Physics and the Demiurge – The Creator is not Omnipotent

I had the pleasure of attending a lecture last year given by Fr. Robert Spitzer, S.J.[1], held at the Catholic Student Center next door to Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, USA.

The lecture was a shortened presentation of the ideas explained in his recent book New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy[2].

Fr. Spitzer has recorded a number of videos presenting the same or related ideas, which are freely available online[3].

For background on the "Abrahamic" concepts, from a Christian perspective, there is a fine article[4] in the old Catholic Encyclopedia. As it was authored circa 1913, it doesn't take into consideration developments in modern physical cosmology or quantum mechanics, but is still a good resource.

A friend of mine told me about another author, Wolfgang Smith[5], who holds that the conundrums involved in quantum mechanics are owing to "Cartesian hangups", and goes on to argue that an ontology and metaphysics grounded in Aristotle provide a kind of solution. He published a book[6] to promote those ideas, but I've not read it myself so can't comment further.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Spitzer_(priest)

[2] http://www.amazon.com/New-Proofs-Existence-God-Contributions...

[3] http://www.magisreasonfaith.org/spitzer_videos.html

[4] http://oce.catholic.com/index.php?title=Creation

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Smith

[6] http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Enigma-Finding-Hidden-Key/dp/0...

If you imagined it like a server - you have a huge amount of loading power on the server and don't need compression there because its not needed. However, if that server is to distribute information to lower powered entities (laptops, phones and other web-enabled devices) it would need compression to ease loading on those entities.....

Perhaps the "server" is omnipotent but hands out our reality compressed so that we can at least begin to grasp it....?

I'm not entirely sure the wave function does collapse; any Many Worlders on HN?

I do have to concede on this.