4.  Given that many atheists, like Dawkins and including ones on this board believe that the Christian God is categorically the same as Zeus, and Baal, and Ra, and other 'gods' and the fact that these categorically belong to the 'created' order somehow, then according to the multiverse line of thinking, it is plausible indeed to think that there is a universe in which such entities really do exist.  Or did.  So why not this one?  How do we know that we are not in that universe?

For example, it is also possible according to logic and QM that all of our elementary parts can re-arrange in an instant and who and what we are can vanish.  And re-appear.  And pass through walls.  Or hover upon water.  Or have us in a dead state in one second but alive in another.  In some universe, this very moment, each of us is vanishing just like this.  In some universe, all of the spilled perfume particles rush to back into the bottle.

What is more parsimonious, the inference that there is a single entity that is the observer that 'nails down' reality for us by being the Final Observer, or the inference that universes are branching off in all directions each and every nanosecond for each and every observer?

7.  Ben and Cop are among many others who say that mind=brain, that our thoughts reduce to matter, etc.  No dualism for them!  In that case, every thought, every decision, every argument, every conclusion reduce to matter and therefore are subject to this 'mathematical discovery.'

Therefore, we can say that there is a universe in which they have read this post and have been persuaded to re-consider Christian theism.  Why not this one? 

There is a universe where when I rush at the wall instead of bouncing off, I pass through.

"You can, of course, imagine impossible ones, where pigs can fly and gods exist."

I don't think you understand.  These wouldn't be impossible at all.  The universes in which the 'gods' exist can simply be the ones in which the particles re-arrange in a fortuitous way so that they would do 'god-like' activity.

And it isn't that there might be such universes.  The multiverse would say that there are such universes.  Big difference.

"I've never been comfortable with the claim that observation causes some kind of wave collapse (quantum decoherence), and I think that the many-worlds hypothesis does away with the need for such a conclusion, given experiments that appear to demonstrate wave collapse."

Not entirely sure I follow... are you saying you do buy the multiverse or not?  You should.  It is a mathematical discovery, a fact, if you will.  It is the greatest development in modern science.  Who are you to reject it?  Though if you do, I will still let you use Occam's razor. 

"This is a false statement about what I believe.  I do not claim that mind=brain and that "our thoughts reduce to matter".  I claim that the physical events in a brain cause mental events.  The mind is an effect of the brain.  Destroy the brain, and you destroy the mind."

I'm not sure there is a significant difference, but I don't think it matters.  The point would remain that the physical events themselves would obey the laws of physics, and also the laws of quantum mechanics, so that your mind will actualize every single possibility open to it allowed by the physical system.  There is a universe in which you are a creationist. 

"Because, in this one, there is no evidence to make Christian theism a reasonable or compelling thing to believe in."

You only think that because in this universe your brain is so aligned as to think that, not because it is really true. 

Of course, all this assumes that in all of these universes the same general laws of 'nature' are in play.  But I guess when you're permitted to posit an infinite amount of universes actualizing an infinite amount of observations you're allowed to pass over that problem.

A motorist who has a near miss, for instance, might feel relieved at his lucky escape. But in a parallel universe, another version of the same driver will have been killed. Yet another universe will see the motorist recover after treatment in hospital. The number of alternative scenarios is endless.

In the 1930s, Eddington provided what are still some of the best physical examples of what this means [this=we have no idea what an electron is doing when we aren't looking at it], in his book "the Philosophy of Physical Science."  He stressed that what we perceive, what we "learn" from experiments, is highly colored by our expectations, and he provides an example, disturbing in its simplicity, to pull the rug from under those perceptions.  Suppose, he says, that an artist tells you that the shape of a human head is "hidden" in a block of marble.  Absurd, you say.  But then the artist, chipping away at the marble with nothing more subtle than a hammer and chisel, reveals the hidden form.  Is this the way that Rutherford "discovered" [synonym: found] the nucleus?  "the discovery does not go beyond the waves which represent the knowledge we have of the nucleus," says Eddington, for nobody has ever seen an atomic nucleus.  All we see are the results of experiments, which we interpret in terms of the nucleus.  Nobody found a positron until Dirac suggested they might exist;  today physicists claim to know of a greater number of so-called fundamental particles than there are distinct elements in the periodic table.  In the 1930s, physicists were intrigued by the prediction of another new particle, the neutrino, required in order to explain [emph mine] subtleties of the spin interactions in thsom radioactive decays.  Eddington said, "I am not much impressed by the neutrino theory," But "dare I say that experimental physicists will not have sufficient ingenuity to make neutrinos?" [emph his]

Since then, neutrinos have indeed been "discovered" [read: found] in three different varieties (plus their three different anti-varieties) and other kinds are postulated.  Can Eddington's doubts really be taken at face value?  Is it possible that the nucleus, the positron and the neutrino did not [emph his] exist until experimenters discovered the right sort of chisel with which to reveal their form?  Such speculations strike at the roots of sanity, let alone our concept of reality.  But they are quite sensible questions to ask in the quantum world.  If we follow the the quantum recipe book correctly, we can perform an experiment that produces a set of pointer readings that we interpret as indicating the existence of a certain kind of particle.  Almost every time we follow the same recipe, we get the same set of pointer readings.  But the interpretation in terms of particles is all in the mind, and may be no more than a consistent delusion.  The equations tell us nothing about what particles do when we do not look at them, [emph mine] and before Rutherford nobody ever looked at a nucleus, before Dirac nobody even imagined the existence of a positron.  If we cannot say what a particle does when we are not looking at it, neither can we say if it exists when we are not looking at it, and it is reasonable to claim that nuclei and positrons did not exist prior to the twentieth century, because nobody before 1900 ever saw one.  IN the quantum world, what you see is what you get, and nothing is real; the best you can hope for is a set of delusions that agree with one another.  Unfortunately, even those hopes are dashed by some of the simplest experiments.

Christian theism puts forward a point of view that is mocked and derided by skeptics for hundreds if not thousands of years.  Scientists discover that actually, the evidence is for a scheme that isn't so far off what the Christians have been saying all along.

Some how, this is a weakness in Christian theism, and a strength for the scientists.  Do you see how bizarre that is?

If I can guess at what you really mean, you don't like the authoritarian style of pronouncements that would come from a religious system like Christianity.  Far from being a weakness in Christian theism, it reveals an irrational stubbornness in man.  Think of it this way.  I am a father.  I tell my son that if he goes out in the backyard, he will find under a rock a hundred dollar bill.  I tell him where the rock is and how to get there.  All he has to do is follow the instructions, and BAM, a hundred dollars richer.

But my son is a modern-day skeptic.  He ignores what his father said.  He derides his brothers for trying to find the rock and therefore the cash.  He sets about methodologically picking up rocks one by one. Two thousand years later, he finds the rock.  He then has the audacity to say... "This shows the weakness of my brother's approach.  I applied a method, they just took my Father at his word."

That is essentially your argument.  The multiverse casts in naturalistic terms something akin to transcendence.  The Big Bang testifies to a beginning.  The Higgs Field, as I understand it, attests to immanence.  Left and right, scientists are regurgitating theological concepts in naturalistic terms.  The skeptic still has the audacity to disregard the theological concepts- some of which would have come via revelation- while consider them and think they are superior at the same time in their naturalistic garb.

Obviously that is exactly what it is.  But it is based on HARD SCIENCE!  A mathematical FACT!  The most important development in modern science!  I know you are trying to keep your distance, but this stuff is mainstream.  It is consensus.  Paul Davies is one person who has said exactly that, and if I can find my copy of Antony Flew's "God and Philosophy" I'd be glad to give the citation.

How about this:  Given the findings of QM and its strange implications, it is at least reasonable to prefer the inference that there is a Final Observer.

<snip>

"How does a single entity observer solve anything ?"

What does that have to do with it?  I was talking about parsimony.   A single entity observer, ie, GOD, accounts for the paradox that the many worlds hypothesis is trying to resolve.

Perhaps not in this language, I've heard more than once the diatribe that QM is the most experimentally verified theory ever- in support of the Standard Model, of course- which the multiverse is consistent with.

"No, I'm trying to see how our current physics models in any way resemble Christian models from hundreds or thousands of years ago.  My mind boggles."

Well, keep looking.  Remember:  Logos.

Sentence of the Tribunal of the Supreme Inquisition against Galileo Galilei, given the 22nd day of June of the year 1633


...We say, pronounce, sentence, and declare, that thou, the said Galileo, by the things deduced during this trial, and by thee confessed as above, hast rendered thyself vehemently suspected of heresy by this Holy Office, that is, of having believed and held a doctrine which is false, and contrary to the Holy Scriptures, to wit: that the Sun is the centre of the universe, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the Earth moves and is not the centre of the universe: and that an opinion may be held and defended as probable after having been declared and defined as contrary to Holy Scripture;

"Right.  Except a real analogy would have the father telling the son to look under a rock to find a hundred dollar bill, the son goes out, and doesn't find it."

But you've got a problem.  Billions of people do find it.   It isn't one or two or 'occasionally.'

"No, the many worlds interpretation still has the same physical laws applying from one universe to the other."

Understood, but there is no reason to believe that they really do.

Its not like anyone is ever going to see these universes to find out.  But I am still applying the same physical laws.  It is theoretically possible even under current quantum laws for me to walk into a wall and pass through it.  Very unlikely, but possible.

"What is the Christian theism interpretation of QM ?"

I'm not sure there is one in this sense.  But when you understand Christian theism you'll easily see how the 'observer paradox' doesn't have to lead us to the death of our epistemology but rather affirms our epistemology.

The perfume particles gradually dissipate and fill up a room more or less evenly.  They don't ever gather, say, in just one corner.  This is 'arrow of time' stuff.  But according to the math of QM, it is possible, at least in theory, for the particles to do just this.  And if it is possible, then in some universe, if it is a possible observational outcome, it actually happened.  No special physical rules at all.  Just possibilities given our own rules.

But if it is possible, and actual in some universe, why not this universe?

That is 'death of epistemology' material, but it is escaped by positing that there is only the one universe we are aware of sustained by the word and thought of a single observer- God.  Could it be that quantum mechanics is simply the examination and exploration of the fabric of thought itself?