Help Wanted: Quantum Physics Theology

Sometime last winter, around Christmas when I was holed up in solitude, I started thinking about quantum physics. That makes it sound like I understand something about quantum physics. Just enough to start speculating. The thing I understand best is that a quantum particle affects other quanta. What happens to one, happens to many, somehow, even the ones on the far side of the universe. I don’t understand that. I don’t understand even how scientists believe they’ve proven that. But, I accept it.

I was thinking about God a lot too, and people. Sometime in there, I decided that perhaps it would be helpful for me, for my behaviour (which wasn’t great at the time), if I thought of myself as a single particle in a larger whole. And you as another particle. And a sheep in Australia as another. (I know what you’re all thinking, especially the Mad One …) Plankton in the Antarctic. The third moon of Jupiter. Everything is a particle in a wholeness.

What that would mean is that my behaviour isn’t just my behaviour. It would affect the behaviour and well-being of all those other particles, in some way I don’t understand. And it would affect the entity of which we are all particles. I keep thinking of that entity as The Singleness. God is The Singleness. At least, that’s what I’ve been trying to keep in my mind and my heart. I’ve been trying to align myself with the well-being of The Singleness, and to act and pray in a way that would increase the innate goodness of it. Heaven knows, I’ve sent enough bad action and energy into it, over the years. And will continue to do so. Even Paul said, “I do not do the things I want to do …”

Since the winter, I’ve learned that there are brilliant scientists and theologians who have been writing about quantum theology. (Hah! Maybe I wasn’t just out there in La-La Land!) There are more books than I can read, and I don’t know enough about the field or the authors to be able to separate the sheep from the goats. If anyone’s got any suggestions, please leave them in the comments box.