God in the Equations
God said in Romans 1:18-20 that nature will testify of His existence.
The approxmations for the known laws of physics are summarized here:
Mechanics (Hamilton's Equations)
Electro-Dynamics (Maxwell's Equations)
Statistical Mechanics (Boltzman's Equations)
Quantum Mechanics (Schrodinger's Equations)
Relativitistic Mechanics (Einstein's Equations)
The most important equation for considerations of Intelligent Design is Schrodinger's Equation.
The Schrodinger Equation (with the Heisenberg Equation) is:
Quantum Mechanics (Schrodinger's Equations)
The first part is the Schrodinger equation, the second equation is the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle. The two combine to describe quantum mechanics. Inherent in the equations is the presumption that some "observer" affects the physical system in question.
page 458 Cosomological Anthropic Principle:In classical physics Man seemed entirely superflous to the universe...However, his role in the Cosmos appears greatly enhanced in quantum mechanics....Man, in his capacity as the observer of an experiment, is an essential and irreducible feature of physics.
Man (an observer) can influence the past and physics. That's right the future affects the past. This has been empirically verified with Prophesying Particle Experiments.
The best (and I say that relatively speaking) description of the experimental details is:
Wheeler's Classic Delay Choice ExperimentThe outrageous conclusion is that the experiment can be carried out at the astrophysical level.
John Horgan writes:To underscore the weirdness of this effect, Wheeler points out that astronomers could perform a delayed-choice experiment on light from quasars, extremely bright, mysterious objects found near the edges of the universe. In place of a beam splitter and mirrors the experiment requires a gravitational lens, a galaxy or other massive object that splits the light from a quasar and refocuses it in the direction of a distant observer, creating two or more images of the quasar.
Psychic Photons
The astronomers choice of how to observe photons from the quasar here in the present apparently determines whether each photon took both paths or just one path around the gravitational lens-billions of years ago. As they approached the galactic beam splitter the photons must have had something like a premonition telling them how to behave in order to satisfy a choice to be made by unborn beings on a still nonexistent planet.The fallacy giving rise to such speculations,Wheeler explains, is the assumption that a photon had some physical form before the astronomer observed it. Either it was a wave or a particle; either it went both ways around the quasar or only one way. Actually Wheeler says quantum phenomena are neither waves nor particles but are intrinsically undefined until the moment they are measured. In a sense the British philosopher Bishop Berkeley was right when he asserted two centuries ago that "to be is to be perceived"
Quantum Computer technology would not be possible without these handy but strange facts.
Now, it is true human observers can affect things like spin aspects of an atomic system. But is it reasonable that ALL laws of physics are affected by an observer. The answer is YES.
Cosmological Anthropic Principle page 470:The "Copenhagen interpretation" was mentioned. A better, more correct interpretation, I believe is John Cramer's Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. However, with some reworking, Barrow and Tipler's proof yield a comparable outcome even under the Transactional Interpretaion.But with the recent success of the unified gauge theory of the weak and electromagnetic interaction in which the electron mass is dependent on the details of symmetry breaking which apparently occurred in the early universe, there is no reason why we should not regard all electron properties as contingent in principle on some sort of observation.
Wheeler points out that according to the Copenhagen interpretation, we can regard some restricted properties of distant galaxies, which we now see as they were billions of years ago, as brought into existence now. Perhaps all properties -- and hence the entire Universe is brought into existence by observations made at some point in time by conscious beings.
Taking the Schrodinger equation to the cosmological level, where we represent the entire cosmos by a wave function, John Barrow derived an equation for the cosmos.
The "Psi" on the left hand side of the equation represents the entire cosmos. It is the Schrodinger equation taken all the way to include every phenomenon in the physical universe. The Schrodinger equation implies an that an Observer must exist outside of the system in question (the entire Cosmos), then reasonable statements of the attributes of such an Ultimate Observer would be:
1. Conscious
2. Intelligent
3. Non-Material
4. All Powerful
5. All Knowing
6. Eternal
#1,2,3 are accounted for by von-Neuman regress problem as resolved by Wigner. See PHILOSOPHY OF PHYSICS
#4 is accounted for by the fact that the cosmos being moved by such a Being would require the Being to be all powerful with respect to the cosmos. We can measure characteristics of the elctron because we are more powerful than it. Likewise the Intelligent Designer must be more powerful than the cosmos to be able to "measure" it (or collapse the wave function as they say).
#5 is accounted for because the observation made to actualize the cosmos must involve observing everything.
#6 is reasonable given the fact that if He is not Eternal, the teleology toward Him will break down. Remember the future affects the past in Quantum Mechanics. The future therefore must exist forever for the present and past to exist. This is an extension of the consequences deduced from the Wheeler Delayed-Choice, Prophesying Particle Experiments.
Thus I showed that the laws of Physics point to God. I echo the comments of renowned Physcist Frank Tipler who says in his essay on Peer Review
More than this, quantum mechanics is actually teleological, though physicists don’t use this loaded word (we call it “unitarity” instead of “teleology”). That is, quantum mechanics says that it is completely correct to say that the universe’s evolution is determined not by how it started in the Big Bang, but by the final state of the universe. Every stage of universal history, including every stage of biological and human history, is determined by the ultimate goal of the universe. And if I am correct that the universal final state is indeed God, then every stage of universal history, in particular every mutation that has ever occurred, or ever will occur in any living being, is determined by the action of God.Tipler also writes from the opening of Physics of Immortality:
It is quite rare in this day and age to come across a book proclaiming the unification of science and religion. It is unique to find a book asserting, as I shall in the body of this book, that theology is a branch of physics, that physicists can infer by calculation the existence of God and the likelihood of the resurrection of the dead to eternal life in exactly the same way as physicists calculate the properties of the electron. One naturally wonders if I am serious.We don't not endorse all Tipler's works, but they have many good points worth adopting and keeping. Some of his work would be considered heretical by orthodox Christians, but his science is sound for the most part.I am quite serious. But I am as surprised as the reader. When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straight-forward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics.
References:
1. Cosmological Anthropic Principle by John Barrow and Frank Tipler, page 471. Oxford University Press, 1986.For a more detailed discussion with links to contrary views, go to
Scientific Necessity of God's Existence
