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From: emma@uw-june (Joe Pfeiffer)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: non-determinism
Message-ID: <588@uw-june>
Date: Wed, 14-Sep-83 14:40:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: uw-june.588
Posted: Wed Sep 14 14:40:14 1983
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Sep-83 06:31:13 EDT
References: <3535@duke.UUCP>
Organization: U. Washington, Computer Sci
Lines: 17

The term 'determinism' means different things, depending on who you
are.  To a physicist, it refers to the possibility of determining,
given the current state of the universe, future states.  And QM does
seem to imply that this is impossible.

When referring to predestination, though, the claim is that God has
determined what will happen, independent of the state of the physical
universe.  Quite a different thing.

As to Einstein and QM -- he found the notion that the universe could be
undescribable at its most fundamental levels to be extremely
disquieting, and felt that it was a question of the math being used for
the description being inadequate.  And this was based on his
philosophical beliefs.  He never said, though, that the results in QM
could not be useful as far as they went.  Sort of like it is possible
to chart planetary motion using epicycles.  For that matter, I find it
hard to read QM stuff without thinking of epicycles!
-Joe P.