Does Quantum Mechanics Disprove an All-Knowing God?

No, points 1-3 apply to any and all particles, even whole atoms. Photons, electrons, Higgs bosons, W and Z particles, protons, neutrons, mesons, hadrons, quirks, neutrinos. All quantum particles. 4 follows from 1 to 3.

I am talking about every quantum particle. Real particles. A real electron - what is its precise location? Can’t know with certainty. I can force it to a precise location but then its momentum is completely unknown.

Since God can’t know either, his is not all-knowing.

That is an abstraction, I am talking about real everyday particles. The stuff you and I are made of.

Certainly is . Does God know the exact location (or state) of the electron in the nueron in my brain that is firing right now. No, he doesn’t.

I think this discussion has become pointless, as you stubbornly refuse to bring anything from QM that is relevant to what you keep saying regarding God. I think you are relaying poorly stated school text book statements on general aspects of QM, and this makes it impossible to engage with you in a meaningful way.

To illustrate my point, I provide Saunders, in Analysis, 66 (2006) pp.52-63, who posed the question, “Are quantum particles objects?” The opening statement in the abstract of this paper states, “It is widely believed that particles in quantum mechanics are metaphysically strange; they are not individuals…, in some sense of the term, and perhaps they are not even objects at all, a suspicion raised by Quine(1976a, 1990). In parallel it is thought that this difference, and especially the status of quantum particles as indistinguishable, accounts for the difference between classical and quantum statistics - a view with long historical credentials.

‘Indistinguishable here mean permutable; that states of affairs differing only in permutations of particles are the same - which, satisfyingly, are described by quantum entanglements, so clearly in a way that is conceptually new.”

Both computations and experimental data (measurements) achieve unprecedented accuracy and reproducibility, and our knowledge of the quantum world is growing exponentially. I have tried to point out to you that modelling (using the most sophisticated QM theory and computer packages) faces a problem in that we cannot believe that single, isolated, particles, or atoms, or molecules, exist anywhere but in our imagination - you have also failed to respond to this.

I think your statements may be understood by Cylons and church thereof, or perhaps you have run your remarks through your encryption protocols, thereby making them impossible to be part of this discussion. :laughing:

I’m having difficulty mapping this onto a standard QM description of a physical system. Specifically, it’s quite possible to prepare a system in a known quantum state. It is, for example, easy to create an electron that is known to be in a spin-up state, when measured on one axis. What the Uncertainty Principle states is that the same electron cannot be in a definite state for an observable that is complementary to the first. In the case of the electron, that means that its spin measured on a perpendicular axis does not have a definite value. That doesn’t mean, however, that the electron’s state cannot be known: it just means that the known state does not have a single value for certain observables.

Put more simply, an electron may exist (though that’s a matter for debate as well), but an electron’s position doesn’t exist. There is nothing for God to know.

Yes Quantum Mechanical Systems are hard to understand. Some properties even have names like “spookiness” . Let’s go back to basics and let’s keep it as simple as possible: the location of an electron at time t1. The location of the electron is in FOUR possible places: Location A, Location B, BOTH Location A & B, or neither Location A or B. Note that location A and B can be any physical location in the whole universe. All we can say prior to measurement is the probability of each of those states. You can never be certain of the electron’s location BEFORE you measure/observer it.

The electron exists. It is real, yes. Where is it? Is it here? Maybe but I am not certain. Is it there - fifty million lights years away? Maybe but I am not certain. Is it in both places? Maybe but I am not certain. Is it in neither place? Maybe but I am not certain.

Ok this is very hard to understand. So let’s try to make it easier. Can a thought be known before it occurs? No.

A thought in a human brain is a firing of a sequence of neurons in the brain. The firing of neuron is at its base governed by quantum mechanical actions of the atoms in the neurons. So thoughts are generated at random and proceeded in well wired sequences. Can you or someone else know what a thought is BEFORE it occurs? No. because of the above Quantum Mechanical Arguments above. Can God know your thoughts before you think them? No. Impossible. All-knowing property of God is false.

Patrick, I’ll try to follow the general injunction for this site, to keep discourse gracious. However, that being said, I read a lot off assertions about quantum mechanics both by you and others with which I am not comfortable. I should add that I’ve published magnetic resonance published papers involving quantum mechanical techniques, principally density matrix theory, have taught graduate courses in qm, and have read qm texts ranging from Bohm through Dirac, Messiah, and texts on philosophical interpretations of qm. Any number of physicists and philosophers would disagree with the assertion that “quantum mechanics disproves God.” Indeed there is a book titled “Mathematical Undecidability, Quantum Nonlocality and the Question of the Existence of God;”–two of the authors in this collection of essays are John T. Bell (of Bell’s Theorem) and Bernard d’Espagnat (coworker in the ASPECT experiments). They don’t say that QM disproves God.

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“A thought in a human being is a firing of a sequence of neurons in the brain”.
It might be more accurate to say
"A thought involves the firing…". There are many philosophers and some neuro-scientists who would disagree with the first statement.

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I am trying to describe a real physical thought. It has to do with neurons firing? Right? A thought doesn’t exist until a sequence of neurons fire. Correct? A neuro-scientist can give the detail on how that occurs etc. But at it base level, the atoms in the neurons behave according to Quantum Mechanics? So no one knows what the thought is until it happens.

Bob,
Thanks for the post. I am not going anywhere near the claim that QM disproves God, I am just going to that QM makes it impossible to be all-knowing property of God. QM says that it is impossible to know the outcome of an event before it occurs.
That event can be a thought, a trajectory of a hurricane, which neutron decays in a gram of uranium.

Interesting Bell’s Theorem. See these latest results Science | AAAS

I am very impressed by the comments of so many physicists and engineers who understand QM. I dont. But I do know its true. Patrick claims that QM disproves an all knowing God. What I find interesting about this is that the first time I began to wonder about my atheism was when I read about QM. I understood that we could never know everything about physical reality, and that led me to see the reason that there might be a God.

After all, if reality does exist, doesn’t it make sense that somebody or something does have the power to know it? But QM says it cannot be any entity in the physical world. Thus there might be an entity in the non physical (supernatural) world that would not only know the exact location and momentum of all photons, but might even be able to control them.

Of course, that implies that there is a supernatural world, (which I didnt believe). And then I realized that the definition of supernatural simply means a part of the natural world that isnt subject to the physical laws we know.

Could such a thing exist? Apparently yes, according to multiverse theory which in fact provides the only viable non theistic answer to the fine tuning issue. So if the multiverse theory is correct, and fine tuning is due to the existence of a near infinite number of universes, each with different values for the physical constants, and different natural laws, then a “supernatural” world can indeed exist. And God can be part of that. On the other hand if that is all wrong, then there is no other answer to the fine tuning issue (as raised by that obscure physicist, theologian and world famous writer, John Polkinghorne) than that God created the universe to be fit for life. Either way, I dont see how we can remove God from reality.

So, I would propose a reversal of the original thought. To me, QM provides pretty strong evidence for the existence of an all knowing and all powerful God.

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You don’t have to make your description simpler: you have to make it more rigorous and (I’m pretty sure) more correct. In QM, the location is not part of the state of a particle. The state of a particle is described by (and only by) its wave function; the location, like any observable, is given by an operator acting on the wave function. You appear to be confusing the two. As I said before, the state of a particle can be well-defined even if its position isn’t.

“Where is the electron really located?” is not a meaningful question in QM. A meaningful question is something like, “Where will the electron be if I measure its location?”

Thanks for the link Patrick. Here’s a thought for you to chew on : > ) . Your point, if I understand it correctly, is that since the measurement outcome of a quantum mechanics event can only be known probabilistically, God can’t know what the outcome would be, which contradicts the notion of an omniscient God. You would be correct I think following several interpretations of quantum mechanics. But what about the Many Worlds/ Many Minds interpretation (which many, although not all, physicists credit)? For this interpretation all possible events occur, although the observer only experiences one of those. The Many Worlds/ Many Minds interpretation is consistent with a Molinist theological setting, God’s Middle Knowledge and in my opinion makes the question of free will easier to reconcile with God’s foreknowledge.

That’s only true if you conceive of God as a physical observer, which makes for an odd sort of theism. If instead you think of God as directly creating every event, or as seeing all of time simultaneously, then of course he can know what’s going to happen.

@Patrick

The God hypothesis is necessary to explain reality, because without unity there is no reality, there is no cosmos.

If QM is not the source of unity, that is, if physical reality is not the source of unity, then it is all the more important for the spiritual Reality to be the source of unity for the universe.

“Does God know the exact location (or state) of the electron in the nueron in my brain that is firing right now. No, he doesn’t”.

Yes he does. What is unknoweable by us, can still be knowable by God. This applies to electrons, to the past, and to the future. God is not limited by time, space, light. What is momentum to us, can be frozen in time by God. Even though your deductions about God are logically incorrect anyway, it is also silly to apply human concepts of knowability to God’s ability to know. But if God created electrons to be undeterminable as to quantum state, from a human perspective, then he knows that doesn’t he? It is not something he doesn’t know. In other words if we know something such as that we cannot determine the quantum state of a particle beyond the possibility of four different states, then certainly God also knows that. When we flip a coin for the 99 time, we do not know what will appear, and we cannot know, but yet that is no proof that God cannot know. It is not even proof that God cannot influence that 99th coin toss.

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@Patrick,

You have made a mistake here. Atoms do NOT behave according to Quantum Physics, because QP only applies to particles SMALLER than an atom. Thus thoughts are NOT governed by QP.

Another important reason why our thoughts are not governed by QP is that it is the sequence of the firing of the neurons that determines the meaning of the thoughts, not the electrons that they fire. We guide the firing of the neurons, so we control the meaning of our thoughts, although at times they can take unexpected turns, but not because of QP, but because God’s reality includes many surprises.

Doing some study online on the Stamford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (online.) I have found that

  1. The Uncertainty Principle is more accurately called the Uncertainty Relationship. It is not a Principle that says that humans or God does not know certain things, but an observation that humans do not know both the location and the momentum exactly of a subatomic particle.

  2. While we do not know the exact location and momentum of a particular particle, we can know the approximate location and plot it on a graph, which satisfies most people. Thus the indeterminate aspect of QP is over rated, just as the random aspect of genetic variation is over rated. Neither is dramatically indeterminate or random. They are more marginally random and indeterminate.

Comment: God gives the freedom we need to make our own decisions, but does not leave us adrift with nowhere to turn. We need and have both freedom and determinancy in our lives.

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Oh my! Please give me the phone number of the local nuclear power plant. I got to tell them that the uranium atoms are not behaving according to Quantum Physics and are not randomly expelling neutrons to heat the water to generate the electricity. :joy: You thoughts are governed by QP see Chapter 1 - The Quantum You of Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza

Why would we read a book by a chiropractor to learn about quantum physics or neurobiology?

Because I don’t rely on one book for everything I need to know in life. :grinning:

@Patrick

You are losing your cred. Everyone knows that nuclear fission is not created by Quantum Physics.

I hope your brother is getting better.