Does Quantum Physics Prove the Existence of God

I do not think that theory means what you think it means

  1. The Many Worlds model addresses branches between probable results, it says nothing about conceivable situations. It is not correct to state that the Many Worlds model predicts that any conceivable being/environment must exist in some branching universe. You would first have to demonstrate that a branching occured from a decision point for which your conceived outcome had a non-zero probability of occuring. Now, if you can demonstrate the branch point which might have resulted in an omnipotent being, then you have the beginnings of a case.

  2. I think you are a little loose with your statements about what has been demonstrated about or by particle physics. For instance:

Please cite for me any experimental results which support the many worlds interpretation over the Modified Copenhage, or Pilot Waves, or any of the myriad other models extant.

I assume you are discussing such theoretical constructs as tachyons and some of the more exotic muons. Hey, I like 'em too. But it is important to keep in mind that the behavior, and the existence, of said particles is still a matter only of conjecture (albeit, conjecture backed by some pretty impressive mathematical constructs).

No. It’s neither. Under certain conditions it exhibits behavior associated with one or the other (or both).

omnipotence: to paraphrase a certain literary giant . . .
I do not think that word means what you think it means
Onn the one hand, you claim an onipotent being must be able to contradict logic. On the other hand, you use logic to “prove” that there cannot be more than one omnipotent being. See the problem?

  1. An omnipotent being exists.
  2. Said being creates an exact copy of itself.
  3. there can be more than one.
    ooops

Aside from the other objections I have to this argument, exactly what part of the Many Worlds interpretation od you use to support the idea that information (or anything else) can be transmitted between divergent Universes?

(not trying to be argumentative, just debating points…)

Why? Some of our statements may have underestimated “omnipotence”, but perhaps you underestimate “an infinite number of universes”. Like I was trying to say, if omnipotence can occur once, it can occur an infinite number of times. Can one omnipotent being destroy another? Sounds like a stalemate to me. (along the same lines of “can God create a rock so big that even He Himself cannot lift it?” or “what happens when an irresistable force hits an immovable object?”)

Although there is lots of supporting evidence supporting quantum mechanics, there is no evidence for the existence of other universes. I’ll stick with that.

Perhaps like Gaiman’s Destiny, the path ahead is infinitely forked, but when looking back, only a straight path is visible.

I’m not most theists. In fact my supreme being makes Yahweh look like a bush leaguer (no pun intended.)

I still think you’re not seeing the scope of omnipotence implied by MWIQP.

All a being would need to be omnipotent would be to select awareness across the multiverse.

In one universe the being is wholly evil. It selects awareness there. Another wholly good. Another it creates a rock it can’t lift. In another it lifts it. Etc. Etc. All a being needs to do in order to become omnipotent is sect its POV across the multiverse. Then it can effectively do whatever it wants in violation of whatever anybody cares to claim as impossible.

I also note that if there is an omnipotent being who can affect other universes and break all physical laws, one of the possibilites is that he destroyed every last possible-world from the beginning to the end of time. If this is a possibility it must have happened, by the argument of your hypothsis, since all possibilites exist. So why are we still here?

[Edited by Gaudere on 10-25-2000 at 12:41 PM]

Hey! I am omnipotent. But only in my dreams (it’s a valid point of view). Down on your your knees and worship me, dog!![sub]hey, how’s that for a straight line[/sub]

You know, the flip side of able to do all things in “the right” Universe is being unable to do anything in “the wrong” Universe. To paraphrase a certain literary giant . . .

Hooooold it right there, folks.

Can there be more than one omnipotent being? If God is infinite, and the Universe is infinite, and time is infinite, and God exists out of time, I don’t see any room for another omnipotent entity/force/thing.

It’s that “existing out of time” thing that I think is most important. If there is force that exists outside of quantum law, outside of cause and effect, and outside of the Many Universes, then there really can be only one.
Poly:

I honestly don’t know which scares me more. Ph’nglui mgwl’nafh Phaedrus R’lyeh . . . Eeesh.

But of course. :slight_smile: Remember, though, that Niven’s result was precisely the opposite of Scylla’s. If everything that can be done is being done, what’s the point? In “AtMW,” God was irrelevant.

As I understand the many-worlds interpretation, the number of worlds is large, but not infinite. There is a finite amount of mass and energy in the universe, and a finite number of possible quantum states for each quantum event. There’s a big difference between very large and infinite. An infinite difference, in fact.

Top physicists like Steven Hawking, Murray Gell-Mann & Richard Fenyman have stated they accept many-worlds. I believe one of the reasons they accept it is that it explains many apparent ‘coincidences’ that resulted in intelligent life appearing in the universe. Without invoking a deity. It’s a Bayesian slam dunk that given the fact that observers exist, then whatever events needed to occur to produce those observers must have happened. But they happened in our ‘world’; most of the other worlds didn’t produce intelligent life.

Is many-worlds strange? I think so. There are worlds in which you did not grab a cup of coffee this morning. There are pink unicorns on other worlds (naturally as we can’t communicate with those worlds, they’re invisible to us.)

So, I agree with Gaudere’s response; Scylla has not demonstrated how an omnipotent being could arise from one of a finite number of quantum possibilities. Also God (under most people’s concept of God) should exist in a non-contingent way with respect to all the many worlds.

Why?

I see no reason to axiomatically restrict the set of “beings outside of time” to one member.

Why?

I see no reason to axiomatically restrict the set of “beings outside of time” to one member.

Knappy:
Thanks. That is basically what I was saying above but expressed much more concisely.

The actualization of the BB mass can be described as a fluctuations in waves of nothingness. It can also be described as the actualization of a virtual mostly self-anhiliatory mass. the results are SiG.

It is of exactly equal possibility that that mass could have actualized as a '73 Buick Centurion, or God, or whatever.

Since virtual particles do actualize ALL THE TIME, that leaves possibilities infinite.

A neutrino zipping through a cloud chamber may leave a pattern of dashes with spaces in between them as it phases in and out of existence. In another universe that pattern may be exactly complimentary so that overlapped they form a straight line. Whether that is the same particle in both universes is a truly meaningless question. It is more the “same” particle than you are the “same” person that existed a split second ago.

an omnipotent being could of course create a duplicate of itself. Both would still be the same being. It could of course destroy all possible universes. It could of course also recreate them.

And Spiritus:

I can think of an adjunct for a Pilot wave interpretation.
I don’t know what you mean by wrong universe.
Of course, as Andros points out, my supreme being is pretty irrelevant as well. Not only can he do anything, he does.

On what do you base this assignment of probabilities?

  1. If a virtual particle came into being in every cubic micron of the Universe for every millisecond since the Big Bang, and if each one of those “actualizations” had a million possible quantuim states associated with it, you would still not have an infinite number of Universes.

  2. Please cite the experimental results that demonstrate the “actualization” of virtual particles.

After a neutrino is detected, and after it leaves the kind of trail you suppose, then it might be profitable to discuss what explanations might account for the particular result observed. Surely you are not assuming that a cloud chamber represents a uniform medium at the level of teh neutrino?

The question of whehter matter may be transmitted between divergent Universes is meaningles??? Hardly.

I do not believe that this is correct. Please give the mathematical model or develop a meaningful way in which I am to interpret “fluctuations in waves of nothingness”.

I have no idea whether this is correct. Please help me interpret “actualization of a virtual mostly self-anhiliatory mass”.

Why? What prevents this being from creating a new entity that is as powerful as itself?

Then share it, by all means. But what I actually asked for were experimental results that supported the Many World’s interpretation but not the Pilot Wave interpretation (or the Modified Copenhagen, etc.)

In the model you proposed, the Universe(s) in which your being cannot lift the rock, etc.

Despite objections, I think this is on target. Consider how one distinguishes between things – they are in different places, shaped differently, exist at different points in time, and so on. An eternal object existing outside of space and time and illimitable cannot be distinguished from a second object with the same characteristics.

Only sort of true. They would possess the same characteristics, and therefore be the same being, but with one significant difference: one would have created the other. They would therefore be the Parent God and the Child God. Or, in sexist language… :wink:

Spiritus:

The specific configuration and mass of the BB is Random. The potential configurations are limitless. No specific configuration is favored over any other. Of all possible configurations it is certainly true that many are similar to what we observe and realtively few resemble a '73 Buick.
The mass of the BB is generally accepted to have actualized in exactly the same way that virtual particles do. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Bang!

That big supercollider in Illinois (I’ll find the name if you want) is generally credited with debunking the concept of parity. Most of the BB anhiliated itself. The small fracion of a percent that is SiG is leftover of that disparity.

**

How about we just consider one particle, and one second, and one point in space? You can divide a second up as finely as you want. In fact you can do so infinitely. At each one of those particular points in time there is a possibility of a virtual particle actualizing. There’s your infinity.

**
I refer of course not to just force carriers, but the spontaneous creation and destruction of matter which occurs all the time. It’s an especially well documented phenomenom. Try Google, or read The God Particle or The Demon Haunted World for some particularly good Laymen’s descriptions.

**

Try this thought experiment:

You step into a teleporter. Your body is broken down, converted to energy, sent around the world and reasembled. Are you the same person? How about if we send the information and assemble you from energy on the spot? I’m not sure it’s a meaningful question if you are an exact copy. Is the real you dead or alive? If a neutrino actualizes in one universe at the exact moment it disapears in another with the exact same velocity and momentum, are they the same even if they are unconnected? Does it matter? It’s just as meaningless a question.

I suspect your next few questions are disingenuous as you seem conversent with BB theory, and particle physics in general.

**
Yes it does make a kind of paradox out of omnipotence. One can and can’t, does and doesn’t do everything. The same paradox applies to an omnipotent being cloning itself. It’s omnipotence basically contains everything or has that potential (for lack of a better word.) If two things contain each other aren’t they the same?

You wouldn’t have an all powerful God, people. Because It would have to do everything! Any time it did not do something, there would still be another universe where it did do that same thing.

Thus your all-powerful God is actually an all-weak one under your scheme, since it has absolutely no will by which to exercise or not exercise it’s supposed all-power.

Yeah, as it turns out omnipotence kinda sucks.

I know what I’d do though. I would only pay attention to those Universes where Claudia Schiffer was my nympho sex-slave.

Spiritus:

Here’s a particularly simple on point link concerning virtual particles:
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/newton/askasci/1993/physics/PHY122.HTM

Scylla said:

I don’t agree. Spacetime is quantized. There is a smallest unit that can’t be subdivided.

knappy:

I wasn’t aware of that. Do you have a link or info where I could learn more?

There’s a limit to x in 1/x sec.? What is it?

The many-worlds theory believes that the universe splits no more often than every Planck unit of time, which is considered to be 10[sup]-43[/sup] seconds. Actually, I believe the original theory only had the universes split when something is observed and it collapses the wave function, forcing the electron to be either one place or another.

http://library.thinkquest.org/3487/qp.html
“Also, by combining Planck’s constant, the constant of gravity, and the speed of light, it is possible to create a quantum of length (about 10[sup]-35[/sup] meter) and a quantum of time (about 10[sup]-43[/sup] sec), called, respectively, Planck’s length and Planck’s time. While saying that energy is not continuous might not be too startling to the average person, since what we commonly think of as energy is not all that well defined anyway, it is startling to say that there are quantities of space and time that cannot be broken up into smaller pieces. Yet it is exactly this that gives nature a finite number of routes to take when an electron interferes with itself.”

Here’s a link using QM to disprove theism, BTW:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/quantum.html