Quantum Mechanics Proves the
Existence of God???
Quantum
mechanics can do a lot of fun things. We
can have particles tunneling through solid barriers, and confuse ourselves
about just what the spin of an electron IS.
But can it prove the existence of God?
Well, the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics (the standard
one, accepted by most physicists), says that matter is in a wave function until
it is observed. This wave function is a
combination of all possible states, and observing it makes the particle being
observed “collapse” into a given state.
I’ve discussed why physicists abandoned the perhaps more common sense
view that a particle does have a well-defined position and momentum (etc, since
the uncertainty principle is more general than just those two) that we just
simply cannot know, in favor of saying that it just doesn’t have a well-defined
position and momentum, available here.
In short, Bell’s Theorem establishes that no local variable (something
that travels slower than the speed of light) can explain our observations, and
it’s unclear whether a nonlocal variable can explain even simple things like
the double-slit experiment while remaining consistent with relativity. I may post more on this later, but for now,
we’re just going to agree on the Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum mechanics
for this post.
So,
if particles are in this wave function until they are observed, what is an
observation? Physicists don’t really have
a formal answer, but its early proponents (especially Bohr) believed that a
conscious observer was necessary.
Somehow we need to explain why a particle is not collapsed out of its
wave function when it’s just coming to a wall with two slits in it, but is
collapsed when we measure it. The chief question
is, if a machine was set to observe a particle, but no one ever looked at the
machine’s results, would the particle collapse or not? To be honest, there’s disagreement- some
people believe that anything that could give us certain knowledge of the
particle’s position would cause the wave function to collapse, and thus the
unobserved machine would cause the particle collapse. However, others do not think that the machine
is any different than the wall, and say that it’s a conscious observer that is
necessary. The latter has traditionally
been the dominant position.
Which
leads to a bigger question- why is the wave function of the universe
collapsed? Did it mysteriously collapse
when the first conscious life form appeared?
That doesn’t seem to make sense- and our observation of things like
background radiation seems to go against that.
Some people have argued that human consciousness has caused the wave
function of the universe to collapse throughout time, but in quantum mechanics
when a wave function collapses it doesn’t do so retroactively throughout time. For example, with the double slit experiment,
we say that the electron was in the wave function, and passed through both
slits, even after it has been observed on the screen (after it collapsed). We cannot then go back and say that it passed
through slit 1 or slit 2. It appears the
wave function of the universe collapsed before there was life to observe it…which
would seem to imply a conscious Observer outside of the universe, who collapsed
its wave function. Perhaps physicists
have stumbled upon an argument for the existence of God. Now that’s an unexpected use for quantum
mechanics!