The “uncertainty of QM” amounts to state that the ordinary material world we live in is sustained by a non-material realm (outside the space-time) we cannot directly access with our senses. For this reason, the single outcomes of any quantum experiment are unpredictable in principle.
In my view this fits quite well with St. Paul’s teaching in the Areopagus: “For in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
Does this correspond to the interface you are looking for?
As I said. Nobody.
It is a good start. The distinction between “energies” and “essence” is also interesting.
I would be thankful if you could expand a bit on this distinction.
It looks like a key point to understand the teaching of St Gregory Palamas and St John Chrysostom.
When we speak of acts performed by God, such as God created the heavens and the earth, we are attributing things, and not ‘knowing’ the essence of God. The theology is extensive and I am extremely brief. The acts are due to the uncreated energies. The Greek word for energy can be understood also by physics, in that we measure things that involve energy, but we do not define energy as such. QM talks of energy levels and electromagnetism fields, but we are left with uncertainty and unknowable aspects.
So what we attribute as activities theologically relate to the energies, and this may correlate with the illusive term energy in physics. I obviously speculate, but it has merit, especially when we become knowledgeable of the Palamas doctrine.
I would like to put what you say in the following context:
For the sake of simplicity suppose a laser source emits single photons that cross a beam-splitter monitored by two detectors called D0 and D1. In each single run either D0 counts (outcome 0) or D1 counts (outcome 1), that is, one and only one of the two detectors fires .
The two slit experiment was key to the insight that which outcome you get in a single run (which of the two detectors clicks) is determined only at the moment of detection. Quantum physics predicts that in this particular experiment you will get 50% of the times outcome 0 and 50% of the times outcome 1. However, in a single run it is impossible in principle to predict before detection whether you will get outcome 0 (D0 counts) or outcome 1 (D1 counts).
Albert Einstein rejected this quantum description because it implies a non-local action at a distance that cannot be explained by signals propagating in the space-time, and therefore conflicts with special relativity. By contrast Max Born stated that from the standpoint of quantum physics there is no quantity that in any single run causally fixes the evolution from the source to the detector and determines the outcome. As an explanation Max Born referred to “a pre-established harmony” (“eine prästabilierte Harmonie”).
As early as 1927 at the Solvay Congress in Brussels Einstein proposed an experiment which astonishingly has only been performed in 2012 in Geneva (see this Reference). The experiment upholds the quantum description.
Now, if you put Einstein and Born together you can fittingly set the following explanation:
In the omniscient mind of God are contained all possible experiments with the corresponding outcomes that the humans of all times can perform. This is a breathtaking huge number but finite after all! Nonetheless you are free to select the experiment you will perform (whose outcome is inaccessible to you as far as you do not perform the experiment). You can express this also in the language of Many-Worlds: In God’s mind are contained all possible parallel worlds but you are always free to choose the world where you want to live!
Are you not claiming something similar?
it depends on your definition of miracles. I am sure most of us see them as acts of make-belief based on our materialistic thinking. The miracle of Canaan is a prime example for this. Most of us think of it as an act of creating a fake reality, of Jesus disguising the truth that there was a limited amount of wine bought by the groom because of his limited material wealth. Even worth, we accept that the master of ceremony praises him for something that is not true, thus tells a lie in the presence of the Lord, as he would not have “not cut the wine to pretend material wealth” because he had still better wine to serve"
We want acts of magic, e.g. make believe reality because we want the more valuable alcohol, the unlimited material wealth coming from God. It’s the materialistic prosperity gospel at its core.
If we do not understand the message that the water of purification to be the most valuable wine we can ever have, but insist on the best wine to be a fine spirit in the grape juice as on it’s OH group location following physical rearrangement, it reveals our relation towards “the spirit” and a God that makes our materialistic wishes for reality come true 
So how do you see God intervening at Canaan? Do you admire him for his power to fake reality and to overcome space-time, or for his power to face reality and to praise the space time he created?
That is a logical impossibility. Unreal. Meaningless.
Yes, you do get to choose but it is not so simple. How we live plays a big role because our desires and actions create conditions in the information realm, i.e., The Mind of God. Those conditions play a big role in where and how and when we will incarnate.
Also God is omniscient, but that does not mean that God knows the future. God has first created us as conscious beings so we are co-creators, though our abilities are limited. For instance, I have observed that there is a huge matrix if you like of information that determines all aspects of our body. And there are rules/ meaning governing that information. We can make additions and thus modify the information. This changes the outcome. The information cannot be erased but we can make additions that give different results. All of our reactions, which are not simply mental but largely physical are changes, i.e., additions to the matrix information.
God has also given us free will so we are not mere puppets. These two conditions means the future is not determined, but open to be created. However by our desires and action we are selecting information in The Mind so we are creating conditions that determine the future every moment. Of course God knows what those conditions we create are so to some extent knows the future. But the future is a constant becoming. And some of our actions and desires and even perceptions and beliefs can change the information in The Mind so that the conditions change in some ways and can even change completely.
When he made the word become flesh he did intervene with our reality as with the miracles where he changed reality in a profound way for those who receive the miracles and understand his signs. As you can talk to God in prayer you can always connect with him and change the world on his behalf. No magic necessary, indeed, just logic.
I quote from an Article by Ian Tatterstal
“When the first Cro-Magnons arrived in Europe some 40,000 years (kyr) ago, they evidently brought with them more or less the entire panoply of behaviors that distinguishes modern humans from every other species that has ever existed. Sculpture, engraving, painting, body ornamentation, music, notation, subtle understanding of diverse materials, elaborate burial of the dead, painstaking decoration of utilitarian objects. What these behavioral accomplishments most clearly have in common is that all were evidently underwritten by the acquisition of symbolic cognitive processes.”
In my view the acquisition of “symbolic cognitive processes” is not enough to infer moral responsibility and sense of accountability toward God and humankind, as the universal prohibition of homicide by God in Genesis 9:3-6 presupposes. Therefore, you cannot exclude that the “behavioral accomplishments” Tatterstal refers to result from merely evolved cognitive processes and in-group morality.
By contrast Cuneiform proves from the very beginning sense for personal identity (registers) and accountability relationship (contracts), the basic qualities for universal morality according to Genesis 9:3-6, that is, morality founded on the universal revelation that “God has made humankind in the image of God”.
If by “obfuscation” you mean “confusion”, yes: there was confusion both, on the part of Teilhard and his opponents. However, instead of insisting on this “confusion” I would like to progress by keeping what it was correct in both parts, according to the following account:
To clarify “the conundrum of original sin”, we may find a key in the following (in my view brilliant) explanation by Richard Dawkins:
“We should not live by Darwinian principles […] one of the reasons for learning about Darwinian evolution is as an object lesson in how not to set up our values and social lives.”
If we have to think about Darwinian evolution “as an object lesson” the obvious straightforward question is: “who is the teacher?”.
So what Dawkins states amounts to this:
God (the teacher) creates a world that works according to Darwinian evolution in order we humans are taught ”in how not to set up our values and social lives” in the fallen state where humankind would remain after the first sin, if any. And this means: Darwinian evolution, involving cruelty, decay, and death, is in fact projected in the mind of God as “an outcome of a possible first sin in human history”.
However, in the beginning, before the arrival of sin, humans in the image of God (contrarily to non-human animals) were not submitted to suffering, decay and death, and were capable of mastering the Darwinian selfish tendencies (state of original Grace or “Blessing”). Once they sinned they lost this control and became part of the Darwinian world. And then holds exactly what Dawkins states: In this “state of original sin”, where we are after the first sin in human history, Darwinian evolution displays before our eyes the monstrosities we are capable of, if we let us guide by the selfish tendencies we carry in our hearts.
So it holds that:
“The properly human fall is the more or less collective and perennial actuation in the human race of that ‘forma peccati’ that was inherent in the entire universe well before the appearance of man…”, as Teilhard de Chardin claims.
But it holds also that:
that ‘forma peccati’ (acting collectively and perennially in the human race) “was inherent in the entire universe well before the appearance of man”, because it was an anticipated effect of the first human sin (a case of “backwards causation”!), and therefore there is “a first sinner” (“Adam”, in this sense), as Teilhard’s opponents claim.
This said, and for the sake of completeness, I can’t help commenting that Teilhard also glorifies “Evil” as "the ransom of progress”, to the extent of celebrating atom bomb explosions in September 1946 (after Hiroshima and Nagasaki) as major evolutionary progress of mankind, without any compassionate remembrance for the victims. In my view this is strong “obfuscation”. One could discuss whether or not the launch of the bombs was justifiable as means to end the war, but one should not suggest that the unleashing of such destructive power will finally bestow man the possibility to consecrate himself entirely to his biological empowerment and achievement (“ se grandir et s’achever biologiquement lui-même”).
In front of human suffering it seems to me that Dawkins perspective (“I despise Darwinian natural selection as a motto for how we should live”) is more Christian than Teilhard’s glorification of Evil, as “the universal and infrangible law of reversion or perversion”.
In physics we speak about the Big-Bang as the creation of expanding space-time itself with structure from which fundamental matter particles and radiation energy emerge in time. Before the Big-Bang it does not make sense to speak about space and time. Moreover, according to QM all physical phenomena involve non-local correlations that cannot be explained exclusively by causal chains (signals) propagating within the space-time.
If I understand well, you would say that according to Palamas the Big-Bang and the subsequent non-local phenomena involve “acts performed by God”, which Palamas calls “energies”.
Am I right with this interpretation?
Antoine, I have always worried about the amount of ignorance and ‘cherry-picking’ of Teihard’s ideas have crept into the construction of my worldview–one that reconciles evolution with a Faith in a good Creator. My understanding of scientific French falls woefully short of that necessary to comprehend Teilhard’s original theological writings. Perhaps the translations and commentaries I have depended upon (e.g. Ilia Delio’s ‘Teilhard and Omega’) suffer from the same weaknesses. On the other hand, I feel confident in my understanding of Dawkins mind-set, and, even tho I emphatically disagree with his objectives in writing “The God Delusion”, I agree with the quotation of his that you cited above.
Teilhard’s quotation, that you have cited above, is devastating! If he really tried to “spin” the evil of the atom bomb use as “the ransom of progress”, I must conclude that he was “losing it” in his old age. But are you sure that the word “celebrating” accurately describes his reaction to Hiroshima & Nagasaki?
Al Leo
My take from the big bang hypothesis is that a ‘beginning’ may be understood. Can physics say something before a beginning?
The energies of Palamas are uncreated and yet result in all that is known by us; this avoids the problems of open theology and other mistakes (God transcends the creation).
Quantum physics can say that the beginning the universe means the beginning of the space-time itself, and therefore cannot be explained by “something existing in space-time before a beginning”.
In other words, the explanation lies outside (transcends) the universe.
The same holds for all that is observable by us (all the physical phenomena) as far as they involve nonlocal correlations emerging from outside the space-time.
It seems to me that this fits well with what I have stated before, provide one understands “energies” as acts performed by God in order to create the universe (“the heavens and the earth”) and sustain it in being.
As “acts of God” the “Palamas’ energies” are “uncreated”. However, they result in all what is created, and in particular the physical world we measure and describe with concepts like “mass” and “energy”.
Do you consider this understanding of Palamas’ doctrine correct?
This more or less is as far as I can speculate - I am tempted to include an ‘interface’ at the quantum level, based on the observable light discussed in the doctrine. The terminologies of QM and theology make for an awkward fit.
Marvin,
I am preparing a detailed answer to your questions. In order to do this fittingly I would be thankful to know how do you see God intervening at Pentecost:
Acts 2:7-11
Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs—we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!”
The idea is worthy of consideration.
To comment I dare to ask a clarification regarding “the theological doctrine that God sustains His creation” you referred to in a previous post.
It seems to me that “God sustains His creation” not only acting Himself directly but also through invisible intelligences like angels, who are created beings.
Does Saint Palamas distinguish between “uncreated energies” (as operations of God himself) and “created energies” (operations of angels)?
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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