Quantum Mechanics Isn't Spiritual

I cannot stand it when people invoke Quantum Mechanics in the context of spirituality. Why? Because it’s stupid, and it shows that they don’t understand it at all.

Quantum mechanics isn’t spiritual. Why do I say that?



That’s why.

In case you’re unfamiliar, that’s the Schroedinger Equation, which is at the heart of quantum mechanics. Any waveform satisfies that equations, and from the waveform you can, in principle, determine the probability of the particle’s behavior.

Wow, second order partial differential equations, I feel such intense spirituality I might just break down and give up this whole materialism thing.

Even at the popular level, only someone with a highly distorted “understanding” (if you can call it that) of QM could possibly derive anything spiritual out of it. I suppose it would be understandable if the entirety of your knowledge came from What the Bleep do we Know?, which is widely regarded as the stupidest misinterpretation of QM ever.

Yes, QM is very weird. But it’s just equations that describe how particles behave in certain situations. It’s no more spiritual or special than Newton’s Laws or the equations of Special Relativity, or any mathematical construct. They may be beautiful in the sense that the contain vast amounts of information in such simple forms, and they have dramatic consequences for our understanding of the world, but they’re not spiritual. That’s just silly.