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Zygon®

God's Action in the World: The Relevance of Quantum Mechanics

Peter Edward Hodgson

Published Sep 2, 2000• 8 citations
Publisher

Abstract

It has been suggested that God can act on the world by operating within the limits set by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (HUP) without violating the laws of nature. This requires nature to be intrinsically indeterministic. However, according to the statistical interpretation the quantum mechanical wavefunction represents the average behavior of an ensemble of similar systems and not that of a single system. The HUP thus refers to a relation between the spreads of possible values of position and momentum and so is consistent with a fully deterministic world. This statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics is supported by reference to actual measurements, resolves the quantum paradoxes, and stimulates further research. If this interpretation is accepted, quantum mechanics is irrelevant to the question of God's action in the world.

DOI
10.1111/0591-2385.00294

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It has been suggested that God can act on the world by operating within the limits set by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle (HUP) without violating the laws of nature. This requires nature to be intrinsically indeterministic. However, according to the statistical interpretation the quantum mechanical wavefunction represents the average behavior of an ensemble of similar systems and not that of a single system. The HUP thus refers to a relation between the spreads of possible values of position and momentum and so is consistent with a fully deterministic world. This statistical interpretation of quantum mechanics is supported by reference to actual measurements, resolves the quantum paradoxes, and stimulates further research. If this interpretation is accepted, quantum mechanics is irrelevant to the question of God's action in the world.
Divine action in the world is one of the important problematic questions in contemporary philosophy of religion. After new inventions in modern physics during 20’th century some of the scholars claimed that in spite of classical physics in which physical laws constrain divine actions, in modern physics, uncertainty principle could explain and justify God intervention in the world. But quantum mechanics had produced big challenges in ontology and had not straightforward metaphysics and resulted to different interpretations, each suggesting different way to explain divine actions. Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics regarding his special metaphysical ideas like implicate order, holomovement and holism presenting novel perspective on this issue. This article investigate relation between Bohmian interpretation of quantum mechanics and divine actions in the world and shows its capacities on this issue.
The common understanding of Copenhagen interpretation of the uncertainty principle and indeterminism in quantum physics is that it is a negation of causal relationships. Having the relationship between the existence of God and causality in mind, some advocates of ontological naturalism assert that by negating causality in modern physics, there remains no room for belief in God as the necessary cause of the world and His actions in it. To examine this claim, I will explain briefly the quantum theory, Copenhagen interpretation of uncertainty principle, and its epistemological position. Next, I will investigate its relationship with causality and divine actions. The article concludes that not only is there no conflict between Copenhagen interpretation and causality, but the former is based on the latter and has complete coherence with the belief in God and His actions in the world. Compared to classical physics, its consistency with direct and special divine actions in the world is more.
Abstract The world picture disclosed by classical physics, beginning with Kepler, Galileo, and Newton and continuing until the early part of the twentieth century, was increasingly deterministic. The prevailing metaphor was that of a clock: as a clock is wound up and runs in an entirely predictable way which can be known from its initial conditions, so the universe unfolds according to a deterministic plan. Such a universe, unfolding under the influence of forces so absolute they were called ‘laws’, appeared to have limited opportunity for divine action. The theological response to this world picture was deism: God created the world but it runs on its own. This world picture collapsed in the early twentieth century as quantum mechanics was discovered and developed into a central, if not the central, part of scientific understanding of physical reality. The quantum-mechanical world picture cannot be modelled after the gears, pulleys, and levers of the classical world: its irreducible constituent parts are more like tiny clouds than tiny gears. Furthermore, the behaviour of these smallest parts was discovered to be indeterministic, and eternally so until observed by a mind. The mysterious behaviour of quantum particles, which compose all reality, and the puzzling role of minds invited speculation that God may be acting through the natural order to influence events. Such divine action could exist entirely within the envelope of possibilities possessed by quantum particles and thus not require any disruption of the natural order.
The model of special divine action based on quantum randomness tends to get more attention than the rest. In the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics, some events are not merely unpredictable but also truly indeterministic. This would allow God to work within such ontologically random events without violating any laws of nature. An unappreciated weakness of the model is that quantum fluctuations are not readily amplified into the macroscopic realm. Dynamical systems theory, continuum mechanics, and condensed matter physics show that such fluctuations are prevented from bubbling up within macroscopic systems. While some look to chaos theory for help, chaotic systems are not nearly as prevalent as the popular literature indicates. Once all the relevant physics is considered, models of divine action based on quantum randomness and chaos are far more limited than they are generally assumed to be. Unless some sort of new physical mechanism is discovered, the amplification problem cannot be solved. This means that there is little that God can accomplish by way of quantum randomness.
I present results of recent work in the field of quantum optics and relate this work to discussions about the theory of quantum mechanics and God's divine action in the world. Experiments involving atomic decay, relevant to event uncertainty in quantum mechanics, as well as experiments aimed at elucidating the so–called Schrödinger’s–cat paradox, help clarify apparent ambiguities or paradoxes that I believe are at the heart of renewed attempts to locate God within our constructed physical theories and tend to narrow the gaps proposed as an opening for divine action. Some problems arise because of imprecise use of nonmathematical language to force quantum mechanics into an intuitive “classical” framework.
The principle of uncertainty is one of the essential principles of quantum mechanics as it outlines that there is a reflective limit to the measurement of microscopic particle motion. However it is impossible to measure at once and accurately both the position and momentum data of any microscopic particle no matter what means are used to do so. This paper starts by discussing the notion and mathematical derivation of the uncertainty principle as put forth by Heisenberg explaining the physical relevance of the principle. It introduces the natural uncertainty the principle introduces to the dynamics of particles in the microscopic world, and the significant part it plays in the theory of quantum mechanics. The article overviews the explanations of the principle on phenomena including atomic stability and scanning tunneling microscopes, and the interference of measurement actions on the states of particles and the shortcomings of measurement precision. According to the wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics, this article gives a required theoretical basis of microscopic phenomena. Likewise, the use of the research theory on the uncertainty principle by distinguished scholars in the physics fraternity helps the readers in achieving the knowledge in related subjects more easily.