> This sounds very much, to me, like the beginning chapters of C.S. Lewis' essay "Miracles." I'm going to only mention selected high points. If you want an extremely careful, high-quality argument, read his essay. It's not long.

I shall have to do so. I've always liked Lewis' writings.

> The "intrinsic nature" by which humans can make decisions separate from their experiences is rationality.
>
> There is no room for reason in deterministic physics. If decisions are nothing but the product of chemical reactions, then rationality is a myth. However much the ideologue is tempted to scoff, claiming that logic is limited, there is no way out of the contradiction: if there is no rationality, then one cannot rationally prove that there is no rationality. It's an attempt to prove the invalidity of all proofs. It's nonsense.

You've lost me right here. Reason is a principle that doesn't require a physical cause any more than language or math require physical causes. If I say "A is A and not non-A," I cannot *prove* this is inherently true anymore than I cannot prove the word "apple" applies to the fruit of apple-trees. The words themselves are metaphors for principles that exist outside of human experience.

If you believe that A can be both A and non-A, you are, however, either playing games with language or are ignoring basic observations. And that's essentially what logic is: a formalized system for describing observations. Of course, with symbollic logic we can transcend observations, but it's all really a sort of language. "A is B, B is C, therefore A is C" is intrinsically valid simply because our words allow no other meaning for them. And if you try to apply logic to real life, you see that it clearly works.

That humans were able to realize this does not, to me, imply divine intervention. It simply shows that we are effective at interpreting the sensory data we gather from our environment.

> On the other hand, maybe I misunderstand QM. Are conclusions in QM unknowable beforehand in principle, or only in practice?

Essentially, it's my understanding that certain quantum interactions are unknowable before they take place both in principle and in practice. The results are truly random.

> And on a different subject: omniscience and free will never contradict, because foreknowledge does not imply control. I know with 100% certainty that those reading this will sit down at some time in the future. I have not just stolen your free will.

This is a false assumption. You do not know that with 100% certainty that those reading your post will sit down at some time in the future: it's conceivable that the only person to ever read it will die while reading it (standing up). What you meant to say is you're certain beyond a reasonable doubt that most will sit at some point in the future. Virtually any assumption you make regarding human behavior is false if you try to apply it to every human.

I believe perfect knowledge of the future invalidates free will and comes pretty close to determinism unless the knowledge is obtained externally to the universe. Does that make sense? In other words, a non-linear god that existed outside of the universe would be able to have perfect knowledge of the future without violating free will, though this may just be hand-waving on my part because temporal mechanics confuses me.

Stephen