Schrödinger's Cat and Agnosticism

Articles From Our Bulletins

Philip C. Strong
08/27/19 - Bulletin Articles

I’m neither highly educated, nor an intellectual. Furthermore, I admit that I would have likely never known anything about Schrödinger or his cat apart from that episode of “Friends” on television several years ago. By the way, the “cat in the box” was a thought experiment/illustration, so don’t worry about him killing cats to make a scientific point. There wasn’t an actual experiment, cat, or box.

In surely over-simplified layman’s terms, Schrödinger stated that if you place a cat and something that could kill the cat (a radioactive atom) in a box and sealed it, you would not know if the cat was dead or alive until you opened the box, so that until the box was opened, the cat was (in a sense) both "dead and alive".

Actually, “Schrodinger constructed his imaginary experiment with the cat to demonstrate that simple misinterpretations of quantum theory can lead to absurd results which do not match the real world. Unfortunately, many popularizers of science in our day have embraced the absurdity of Schrodinger's Cat and claim that this is how the world really works.” (source: “What did Schodinger’s Cat Experiment Prove?” https://wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2013/07/30/what-did-schrodingers-cat-experiment-prove/)

So, why am I interested in and writing about all of this? The misinterpretations of Schrödinger’s hypothetical cat have led to a supposed principle that seems to me to be analogous to Agnostic notions about God. The Agnostic, perhaps again over-simplified, suggests that although God may exist, we cannot actually know because we can’t “see” or “prove” Him; that we can’t “open the box” to know for certain that He is alive… just like Schrödinger’s cat. But they are just as mistaken about this as those who missed the point of the cat in the box altogether…

1) The Agnostic claims “the box” is closed- that we can’t know that God exists, but it isn’t. “The heavens are telling of the glory of God; and their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night reveals knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their utterances to the end of the world,” Psalms 19:1-4a.

Note also the words of Job, “But now ask the beasts, and let them teach you; and the birds of the heavens, and let them tell you. Or speak to the earth, and let it teach you; and let the fish of the sea declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this, in whose hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind? Does not the ear test words, as the palate tastes its food? Wisdom is with aged men, with long life is understanding,” Job 12:7-12.
And finally on this point, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened,” Romans 1:18-21.

2) Agnosticism is arrogance masquerading as intellectualism. How so? His own questions, doubts, or inabilities or unwillingness to “see” evidence is extrapolated to everyone. In short, because he either can’t or is unwilling to “see” the existent evidence for God, he claims no one can. The lyrical humorist, songwriter/singer Ray Stevens penned, “There is none so blind as he who will not see…” (in the song, “Everything is Beautiful”), which is a rephrasing of the words of the prophet Jeremiah and the Savior, Jesus Christ, “while seeing they do not see,” cf. Jeremiah 21:5; Matthew 13:13-14. Those of whom both Jeremiah and Jesus spoke didn’t fail to “see” because they could not see, but because they would not see. While this may not be true of all Agnostics- I’m quite sure that some have just never “opened the box” or had someone else do it for them, it is certainly used by some as an excuse for either intellectual laziness, or an arrogant refusal to admit an inconvenient reality: that God does exist, and therefore that we as His creation are under obligation to Him. The reality is that Schrödinger’s cat was either alive or dead whether one could “see” or would admit it or not!

The Hebrews writer penned, “For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God,” Hebrews 3:4. This is basic Cause and Effect logic; which is says, “For every effect, there has to be a cause sufficient to have produced it.” No one looks at the effect of a house and denies the obvious: that someone built it. The house did not, through unknown or insufficient causes, build itself from nothing no matter how much time was involved! Our own bodies, the world we inhabit, and the Universe itself- as effects, demand a First-Cause Creator… God. We can refuse to “see” it, rebelliously refuse to “admit” it, or even deny that it can be “seen/known,” but such doesn’t change the reality of the existent evidence to the contrary.