Quantum Physics | Seventimes70

Computer Code in Nature Points to an Ultimate Programmer

What if scientists found computer code embedded in our natural world? Not only that, but what if that computer code was identical to code found in, of all places, Internet browsers? Surely you would have to conclude that an intelligent mind had a hand in designing our natural world, and that it did not arise by chance. Because after all, there’s no way computer code – whether it be in Internet browsers or anywhere else – could “evolve” into existence on its own; someone must have put it there.

Well it turns out that a scientist has found computer code embedded in the fabric of reality – which points to strong evidence of a Creator. (The coding we’re talking about here is not that of DNA, which is another topic altogether.) His name is S. James Gates, a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland at College Park. He studies string theory and supersymmetry, which seek to explain how the most elementary parts of the cosmos work.

Some time ago, when he was developing diagrams to represent equations in string theory, he noticed that these equations are indistinguishable from error-correcting coding found in browsers. In fact, the browser coding is a special kind of coding developed by a brilliant mathematician named Claude Shannon, a pioneer in information theory.

Dr. James Gates 300x263 - Computer Code in Nature Points to an Ultimate Programmer

Dr. S. James Gates

Huh? That’s huge! Just as browser coding obviously had to have been written by an intelligent mind, the same is true for coding found in nature. It is stark evidence of an ultimate, ethereal Programmer.

Dr. Gates’ findings are solid. University of Maryland physicist Tristan Hubsch assures that the discovery of coding in supersymmetry is a rigorously proven theorem.

To be sure, one commentator points out that we’re not talking about literal computer coding such as found in C++ or Visual Basic; instead, it’s a type of math that’s indistinguishable from Shannon coding – which is a mathematical way to represent information.

The more that science uncovers, the more evidence of The Creator. Dr. Gates told Smithsonian magazine, “I have never found a schism in my life between doing science and having religious beliefs….I believe that both faith and science are essential for the survival of our species.”

Filed Under: Evidence of God, Intelligent Design, Previous Articles, Quantum Physics, Science Tagged With: James Gates Shannon coding, string theory Shannon code, supersymmetry computer coding

Origin of Life Reveals a Transcendent Creator

by Patrick Chisholm

The probability of an RNA spontaneously forming from simple organic compounds in the primordial soup is essentially zero.

There’s so much evidence for fine-tuning in the origin of the universe, pointing to a transcendent Creator, that scientists had to come up with the far-fetched multiverse theory to try to get around a Creator (even though a multiverse would need a Creator, too).

Now, they’re doing a similar thing vis-a-vis the origin of life. There’s so much evidence that life could not have originated through random chance, implying that it had to have been designed by a transcendent Creator, that (some) scientists are resorting to quantum physics as a possible explanation.

In their book Life on the Edge, Johnjoe McFadden and Jim Al-Khalili (the latter a science popularizer frequently seen on science television shows) discuss the impossibility of life ever originating on its own in the “primordial soup”. When in 1952 Stanley Miller and Harold Urey tried to replicate that primordial soup in the famous Miller-Urey experiment, all they came up with were some amino acids. Such acids are what proteins are made of.

Proteins are the components of cells. (They’re not just nutrients found in meat. They’re so much more than that.) They are molecular structures that take multitudes of shapes, which carry out multitudes of functions within the cell. They are akin to the components of your car engine – i.e. mostly made of metal, but in a variety of shapes and forms (e.g. piston, fan, spark plug, etc.)

Proteins are needed for life to form. Also needed are nucleotides – which form DNA and RNA, the blueprints which instruct amino acids to form the millions of varieties of proteins. The authors cite the Scottish chemist Graham Cairns-Smith, who estimated that just to form an RNA from simple organic compounds in the primordial soup, there are some 140 steps involved. For each step there are about six reactions that have to be avoided. “So the odds of any starting molecule eventually being converted into RNA is equivalent to throwing a six 140 times in a row.” The chances of this happening are roughly one in six to the power of 140.

But six to the power of 140 is far more than there are particles in the universe! McFadden and Al-Khalili write that the earth simply did not have enough molecules or enough time to enable anything like that to happen. And that’s just the first step – random chance also needs to make ribozymes (a certain type of RNA) capable of self-replication. Random chance additionally needs to make proteins. “Clearly, we cannot rely on pure chance alone,” declare the authors.

That points to obvious evidence of a transcendent Creator.

But McFadden and Al-Khalili are scientists, and the job of scientists is to find natural explanations to things, not supernatural explanations to things – even when the evidence screams supernatural.

So McFadden and Al-Khalili resort to quantum physics to try to come up with an explanation – and quantum physics is very supernatural-like. They suggest that quantum tunnelling (akin to going through solid walls) and quantum superposition (where a proto-enzyme can exist in all of its possible configurations simultaneously) played a role.

Scientists often use the terms “weird” and “strange” to describe quantum physics, because things happen therein that from a classical physics perspective are like little miracles. In quantum physics, subatomic particles can be move through solid walls. They can be invisible. They can communicate instantaneously with a twin particle a billion light years away. And a single particle can be in many different, distinct places and configurations simultaneously.

Scientists have no idea how these phenomena happen. They just know that they happen.

They are stumped enough trying to explain how the natural physical world arose on its own. They certainly have no idea whatsoever how the quantum physical world arose, or how it works.

It’s yet more evidence of a transcendent Creator.

Filed Under: Evidence of God, Origin of Life, Previous Articles, Quantum Physics, Science Tagged With: Graham Cairns-Smith, how did life form, intelligent design, Jim Al-Khalili, Johnjoe McFadden, life on the edge, Miller-Urey experiment, multiverse theory, origin of life, primordial soup

Scientists Are Almost Sounding Religious

by Patrick Chisholm

Background image photo credit (altered): Fkearney via Wikimedia Commons.

There’s an anti-religion website called Disbeliefnet, evidently created by comedian Bill Maher, which trumpets the motto, “You won’t believe what people believe.”

He’s right. People buy into a lot of outlandish and fantastical stuff that defy common sense and the laws of nature – in a word, miracles. Such propositions are so foreign to our five senses that it’s no wonder that so many academics and other highly educated people have no tolerance for them.

Here’s a sampling of bizarre, other-worldly, and downright fanciful notions that some people believe:

* There are other dimensions beyond our own.
* Certain entities can move through solid walls.
* Some things can be invisible.
* Certain things can travel back and forth through time.
* The same entity can be in multiple distinct locations at the same time.
* Certain entities can communicate instantaneously with other entities – that are billions of light years away.

Bill Maher could have a field day with this stuff.

In centuries past, people believed in the supernatural because they didn’t have science to explain things. Now, we’re nicely ensconced in the age of science and reason; if it’s not explainable by science, goes the thinking, then it can’t be true.

Or maybe not.

It turns out that the strange notions described above are championed by top physicists.

That’s right. The weirdness falls into the realm of quantum physics – the branch of physics that seeks to explain how subatomic particles behave.

Physicists often use the adjectives “bizarre” or “weird” when describing quantum physics – because things happen that defy classical physics or common sense. And they admit they can’t explain how such things happen.

So let’s get this straight. The secular elite disparages religion because they find silly the notion that there are spiritual beings that can exist in different dimensions, be invisible, go through solid walls, time travel, and carry out other seemingly miraculous activities.

Yet, renown scientists are telling us that subatomic particles can do all of these things.

If one accepts that, then it’s by no means a stretch to infer that there is a spiritual world in which similar things occur.

Far from being in conflict with each other, science and religion are complementary. Twentieth-century physicist and Nobel Prize-winner Eugene Wigner pointed out that materialism – the atheistic worldview that reality only consists of physical matter – is not “logically consistent with present quantum mechanics.”

Another Nobel Prize winner, neuroscientist John C. Eccles, posited that the spiritual mind and physical brain are independent entities, and that the two interact through quantum physics.

In quantum physics there are systems, laws, and observers. “There is something about observers like us that’s not reducible to (classical) physics,” said University of Delaware physicist Stephen Barr. He explained in a 2012 Research on Religion podcast interview that once you accept the nonphysical reality of our own minds, then it’s easier to accept the reality of greater minds, such as that of God. And given how incredibly orderly the universe is from a mathematical standpoint, which suggests a supreme designer, “Modern physics ought to make every particle physicist in the world get down on their knees,” he remarked.

The dictionary defines the term supernatural as “not existing in nature or not subject to explanation according to natural laws.” It’s also defined as “of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe.”

If that’s the case, then to this reporter, modern science indicates that the supernatural must exist. “An order of existence beyond the visible observable universe” immediately evokes dark matter and dark energy. Astrophysicists widely agree that the visible observable universe only makes up about 4 percent of all matter. The rest is matter that is invisible to us, known as dark matter, as well as dark energy. Scientists know it’s there because without the gravitational effects of dark matter, galaxies would fly apart.

Some physicists, notably Lisa Randall at Harvard, theorize that dark matter comes from higher dimensions, and that gravity is “leaking” from these dimensions. Apart from that, string theory has long predicted hidden dimensions. And at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, they’re working hard on finding evidence of other dimensions.

Oxford physicist David Deutsch considers there to be vast numbers of parallel worlds, and that perhaps someday we’ll be able to contact them using quantum computers.

To be sure, scientists very rarely use the term supernatural when describing quantum physics. And when discussing other dimensions, most physicists don’t touch the word “spiritual”. Whatever the case, all this talk of other dimensions blurs the lines between the definition of physical and spiritual.

And one thing is certain: for evidence of the supernatural, the theologians have a much stronger case than the secular elite. Science confirms it.

(Originally published in Newsmax.)