Divine action in a quantum world

A friend shared this with me:

http://www.relocatingtoelfland.com/2012/05/16/divine-action-in-a-quantum-world/

I’ll make three brief observations:

i) The correct interpretation of quantum mechanics remains very diverse and controversial.

ii) Even if we interpret quantum mechanics realistically (whatever that amounts to), it wouldn’t mean that quantum events are uncaused and/or indeterminate in relation to God. Rather, this has reference to second effects. The internal dynamics of the world. How mundane events influence, affect, or interact with other mundane events.

iii) Wolfgang Pauli draws an intriguing distinction:

We have seen that the emergence of this conception in physics was from the outset associated with a freer treatment of the idea of cause. It will be explained later that the idea of causality, critcised earlier from the empirical standpoint by D. Hume, has undergone a further essential generalisation in quantum mechanics…Instead of “causal” the physicist prefers to say deterministic. By this he means a theory in which the state of a system at all other times, earlier and later, follows mathematically from the state at a given time. W. Pauli, Writings on Physics and Philosophy (Springer-Verlag 1994), 130-131.

On this view, quantum events could be uncaused, yet still be determinate (thus defined). And that’s at the level of mundane factors–even before we take divine agency (e.g. predestination, providence, miracle) into account.