#STRask - Does Quantum Mechanics Indicate We Can’t Perceive True Evidence That God Exists?

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

Questions about whether quantum mechanics disproves an objective reality and indicates we can’t perceive true evidence that God exists, and whether an infinite, intelligent, loving designer would have designed logic to exclude the possibility of suffering.   I’ve been struggling with the idea that quantum mechanics disproves an objective reality. Does God exist, or is the evidence we perceive actually fake and we can’t make sense out of the physical world? If logic was created by an infinite, intelligent designer, and that designer is a loving God, wouldn’t he have designed logic to exclude the possibility of suffering without interfering with his goals?

Welcome to the show. This is the hashtag STRSk podcast. Greg, are you ready for your first question? Yeah, sure. Why not? Okay. All right. Here's a question from Maggie. Lately, I have been struggling with the idea that quantum mechanics disproves an objective reality due to the nature of particles and observation. I'm wondering if God exists or if the reality of evidence we perceive is actually fake, and we can't make sense. sense out of the physical world. Thank you. Well, there's a couple of things going on here, and we don't have to get into quantum physics or anything like that. Just think of the claim that was just made. Can you read the statement about quantum physics? I'm struggling with the idea that quantum mechanics disproves

an objective reality due to the nature of particles and observation. Okay. If it disproves objective reality, then it proves objective reality, then it proves. proves objective reality. Because what we are objectively, truthfully learning about quantum physics, the claim is, is causing us to question whether there's any truthful, factual thing about the nature of reality. This statement about quantum physics is a narrative of sorts. It's a, it's a, it's a metanarrative. It's a big look at the way the world actually is. That is a story of reality. And you can't say, we have a story of reality that says there is no story of reality. It's contradictory.

And so the nature of this entire claim is contradictory. That's the point of making. It's like saying you can only trust science to tell you truth about the world. But of course, that statement purports to be true. And that statement itself is not learned by science. So this is self-refuting. It falls prey to the suicide tactic. in a very straightforward way, but because of the, you know, the way the language is used and the reference to quantum mechanics and everything, it is not, it is, you don't, it's not easy to see.

Let's put it that way. But it was obvious to me. It is objectively the case that there is no objective reality. And that's, we know this because our objective analysis of the objective set of circumstances that quantum mechanics produces. The best you can come up with there is that because there is, you know, there is certain ambiguities that might result from quantum effects, because what quantum mechanics is, is a body of knowledge about how the quantum world works, and that if it's accurate, then it's an objective characterization of how the quantum world works.

the contradiction. And if it turns out that there is a concern about the quantum realm, all the concern amounts to is that we may not always see things the way they are. Okay. Now, you and I had an appointment this morning for which we were both late, which is why we're kind of chuckling at the show open. Okay. In other words, there were plans that were made there were claims that were made about the nature of reality, that the meeting, okay, and it was going to be here in this studio, and in fact we both arrived in virtue of that claim, which then turned out to be true, the claim that we were supposed to have a meeting here at a certain time, and it's also true that we were late, and it's also true there were reasons why it was late.

Everything about our lives is a testimony to the fact that we are able to make claims, about the nature of the world and test them, even if it seems, the testing seems not exactly subliminal, but it's not obvious. We can test them to see if they're accurate. Every time you go to an appointment, you're testing the claim that the doctor will be ready for you at that particular point or the dentist or the person will meet you at the restaurant or whatever. These are all claims about the nature of the world.

And when you go and they show up, then the claim is proven true. The illustration that was given first off on this, obviously a long time ago, is you have a telephone number, kind of in your Rolodex, your list of telephone numbers, and this is the number for a person. This is Amy Hall's number. And you bang, bang, bang out these seven digits or whatever it is, and guess who answers? Amy Hall answers. So the claim that these numbers get you to Amy Hall's phone is an accurate claim. It's a truth about the nature of reality. You know that because you've tested it. So we do this literally innumerable times, no many times. You can't number them every single day. This is how we survive. If you couldn't know the nature of objective reality, you'd be dead today. And by the way, that would be a truth of objective reality. You'd be dead today. And by the way, that would be a truth of objective reality. So even though people have, I think, used this quantum elements, quantum factors or quantum facts, if you will, the quantum world is a very difficult world to understand because it operates in odd ways. Even though there are these concerns about that, this is the quantum world. The quantum world is the idie-bitty, idiest, bitiest little slice of reality.

reality. All the rest of reality is where we live, not the quantum world, but the maximum world, not the itty-bitty, but the big world, the world we perceive. I mean, the fact is, look, there's more space in this desk than there is desk, but it looks solid. And that's the world we operated because whatever's happening on the quantum level is producing this thing that looks solid. And this is what we deal with. So even though things get discovered in the quantum realm, that gives us no reason, I think, to draw radical conclusions about the nature of macro reality, if you will, the reality of macro things, which is where we live. All of our conclusions about God and Jesus and the Bible, and all these things relate to issues in the macro world that we can measure, and we have found to be reliable as tools to knowledge. The quantum realm, gee, that's weird. So I don't know why there would be any justification for someone looking at oddities of the quantum realm and think, well, this, God must not exist. How is it that God?

I'm not sure how you get from quantum indeterminacy, which is maybe what a lot of people are thinking of here, and God doesn't exist. How does one get there? I think what people are doing is they're taking an interpretation of quantum mechanics and changing that into a whole philosophy that we can't know anything and putting that in the aggregate and saying, well, then therefore we can't know anything about anything, which, as you pointed out, is a problem. All you have to do is look at the predictability, not just of things like going to an appointment, but think about how predictability has to be in place to send. someone to the moon. I mean, look at mathematics and how it can describe reality and look at what we're able to do with all of our technology. If things weren't predictable in the sense that we can measure, then we could not create technology that worked. Right, right. Nothing would work for us. You're driving a car with, well, most people have internal combustion engine, not Alan Fleen, and he's got

two Teslas. But nevertheless, that still operates in a very similar fashion by a different set of of mechanics, but nevertheless, it is very specific mechanics that make it work. So even without knowing more about quantum mechanics, we can know that we can, that things are predictable, that we can create things that depend on predictability that are very complex and come down to very small parts and very refined processes and they work. Right. But even in addition to that, there are other ways to interpret what is being seen in the quantum world. We don't know everything that's happening there yet. I think there's something like

nine major schools of thought about what the quantum world is actually like. It isn't settled science. So those are, so even if you, even if you're not sure how to interpret what you're seeing in quantum mechanics, look at the rest of things in the world and see that we can test them and know that they actually are predictable and we can learn things about reality from them. Sure. And then, and specifically regarding the theological issue, how does this, whatever indeterminacy one presumes, happens at a quantum level, what does that, how does that interfere with any reasons that we have that God exists, for example? That's another question I'd ask. Yeah, I think what Maggie's saying there is that, well, this is what she says, or if the reality of evidence we perceive is actually fake. So we're not perceiving actual reality.

Well, this is the testability level element that we have this ability to test this level to find out if we are, if we know anything about this world. And at the core is this contradiction that if we learn from quantum mechanics, our claim is that quantum mechanics teaches us there's no objective reality, then that is. infringes on the objective legitimacy of the claims of quantum mechanics. Okay. I want to add one other thing because you made reference to it, and that is taking a principle like the quantum indeterminacy, the I'm trying to think of the, you'll probably think of the name of the law, but basically if you try to measure the position of an electron or something,

something on a quantum level, you affect its speed, and if you measure its speed, you affect its speed. you affect its position. So you can't know both at the same time. And the point there is, in that circumstance, the act of trying to measure it changes it. The act of measuring it changes it. There are probably listeners that are screaming the name of the principle here. But it is a, it is a, but what's happened is people have taken that principle and they've expanded into a philosophy. observation changes it. That's what they do.

And by the way, this was in the second Jurassic Park movie. And he made that comment. Somebody made that comment where they said, well, you know when you observe it, you change it. That's the law. And he named the person or whatever, the principle there. And that's a way over extension of law. It's to take a particular thing and build it into a philosophy of knowledge, an epistemological principle, that when you observe it, you change it.

And that would mean if you're always observing something, your observation is always changing it, which is just goofy. So I'm not taking into exception that foundational principle of measuring those two things and the influence of measuring changes each of those things. But you can't make that into a philosophical system. because if that were the true, if that were true, you'd never be able to have knowledge.

Because knowledge, at least a vast portion of it, requires that you look at something. And if looking at it changes it, observing it, measuring it, changes it, then you can never have any knowledge about what that thing is. And yet the predictability proves that we do have knowledge, so therefore that can't be. Well, this is how science works. Yeah. Science works a large part of science. by experimental repeatability to establish the fact, and then we take the fact and employ it into internal combustion unions or batteries that run cars or something like that.

Let's go to a question from Julian. The Mandelbrot set fractal in mathematics seems to entail that logic was created by an infinite intelligent designer. Did God create logic? But if that designer is a loving God, it seems that he would have designed logic to exclude the possibility of suffering without interfering with his goals. I don't know what logic or laws or logic have anything to do with suffering. I don't see how if you change the laws of logic, which, by the way, are necessary.

A equals A, law of identity. In any universe, that's got to be the case. A thing is itself and not something else. There's another way of putting it. that A cannot be not A at the same time and in the same way. That's the law of non-contradiction. Okay, well, this is what we were talking about in the earlier conversation. So we were employing that in a certain circumstance regarding that question about quantum indeterminacy.

And so those laws of logic are necessary. They have to be in place in any possible world, which seems to suggest that there's a sense, excuse me, there's a sense in which the laws of logic must be grounded in God and in his nature because he's a necessary being and these are necessary features of the world and therefore they must somehow be connected. But I don't see how, and if that's the case, then he's not creating the laws of logic. Right. But even if we weren't creating the laws of logic, I don't see how the laws of logic have anything to do with suffering. Somebody's got to make that connection for me.

It could be that the laws of physics have to do with suffering, and the laws of physics are not necessary. There could be different physics in different worlds, but not the laws of logic. So just looking at the question here, it seems that he would have designed logic to exclude the possibility of suffering without interfering with his goals. It sounds like he thinks that his goals logically require. suffering? Do you have something? I think that's what he's... Well, that might be, and I don't... I'm not sure about that. This would have to be cashed out more. It seems really clear to me, and we've talked about this before, that there is purpose for suffering, that God allows it for a morally sufficient reason, and it's obvious to us sometimes

the purpose of suffering if we live in a moral world. In other words, if we live in a world that where there are moral goods like virtues, that some of these virtues are produced by suffering. Long suffering is a virtue. You can't have long suffering without suffering. If you don't have suffering, you have no long suffering. You know, no endurance under difficulty in hardship unless there's difficulty in hardship. And so if one wants to build that thing, then you need to have the thing that builds it. A person goes into the gym. They exercise. They lift weights. Why? Because lifting weights puts a stress of the muscles, the

stress of the muscles, tears the muscles down for a bit, and then they build up stronger. So this stress, this difficulty is the thing that causes the stronger muscle, given the nature of the muscle. And so I'm just using that as a general illustration that there's a connectedness between some of these things. I don't know all the reasons that God has purposed suffering in difficulty, in hardship, and evil. And I toy with some things in the—well, maybe toys too lackadaisical a word, but I have some ideas that I develop in story of reality. Some that you're not—that's not your view so much.

But there are things that it's clear that God is doing through suffering. Momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal way to glory, 2 Corinthians 4. So there you see that verb, and that's working. There's something, the bad things are working for good things. Romans 8 says the same thing with regards to the Christian. So, I don't, again, I don't see how the laws of logic have anything to do with that. But this may be a question about, does God have a morally sufficient reason for suffering? Could he have created a world in which there was no suffering?

The answer is yes. Could he create a world in which there was no evil? The answer is yes. where there was no possibility of evil, okay, because the world he created wasn't evil. And we're actually going to talk more about this in the next episode. There's a spoiler alert. Okay. Cliffanger. Yes. But I would say that God can't change logic, not because he's beholden to logic, but because logic reflects the orderliness of his character, of his nature, I should say.

As you pointed out, you can't change the idea that A is not not A. Yes. Without changing the entire nature of reality. And since all of reality is rooted in God as the self-existent being who created everything, it will reflect his orderliness and his rationality and all of these things that make everything possible that we experience and think about. and all of that. So it wouldn't have been illogical for God to create a world without suffering. I agree, Greg, this has to do with whatever God's greatest goals were and whatever his morally sufficient reasons were. So if suffering was the best way to bring about his goals, then he would do that. And if it wasn't the best way to bring about his goals, then he wouldn't do that.

But he wasn't constrained by anything he created in terms of logic, which he didn't create. I'm trying to think. I don't want to make it sound like it's something outside of God that he was beholden to. Well, it's like morality. We ground morality in his moral nature. It's not outside of him, but it is an expression of who he is and the kind of God he is. And I think this is just another example of that kind of thing. So we can't explain the existence.

distance of suffering by saying that logic demanded it. There has to be another reason, which we will take up in the next episode. Because we have, I get so many questions about evil. When I go to our youth conferences, almost every question is some aspect of the problem of evil. So this is something people really struggle with for obvious reasons. So we will take on some more of those. We might get into this in the next episode. But the thing is, what you can't hear, there are lots of ways you can go with that problem. Here is the direction you cannot go. You cannot go to atheism because that means the questions we're asking are meaningless about evil. And like I said, maybe that's a little cliffhager there for the next episode. We'll see how that goes. All right. Thank you so much,

Julian and Maggie. We appreciate hearing from you. So if you have a question and you've been thinking about sending that in, go ahead and send that in. Just go to our website at STR.org. And if you look for the hashtag STR-Ask podcast page, you'll find a link there to send your question, or you can just go to X and use the hashtag STR-Ask. This is Amy Hall and Greg Kokel for Stand to Reason.