RE: Disproving Odin - An Experiment in arguing with a theist with Theist logic
March 25, 2018 at 9:44 am
(March 25, 2018 at 9:21 am)RoadRunner79 Wrote:Quote:Quntum mechanics merely describe what takes place at the quantum level. It makes no reference to causes, but that does not imply that there are no causal entities involved.
Feser hypothesizes that perhaps Oerter understands the law of causality to refer to some sort of deterministic cause, and since quantum mechanics are supposedly indeterministic (a disputed interpretation), the law of causality could not apply. Feser notes that “[t]he principle of causality doesn’t require that. It requires only that a potency be actualized by something already actual; whether that something, whatever it is, actualizes potencies according some sort of pattern –deterministic or otherwise — is another matter altogether.”
The fact of the matter is that quantum mechanics has not identified causeless effects or invalidated the causal principle. For any event to occur it must first have the potential to occur, and then have that potential actualized. If that potential is actualized, it “must be actualized by something already actual,”[2] and that something is what we identify as the cause.
I'm going to disagree here. The potential to occur is what QM predicts. It even predicts the probabilities of occurrence. It is *precisely* the activation of that potential that isn't caused.
For example, a uranium atom always has the *potential' to decay. And there is NO difference between the uranium atom that decays now verses one that decays a billion years from now. There is NOTHING that actualized that potential to decay. And that means the decay is uncaused.