Resurrection of the Dead; Last Days:
Quantum Logic, Cosmology

resurrected body, prophecy

Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead?
But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen:
And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.
Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead rise not.
For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised:
And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.— 1 Cor:13-17 (KJV)

“So the same combinations of atoms, the same space volumes corresponding to human bodies, cars, buildings and so on, will come again.   All events in spacetime will be reorganized or ‘resurrected’  but not in such a way that they will be in time…It is not that the dead will arise from their graves, as it were, but rather sets of events of any life can arise again,  together with the consciousness of those who were alive.” Andrej Grib,  ‘Quantum Cosmology: Observer Logic’ in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature–Perspectives on Divine Action¹

INTRODUCTION

This April when Easter comes we will celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Before then, we might reflect on the resurrection given to us, that Paul foretold in his letter to the Corinthians.  It is an article of faith  that we will be resurrected and that we will be judged on the Last Day.  Could there be a basis for that belief in contemporary science?   Possibly, although in the last analysis Revelation is more convincing than science.

In an article in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature, a Russian mathematician, Andrej Grib, has speculated on how resurrection might follow from quantum mechanics.   I’ll attempt to summarize some of his novel ideas about how quantum mechanics is to be interpreted, what that means in terms of cosmology, and finally, how it suggests the possibility of resurrection.

QUANTUM MECHANICS REQUIRES AN OBSERVER

Grib’s fundamental thesis (relying on early interpretations of quantum mechanics by Von Neumann and London) is that a measurement process is implicit in quantum mechanics;  thus an observer must be the final link in the measurement chain,  in order that a measurement is meaningful.

“In the end the final observer is just the  abstract ego of the observer—the one who is the subject of observation [i.e. the one who observes]…So it is this abstract ego which is responsible for the collapse of the wave function.  This is a strong form of the subjective interpretation of quantum mechanics.” Andrej Grib,  op. cit. , p 169

Accordingly, to speak of the wave function of the universe without specifying a measurement or an observer to make that measurement is “very bad philology” (to quote Grib), that is to say, contradictory to implicit assumptions on which quantum mechanics is based.²

Grib then links what appear to be puzzling features of quantum mechanics—the uncertainty principle, which says we can’t get exact simultaneous measurements on complementary variables; the wave-particle duality; the entanglement of particle shown in Bell’s Theorem experiments—to this concept:  the human mind operates by Boolean logic, the Aristotelian principle of non-contradiction: a statement is either true or false.  However, the universe (in fundamental reality) is governed by a non-Boolean logic, a quantum logic, discussed below.

QUANTUM LOGIC³

Quantum logic violates the distribution law of Boolean logic.
Consider events or logical statements A, B, C.    The Boolean distribution law says A*(B+C) = A*B + A*C, or in words,
[A and (B or C)] =  (A and B)  or (A and C)
where “and” , “or” are logical conjunctions.   (See this link for a nice illustration applied to circuit theory.)

But in quantum logic, that equality does NOT hold.    What does this means, physically?

Boolean Logic–Newtonian Physics
from Wikimedia Commons

 

Quantum Logic–Particles as Waves
From Wikimedia Commons

Consider the double slit experiment according to the first illustration above (“Boolean Logic”).   If a beam of particles passes through the two slits and behaves according to classical physics you’d expect two spots on the detecting screen, more or less opposite each slit.

Now suppose you have quantum behavior (“Quantum Logic) as shown in the second illustration above.  You have a beam of particles–photons, electrons (whatever!)–passing through the two slits.  If one takes A to mean a particle hits the screen, B that it has passed through the upper slit and C that it has passed through the lower slit, then the classical experiment would have particle passing either through the upper slit and hitting the screen more or less opposite that slit (A and B), or passing through the lower slit and hitting the screen more or less opposite that slit (A and C).   But that is NOT what happens.   Instead, you get each individual particle behaving as if it were part of a wave and “knew” about both slits.

In other words, the logical terms B and C can’t be separated into B or C, it remains B and C in quantum logic.  A particle goes through both upper and lower slits at the same time, as does a wave-front.

BOOLEAN MINDS, A NON-BOOLEAN UNIVERSE, THE BIG CRUNCH

Our minds, Grib says, operate in a Boolean logic mode.   We cannot apprehend non-Boolean logic, whence the apparent mysteries of quantum mechanics.   The perception of time itself is a consequence of this Boolean mind / non-Boolean universe dichotomy.   We must experience events separately and in succession, as past, present and future, even though the physics of relativity suggests they are conjoined, that is to say are not really separated in that non-Boolean universe.

In the short space of this post, I won’t attempt to show how this reasoning leads to quantum cosmology.  (To be frank, I don’t altogether understand it myself.)  But it is a consequence of the cosmology engendered by this quantum logic that there will be a “Big Crunch”:  instead of a continual expansion of space-time, there will be a reversal, a contraction and, as given in the introductory quote,  events and material things will come again, as in a resurrection of everything.

Grib suggests that in this case, Revelation may be a better guide to what “will” happen. (“will”—a future tense—seems out of place given his joining past, present and future together.)

The idea of the collapse of the wave-function of the universe after the Big Crunch corresponds to these lives coming into a new existence where different weights will be given to different events [emphasis added].   Some of the events could be annihilated (i.e. have zero weight), which is very close to the idea of The Last Judgment).   How can we know in this life what will, and what will not be important for the eternal life after the Big Crunch?  The only sure answer is Revelation [emphasis and upper-case added]. op. cit., p. 181

MY TAKE
I agree with Grib’s last sentence in the quote above: “The only sure answer is Revelation.”    This attitude is not an appeal to fideism, that only through faith will we know what is truly important.   Rather, it concedes that our knowledge of material things is limited, that there is a “veiled reality” concealing the fundamental nature of things.
Science changes.   What we take as established today may be tossed in the dustbin a hundred years from now.   Revelation does indeed supersede scientific theory because it is the Word of God.

 

NOTES

¹Press on the green book icon and chapter summary will appear on the right; press on that by Grib to get a summary.

²Grib also expounds on Fritz London’s ideas about consciousness as the final agent for quantum mechanical measurement:

“According to London and Bauer the main feature of consciousness is introspection:  in giving an account to myself of the state in which I am, I know that what I see now is white rather than black, and I know that I know.”  op. cit. p. 170

³For a brief account of the relevant features of quantum mechanics see
Quantum Divine Action via God, the Berkeleyan Observer…. and links and references therein.

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