It is actually this, and not creation/evolution issues that give me the most science related angst. It seems that there is a conflict between the indeterminacy of quantum mechanics and foreordination of all things. There are a lot of resources on the net on quantum mechanics and Christianity, but unfortunately they're almost all written from a libertarian perspective, and so they welcome randomicity, not seeing that if something is not in God's complete control it makes any sort of divine plan meaningless. The only stuff from a calvinist perspective I found was on Hugh Ross's site, but I'd like more. Anyone got resources, or their own thoughts, on this? Apreciated...
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Quantum Mechanics and Calvinism
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cygnusx1
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cygnusx1
Jacob the twister.....
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by Ex Nihilo
"Quantum mechanics is a major problem for naturalistic determinism, but since Calvinism does not assume that all events have naturalistic causes, QM is not a problem at all for Calvinism. (If we assume that God's sovereignty of the universe means always using secondary natural causes, we have to exclude the resurrection and the regeneration of our own hearts.)
Scientists claim on the basis of QM that there is no (known) cause for whether a given photon goes one way or another. That is, we have no naturalistic explanation for the photon's "choice."
The lack of natural cause doesn't mean there is no cause.
What if God himself ordains the direction of the photon's path? This isn't inconsistent with our view of a supersovereign God. (And if you click the link, that's also my prof's position.)
Would you claim that your thoughts are naturalistically determined with a physical cause? Surely not. Yet God knows them before they happen. He needn't roll dice. He knows and ordains what will happen through the sovereign working of his will. It is as if you are saying that God must act in patterns we can discern and through causes we understand. He needn't. He can act directly within his world or he can use causes that make no sense to use. I don't know which this is, frankly.
My physics prof has a web site where he discusses this. You might not agree with everything he says (though I believe he is a Calvinist), but it's an interesting read:
http://cavserver.lacollege.edu/Sprow...uantumtalk.htm
http://www.puritanboard.com/f60/quantum-mechanics-5885/
"Quantum mechanics is a major problem for naturalistic determinism, but since Calvinism does not assume that all events have naturalistic causes, QM is not a problem at all for Calvinism. (If we assume that God's sovereignty of the universe means always using secondary natural causes, we have to exclude the resurrection and the regeneration of our own hearts.)
Scientists claim on the basis of QM that there is no (known) cause for whether a given photon goes one way or another. That is, we have no naturalistic explanation for the photon's "choice."
The lack of natural cause doesn't mean there is no cause.
What if God himself ordains the direction of the photon's path? This isn't inconsistent with our view of a supersovereign God. (And if you click the link, that's also my prof's position.)
Would you claim that your thoughts are naturalistically determined with a physical cause? Surely not. Yet God knows them before they happen. He needn't roll dice. He knows and ordains what will happen through the sovereign working of his will. It is as if you are saying that God must act in patterns we can discern and through causes we understand. He needn't. He can act directly within his world or he can use causes that make no sense to use. I don't know which this is, frankly.
My physics prof has a web site where he discusses this. You might not agree with everything he says (though I believe he is a Calvinist), but it's an interesting read:
http://cavserver.lacollege.edu/Sprow...uantumtalk.htm
http://www.puritanboard.com/f60/quantum-mechanics-5885/
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arunma
Flaming Calvinist
Perhaps I can be of some help here. The association of quantum mechanics with indeterminacy is, I think, due to a failure on the part of physicists to properly communicate with the general public. It is true that QM proposes that there is a certain "vagueness" to the universe at the smallest of scales. However, this vagueness is not quite the same thing as indeterminacy. While it could, in some sense, be called randomness, quantum effects are precisely the reason that the universe operates in a deterministic fashion on larger scales, and it is quantum effects that gives the universe its fundamental order.
The fundamental object in quantum mechanics is the wave function. We often talk of the wave function as describing the probability of finding quantum particles in certain locations. However, when Erwin Schrodinger first wrote down his famous equations (at least it's famous among physicists), he did not know what the wave function was. At first it was merely a linear algebraic tool -- an eigenvector or eigenfunction as it's known in the business -- which he used to calculate physical observables such as energies. The connection between the wave functions and probability isn't entirely obvious.
Nor does it point to an inherent disorder or chaos to the universe. If you are fairly well-versed in physics, you know that gas discharge lamps operate by stripping electrons from gas molecules. The electrons release photons as they transition to their initial state. Now these lamps emit light at very specific energies, and this effect occurs precisely because of the quantum nature of hydrogen electrons. So one can see that if not for the random behavior of the hydrogen electron, the hydrogen atom would not have the precise, predictable energies that it does!
Furthermore, we needn't even think of the wave function as fundamentally indeterminate. The idea of quantum mechanics is that rather than being at an "indeterminate," quantum particles are delocalized when they remain unobserved by some measuring apparatus. So it would make no sense to say that "the particle's position can't be precisely known," when QM is really saying that quantum particles don't even have a defined location until they are observed.
I think that one of my old undergraduate quantum mechanics textbooks puts it best:
We can be certain, from the Scriptures, that God is sovereign. The order that arises due to quantum mechanics confirms that God has ordained all things for our good, so that we can repent of our sins and have faith in Jesus Christ. Without it we would certainly not live in a world so conducive of human life.
The fundamental object in quantum mechanics is the wave function. We often talk of the wave function as describing the probability of finding quantum particles in certain locations. However, when Erwin Schrodinger first wrote down his famous equations (at least it's famous among physicists), he did not know what the wave function was. At first it was merely a linear algebraic tool -- an eigenvector or eigenfunction as it's known in the business -- which he used to calculate physical observables such as energies. The connection between the wave functions and probability isn't entirely obvious.
Nor does it point to an inherent disorder or chaos to the universe. If you are fairly well-versed in physics, you know that gas discharge lamps operate by stripping electrons from gas molecules. The electrons release photons as they transition to their initial state. Now these lamps emit light at very specific energies, and this effect occurs precisely because of the quantum nature of hydrogen electrons. So one can see that if not for the random behavior of the hydrogen electron, the hydrogen atom would not have the precise, predictable energies that it does!
Furthermore, we needn't even think of the wave function as fundamentally indeterminate. The idea of quantum mechanics is that rather than being at an "indeterminate," quantum particles are delocalized when they remain unobserved by some measuring apparatus. So it would make no sense to say that "the particle's position can't be precisely known," when QM is really saying that quantum particles don't even have a defined location until they are observed.
I think that one of my old undergraduate quantum mechanics textbooks puts it best:
To the layman, the philosopher, or the classical physicist, a statement of the form "this particle doesn't have a well-defined position" (or momentum, or x-component of spin angular momentum, or whatever) sounds vague, incompetent, or (worst of all) profound. It is none of these. But its precise meaning is, I think, almost impossible to convey to anyone who has not studied quantum mechanics in some depth. (Griffiths, Introduction to Quantum Mechanics, pg 176-177)
Ultimately quantum mechanics is a mathematical science, and the wave function is a mathematical object that doesn't entirely have a physical analogue. I think that a lot of the philosophizing about QM goes on because people attempt to compare the wave function to classical objects, when such a comparison isn't possible.We can be certain, from the Scriptures, that God is sovereign. The order that arises due to quantum mechanics confirms that God has ordained all things for our good, so that we can repent of our sins and have faith in Jesus Christ. Without it we would certainly not live in a world so conducive of human life.
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Quantum doesn't prove that there are no causes, only that we do not know them. You can't prove a negative, after all. JMHO
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Jim Heimbach
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Obviously it has been quite a while since you originally asked your question, but I have recently encountered a theory of Quantum Mechanics that has direct relevance to your question.
You are correct that the traditional or currently orthodox understanding (the Copenhagen interpretation) of quantum mechanics presents profound problems with the idea of a sovereign God, because it affirms the fundamental indeterminacy of the universe. However a theory that has recently come to the fore is Bohmian Mechanics which predicts what the Copenhagen interpretation predicts, but while affirming a deterministic universe - a big difference!
See, Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong this Whole Time and also You Probably Have No Free Will but Don't Worry about It. I think you may find yourself greatly encouraged. You will find some interesting reading!
You are correct that the traditional or currently orthodox understanding (the Copenhagen interpretation) of quantum mechanics presents profound problems with the idea of a sovereign God, because it affirms the fundamental indeterminacy of the universe. However a theory that has recently come to the fore is Bohmian Mechanics which predicts what the Copenhagen interpretation predicts, but while affirming a deterministic universe - a big difference!
See, Have We Been Interpreting Quantum Mechanics Wrong this Whole Time and also You Probably Have No Free Will but Don't Worry about It. I think you may find yourself greatly encouraged. You will find some interesting reading!
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Note that it's possible to have Calvinism without strict determinism. I'm not sure how many Calvinists would follow such an interpretation. But one reasonable understanding of Calvinism is that it's a consequence of our brokenness. Without Gods grace we are doomed, and he gives his grace only to a specific set of people who has chosen. That doesn't base the fixity of the elect on determinism. It bases it on God's choice.
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Maybe its human curiosity or our desire to find conclusions to our questions, it seems many reformed folk think of absolute sovereignty in a very specific way. I wonder if the level of specificity is a bit too much when we think about sovereignty.
Quantum mechanics can seem a bit chaotic or present driven. And yet the forces and our environment (through God) provide stability. The Earth is at the correct angle and distance from the sun to provide us with a habitable planet. Prophecy is being fulfilled.
I think the question your asking can only be answered with knowing where to find and how to find the tip of God's paint brush, which we will probably not know in this life, but maybe the next.
Its like asking a virtual A.I. if he knows what code he is existing on. One thing I notice in nature is math like the Golden ratio and fractals etc. By that reason I feel more comfortable empirically thinking about math in a pure form rather than Quantum mechanics which maybe I'm wrong, but is still in its infancy stages as a science, and we know very little about the sub atomic world.
Quantum mechanics can seem a bit chaotic or present driven. And yet the forces and our environment (through God) provide stability. The Earth is at the correct angle and distance from the sun to provide us with a habitable planet. Prophecy is being fulfilled.
I think the question your asking can only be answered with knowing where to find and how to find the tip of God's paint brush, which we will probably not know in this life, but maybe the next.
Its like asking a virtual A.I. if he knows what code he is existing on. One thing I notice in nature is math like the Golden ratio and fractals etc. By that reason I feel more comfortable empirically thinking about math in a pure form rather than Quantum mechanics which maybe I'm wrong, but is still in its infancy stages as a science, and we know very little about the sub atomic world.
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