Q&A: Quantum Theory and Philosophical Arguments
Quantum Theory and Philosophical Arguments
Question
Hello Rabbi,
I saw that the Rabbi said that it is impossible for quantum mechanics to be what makes a prior cause (God) unnecessary.
The Rabbi explained this by saying that since we see two particles with opposite charges being created even in a complete vacuum,
we still have to attribute this to some factor behind the scenes that caused these conservation laws.
So I have two questions about this:
1) Who says that quantum mechanics belongs to the same domain as the rest of physics, where cause and effect are required? (Like Newton’s second law.) Maybe here the laws themselves are the cause, and the conservation laws are included in them.
2) Before the Big Bang, there did not have to be conservation laws. So the whole universe could have come into being through such a spontaneous creation.
3) The Rabbi said in the last paragraph in the notebook that quanta are created from “prime matter.” If so, we could still say that before the Big Bang there was prime matter that had always existed, and from it everything was created.
Answer
- All quantum events are events that occur according to laws. Someone created those laws; otherwise everything would happen randomly. Quantum theory too has regularity, even if its nature is different. It is a reasonable intuition that laws require a lawgiver.
- I did not understand.
- I did not understand. Prime matter is matter without properties. The laws are what create the world from it. Do laws emerge from matter without properties? We are speaking about the creation of an intelligent entity.
Discussion on Answer
I answered 1 above. Everything described there is a result of the laws of nature / quantum theory. The question is who created them. Who created the reality in which there is a ground state from which universes are created? By the way, the probability of a universe being formed in such a way is completely negligible, to the point of absurdity.
By definition, laws require a lawgiver. Beyond that, laws do not create anything; they only describe processes. Laws are not entities.
2)
It can be said that relative to the meta-universe (the universe above our universe), this world was created the way particles are created in quantum mechanics. And the world still exists for a long period of time because, relative to the meta-universe, the total energy in this world tends toward 0.
The Rabbi can briefly read about it here:
3)
The laws do not require a lawgiver, because laws are not the kind of things that we see as requiring a lawgiver.
And the laws and the matter the Rabbi is talking about always existed… and that is how the world was created.
What’s the problem?