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Are gods Schrodinger's cats?

This question is about half serious and half not serious (yes you can play with that pun too).

If you are unfamiliar with the Schrodinger's Cat thought experiment, please watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxqTtiWxs4

The long and short of it is that the act of an observer observating a particle is an essential part to the particle's being in existence at a certain place at a certain time. This is why the cat is both alive and dead at the same time until we make an observation of the cat.

So, I wonder, since we have not been able to make any verifiable observations of gods, are gods like Schrodinger's Cat, both existing and not existing at the same time until we are able to make an observation ultimately verifying or disproving their existence? I already realize that gods are not made up of particles, at least not in the natural particle sense, and thus this is not a water-tight comparison or analogy, nor it is meant to be.

Thought-provoking answers on this extension of a classic thought experiment are most welcome.

Update:

Paul, I appreciate your comment greatly. I am curious, however, as to why the god must be the "prime mover." What prevents a god concept from being something that arose out of something in the natural world and ascended, for the lack of a better term, to a supernatural state at a time when it was still not possible to observe the ascension? Not all gods are defined as being prime movers, or an uncaused cause.

9 Answers

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  • 1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    The difference is that there actually IS a cat to make a verifiable observation of. The cat EXISTS in the first place. A thing cannot both simultaneously exist and not exist.

    Ironic twist - Schrodinger;'s actual cat was named Jehovah.

  • Anonymous
    5 years ago

    Just wait a month. The cat will definitely be dead by then. Th problem with extending Schrodinger's Cat to god is that Schrodinger's Cat already assumes the cat once existed. The hypothetical is not: here is an empty box you know nothing about, is there anything inside of it. If it was, then I'd say, given I have no evidence that anything actually is inside the box, I think I'm justified in assuming nothing. In other words, "in the terms of physics, he both exists and doesn't exist" strikes me as circular. Surly physics doesn't treat every human conjecture like that.

  • Paul
    Lv 7
    1 decade ago

    Schrödinger's cat is a thought experiment designed to show how ludicrous the concept of some of the strange behaviour of sub atomic particles that are predicted by the EPR paper, such as quantum entanglement.

    The EPR paper predicts that sub atomic particles can exist in two or more quantum states at the same time and those multiple states collapse into one state when measured. I don't think any of those states include non existence though.

    To apply the same reasoning Schrödinger did to the EPR paper, I'm going to carry out a thought experiment based on your argument that while God is unobserved He both exists and doesn't exist at the same time.

    If God exists then He is the primary cause that caused all things in existence to come into existence or else he isn't God. Since God by your reasoning exists in a state of existing and not existing at the same time until He is observed, then the whole of creation exists in a state of existing and not existing at the same time until observed, at which point the whole cosmos must collapse into a state of existing or not existing. Well I have observed part of creation and therefore I know that all of creation exists and in so knowing the whole of creation has collapsed from a state of quantum uncertainty to a state of existing and since through creation God has been indirectly observed He too must collapse from a state of quantum uncertainty to a state of existence.

    So if you accept that God can exist then logic dictates that He must exist since we cannot deny that the cosmos exists. If God doesn't exist he can't possibly exist. I think this thought experiment disproves the hypothesis that God could be in a quantum state of existing and not existing at the same time.

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    Well, quantum uncertainty only applies on the scale of the very small. For example, our uncertainty about the position of an elephant with a mass of several tonnes travelling at a few miles per hour is very very small indeed, however for an electron, we can't be certain of it's velocity to any better than within about a thousand miles an hour.

    This is because σx.σp ≤ ħ/2

    where ħ = h/2π, and σx, σp are the standard deviations of position and momentum.

    Now god is supposed to be really, really, REALLY big, so we could probably nail down his velocity with some reasonable degree of precision.

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  • ?
    Lv 6
    1 decade ago

    We know that the cat was alive when we put it in the box. So there is a chance that the cat is alive. We have NEVER had any sort of evidence that god is real

  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago

    No, because the correspondence principle forces a quantum system to behave like a Newtonian system as the quantum number becomes large, and gods are much too large to be quantum systems.

  • Saint
    Lv 5
    1 decade ago

    If we wait long enough, is God also dead regardless?

  • ?
    Lv 4
    1 decade ago

    Yeah sounds right.

  • 1 decade ago

    yes

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