God, Man and Physics

Discovery Institute ^ | 18 February 2002 | David Berlinski

[Cameron]

Originally published in The Weekly Standard, February 18, 2002

[_Jim]

For some, even on this board, it's just "Man and Physics".

[Southack]

God's existence may not be "required" for quantum mechanics, but for complex mathematical device programming, that's another matter altogether.

All life on Earth is formed via DNA. DNA is comprised of various parings of four root elements: A, C, G, and T components. In math, that's represented as A=0, C=1, G=2, and T=3. 0, 1, 2, 3. That's a mathematical Base 4 system.

These Base-4 groups form the genetic programming of every life form on Earth, wrapped in a physical Double-Helix structure/format. The Base-4 groups are most frequently seen in sub-groups (or sub-programs or sub-routines) known as genes.

These genes are often seen being reused, usually verbatim, in multiple species.

We see such similar programming code re-use in Man-made languages/programs, except that at its most basic point, Man's programming is Base-2 (AKA "binary"), an order of magnitude lower than the Base-4 coding seen in DNA.

The concept that programming an order of magnitude greater than Man's best software - could appear randomly (i.e., without the aid of an Intelligent Designer), is even more ludicrous than the notion that MicroSoft Windows, Linux, and AutoCad would spontaneously form from pure white noise if you left your computer on for several million years.

Quantum mechanics may or may not need a God to exist, but DNA coding was certainly done by someone smarter than we are today.

[Southack]

#3 is for you, too.

[Joe Brower]

Very cool and enjoyable essay. It has always interested me that science, for all it's amazing feats, can not and does not even begin to explain the most fundamental questions underlying our existence. Questions like:

"Why are we here?"

"Where are we going?"

"How long have we got?"

Weinberg stated when he recieved his 1978 Nobel prize in physics that "The more we discover about the universe, the more it becomes pointless and meaningless". Sounds like he's trying hard to convince himself.

Regarding the "Goldilocks Universe", Steven Hawking joked about "the anthropomorphic principle of physics", to wit: "Why is the universe exactly the way it is? Because if it was not, we wouldn't be here to ask the question".

The mathematics of western science is powerful and vast, but, as Heins Pagels noted in "The Cosmic Code", all math gives us is descriptions of phenomena, not the phenomena itself. For example, the planets revolve around the sun according to paths described by Newton's differential equations. But the planets are no more solving math equations than they are hanging from strings held by some celestial hand. They are simply moving.

One irony to all of this is that, when and if mankind does finally find God, it will be science, not religion, that will find him.

Just my view from the saddle...

[BibChr]

#3 is for you, too.

Uh... thanks. Ping me again when you put up the Veggie Tales version, would you? (c8

Dan

[ableChair]

As a gravitational physicist, I've heard rants like this quite a bit and they generally represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what is currently 'known'. Many well known physicists have overlooked the finer details and depth of what we have already established, not because they are dim-witted, but because the concepts involved stretch the capacities of human cognition to it's breaking point. It is only after many years that we even begin to fully understand the Great Theories postulated and largely proven decades before.

One example of this relates directly to the notion of a God, and what science can say about it. Few people realize that the scientific method itself has already recursively demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that it is insufficient for a complete understanding of Nature. But this is only unambiguously understood when one understands the full implications of Quantum Field Theory, especially what is known as Objective State Vector Reduction (R. Penrose) and the fact that some quantum coherent states evolve into classical systems in a matter that is non-algorithmic and inherently unpredicatable. Let's be clear: this means that there are Natural processes, clearly identified by the scientific method (they DO occur naturally), that can yield outcomes that cannot, in principle, be predicted in advance. This defeats the notion of scientific objectivism and predictability entirely. It matters not what technology you possess, what great minds you apply, or how lucky you get, the very Laws of Nature forbid such predictability.

This is the very essence of what we regard as 'mind', and 'consciousness'; that is, it possesses the quality of being non-deterministic, at least partly. Where does the 'decision' for a truly 'random' (as humans measure it) come from. It isn't human, as it occurs in Nature. Are these shadows of the mind of God? There has never been a more powerful, damning and thorough argument for the existence of a God than this, yet only in the last couple of years have some of the brightest physicists begun to catch on to this revelation and fully appreciate it's implications. It was only because I've been working directly on the unification issue that I became aware of this profound fact about non-deterministic behavior, and studied it carefully. Most mathematical physicists don't bother with unification: it's too damn hard. But some of us fools keep pressing. But for me, at least, it's about the journey, not necessarily reaching the destination.

In fact, it is amazing how few physicists, or people for that matter, even understand what it means to state a principled truth vs. a practiced truth, yet confusion continues, even in the highest levels of academia. Something weird is going on in the universe and we don't fully understand what it is yet. QFT suggests we probably never will. Any complete theory of Nature will be, in some sense, incomplete, inasmuch as it will necessarily restrict it's scope to those Natural phenomenon that are principally predictable. It's not a huge loss, it could explain the VAST majority of all Natural processes humans are capable of observing, but it leaves just one titillating scintilla of weirdness for which the puny minds of man can only ponder.

[Physicist]

My example of fine tuning: to at least ten significant digits, every person's legs are exactly as long as they need to be to reach the ground. That's too close a match to have been a random coincidence, therefore our legs must have been intelligently designed.

[Stultis]

But this is only unambiguously understood when one understands the full implications of Quantum Field Theory, especially what is known as Objective State Vector Reduction (R. Penrose) and the fact that some quantum coherent states evolve into classical systems in a matter that is non-algorithmic and inherently unpredicatable. Let's be clear: this means that there are Natural processes, clearly identified by the scientific method (they DO occur naturally), that can yield outcomes that cannot, in principle, be predicted in advance. This defeats the notion of scientific objectivism and predictability entirely. It matters not what technology you possess, what great minds you apply, or how lucky you get, the very Laws of Nature forbid such predictability.

This is the very essence of what we regard as 'mind', and 'consciousness'; that is, it possesses the quality of being non-deterministic, at least partly. Where does the 'decision' for a truly 'random' (as humans measure it) come from. It isn't human, as it occurs in Nature. Are these shadows of the mind of God?

I kinda doubt you'll get many of the Discovery Institute types following you down this road. They may not be hard core fundies like your classical "creation scientists," but I suspect they are still way too theologically conservative to cozy up to the idea of a God "in process" (and therefore not absolutely omnipotent or omniscent) suggested by your musings.

I'm with you, though. I don't understand these physical theories, but have long believed on other grounds that it is not possible for God to be both a conscious persona AND absolutely omniscient and omnipotent, or at least that the idea of such a Diety is severely incoherent. God is the supreme being, and the source of all being, but if conscious and personal then He is capable of learning, of being suprised, of experiencing novelty, etc. In some sense God is evolving.

Indeed I find the notion of "panentheism" (the world is in God) to be the most logically consistent and plausible formulation of theism. Contrary to both classical theism, which holds that the world is totally noncoincident with God, and pantheism, which holds that the world is God, panenthiesm holds that the creaturely universe is part of (but not all of) God. On this view the evolution of the universe is part of the evolution of God Himself, and its laws may indeed be viewed as "shadows of the mind of God".

It may also be, though, that God is not completely conscious of the laws of nature, somewhat as we are not conscious of the processes governing the operation of our own human bodies. It may be that God discovers these laws by a process of "introspection," so that in granting being to universes (I suspect ours is only one of many that have, will or do exist) God is eternally investigating the possibilities of being.

[Senator Pardek]

Who cares about any of this - I'm not "elected".

[Stultis]

My example of fine tuning: to at least ten significant digits, every person's legs are exactly as long as they need to be to reach the ground. That's too close a match to have been a random coincidence, therefore our legs must have been intelligently designed.

B-b-but I've seen faith healers lengthening peoples' legs, onstage! Does this mean that God goofs up sometimes and sends us guys with big hair and shiny suits to fix the mistakes???

[Aurelius]

BUMP

[onedoug]

I'll try not to sin so much.

[Vercingetorix]

"...every person's legs are exactly as long as they need to be to reach the ground." -- Physicist

Exactly. Whenever my five year old complains that he is not tall enough, I remind him that if he was any taller his legs wouldn't reach all the way to the ground.

[Vercingetorix]

"The concept that programming an order of magnitude greater than Man's best software - could appear randomly (i.e., without the aid of an Intelligent Designer), is even more ludicrous than the notion that MicroSoft Windows, Linux, and AutoCad would spontaneously form from pure white noise if you left your computer on for several million years." -- Southack

Add selection (i.e., users with needs and purposes who interact with the computer) and you will get Windows etc. in just a few short years. The codes evolved as did the languages and the hardware because there were strong selection pressures to increase computing power and complexity.

The Base-4 coding you refer to is misleading. DNA codons consists of four nucleotide bases taken three at a time. This gives 64 possible codons. There are 21 natural amino acids so the code is redundant.

DNA is a linear polymer. The sequence is clearly altered randomly in nature in a great variety of ways -- inversions, translocations, base pair substitutions, deletions, etc. DNA is even shared among widely different species by viral transduction. Bacteria typically acquire resistance to antibiotics through plasmid transfer from unrelated species. All of these phenomena prove that random change is inevitable on a vast scale and that Intelligent Design is an impossibility unless you want to allow that the Hidden Designer molds life by a process that looks exactly like natural selection.

[Southack]

"Add selection (i.e., users with needs and purposes who interact with the computer) and you will get Windows etc. in just a few short years."

Not if there are no programmers. Users can interact all day long for thousands of years, but in a world devoid of programmers, you won't get more sophisticated programs. Likewise, DNA can be altered randomly for thousands of years and still not produce a more sophisticated gene. Programming requires design.

"DNA is a linear polymer. The sequence is clearly altered randomly in nature in a great variety of ways -- inversions, translocations, base pair substitutions, deletions, etc."

DNA is altered randomly just as copying a program over and over will randomly alter programming code eventually, which is to say that the alterations are always negative and usually destructive of the original designed program.

In no way, shape, or form can you copy an old DOS program enough times for random alterations to turn the offspring programs into Windows NT programs.

[Consort]

"DNA is a linear polymer. The sequence is clearly altered randomly in nature in a great variety of ways -- inversions, translocations, base pair substitutions, deletions, etc."

...and when all the possible permutations are used up, DNA may no longer replicate. Will have reached our final generation. I suppose that DNA is as finite as anything else.

[Vercingetorix]

"In no way, shape, or form can you copy an old DOS program enough times for random alterations to turn the offspring programs into Windows NT programs." -- Southack

You don't understand the power of selection. Take a few billion bacteria descended from a single genetically defined progenitor and treat them with a toxin or withold a vital nutrient and you will likely obtain colonies descended from single mutant individuals that can deal with the toxin or synthesize their own previously required nutrient. The genetic change occurred randomly in the large population but the selection pressure (i.e., toxin or lack of nutrient) caused the mutant strains to replace entirely the ancestral type.

You also need to think differently about your computer program example. Computer codes like DOS and Windows are abstract instruction sets and, unlike the genetic code where every sequence of three bases has potential meaning, this will not be true of computer codes. Additionally, nonsense sequences in the genome are effectively ignored or serve a merely structural function. The first time a computer command mutates it comes to a dead stop and has to be fixed by the programmer. The programmer may fix it by restoring the original command or he may replace that command with a new one he took from a different place in that program or from a different program entirely.

The programmer is merely the agent of selection. He is presumably motivated by a desire to make the program more robust or to do more things faster and more easily but he must always keep the program working. He is not an omnipotent designer but must work with what he has learned and may use trial and error approaches extensively at least until the code has evolved to the point where accummulated conventions prohibit innovations to the basic program. At that point modular programming predominates with whole sections of code being adapted for use with existing programs (i.e., add-ins). As the constraints of speed, memory, user interface, and needs change the programs will change too. Not to mention the fact that poorly written codes are abandoned in favor of better ones due to selection in the marketplace. Randomness and selection exist in the process and it matters not at all that humans are making the selections. All that is necessary for you to do is recognize that selection occurs in nature.

[Southack]

"You also need to think differently about your computer program example. Computer codes like DOS and Windows are abstract instruction sets and, unlike the genetic code where every sequence of three bases has potential meaning, this will not be true of computer codes."

Your claim above is entirely false. Computer instructions are always broken down to their most basic instruction sets (machine code in Binary / Base-2), either by other software or by the CPU itself internally. The only abstract part of computer codes is that programmers usually prefer to view and work with abstract instructions rather than in Binary code. At the Binary (Base-2) level, every possible machine code has a specific meaning. This is identical to DNA codons, except that DNA is broken down to a Base-4 level.

" Additionally, nonsense sequences in the genome are effectively ignored or serve a merely structural function. The first time a computer command mutates it comes to a dead stop and has to be fixed by the programmer."

Again, your claim about computer code is completely erroneous. A computer command can mutate into another computer command and cause unintended behavior, but that does NOT mean that the program will immediately stop all execution.

[Southack]

"The programmer is merely the agent of selection."

Nonsense. The programmer is the intelligent designer, not an unaided, random, "natural" selector. The programmer is to programs what God is to Life.