Star Wars, Quantum Mechanics and God (June 15, 2008 by Rev. Joan Shiels)
As a kid in the Baptist Church I loved all the dramatics at the pulpit and the earnest singing about Jesus. But, over time, it seemed that the most consistent message I was hearing was that the most glorious thing of all was going to be with Jesus. To me, logically, that suggested we should all just commit suicide so we could go be with him quicker. And yet, that was clearly not what they were advocating, so there was dissonance there that troubled me. It didn’t make sense.
And then that business about the all good, all powerful God. I was 14 when John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated. I just couldn’t believe that any all powerful, all good God would allow those things to happen so I, like a lot of young people, left God and the church behind. I wanted nothing to do with that kind of God ---and that seemed to be the only kind there was.
Then, in 1975, I went to see the movie Star Wars. In it, they wished each other well by saying, “May be the force be with you.” Somehow, that struck me as the exact right way to say it. I believed there was a Force. But I had no way to understand it until I thought carefully about how Obi Wan Kenobi described it, “The force is an energy field composed of all living things. It surrounds and permeates us. It controls our actions but it responds to our commands.” That just sounded like God to me. It wasn’t something I understood fully, but it was something I felt deeply. Yes, that just sounded like God to me.
I was embarrassed that I had found my understanding of God in a movie ---until I found out that George Lucas has gotten that description from Joseph Campbell who had composed it as a distillation of all he had learned about God from a lifetime of studying religious myth.
Then, in 1976, I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. In it I began to see the way that I, as a Westerner, was taught to understand the world. And I realized that there was another way of under-standing available…more intuitive than rational, more holistic than dualistic. This understanding is more common in Oriental cultures.My mind was opened to a new way of understanding myself, the world and God.
Along about this time someone told me the story of the One Hundred Monkeys – and I will have much to say about the one hundred monkeys later.
In 1992 I went to seminary and discovered Process Theology. Based on the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, process theology is a new lens through which traditional religious doctrine is not discarded but transformed. Rather than dogmatic truths,
it offers a relational vision of reality where
· science and religion need not contradict each other,
· concepts of the divine and human nature make sense,
· other faiths are respected and valued,
· and transformation of self and world is a possibility alive in every moment.
Process theology believes that we, and the world, are all parts of God. Process theology states that
We and God are both different kinds of energy events. Another step on my staggering journey of discovery.
Then, in 2001 I discovered Margaret Wheatley. Margaret is a management and organization systems consultant who wrote a stunning and award-winning book about business management explained by the concepts she discovered in, of all unlikely places, quantum physics. Margaret opened the door to quantum physics to me and I have read and thought about God in relation to quantum physics ever since.
Today I have assigned myself the task of presenting what I have learned and concluded to engage and provoke you, knowing that your reaction to what I have to say will probably produce different ideas, hopes and conclusions than mine.
It is not important that you agree with my conclusions. That is not the nature of my ministry. I apologize in advance to those of you, more familiar with science than I, who might find my leap from science to theology offensive.
My objective today is to present just enough science to expand your thinking about God and the nature of reality. There, that’s pretty ambitious, isn’t it?
Ever since I walked away from what I will call “traditional church theology” I have believed in a God that is eternal and yet constantly being re-created. A God that evolves in collaboration with us and all living things. I believe God is a never-changing constant that is constantly changing form. This is a God that is infinitely more interesting than anything I was offered as a child.
Before I continue forward, I need to step back and say something about the way most of us THINK.
We, in the Western world, have been trained, since Aristotle, to think in what has been named the “classical model.” In short, the classical model has four distinguishing characteristics:
1. It is a world of cause and effect. I push the switch and the TV comes on. Everything happens as a result of something that causes it to happen.
2. It is a world of determinism. It is predictable that the set will come on when I push the switch. Everything in the universe is assumed to work in this predetermined, predictable fashion.
3. It is a world of wholes comprised of a certain number of separate and discrete parts: The TV is a whole (machine) in its own right, consisting of specific parts. If the set does not work, it has to be the result of faulty parts. Repair or replace the parts and all will be well. Everything in the universe is assumed to work in similar fashion.
4. We have been taught to believe It is a world of objective reality. Measurable, recordable data is considered to be objective and reliable. It believes that there can be a neutral observer who can detect and verify, in repeatable experiments, reality as reality is.
According to the classical model all elements in the universe are stable, isolated, and independent of each other, and operate as in a machine where each part functions in order to make the whole operate effectively.
Assuming this classical model is true in all instances is often called living in a Newtonian world. A world dominated by the mechanics first explained by Isaac Newton. Each of us lives and works and thinks in ways derived from a Newtonian understanding of the universe. It pervades our culture. It is so accepted that we are like fish swimming in the lake, unaware that there is something called water.
This model of thinking was virtually unassailable for 400 years until Albert Einstein formulated his relativity theories. His were the first of several discoveries in the twentieth century which rocked the classical model that had been in vogue for the previous four centuries.
Einstein’s famous equation altered the view that the elementary building block of reality is a form of indestructible matter He said, instead, that the elementary building block of reality is not a particle.
It is an energy. And that energy is capable of being modified and transformed. In this new scientific world, things can be understood not as discrete parts, but things can be understood only relative (i.e. in relation) to each other.Further, in this new model, an observer cannot observe anything without interfering or, more precisely, participating in, its creation. Quantum science strikes down the term “objective observer.” There is no such thing. What we observe is created, at least in part, by who we are and what we are looking for.
If you’re having a hard time understanding this, don’t be discouraged.It’s hard to let go of our old ways of understanding things.
Sometimes we call ‘Land Ho!’ on faith.”
Some science now: Scientists have now split the atom and discovered more than 100 particles smaller than the atom. Having seen life at the subatomic level. We have learned that the basic ingredient of the universe is space. There is more of it than anything else. Even at the microscopic level of atoms, where we would expect things to be dense and compact, there is mostly space. Within atoms, subatomic particles are separated by vast space, so much so that an atom is 99.99 percent empty. Everything we touch, including our bodies, is composed of these empty atoms. We are far more porous than our dense bodies indicate. In fact, we are as void, proportionately, as intergalactic space.
So we, and everything, are made up of mostly space.
Quantum physics has discovered that space everywhere is now thought to be filled with fields,
invisible, non-material influences that are the basic substance of the universe. We cannot see these fields, but we do observe their effects. Newton introduced the first field: gravity. Can you see gravity? No. Place iron filings near a magnet. You cannot see electromagnetism but you see its effects. Fields are unseen forces, invisible influences in space that become apparent through their effects. In our day-to-day lives, we have direct experience with other fields.
These fields are the basic substance of the universe. They manifest in two ways: as particles or as waves. The things we see the physical manifestations of matter as particles—are a result of fields colliding. Particles may come into existence when two fields intersect. At the point of meeting, where their energies interact particles appear.
When the fields are acting as waves information travels in these fields, instantaneously. Newtonian physics claimed nothing moved faster than the speed of light. Quantum physics has proven otherwise.
It’s time to talk about the 100 Monkeys. This is a well-known exaggeration, based on facts from an experiment in the 1950’s. Certain Japanese monkeys had been observed in the wild for over 30 years. One of their favorite foods was the sweet potato.
In 1952, one monkey found she could solve the annoying problem of sand on her potatoes by washing them before eating them. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way from her and they taught their mothers. Before the eyes of the scientists, this cultural innovation was gradually picked up by various monkeys, and by 1958 all of the young monkeys on the island had learned to wash sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable.
A critical number of monkeys, estimated at 99, were washing sweet potatoes, and on the day that the hundredth monkey learned to wash potatoes, something startling took place. The habit of washing sweet potatoes jumped over the sea and instantly colonies of monkeys on other islands and on the mainland began washing their sweet potatoes as well.
The explanation, in terms of quantum physics, is that that first monkey who washed her potato made a “quantum leap” –an unexpected, unpredictable change in behavior.
It was learned by those who observed her but as the behavior grew it created a new field of information. Once the field grew to a certain size ---in this case, 100 monkeys--- it expanded instantaneously so that monkeys all over the world did not have to “learn” the skill. They pulled it from the field.
Though this particular story is an exaggeration of the facts, scientists have in fact conducted experiments at the subatomic level that duplicate the implication of the story. In 1964 Bell’s Theorem proved that information acquired and behavior exhibited by electrons once joined can instantaneously be duplicated by each even when separated --even by infinite space.
Information travels instantly in a field and the knowledge can be acquired by like individuals. The quantum view of reality startles us out of our common notions of what is real. In the quantum world, relationship is the key determiner of everything. Subatomic particles come into form and are observed only as they are in relationship to something else. They do not exist as independent things.
Even to scientists, it is admittedly bizarre. It has been said, “If you’re not confused, you don’t understand the situation.”
The quantum world challenges our beliefs about objective measurement. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle proves that at the subatomic level the observer cannot observe anything without interfering,or, more precisely, participating in its creation.
Energy can appear as particles or waves in fields. But it is impossible to observe or measure energy In both forms simultaneously. Try to observe it as a wave, it becomes particles. Try to observe it as particle, it turns into a wave. It knows it is being observed, and responds to the observation. “Objective observation” is impossible.
The quantum world is weird, even to scientists. Niels Bohr, winner of the 1922 Nobel Prize for his work on the structure of the atom, warns that “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” And Erwin Shroedinger, winner of the 1933 Nobel Prize in Physics, reacting to some of its puzzles says, “I don’t like it and I’m sorry I ever had anything to do with it.”
But the quantum world is not just weird and fascinating. As more people contemplate these strange behaviors at the subatomic level, we are given potent images that can enrich our lives at the macro level. Quantum imagery challenges many of our basic assumptions, about what is real.
Alongside the strictly scientific understanding of quantum theory, creative thinkers of our time are naming philosophical, biological and theological ramifications that result from the quantum vision.
The discovery of life at the subatomic level has revealed realities that are startlingly different
from the Newtonian mechanistic ones that had been used to explain reality.
Particles are not fixed entities but “bundles of potential.” We already that know our personalities
do not exist independent of our relationships with others. Different settings and people evoke some qualities from us and leave others dormant. Each of us is a different person in different places.
This doesn’t make us inauthentic; it merely makes us quantum. Not only are we fuzzy, the whole universe is.
Similar shifts in understanding have appeared in the field of human health with the new understanding of mind, body and spirit being inextricably linked. The body is viewed now as an integrated system rather than a collection of discrete parts.
Looking at the earth as a whole, there is increasing support for Lovelock’s theory that the earth is a self-regulating system, a planetary community of interdependent systems that together create the conditions which make life possible.
In religion, quantum physics has created a new arena for theological exploration. Like the universe, our theological parameters are expanding, not contracting.
In the old theology –the theology of a Newtonian world: a vast and complex machine had been entrusted to our care. We searched to know the mind of the clock maker, even as he receded deep into the distance. We made some assumptions about him (gender was never a question.) He was infinitely rational, his works were totally predictable and a few simple laws would reveal what made everything work.
All theology is a metaphor, a hypothetical description of how to think of a reality we can never fully know. In a quantum world, God sustains the same identity over time, yet is not rigidly locked into any one form.
Sometimes the God field produces particles and God takes a human form. Sometimes God acts only as a wave, discoverable only as a thought or a feeling. A God that is an energy field can change to be
whatever you need God to be: a carpenter from Israel, a blue-faced goatherder from India, a spot of light in your meditation.The Native Americans said God was a shape-shifter, capable of becoming a coyote or a jackal or the smoke from the fire ---all things familiar to them, all things they could understand. God can even become, if that is what you are looking for, a big guy in the sky.
The quantum world is a pluralist world. All religions are equal and valid paths to the divine reality. Each is right for its own cultural, communal, or personal context. Each religion is understood to be a cultural, historical attempt at understanding the divine. Each religion is right for its time. Each offers a partial and limited view of reality, yet each can genuinely lead you to God and communicate God’s design for you and for the world.
If you have been paying attention to liberal religious dialogue these ideas are not new to you. I am aware that I am in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship today ----- a place where each person has long been encouraged and supported to believe in the God that made sense to them.
Please understand that what I know about quantum physics is the tiniest nit of what there is to be know about it. What I have been able to share with you in this brief time is the tiniest nit of what I know.
I have spoken in a metaphorical way---using science as a metaphor for something that seems true to me about theology. Speaking in metaphors is so much easier than doing hard science --it means not having to learn all that math.
But with these new insights into the universe I can feel the ground shaking. Many of us hear its deep rumblings. Any moment now the earth may crack open and we will stare into its dark center. Into that smoking caldera, we will be asked to throw most of what we have treasured, most of the techniques and tools that have made us feel competent to understand the world.
We know what we must do.
And when we finally step forward to do it, when we have made our sacrificial offerings to the Gods of understanding, then the ruptures will cease.
Healing waters will cover the land, giving birth to new life, burying forever the ancient, rusting machines
of our past understandings. And on these waters we will set sail to places we now can only imagine. This will not be an easy land to inhabit. These are no easy concepts in which to place faith in---except for the fact that most of us are living with them already.
In this new land we will feel once again like creative participants in this mysterious world. But for now, we wait. An act of faith. Land ho.