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God's Existence and Buddhist philosophy: An Interesting Debate -3
Most Probably I could not satisfy Vir Gupta completely in my previous response, so following arguments were appeared from his side once again :
No; not really, Vir. While we can leave open the possibility that the definite causes may someday found that allow for prediction, we have no current basis for assuming such causes exist. We cannot argue on the basis what will or what not be found in future. Quantum mechanics is already century years old, and we are yet to find such "definite causes" that you want to infer from your intuition. The physicists who grew up playing with quantum mechanical theories, the indeterminacy would seem right and natural to them (check Vic Stenger, Aparthib and Meeker's responses in this thread). But in our, seemingly, cause and effect world, quantum mechanics is very strange. However, the test of a theory must be how well it predicts measurements we make. Einstein's theory of relativity seemed to be very counter intuitive when it was first proposed, but it had the virtue of making very detailed predictions that check with what we see. We accept quantum mechanics because it, also, is a remarkably successful theory. It has been passed every tests so far. Also be reminded many devices has already been invented based on "uncertain" quantum phenomenon. Vir Gupta also wrote:
This is just a fallacy of "Appeal to authority". The "Appeal to Authority" uses admiration of a famous person to try and win support for an assertion. For example: "Isaac Newton was a genius and he believed in God, so God exist". This line of argument is absolutely wrong. I can quote many distinguished scholars (some are famous scientists) for you who are sympathetic towards Islam or Muhammad. That does not prove Islam is true either. Buddha was a progressive person no doubt, but don't forget that he was just a man of his time and thus not above limitations. He is not expected to know second law of thermodynamics, Einstein's theory of relativity, or recent super string theory, even though I do not disrespect or disregard his progressive teaching for social reformation. Vir, be realistic, Buddha is no supernatural being; and I suggest - Please do not follow anyone religiously; rather try to be a bit critical, no matter whether he is Buddha, Muhammad, Jesus, Aristotle or whoever. It is as useless to quote from Buddist scripture to seek symmetry with QM just as ridiculous to cite Qur'anic verses to support Big Bang, even though some pseudo- scientists like Bucaille or Harun Yaha has been doing this for time. No rationalist or freethinker will buy such irrational attempt frequently made by apologists. If one likes to see modern science, he/she can see it anywhere, may it be in some poems of Tagore, or Nagarjun's writing or Confucius's speech. Any vague phrase, puns, allegories, quotes of any scripture or literary work can be customized any time to fit to make similarity with modern scientific principles in a gross generic terms. For example, Anyone can stretch his wild imagination to cite that even Shakespeare also predicted the Big Bang and Dark matter: https://gold.mukto-mona.com/Articles/yaha/shakespeare_dark_matter.htm So, by such flawed attempt of quoting ancient scripture to seek relevance with modern science, one is basically denying the painstaking research of modern scientists who has been helping to explore the complexity of laws of nature and reality. If you really think Buddhist literature properly describes or contains quantum mechanics, then please enlighten me how Buddha solved Heisenberg's theory of noncommuting operators, or Schrodinger's Hamilton-Jaccobi equation of motion to infer wave equation etc. Also cite me the name of scientific journals (not scientist's personal belief for God's sake:)) that used Buddha's mathematical derivation. This will be suffice to convince me. Regards,
Avijit Nov 12, 2004
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