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Chapter 6 - Does God cheat at dice?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2009

Nicholas Saunders
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

Soon after the initial development of quantum mechanics Albert Einstein made the famous statement that he could not conceive of a God that ‘plays dice’. The theologians we considered in the previous chapter seize upon this claimed indeterminacy and have linked it to a theology of special divine action. As we have seen, however, there has been little technical discussion of the possibilities for SDA in quantum theory. It is the aim of this chapter to evaluate this work from a scientific perspective and consider the extent to which God can be said to ‘cheat’ at playing dice. The approach adopted in this chapter is again to consider the claim for quantum SDA in its most basic form – namely the possibility of God determining all or only some quantum events. We shall leave to one side the many different theological motivations for this claim, and consider in detail whether it is a proposal that appears consonant with our current understanding of quantum mechanics. The most constructive approach to assessing the claims considered in the previous chapter is to push the claim that quantum SDA objectively exists as far as possible and examine more closely which theoretical features of quantum mechanics may be taken in support of a notion of non-interventionist SDA. As we saw in chapters 3 and 4, this will necessarily involve a detailed discussion of the understanding of indeterminism in quantum theory and, as we shall see, shall raise the possibility of both compatibilist and incompatibilist interpretations of SDA.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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