Science Forums 2

[CraigD]

Originally Posted by Shubee

Formally, quantum creationism is the mathematical proposition that there is no limit to improbability in quantum theory.

The problem with this, as a formal definition, is that “improbability” isn’t a formal mathematical term. Rather, “improbable” is a context-specific or informal synonym of “having a low probability”. It’s odd and not useful to describe the “improbability” of an event, because it’s at best the same as describing the probability of an event, or .

The bigger question of this thread, however is

Originally Posted by Shubee

Is It Possible To Remake Creationism Into A Scientific Theory?

Details aside, anything can be made into a scientific theory by expressing it as an understandable (to a given target audience, who may have very specialized language and skills) collection of techniques for generating predictions of experimentally verifiable outcomes. To be a correct theory, predictions must be made, experimentally tested, and found to be correct.

So to make a specific form of creationism (the term has many meanings, so requires more specific definition) into a scientific theory, one need only use it to make predictions. For the theory to be correct, experimental test of these predictions must find them correct.

This has been done many times for various forms of creationism. Young Earth creationism, for example, predicts that measurements of the age of animal and human remains should find no animal remains more than two days older than the oldest human remains, and that nothing whatever should be measured to be older than about 10,000 years. When tested with techniques such as examining fossil and radiometric dating, however, these predictions fail, so, as a scientific theory, young Earth creationism is not correct.

Originally Posted by Shubee

For example, quantum mechanically, is it possible for the Red Sea to split (Exodus 14:21) and for a man to be fully formed out of the inanimate material of the earth in a single day? (Genesis 2:7).

It is correct that the formalism of quantum mechanics describes the position and other attributes of particles of matter as a range of values related to probabilities. So, for any given particle, the probability that if will be detected within a volume arbitrarily distant from its most probable location, while very small, is non-zero. The probability that many particles would be detected in low-probability locations preserving their relative positions – ie: that the water of the Red Sea would be detected not in a parted path across it, yet still be water, not steam, or plasma, or a storm of rapidly decaying exotic particles – is many time less probable than for a single particle – a reasonable if simplistic estimate is , where is the number of particles. Because is very large, is very, very small.

I’ve not attempted to estimate these miniscule probabilities. As the idea’s champion, however, this sounds like a task for Shubee. Shubee, explicitly making whatever assumptions and guesses you need, linking to any reference material you use, and showing your calculations, what do you calculate for the probability of the spontaneous parting of the Red Sea (or an easier-to-describe body of water)?