Does Quantum Mechanics Disprove an All-Knowing God?

Yes, my scientific training AND my human twenty-first century reasoning says to me that the God hypothesis is not necessary to explain reality. It is not an over claim.

QM isn’t a claim, it is a fact about reality. The God hypothesis is contrary to QM so it is therefore not necessary. Poof it’s gone. Like the electro-magnetic ether.

Isn’t it time to determine how we are going to live without God? How we are going to make sure that we don’t destroy our future arguing with each other what He wants us to do with our lives?

@Patrick

You’re comparing God to that of the “ether”. And that’s silly. People don’t look at God as a scientific theory, Patrick. They look at Him as working with their lives so saying he is “unnecessary” based on “what we now know” is silly.

We don’t look to God as one looks to science. God speaks to us in our lives… The stars remain silent.

You’re comparing what you know, as a human being, to that of what God knows.
You haven’t me a single logical reason how it is God knows as much about the universe as you do.

-Tim

That voice in your head that you keep hearing is you. Take a look at the video that nink posted. Tell me that ego and God of one’s mind isn’t united as one.

It is not reckless and absurd. Examining the basis of one’s thoughts is key to one’s mental health.

Sorry, I never heard of Polkinghorne. Is he alive today? If he is I wish him well and thank him for his contribution to humanity. However, his opinion on the conflict or non conflict between QM and his belief in God has absolutely no bearing on whether QM is a true description of reality.

No, I rather to continue reading the latest QM papers. Especially photon entanglement and teleportation. Why? Because there is a chance that these new experimental results can yield technologies such as quantum cryptography that make passwords and databases impossible to hack.
That would be doing something good for humanity. You on the other hand, would rather debate whether God can hack into a quantum computer and decrypt the data or not. Unimportant unnecessary waste of neural activity.

There is no place for God in QM. He can’t know the quantum state of an electron before observation.
Proves the all-knowing property of the God hypothesis is false. QM doesn’t disproves the existence of God. Just the all-knowing property and the necessity of God in a quantum mechanical device or system. QM works the same way whether God exists or doesn’t.

You keep making statements such as “no place for God in QM” and yet I cannot see a single point from QM that is even relevant to your statements. Surely you cannot be serious in starting with the uncertainty principle (or entanglement for that matter) and jump into a non-descript theology. I for one would be interested in hearing from you specific theoretical and practical (your version of what is real) aspects of QM that would make some theological point. You have been more than forthright in other remarks, why not on QM and your version of God?

Yes, I make that claim. Prove that I am incorrect in my claim. That is what science is all about - falsifying claims with new data, new observations, new experimental results. Go ahead, prove me wrong. Please prove me wrong. Please show me that God can and does know the quantum state of a photon (an electron) before it is detected (measured). I need to know this as I (and all of the entire Quantum Cryptography field) are claiming that impossible to know this in a Quantum Cryptography System. If this is not true, I would like to know as billions is being spent on researching quantum computing.

Making unwarranted claims, and then immediately pronouncing that it is everybody else’s responsibility to prove you wrong is the first sign that as far as evidence goes … You’ve got nothing. You’re the one making claims here, Patrick, so the burden of evidence is yours.

Patrick, now you are either knowingly making silly comments or showing an odd (perhaps Cylon) sense of humour. You are active in the areas I suggested and thus my questions are obvious - from your comment I can only conclude you do not have any theory or experimental data to support your eccentric claims/statement and cannot bring your self to admit this publicly. Perhaps it is best if you stick to your stories of meant sandwiches, hostile nuns, and cylons (btw I have never met such nuns as you describe, unless you refer to those in the “Blues Brothers”).

ok, to those who say that I got nothing, here goes again. Please fire away and also I ask Biologos staff to examine and comment on my claims.

  1. The quantum state of any quantum particle is unknowable with certainty.
  2. The state of any particle can be one of FOUR possible states: 1. state A, 2. state B, 3. both A and B, or 4. neither A or B. (State can be spin, location, momentum, energy level, any measurable quantity)
  3. Probabilities of each state can be determined a priori but which of the four states the particle is in is unknowable with certainty. (Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle)
  4. Given the above the claim that an all-knowing being, entity, god, or God can exist is false. All knowing is impossible.

There is mountains of experimental data supporting this. This is the foundation of quantum cryptography.

Attack it at will.

Your points 1-3 imply you may be promoting a photon (or electron) at rest or something equally improbable. If taken as a crude attempt at discussing QM theory, they are irrelevant to 4, and thus there is not much that can be considered as a debate.

You start with saying complete knowledge of any particle at a given instant cannot be obtained by us, and then simply say that this proves something about God - that is illogical. You must start with something along the lines, that you cannot believe that God transcends all physical reality - if you commence with that assumption, and you claim a false claim your belief has been proven to be correct, than God cannot exist, so your discussion is pointless. If on the other hand you use the phrase ‘an all-knowing god, of God’, than by definition He must know all, so how does your thinking stack up? It does not. Along with a strange circularity in your thinking, you have not provided any data supporting for or against God’s transcendence, or as you prefer, that He is ‘all knowing’.

This tendency to come up with something that sounds scientific, and then assume that it (science) is attacked when it is shown to be theologically irrelevant, shows a tendency worse than the straw man approach.

@Patrick

I was just getting set to respond and noticed that GJDS just made some good points already. I’ll still add this, though, which may be just another way of addressing what GJDS already said above.

I think your #1 already runs into trouble, when you declare something “unknowable”. There may well be unknowable things that are unknowable because there is nothing there to know. E.g. does God know what the smallest positive real number is? The challenge is nonsensical because there is no “smallest positive real number” to know. So notions of omniscience are in no way threatened by failing to be self-contradictory. So if an electron is not a phenomenon that involves a specific location then that is exactly what God would know about it.

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