Thanks, George, I am certainly not going to pretend that I have any real understanding about quantum mechanics, other than that it seems to show that there are areas where the normal scientific rules do not always seem to apply.
Well yes. For us laymen that pretty much defines quantum mechanics.
The important point is that quantum mechanics has cast serious doubt over a lot of our understanding as to how the universe works.
Agreed. And the implications of this are huge and in many ways move us toward a better understanding of what once seemed supernatural but might be quite "natural' after all.
The important point is that our classical understanding is challenged,
I absolutely agree.
just as Newton's work was shown to be inadequate to describe what happens at an atomic level.
After his work was shown to also be inadequate on the cosmic level as well.
Which in turn means that the simple causality assumed by the creators of the KCA has been left behind by developments in thinking and in particular science.
I think you have stretched the significance of those developments. And again, it seems that I have to keep saying this over and over but these developments currently reside thoroughly in the speculative realm. Many of them have no math to support them and are acknowledged to have no hope of being testable. They are essentially thought experiments. And they are widely debated within the QM community. This puts such ideas on the fringe of what we can call science, if, as many here have said, science necessarily includes the prospect of testability. Unlike relativity, which had solid math and the prospect of testability and subsequent proof through measurement of the red-shift, these theories have no hope of such proof. That being the case, they do not represent a serious challenge to the KCA. They might. They could. But they can't as of yet.
One might call a self creating universe a Creator. However, this would be very different from the traditional understanding of god as a supernatural sentient entity.
Quite right, but I'm not here arguing for the existence of the God of Moses. Remember, the OP had a sensation, a feeling, that an event in his life might have been guided by things he could not readily explain from a materialist viewpoint. For this he was ridiculed.
The self creating universe, if Hawking is correct, is simply the working out of nature,
I hope that you can hear how ridiculous this sounds? It is paramount to saying that something that exists created itself when neither it nor anything else existed. Granted, spoken/written language falls short in regard to expressing quantum mechanical potentials but at some point it begins to sound absurd. And sometimes what sounds absurd is absurd. And again, there are theoretical and philosophical ramifications if such absurdities are true. If something can create itself when itself wasn't a self, or anything at all, from a complete lack of anything at all.....then what can we possibly call impossible?
not supernatural
QM seems to be erasing those boundaries.
and not sentient.
Why not? If the universe created itself then it created. If it can create something out of nothing what science can say it isn't sentient. Again, maybe the terminology is insufficient for the concept........but still. And again, if this is possible we have no basis for saying anything is impossible.
As such it does not qualify to be called god.
Thoroughly depends on your definition of god. Many god's throughout mythology were weak, stupid, vindictive, capricious. I'm not here to define what sort of influence the OP felt in his experience.
It is not a matter of changing the meaning of "cause" and "effect". It is about saying that our understandings of how they operate in "normal" life may not be relevant in certain circumstances.
I'm sorry but that sounds
exactly like changing the meaning.
Apart from these issues, the KCA fails to prove a divine Creator, because that is only one of a range of possibilities.
Agreed. I have not sought to use it that way. And if it even hints at the possibility of a creative force (The Force, if you will) then my point stands that no matter what level of science we understand it is not justifiable to belittle those who have a belief in the divine.
Serious scientists are having serious debates, based on scientific research and thinking, about whether there is a multiverse, or whether there was another universe before the big bang (the big bang itself being a fairly recent theory). The science is beyond me, and I retain a healthy but open minded scepticism.
The science is beyond you because it is not science. Again, this is another thought experiment conducted by scientists that falls well outside the realm of science. No only can it not be tested, not only is there no math to be applied to it, it opens up the possibility for ALL things to be possible. It is an interesting concept but has no scientific application whatsoever.
Even if the KCA worked, it would not prove that there is a divine entity which intervenes in our world.
Totally agree. I did not use it as such.
In summary, the KCA fails on the science,
No. It only fails on speculation which is not testable, disprovable or reproducible. And that is not a failure or a defeater. The fact that some future science can alter the meaning of cause and effect does not prove anything at all.
it fails to provide the only possible answer to the creation of the universe,
That is a straw man. I did not use it as such.
and it fails to show that our current world is affected by the activities of a divine entity.
Another straw man, right? I did not use the KCA to make that argument. Even its creator does not go that far directly so that's beside the point of the KCA and this discussion.
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