July 27, 2012
Does Quantum Physics Make it Easier to Believe in God?
From BQO:
Not in any direct way. That is, it doesn’t provide an argument for the existence of God. But it does so indirectly, by providing an argument against the philosophy called materialism (or “physicalism”), which is the main intellectual opponent of belief in God in today’s world. Materialism is an atheistic philosophy that says that all of reality is reducible to matter and its interactions. It has gained ground because many people think that it’s supported by science. They think that physics has shown the material world to be a closed system of cause and effect, sealed off from the influence of any non-physical realities --- if any there be. Since our minds and thoughts obviously do affect the physical world, it would follow that they are themselves merely physical phenomena. No room for a spiritual soul or free will: for materialists we are just “machines made of meat.”
Quantum mechanics, however, throws a monkey wrench into this simple mechanical view of things. No less a figure than Eugene Wigner, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, claimed that materialism --- at least with regard to the human mind --- is not “logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.” And on the basis of quantum mechanics, Sir Rudolf Peierls, another great 20th-century physicist, said, “the premise that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a human being ... including [his] knowledge, and [his] consciousness, is untenable. There is still something missing.”
More here.
Posted by Azra Raza at 06:23 AM | Permalink
Comments
Oh my.. yet another "god of the gaps" argument. The horror..the horror!
Posted by: Bill | Jul 27, 2012 6:53:10 AM
Seriously?
Take a look at this post - a nice discussion on the post you linked by Sean Carol (Caltech). Says enough.
Cheers
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/sort-of-guest-post-sean-carroll-comments-on-whether-quantum-mechanics-gives-evidence-for-god/
Posted by: Filip | Jul 27, 2012 7:14:22 AM
The "God of the 'Gaps'" meme needs an update. Maybe it worked when we thought we knew what 98% of everything was, but now that we know we can't even see 98% of the stuff in our own universe, that there must be, it seems, an infinite number of other universes, and we still can't explain why life exists, how thought functions etc. in even the most broad strokes, well...
Seems a bit ignorant of the true depths of our ignorance, if you ask me.
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 27, 2012 9:55:08 AM
OK, now we have an argument from ignorance. We probably don't know a heck of a lot about the world, so, based on that presumed ignorance, God might exist, even though we don't know.
I think it makes much more sense to build our world views on what we are pretty sure we do know, rather than what might be the case, but who knows? And based on what we are pretty sure we do know, there just isn't any sound argument for the existence of the Christian-type God.
And it's also interesting to consider the question of what we would need to know -- someday -- if we did find out that this divine person was real. And how we would know it. And how that differs from what we are pretty sure we know right now. My short answers to these questions are: a) Who knows what we would need to know? b) Who knows how we would know it? c) Probably not any different from the kinds of things we know (or some of us think we know, e.g., "revelation by the Holy Spirit") right now. Of course, fleshing out these short answers would take some lengthy argument.
So, in sum, religious believers can go right ahead having a cozy relationship with a something-or-other they don't know anything about, but -- hey, maybe he's out there somewhere. Let's hope so, anyway.
Basically, religion is all about hope: hope that you won't really die after all, and that all the rewards you haven't gotten in life will be given to you in heaven. Personally, I don't need it, but I realize that a lot of people do.
Posted by: JonJ | Jul 27, 2012 10:59:54 AM
http://www.thepaincomics.com/Science%20vs.%20Norse.jpg
Posted by: Bill | Jul 27, 2012 11:37:45 AM
You know an article is terrible when every single comment on here is pointing out the problems with it. Why link to this? As others have pointed out, it's just a mildly updated argument from ignorance, with the mysticism du jour, "quantum physics". Any time you see someone making an argument with serious implications that relies on "quantum physics" in any way, there's a very good chance that they don't understand it. There are good articles about quantum physics (Sean Carroll, indirectly linked above is generally good), but most non-scientific articles that feature it are terrible.
Posted by: Matt | Jul 27, 2012 1:03:02 PM
materialists flummoxed by spirituality, merriment ensues
Posted by: Kim Cascone | Jul 27, 2012 1:56:12 PM
It's all very weird and unknown and quantum
Posted by: ophu | Jul 27, 2012 3:02:51 PM
ODIN!!!
Love it.
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 27, 2012 3:36:35 PM
I don't understand the thing about decaying nuclei --if you have a finite number of decaying nuclei, then I don't understand how its not clear that you get to that last unchanged one....something about Schrodingers' equations can't describe its decay because the probably then becomes 0 or 100 or something? I don't get it.
Posted by: Stopher | Jul 27, 2012 4:58:15 PM
On the contrary, quantum physics does not reveal a Maker because everything is happening by chance. "God does not play dice" - Einstein.
So you can believe in QM or you can believe in God, but you can't believe in both.
Posted by: Raza | Jul 27, 2012 5:28:30 PM
I sense an increase in desperation of religious people since the publication of books like Krauss's "A Universe from Nothing: Why There is Something Rather than Nothing"
This is a sign Krauss is on the right track.
Posted by: reader | Jul 27, 2012 6:27:29 PM
"I sense an increase in desperation of religious people since the publication of books like Krauss's "A Universe from Nothing:"
There might be a certain amount of wishful thinking or even projection at work in your subconscious, reader. The number of books hashing over the same well plowed ground, starting with Susskind's Cosmic Landscape years ago, then Hawkings Grand Design, and finally Krauss' Universe from Nothing, can't really be seen as discouragements to the believers. Rather, they are meant to be encouragements to the flagging enthusiasm of the antitheists: "Hold on, I know it looks really, really, bad right now, but trust us, in a multiverse with infinite variations, one of them is bound not to have a creator god in it, and this could be it!"
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 27, 2012 6:52:33 PM
Carlos, who created your "creator god"?
And how exactly does it "look really bad right now?"
The article above makes a fairly basic error in assuming that the technical term "observer" in QM means a conscious subject. Few working physicists believe that, as Sean Carol above explained.
Posted by: Bruce | Jul 27, 2012 7:30:19 PM
Carlos, who created your "creator god"?
Good point!
And how exactly does it "look really bad right now?"
Each one of the authors I mention has done an exemplary job explaining the anthropic principle from their own perspectives. Taken together, the three expositions of the theory combine to resonate very compellingly against the alternative explanations, although I do like the holographic principle a great deal.
I always find myself back a Dennett's brilliant concept of the Sky Hook.Both sides require one, but the Theistic Sky Hook seems to have many more definable (observable) parts than the Sky Hook required by the theory that rejects Sky Hooks as inadmissible.
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 27, 2012 9:43:35 PM
The sky hook required by the theory that rejects sky hooks is, at the same time, indefinable, undetectable, and infinitely complicated.
Swimming against the "natural" tendency to simply dismiss the accumulating evidence in support the anthropic principle as mere (if blisteringly improbable) coincidence, with the reasonable assertion that with infinite variation infinitely unlikely probabilities will occur naturally, what if instead we attempted to apply two reasonable standards of evidence to it as if it were a legitimate scientific theory: Occam's razor, and falsification?
So how is the Anthropic PrincipleFalsified? And if it is not falsified, how would one falsify it? How is the alternative infinitely complex scenario even demonstrated so that if can be falsified? And finally, isn't even the existence of an uncreated Supreme Being, by definition, simpler than an uncreated multiverse of infinite scope, variation and complexity? What would Occam say?
Posted by: Carlos | Jul 27, 2012 10:31:53 PM
>And finally, isn't even the existence of an uncreated Supreme Being, by definition, simpler than an uncreated multiverse of infinite scope, variation and complexity?
No. Because the behavior of the universe, its machinery, looks to be a compact set of interactions. We may not know what they are fully yet, but it's still not that big. One clue to that is the bekenstein bound, one of the starting points of the anthropic principle; it states that the information content in a region of space is a finite number of bits, and its interaction with the remainder of the universe is also finite in scope.
Whereas a mind is an enormously complex thing. It only seems simple because our minds are evolved to model the behavior of other minds, and do math and logical thinking very inefficiently by comparison.
I do think the recent atheist-activist authors are making one basic mistake. The "believers" are happy to fill in the blanks with wild, anthropic fantasies. But scientists should be more than happy to state "we just don't know, and you don't either, but we do know your beliefs are very unlikely", and feel confident in that stance. Posing their own wild conjectures is undignified.
Posted by: Bruce | Jul 27, 2012 11:18:39 PM
Mistype: "bekenstein bound, one of the starting points of the anthropic principle"
Should have read:
"Bekenstein bound, one of the starting points of the Holographic principle"
Posted by: Bruce | Jul 27, 2012 11:19:55 PM
There are really two questions here:
1. Does quantum physics make belief in God more reasonable?
2. Does quantum physics make it easier for people to go on believing in God.
The answer to the first question is pretty obviously no since quantum mechanics has nothing to say about things theological one way or the other. You can't represent God in the mathematical formalisms of QM so QM can neither affirm nor deny God's existence.
The answer to the first question is pretty obviously yes since anything that confuses and befuddles people makes it easier to go on believing what you've always believed anyhow. Only a handful of people have any knowledge of QM—what passes for lay knowledge of QM is usually a misunderstanding of the science rather than a simplified, qualitative take on it. We're in "Thunder stick go bang! Friend die" territory here. For the vast majority of mankind, QM is simply a night in which all cows are black. If you want to believe in something mysterious or sell investing secrets or theology, the existence of a body of thought that is both highly mysterious and highly prestigious is highly convenient.
Posted by: Jim Harrison | Jul 28, 2012 3:14:05 PM
Although, like most people, I barely understand QM, I can see how it can provide a possible explanation for how something can come from nothing. I think this does make it easier not to believe in god. Those who want to believe in god will not let QM stop them.
Posted by: reader | Jul 28, 2012 6:25:37 PM
Quantum Mechanics is bullshit.
Posted by: God | Jul 28, 2012 8:30:41 PM
God: shut up and calculate.
Posted by: Feynman | Jul 29, 2012 2:55:13 AM
Quantum Mechanics will be the foundation on which spirituality is realized as the ultimate alternative to religion. Does it prove God exists,.. of course! it all depends on your definition of God. My definition, "The totality of universal experience" will be perceived as vague by the mundane, but to the enlightened,.. it's as elegant as E=MC2.
My point is,.. quantum mechanics is perfect for those of us who are wise enough to uncover its logic. Imaging you were god. Meaning you are "all that was and all that will be" and you wanted to create an existence with infinite possibilities (universe/multiverse). The only pragmatic foundation to this system would be Qunatum Mechanics.
Simply put,.. if all possibilities are to be achieved then all probabilities must be realized!
Posted by: Rich | Aug 1, 2012 12:10:21 PM
1) There are no gods.
2) Therefore, one cannot use a sound logical argument to prove the existence of a god.
3) Your interlocutor does not understand quantum mechanics.
4) Therefore, your interlocutor cannot judge whether an argument involving quantum mechanics is sound.
5) Therefore, an argument involving quantum mechanics makes it easier to convince your interlocutor there is a god.
QED
Posted by: X | Aug 3, 2012 5:43:22 PM
Post a comment