Certainly Theists must be careful in using scientific arguments to support the existence of God, since, as I think you’re intimating, there’s a potential for a “god of the gaps” problem. But, of course, the inverse of this is a problem too: a “godless of the gaps”, where the atheist tries to utilize the latest scientific knowledge to support his atheism, but then subsequent scientific knowledge shows that the atheism is untenable, for example, quantum mechanics showing that belief in God is more rational than atheism. But both sides would be wise to rely on the latest science to support their views parsimoniously.

In my example above, in which I was unaware of the meaning of decoherence, my thought was not about a photon hitting a detector in a lab. It was about a photon long ago, before the existence of human intelligence, striking some surface and perhaps producing heat. The question in my mind is whether the equations of quantum mechanics can be thought of as applying to situations that occurred before human consciousness was around and people were able to experiment with, predict, and measure quantum phenomena. The question in my mind is whether reality is somehow different if there is no (human) consciousness to observe it. Did reality actually change because consciousness came into existence? If there was no reality before there were human beings to observe it, what are geologists seeing when they look at billion-year-old rocks, or what are we seeing when we look in the sky and see light from a billion years ago. We can say that the observer has an effect on the observed, but what can we say about unobserved (and inherently unobservable) quantum phenomena?

That was the cosmology a few thousand years ago, and most people seem to have accepted that the Earth had an edge. But new insights came along a few centuries later and yet more alternatives were thought up.

QM is a beautiful theory, and its predictions have been confirmed in every test we’ve made to date, to many decimal places. Relativity is another theory that’s passed every test we’ve thrown at it with flying colors.

But they make different predictions in areas we can’t test yet – like rotating black holes. We know that at least one of them – and probably both! – are incomplete to some degree. There’s a long history of hitting the limits of what we currently know and saying ‘here be the supernatural’ but that hasn’t worked out in practice.

One question to Dr. Barr, will there be an other book forthcoming? I already have on my Kindle “A Natural Guide To Natural Science.”
Thank You

It’s true that most physicists don’t spend much time thinking about this problem. Quite disappointing, given how interesting it is.

Thanks for the great article!

Stephen M. Barr,

Normally, I would be quite surprised, but not when the subject is quantum mechanics, philosophy, and human consciousness! Thank you for your detailed response.