Posted on 04/07/2019 4:28:41 AM PDT by Kaslin
The observable universe contains more than 100 billion galaxies. Our galaxy alone, popularly known as the Milky Way, has more than 100 billion stars. Does that make you yearn for those days of yesteryear when many followed the thought of Aristotle and Ptolemy: Five planets plus the sun and the moon circling Earth? Was it easier to evangelize before people thought of Earth as a little sphere circling a fifth-rate star on a minor galaxy’s periphery -- so why should God care about us?
A century ago scientists of course knew the Earth moved, but many still thought we were near the center of things. British naturalist/biologist Alfred Russel Wallace, who co- developed (with Charles Darwin) the theory of evolution through natural selection, wrote this in “Man’s Place in the Universe” (1903): “An overwhelming consensus among the astronomers establishes the fact of our nearly central position in the stellar universe. They all agree that the Milky Way is nearly circular in form. They all agree that our sun is situated almost exactly in its medial plane.”
But astronomers did not agree with that for long. As telescope improvements allowed them to see further out, they saw the vastness of space. They asked a truncated version of Psalm 8’s question -- “When I look at your heavens?.?what is man that you are mindful of him?” Many answered: There’s no God and He’s not mindful. Humans are merely the result of chance plus eons of time, and thus of no importance.
Now, though, I can tell you about a great reversal: A trendy theory among scientists means those billions and billions of galaxies should make belief in a godlike creator-of-sorts more likely, not less. The theory, taken very seriously by establishment evolutionists like Neil deGrasse Tyson, is that we are living in a simulation probably designed by aliens of a far-advanced civilization. As “Scientific American” reports, Tyson puts the odds at 50-50 that “our entire existence is a program on someone else’s hard drive.” Reasons why this could be so: “The more we learn about the universe, the more it appears to be based on mathematical laws.”
Of course, Isaac Newton and others saw such laws as proofs of the existence of God, but we are too sophisticated to believe in Him, aren’t we? Maybe not, as long as this “god” appears to be merely human. “Scientific American” quotes NYU philosophy professor David Chalmers: “We in this universe can create simulated worlds and there’s nothing remotely spooky about that. Our creator isn’t especially spooky, it’s just some teenage hacker in the next universe up.”
Tyson adds, “We don’t think of ourselves as deities when we program Mario, even though we have power over how high Mario jumps. There’s no reason to think they’re all-powerful just because they control everything we do.” Oxford University philosophy professor Nick Bostrom speculates that our descendants with super-powerful computers may have simulated us, and estimates how much computing power that would take: “Simulating the entire universe down to the quantum universe is obviously infeasible, unless radically new physics is discovered.”
Bostrom adds, “In order to get a realistic simulation of human experience, much less [computer power] is needed -- only whatever is required to ensure that the simulated humans, interacting in normal human ways with their simulated environment, don’t notice any irregularities.” For example, “The microscopic structure of the inside of the earth can be safely omitted. Distant astronomical objects can have highly compressed representations.”
What should Christians do with such speculation? We can chastise it as one more nutty, atheistic attempt to find a way of explaining creation apart from the Creator -- or we can see that such speculation, if true, just produces one more proof of God’s existence. Say a super-advanced hacker in his garage wants to simulate a universe so he can have some bedtime entertainment each evening: Wouldn’t he go for something relatively easy to create, like a small, Earth-centered universe? A new come-on for the video game “The Sims FreePlay” offers “the ability to build A-frame roofing,” not “the ability to create billions of galaxies.”
A super-advanced hacker could conceivably create a solar system. It takes omniscience and omnipotence to create a universe almost unimaginably huge, with billions and billions of stars. Praise God from Whom all blessings flow.
>>Tyson adds, “We don’t think of ourselves as deities when we program Mario, even though we have power over how high Mario jumps. There’s no reason to think they’re all-powerful just because they control everything we do.”
When I was in engineering, the ROM BIOS developers saw themselves as gods.
One of my favorite authors, and his book
The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky
is Fantastic!
And although quite a few years old, the book is Very Timely!
A radio program from years ago was telling how a missionary flight from Earth went to save the souls on a distant planet. A planet native said, “Yes, we know your salvation story. On our planet, Adam and Eve said, ‘No.’”
Marvin Olasky =
He became an atheist in adolescence and a Marxist in college, ultimately joining the Communist Party USA in 1972. He left the Communist Party late in 1973 and in 1976 became a Christian after reading the New Testament and a number of Christian authors.
To know that God can (and does) dictate the velocity and location of each sub-atomic particle in the universe is humbly reassuring.
That the Creator God is also concerned (and in love) with each person He created is what's really mind-blowing.
And Marvin Olasky's publication "World" magazine is a real gem - if you haven't read it, give it a try.
we’re living in the matrix?? how can i hack the program and get more stuff? a ‘66 ferrari Daytona would ne cool
“I think, therefore, I am”, Descartes.
Does anyone believes that “Mario” in the video game is saying the same thing? If they do, they are insane.
Billions of galaxies. “In my Father’s house there are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you”....comes to mind.
Simulated Universe. An infinity of Alternate Universes. The Universe popping in and out of existence. The Multiverse.
All wrong. There is one Universe.
Well worth watching for SciFi fans IMHo.
Consciousness is a simulation.
Everything we experience is a recreation inside our heads, including our perception of the Universe.
“We in this universe can create simulated worlds and there’s nothing remotely spooky about that. Our creator isn’t especially spooky, it’s just some teenage hacker in the next universe up.”
In that case, who created the universe in which that teenage hacker lives?
CS Lewis’s Space Trilogy has much the same starting point.
The reason I don’t accept that the Universe is a simulation is closely related to the reason I don’t believe it is the work of a supernatural intelligence. The demonstration of quantum entanglement and its proof that the observed behavior can not be attributed to “hidden variables” means that any simulation would need to be able to transmit information faster than the speed of light. Since the simulation would also be subject to this limit it would be impossible to simulate. The other part of the argument is that quantum behavior like radioactive decay is truly random in time unlike any other deterministic behavior like coin tossing whose randomness is really just due to our ignorance of all the forces and initial conditions that preceded the observation of heads or tails. God would of course know whether the coin would come up heads or tails but even He could never know when a neutron would decay in a radioactive material. If there is information in the system that is beyond even God then He can’t be the supreme being and the creator of everything. There would have to be higher laws or principles that even He was subject to.
Kinda makes me think of Aquinas’s 5 proofs of God, at least some of them!
‘It takes omniscience and omnipotence to create a universe almost unimaginably huge, with billions and billions of stars.’
yeah, and be sure to add a generous measure of pixie dust as well...
I personally find the possibility we are in a simulation to be extremely distasteful but I do see the depressing “logic” of it: since the number of simulations is likely to be vastly greater than the number of real universes, basic probability puts us in a matrix.
There are only two ways out of this “logic”:
1. God created the universe. Period. End of story. Nothing else needed. Except, of course to have a relationship with and/or understanding of God, as much as is possible.
2. There is an infinite Multiverse. Not just a Multiverse but an infinite Multiverse, such as a Type 2 Multiverse discussed by Mac Tegmark or a string theory landscape Multiverse with all variations of the landscape repeating an infinite number of times. The key word here is infinite. Infinite erases improbability, specifically the improbability of not living in a simulation, also the improbability of not being the first sentient species in our galaxy and the improbability of not being at an early point in human history.
So to me, there’s either a god or a Multiverse (and maybe those aren’t mutually exclusive).
——There is one Universe.-——
For each star
I’ve always thought of our 3 spacial dimensions as a playpen that keeps our sin from poluting the higher dimensions
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