Quantum Will: God’s Gift to the Universe
in the Bible it says that God gave the first two sentient humans to walk this Earth "free will" – the ability to decide our own fate – to decide whether we will live up to the precious thing we stole and God deigned NOT or to forsake goodness, forsake sentience and fall back towards the minds of animals we had before God breathed humanity into us for the first time. there are others, however, who say that, because God is omnicient and omnipresent, there can be no such thing as free will. how can there be, when, by that logic, God must know every action before it is taken, every thought before it is had?
i learned about the basics of Quantum Mechanics in my class on the history of phyisics last week. the knowlege was beautiful, and so simple when taken down to the smallest, basic facts:
* electrons – the tiny little points flinging themselves in concentric paths around a nucleus that we’ve seen in every highschool science lab, have been discovered instead to be misty shells around the nucleus – the electrons themselves are the concentric paths.
* when electrons get hit by energy, they JUMP, as if horribly startled rabbits, to an area (and never the same one) an electron could occupy MUCH farther away from where it was before, where it jitters at mind-bending speed with the energy that hit it. in almost the same instant (but sometimes not, which only adds to the beauty of it) it blips back to its usual place, releasing a tiny particle of light as it returns to jitter in expectation of the next jolt of energy.
*because electrons travel like this, and even the tiniest bit of energy will send them blipping off to a different place than it was in that same instant, any attempt to observe that electron will CAUSE it to be somewhere else! we can tell where it was OR where it is, but never both. and because it can never be predicted where an electron will be at any given moment, it can never be predicted exactly where two atoms will go when they crash into each other. yes, by the laws of physics, their inertia can only bounce them to a certain range of possible destinations, but the totally, completely random nature of electrons makes it impossible that any set of atoms, even if propelled toward each other from the exact same directions, will EVER end up in the same place as the set before or after them.
"well what does this have to do with God?" you ask. "wouldn’t He, in His wisdom, always know where each atom would go?"
is this the belief then that God can tell us we have our will, our freedom to choose, but then not give it to us? God set the rules of the Universe in motion – he created the framework, the pillars and beams of Creation that we call Physics. Perhaps he set them to run a certain way – the way of discovery. If a God can do all this, can He not also sheild His own eyes? When you hold a book in your hand, you have the ability to know the begining AND the end, but then what is the point of reading the story if you already know what will happen?
there is no cause for dispare, or for questioning one’s faith in a Higher Power … this Holy self-limitation is an example, not cause for denial. if we have free will, must not God also? God CHOSE to let us have our way, and to exercise His awesome sight would to put to lie the Sacred Promise. It is as a child wanting Christmas presents to be a suprise, instead of finding the parents’ hiding places. It is a member of the audience reaching a tense moment in a spell-binding performance and refraining from reading ahead in the script to make sure all has come out right.
God gave us the means to choose our own destinies. It is a terrifying, awesome power we have been invested with, the knowlege that we may choose, but that no one may chose for us!
God grants strength when He is asked, grants comfort and peace when the need is great, but leaves the responsibility of using those gifts wisely to us – which is the greatest honor of all.