Uncertainty – Belief vs Reason (part II)

OK – Have we all let that soak in for a while and refreshed our brains and our coffee/tea cups? Good!

Quick recap: Werner Heisenberg. Uncertainty Principle (HUP). It’s impossible to know with 100% certainty ‘exactly’ two things about a thing at the same time at a VERY basic level.

It should go without saying that it is even ‘more’ impossible for knowing (or observing) three or more things about a thing at the same time for the same reasons Werner proved to all.

OK. Werner was Good but he only went so far. Not very far at all apparently since he basically stopped at the atomic level and much of human experince in our world is way ‘above’ this – or so we currently tend to believe.

There is a growing amount of evidence that much of our life (eg. the way our brains actually operate) is controlled BENEATH this level – WAY beneath! At a Quantum level! – The world of the infinitessimally small ‘Quantum Foam’. The ‘dimensions’ of quantum foam make those of atoms and electrons look like galaxies. We are talking beyond minute here.

Strange things happen here – The impossible becomes merely a well-defined, definite’probability’. Here there is no ‘reality’ as we understand the term in our daily lives, just ‘probabilities’. Mathematical ‘odds’ of something being ‘true’ – a 99.9 % chance of something happening does not make it true in all cases – just 999 out of every 1000.

Good enough for me you may say – but would you bet your life upon it?

There is a 999 chance in 1000 that a rifle has no bullet in the clip – do you put the barrel to your head and pull the trigger to show how ‘right’ you are? You’d be right 999 times out of every one thousand… that one remaining though is what would bother me ‘most’.

Are you feeling lucky, Punk? 🙂

Don’t forget! That rifle with a bullet may very just be the FIRST one you test, then you don’t get another 999 chances to be ‘right’, straight after!!! That’s where probability sucks. That’s why you see all those people winning the lottery and why it COULD be you one day but for every winner there must be around 8 million who don’t win at each attempt.  Winning twice or three times  in one lifetime well that’s just plain greedy!  😉

Back to the point – it is ‘slipping’ a bit i feel.

Reality isn’t quite the picture we paint it to be. At least the canvas we ‘see it’ occuring on is not what we might ‘believe’.

Way back up at the ‘human’ level. Quantum and relativistic effects become so negligible they virtually ‘don’t count’ This is because with an individual ‘quantum probability’, when amalgamated together with the massive quantities of probabilities we experience at the human level, the individualities become so interwoven with all the others that a seemingly seamless ‘common probability’, that is what our ‘reality’ actually appears to us as, ‘exists’ with a probability of around 1 to 1.

Nonetheless, they are still very ‘real’ – moreso than our daily lives are. ( I KNOW how confusing that gets – if you don’t get it yet – don’t worry! but try this to give you an idea… you are an individual, you have unique ‘fixed’ (kind of) qualities. You are also one of some three hundred million or more if you are American (and stats show most of you reading this are). By grouping you all together a ‘picture’ of ‘the average American’ is built up and America can make decisions as a ‘unit’ even though it may be far from the decision you personally would have taken ( or maybe not?) as a valid part of that ‘Unit’. Here, you are the Quantum and America is the ‘real’ you – reality in probabilistic terms. You do not control America yourself but you are an essential indivisible component of it with your own unique qualities/probabilities – make more sense?

We can only ever, AT BEST, be one hundred percent certain about ONE ‘aspect’ of something at any one time is what Heisenberg proved to us all.

So – what is the Spirit of this and how could it extend to us as we discuss ‘things’, when we try to discuss the ‘same’ thing – or an aspect of it – like Faith or Belief or Reason?.

The harder we try to ‘nail’ one aspect of something to the ‘wall’ to show others – the more ‘squishy’ another aspect of it becomes and slides down the wall.

Oh Yes! – VERY Scientific description and ‘logical’ conclusion – I don’t think! 🙂

Radical perspective switch here!.

You’ve heard the saying the Devil is in the Detail? That applies here and is in perfect (to me) accord with Werner.

The more accurately you place something in your consciousness or the greater detail you can get down to, or go into – the further away you push another aspect of that same thing. It is Impossible to ever come close to holding both a perfect understanding of Faith and a perfect understanding of Reason in one human brain at the same time!

–  LWBUT’s Uncertainty Principle. 😉

You can have 100% faith and a less than perfect concept of ‘reason’, or you can have 100% reason and a less than perfect understanding of faith – you can’t do both at once!.  Perhaps another way of putting it is this: If you try to ‘prove’ faith (or God) by reason alone you are doomed to fail to understand the thing you are trying to ‘define’.

This is because by being more and more ‘reasonable’ you ‘quantify’ faith and that simply is not what faith is all about.

Any more than by holding a faith perspective you can ‘justify’ your reason. Reason Justifies Reason – Faith Justifies Faith.

That is not to say that either are not valid and useful human endeavours or that ‘possessing’ one requires a total abolition of the other.

That was NOT what Werner or I am saying.

Those who have faith can also use reason to test their faith. Those who have reason can and most certainly DO use faith to hold up their structure of reason.

Don’t believe me?

Take a good long hard look at what an AXIOM is. Get a dictionary to prove it to yourself.

Axioms are taken on faith and can be, and occasionally are, shown to be completely wrong, requiring a total and complete restructuring of an existing ‘belief’ system. – even those considered mostly ‘rational’.

Reason can fail us because our logic is all to often faulty and imperfect and reason also fails us by not acknowledging loudly enough it’s own potential for flaw – Axioms!

What is an Axiom?

It is the ‘reasoner’s equivalent of faith – a Belief which it is impossible to ever prove, upon which all else depends.

That’s right folks – the pretenders of logic and reason have no more basis for saying so loudly how foolish you are than  they have for being so certain they are ‘right’!!!

Their scientific method may be structurally sound but it is built upon some very ‘shifty’ sand!

And if they were honest with you or honest with themselves they would confess this to you up front. If they even know it, that is.

Axioms and Scientific Method are to the Scientist as is Faith in God and scriptural doctrine are to the believer, as galling as that is to them and as hard as it is to admit!

The closer they try to nail something down – the more their essential ‘flaw’ upon which their reasons depend makes it harder to.

No matter how certain they become, a little ‘chink’ soon appears to make them reconsider what actually ‘IS’. What the fundamental underlying concepts are.

It happened to Newton – it happened to Einstein – it is unavoidable.

Life IS ‘uncertain’ in more than one ‘aspect’.