an absence of design, with respect to the distant past, any more than you can if I handed you a test-tube, noted it contains a virus, and refused to say whether me walking toward you from the Genetic Engineering Lab means that's where I got it, however much you're free to examine it afterward.
When it's said and done
I'll have my fun
I can chew anything I bite
--Ted Nugent
Downmod away.
Many, many blank assertions and semantic rescoping here, but, to address just the one notion, there is precisely -zero- difference between the plausibility of the Interpretations by reference to science. That you may prefer, say, the Copenhagen Interpretation is purely your personal predispositions as to what you consider more plausible, or equally likely in this case, what you will tell yourself is more plausible due to having implications you like, while knowing you have no basis for your preference which has any basis in science. I am glad you teach quantum physics. I again suggest you review David Deutsch's (greater) qualifications, and his stances (which, should be comfortably harmonious as a baseline for you, as he is an ardent supporter of Dawkins)--so that you can teach quantum mechanics well. Suggesting that science judges Everett more "exotic", in the face of no scientific basis at all for such a relative characterization, gives me pause in that regard. Certainly, the notion that mere observation causes waveform collapse has its own issues of intuitive plausibility, even if preferred by you because it seems more pleasant to your preference in worldview.
So... merely semantically and tautologically true, then. If we specify that we are talking about the proposable methods of precognition that would be impossible, indeed, they would be impossible. This has, however, nothing to do with the discussion or the communicable heuristics and -subset- of "all knowledge" necessary for any actual proposed case of precognition.
As for your Universe/multiverse argument, well, this mirrors the standard semantic argument that "there is no supernatural, because if there were, it'd be natural". The terminology used is irrelevant here, it is the scope of content we are each using that matters. In that respect, if there is another dimension/universe, the limitation of information representation of -our- universe, within the wider scope inclusive of that one, goes away entirely. Once again, this statement I'm making -as if- I had made your hoped-for assertion that "omniscience" is necessary for "precognition"--what I haven't, and it isn't.
That's fine, but neither you nor anyone else should give credence to the real objective existence of this additional complexity without solid evidence
I have solid evidence. You do not. It really is that simple--evidence does not have to be reproducible, universally known, or universally assented to, for it to be evidence. You are quite capable of -knowing-, say, that your wife is cheating on you if you directly observe her doing so, even in the face of her and his denials, and an utter non-reproducibility for others of the -fact- you know -empirically- (that is, via sense data). Would, for the general case, I be as skeptical as you given a claim such as mine, and for the general case, would I prefer broadly-reproducible evidence? Yes, definitely. However, I'm also willing to recognize that entities exist (say, thousands of individuals and groups) that a) cause effects in the world, and b) prefer that their actions and methods are not broadly analyzed, and have the means to accomplish that. That is why I decided to test this question by the long-established methodology--that is, as you may have heard/guessed, the method of asking the relevant entity for demonstration. If you can pause to recognize that this not being -your- preferred methodology actually matters in no way at all, you may wish to try the same test at some point.
Sure, so next, provide me with evidence that any sort of multiverse model is correct.
No.
Well, that was easy. You may, though, want to look into the history of the Everett Interpretation and/or the particular qualifications of the person I quoted. It has a well, and long, established inferential plausibility.
provide me with the double blind, statistically significant evidence and you can take the quotes off of the word "empirical".
No.
Net facts about reality altered by either of the above responses: None. Degree to which "fact" and "demonstrable by scientific method" have changed from the usual actual reality of being discrete sets: None.
Finally, your assertion that e.g. the NSA could conceivably predict the kind of stuff that would count as "precognition" simply demonstrates that you don't understand computational complexity.
No, you simply don't understand a straightforward alternate -means- of making the determination from the one you are fixated on to fit your preloaded argument, or you choose not to acknowledge it.
The Universe is its own basically irreducible information theoretic representation, which is the fundamental reason an information-theoretic Laplace Demon argument is a proof that if God exists, God must be the Universe itself.
Again, per your scoping of "Universe", and presuming that we are aware of all forms of information representation, and presuming only "material" existence exists, and assuming that "precognition" requires this in the first place. Has all of the foregoing simply been an awkward means for you to insert an atheistic argument?