Quantum Freewill

This is a summary of a draft I wrote that ended up being waaay too long.*

Science is the observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.

Materialism is not science. It asserts that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena. Therefore, materialists believe that the supernatural, and therefore God, does not exist.

So, according to materialism, everything can be explained by material causes and is therefore determined by physical laws. Subsequently, the universe is a closed, interlocked system of cause and effect, which precludes freewill on the grounds that all phenomena are casually determined.

A counter to this is the ''freedom'' allowed in the apparently random behavior of quantum particles (QP). QPs behave according to a probabilistic framework. As the result of a coin flip can only be guessed at so is the loose framework governing the smallest pieces of matter. In general terms, there is a multitude of possible accelerations and locations that a QP ''chooses'' from seemingly independent of any physical cause/law.

So this is my question: is the behavior of QPs supernatural if they act free of material causes? And, what causes the QP to choose the way it does and, indeed, what causes it to choose at all? If that cannot be explained then the universe is not closed and there a supernatural ''back door'' to the physical universe. Is the universe a closed material system or not?

In my coin flipping example the act of picking up the coin and flipping it was the physical cause that forces it to ''choose'' a side and determines which side is ''chosen.'' If there is nothing that forces how a QP chooses (or to choose at all) then materialism has hit a casual and epistemological dead-end.

So, I see a crossroads for materialism in light of quantum mechanics:

1.) Material causes do not determine the behavior of QPs, everything is not trapped in causality and therefore freewill is possible but supernatural so that materialism's premise falls apart.

2.) Or, ｔhe behavior of QPs will be found to have a material cause but, once again, the universe would then be a deterministic cause and effect machine deviod of freewill.

Either everything in the universe is locked in a closed casual system or it is not, materialists cannot have it both ways. As iｔ stands, quantum mechanics should serve as the catalyst for materialism to re-examine its premise if it can continue to claim that science serves as the basis of its ideology.

*Note: Here's the rough draft of the original post:

Before quantum mechanics (QM), according to the materialistic worldview the universe could be seen as a rigid, deterministic machine wherein everything was part of an interlocked system. In this view, the fundamental physical laws govern everything in the universe and, as human beings with material bodies within that interlocked system, we too would then necessarily be governed by those fundamental physical laws. It seemed that the big bang set it all off and the rest of existence would be like a ball falling down the stairs. Therefore, all events, even mental events (i.e. thoughts), would have had to be arrived at or "pre-determined"; for example, me writing this post (and my belief in Christianity) would have been as unavoidable as an apple falling to the ground, and thus leaving no room for free agents within that interlocked system. Or, in other words, no free will.

However, QM gave a little breathing room for materialists. It stated that all building blocks of particles did not obey strict fundamental laws but that they acted within a framework of probable behaviors. In other words, a sub-particle could either go here or there at this or that speed, or any where or speed in between, seemingly on its on accord. Just as the result of flipping a coin is incalculable and only guessed at based on probability, so is the apparently random behavior of a sub-particle determined by what will only probably happen. But, because particles are made up of many building blocks, the law of averages applies and so particles only seem to obey fundamental physical laws because, in the long run, "the house always wins." So, what do the materialists leave us with? a physical world that is now not a deterministic physical machine but a fluid system steered by randomly swerving sub-particles. However, that does not seem to solve the problem of free will and indeed we begin to see how materialism is self-refuting. Materialism posits that nothing exists except matter and all things can then be explained by material causes. In other words, nothing can escape the law of cause and effect therefore causality can explain everything.

But we see in QM a cross roads where materialism wants to have it both ways. They want to say that all things can be determined by cause and effect but make allowances for sub-particles. In other words, materialism, when faced with something that doesn't seem to be able to be explained by cause and effect they don't redefine their premise based on evidence as sound science should do. Science, it would seem, has its own beliefs. Consider what materialists have offered us with QM. The conclusion is that sub-particles act randomly because their behavior is random. But that assertion is circular. You cannot logically explain an effect with an effect. I did not get sick because I got sick. If materialism is to stand it must come up with a cause to explain the effect called random behavior. Consider the coin flipping example, the coin did not get up and choose to flip and choose to land on a certain side. A person picked it up, flipped it (the cause) and its subsequent fall determined which side it would land on (the effect). But with QM we see that the observed effect (that the behavior of sub-particles is random) is also asserted as the cause. There is nothing that causes the sub-particles to choose a particular behavior.

So, as QM stands, materialism appears to have ended with an uncaused effect and thus found its own limitation. However, although QM might prove daunting now I assume that science might one day dig deeper and find a cause for the seemingly random behavior of sub-particles. But, to what end? I see that for materialism to be true there must be infinite regress, or in other words, an infinite chain of cause and effect, and if that is so then causality is again the deterministic law for everything in the universe and the existence of free will is again problematic. Also, even if the QM problem is solved, materialism has shown that instead of redefining its premise and allowing for existence of things outside of causality it will choose false logic and conclude that things just happen.

As we have seen with QM, even if an end of the chain of casuality is observed materialism, based on its dogma, will ignore the observation and assume that there is a longer chain. Materialism has precluded the existence of an uncaused cause. Furthermore, without an Intelligence behind that causality then that chain is inherently a blind, unthinking system. So, how then can that nonsensical chain of events give rise to reasoning minds? Indeed, if true, how can that unguided chain of events steered only by fundamental physical laws give rise to create materialists to observe that chain of events? I would then have to assume that inherent in the laws themselves there is the potential to create beings that can observe those laws, and that starts to sound a lot like an Intelligence.

Thus, either materialism has met its limitations in QM and a new kind of explanation of things is necessary and free will is possible. Or, materialism has not met its limitations in QM and will uncover the cause for the random behavior of sub-particles and thus we again encounter the problem of free will. And our minds, and everything therein, our thoughts, our beliefs, our feelings, are not our own but are only links in one big, blind casual chain with no beginning and no end.