From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Wed Jul 02 2003 - 08:17:56 EDT
Glenn Morton wrote:
>
> My friend Howard asks for a science and religion topic. I hope this
> qualifies. I have pondered the implications of a Scientific American
> article which I read on the plane on the way back from the UK. The article
> is Max T Tegmark, "Parallel Universes," Scientific American May 2003, p.
> 40-51.
>
> The article notes that the region of the universe which we can observe, is
> cT big, where c is the speed of light and T is the age of the universe. This
> is approximately 10^26 meters away in all directions. Now, each second this
> region grows by c meters bringing a part of the universe which was
> previously unobservable within view. Thus this clearly implies that the
> real universe is much larger than what we can see. And here is where the
> issue gets interesting, at least to me.
> Someone at a point in another region of space is equally limited in his view
> of the universe. and if you place observers as in separate regions, as
> illustrated by
>
> http://home.entouch.net/dmd/parallel.bmp
>
> each centered in his own universe equal in size to our own but only touching
> our universe, you get regions of space which are causally disconnected from
> each other which have a different arrangment of the matter. Each volume can
> be termed a 'Hubble volume' Using quantum one can count the permutations of
> matter which can occur in each of these Hubble volumes. It turns out that
> the matter can be arranged in 2^(10^118)) different patterns. After that,
> the patterns must repeat! That means that if the universe is bigger than
> this many Hubble volumes, duplication of an entire Hubble volume occurs.
> Thus, if our universe is duplicated, it means that there is another you and
> another me out there in a galaxy far far away.
>
> The universe doesn't have to be infinite for this to occur. It can be quite
> finite, just extremely large. Thus one doesn't have to grant infinite power
> or extent to the created universe. And this brings us to the theological
> issue.
>
> How would God be able to predetermine events in a universe based upon
> quantum? As far as one can tell there are no hidden variables i.e. no
> underlying rules which govern quantum events. They appear to be chance
> related, unpredictable.
>
> But if, the universe was rigged so that every possible permutation occurred,
> then the universe is entirely predictable. Only the location in the greater
> universe of a particular Hubble arrangement isn't predictable.
>
> This is something most Christians probably won't like because it is a
> trivial predeterminism, unless one considers that creating a universe that
> big can't possibly be trivial. One thing I like about this view is that it
> doesn't have to depend upon Hugh Everett's many world's hypothesis solution
> to the collapse wave function.
>
> Theologically, the objection, I suspect will be that it diminishes God.
> Does it?
It diminishes God only if one thinks that the model of God as absolute monarch
is necessary. But if God's action in the world is distinguished by kenosis (as the NT
suggests) then God's not having complete control of all events is the kind of thing we
might expect. (BTW this would be part of an answer to the question I posed yesterday
about distinctive Christian insights on relision-science issues.)
But this still leaves the question "What makes the wave packet collapse?" (The
Everett idea isn't an answer to this question but a way of avoiding "collapse" in favor
of a splitting of the universe.) It doesn't seem satisfactory (Leibniz' principle of
sufficient reason) to say "It just happens." & having some ultimate cause other than
God is unsatisfactory.
Or - one can argue that God acts at the quantum level to collapse wave packets
for some or all events in such a way that there is no contradiction with our statistical
laws of quantum theory. Bob Russell has recently made use of this idea to speak about
God's action in, and direction of, the evolutionary process at the molecular level. (An
article of his will be in the collection of essays edited by Keith Miller, _Perspectives
on an Evolving Creation_ which will be out from Eerdmans later this summer.) One
problem with this is that, unless there are hidden variables, God has to act directly on
quantum events.
Another way to play it is to appeal to the idea that it is the entrance of
consciousness into the measurement process that makes the wave packet collapse. If one
then asks what makes the wave function of the observer's mind collapse &c one is led
finally to the claim that there must be some ultimate intelligence which makes all
observations definite, and thus to something like a QM proof of the existence of God
(Belinfante). It can be asked whether God can be said to "observe" the universe in the
same sense that one uses the term in QM. Again I think there is the possibility of a
distinctive insight from Christianity, that the mind of God is uniquely linked to a mind
within the universe & all its perceptual apparatus via the Incarnation.
I dealt with some of these questions - though certainly not definitively - in my
article "Does the Trinity Play Dice?" in the March 1999 issue of _Perspectives on
Science and Christian Faith_.
Shalom,
George
-- George L. Murphy gmurphy@raex.com http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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