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If the universe is fundamentally indeterministic, and by Bell’s theorem, some hidden variable theories cannot exist, does this also mean that an omniscient god cannot exist?

If one cannot predict where a certain photon will land for example despite knowing everything that there is to know about prior conditions, does this also mean that god cannot?

And if god can, then presumably He would be able to do this through some mechanism or through some special power. But if that power exists, wouldn’t this contradict indeterminacy?

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  • Bell’s theorem does not rule out hidden variable theories, Bohmian mechanics is one and equivalent to standard QM. Only local non-contextual theories are ruled out, and God should hardly be so constrained. And if God's omniscience is interpreted as a timeless act of comprehension a la Boethius and Aquinas then determinism/indeterminism is altogether irrelevant since time stamps do not attach to God's knowledge, see SEP.
    – Conifold
    Commented Aug 23, 2023 at 23:31
  • How does one have knowledge of something “timelessly”? One needs to show that one’s statement is meaningful or coherent before taking a position on anything. If one can’t, it an arguably be dismissed. Be right back, I’m about to have sex timelessly.
    – user62907
    Commented Aug 24, 2023 at 0:38
  • @thinkingman luckily, in terms of the physics-flavored hypothesis of 4-dimensionalism, we can say that God's perception of our time is like the difference between 2D and 3D perception: since a 3D perceiver can see all sides of a 2D shape "at once," a 2D time perceiver can perceive whole lines of time "at once." Or then God, if outside a 4D-spacetime, can see all the time-slices "at once." For God, all quantum observations would have "already" happened, so there is no sense of a "before God measured..." but God is supposed to "have measured" everything.
    – Kristian Berry
    Commented Aug 24, 2023 at 4:10
  • It is far from clear to me what it means to say that the universe is "indeterministic". I expect that this word is very difficult or impossible to define clearly.
    – Daniel Asimov
    Commented Aug 24, 2023 at 5:39
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    “Kekeriri soisiejrr jriendjdjrjrjbrir” is also not a self contradictory statement. Rather, it is meaningless. I fail to see how a meaningless statement has any more value than a meaningful, self contradictory one. Given this, one must show that it is meaningful to talk about seeing things “all at once” in time before asserting it. The analogy with dimensions doesn’t provide demonstration of meaning
    – user62907
    Commented Aug 24, 2023 at 10:59

2 Answers 2

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TL/DR: it depends how one defines "omniscient".

The properties of the tri-omni God (omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent) have given rise to many paradoxes that have been addressed by theologians and apologists. OP's problem is akin to the famous "Can God create a rock so big He can't lift it ?" paradox about God's omnipotence. The classical response is to redefine "omnipotent" as "can do everything that is logically possible".

The same response can be applied to OP's "can God know the result of a single quantic experiment?" and has indeed been applied to similar questions like the problem of free will: "if we have free will how can God know what we are going to do ?". The answer would be "God knows everything that is logically possible to know", and if one insists that God must know things that are impossible to known then the objection formally makes no sense and is not receivable as an argument.

If we go this way, in the case of physics God might not know the result of a singular quantic experiment but can make predictions at the macro level, in the same way we do (except God knows the exact model to apply and the initial conditions with perfect precision). In the same way, God would be able to know our state of mind better than us but be unable to know our next decision because we have free will. If we consider that even I, mere human, can predict with very high certainty my kid is not going to answer "no" if i say "do you want to have cake?", God who knows everything there is to know about psychology and our state of mind at any time could still be able to make very accurate predictions of our behavior without violating free will.

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  • This answer is at odds with the Free Will theorem; any free will of humans is transferable to certain particles by way of certain experiments, and this can be extrapolated to defeat any predictions made by God. Flip a quantum coin with free will and eat cake with 50% probability; God can't predict the outcome.
    – Corbin
    Commented Jan 31 at 19:52
  • @Corbin Not sure I understand what you mean but you seem confused. That's actually what I'm saying: even if God can't predict our actions one simply has to redefine omniscience to keep claiming God is omniscient.
    – armand
    Commented Feb 1 at 1:13
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I think this assumes that God is 'within' the universe. The processes that determine things we consider to be truly random could lie outside of the universe, only visible to God.

In the same way that people inside a computer simulation might see what is really a PRNG to be completely unpredictable, the programmers of the simulation would understand that they are generated in a deterministically.

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  • Bell's theorem does not allow for any determined assignment of hidden variables controlling spin; PRNGs are not a good analogy because they are discrete, deterministic, and reproducible.
    – Corbin
    Commented Jan 31 at 19:54
  • Which is why I chose that example - perhaps I'm misunderstanding the scope of Bell's theorem but I am attempting to make the point that from our frame of reference a deterministic event can appear truly random/without cause in our limited perception (confines of the simulation in the analogy).
    – Doot
    Commented Feb 1 at 0:15

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