Not Getting It

Not connected but still confusing ...

Schrödinger's Cat

You may not have heard of the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment. Schrödinger was actually discussing a whole "atomic decay"/"quantum system" question, but it has decayed since then. Here's the idea.

A cat is placed in a steel box along with a Geiger counter, a vial of poison, a hammer, and a radioactive substance. When the radioactive substance decays, the Geiger detects it and triggers the hammer to release the poison, which subsequently kills the cat. The radioactive decay is a random process, and there is no way to predict when it will happen. Physicists say the atom exists in a state known as a superposition—both decayed and not decayed at the same time.

Until the box is opened, an observer doesn't know whether the cat is alive or dead—because the cat's fate is intrinsically tied to whether or not the atom has decayed and the cat would be living and dead ... in equal parts until it is observed.

That's the idea. Until you open the box, the cat is both alive and dead. The cat is not alive or dead until you open the box.

Mindless as that may seem, we seem to have arrived at Schrödinger's Gender when it comes to your kids. Until you "open the box" (find out what they feel), you can't know what gender they will be. No, checking their body parts will not do. Until they decide, they are both male and female. Or neither. Either or both will work.

Just as incoherent as Schrödinger's both-dead-and-alive cat.

Tragedy

This week a youth pastor, his wife, and their baby were killed when a large concrete slab fell on their pickup truck. "It's a tragic event," their pastor said. "In the blink of an eye, inhale and exhale, and they're in the presence of God."

I'm not getting it. What in the mind of a Christian pastor is the "tragic event" in passing from this life in a blink of an eye into the presence of God?

Killing? Bad. No, Good.

Ardent anti-theist Ricky Gervais tweeted a photo of hunter Rebecca Francis next to a giraffe she had shot in Africa. Facebook and Twitter have exploded with death threats for the hunter because, as we all know, it's wrong to kill a giraffe, but perfectly good to murder a person. We know that because there is no God and ... oh, wait ... ^[1]

Decapitalism

April 15th was both tax day and "Fight for 15" day on which "fast food workers walked off the job in 230 cities, staging the largest-ever strike in their movement aimed at a $15 minimum wage and the right to form a union." This is because times have changed. Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit. In America, now, we have some sort of new economic system where a country's trade and industry are controlled by workers for the primary function of providing a living wage. What? You think you need to go out of business because you can't pay them? Well, don't you dare! Dirty capitalist.

So much about this I don't get. I don't understand where the money is supposed to come from. It's not coming from the CEO's. Most of these places are franchises owned by small-time owners making enough to get by. They aren't paying a lot because they aren't making a lot. I don't understand when it became the function of all businesses to "provide a living wage" instead of earning money. I don't understand this theory of economics that says, "Money exists somewhere and I want my share" without any hint of where it will come from. So much I'm not getting.
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^[1] Because, of course, the only means by which we can consider humans as more valuable than animals or either of any value at all is if we have a Creator who determines it. The materialism of the anti-theist offers no basis for such a valuation, either of the animal or the human.