Re: The reasoning behind my quantum concerns

John,

I sense the deep anxiety and unease behind your questions - the lost
sleep and so forth. There aren't any easy answers to deep questions
like this, but I would point out that at the end of the Nature article
you cited, it was pointed out that the real answer may be "eternally
elusive". As the last sentence says:

---
Perhaps, he speculates, the world was built "according to quantum
mechanics but quantum mechanics itself prevents us from ever being
sure".
---
I believe that God built the world according to quantum mechanics, and
maybe that is so we can never be sure - that faith is the only way,
and God's thoughts are always higher than our thoughts.  (Isaiah 55
somewhere).
Once I saw a poster that said "AND GOD SAID", followed by Maxwell's
equations, followed by "and behold there was light".  We may
ultimately be able to reduce the universe to a few ink-marks on paper,
but in the end we'll never know, as Stephen Hawking says at the end of
"Brief History of Time", what it is that "breathes fire into the
equations".  We'll never know, but that's why we have faith.
John, I really hope some of this rambling of mine is of some help.  I
don't think you're a "psycho child" - the problems you are having are
rational ones.
In Christ,
Iain Strachan
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 23:13:08 -0500, John Hewlett <john.hewlett@usa.com> wrote:
> First off I am in molecular biology and biological chemistry and I know that there will never be anything in these fields that disprove the existance of God. I am interested in the brain and I think the quote Neurotheology movement bothers people. I think neurotheology is a crock and a complete waste of time, because my grandmother who knows nothing about brain science could conclude that you can electrically stimulate pretty much anything in the brain. You invoke an orgasm in the human brain through electrical stimulation. The sheer fact that you can induce an orgasm through electrical stimulation doesn't tell you much, because A. it is an orgasm that results from electrical stimuli, as compared to one that normaly occurs during sex. The act of sex inducing these feelings indicates external stimuli in normal situations. There for when Persinger excites the temporal lobes, I mean come on what the do you expect will happen!? Your going to get the feelings. And that folks say
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>  absolutley nothing about the existance of God. Honestly I am not convinced that it says much of anything other than "Hey check this out, I can give you an artificial religious experience!" This neurotheology thing is the closest thing in biology I can come up with that deals with explaining away God and I don't think it stands a snow balls chance of even remotley coming close to doing so. After all biology is matter and matter is the realm of chemistry and physics so nothing we learn about cells or protiens are going to have anything to say about God. Well let me retract that the more I learn about cells and proteins the more I beleive in God, I know that. I think in biology the fingerprints are all over the place. Thats why I love biology. But the quantum world, that is a wierd weird weird place, its spooky, its confusing, it is on the edge of whats reality and whats not. And its the place in science that I fear the most, when I read stuff about it I feel going and bangin
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>  my head against a wall. But I take it seriously because Quantum theor
> ies and that is ok with me. I typically keep my nose out of it. I guess in my mind if you were to climb to the bottom of the material ladder at the bottom you find the quantum world, where the weirdness happens. Of course the copenhagen interpretation is a very widley accepted interpretation, that of course was proposed by Bohr, and there is alot of indeterminancy involved and thats ok. But the very bottom line as why quantum physics worries me is because in my mind its not "Just another science" its the fundemental basis for all science, because science deals with matter. I am perfectly comfortable with believing in God and chaos, and randomness and that is just hunky dory. But if I had to worry (and if worrying is a sin, I am a super sinner, infact in one of my college math classes I was nicknamed "the worrier") about one thing, it is the argument over free will. I obsess over this. I lose sleep over this. I so very very much want to believe we are free agents in this uni
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> erse and some seem to think that the quantum is the answer.  So when Joe shmo proposes his hypothesis about there being hidden variables or other things that take the chance and randomness and indeterminancy out the quantum world. I start to worry, what if he is right? My belief in God and christ is a very rational one, I look at the simplest of the atoms, hydrogen and ask my self, "why the heck is that even hear" and I can only conclude that some thing put it there, in my view the spirit, the eternal and infinantly wise "thing" that I call God. I agree with Alan Sandage, God is a total mystery to me, He is something I can't fathom. But thats why He came in the flesh as Christ to let us fathom the Him. And I so very very very much need this faith, it is the core of who I am and where I find my happeniness, and the reason I love nature and all the weird stuff about nature like ATP synthase with its awesome little rotor that aids in the synthesis of ATP in ALL of our cells mi
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> ochondria which I find so divinly created. But it is as if someone thr
> ith quantum physics. It scares me because I think the quantum address's questions that relate to the existance of God (where as I see the hand of God in my biochemistry it most certainly doesn't dispute His existance, I may totally wrong about the quantum addressing the existence of God), and that bothers me, and that may be because I am not a quantum expert and maybe these issues in my mind are minor to the existance of God. But where the pendulum rests with regard to determinism and indeterminism, I still want to have my rational faith in Christ, and for me freedom of will plays a big role in that rational faith, but maybe it shouldn't, maybe it should play a minor role. How did Christian physicists veiw God and the issues of free will before the early 20th century when quantum physics was proposed? Determinism in the quantum disturbs me to the greatest and at the end of the day that is why I am scared of quantum physics. This is science and as Glenn Morton so bluntly poi
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> ted out to me in a previous post, we don't always get what we want. I have been troubled with this for months and months now and I hope you all don't think of me as the ASA psycho child. I just wish someone would give me some positive theological advise or information or what have to somewhat lay my troubled mind to rest. I am so dependent on Christ, and I don't like the ripples that are made on my lake of faith by my possibly errant over zealous interpretation of the quantum world. I am feeling somewhat embarassed that I written this.
> 
> Best wishes to all,
> John
> --
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