Vikki Roemer wrote:
Basically, it boils down to the Uncertainty Principle (and/or Schroedinger's Cat)-- for matter to settle into a specific state, it has to be observed; otherwise, it just sort of sits in a sort of limbo, and it's in 2 states at once (yes, I know that the Uncertainty Principle mostly applies to electron spins, but I was told by people who should know[tm] that it would apply in this case). So someone (God, for lack of a better term) was there to observe it; granted, that doesn't necessarily mean that God created the Universe, but why else would God have been in the area to observe the Primordial Atom if s/he hadn't created it?
Actually, when Schrödinger came up with his story about a cat, he wasn't arguing that the cat exists in two states at once. He was trying to point out that our current understanding of quantum machanics is obviously incomplete; the Copenhagen interpretation doesn't say clearly enough just when the wave function "collapses".
Everett's many-worlds interpretation doesn't give the Observer any special position, but in some ways is even stranger.
Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, nothing in quantum mechanics requires anything supernatural. I'm quite happy to believe that if the conditions hadn't been in place for the universe to be created, I wouldn't be sitting here waiting for enough caffeine molecules to bind to adenosine receptors to get me to work.
- Carey "lapsed atheist" Evans --"Hanging is too good for a man who makes puns; he should be drawn and quoted."
-- Fred Allen