There is a popular meme going around on the Interweb, a quote (“If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics”) attributed to Richard Feynman about the futility of trying to understand quantum physics. To the best of my knowledge, the origins of this quote are unclear. While it sounds like something Feynman might have said, it is also a paraphrase of something said much earlier by Niels Bohr. Bohr or Feynman doesn’t matter. That quote is anywhere between half a century and a century old. One would hope that our understanding of fundamental physics would have improved since then… And indeed it did.- Many physicists understand quantum physics and its “implications for ‘reality.’”
- God acts within the quantum world.
The ones that do understand it are not usually the ones who talk about wave function collapse, many worlds, pilot waves, transactions, or other philosophical, interpretational stuff. Rather, they usually stay off that turf altogether and instead work out the details of a theory, deduce its Feynman rules and its propagators, find ways to renormalize its infinities, and calculate interaction cross sections that can be verified by experimenters. I.e., they create a falsifiable physical theory.
- The reason why communicating the understanding of quantum physics to a non-professional audience is difficult is that quantum physics is manifestly mathematical. The mathematics tells you precisely where everyday intuition and visualizations fail, which is where quantum physics begins. And the failure is complete: the very nature of quantum physics is such that visualizations and classical intuition are incompatible with it. This is why quantum physics can be much harder to master than what are the specific implications of quantum physics on our understanding of reality, and how do these implications challenge our conventional perceptions of the universe?
- What are some examples of real-world experiments that have successfully tested concepts in quantum physics, and how do these experiments help validate or refute different interpretations of the theory? The theory. The mathematics is not necessarily more complicated, but whereas you can visualize relativity once you successfully let go of some non-relativistic notions (after all relativity theory is just a theory of clocks and meter sticks), there is no similar path to visualize or intuitively understand quantum physics.
God acts within your quantum world.
- Introduction Let’s suppose, for this paper, that God exists as a personal, omnipotent being, and as the creator and sustainer of the physical universe. Let’s also suppose for this paper that the theologians who believe God would not intervene in the world are correct. Here, “non-intervention” is to be understood in the technical sense that God would not violate the laws of nature that he created for the world, since that would involve God dealing in two different ways with his creation (McMullin, 1993). (The worry is: why would God create laws of nature that govern the world, and then violate them?) Even though these theologians believe that God doesn’t violate the laws of nature, they do believe that God can act in the world, as long as God does so in ways that don’t violate the laws. Nancey Murphy, Robert Russell, and Thomas Tracy are prominent theologians who give sympathetic discussions of this position, called “noninterventionist special divine action”. (Murphy, 1995; Russell, 2002, and Tracy, 2002 are
- For this paper, let us assume that God exists as a personal, omnipotent being who is the creator and sustainer of the physical universe. We will also assume, in alignment with certain theologians, that God would not intervene in the world. In this context, “non-intervention” refers to the idea that God would not violate the laws of nature that He established, as doing so would imply that God is dealing with His creation in two contradictory ways (McMullin, 1993). The concern here is: why would God create laws of nature to govern the world and then choose to violate them?
- While these theologians maintain that God does not transgress the laws of nature, they believe that God can still act within the world, provided such actions do not contradict the established laws. Notable theologians such as Nancey Murphy, Robert Russell, and Thomas Tracy provide sympathetic discussions of this viewpoint, known as “noninterventionist special divine action.” Their works (Murphy, 1995; Russell, 2002; and Tracy, 2002) are representative of the extensive literature surrounding this topic.
- So, how can God act in the world without intervening? One way is for God to operate at the indeterministic quantum level. For instance, if there is a quantum process with a 10 percent chance of resulting in outcome A and a 90 percent chance of yielding outcome B, God can influence the outcome in a particular instance without violating any laws of nature. This allows for divine action to occur within the framework of established natural laws.that are representative of an extensive literature on this topic.) So how could God act in the world without intervening? One way for God to do this is by acting at the indeterministic quantum level. For example, if there’s some quantum process that has a 10 percent chance of yielding outcome A, and a 90 percent chance of yielding outcome B, God can, in a particular instance of this process, decide which outcome will result, without violating any laws. God Acts in the Quantum World
- It has sometimes been maintained that God’s actions in the world are quite limited if all he can do is an act at the quantum level. My first goal is to show that, in some ways of understanding quantum mechanics, that is false; God’s actions are almost unlimited. This gives God almost unlimited freedom to bring about any effect in the physical world, including (for example) parting the sea, changing water into wine, resurrecting the dead, and producing fish and loaves of bread. Moreover, it has sometimes been maintained that God’s actions in the world, within this quantum-mechanical framework, are problematically episodic, in the sense that God can’t continuously act in the world. I will show that, on some ways of understanding quantum mechanics, this too is false; God’s actions can be continuous (though they need not be). Quantum mechanics is probably a false theory—it can’t accommodate the empirical evidence that supports general relativity, and that’s one reason that physicists are working on a theory of quantum gravity, to supplant both quantum mechanics and general relativity. Even so, this discussion presents a useful model of how it could be the case that some have suggested that God’s capacity to act in the world is severely restricted if He is limited to operating solely at the quantum level. However, I intend to demonstrate that this belief is flawed. Under certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, God’s actions can actually be nearly limitless. This perspective empowers God to produce any physical effect, such as parting the sea, turning water into wine, resurrecting the dead, and multiplying loaves and fish.
- Moreover, critics argue that God’s actions within a quantum-mechanical framework are episodic, implying that He cannot consistently influence the world. I will show that, according to specific interpretations of quantum mechanics, this assertion is also misguided; God’s actions can indeed be continuous, though they need not be.
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- It is important to acknowledge that quantum mechanics may very well be an inadequate theory—it fails to fully account for the empirical evidence that supports general relativity. This is one of the driving forces behind physicists’ efforts to formulate a theory of quantum gravity that could unify or replace both quantum mechanics and general relativity. Nonetheless, this discussion serves as a powerful model for understanding how God might engage with the world in talking as if the GRW theory could be a correct theory of the world, but in fact it (like every other version of quantum mechanics) is probably a false theory. As I noted at the start, quantum mechanics cannot accommodate the evidence that supports general relativity, and that is one reason physicists are searching for a theory of quantum gravity, which will supplant both Quantum mechanics and general relativity. It could turn out that some. theory of quantum gravity is the correct theory of the world, or it could turn out that after coming up with that theory, we will realize that we still have Further to go. What I’ve defended in this paper is a model for how noninterventionist special divine action could work. I’ve defended the details. of the GRW-based model, not to argue for the truth of the GRW theory, But to show that there is a plausible extant model for how noninterventionist special divine action could happen. (I’ve also suggested that some Modal interpretations provide another plausible model.) We will have to see whether future theories of physics have a level of indeterminism built in to them such that my model for noninterventionist special divine Action still applies. Given the current state of physics, we just don’t know, and it’s hard to even make a well-informed guess. Polkinghorne makes a similar point: In our present state of knowledge, no proposal relating to the conceivable causal joints of divine providential interaction can be more than what the physicists would call a “zero-order approximation,” a crude starting point from which one may Hope that better developments might eventually spring. (Polkaing
- I will conclude with two definitive points. First, God’s ability to act in the physical world through quantum effects comes with a critical responsibility. It is imperative that God be willing to intervene actively in the world to ensure it does not veer dangerously off course. God cannot be a hands-off creator who merely initiates the universe and then steps back. Given the premise that God refuses to allow the world to descend into certain catastrophic realities, this necessity for divine intervention is undeniable.Ought I’ll close with two concluding thoughts. First, this ability of God to act in the physical world, via quantum effects, comes with a price. Specifically, God has to act in the world, or at least be ready to act in the world, to ensure that it does not go vastly awry. God cannot be a hands-off God who starts the universe in motion but then no longer intervenes—or at least, God can’t ensure from the start that he will be such a God, under the assumptions that God is unwilling to let the world go certain horrible.
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- R reasons to be unhappy with my versions of quantum special divine action? As far as I can tell, modal interpretations have never been discussed in this literature on quantum special divine action, so no critiques of those interpretations have been raised in this context. The GRW theory, though, has been discussed in this context, and Nicholas Saunders (2002, 156–9) has argued against the GRW theory as a way of understanding quantum special divine action. I’ll now show that Saunders’ critiques are ill-founded. The first of Saunders’ arguments against the GRW theory which I’ll focus on is that the GRW theory appears basically contrived: for a microscopic quantum system with a few particles N, the multiplication of the Gaussian [i.e. the GRW hit] becomes so infrequent as to be practically undetectable; moreover the width of the Gaussian appears to be chosen to be suffi control big to ensure that any energy conservation violations which arise because of its multiplication would be very small and are thus experimentally undetectable. (Saunders, 2002, 158–9) Indeed, the two new fundamental constants of the GRW theory (the probability of a GRW hit happening and the width of the Gaussian) have been picked to fit the extant data, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s a typical process in science that sometimes one uses empirical evidence to determine how to formulate one’s theory; if the process of theory-formation didn’t rely on empirical evidence, there would be something horribly misguided about the process. So I wouldn’t call the f Acts in the quantum world 181 Gaussian multiplication is not the same as a completely localized state .” Saunders goes on to explain the problem of wave function tails—that wave functions aren’t highly localized; they go out to infinity. But it’s this feature of the GRW theory that I’m exploiting to explain how God is so free to act in the quantum world: God can do GRW hits to move particles anywhere. Moreover, there’s now a well-worked-out and agreed-upon ontology for the GRW theory, which accommodates these wave function tails, the mass density ontology (Monton, 2004; Ghirardi, 2011). Saunders’ third and final argument focuses on God’s actions given the ontology of the GRW theory. But the argument is only plausible because Saunders has a different view of how God would act than I do. Saunders writes: under this connection between quantum special divine action and the [GRW] approach to measurement, God still does no more than determine when interventionistically to “toss the quantum dice” and get a probabilistic result. The theologian is still left with the burden of describing how it is that God might obtain a purposive result under this scheme. . .Review suggestions
