K

This is a new thread for general discussion about the implications of quantum mechanics on causality - specifically in reference to the First Cause proof of God's existence.

Starboy

Please forgive this question but how are they related?

RJS

Thanks. You need to understand that quantum mechanics is not my deal (not that you won't come to that conclusion on your own very soon).

But the topic of causality has been of interest to me, and your comment

really shocked me. The shock came from the fact that nobody here has brought this up in the many months I have been here - and there were many discussions begging for such info.

Anyway, I guess what I was hoping to get out of this is a simple explanation (overly simple to you I am sure) of this whole concept.

After reading some of the links provided by you, I will propose what I think Heisenberg is stating, then you can correct me. Also, please comment on how widely accepted this theory is, as the information intimated that is is still controversial.

My take on it -

1) Nothing exists that we can't observe or measure - or maybe just that such things have no meaning.

2) Since we cannot know the precise position and momentum of a particle at a given instant, its future cannot be determined.

3) Therefore, the future movement of a given particle is random and has no cause.

Correct away.

[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: RJS ]</p>

NialScorva

There is also the fun effects such as simple radioactive decay. You can take a sample of an isotope, and say with a great deal of confidence that half of it will decay in X time, but given a single atom of it, there's no way to predict when it will decay, or how long it will take.

RJS

Has there been a scientific explanation for this?

K

Starboy:

I'm not sure what relationship you're looking for, so I'll try to cover both.

The ramifications of quantum mechanics are that causality at the quantum level does not hold. Bohr and Einstein debated about this for years. Einstein was eventually forced to begrudginly concede.

The First Cause argurment states that every event in the universe has a cause. Therefore, the first event needed a transcendent cause outside of the universe. Quantum mechanics would seem to invalidate the initial premise of the argument.

Starboy

Hi RJS,

Hope you don’t mind if I give it a stab.

This is not a QM question per say but a science dogma question. If it can be observed and measured then it is real and does exist. There is no statement about things that can’t be measured or observed, but science doesn’t care about such things.

Not exactly, you can in principle write the appropriate QM equations for any system, including the universe. After you solve it (if that is possible) and apply boundary conditions you would end up with a wave function with a whole lot of parameters in it. Using this wave function you could compute the probability of the universe being in any given state in the future. The interesting thing about this is that there will be states where the probability is zero, which means the universe can never get there. There may be a state with the highest probability or a collection of states with about equal probability. One could interpret this is the list of choices for the universe, some of which are ruled out entirely.


Not completely random, see 2.

Starboy

Starboy

Is the First Cause argument just a variant of the something from nothing question?

Starboy

K

Starboy:

I would say the two arguements are pretty close. Both start from an observation of the universe and work backward in infinite regression style.

Shadowy Man

This has been bothering me concerning the use of the word "uncaused" in relation to quantum mechanics. In your case with the radioactive decay - just because you can't predict exactly when an atom will decay, doesn't imply that the decay itself was "uncaused".