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<BODY>There is an interesting discussion on <A
href="http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/1/8/6712/48738">Kuro5hin</A> on how to
achieve peaceful coexistence between two opposite concepts in religious
thinking: the omniscience of God and the free will of Man. Is it possible to
have a universe sporting free-will and a God? The theological discussion is
mixed with ideas taken from interpretations of the foundations of quantum
physics: "Suppose that God plays the role of the scientist and we play the role
of Schrodinger's cat. Once God opens the box and peers into our future, He fixes
the reality. Therefore, He chooses to view time and events linearly along with
us, to grant us free-will", and the concept of God existing outside of time is
mentioned by several posters.<BR>I wish to contribute to the discussion without
mentioning God, as "Is it possible to have a deterministic universe sporting
free-will?" (by deterministic universe I mean one where the future is uniquely
determined by the past). Our universe is deterministic only if we accept some
form of the <A href="http://www.hep.upenn.edu/~max/everett/">Everett</A> <A
href="http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm">interpretation of quantum physics</A>.
Otherwise, there is some kind of magic effect that kills off all possible
outcomes of the current state of the universe, except one selected randomly, as
soon as an act of observation by a conscious observer takes place. So if we
choose another interpretation of the foundations of physics, we can hold the
concept of free will in the universe.<BR>If we choose the Everett
interpretation, the state of the universe (reality) evolves without random
effects, but our consciousness only perceives a specific projection of the state
of the universe (our reality), which by itself does not contain any information
or laws that could permit predicting deterministically its evolution in time. In
this case, there is a Platonic metareality that we do not perceive, but we can
hold the concept of free will within the universe that we
perceive.</BODY></HTML>