A Personal God, Chance, and Randomness in Quantum Physics

John C. Beckman, Evangelical Philosophical Society

John Breck

Michael Brooks

Even processes that inherently involved chance were pre-determined. Long before dice were used for gaming, they were used for divination. Ancient thinkers thought the gods determined the outcome of a die roll; the apparent randomness resulted from their ignorance of divine intentions. Oddly, modern science at first did little to change that view but it showed that randomness was nothing intrinsic; just a reflection of humanity's lack of information. Here, Brooks examines whether anything in the universe is truly random.

Dieter Hattrup

Albert Einstein is considered the most famous physicist of the 20th century. His name still unfolds a myth: To what end con the human mind reach out? He claimed physics could answer the metaphysical question: Is the human mind able to achieve a theory of everything (TOE)? If the first principle, called God, is in itself determined. then perhaps we can hope to be some day in possession of this theory. Metaphorically speaking, if God is not able to play dice, this means that its does not exists a free being. The article intends to show that Quantum theory reveals this to be wishful thinking that will not stand on experimental approach. Einstein abhorred indeterminism lo physics, because be wonted to avoid a personal God and man as a being endowed with freedom and responsibility.

Detlef Dürr, Sheldon Goldstein, Nino Zanghı̀

William G. Pollard

There are several hints in physics of a domain of external reality transcendent to three-dimensional space and time. This paper calls attention to several of these intimations of a real world beyond the natural order. Examples are the complex state functions in configuration space of quantum mechanics, the singularity at the birth of the universe, the anthropic principle, the role of chance in evolution, and the unaccountable fruitfulness of mathematics for physics. None of these examples touch on the existence or activity of God, but they do suggest that external reality may be much richer than the natural world which it is the task of physics to describe.