Hi, I am confused over where quantum mechanics takes us in terms of is there a ‘God’ and if there is what if anything can we deduce.
I have made a few bullet points with what are basic assumptions / posits to provoke a response so we have something to bounce off.
Please have a read and offer your thoughts, correcting me as I am bound to be wrong in places.
Quantum Mechanics & Possible Explanations
Quantum mechanics only occurs on a separated atomised particle level, so has little relevance to the classical /Einstein’s relativity laws.
Quantum mechanics effects all measured / observed physical entities.
If posit 2 is correct then reality is fluid
If posit 1 is correct then forms could be made by inclination towards an idea (explaining rapid growth evolution)
If posit 2 is correct then Quantum effects define and govern nature so is ‘God’ like
As the world is full of sufferance we cannot state this ‘God force’ is benevolent unless sufferance
is intrinsic to some objective of transcendence.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
2
3, 4, 5 do not follow in any way from 1, 2, 3
I can only make any sense of 5 at all: if God is not the ground of being, then whatever is, takes His place. Without intentionality.
Don’t worry about being confused about what quantum mechanics has to say about God. Quantum mechanics is confusing enough as it is anyway. It does raise all sorts of interesting philosophical questions, such as ones about the role of randomness in the way that creation behaves, or the nature of consciousness or even of reality itself, but at the same time it is very mathematical and technical and it introduces all sorts of phenomena that are very difficult to conceptualise without a lot of intense study.
As a matter of interest, how much do you know about quantum mechanics? Have you studied it at university level?
Hi Roger,
I will attempt to explain what I mean by posit 4.:
In Quantum mechanics the observer affects the outcome. Why this is we do not know. In Darwin’s theory of evolution we have random mutation creating new species. My understanding is that it is unlikely that random mutation created the origin of life or new species as mathematically it is improbable. So if and it is a big if, Darwin was wrong then let’s go back to Quantum mechanics and posit an explanation. I make no attempt to cross the t’s and dot the i’s but I posit there are Quantum attractions towards form. Such attractions may emanate from random advantage, existing forms or unknown programming.
The big issue is that we have theists with fixed ideas and materialists with fixed ideas. Where there should be common ground is the idea of a creative ‘god’ force.
Hope this helps, yes it is fuzzy but it is my contemporary thought base I play with.
Regarding Posit 6;
Darwin had trouble with creation due to several factors, one was bad things occurring in nature. I think he was wrong in that in simple life forms you cannot expect complexity. Sounds obvious but moral decision making requires a more complex mind that one supposes an insect possesses. Bad is a necessary ingredient to develop true goodness. If we were all programmed to perform 100% in the right way we could not be described as being intrinsically good as we would lack the ability to transgress.
Regards
Chris
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
6
The observer doesn’t have to have intentionality. Any appropriate detector will do. Why this is we know: Wave function collapse.
Yes, although natural selection also plays an important and nonrandom role.
Leaving aside the origin of life, which is outside the realm of Darwin’s theory, there’s no reason to think that the origin of species by mutation and selection is improbable. In fact, it’s pretty much inevitable.
What you’re proposing doesn’t strike me as related to actual quantum mechanics. You’re free to hypothesize attractions like this, but I don’t see that putting the label ‘quantum’ on them adds anything.
That is what Erwin Schrodinger posited in a tiny book called “What is life,” arguing that quantum fluctuations all averaged out to no effect. But then came the revolution of Chaos science where we realized our routine approximations of non-linear equations with linear equations were misleading us. The truth is that the nonlinear equations governing most physical processes can selectively amplify tiny fluctuations until they dominate and alter the course of events on a macroscopic scale in the so so called “butterfly effect.” And Ilya Prigogine proved that non-linear equations required specification of initial conditions to an infinite degree of precision before the results can be predicted. Thus quantum fluctuations cannot always be ignored in macroscopic events.
Yes and non-linearity is nearly as ubiquitous. Even in the gravitational interactions between large bodies if you have more than two, then you get the non-linearity of the so called “three body problem.”
The failure of 1 means physical determinism is dead and physical causality is not a closed system. Thus you cannot exclude the possibility of nonphysical causes having an impact upon physical events.
Don’t see how that follows and don’t even know what that is supposed to mean. What I have explained above certainly means the failure of physical determinism affects everything.
??? It is certainly true that we live in a quantum reality. Even if quantum weirdness is restricted to microscopic events, it still has an impact on the course of macroscopic events.
HOWEVER, any window which quantum physics provides for the involvement of God in events is restricted to the rare and the miraculous for consistent interference providing us with a way to control the involvement of God in events would amount to an alteration of the laws of nature which would be measurable. What we measure is that God chooses to be consistent with His decision that the universe will be primarily governed by the laws of nature and He is NOT a being to be manipulated or controlled.
In quantum mechanics “the observer” refers to measuring devices. It is demonstrable that the measuring devices have these effect regardless of whether there are any conscious observers or not.
I will skip the claims about random mutation and evolution since glipsnort handles those.
Perhaps you need to define your terms. This communicates nothing to me. You certainly have not demonstrated a viable alternative to evolution.
On what basis do you make such a claim about Darwin? Sounds more like a standard atheist argument.
Sounds like the typical argument of the villain in many stories, like Zorg in the film “The Fifth element.” I do not agree.
Programming is for machines. Nothing wrong with machines if you want things done perfectly and efficiently. But one does not have children for the same reason as one make machines. So if that is your reason for doing things then you would want the process of life where organisms make their own choices and thus have the possibility of choosing evil. But that is need for a possibility of evil for a greater good, which is not the same thing as saying you must have evil in order to have good.
To me this is of prime importance. If a none conscious measuring device impact the behaviour of a particle what can we possibly infer / explain this by?
We could posit for example:
1.That there could be an unknown entity that ‘sees’ what is happening.
2.That the particle itself has some form of awareness.
3.That the person(s) installing the measuring device by some unknown mechanism triggers the
outcome.
Solutions to such issues are extremely difficult as I suspect we may be into cross dimensional relationships.
Regards
Chris
What you posit does not agree with the evidence. The evidence shows that conscious observers have nothing whatsoever to do with quantum effects. Quantum effects are a consequence of interactions with the measuring devices.
This sort of confusion only serves to throw a smokescreen obscuring the real implications of quantum effects, which is really about causality and the limitations of science and not about some magical interaction between the mind and reality.
This has no connection to the findings of quantum physics.
There is no evidence of any such thing in the behavior of particles.
Nope. The installation is irrelevant. You can have machines install the measuring devices. The only thing of importance is the functionality of the measuring device.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
14
None of the above. Magic doesn’t come in to it. Terry Pratchett would be the man to ask how it would. You’d need a seance for that.