Sunday 4 November 2012

Is quantum leap somehow a reflection of God's plan for us?

Is quantum leap somehow a reflection of God's plan for us?

Because I am only 13 years old and have a very limited working knowledge of quantum physics, please excuse (or point out) any gaps in my reasoning. I'm certainly no expert, but to my understanding, quantum leap means that a particle has no definite position at a given time, and only occurs with atomic or subatomic particles but not with larger, macroscopic objects.

While thinking deeply about why this is, I've come to the possible conclusion that just maybe macroscopic objects have definite positions because God's plan requires it to be in that place at that time, and that God's plan doesn't give a definite position to subatomic particles because they don't greatly impact our lives and therefore do not play a role in God's plan for us. Could this be possible? I don't know enough of physics to know of any laws against this

I know that the problem of quantum leap not happening with larger objects has been answered before by a theory involving parallel universes, but this seems to me to be inaccurate and in no agreement to the bible.

Response: The relation between the quantum and classical worlds is subtle, complex and not well understood or even agreed upon at a philosophical level.  What’s clear is that at sub-atomic scales “objects” don’t behave at all in the way that our intuition would suggest based on our experience of objects that are roughly our size (to within a factor of a billion or so).

Mathematically very small objects should probably be thought of, for many purposes, as “wave functions” or aspects of a wave function rather than as discrete entities.  But when you get lots of these together they behave like a macroscopic object.  John wrote a nice book called  “Quantum Mechanics: A Very Short Introduction” which you might want to read.

I think God really only has plans for Persons (human and any non-human persons who quite possibly exist as well) rather than for inanimate objects.  The most important things I think we learn from studying physics are:
  1. The universe is a very interesting place where the truth, as far as we can discern it, is often fascinatingly different from what common sense suggests.  Most of reality is not directly visible to our senses – like God.
  2. Nevertheless there is a deep sense of a mind at the root of it all. The universe is underpinned by rationality and seems to be exquisitely “fine-tuned” to allow rational beings to emerge.

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