Theological implications of quantum physics

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i thought this might be a good topic to discuss since i have not seen it brought up yet. i would like to bring up the idea of quantum physics, the theories involved, and the implications these have if proven true in the theory. such ideas include but are not limited to time travel, wormholes, string theory, parallel universes, etc.

as a first example, lets take time travel. einstein proved it CAN happen, were just not sure HOW to do it. now what situations would this bring about? what if i killed my grandfather? would i exist, or not even be able to do such a thing? if i travelled back in time a few years and met myself, there are now two of me, what problems does this bring about? also would the church allow us to go back and prevent some disaster by eliminating potential enemies who cause great misery in the past? and suppose we went back and killed ourselves and took “their” place?

another example is alternate universes. already physicists have seen particles appear from out of nowhere, one idea is that they travelled from one universe to ours. now if this is true is there one alternate plane or many? and lets go a step further and assume these universes are like ours except with minor differences, such as a earth where the world wars never happened, where we are 100 years more advanced, etc. now what about the “me” in this, or these dimensions. are they simply shadows of me?..or am i a shadow of them? would they be individual souls and their own living being like me? suppose i exterminated an alternate “me”, would i be guilty of murder or suicide?

im sure many of you could bring up plenty more situations and other theories of quantum theories that would be of interest. no doubt many of these theories will be proven fact in our lifetime and eventually the church will have to grapple with many issues and problems that arise from these. what do you think?

P.S. I think while were on this subject we might also discuss the subject of extraterrastrial life, now THAT could give us all sorts of headaches…
 
yeah this is a topic i could read up on for days. I read this article saying that something could come out of nothing quite easily if there were multiple universes and thus the matter for the big bang. Quite recently scientists are saying that the percentage of “dark matter” in the universe suggests that there very well may be multiple universes. The existance of God as a creator may be shaken up if the latter is true but this does mean science and belief is not compatible.
 
Dredgtone,

You wrote: “The existance of God as a creator may be shaken up if the latter is true but this does mean science and belief is not compatible.”

I don’t see where you come up with those conclusions. If multiple universes are discovered, it seems to me that the concept of “universe” has been expanded, but that hardly “shakes up” the exixtence of God as Creator.

Nor do I see how this shows that science and belief are not compatible. You will have to give me reasons to accept that—what are your reasons?
 
I just finished reading Brian Greene’s The Structure of the Cosmos, which contains some of the more recent ideas in physics relating to these topics.

With regard to time travel. While you might go back in time, you could not kill your Grandfather. You would find once you completed your time travel that your world-line had always been like that. i.e. born, 7/6/1980, invented time machine 6/25/2020, met grandfather, 5/29/45, etc. Your timeline would wind through space-time in a particular fashion, not affecting the future.

Alternate Universes are more speculative. They are posited as a way to actualize every possible outcome of any particular action. Since, especially at the submicroscopic level, the motion of objects is determined by their probability wave function, the outcome is known only when we ‘force’ an outcome by making an observation. But it could have been otherwise. If I have only a .0000000001% chance of suddenly appearing in the Andromeda galaxy as I walk into the next room, under the AU theory, in some universe, that outcome actually happens. I’m not really inclined to take this one too seriously.

JimG
 
Also, with respect to current physical theory, “nothing” is not really nothing. That is, empty space is itself something. While space may appear perfectly smooth and uniform, as you subdivide it into smaller and smaller parts, it begins to look unstable and wavy, and at less than the Planck length, it looks chaotic, so that there is no longer an up, down, left, or right; even time is fragmented so that you can’t tell its direction.

As far as how all this affects theology, I don’t think it does. Physical theory only concerns matter, energy, space, and time. But God is pure Spirit, outside of all those, and without any of their qualities.

JimG
 
For some fun speculative sci-fi, read Dan Simmons. He’s all over this stuff, and he’s always throwing in Catholics and the Church. The Hyperion and Endymion series are great–some of the best lit I’ve ever read. (Well, I don’t know if it’s “literature,” but it’s quite entertaining.)

In his new Illium book, though, he paints a pretty dark picture of quantum “teleportation” and travel. Basically, quantum teleportation could happen, but instead of teleporting the individual complete with memories and personality, it basically annihilated the person on one end, and created a perfect replica on the other. Now THAT has serious moral problems. As Catholics, these books are must reads. You’ll get a whole new dimension out of them.

And by the way, I’m not Dan Simmons…
 
Wow you guys are heavy thinkers. My brain shuts down at the slightest thought of “if there’s an edge of the universe, what’s beyond?”
 
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Sherlock:
Dredgtone,

You wrote: “The existance of God as a creator may be shaken up if the latter is true but this does mean science and belief is not compatible.”

I don’t see where you come up with those conclusions. If multiple universes are discovered, it seems to me that the concept of “universe” has been expanded, but that hardly “shakes up” the exixtence of God as Creator.

Nor do I see how this shows that science and belief are not compatible. You will have to give me reasons to accept that—what are your reasons?
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Because like i said, if there are multiple universes, then something can come from nothing. Therefore, God is no longer needed to explain the inception of the universe. The universe could have been created by itself without a creator.
 
Dredgtone,

No, it doesn’t show that “something can come from nothing”, for the simple reason that something has to be the cause of the existence of those other universes. You haven’t shown how this means that something can come from nothing. Multiple universes merely expands the concept of universe—perhaps a single, “mega-Universe” consisting of multiple sub-universes. That concept does not do away with God at all.
 
Because like i said, if there are multiple universes, then something can come from nothing. Therefore, God is no longer needed to explain the inception of the universe. The universe could have been created by itself without a creator.
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Rubbish. 😉 All that would mean is that God has a bigger imagination than we thought.

Or, it could mean that an infinite number of probability waves are collapsing into an infinite number of events, resulting in universes and realities outside our perception.

I don’t see how you’re going from the possibility of multiple universes to a (metaphysical?) impossibility–something from nothing. Why would multiple universes necessarily negate a God? Haven’t you read the last book in the Narnia Chronicles? 😉
 
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dredgtone:
Because like i said, if there are multiple universes, then something can come from nothing. Therefore, God is no longer needed to explain the inception of the universe. The universe could have been created by itself without a creator.
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Even the question of multiple universes eventually seems to lead back to the inevitable “but what was before that?” question that always seems to lead back to God.

In his book “In the Presence of Our Lord”, Fr. Groeschel writes:
“Writing of the origin of the universe, Dr. Robert Jastrow, professor emeritus of astronomy at Columbia University, put the mystery of the cosmos in scientific terms but acknowledged that the question goes over into theology. He had discovered that the exploration of the mystery of existence must always lead to that infinite Reality religious people call God:
”…The scientist’s pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. This is an exceedingly strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians… It is unexpected because science has had such extraordinary success in tracing the chain of cause and effect backward in time. …we would like to pursue that inquiry farther back in time, but the barrier to further progress seems insurmountable… For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries."​
I was trained in the sciences and I can appreciate this problem. Whatever wrinkles keep getting added to the questions surrounding the origins of the universe (single, multiple or otherwise) there is always another question, and ultimately that question cannot be answered scientifically. At that point, the answer inevitably points to a Creator who is beyond time and space, ultimately the only answer is God.

Blessings.
 
another theory i heard which makes more sense to me is the “branching theory” as far as time travel is concerned. basically to get around the “how can i kill my grandfarher” problem, the theory states that once you travel back or forward in time, that alternate timeline is also an alternate universe as well, basically each time you travel, you create more and more alternate universes, and your never really able to go back into a previous one, you’ll just simply have to make new ones, think of it as one of those family tree diagrams we always saw as kids, the universe(s) pretty much are continuously branching if people are time travelling, this would even go for sub-atomic particles that travel through time naturally
 
Theoretical physics student checking in here.

Time Travel:

The thing about Relativity (whether Special or General) that needs to be understood (but which few people ever talk about) is that it implies (or requires, depending on where you start your premises) a complete, fixed Universe–space and time. That is, the Universe is one complete whole. Whether sometime in the future you travel into the past, and what you do while you’re there, is just as fixed as the past is. This follows from the relativity of simultaneity. There is no universal Now from which to measure the “present”. Interesting, this result of Relativity is consistent with theological speculations about Time (such as St. Augustine’s) in which God is outside of Time and “sees” the whole physical universe–past, “present,” and future as one great Whole.

Most people tend to think of time as this absolute stage on which the events of the Universe are played out. And Heaven too. They think of the saints as being in Heaven “right now” looking down on us “now”. But if there is something like Time in Heaven, it has nothing to do with earth-time. Time here is as much a part of the physical universe as space (they’re just part of the same thing: the space-time continuum. They can’t be separated. They’re related sort of in the way that latitude and longitude on a globe are related.)

Anyway, the conclusion from this that since the Universe is a seamless whole, the question of “time paradoxes” is a moot one. They can’t occur. If you tried to murder your grandfather, something would cause you to fail.

What this means for “free will” is a thornier question, but not insurmountable. The problem is not a new one but goes back at least to St. Augustine. Very subtle to grasp though. I won’t attempt to tackle it.
 
while its true this universe may be “objective” in its form, nonetheless the ability to create or travel between several alternate historical universes is a possibility in the case of time travel…
 
Racer X:
Theoretical physics student checking in here.

Time Travel:

The thing about Relativity (whether Special or General) that needs to be understood (but which few people ever talk about) is that it implies (or requires, depending on where you start your premises) a complete, fixed Universe–space and time. That is, the Universe is one complete whole. Whether sometime in the future you travel into the past, and what you do while you’re there, is just as fixed as the past is. This follows from the relativity of simultaneity. There is no universal Now from which to measure the “present”. Interesting, this result of Relativity is consistent with theological speculations about Time (such as St. Augustine’s) in which God is outside of Time and “sees” the whole physical universe–past, “present,” and future as one great Whole.

Most people tend to think of time as this absolute stage on which the events of the Universe are played out. And Heaven too. They think of the saints as being in Heaven “right now” looking down on us “now”. But if there is something like Time in Heaven, it has nothing to do with earth-time. Time here is as much a part of the physical universe as space (they’re just part of the same thing: the space-time continuum. They can’t be separated. They’re related sort of in the way that latitude and longitude on a globe are related.)

Anyway, the conclusion from this that since the Universe is a seamless whole, the question of “time paradoxes” is a moot one. They can’t occur. If you tried to murder your grandfather, something would cause you to fail.

What this means for “free will” is a thornier question, but not insurmountable. The problem is not a new one but goes back at least to St. Augustine. Very subtle to grasp though. I won’t attempt to tackle it.
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I think that if you traveled back in time at all, you would make a subtle change regardless, perhaps appearing on top of a small rodent whose sudden demise would cause a change in its particular branch of the food chain.

Actually, travelling back in time at all would immediately introduce a paradox, unless you were “become” something else that was already present at your time-travel destination. Otherwise, if you suddenly appeared at point x, it would be simultaneously true that on such and such a date you were both present and not present at point x.
 
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Prometheum_x:
I think that if you traveled back in time at all, you would make a subtle change regardless, perhaps appearing on top of a small rodent whose sudden demise would cause a change in its particular branch of the food chain.

Actually, travelling back in time at all would immediately introduce a paradox, unless you were “become” something else that was already present at your time-travel destination. Otherwise, if you suddenly appeared at point x, it would be simultaneously true that on such and such a date you were both present and not present at point x.
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No. The past is past. No, more than that–the future exists in the same way the present does. If in 2005 you are going to back to 1927 and step on a small rodent, the rodent has been already been stepped on 1927. You’ve been there. That is, 1927 contains the you that will come in 2005. That fact that from our perspective in 2004 you have not begun your trip in 2005 yet does not matter.

Like I said, it raises serious questions about free will. But I’m not going there. After much thought I’m not even sure what “free will” means anymore.
 
Racer X:
No. The past is past. No, more than that–the future exists in the same way the present does. If in 2005 you are going to back to 1927 and step on a small rodent, the rodent has been already been stepped on 1927. You’ve been there. That is, 1927 contains the you that will come in 2005. That fact that from our perspective in 2004 you have not begun your trip in 2005 yet does not matter.
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Racer X, thanks for your posts; they have been good clarifications of this issue. This is the same perspective that Brian Greene gives when discussing time travel in The Structure of The Cosmos.

Say you travel back to 1941 with the intention of stopping your father from meeting your mother. Your sudden appearance in 1941 perhaps startles your future father so much that he runs iimmediately to your mother and proposes. The rest is history. The “you” that suddenly appeared there that day in 1941 has always been a part of your timeline, and his. No time paradoxes.

JimG
 
i just found this article, seems the speed of light is not objective and may change, which puts our whole understanding of physics in the garbage can if true. Just like i said at the beginning, this stuff is gonna change everything about our understanding of the universe…

newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996092
 
Racer X:
No. The past is past. No, more than that–the future exists in the same way the present does. If in 2005 you are going to back to 1927 and step on a small rodent, the rodent has been already been stepped on 1927. You’ve been there. That is, 1927 contains the you that will come in 2005. That fact that from our perspective in 2004 you have not begun your trip in 2005 yet does not matter.

Like I said, it raises serious questions about free will. But I’m not going there. After much thought I’m not even sure what “free will” means anymore.
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I would agree. Anything else would be a paradox.
 
What a headsy topic. I bought a book once (I’ll have to go dig it up) that talked about God and quantum physics.

In regards to time travel - I like the way 2 of the posters have put it. I think many people think that time travel works like in “Back to the Future” and thus get into the “if I went back in time and killed my father” loop.

Also I remember reading an article in Time (this has to be problem 10 years ago already) where it gave 7 reasons based on physics why time travel is impossible.

Wish I had more to add than the fog in my memory.
 
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