Dr. Quantum “Proves” Existence of God!

“So what we have is a high interest and a lot of misinformation floating around,” warned Barbara Strauch, Science and Health Editor at The Times, who died recently. “And we have fewer and fewer places that provide real information to a general audience that is understandable, at least by those of us who do not yet have our doctorates in astrophysics. The disconnect is what we should all be worried about.” The most dangerous promoters of misinformation are those who package it in scientific wrappings. Fred Alan Wolf received his Ph.D. in physics from UCLA.  After teaching at San Diego State College – now San Diego State University – for several years, he left the academia and decided to spend his time writing popular books on the connection between quantum physics and spirituality, the Yoga of time travel, alchemy of science and spirit, the unity of psyche and physics, shamanism and physics, and the physics of mind-body and health. He has also appeared and reappeared on the Discovery Channel and PBS. He calls himself Dr. Quantum, insinuating an expertise in a field in which hundreds of brilliant physicists, including many Nobel Laureates, from premier universities and research institutes are actively participating. If a listener is unfamiliar with the Chinese language, an impersonator can draw some nonsensical lines slightly resembling Chinese characters, utter some nonsensical words remotely sounding like Chinese, and convince the listener that he/she is reading Chinese poetry from a text. On Wolf’s website are some links to certain articles claiming to affiliate quantum field theory with spirituality. One such article has the catchy title Is the Mind of God Found in Quantum Field Theory? The first thing that catches the eye in the article is a long complicated equation – written no doubt to impress the readers, most of whom are as hopelessly unfamiliar with theoretical physics as the listener of the impersonator above was with Chinese – reminding its readers of the genuine equations they encountered in the books they studied in high school, or browsed in a library.

This is one of the dirtiest tricks a promoter of woo can use to fool his/her readers!

Wolf is telling his readers “Remember how impressed you were by all those equations that you did not understand, but knew that they contained a lot of valuable scientifically proven information? Well, here is another such equation that I have come up with. Even though you don’t understand it, believe it, and have faith in its validity just as you did with the other equations.”

The equation is taken from a typical quantum field theory book, but slightly modified by Wolf to incorporate nonexistent superluminal particles called tachyons. Of these tachyons Wolf says “I speculate that mind/soul exists as a field embedding itself in space time that communicates with ordinary matter through the intermediary of physical imaginary-mass objects – tachyons. … I speculate that this mind field may be an information field – the tachyonic quantum field – possibly what the ancients called the Akashic record.” The two sentences above start with the word “speculate;” a word which gives the “speculator” the freedom to throw in any arbitrary notion. The quote reads equally well if one replaces “mind/soul” with happiness, anger, desire, wealth, war, peace, politics, or any other word one can come up with. Since they are all speculations, they all lead to equally wrong conclusions! What about tachyons? What exactly are they? The theory of relativity does not allow any observable particle to go faster than light. This theory has been tested on innumerable occasions ever since it was proposed by Einstein and others in 1905.

In fact, every time you use your GPS, you are testing the validity of relativity.

In the 1960’s a few physicists speculated some particles that would go faster than light, and they called these particles tachyons. No mainstream physicists took the idea seriously, and the idea has not left the stage of speculation! In fact, real physicists have had to abandon theories which predicted the existence of tachyons. Here is what three prominent string theorists have to say about tachyons:  “In 1974, such dreams were brought down to earth by the fact that even the so-called ‘consistent’ dual models of that day had at least one fault: they all predicted a tachyon.” ¹ So, as far as real physics is concerned, tachyon is a curse to be avoided.

Revolutionary claims – such as Wolf’s finding the mind of God in quantum field theory – demand comparison with revolutionary achievements of the past. When groundbreaking physicists introduce an equation in an article, they, at a minimum, find some specific solution for it, and that solution usually contains a significant prediction. For example, when Maxwell introduced the equations that now bear his name in 1865, he solved them for a specific situation and predicted the existence of electromagnetic waves, which travel at the speed of light. When Einstein wrote down his famous equation in a 1916 paper on the general theory of relativity, he partially solved it and, among other things, predicted the bending of light in strong gravitational fields. When Dirac introduced his equation in 1928, he solved it for a specific case, and predicted the existence of antimatter.

Wolf does nothing but babble on about the various symbols of his equation. Then, at the end of his article, he expatiates on his speculative hypotheses about mind and soul and Akasha, in complete detachment from the equation with which he began his article!