Physicist (and Catholic) Stephen M. Barr takes on the question, "Does Quantum Physics Make it Easier to Believe in God?" He writes:
Not
in any direct way. That is, it doesn’t provide an argument for the
existence of God. But it does so indirectly, by providing an argument
against the philosophy called materialism (or “physicalism”), which is
the main intellectual opponent of belief in God in today’s world.
Materialism is an atheistic philosophy
that says that all of reality is reducible to matter and its
interactions. It has gained ground because many people think that it’s
supported by science. They think that physics has shown the material
world to be a closed system of cause and effect, sealed off from the
influence of any non-physical realities --- if any there be. Since our
minds and thoughts obviously do affect the physical world, it would
follow that they are themselves merely physical phenomena. No room for a
spiritual soul or free will: for materialists we are just “machines
made of meat.”
Quantum mechanics, however, throws a monkey wrench into this simple mechanical view of things. No less a figure than Eugene Wigner,
a Nobel Prize winner in physics, claimed that materialism --- at least
with regard to the human mind --- is not “logically consistent with
present quantum mechanics.” And on the basis of quantum mechanics, Sir
Rudolf Peierls, another great 20th-century physicist, said, “the premise
that you can describe in terms of physics the whole function of a
human being ... including [his] knowledge, and [his] consciousness, is
untenable. There is still something missing.”
How, one might ask, can quantum
mechanics have anything to say about the human mind? Isn’t it about
things that can be physically measured, such as particles and forces?
It is; but while minds cannot be measured, it is ultimately minds that
do the measuring. And that, as we shall see, is a fact that cannot be
ignored in trying to make sense of quantum mechanics. If one claims
that it is possible (in principle) to give a complete physical
description of what goes on during a measurement --- including the mind
of the person who is doing the measuring --- one is led into severe
difficulties. This was pointed out in the 1930s by the great
mathematician John von Neumann. Though I cannot go into technicalities
in an essay such as this, I will try to sketch the argument.
Read his entire essay on the Big Questions Online site. On a related note, see Dr. Barr's Ignatius Insight interview with Mark Brumley about the "mythological conflict between faith and science".