Quantum Physics and Free Will, Omniscience, and Determinism

[carn]

Why would quantum indeterminancy lead to global indeterminancy?

I did not claim that it necessarily leads to global indeterminancy, but its enough to lead to individual inderterminancy. For example whether someone gets cancer from ingesting radioactive material (and a lot of people due that due to smoking, half of deaths from smoking are due to radioactive pollution of tabac) is not deterministic. With a known ingested quantity the probability to get cancer is known, but whether an individual gets cancer depends except for his bodies regernation capabilities upon whether and how often decay products hit crucial parts of cells. And this later probability is depend on chance, even knowing the position of every single radioactive atom inside the body cannot determine deterministically whether the person will or will not get cancer.

And there are even two possibilites for global indeterminancy:

-so called butterfly effect, a small effect through circumstances is decisive for some large issue

as a not good but sufficient example is a supernovae explosion. It triggers, when the fusion process can no longer compensate the gravitative pressure in a star. But the exact place or places where the fusion process collapses depends on chance. But these place or places has high influence of the distrubution of the gas emitted by the explosion. The gas on the other hand influences the movement of objects travelling through. So for an asteroid or the like not bound to a solar system travelling towards ours it could be possible, that whether it collides, depended upon the exact brakedown of the fusion process in a dying star some billions of yers ago. The course now would be determined, but just right before the supernovae the asteroid course was not determined as it depnded upon the gas distribution, which again depended upon where in the star the fusion process stops first, which for all we know would depend on tunneling probabilities.

-human brain activity is maybe influenced also by quantum effects. If thats the case, the individual decision of humans can sometimes be a matter of pure chance. And if its a human deciding something dire important, it could have global effects.
(And there are contrary to leftist myths sometimes such decisions, for example in the battle of midway a flight group leader had to decide where more or less randomly look for the japanese fleet. He by chance spotted a ship returning to the japanese fleet and arrived exactly at the time, when the japanese air defense was busied fighting us torpedo bombers at low altitude and when the carrier decks were just filed with fueled and ready to take off japanese torbedo bombers. His flight group took out 3 japanese carriers. If he has flown a slightly different course, he would have missed the japanese fleet and their otrpedo bombers would likely have attacked the not well defended us fleet as the us fleet had nearly everythingin air to attck. Midway ended with US losing 1 carrier and japanese 4, meaning the US had 4 active carriers and the japanese also 4. If he had missed, the US might have lost 2-3 more carriers with the japanese likely losing none. So it would have meant 7-8 japanese carriers vs 1-2 US, which would have meant the Japanese could have at least tried to take Hawaii, which could have easily prolonged WW2 for a year.
If the decision where to fly exactly had depended on quantum effects, then on that day the fate of hundreds of thousands of lives was decided by pure chance with the result physically indetermined before the event. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway#Attacks_on_the_Japanese_fleet
cv6.org/company/accounts/wmcclusky/)

 

[gavanhe]

Just to throw this into the mix bottomlayer.com/index.html
Some fascinating observations.

 

[aquohn]

I used to adhere to the time theory, but found it flawed. If God exists outside of time, how does he process things mentally? How does he decide? How do events like the Battle in Heaven, where a third of the angels, who followed Lucifer, were cast out, occur? Events must occur with time. No time, no evolution. God’s “consciousness”, to put it brusquely, simply cannot exist outside of time.

To paraphrase carn on the Butterfly Effect: due to the fact that probabilities are generally, more or less, symmetric, the quantum effects that are caused by the existence of probabilities cancel each other out. However, when they don’t, the stuff carn descirbed might happen (this might also explain natural disasters, exonerating God once again).

Also, on the individual effect of QM, I sugges referring to Schrodinger’s Cat, which can be interpreted along the lines of carn’s “swallowed radioistopes”.

One thing I do take carn to task for (other than interpretation) is the quantum effect of consciousness. While I believe that quantum effects are present in the brain, I doubt that said effects affect the mind, particularly when it comes to randomness. Compare a “randomly” generated string of ‘heads’ and ‘tails’ by a person, with, say, the results for a stream of photons passing through a polariser. The second is quantum randomness. The first is failure at randomness.

To elaborate on my belief of quantum effects in the brain, let’s put it this way. God created non-physical entities known as souls which embody our personalities (and can cause wavefucntion collapse), which interact with the body through the brain and with the mind directly through the phenomenon perceived as the mind. The mind is a tool for making decisions and all that, but as it bridges the physical brain and nonphysical soul, damage to the brain may result in changes in the mind, and therefore a difference between what one wills, what one thinks, what one feels, and what one does, which are decided by the soul, mind brain and body in that order. The (as-yet experiemntally unconfirmed) quantum phenomena in the brain are ‘evidences’, in a way, of the existence of the mind and soul.

Finally, I wish to reiterate: this is a highly technical topic, it requires in-depth study of quantum mechanics (at least the qualitative aspect). All readings posted MUST be read, or it would be difficult to comprehend the terms in the argument. It is frustrating when people thro up incorrect lingo or make moot points based on an incomplete knowledge of the subject matter. Read the subject matter. It really isn’t that tough. Just have a bit of commitment, and you will be able to understand the arguments.

 

[Bobber90]

Finally, I wish to reiterate: this is a highly technical topic, it requires in-depth study of quantum mechanics (at least the qualitative aspect). All readings posted MUST be read, or it would be difficult to comprehend the terms in the argument. It is frustrating when people thro up incorrect lingo or make moot points based on an incomplete knowledge of the subject matter. Read the subject matter. It really isn’t that tough. Just have a bit of commitment, and you will be able to understand the arguments.

Good point, because we are all remarkably good at firing ideas blunderbuss-style on here. The pattern is blunderbuss generality followed by hair-splitting dissection of several tangential points. But please persist!

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

I did not claim that it necessarily leads to global indeterminancy, but its enough to lead to individual inderterminancy. For example whether someone gets cancer from ingesting radioactive material (and a lot of people due that due to smoking, half of deaths from smoking are due to radioactive pollution of tabac) is not deterministic. With a known ingested quantity the probability to get cancer is known, but whether an individual gets cancer depends except for his bodies regernation capabilities upon whether and how often decay products hit crucial parts of cells. And this later probability is depend on chance, even knowing the position of every single radioactive atom inside the body cannot determine deterministically whether the person will or will not get cancer.

You did not directly make the claim, but it absolutely is part of the thesis. You are asserting that because some aspects of QM are indeterminant, then God cannot be omniscient because it violates quantum indeterminacy. Thus, my assertion still stands.
Note that the radioactive particle decay may be a quantum effect, but the macroscopic reaction of the persons body to this stimuli is certainly not a quantum effect. So again, there is no reason to think that quantum indeterminacy has any role in global indeterminancy.

And there are even two possibilites for global indeterminancy:

-so called butterfly effect, a small effect through circumstances is decisive for some large issue

as a not good but sufficient example is a supernovae explosion. It triggers, when the fusion process can no longer compensate the gravitative pressure in a star. But the exact place or places where the fusion process collapses depends on chance. But these place or places has high influence of the distrubution of the gas emitted by the explosion. The gas on the other hand influences the movement of objects travelling through. So for an asteroid or the like not bound to a solar system travelling towards ours it could be possible, that whether it collides, depended upon the exact brakedown of the fusion process in a dying star some billions of yers ago. The course now would be determined, but just right before the supernovae the asteroid course was not determined as it depnded upon the gas distribution, which again depended upon where in the star the fusion process stops first, which for all we know would depend on tunneling probabilities.

There is a lot wrong with the above paragraph. I will try to correct your confusions:
(1) Fusion does not depend on chance, just circumstance–if you have a gas cloud that collapses due to gravitational potential, fusion is what happens. There is no random chance here.
(2) And assuming a massive enough star, in 10[sup]7[/sup] years, you will have a core made of mostly silicon and iron (and at about 10[sup]10[/sup] K). When the entire core becomes iron, there is no more fusion & the star collapses before the outwards blast of the star going supernova. Since only the more massive stars, greater than 8 times the mass of our sun, go through this process (in our galaxy with our initial mass function, only about 0.3% of the stars ever made will go supernovae in this fashion), we are talking on the order of several hundred solar radii which means there is zero concept of quantum mechanics here, so no tunneling probabilities here.
(3) Asteroids–which would be obliterated by the shock front of the expanding SNe gas if they happened to pass through one–are also massive particles, some on the order of several kilometers wide. Since they are massive particles, there is absolutely no chance for a massive particle to tunnel.
(4) The shock waves of a supernova produce no gravitational acceleration, so they cannot “deflect” asteroids.

–continued–

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

–continued–

-human brain activity is maybe influenced also by quantum effects. If thats the case, the individual decision of humans can sometimes be a matter of pure chance. And if its a human deciding something dire important, it could have global effects.
(And there are contrary to leftist myths sometimes such decisions, for example in the battle of midway a flight group leader had to decide where more or less randomly look for the japanese fleet. He by chance spotted a ship returning to the japanese fleet and arrived exactly at the time, when the japanese air defense was busied fighting us torpedo bombers at low altitude and when the carrier decks were just filed with fueled and ready to take off japanese torbedo bombers. His flight group took out 3 japanese carriers. If he has flown a slightly different course, he would have missed the japanese fleet and their otrpedo bombers would likely have attacked the not well defended us fleet as the us fleet had nearly everythingin air to attck. Midway ended with US losing 1 carrier and japanese 4, meaning the US had 4 active carriers and the japanese also 4. If he had missed, the US might have lost 2-3 more carriers with the japanese likely losing none. So it would have meant 7-8 japanese carriers vs 1-2 US, which would have meant the Japanese could have at least tried to take Hawaii, which could have easily prolonged WW2 for a year.
If the decision where to fly exactly had depended on quantum effects, then on that day the fate of hundreds of thousands of lives was decided by pure chance with the result physically indetermined before the event. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway#Attacks_on_the_Japanese_fleet
cv6.org/company/accounts/wmcclusky/)

Chance is not indeterminacy!!! Indeterminacy, specifically quantum indeterminacy, is the necessary incompleteness of the physical laws. Chance is the possibility of something happening (and not that it must happen). I agree that there is some vague overlap between the two, but a chance happening is not indeterminacy, especially not quantum indeterminacy.

Also, I would like to see how on earth someone could determine that brain activity is affected by “quantum effects.”

 

[Jaaanosik]

If QM stands is it possible to have time shorter than Planck time?

 

[Jaaanosik]

I used to adhere to the time theory, but found it flawed. If God exists outside of time, how does he process things mentally? How does he decide? How do events like the Battle in Heaven, where a third of the angels, who followed Lucifer, were cast out, occur? Events must occur with time. No time, no evolution. God’s “consciousness”, to put it brusquely, simply cannot exist outside of time.

…

Are you saying that there was no God before the Big Bang?
… or you have other theories?

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

If QM stands is it possible to have time shorter than Planck time?

What do you mean “If QM stands??” It has stood up to every test put forth, it is certainly is standing on very solid ground. Perhaps you really mean QG, as in Quantum Gravity? But as far as I know, the Planck scale is the smallest possible scale known. I have heard that physicist Brian Greene has supposed of the existence of sub-Planck scale physics, but I do not believe it is being investigated.

 

[Jaaanosik]

What do you mean “If QM stands??” It has stood up to every test put forth, it is certainly is standing on very solid ground. Perhaps you really mean QG, as in Quantum Gravity? But as far as I know, the Planck scale is the smallest possible scale known. I have heard that physicist Brian Greene has supposed of the existence of sub-Planck scale physics, but I do not believe it is being investigated.

My intention was not to imply that QM is not valid just to point out that it seems the time is discrete.
If we knew position and momentum of a photon at Pt1 then I guess we would know the new position of the photon at Pt2.
Pt2 minus Pt1 is Planck time interval.
Is that correct?

 

[fhansen]

Alright, I am about to present a controversial original viewpoint. I hope that readers take time to think about the implications, and give rational reasons for/against this.

Being a philosopher, Catholic, and physicist, I have considered deeply the theological implications of the field known as quantum physics. Quantum physics is a highly complicated field, no attempt at explanation will be made here. Interested readers are welcome to check en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_quantum_mechanics.

Well, basically, in layman’s terms, the overwhelming evidence is in favour of a model of the universe where things are decided non-deterministically. In other words, it is impossible to know the outcome of certain things from initial conditions. Additionally, the act of measurement of certain things will force them to behave differently than if they had not been measured (and evidence indicates that this is simply because we obtained knowledge of it), and this seems to be a feature of reality itself: reality is in the eye of the beholder.

Now this seems to be a very human-centred position, which is good (for Catholics), since we are made in the image of God and ipso facto hold a special position in this universe. Additionally, a mildly technial argument can show that there has to exist an external consciousness (read: God) for the universe to exist.

Now all this is fine and good, until one remembers that God knows everything, including that which will happen in the future. This simply cannot occur in a non-determinsitic universe (cf. Laplace’s demon), and conflcits with the problem of systems behaving differently when people obtain information about them. Circumventing this with the ‘God can do anything’ card is like saying that God can create a square circle: it doesn’t magically become possible just because we say ‘God can’.

So, therefore, I propose an amendment to the Catholic Church’s stance on omniscience, which happens to kill a few annoying problems such as ‘why would God create us?’, ‘why would God need us to pray if he already has a ‘plan’ ahead for us?’, ‘how do we reconiccle free will with omniscience’, etc.: God does not know what is in the future.

Before people decry me for heresy, allow me to offer a technical argument in my defence. If God knows everything that is going to happen, he knows exactly when and how I will die. But if I am placed in a situation where my life and death rest on a quantum event (cf. Schrodinger’s Cat), then God cannot know exactly when I will die.

God knows everything in existence at any moment, but he cannot predict how it would evolve since it is non-deterministic. He can influence it (though he doesn’t do it in very spectacular ways anymore, cf. Elijah at Mt. Sinai), but not predict its evolution. Wouldn’t it be better if we could write our own world, our own damnation and salvation (to an extremely small extent, but still)? Wouldn’t such a creation have more value? Wouldn’t it be a better test of ourselves.

As I said, a controversial viewpoint. But feedback would be appreciated.

OK, how about this:
For in him we live and move and have our being.’ Acts 17:28.

So this has probably been brought up but what if everything-at least in the temporal/physical realm, leaving out the moral/free will activity of man-is determined-on a deeper level that what we can observe-at every moment by God?

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

My intention was not to imply that QM is not valid just to point out that it seems the time is discrete.
If we knew position and momentum of a photon at Pt1 then I guess we would know the new position of the photon at Pt2.
Pt2 minus Pt1 is Planck time interval.
Is that correct?

Time is discrete. The Greeks had a line of thought that went something like, “If distance were infinitely divisible, I could never go from A to B because I’d have to cross an infinity of half-way points.” In a similar manner, if time were infinitely divisible, then tomorrow would never come because there’d be an infinity of half-way points. Thus, time must be discrete.

Anyway, we cannot know the position and momentum of a photon simultaneously, we are limited by the uncertainty relation ΔpΔx >= h. Assuming we could know both the position and momentum of a photon, the Planck length is smaller than h by about 6 orders of magnitude, so even at a Planck second later, we could not know the position and momentum then.

 

[greylorn]

Alright, I am about to present a controversial original viewpoint. I hope that readers take time to think about the implications, and give rational reasons for/against this.

Being a philosopher, Catholic, and physicist, I have considered deeply the theological implications of the field known as quantum physics. Quantum physics is a highly complicated field, no attempt at explanation will be made here. Interested readers are welcome to check en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_quantum_mechanics.

Well, basically, in layman’s terms, the overwhelming evidence is in favour of a model of the universe where things are decided non-deterministically. In other words, it is impossible to know the outcome of certain things from initial conditions. Additionally, the act of measurement of certain things will force them to behave differently than if they had not been measured (and evidence indicates that this is simply because we obtained knowledge of it), and this seems to be a feature of reality itself: reality is in the eye of the beholder.

Now this seems to be a very human-centred position, which is good (for Catholics), since we are made in the image of God and ipso facto hold a special position in this universe. Additionally, a mildly technial argument can show that there has to exist an external consciousness (read: God) for the universe to exist.

Now all this is fine and good, until one remembers that God knows everything, including that which will happen in the future. This simply cannot occur in a non-determinsitic universe (cf. Laplace’s demon), and conflcits with the problem of systems behaving differently when people obtain information about them. Circumventing this with the ‘God can do anything’ card is like saying that God can create a square circle: it doesn’t magically become possible just because we say ‘God can’.

So, therefore, I propose an amendment to the Catholic Church’s stance on omniscience, which happens to kill a few annoying problems such as ‘why would God create us?’, ‘why would God need us to pray if he already has a ‘plan’ ahead for us?’, ‘how do we reconiccle free will with omniscience’, etc.: God does not know what is in the future.

Before people decry me for heresy, allow me to offer a technical argument in my defence. If God knows everything that is going to happen, he knows exactly when and how I will die. But if I am placed in a situation where my life and death rest on a quantum event (cf. Schrodinger’s Cat), then God cannot know exactly when I will die.

God knows everything in existence at any moment, but he cannot predict how it would evolve since it is non-deterministic. He can influence it (though he doesn’t do it in very spectacular ways anymore, cf. Elijah at Mt. Sinai), but not predict its evolution. Wouldn’t it be better if we could write our own world, our own damnation and salvation (to an extremely small extent, but still)? Wouldn’t such a creation have more value? Wouldn’t it be a better test of ourselves.

As I said, a controversial viewpoint. But feedback would be appreciated.

There is nothing whatsoever that is original about your proposal that God is not omniscient, except in your own mind. i “invented” the same notion half a century ago, and have proposed it in several threads on CAF. It was described in an old novel, The Soul of Anna Klane, published before you were born.

An honest reading of the Old Testament will make in pretty clear that the Hebrews did not regard God as all knowing. He does not seem to have planned ahead very well in His creation or treatment of mankind.

You will not find it profitable to argue your position from QM theory. Few posters around here claim to understand it, and their perspective is the same conventional physics interpretation which you’ve recently been taught as dogma, and which is wrong, IMO anyway.

Nonetheless, you seem to have made a little mental quantum leap on your own, from physics considerations, and are off to an excellent start.

You might find it easier to explain your point from the perspective of creative thought, which God cannot perform if He is omniscient. This won’t change any well-programmed minds, but at least most folks can understand the point of the argument.

You will find that if you pursue your new discovery in the context of physics it will lead to other unexpected implications which are inconsistent with dogma. For example, solving the problem of what happens if an omnipotent entity applies infinite force to, let’s say, one electron, might get you wondering why anyone imagines that omnipotence is a useful property.

You can move from there to a consideration of what properties an entity might actually require to create a universe. Don’t expect to have a lot of Christian friends after a while.

BTW, exactly why did God create us, in your opinion?

 

[Jaaanosik]

Time is discrete. The Greeks had a line of thought that went something like, “If distance were infinitely divisible, I could never go from A to B because I’d have to cross an infinity of half-way points.” In a similar manner, if time were infinitely divisible, then tomorrow would never come because there’d be an infinity of half-way points. Thus, time must be discrete.

Anyway, we cannot know the position and momentum of a photon simultaneously, we are limited by the uncertainty relation ΔpΔx >= h. Assuming we could know both the position and momentum of a photon, the Planck length is smaller than h by about 6 orders of magnitude, so even at a Planck second later, we could not know the position and momentum then.

How can you compare meters to Joule seconds?

…the distance traveled by light during 1 Planck time is 1 Planck length…

That’s what photon does.
I know we can not know it but the question is does God know where a photon is and where it’s heading?
Does God know His particles?

 

[carn]

You did not directly make the claim, but it absolutely is part of the thesis. You are asserting that because some aspects of QM are indeterminant, then God cannot be omniscient because it violates quantum indeterminacy. Thus, my assertion still stands.

I claim its possible He does not know the slit an electron goes through in a double slit experiment. He could nonetheless be omniscent. It would just be different than what one usually considers omniscent to be.

Note that the radioactive particle decay may be a quantum effect, but the macroscopic reaction of the persons body to this stimuli is certainly not a quantum effect. So again, there is no reason to think that quantum indeterminacy has any role in global indeterminancy.

So you claim it is, if all properties of a human, who ingested some radioactive material, is known including the rough position of the particles, then in principle it would be known for certain whether he gets cancer or not?

Sounds a bit strange considering that its indeterministic, which particles actually decay and in which direction the decay products are emitted.

There is a lot wrong with the above paragraph. I will try to correct your confusions:
(1) Fusion does not depend on chance, just circumstance–if you have a gas cloud that collapses due to gravitational potential, fusion is what happens. There is no random chance here.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion
“There are two effects that lower the actual temperature needed. One is the fact that temperature is the average kinetic energy, implying that some nuclei at this temperature would actually have much higher energy than 0.1 MeV, while others would be much lower. It is the nuclei in the high-energy tail of the velocity distribution that account for most of the fusion reactions. The other effect is quantum tunneling. The nuclei do not actually have to have enough energy to overcome the Coulomb barrier completely. If they have nearly enough energy, they can tunnel through the remaining barrier. For these reasons fuel at lower temperatures will still undergo fusion events, at a lower rate.”

When the entire core becomes iron, there is no more fusion & the star collapses before the outwards blast of the star going supernova.

Not the entire mass will be iron, just the larger part. In the end phase silicium will burn into iron and the amount of silicium will decrease. At some point there will be not enough silicium left to maintain a fusion process and collapse will happen. And the breakdown of fusion process will not be completely uniform.
If by chance many of the remaining few silicium atoms in a region meet (and this is not determined), such a region will maintain the fusion process slightly longer than a region, in which by chance few of the remaining silicium atoms meet each other. So in case of uniform silicium distribution, the breakdown of fusion process will still not be uniform, due to the indeterminancy.

(3) Asteroids–which would be obliterated by the shock front of the expanding SNe gas if they happened to pass through one–are also massive particles, some on the order of several kilometers wide. Since they are massive particles, there is absolutely no chance for a massive particle to tunnel.
(4) The shock waves of a supernova produce no gravitational acceleration, so they cannot “deflect” asteroids.

And the exact way the breakdown happens will influence the following explosion and the distribution of the expanding material slightly.

And an asteroid passing through the expanded and cooled down gas cloud will have its course slightly altered depending upon the distribution of the gas cloud, which is not determined prior collapse due to the indeterminancy of the exact pattern of fusion process breakdown.

Also, I would like to see how on earth someone could determine that brain activity is affected by “quantum effects.”

We do not know how the brain functions and therefore do not know, whether for simulating a brains classical physics would be enough or not.

And regarding very remote chances, they are just ignored for convenience. According to QM there is a chance, that we all die the next second, if all radioactive particles of earth decay the next second. Chance is low for this to happen, but it is not deterministic whether it will happen or not.

 

[carn]

I know we can not know it but the question is does God know where a photon is and where it’s heading?

Under some circumstances the terms “where a photon is” and “where it is heading” do not have any meaning. Therefore there would be no reason for God to know them.

 

[greylorn]

How can you compare meters to Joule seconds?

Quite simply, using the same method we commonly use to compare distance with time. Treat each as a dimension, and plot one against another on an ordinary two-dimensional graph.

That’s what photon does.
I know we can not know it but the question is does God know where a photon is and where it’s heading?
Does God know His particles?

Essentially, you are asking if God is bound by the Uncertainty Principle. If God must use some form of energy to make observations, then he is bound by the U.P. and will necessarily destroy any photon he observes.

However, if God is composed of stuff which is not energy, He ought to be able to observe a photon w/o the photon being any the wiser.

 

[greylorn]

I claim its possible He does not know the slit an electron goes through in a double slit experiment. He could nonetheless be omniscent. It would just be different than what one usually considers omniscent to be.

You must have learned logic from Nancy Pelosi. .

 

[Jaaanosik]

Under some circumstances the terms “where a photon is” and “where it is heading” do not have any meaning. Therefore there would be no reason for God to know them.

Would you shed some light on the circumstances?

 

[Alberti_Devoveo]

How can you compare meters to Joule seconds?

Aside from Greylorn’s comment, you can do unit conversions. The Planck second is defined as t[sub]p[/sup] sqrt (G*hbar/c[sup]5[/sup] ) where hbar is h/2π. Solve this for h, you get the comparison to the two.
As a small oversight on my part, one Planck second would actually be equivalent to h when doing the above conversion. It could then be possible to know to some degree of accuracy the position and momentum; however, it would not be knowledge of its exact position and exact momentum. And this is quantum indeterminacy.

That’s what photon does.
I know we can not know it but the question is does God know where a photon is and where it’s heading?
Does God know His particles?

That is not “what a photon does” but how the Planck scale is determined. A Planck second is the time it takes a photon to move, in a vacuum, one Planck length, which is determined through the use of 3 fundamental constants of nature. All the Planck units are are the smallest dimension using the fundamental constants of nature.

I would answer that question as absolutely yes, God knows every photon’s position and momentum. He could not be omniscient without knowing everything.