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Is God a particle-wave duality?

In today’s feedbacks, Dr Jonathan Sarfati answers some questions about biblical metaphor and quantum mechanics, white holes, and an expanding universe in creationist cosmologies.

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Dominic O. from the United States writes:

I was discussing with my friend about the necessary preconditions of intelligibility like Logic and he argued that the Duality of light negates the Law of Identity in logic. This was rather troubling and as I am no physicist I do not understand the nature of lights particle and wave like duality. Also what does the Bible mean when it says God is light. On another note how does quantum mechanics relate to Logic. I have heard ideas about it that would seem to allow contradictions, similar to dialetheism. Sorry for all these questions.

CMI’s Dr Jonathan Sarfati responds:

Dear Mr O.

Thank you for writing to CMI. You came to the right place, because I have written detailed papers both on logic and quantum mechanics from a creationist perspective: Loving God with all your mind: logic and creation and Should creationists accept quantum mechanics?.

From the first: “A contradiction is defined as the conjunction of the affirmation and denial of a premise, in the same time, place, and sense (i.e. p and not-p, or in symbolic form, p.~p).”

From the second: “But this unified theory did not permit wave and particle qualities to be observed at the same time; it was always one or the other.”

Here we have the resolution: there is no contradiction, first because it’s not a case of p and not-p, but also because the wave and particle properties don’t exist at the same time. So there is no need for dialetheism.

The statement “God is light” doesn’t mean that He is electromagnetic energy. This meaning of “light” is clearly part of the creation not the Creator, since God said “let there be light”. Rather, it is a profound metaphor involving many aspects of light, as explained in a previous feedback.

Regards

Jonathan Sarfati


Dan O. from the United States writes:

Dear CMI:

I greatly appreciate the excellent resources available on your website that provide great scientific resources for creationism.

I have spent much time studying the fascinating cosmology developed by Russell Humphreys in his book Starlight and Time. I have two questions about a comment he made regarding the nature of white holes in the paper, “D. Russell Humphreys replies and clarifies cosmology,” TJ 16(3):76–78, 2002. On page 77, Dr. Humphreys said:

“According to the basic equations, a white hole would not repel matter. Instead, the matter in it gravitates normally, but has enough outward momentum to overcome its own self-attraction.”

He cited a reference (The classical theory of fields, 1971), and though I was able to obtain a copy of this book, it is a different edition (1975) and thus does not appear to have the cited section on the same pages. Can you provide the name of the chapter/section that Humphreys references so that I can find it in the edition I have?

My second question is, since gravity is operating normally in a white hole, and since there is matter within its Schwarzschild radius, wouldn’t the escape velocity at the event horizon still be greater than light? If so, how can outward momentum overcome that and allow matter and light to escape?

Thank you for your time and help.

Dr Jonathan Sarfati responds:

Dear Mr O.

Thank you for writing.

I can’t help with the first question, but it’s possible that something like Google Books or a university library will have the reference.

But with the second question, it goes back to what a white hole is. Schwartzschild showed that what we now call a black hole is a valid solution for general relativity (since you like source material, it’s “Über das Gravitationsfeld eines Massenpunktes nach der Einsteinschen Theorie”, Sitzungsberichte der Königlich-Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, S. 189–196, 3 February 1916, or “On the Gravitational Field of a Point-Mass, according to the Einsteinian Theory”, Proceedings of the Royal Prussian Academy of Sciences). But the equations of relativity are reversible, so if a black hole is a valid solution, then a white hole is as well. Both of them involve a mass inside an event horizon given by the Schwarzschild Radius RS = 2GM/c². In both cases, there is matter inside the radius by definition, as shown by the formula. But since the white hole is running in reverse and losing mass, the radius is shrinking.

I hope this helps.

Regards

Jonathan Sarfati


Alex C. writes:

Dear Creation Ministries International,

I have a simple question, what do Christians need to think about the universe expanding and not static? Furthermore, is it true?

Sincerely,

Alex

Dr Jonathan Sarfati responds:

Dear Mr C.

Thank you for writing to CMI. We think that the Bible does not teach one way or the other. So for now, we would probably go for the expanding universe theory since that seems to be supported by the evidence, and doesn’t conflict with Scripture. This is our general policy on biblically neutral theories; cf. Should creationists accept quantum mechanics? You might also like to read the articles under What are some of the problems with the ‘big bang’ hypothesis? and the key articles on that page.

Regards

Jonathan Sarfati

Published: 4 November 2012

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