I’m no theologian, nor do I play one on TV. So forgive this momentary lapse into a realm where I am not so comfortable; but I’ve been thinking about this a great deal, and find it both fascinating and comforting.
For two thousand years, almost, we have been looking up and out for the hand of God. Newton and his contemporaries saw God in the regularity of the universe, as many still do, yet this regularity is illusory. What seems to be all order is chaos; what seems linear is fractal; and fluidity, not stability, reigns.
Yet when we look up and out, toward the nebulae and galaxies, we see the appearance of certainty, stability, and yes, design. But one is hard pressed to find God here if one looks too closely. There is too much disorder.
Few look down and in, to the sub-atomic level. And why should they? For one thing, few know much about quantum mechanics, which remains the realm of theoretical physics. For another, there seems little reason to do so, given that uncertainty, not certainty, rules there, and everything we know about the world is there topsy-turvy.
But perhaps this tendency to look for certainty when we seek God is misguided. Perhaps we should, instead, look for the uncertain — since God gave us free will to seek or not seek, to see or not see. And this free will is uncertainty in its most human form.
More to the point, quantum theory, I believe, shows us the hand of God. Let me explain.
If we create two sub-atomic particles, the total spin of those particles must be zero: that is, if one spins clockwise, the other must spin counter-clockwise, and both at the same speed. In what physicists call a thought experiment, Albert Einstein proposed that if you send one particle to the furthest reaches of the galaxy and reversed the spin of the particle in front of you, the other particle’s spin must also reverse instantaneously.
Einstein called this Spooky Action at a Distance. It is now more commonly known as Entanglement.
This violated one of the central tenets of Einstein’s physics. After all, nothing can travel faster than light, yet even if the second particle is thousands of light years away, the spin will reverse instantaneously. This troubled Einstein greatly, yet the math showed that this must be the case.
More problematic, this violates one of the central axioms of science since Aristotle: locality. Locality is not a theory or even a hypothesis, but an axiom, an assuption we make when we observe the world. Locality is the assumption and you and I are different entities.
To make matters worse, J.S. Bell proposed Bell’s Theorem, which basically states that no theory that assumes locality can explain Entanglement. Physicists tried to avoid these questions, and understandably, but when physicists observed Entanglement, or Spooky Action, in the lab instead of in equations, it became an issue physicists could no longer ignore.
How, then, do we explain this phenomenon, that when we change the spin of one particle, the other’s spin must also change instantaneously, no matter how far apart the particles are?
Enter David Bohm. Bohm theorized that particles are not, in fact, local, and the universe is part of a seamless whole. Is this starting to sound theological? If so, you are seeing what I see, though Bohm’s Theory is purely scientific, and contains no references to, or assumptions of, the existence of God.
Quantum physics theorizes that just as matter and energy can exist either as particles or waves, they exist in two other forms: explicit and implicit. It is this implicit form where everything is connected into a seamless whole, and, I believe, the hand of God moves.
Understand, I don’t propose this is the only place in which we may see God. This is, however, the only scientific realm that implies Divinity. The Seamless Whole may be interpreted and studied without reference to the unprovable Divine; else, it would no longer be within the realm of science. But those of us who are not physicists, and physicists when they are not publishing papers, may see the Seamless Whole as God.
Nor do I propose that the nature of God is limited to the sub-atomic realm. Although the principles of quantum mechanics do not apply, save at the sub-atomic level, God is limitless and boundless.
And where is more appropriate to find this finger pointing to the Divine, than at the most fundamental level of the world?
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