Proof of God
Mostly God is something or someone that you take on faith, but does that have to be the case? Some 20 years ago now, a non-practicing Jewish friend of mine began me on the quest to prove "God" exists. God, in our various mythologies, is given the power to change things. To see the future. To control everything. Over the course of the next several weeks, we will explore that some more, but first we have to prove that a God actually exists.
Scientists have a hard time with the idea of a God, and yet it is actually science that helps to prove God does in fact exist. Perhaps not the old guy with the beard sitting on a throne in the sky, but spiritual presence beyond physics and science that we all know in our hearts exists.
Life has certain characteristics of inanimate objects. Generally to accomplish tasks it follows the laws of physics. We can only lift a certain weight off the ground if several aspects of physics are in play: we have the right leverage, we use the right balance, and the chemical reactions in our muscles provide us with adequate strength to overcome the desire of the object to remain at rest. Our nerves work using a series of chemical reactions which in turn cause muscles to react, pain the be registered, etc.
That part of the body is the machine. We have heard it many time. We have a soul and we have the machine that is the body. We can repair and replace parts of the body machine like we repair and replace parts of a car. We can rewire it of block the effects of the wiring with things like paralytics and pain relievers. We can put in a new motor. We can even create artificial parts or use parts from animals.
The machine operates entirely on the rules of physics that govern the operation and actions of every inanimate object in the earth, the world, the universe.
Consider another machine. An automobile, for example. It is very complex. It often has a computer brain that does a great many things to make sure the vehicle operates properly. But not being alive, when turned off it cannot do anything.
All inanimate objects are completely predictable. Consider the pool table. Several balls on a felt table with bumpers and pockets. There are many forces at work, all completely predictable. So simply predictable that with a bit of practice most of us can create the right amount of force in the pool cue to cause it to strike the cue ball with the proper force and at the proper angle, taking into account the friction of the felt on the table and the reactions of the bumpers, to cause a colored ball to find its way into a pocket. Great pool players can do this so well that they can set up the other balls on the table to make sure they can make another shot, followed by another until the table is clear.
Bowlers can send a ball down a oiled lane with a hook into the pocket to predictably knock over 10 pins. Great bowlers do this with greater frequency. It is wholey predictable that if the ball is thrown right the pins will fall properly leaving none.
Golf, basketball, baseball, auto-mechanics, hunting, and every other endeavor man has created relies on the complete and total predictability of working with inanimate objects. The best even allow for physical forces difficult to predict, like allowing for the wind. We all know if they knew the precise wind speed and angle throughout the flight of the arrow, for example, the great archer could completely predict where the arrow would land. This is the simple stuff that even you and I can understand and even get right once in awhile.
The laws of physics, however, not only govern physical objects, but also energy, light, sound, dark matter, dark energy, anti-matter, and a whole host of weird things that physicists find in nature. They find them, however, because they calculate their existence in advance using math and the laws of physics. Then, once theorized by brilliant minds, they are found in nature just as predicted. Black holes with bits of anti-matter at the edges. Planets circling stars with a slight wobble as the planets rotate around them in eliptical orbits. Dark matter and dark energy, which are much larger than their counterparts in terms of the universe and its contents. Neutrons, electrons, quarks, and particles smaller still.
No one has actually seen any of these things. The light we see from the universe is millions of years old at the youngest. Planets are too small to see. Atoms, much less sub-atomic particles, are too small to see. We find them and prove they exist using the predictability of the laws of physics.
The Big Bang Theory is based on predictions. Scientists can see that everything they observe in space is moving. When they use the laws of physics and trace these movements back in time tens of billions of years, everything ends up in one place. Hence the theory that it all was once in one place and then suddenly "bang" it exploded into existence. The cool thing is they can determine what elements were caused first and how the remaining ones were caused over time. It is still a theory, but it is based on the pure predictability of inanimate objects.
But, Houston, we have a problem. Living things, and humans in particular, have the power to violate the predictability of the laws of physics. While living things USE the laws of physics to accomplish tasks, unlike inanimate objects, they are not bound by them.
"What on earth do you mean?" you ask.
If the laws of physics applied, from the moment of the Big Bang forward the actions of every single particle of matter would be completely predictable and would continue to be forever. Out in space, this is true.
Think about that for a moment.
That would mean that I am typing this because the particles in my fingers that began a path at the moment of the big bang caused me to type this.
That would mean that you are reading this because at the moment of the Big Bang every single particle in your was destined to be where you are right now doing what you are doing right now.
That would mean that there is no free will whatsoever.
Lots of things in the universe are predictable from the moment of the Big Bang, which is how they figured it out.
We know both subjectively and objectively that we do have free will. Biologists will confirm that living things decide to move, which causes particles to change directions from the path they were set on when the Big Bang happened, or from last week or seconds ago.
We can decide to move when we desire to move. We cause our body machines to do things, suddenly and without any required action-reaction sequence. Yes we then use physics to our advantage to make the body-machine, automobile-machine, cell phone-machine, etc do things, but we decide how and when to operate them and what they will do. The automobile does not move until we cause our body-machines to get into it, turn the key and make it do things. When we get into that car, we have simply augmented our body machines to allow our body-machines to do things it could not otherwise do, but we are still operating one machine so that it operates the other machine (and sometimes while texting on yet another machine we cause a crash and injury to both of the other machines in the process).
So what is it that gives us the ability to cause our body-machines to move in ways that violate the pure and lovely predictability of the laws of physics.
That, my good friend, is what we refer to as "God." This is a physics-proven fact. The ability of living things to use physics to accomplish things, but to violate the laws of physics to start the process. The difference, the intervention, is life. Life is spiritual, not physical. It is real. It is quantifiable. It is measurable. But, it is free and unpredictable. That spiritual component of life it "God" unless you want to call it something else, which is fine with me. I just proved its existence, not the name.
More when my particles get around to it again.
Post Script: Interestingly, well at least to me, I read an article by a physicist who notes that on earth, in particular humans, have so changed things that the predictability of pure physics is interfered with. For example, if left to their paths after the Big Bang, that table and chair you are sitting on would likely still be growing or would have fallen in the forest to be eaten by bugs, that steel in your lamp would still be ore and the gas in your car would still be petroleum in the ground. It would have followed the path it was destined for when the Big Bang begun.
So not only do we change things within our own body-machines to make it do things, but we have moved particles from the path of their predictable physics-based destiny to a location of our chosing, using physics, but moving the particles completely in violation of the laws of physics.
The theory of the butterfly effect contemplates that every movement that we make that changes the natural movement of these particles, even the beating of a butterflies wings, changes every particle everywhere in some way. Physicists call it chaos or entropy. Basically stuff that cannot be explained because humans messed with it. That is why physicists stare out into untouched space.
This physicist has noticed, however, that there are things in space that are showing a bit of this. Stars and stuff too far to be effectively altered by anything we have done are exhibiting a touch of this chaos. Since the light we see from space is older that human-kind itself, whatever we are sending out there will not be effecting the light we see coming to us for millions of years.
So that means that something else is causing particles to stop following the rules of physics way out there in the universe, and it started way before any humans existed. Hmmm. Think about the implications of that observation.
