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Read other letters about this article
You're right, and you're not right:
If you are willing to learn a bit of mathematics and sit still for a few hours, a physics teacher can walk you through every single step of the theory that leads up to the paradox of Schoedinger's Cat. [...]There is absolutely no "faith" involved. [...]
if you find that it requires faith to accept a scientific theory, then you are doing it wrong.
But how did you ultimately resolve the paradox? How can the cat be dead and not dead? Ah, yes, the quantum probability "collapses". What does that mean? Well, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle applies. Ah, yes. ... etc. That's as far I recall getting. Something about particles and wave duality, too, but I don't recall.
One suggestion I make, though, paradoxes never DO resolve completely in discursive thought. One should really ponder this fact. Why do we dismiss paradoxes so easily? They point to the circularity of our reasoning, and open the door to higher modes of logic.
Perhaps, in discussing Schroedinger's Cat, if one accepts that the the cat is dead/not-dead, a chain of dependent reasoning opens. I follow it until I'm satisfied I can pass the exam (until any question, couched in the same terms of reference, will obviously relate). The cat is dead/not-dead, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, I can regurgitate these facts, but it's only in their application that I demonstrate understanding.
Ethics and morality are the same: I can regurgitate platitudes, but only in action can I demonstrate understanding. I repeat: enlightened is as enlightened does.
Read Gödel and Wittenstein, Pierce: every formal system of logic is tautological, that is every fact relies upon another fact for truth value. Therefore, every logical statement in a formal system is tautological, and that includes our attempts at logical descriptions of phenomenal and spiritual experience.
What bothers some atheists so much about religious belief? There is real harm in snide comments like, "the truth hurts", "how sad". Maybe it's innocuous on a forum, but I suspect it's being repeated in classrooms and in homes.
A young friend of mine, studying political philosophy, bragged to me about how he and another conservative reduced a fellow student to speechless blubbering during a debate. I was honestly appalled and alarmed for him, but what to say? In the event, I said, "I'm not so sure I would be proud of browbeating a fellow student. Why do you feel it has merit?" In his answer, my friend said that it's all a game, winners and losers, politics and life, too. I find the attitude truly sad, distressing, for all the cynicism it implies.
Please, you're only harming yourself with such negative thoughts. It's not all a game. Life is truly just what it is, and we're all connected. Harming others, you harm yourself. I know this to be true for myself, although, in the past, I only "knew" this in a factoidal sense. I know it now, in my dotage, experientially, and apply it in my daily life.
I see many young persons who struggle with ethics. Some turn to religion, some to humanism. Both are fine, in my opinion.
Object, if you like, to blind faith, proselytizing and false prophets. But don't judge people by what you little you understand of other forms of thought. Most of the pseudo-logical arguments advanced on any Internet-forum are sophistries. Judge what you read for yourself to determine if the intent is mild and honest, or sarcastic and ego-driven.
I notice, btw, no one has presented niti (wheeling lights) witnessed in the 2nd and 3rd jhanas (trance states). Until CAT scans, no tangible evidence existed for the shared experience of many meditators, but art work and description suggests there are many such brain phenomena. The subjective experience, however, still eludes science (will always elude?) because science cannot observe itself observing, except obliquely, through parable, poetry, music... ie, in the desiderative mode of thought. Thus, S's Cat.
More truth:
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?
