Physics Has No Place For Religion, But Does It Have A Place For God?

[Aethelwulf]

Physics has no Place for Religion,

But Does it Have a Place for God?

 

Part One

 

Many people today in a science-obsessed world often come to tackle what it means to speak about God and what it usually entails; today, the worship of a God or gods usually envokes the concept of a religion ... but what is religion? Some people today equate God and religion as synonymous concepts... but should people think this way?

 

The answer is that the definition of religion covers a few things, we shall quickly go through some of these. A religion is an organized collection beliefs usually held by a large number of people. It is a shared belief system in something supernatural and often divine. It also involves a number of practices which vary from religion to religion.

 

To believe in a God, requires very few of these things. In science, there is no room for the supernatural, nor do we often blindly believe in something. We may require a large number of people (for a consensus) but there won't be any sacred practices.

What is this new system I speak about?

 

Well, first of all, it's not exactly new. The idea that science cannot entertain religion or even a ''personal God'' goes back to Einstein when he struggled to find an appropriate picture for God that did not involve all the usual suspects tied to modern religious folly. He realized that for there to be a God, responsible for the order of things, this God couldn't be interested in the doings of man kind, we are completely insignificant. In Einstein's ver words concerning the subject, he said

 

''The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this. ''

 

And also known for saying

 

''I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. ''

 

Einstein is of course, speaking about the God of the Bible. Rightly, he states it is a product of human weakness. This is true, since God was invented to explain things that humans struggled to. God was there to give comfort to the question of death, life and tribulations which follow. God was a way out of the human darkness which was modern society 2000 years ago. A brutally cold era, with torturous and often blood thirsty crowds of people which back then would seem utterly barbaric to todays standards. Who wouldn't have wanted to jump on the god-train?

 

Of course... no one's god ever came to save them. God isn't personally there for you... certainly no personal Jesus. Einstein, just to make clear on his contentions of God, made it clear

 

''I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fates and actions of human beings. ''

 

This rebuts the idea that science is atheistic in nature; it actually isn't but often people naturally think this way. The reason why is because people refute the religious gods for the wrong reasons: It isn't because scientists surely could not believe that some kind of superintelligence was running the show, it really has to do with the principles of personalizing the god instead. When someone realizes this, God really isn't dead after all.

 

But if the concept of a God can be redeemed, what could possibly be found in science to support that there could be some kind of cosmological order to everything, this same order Einstein has spoken about on a number of occasions?

 

According to the Carl Sagan, Einsteins god has another name: Quantum Physics. He says, that ''if anyone denies Einstein's god, they do not know what they are talking about since no respectable physicist denies the laws of physics.'' Einsteins God in a sense is the order which we call quantum physical laws. Was there anyone... or anything around at the initial stages of the universe which set the laws into motion? This question will take us to a number of idea's which I am going to take the reader through and the result is very amazing, at least to the humble mind.

 

Part Two

 

''It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I also cannot imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere.... Science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behaviour should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death. ''

 

(Einstein "Religion and Science," New York Times Magazine, November 9, 1930)

 

Fred Hoyle believed that in our future horizon exists a supercomputer which was sending messages back through time telling the universe how to behave and act. Fred was a good storyteller and very imaginative but no doubt one of the greatest scientists we have ever had, solving cosmological puzzles which had plauged science for a long time. Some considered him eccentric, others kept an open mind concerning many of his theories. But could there really be signals coming from our future, making things happen today? The answer surprisingly turns out to ''Yes.'' We even have a mathematical foundation which can model the retrocausal reality.

 

Enter the Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics, in this modern interpretation of quantum mechanics, systems are modelled with two waves, one coming from the future and another coming from our past. The wave coming from our future is called the echo wave, the wave from our past is called the offer wave. They both form what are called ''state vectors,'' and something interesting happens when they meet up in the present time. They clash, just like two waves in the sea and they create something physical (this is the moment of what is called the collapse of the wave function).

 

The wave function of quantum mechanics is a statistical wave probability field which governs absolutely everything in the universe. Even we have fields of probability surrounding us which extend as far as the outermost planets of our star system! The probability for instance, of you showing up instantly on the surface of the moon is very very very slim, but the chance for you to quantum tunnel there in an instant is still there. It's just the wavelengths of these fields are so small because we are so large, being macroscopic systems, the effects of quantum mechanics are vanishing. But on the world of the small, things like this happen all the time.

 

The probability field of the Transactional Interpretation is also the wave function spoke about - except with a special condition, it is time-symmetric meaning that it is a two-way barrel with a gun pointing towards the future and a gun pointing towards the path. But if there are wave function coming from our future, wouldn't that mean that the future is happening now?

 

The answer surprisingly is yes, in fact we are often taught in General Relativity that time is an illusion, that in the reality, all events would happen side by side if it had not been for the illusion which is time. In fact, there is no such thing as time when General Relativity is concerned. We get some idea that this is the case when we quantize the General Relativistic equations describing the universe; the result is the timelessness of relativity - the time derivative of the Hamiltonian which describes the universe effectively is zero

 

[math]H|\psi> = 0[/math]

 

On the right handside, it should look like the normal Schrodinger equation, but it doesn't end up this way, instead we are told that this translates as there being no cosmological time. Just to identify what these little symbols are, [math]H[/math] is known as the Hamiltonian, which comprises the total energy of the system. [math]\psi[/math] is the wave function we have just been talking about, the same statistical probability field which governs all of particle physics. The little symbols encasing the wave function [math]|>[/math] is called braket notation and you can just think of it saying we are dealing with vector which will form a state function [math]<\psi>[/math].

 

Time is merely a tool an intelligent recording device uses to order chronological happenings. Time however isn't physical nor is it even treated in quantum mechanics as an observable or even better yet, it has no non-trivial operator. Einstein knew when he formulated his theory that time could be dealt with as a normal feature of the world and was also aware that quantum mechanics didn't have a real Newtonian view of time. Two relevant quotes are

 

''Since there exists in this four dimensional structure [space-time] no longer any sections which represent "now" objectively, the concepts of happening and becoming are indeed not completely suspended, but yet complicated. It appears therefore more natural to think of physical reality as a four dimensional existence, instead of, as hitherto, the evolution of a three dimensional existence.''

 

''... for us physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.''

 

So it is possible then, within the framework of our understanding how quantum mechanics operates that wave of information could be coming from our future and our past which paradoxically are happening right now. But what does this mean of a God? And what about the beginning of the universe, we still haven't tackled if anyone was around at the big bang to ''make it happen?''

 

In physics, we are told that for something to come into existence, something first needs to disturb it's wave function, the process is called observing. This isn't meant to mean something with consciousness however needs to do the observing, it could be anything as trivial as a physical disturbance between two particles at the subatomic level. When their fields become entangled, the wave function collapses and viola! Two particles are drawn out of their previously messy probabilistic parts. Of course, a human being or some other intelligent recording device can also disturb the wave functions of things just by simply looking at it. Question then, is if this is true, who was around during the first stages of the universe to ''bring it into existence.''

 

Avoiding ''something from nothing'' models which do exist in physics, we are going to explore what mechanisms can be responsible for the creation of the universe... but we don't have many which is why some physicists felt forced to investigate something from nothing models, just like Prof. Hawking has. However Hawking has also investigated what are called Top-Bottom models of physics, the idea that the future effects the past just like the Transactional Interpretation! So he is quite aware of the implications of the following question: ''What if the future horizon created the Big Bang? And if it did, what is the future horizon?''

 

The future horizon of the universe will contain all the information about the universe. We have to be working in a closed universe, where there is a specific end expiry date attached to the universe. At some point in our universes history, it will reach a point where it cannot expand any more. The exact reasons for this may vary but isn't important for this particular discussion, only that we may call the end, the Omega Point which is the traditional name given to this hypothetical period. This may be many hundreds of millions of years away so no need to worry.

 

What's interesting is that somehow, spacetime must encode all the information about everything which has ever happened and just like the surface of a black hole, the horizon of our universe will encode all the information about it's past in it's own present. To imagine now, that the universe has had a sufficient amount of evolution, that at the future horizon exists some complicated assembly of information which is processed as an observation in physics. This information suddenly sends the information back through time only moments before the universe crunches itself out of existence. Paradoxically, this information is sent back through time to it's initial stages of existence and it is collapsing the probability fields where there was no God in direct contradiction to all religions. There was no God around in the beginning of the universe according to the theory, God would be sitting on the Horizon of the universe enjoying only the last few moments of existence... Not the kind of vision you would have for a superintelligence.

 

 

We also have to keep in mind, it would mean that God is not all-powerful in the sense usually taught by modern religions. The God we are considering cannot change at will the laws of physics at any time. The laws of physics will be because of the existence of this entity we speak about, it will be responsible for the creation of the initial conditions which where required at the big bang. The God we speak about however, may not even be sentient, it could be, but doesn't have to be. It just needs to be present within the final stages of the universe so that it can make that all important computation about the final stages of the big bang which is called the big crunch.

 

There is no such order of course in the reality of the physics being used here, ultimately without the veil of time, all events would be happening at once. But because the waves of probability will be oscillating through the ''time dimension'' at superluminal speeds, the past and future will be effecting each other in often peculiar ways hard to imagine. The order of events of course are relative when you have a sophisticated recording device.

 

 

Part Three

 

 

Now over the last few years, we have encountered some strange advances in physics. Not only have we shown that this model of reality where waves are moving throughout the ''illusionary boundaries'' of time is possible, but we have also proven recently that the Holographic principle works when you reduce the dimensions of string theory and that the energies are consistent even in a flat spacetime. The retrocausal holographic model of the universe is very much alive, and so this must mean God is alive also. It's just never the kind of God any of us would have instinctively imagined.

 

Recently we also found binary codes which are used in computers, hidden in the mathematics of string theory. I wonder how those will translate to lower dimensions as well and whether it adds evidence that the universe is in some kind of computer generated hologram. The future superintelligence, could very well be some supercomputer just like Hoyle had dreamt about!

Edited December 15, 2013 by Aethelwulf