Customer Reviews

Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics

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1 star:		(5)

 

 

O'Murchu does an excellent job of introducing quantum theory (and to a lesser extent chaos theory) as a potential source of theological enlightenment. But one suspects he brings a lot of prior (Marxist?) baggage to the table that in places seems to contradict his central thesis. For example he makes a valid point of the wholeness of good and evil, light and dark, etc. and deplores our traditional way of dealing with these as polar opposites or dualisms. Fine so far, but then when he describes some of the "sins" of the contemporary world, he does so in much the same polemical way of any conventional "politcially correct" attack on the forces of evil as a typcial left-wing activist defines it. He proposes engagement with our shadow side as an alternative to the traditional Christian response to evil, however defined. But when listing his pet "sins" of today, O'Murchu promptly lapses into the traditional attack mode response himself and he seems oblivious to the contradiction.

For example he is highly critical of competition throughout the book and urges cooperation in its place. I agree that is often called for, but at the same time competition and cooperation often complement each other. In fact competition often has the effect of enchancing cooperation in a wide range of arenas such as team sports, etc. O'Murchu never invokes his broader understanding that these two modes are complementary aspects rather than polar opposites. For example O'Murchu himself describes how the competitive invasion of a virus into the body soon invokes a cooperative antibody response by the immune system. Yet he ignores the fact that something similar is often at work in the social body.

He also mentions alcoholism at several points but only as a "family disease" (which it certainly can become. But he hints that the individual alcoholic has no personal responsibility for making a decision to submit to addiction or not. He leaves the impression that it is caused by an unfair social order "which drives people to drink". That is of course nearly every alcoholics favorite excuse. Oddly enough O'Murchu ignores Alcoholics Anonymous which has had the greatest success by far in getting people to abstain from drink mainly by entering into a spiritual life much like the one he seems to be advocating.

Still, despite these criticisms, I liked the book and thought it well worth reading. It is loaded with excellent insights. It gives a good overview of the contemporary theological scene as well. And as I said, O'Murchu well explains how quantum theory opens the door to a fruitful theological and spiritual discussion that classical Newtonian physics precludes. However, for those who want greater depth of understanding on just how and why the wave/particle duality of quantum theory opens this door, I recommend reading Lothar Schafer's 1997 book, In Search of Divine Reality (U. of Ark. Press)

This book fails to set up and maintain a logical flow to advance its thesis. He should have started with the appendix as a list of axioms, then proven statements from those axioms to construct his theory. Instead, the text is rather scatter-brained and lacking in conciseness. He fails to give good definitions of many terms used (light, dark, etc), which leaves them as free parameters instead of giving them precise moral values.

To me, the objective of furthering the implementation of quantum physics within theology is admirable, though questionable in its justification. His principles are vast, unproveable generalizations of a poorly understood physical theory which itself is only an approximation to more fundamental theories (such as string/M-theory, if it turns out to really be a physical theory). So, even ignoring the free parameters, the applicability of his axioms to our universe is unclear.

Moreover, as faith is the one truly subjective human pursuit, completely lacking in objective data to ground together multiple viewpoints, any arguments involving faith fail to compel. This is because there is no reason for all beings to share the same faith, no evidence to draw or repel potential believers. Some may argue that holy scriptures are pieces of such evidence, however they are analogous to a report on a physical experiment conducted long ago which states only the results of the experiment, with no description of the setup itself. In this case, the experiment is not repeatable, since we don't know how it was conducted, and we have no way of knowing how much the authors' personal prejudices or mistakes influenced his/her report. Holy scriptures give, at best, second hand accounts of the true objective data (the miracles, revelations, etc) and since we are unable to witness those miracles, etc, for ourselves we are simply left with interesting, useless tales.

Thus, O'Murchu's axioms which ascribe a definite nature to the supernatural, hence require faith to be held as true, are merely arbitrary choices within an infinite array of equally weighted possibilities. Therefore, I find his project to be flawed in both its basis and its execution.

The author does make some interesting arguments. However, I recommend reading the appendicies first as a way of being introduced to the "theology."

The author is overly steeped in New Age, Femininst, and Anti-Industrial dogma and this seeps into an otherwise interesting view of the theological viewpoint.

I prefer the appendicies over the text as it provides a lot of ideas on which to work and think. Overall pretty good but would have been better without the preaching in the text.

Quantum Theology is a book that claims to be consistent with Christianity but is clearly at odds with it. The subtitle is "Spiritual Implications of the New Physics," but this is just marketing drivel. The author obviously knows nothing about physics, except for the fact that quantum theory introduces an element of uncertainty into physics. He uses this idea to cast doubt on centuries of Christian tradition, and replace it with his own vacuous speculations. There are some ideas in the book that are worthwhile, but these are carried to ridiculous extremes. For example:
1. "Seek meaning in the journey rather than the destination." That's fine, but then the book goes on to say that the journey does not even have a destination. Enjoying the journey is fine, but just the same I would prefer to have a destination in mind.
2. "God supercedes traditional theology." Of course God is bigger than theology, but then the book goes on to denigrate 2000 years of Christian tradition and hold itself up as the new paradigm.
Some of the claims in the book that are at odds with the Bible are:
1. The notion of "God" is a human construct "that may limit rather than enhance our understanding of life's ultimate source and meaning."
2. "The dilemma of pantheism is resolved."
3. The idea of "original sin" is a human construct.
4. Quantum theology seeks to outgrow the quaint dualism of good vs. evil.
5. The major sin of our time is speciesism. (I don't know about you, but I can think of plenty of sin in this world that is worse than speciesism!)
6. "We live in a world without beginning or end." (This contradicts both the Bible and physics.)
7. It is only systems, rather than individuals, that can be guilty of sin. (So much for individual responsibility.)
8. "Resurrection and reincarnation are not facts." (I agree with half of that statement, but Christianity without resurrection is like a building without a foundation.)
Having criticized the book, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's plenty of dirty bathwater in this book, but some ideas of value include:
1. "No one source of knowledge ... can provide a complete description of reality." This emphasizes the Biblical concept of general revelation, which is ignored by too many evangelicals.
2. "Redemption is not just about personal salvation; it also concerns ... planetary and universal life." This idea, which is typically missed by evangelicals, is clearly consistent with the Bible.
In summary, this book provides some food for thought, but it contains far more junk food than nutrition.

I agree with other reviewers that this book has bias issues, the least of which is not a strong Feminist bias. But beyond these biases, there are serious factual errors in its presentation of modern physics. I will list only two:

1. On page 17, the author says that we know that the earth has existed for at least 15 billion years. In fact, modern theory has it that the universe has existed for about 15 billion years while our earth has only existed for about 5 billion years, our sun being a second or third generation star. This error is in some very elementary material. Confusing the ages of the earth and the universe raises an immediate red flag to me and throws a shadow on the remaining contents of the book.

2. On page 31, the author refers to passing a beam of light through a "Stern-Gerlach device" in which the (magnetic) field seperates the initial beam into two weaker beams. The Stern-Gerlach experiment in fact involves sending a beam of (uncharged) particles (not light) through an inhomogeneous magnetic field and observing their deflections. The results show that, while the particles do, in fact, possess intrinsic angular momenta, analogous to the angular momentum of classically spinning objects, these momenta are quantized and take on only certain discreet values. Light is not involved at all in the Stern-Gerlach experiment. Confusing a beam of light with a particle beam is another serious error which (for me) throws into question everything that the book claims to teach about quantum mechanics (or about modern science in general).

There have been many books that have attempted to combine religion or mysticism with quantum mechanics. This one was recommended to me by a friend who is a Catholic nun. I spotted the errors while scanning the pages of the book prior to actually reading it. Perhaps it is best simply to leave such disciplinary mixtures as physics and religion/mysticism alone since they are more like oil and water in their mixing properties, forming an emulsion rather than a solution, than, say sugar and water, in which the sugar really does go into solution.

I do not recommend this book.

O'Murchu claims to have reached a synthesis of religion and science, including the "new physics" of quantum mechanics (hence the title). This is an interesting idea, but the author of a book such as this needs to have background in both physics and theology, and O'Murchu has little to say about classical theology and no knowledge of any kind of science. The list of scientists he has consulted is impressive (including David Bohm, Stephen Hawking, and Paul Davies), but it would appear that he threw out everything they told him; the book is filled with misinformation and outright lies about quantum mechanics. Beyond this, O'Murchu constantly invokes "energy fields" and "forces" all of which are undocumented in science but factor heavily in New Age type beliefs. In short, O'Murchu has no idea what he is talking about, and his writing makes for a nonsensical book that is filled with non-sequiturs and poorly explained reasoning.

Having read perhaps sixty or seventy books concerning quantum phenomena, I was eager to enlarge my horizons with this one. Now that I have read it twice, I am still searching for some indication that the author has found a connection between theology (I grant him expertise in this) and quantum anything. In fact, though it is merely implicit, he makes the naive error of considering the quantum as something large, when semi-informed lay readers know that the quantum is the smallest measurable amount of energy. thebigo@gte.net

I would have thought by this time that Amazon would be offering the 2004 revision, not the 1997 edition. Don't buy the older version.

I am minimally trained in physics and theology, but in the process of exploring my own spirituality. I did find the book stimulating and procovative, and it was worth the time I spent reading it during a recent plane trip.

Reading this provocative book gave me a decaffinated boost.Though a priest I am only an amatuer as a theologian. And I have no credentials as a scientist. But I suspect that we learn as much about the reviewer from a book review as we do about the book being reviewed (or its author). Every 6 months or so I find "THE" book. QUANTUM THEOLOGY (which I plan to use as the text for a discussion group) is my candidate for the current 6 month period. Others which have held high esteem for me at one time or another are: ART & PHYSICS, L. Shlain, M.D. THE CREATORS, D. Boorstin OUR FATHERS' WELLS, P. Pitzelle CATCHING THE LIGHT, A Zajong GOD, A Biography, J. Miles EQUUS, P. Shaffer THE TURBULENT MIRROR, Briggs & Peat A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY,(what's his name, excuse me, I'm having a Senior Moment. Author of WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP) PURE DRIVEL, S. Martin MAKING FRIENDS WITH YOUR SHADOW, D. Augsburger MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, R. Bolt TIME & NUMBER, M.L. von Franz EYE OF THE NEEDLE, K. Follett MEDITATION FOR A YOUNG BOY CONFIRMED, A. Paton A NATURAL HISTORY OF THE SENSES, D. Ackerman INSEARCH, J. Hillman WISHFUL THINKING, F. Bueckner BRER RABBIT & THE TAR BABY, J.C. Harris (various variations on the story of) JOB, Hebrew Scripture, W. Saffire, Wm. Blake, Archibald MacLeish, C.G. Jung, E. Edinger, etc.

BOTTOM LINE: A hope readers of QUANTUM THEOLOGY can take the author's word for it that he's offering, not a set of answers, but an invitation to explore. May his tribe increase

If there is one book that will expand your definition of God, it is this one. The author manages to breathe new life into Christian theology, no easy task in these days of stultified dogma and mindless tradition, using the findings of quantum physics to express a new, and far more empowering and life-affirming, perspective on the fundamentals of Christianity. It is not just Christians who will profit from reading this book. Anybody who has even the vaguest interest in things spiritual will find something, some concept or idea, that resonates with their current beliefs hopefully showing that whatever we hold to be true, we are all partly right. After all, all religions and beliefs are simply different paths up the same mountain and Quantum Theology describes that mountain like no other book I have read.