Quantum Kabbalah
and the Instant Universe:
"And God Said, 'Let there have been a Big Bang' ” [1]
Avi Rabinowitz
Preface: This article looks at some of the essential content of the creation and Eden accounts from within the Biblical perspective, discussing two types of consistency. One is an internal type of consistency, namely the consistency of these Biblical accounts with various issues related to religion and metaphysics, specifically, with the problem of evil, existential angst and the unfairness of the burden of moral responsibility. Another is the consistency - still from within the Biblical perspective - of the Biblical and scientific creation accounts.
Part I: Introduction
The position taken here is that to a large degree both the scientific and Biblical origin accounts follow logically from their fundamental assumptions and that given the difference between their assumptions about the nature of things, it is only to be expected that they arrive at different conclusions regarding the origin of the universe.
Science is a programmatic attempt to find naturalistic explanations based on cause and effect for all objectively observable phenomena. Science - as opposed to atheism - does not claim there is no God, nor does it assume there is no God directing events, it is merely an attempt to arrive at non-supernatural explanations – 'laws' - for everything, and to find mathematical formulations of these explanations. Specifically, regarding the origin of the universe: even from the scientific perspective the question of whether or not there is a God who designed the laws of nature and created the universe is one for people to address individually - the issue has nothing to do with science. Science simply presents an origin theory based on its attempt to find naturalistic explanations for the existence and development of the universe and of humanity. Obviously if one seeks naturalistic explanations one will not suddenly find God popping up in the equations. The fact that one can arrive at convincing scientific theories is very impressive, but it does not prove that there is no God, nor does science claim that it does, it only proves that the scientific endeavor has succeeded in its task of finding convincing naturalistic explanations for many phenomena. Science does not claim or assume there is or is no God, it only seeks to find explanations which do not require invoking God.
In contrast, religion assumes the existence of a God, and seeks explanations which derive from this assumption. In particular, the Bible sets out a picture of a universe designed and created by an all-powerful being, created for a purpose, and where that purpose includes the existence of humanity, and humanity's moral activity. The Bible (at least in the Jewish Traditional understanding of it) does not claim there are no other types of explanations for things, and does not assume or teach that scientific inquiries will lead no where, it simply tells of a special creation of the universe and of humanity, and tells of various revelations and miracles which occur outside the realm of ordinary cause and effect.
The great majority of philosophers and scientists would likely agree that neither atheism nor religion can be proved and therefore that one can conclude that the fundamental assumptions each makes are equally 'valid'. Our point of view is therefore that, regarding the origin accounts of science and the Bible, as the assumptions of one system are not provable within the realm of the other, and the programs of each are totally different, the validity of one of these accounts should not be considered as negating the validity of the other; they can both be valid, in the sense that both follow logically from fundamental assumptions which are themselves equally unimpeachable.
Whether or not the scientific origin theory is considered true by a religious person, it can be appreciated as a theory which logically follows from its axioms, and so too we wish to indicate why even to someone who does not believe in the Bible the picture of creation it offers can be appreciated as one which (at least to some degree) follows 'logically' from its assumptions.
That the scientific origin theory indeed follows from its assumptions and method can be readily seen by those who study it. Here we will attempt to see how central elements of the traditional understanding of the origins of existence can be seen to follow from its fundamental assumptions, namely the Biblical conception of the purposive creation of a universe containing a free-willed moral consciousness.
In addition, from our understanding of the Traditional Jewish perspective not only is there no logical dissonance in accepting the validity of both approaches, but the scientific origin theory could be considered as one of the ways of describing God’s creation of the universe and therefore as one of the traditional "70 facets" of the Creation account.
Everything in a system follows from its axioms: Einstein, who used the term 'God' somewhat differently than Biblical religion would, wrote: “I want to know how God created the universe. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon…I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details.”[1] This is not to mean that Einstein believed in a conscious being – God – who created the universe as an act of will, as laid out in Genesis. What it does mean is that Einstein believed that given the fundamentals about the universe one could deduce the details, and it is these fundamentals which are the essential. Below we apply this concept also to the religious view of creation.
Specifically, we wish to show that to some degree the details of creation as recounted in Genesis follow from the underlying principles about the universe related there. Tradition - comprising not only the Genesis creation account but also its interpretation in the Talmud, the Kabbalah, and other sources - teaches us about the method and procedure of the creation of the universe, as well as about God’s program or purpose for creation. Combining various traditional sources we can suggest the following as "the Torah’s creation axiom": In a free-willed act an all-powerful being designed and created a natural universe containing entities morally responsible for their choices.
What follows if one accepts this ‘axiom’? Can we intuit[2] a model for the design and creation of the universe? How would this model relate to the traditional account of creation and to the origin theories of science? To paraphrase Einstein, if we know why God created the universe, God's fundamental thoughts, does the rest, the details, follow from them?
Part II: The Biblical Creation Account and
Metaphysical/Religious Concerns
The Common Ground of Science and Genesis: Charles Darwin wrote: “Another source of conviction in the existence of God….follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man …as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man…. [3]
Humans exist now, but scientific research indicates they, and life in general, did not always exist on this planet. The scientific quest for human origins therefore seeks a model which allows for life arising where there previously had been none, basically to account for the emergence of humans from the inorganic (“the dust of the earth”) solely via the laws of nature. The theory of the big bang[4] coupled with that of evolution provides a scientifically satisfying hypothetical model for this.[5] Science does not deal with that which cannot be objectively and universally observed by scientists, and so does not deal with the soul. Consequently, the inability of the present-day scientific theories to account for the soul is not necessarily scientifically relevant.[6] Analogously, since science does not concern itself with whether or not the origin of existence and of the laws of nature lies in a creator or not, the thesis of Divine Creation does not compete with it.[7]
From both the scientific and biblical points of view, Genesis can in the above context be read as describing God’s infusion of a soul—and perhaps a mind as well—into a humanoid emerging from “the dust of the earth,” as detailed by evolutionary theory, in a universe which developed from a big bang created by God.
What is the Intent of the Creation Accounts in Genesis?
To some people the essence of the creation accounts is the 7 days of creation, or the order in which specific entities were created, or the amount of time that seemingly lapsed between the creation of the universe and the emergence of humanity (5 days) or the fact that Adam ate forbidden fruit from a tree in Eden which gave him the ability to distinguish good from evil. To this writer in contrast, the essence is a totally different set of teachings: the fundamental teachings being that the universe originated in a purposive creation by an all-powerful Being; that the universe is the product of very careful design, with 'quality control' at every step; the idea of humanity as a culmination of the creation process; and the concept of the emergence of free-willed choice and moral responsibility in a universe which up until that point lacked beings capable of comprehending the difference between good and evil and acting freely to choose one over the other. In addition, there is the theme of existential loneliness, the relationship of men and women, of humans and God and other aspects fundamental to our existence such as the burden of moral responsibility. On the other hand much of the details are allegories, pointing to deep and hidden mysteries but not meant literally – including the idea of the 7 days and the alleged implied age of the universe (it is not specified ever) and the idea of a Tree of Knowledge and a talking snake and so on.
We wish to show in what way some of these essential aspects of the creation accounts make sense within their context, and how they follow from the fundamental assumptions inherent in the accounts. To a large degree the key concept will be free will.
Free Will: In order for the created entities to be morally responsible for their actions they must possess a certain order of intelligence, an intrinsically free-willed consciousness, and a moral sense. Charles Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man:[8] "I fully subscribe to the judgment of those writers who maintain that of all the differences between men and the lower animals, the moral sense or conscience is the most important."
Free-willed consciousness and the
moral sense distinguish humanity from the animals. However,
according to the scientific view, mind is no less subject to natural law than
is for example a software program, and therefore all our thoughts and emotion,
beliefs and decisions derive from deterministic or random processes. Only a
free will which is somehow above the ordinary laws of nature can make human
free-willed decisions significant from the perspective of the creator: from the
perspective of Genesis, in this sense humans were
created 'in the image of God'.[9]
Free Will and Kabbalah: The traditional understanding of the metaphysical/spiritual aspects of the creation process may be seen (ex post facto) as following from the traditional conception of its purpose, i.e., the creation of free-willed moral beings. In order to make the free-willed actions of these ‘moral beings’ truly independent of the will of their designer-and-creator, we intuit a sacrifice of the sovereignty of the Creator’s Will, a withdrawal and narrowing of its exclusivity.
This parallels God’s tsimtsum (contraction) before Creation, as described by the Kabbalah.
We can intuit[2] that in order for the Creator to bring an additional independent consciousness into existence, the pre-existent unity had to be shattered. This parallels the traditional mystical concept of shvirat ha’kelim, the breaking of the vessels.
Free Will & Morality, Fairness & the Burden of Existence: So that it will be morally responsible for its actions, the created being is given a share of the Creator’s free will - the attribute that underlies Creation itself.[10] In biblical terms, humans were created “in the image of God”[11] with some infusion of the Divine during the Creation process: “And God breathed into man the spirit of life”[12].
As it is not fair to create an entity burdened by existence, and plagued by suffering, it makes sense to create the being in an idyllic environment (the Garden of Eden) to gain its retroactive acquiescence to having been created. It is similarly unfair to impose the obligation of moral responsibility on a being that did not choose it. The being could reject its moral responsibility by claiming that it had not chosen to be faced with moral dilemmas.
A situation can therefore be arranged whereby the being itself chooses whether or not to bear the burden of moral responsibility. The Creator forbids the assumption of this burden, so that the responsibility of the choice becomes that of the chooser alone.[13]
With the assumption of moral responsibility and the acquisition of free-willed consciousness, purposive history can begin.
Part III: The Scientific and Biblical Origin Accounts
In the above, we were concerned more with the internal consistency of the creation accounts – relating their essential content to the religious and spiritual issues which arise in the context of a created universe. In the below we will address some issues related to the different pictures of the universe presented in the scientific and Biblical creation accounts. We'll assume the essentials of both, namely that the universe emerged from a big bang as described by science, but that it was designed and created by God.
Designing the Big Bang: God’s Choice: Which parameters of the universe were chosen to allow for the fulfillment of the Divine purpose in Creation? Is ours the only type of universe and laws of nature that could exist?
Albert Einstein, though he didn’t really believe in a Creator, wrote: “What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world” —.[14]
According to scientific origin theory, our universe emerged from a big bang, but it could not be just any big bang, since only a very specific type of big bang would lead to our universe, for example one with human beings. This is what Einstein meant, since the universe is of a very specific type, could it have been produced by only one very specific set of natural laws and initial conditions at the big bang, or could several different sets of laws and conditions produced it.
Similarly, from the Biblical perspective, since a central purpose of the created being is its exercise of free-willed moral choice, the universe would have to be designed to contain morally meaningful situations and dilemmas. If God created the universe via a big bang, the design for the big bang would have to be carefully worked out in advance [15] and must be based on the opportunities of moral choice that the Creator desires the being to eventually face.[16][2]
Creating the blueprint of the universe: We can match aspects of the traditional conception of the universe’s purpose to resulting elements of the physical creation procedure.
If, as stated above, it is the eventual human moral challenges that prescribe the universal blueprint, and if it is the Torah that prescribes these moral challenges, then it is the Torah that sets the parameters for the design of the universe and humanity. As the Midrash says, “God looked into the Torah and created the universe.”[17]
Only after assembling a complete picture of a moral being and an appropriate universe could there begin the design of the big bang and laws of nature leading to their emergence.
According to this scenario, the process of Creation began not with the big bang but rather with the prior idea to create a being with moral responsibility, and a mental conception of this moral being and of the universe it would inhabit. Prior to physical creation it would be necessary to mentally assemble the desired main ingredients of the universe until everything necessary to produce a moral being has been obtained. The blueprint of the universe is created one stage at a time. A new stage is initiated after the previous stage is seen to fit into the whole—“God saw … that it was good”[18]—until the end product is reached. A being is created in the Divine image and is integrated into the rest of the Creation—“God saw … that all … was very good.”[19]
A description of this creation could then consist of an account of the creation either of the universe itself or of the blueprint of the universe, which is completed with the design of humanity.[20] Given the entire functioning integrated blueprint of a universe containing moral beings, a big bang could then be designed and programmed to teleologically produce them.[21]
The First Moment, from the Teleological Perspective: With the design of the big bang ready, its creation can be initiated. Until the emergence of a free-willed intelligent being from this teleological designed big bang, however, everything that occurs is preprogrammed, an acting out of the mechanistic laws of nature. To a designer of the universe and its laws this would be as interesting as a watchmaker watching the hands of a clock for a few billion years, albeit with some quantum randomness thrown in ; perhaps more interesting than watching a clock - it's as interesting as watching the wash cycle of a washing machine with a cycle incorporating some random jumps and jerks, for billions of years. The activity which would be (in an admittedly anthropomorphic view) truly “interesting” even to God, the events which are neither determined nor random, begins only with the onset of moral choice. Only then the purpose of the universe can begin to unfold.[22] In the teleological sense, Creation is completed not with the emergence of the big bang but rather fifteen billion years later when the first intelligent moral being emerges and decides to accept the burden of moral responsibility for its actions.
The Instant Retroactive Universe: Assuming that as related in the Bible the universe is created by a being for a purpose. Would the creation of a big bang be the most reasonable method of creation of such a purposive universe? Creation of a big bang involves a delay of billions of years until the free-willed being evolves and the desired moral activity begins. It would seem that the more reasonable [2] procedure would be the creation of the universe at the stage of the emergence of a free-willed human being. This would juxtapose the creation of the universe with the choice of the burden of the knowledge of good and evil.
This could be accomplished, for example, by a Divine mental extrapolation of the big bang conditions (mental “fast-forwarding”) up to the moral stage of the universe, followed by actual creation at that point. In this sense the reasonable creation method is the creation of an “instant universe” at the moral stage. Thus, paradoxically, the physical creation of the big-bang-emergent universe actually occurs not at the big bang but with the emergence of the first moral being.[23]
This radical idea that the universe begins its physical existence only with the emergence of a moral being interestingly finds support and parallel in a suggestion of quantum metaphysics that at any given instant a physical event can emerge from a quantum non-fully-real state into true physical reality only upon the observation of a conscious being. By extension the entire universe, composed as it is of individual events, can also only emerge from a quantum non-fully-real state into true physical reality only upon the observation emergence within it of a conscious being. Indeed, as eminent physicist John A. Wheeler states, the emergence of a conscious being retroactively causes the emergence into reality of the big bang itself![24] [LINK TO: Further detail about this topic]
According to our thesis, it is only a free-willed moral consciousness rather than consciousness alone which can accomplish all this, and thus by application of Wheeler's idea, we could say that the emergence of a conscious being retroactively causes the emergence into reality of the big bang itself [LINK TO: Further detail about this topic]. Thus in Genesis, the universe is designed as detailed in the '6 days of creation' account, and emerges into existence with the emergence of the first free-willed activity, detailed in the Garden of Eden account.
What Is the First Stage of Creation: the Big Bang or the Emergence of Adam?: As stated previously, for a purposive universe created as an “instant universe” the first stage of real existence is when purposive activity begins, so that the initial point is not the big bang but rather the emergence of free-willed consciousness capable of moral choice. There is another reason why a purposive universe of this sort would be considered as beginning at the moral stage rather than at the big bang. Since there are many quantum paths along which the universe could develop, including many paths not leading to the emergence of life or to moral beings, in order to have the universe fulfill its design it is necessary to guide the development of the big bang along a path leading to the emergence of the desired free-willed being. In this case the emergence of a moral being is the last stage of direct Divine intervention in developing the universe and hence the last stage of Creation and the first stage of the ‘natural’ existence of the universe. Thus, even in a universe physically starting with a big bang, it is the emergence of the moral being rather than the big bang that is the first stage of independent existence.
From the point of view of the Creator, and in the context of a teleological oriented creation account, the emergence of a moral being crowns creation. Thus, from the points of view of quantum randomness, quantum metaphysics, and teleology, the emergence of a conscious being—not the emergence of the big bang—is the first stage of the universe.
The age of the universe may be considered from various perspectives:
The non-physical teleological perspective: The universe originates with God’s decision to create or to plan its blueprint, when time did not exist, and so the age of the universe is not defined.
The physical teleological perspective: The universe begins with the emergence of a newly created instant universe containing a moral being; evolutionary anthropology places the emergence of such a being probably not more than 100,000 years ago, and this is therefore also the maximal physical age of the universe.
The quantum metaphysical perspective: The universe emerges at the moral stage, but retroactively from the big bang, so that at the moral stage the universe has no clearly defined age.
The conventional scientific perspective: The universe begins with the big bang. At the stage of containing moral beings it is approximately fifteen billion years old.
In describing the creation of a complete universe at the moral stage, a creation account written from the teleological or quantum metaphysical perspective might imply simultaneity of the emergence of human free-willed consciousness with the completion of the creation of the universe or of its blueprint. This provides a motivation for the juxtaposition of the creation and Eden accounts in Genesis [25].
The Instant Evolutionary Universe: Neither Wasteful nor
Cruel: Evolutionary advance is achieved by competition for survival,
selection of the fittest via predatory and environmental extinction, fatal
biological defects, and so on. The evolutionary path is littered with corpses
and suffused with suffering. The emergence of humanity is achieved at the very
heavy price of the sufferings of untold numbers of creatures losing their
struggle to survive to those more fit than they. Billions of “unsuccessful”
mutations, many of them horribly deformed animals unable to survive; billions
and billions and billions of small organisms, insects, animals, and even
primitive humanoids devoured by predators, killed by natural disasters or birth
defects strew the evolutionary path. It is not comfortable to contemplate the
total genocide of our ancestors’ competitors, the Neanderthalers.
The path of “nature red in tooth and claw” (in the words of Alfred, Lord
Tennyson) leading to the emergence of humans strongly disturbed
In the instant universe scenario, however, these two objectionable features of evolution—that it is too clumsy and evil—disappear, at least in the period leading up to the emergence of humanity. Evolution in the context of an instant universe is not a violence-drenched process. The entire process leading up to the emergence of moral man takes place only in potentiality, in the ‘mind’ of God, as the working out of a process implied by the laws of nature and the initial conditions. Actual reality begins only with the emergence of moral man.
The evolutionary process according to this scenario is certainly not a clumsy method of producing human beings. Instead, the pre-moral stage ‘evolutionary process’ is merely the logically-consistent theory which underlies the emergence of man in a ‘natural’ physical universe. In actuality, however, the emergence of humans took place in a most elegant, clever, and direct manner—as the initial stage of an instant universe.
Laws of Nature: “And God Rested”: Why create a big bang universe, with its billions of galaxies and myriad plant and animal species? Why not create moral beings in a small universe centered on them?
Many people have speculated on the seeming hiddeness of God. Explanations include the necessity to protect the freedom of, and give meaning to, moral choice. Why bother creating a small human-centered universe for the purpose of moral confrontation if free will is compromised by the obviousness of God’s presence? There are also aesthetic reasons for the creation of a complete big-bang emergent ‘natural’ universe rather than a small ‘special’ universe. Constant intervention can be reduced by designing ‘laws of nature’ to allow the universe to be self-operating.[26] For self-operation and regularity there must be consistency and coordination within the entire universe. For this to be the case, there has to be a unifying factor. An elegant method of finding this common denominator is to find an entity which, unified in itself, could give rise to the desired universe. The big bang together with the laws of nature is such an entity.
MESH:
In addition, when the evolutionary process is seen as the “computational device,” which it is in the instant universe scenario, it can be seen in all its elegance. Evolution by random mutation in this sense is a self-improving program. It is a very simple yet efficient algorithm, used to run the ‘computer simulation’ leading up to the evolution of ever more complex creatures.
Similarly, the big bang theory is a beautifully simple algorithm for generating the blueprint of an extremely complex universe. Given the design of the intended moral being, the big bang generates a complex universe of billions of galaxies containing billions of stars, with billions of life forms containing billions of cells. All that is created is a singularity or big bang, operating according to one unified universal law in a four-(or perhaps higher) dimensional space-time, and the rest takes care of itself. By ‘mentally extrapolating’ this ‘algorithm,’ God obtains very simply a complete description of a totally self-consistent complex universe and uses this description to create an actual universe at the moral stage without any “red in tooth and claw” physical evolution.
When this big bang evolves or is extrapolated forward to produce
later stages of the universe, all these eventual states are inherently regular
and synchronized since all is derived from one entity. Everything within the
resulting universe operates according to the laws of nature, and the desired
moral stage of the universe eventually emerges, this time as a unified
self-consistently-operating state of a ‘natural’ universe. It is a universe
where humanity seems to arise as the result of natural selection, but where the
evolution and selection is part of the Divine plan. As stated in the closing
paragraph of
Thus from the war of Nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Conclusion: As we have seen, in some sense our axiom suggested at the outset intuitively implies the central features of the traditional model of Creation. In this model Creation proceeds as described by tradition, and its physical development occurs as outlined by science.
From the teleological perspective, the first stage in Creation is to draw up the blueprint of both the desired type of moral being and the desired type of universe at the stage of the emergence of moral beings. Then comes a backwards extrapolation of the moral stage universe blueprint to find the right type of big bang to lead up to this stage.
After the design of the big bang from the specifications of the moral being and a universe that can support moral choice, the resultant ‘teleo-derived big bang’ is mentally extrapolated to the future along all quantumly-possible paths of future development. Each possible path ends either in the emergence of a moral being, whose exercise of free will introduces non-predictability and therefore stops the extrapolation—or results in the end of the universe without the emergence of a moral being.
After extrapolation to the moral stage, the universe is ‘created in potential.’ In the quantum metaphysical sense this might be through a collapse of the wave function caused by the Creator’s consciousness observing the universe. “God saw it was all very good.” From the human perspective, the universe is brought into physical (human) reality by the created moral being’s exercise of free-willed consciousness and its existential awareness of the external universe, and of itself, as separate entities.
From among all the possible (potential) moral universes at the pre-moral stage, one is selected—the best one for fulfilling the purpose of Creation. “God saw all that He had created, and it was very good.”
In the instant retroactive universe everything proceeds in the most direct, logical, and aesthetic way. The Creator can withhold direct intervention after the ‘laws of nature’ take over upon the emergence of a moral being. “And [all] the Heavens and the Earth were complete….and God…rested”[28]
Consequently, a natural-law-obeying fifteen-billion-year-old instant universe emerges into physical reality unfolded from a moral-stage-teleoderived big bang. To paraphrase Genesis: And God said, “Let there have been a big bang.” And it was so.
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For Further Reading: The above paper is a much-condensed excerpt from the author’s book The Instant Universe,*[see related material on website] written while the author was in graduate school in the mid-80s, and which circulated widely in manuscript form since that time.
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More Detail regarding
Quantum Physics, Measurement, Consciousness and Free Will
For the interested reader
Probabilistic Determinism
Prior to the advent of quantum physics, scientists and philosophers believed that every event in the universe occurred as an inevitable and necessary result of previous events.
Quantum physics, introduced at the beginning of the twentieth century, brought with it a drastic change in this viewpoint. Each event was now understood to be able to occur in a number of ways, with the actual way that it does occur left to “chance.” Despite the fact that chance “ruled” each individual event, however, when numerous similar events occurred, the pattern that emerged resembled the results one would have expected using pre-quantum physics. One could say that "determinism" was replaced by "probabilistically determined randomness" (we'll abbreviate this as: PDR).
Reality and measurement
The mathematical description of a quantum system has it being in all possible states simultaneously—a “superposition of states.” However, of course when we look about us we always see unique states
There is somehow a significant difference between the supposed mathematical description of what we see and what we actually see.
Whether the event we are seeing is via our visual system directly, or is what we see when we look at a machine measuring the state of some event, we will call this 'measurement'. Either way, what we see (a specific state) is very different from what the mathematics tells us (a superposition of many states).
Prior to measurement one truly cannot attribute a unique “physically real” state to a system (for example a particle) even in theory—it is in a superposition state..
Thus, if we take very seriously the correspondence of the mathematical description of the physical state and the physical state itself, since the mathematical description changes abruptly from before the measurement to after, we conclude that there is a vast difference between the physical system prior to measurement—it is in a superposition of all possible states—and after measurement, when it is in a unique state.
The equations in physics map mathematically the events in the physical world, and the math in quantum physics is very capable of handling this mapping all the time until the system is measured and all the time after the measurement, the mapping gives rise to correct predictions, but there is no apparent physical reason to insert something into the math which would transform one set of equations (the pre-measurement ones) into the other (the post-measurement ones), except the act of measurement itself, and so one is forced to conclude that for some reason the act of measurement itself causes this drastic change. Since the pre-measurement superposition is described by a mathematical wave function of probabilities of values and the post-measurement description is not a wave function, nor any collection of values but a specific value, this transformation is sometimes called “the collapse of the wave function", in some sense it 'collapses' from probabilities into unique reality.
The probability aspect is not a matter of ignorance, but is ontological. Prior to its measurement, an event can occur in a number of ways and actually does so in some sense. Without measuring the state of a particle, we cannot say, “It is in some particular state, which is, however, as yet unknown to us.” It is not in some particular state. Instead, it is (in some sense) simultaneously in all the possible states in which it can be. Our observations about us are measurements, and we therefore always see unique states, not superpositions. However after measurement is made, and the particle is found to be in a particular state, experiments have indicated (that given certain reasonable-seeming assumptions about the universe) that it is physically untrue that the particle was in that state all the time - it had no definite state until one measured it.
[According to the philosophy of quantum physics, actual physical reality can exist (in the scientific meaning of the term existence) only as a result of measurement. When not being measured, any system –an atom or a rock or the universe as a whole - is in a quasi-real state amenable to description only in terms of probabilities and not unequivocal facts.]
This surprising - even bewildering - idea that events can emerge into reality only as a result of its measurement is in a way trite and in a way radical. It is trite in the sense that for a at least two centuries philosophers such as Berkeley and the positivists have explored the idea that reality is only set by our consciousness of it, because we can perceive things through the senses. It is radical, however, in that this result has now been achieved by physics. Therefore, what is true in the realm of words and ideas has been shown by physics to be true of physical reality as well: the actual thing itself is not set until it is measured.
Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment has shown that measurement can even in some sense retroactively affect an outcome.
The Role of Consciousness
What is the active factor in a measurement which causes this emergence into reality?
Some eminent physicists have proposed that it is only measurement performed by a conscious being which can transform the quasi-real state into a fully physical real state. The great mathematician and theoretical physicist John Von Neumann, who provided a rigorous mathematical foundation for quantum mechanics, believed that only a human consciousness can collapse the wave function. The eminent Nobel prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner writes: It follows that the quantum description of objects is influenced by impressions entering my consciousness….It follows that the being with a consciousness must have a different role in quantum mechanics than the inanimate measuring device.
The Universe as a Whole.
The state of the universe at any one instant was believed to be totally determined by the states of the universe in the past, and in turn the present state totally determined what all future states of the universe would be. However, the universe as a whole is also a system of physical entities, and therefore quantum physics teaches that its state is also a superposition until measured. Our measurement forces the universe to assume one definite state from among all the possibility-states it is in prior to the measurement.
The universe, or any subsystem of it, is capable of being in two (or more) mutually contradictory states simultaneously. Saying that the universe is uniquely in one state is just as invalid as saying that it is in the other state. A measurement forces the universe into an unambiguous state. After that, only one becomes correct. However, this does not imply that it was always the correct one; there was no “correct” state until the measurement was made.
The Role of conscious observers in the universe's
emergence into existence
One can apply the conclusions about events in the universe to the entirety of the universe as a whole. The famous physicist John Wheeler once speculated that the entire universe can emerge into true physical existence only via the observation of a consciousness. He wrote:
[Perhaps] no universe at all could come into being unless it were guaranteed to produce life, consciousness and observership somewhere and for some little length of time in its history-to-be?…
..the observer is as essential to the creation of the universe as the universe is to the creation of the observer….
…the universe would be nothing without observership, as surely as a motor would be dead without electricity….
…is observership the “electricity” that powers genesis?…
“….observership” allows and enforces a transcendence of the usual order in time….
Thus, according to this “quantum metaphysics,” a consciousness is indispensable to the universe if it is to emerge into reality. Physical reality can be said to exist only as a result of our presence within it or, more precisely, as a result of our perception of it.
Wheeler has constructed a fascinating diagram to illustrate this concept (see Figure 7-1). Explaining the diagram, he writes: “Beginning with the big bang, the universe expands and cools. After eons of dynamic development it gives rise to observership. Acts of observer-participancy in turn give tangible reality to the universe not only now but back to the beginning.”
Free-willed-consciousness and the Collapse: We propose that it is free will which underlies this property of consciousness, and so only a truly free-willed consciousness rather than just a generic consciousness could 'collapse the universal quantum wave function'.
A free-willed decision, in order to be truly free, has to be unconstrained by the laws of nature and not determined by any physical phenomena. Hence free will must be neither the result of deterministic processes, nor the result of random processes occurring in accordance with the natural order of phenomena. Hence if the universe contains a free will, this free will must operate via interactions which transcend both the determinism of classical physics and the randomness of quantum physics. Free will is then unique in this respect.
[If some entity exists which can collapse the quantum wave function, then this author proposes that it is reasonable to postulate that this entity has to be a free will, since, as we just discussed, only free will transcends quantum randomness, as it transcends nature in general.]
Since a consciousness can affect physicality only if it has a free will, and a free will is by definition unthinkable without a consciousness, we will assume in the course of further discussion that free will subsumes within itself the concept of consciousness.
The role of free willed conscious observers in the universe's emergence into existence
According to our speculation, the consciousness which 'collapses the quantum wave function' possibly must operate in a non-quantum fashion, or a quantum-transcendent manner, in order to do so. If there is such non-quantum factor in the universe, the best candidate is true free will. Thus, combining Wheeler's speculations about consciousness collapsing the universal wave function with our own speculation that free will is the active ingredient, and, we postulate that it is the presence of a free-willed, conscious being which enables the universe to emerge into reality.
The Spiritual and the Physical: From the Biblical perspective, the true reality is the spiritual one. The physical is in existence only to serve the spiritual. The entire physical universe is an artifact created by God. Humans are precisely crafted instruments designed to interact with the physical universe in ways which have the potential to achieve spiritual goals unattainable without the vehicle of the physical. Thus, the physical is of central importance, but only as a means: It can have sublime beauty and dignity, but only by virtue of its ability to achieve in the spiritual realm. Thus the human body, rather than being a hindrance to spirituality, is a potentially holy physical tool which can control the spiritual.
Indeed, every action/thought/word affects the spiritual cosmos, and the Jewish way of life as prescribed by the Torah is designed to resonate with the spiritual and to correctly utilize the physical order to elicit the fusion of ultimate spirituality with the physical. God is the Creator of the universe and of Humanity and designed the universe, humans and the way to complete each other, to complement one another, in a self-consistent optimum system. God communicated the method to humankind in the form of the Torah (Written and Oral), and then in capacity as Designer and Creator of this system, promised us that we are superbly qualified to successfully perform our role and attain our goal. More than this, we are told that since we are designed to be the best instrument to achieve this goal within the context of a physical universe, when we perform at optimum, we are a crucial element in the scheme of things and particularly-well suited to physical/spiritual interaction.
Since it is Humanity’s consciousness and free will which invest their choices with the possibility of meaning, it is therefore only free-willed consciousness which has the possibility of conducting reality-determining observation and measurement.
APPENDIX: Spiritual and Physical Reality.
According to Jewish thought, the true reality is the spiritual realm, the physical cosmos being God’s precision-crafted instrument for achieving spiritual goals. Indeed, the physical universe is a shadow of the spiritual world, the illusion perceived by limited beings in contact with the spiritual cosmos, but directly sensing and perceiving only its shadow. Human free-willed moral choice connects the two realms, and this moral activity gives meaning to the existence of the universe.
Thus, since the true reality of the universe is the spiritually meaningful aspect, it should not be surprising that the emergence of the universe into reality is so intimately bound up with the emergence of those beings who endow physicality of meaning. Furthermore, once this connection is understood, it is most appropriate that the very characteristics of humans which allow the emergence of the universe into reality (i.e., his free-willed consciousness) are the very same characteristics which endow it with meaning. We can thus see the fundamental interrelationship between meaning, purpose, free will, consciousness, and the very nature of reality (and how this is reflected in Creation).
Summary: We have seen that according to quantum (meta)physics, reality is established via the observation of a
(free-willed) consciousness. In addition, we have shown that according to
Jewish thought, free-willed choice gives the universe meaning and is thus the
“motivation” for the very existence of the universe.
Nature by itself is powerless to achieve self-realization; humanity is required to bring both self and the universe into reality. Humans, alive and physical and yet spiritual as well, albeit limited and fallible—or perhaps because limited and fallible— are uniquely qualified, by virtue of possessing a free-willed consciousness, to determine the nature of physical and spiritual reality.
Complementary but not Contradictory Perspectives on Human Emergence.
As we have seen, quantum physics connects ontology (being) with epistemology (knowing), and quantum metaphysics postulates that the universe can emerge into true physical existence only when there are (free-willed) conscious beings in it. According to this scenario, Humanity is not a random product of the universe but is rather a necessary condition for the very existence of the universe. In addition, since the universe can emerge into true physical existence only when free-willed consciousness is present within it, there is no true physical reality to any time prior to its emergence. In the Torah, this first such free-willed conscious being (at least on Earth) is referred to as 'Adam', meaning 'human'.
Of course, other perspectives exist regarding the emergence of Humanity. However, these by definition relate to a time prior to the emergence of free-willed conscious individuals. According to the approach of quantum metaphysics explored here, this emergence takes place in a less-than-fully real superposition –of-quantum states-universe. And this perspective is not a contradiction to the Biblical one, it is complementary.
Given the differing fundamental assumptions underlying the two perspectives it is only to be expected that there will be differences between the descriptions each arrives at regarding the emergence of the first free-willed conscious being.
It is also inevitable that there will be stylistic differences in the type of description of the emergence of the universe which humans attribute to themselves and their own rational inquiry – for example the scientific origin theory - and an account of this emergence which they attribute to a prophetic revelation. In any case, whether or not creation and the emergence of human (or other)free willed moral choosing were indeed juxtaposed chronologically, there is some thematic justification for a creation account presented from the divine perspective of purposeful creation to describe creation in this way.
Complementarity vs Contradiction: The perspectives of science and biblical religion are very different, and lead to different conclusions regarding the emergence of the universe and of humanity. However, besides the parallels between then drawn as indicated above, quantum physics on its own indicates as well how two perspectives and their respective conclusion are not necessarily contradictory even though they differ greatly.
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Related works from the author available on this website:
1) A Garden of
2) The Retroactive Universe, which investigates the emergence of free-willed consciousness from the biblical and scientific perspectives, and explores the philosophical and cosmological implications of the existence of true moral responsibility.
3) *soon-to-be-available: Einstein’s Blunder and the God Who Plays Dice, the author explores the moral philosophy of Albert Einstein, and the connection between moral responsibility and free will.
4) Miday Abir,* in English and Hebrew: a collection of the author's comments on biblical passages and narratives. The sections on Genesis contain material relevant to the subject of this article.
5) *soon-to-be-available: Excerpts from Warped Spacetime, Wormholes and the Big Bang. A textbook, essentially an introduction to general relativity and cosmology, which uniquely presents heuristic derivations and solutions of the Einstein equations at a level accessible to those who have taken the standard calculus-based college physics course. Applications are given to cosmology, which allow for a deeper appreciation of the big bang theory discussed in the article above.
Publishing history of this article: The original version of this paper was submitted to B’Or Ha’Torah in 1986, and the manuscript is referred to in several of Dr. Rabinowitz’s publications from that period: “Geocentrism” in B’Or Ha’Torah 6E (1987); “The Role of the Observer in Halakhah and Quantum Physics” in B’Or Ha’Torah 6H (1988), which is the Hebrew version of the English paper that appeared in Science in the Light of the Torah H. Branover and I. Attia, eds. (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1994).
The essential ideas underlying this book were presented by the author in various forums over the years; in lectures, at conferences, in correspondence, and private conversations; starting in the mid to late 1980’s several versions of the manuscripts were read by scholars as reviewers, some of whom also made useful comments, and copies were donated to the libraries of various Yeshivot for English-speakers in Jerusalem.
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[1] Cited in Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and
Times (World Publishing Company, 1971) p. 19.
Esther Salaman in “A Talk with Einstein” in The Listener (8 Sep 1955).
[2] Intuition, tainted by anthropomorphic reasoning and guided by hindsight, and therefore admittedly a post-hoc argument.
[3] Cited in Neal C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the
Problem of Creation (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1979)
p. 141. According to Gillespie, this citation is from
Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters. This book was issued by W.W. Norton in 1993 as The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882 (Nora Barlow, ed.).
[4] Cosmology and astrophysics are required for theories of the emergence of life, e.g., the atoms in our bodies originate in the hearts of stars which later exploded.
[5] For excellent presentations of the logic behind evolutionary theory see, e.g., The Blind Watchmaker, Climbing Mount Improbable and other books by Richard Dawkins. Cf the writings of Stephen J. Gould.
[6] Science also does not as yet deal even with mind (as opposed to brain, which is heavily studied).
[7] occasional interventions by God into the physical universe such as miracles, or subtle (but far-reaching in effect) divine interventions in the path of evolution. are not the concern of science.
[8] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (Prometheus Books, 1997) p. 70. Available online at http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/charles_darwin/descent_of_man
[9] See for example Sforno on “kidmusenu” (“after our likeness”).
[10] For discussions of the interrelationships between free will, creativity, quantum physics, complexity, consciousness, Creation, and scientific cosmology, see my manuscript The Retroactive Universe.
[11] Genesis 1:27.
[12] Genesis 2:7.
[13] Genesis 2:16-17.
[14] According to Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler’s Gravitation, Einstein said, “What really interests me is whether God had any choice in the creation of the world” to an assistant. The reference they provide is a book review by G. Holton of Ronald W. Clark’s Einstein: The Life and Times that appeared in the New York Times, 5 Sep 1971. p.20. (DELETE??!: Holton wrote a lot about Einstein and presumably inserted this quote into his review.) Note that Einstein meant by "God" something rather different than what Biblical religionists mean by the term.
[15] See Paul Davies, The Mind of God (Simon & Schuster Touchstone, 1992) for interesting discussions on related topics.
[16] This may be seen as a version of the Anthropic Principle in cosmology.
[17] Genesis Rabba 1:1. The midrash says that we know this because the first word of Genesis, breisheet = with reisheet = with the Torah, which is called “reisheet.”
[18] Genesis 1:3, 10, 12, 17, 21, 25.
[19] Genesis 1:31.
[20] According to tradition, the Creation account contains the whole Torah; and, “God looked into the [Creation account of] the Torah and created the universe.” The Creation account is paradoxically both the blueprint of Creation and the description of the Creation from that blueprint. Fittingly, it ends with the onset of Shabbat, which paradoxically, while it is part of the purpose of Creation and therefore ‘logically prior’ to the onset of Creation, is also the commemoration of the completion of Creation, and therefore ‘chronologically after’ the cessation of Creation.
[21] Moral beings seem a late development of the big bang, but the true order is reversed: They are the first stage of the big bang’s design. As in Alkabetz’s Shabbat hymn “Lkha Dodi” in which Shabbat, which is seemingly the final act of Creation, is teleologically primary to it: “That which was last in execution [of Creation, i.e., the Shabbat] was first in intention.”
See also Genesis Rabba 10:9 and the commentary of Radal. By resting on Shabbat, God places the universe in its natural-law operating mode. This is simultaneous with and caused or allowed by the emergence of moral consciousness.
[22] See my book The Retroactive Universe for a more thorough discussion.
[23] Both science and a literal reading of Genesis would place this event as occurring very recently, between five and one-hundred thousand years ago, rather than millions or billions of years ago.
[24] For an explanation of these points, see my book The Instant Universe or my papers “Free Will” in B’Or Ha’Torah 6E (1987) pp. 141-157; and with Herman Branover, “The Role of the Universe in Halakhah and Quantum Physics” in H. Branover and I. Attia, eds., Science in the Light of the Torah (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1994), especially Wheeler’s diagram on p. 79.
[25] Furthermore the OFTEN OVERLOOKED SECONDARY “CREATION ACCOUNT” of Genesis 2:4-9
“… on the day God made Earth and Heaven…… God formed man”
(—emphasis and ellipsis mine) imply Creation simultaneous with the emergence of Adam.
[26] A universe without natural law would dissolve into chaos. Stars and human bodies alike would lose their structural integrity. Natural law also allows regularity of operation so that moral beings could know the results of their actions and therefore be morally responsible for them.
[27] Charles Darwin, “The Origin of Species” chap. 15, last paragraph of the book. Available online at:
http://www.literature-web.net/book.php3/originofspecies
[28] Genesis 2:1-2.
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Religion homepage
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Notes to incorporate
Free-willed-consciousness in quantum physics and
biblical belief: Human free-willed
consciousness is essential to the purpose of the universe from two very
different perspectives – those of quantum metaphysics and of biblical religion.
……
Free Will & Cosmology, the
Bang and Adam
Insert diagram and caption
from Wheeler
(quantum
metaphysics indicates the possibility that the universe emerged into true
physical existence only when there was a conscious observer in it).
We claim that the type of
purpose which the Bible imputes to the universe could not commence until a
free-willed being emerges, and so both quantum metaphysics and biblical
religion require the beginning of the universe to be tied up with the emergence
of a free-willed being, which in biblical terms is the Adam of the Eden account
(Adam after eating from the 'Tree of Knowledge'). Thus it is reasonable both
from the biblical and our quantum metaphysical perspective that the bible
presents the creation of the universe juxtaposed to the emergence of Adam.
our reasons for supposing that for this purpose it is free
will which is the essential ingredient of consciousness.
discussion of universal purpose from an anthropomorphic 'divine
perspective'.
the cosmological
significance of free will.
Conclusion: The creation/Eden accounts imply that the
universe emerged into existence as part of a process in which the first
free-willed beings emerge. This meshes well with both Wheeler's quantum
metaphysical idea of the universal conscious observer, which we interpret as a
free-willed observer, and also with the idea that from the divine perspective
the onset of universal purpose, and therefore the most reasonable creation
point, is at the emergence of free-willed beings.
…..
[1][1] This article is an abridged version of the author’s book The Instant
Universe. And
is an edited version of the
article in B’OR HA’TORAH 13E (2002) pp.7-17
[2] There is no inherent conflict between the scientific origin theory, of the universe emerging from a big bang, and the Biblical idea of a God designing the big bang to produce free-willed beings. Atheistic philosophical conclusions often associated with scientific origin theory are a belief, and therefore are a form of religion rather than science, they are not truly part of the theory and should not be allowed to detract from an appreciation of the scientific theory itself.