Posted on 11/21/2002 8:14:40 PM PST by FreetheSouth!
God Is the Machine
IN THE BEGINNING THERE WAS 0. AND THEN THERE WAS 1. A MIND-BENDING MEDITATION ON THE TRANSCENDENT POWER OF DIGITAL COMPUTATION
At today's rates of compression, you could download the entire 3 billion digits of your DNA onto about four CDs. That 3-gigabyte genome sequence represents the prime coding information of a human body — your life as numbers. Biology, that pulsating mass of plant and animal flesh, is conceived by science today as an information process. As computers keep shrinking, we can imagine our complex bodies being numerically condensed to the size of two tiny cells. These micro-memory devices are called the egg and sperm. They are packed with information.
That life might be information, as biologists propose, is far more intuitive than the corresponding idea that hard matter is information as well. When we bang a knee against a table leg, it sure doesn't feel like we knocked into information. But that's the idea many physicists are formulating.
The spooky nature of material things is not new. Once science examined matter below the level of fleeting quarks and muons, it knew the world was incorporeal. What could be less substantial than a realm built out of waves of quantum probabilities? And what could be weirder? Digital physics is both. It suggests that those strange and insubstantial quantum wavicles, along with everything else in the universe, are themselves made of nothing but 1s and 0s. The physical world itself is digital.
The scientist John Archibald Wheeler (coiner of the term "black hole") was onto this in the '80s. He claimed that, fundamentally, atoms are made up of of bits of information. As he put it in a 1989 lecture, "Its are from bits." He elaborated: "Every it — every particle, every field of force, even the space-time continuum itself — derives its function, its meaning, its very existence entirely from binary choices, bits. What we call reality arises in the last analysis from the posing of yes/no questions."
To get a sense of the challenge of describing physics as a software program, picture three atoms: two hydrogen and one oxygen. Put on the magic glasses of digital physics and watch as the three atoms bind together to form a water molecule. As they merge, each seems to be calculating the optimal angle and distance at which to attach itself to the others. The oxygen atom uses yes/no decisions to evaluate all possible courses toward the hydrogen atom, then usually selects the optimal 104.45 degrees by moving toward the other hydrogen at that very angle. Every chemical bond is thus calculated.
If this sounds like a simulation of physics, then you understand perfectly, because in a world made up of bits, physics is exactly the same as a simulation of physics. There's no difference in kind, just in degree of exactness. In the movie The Matrix, simulations are so good you can't tell if you're in one. In a universe run on bits, everything is a simulation.
An ultimate simulation needs an ultimate computer, and the new science of digitalism says that the universe itself is the ultimate computer — actually the only computer. Further, it says, all the computation of the human world, especially our puny little PCs, merely piggybacks on cycles of the great computer. Weaving together the esoteric teachings of quantum physics with the latest theories in computer science, pioneering digital thinkers are outlining a way of understanding all of physics as a form of computation.
From this perspective, computation seems almost a theological process. It takes as its fodder the primeval choice between yes or no, the fundamental state of 1 or 0. After stripping away all externalities, all material embellishments, what remains is the purest state of existence: here/not here. Am/not am. In the Old Testament, when Moses asks the Creator, "Who are you?" the being says, in effect, "Am." One bit. One almighty bit. Yes. One. Exist. It is the simplest statement possible.
(Excerpt) Read more at wired.com ...
Our bodies are like the computer hardware (for many of us "older bodies", it's like the IBM px/xt computer model, exotic at one time, but pretty worn out by now ). Our souls are the software programming. Out bodies will perish, the media containing our information may perish, but the information that represents our souls will live forever.
Men are not just the sum of inanimate programming. God gave man sentience, and within certain parameters, a "free will". Freedom always comes with constraints. We may operate as if that is not true when discussing philosophy or religion, but we betray that contention in the way we live our limited lives.
Your argument on "freewill" is the juxtiposition of the famliar rant that occurs with every disaster, rape, or murder, e.g. "How could a loving God allow this to happen to innocents?!" The answer is: "How could a loving God NOT allow man that freedom. We'd be robots! Robots can never sentiently chose to love God.
Freedom is a double edged sword, i.e. the same freedom that produced the Good Samaritan also allowed the thugs who beat and rob the victim in the first place. God is the ultimate "pro-choicer". Man can't blame God for "acts of God" AND for constraining freedom simultaneously. The problem of chaos and evil in this world is due to the sin of mankind.
However, God also promises accountability and reward. God's states clearly: All have sinned (i.e. HUGE error dump!!), and will be doomed because of our choice.
God's solution: There is only one who has not sinned, who is absolutely good. There is only one who has already paid the price, who has paid YOUR price. There is only one way to be saved from the corruption that sin has wrought. Jesus Christ. Those who accept Him as their Lord and Savior will have the reward of eternal life.
Wise men who earnestly seek wisdom, order, and goodness will find it in Christ.
God Bless.. SFS
Whether or not you posit the existence of God, there is still a "free will vs. determinism" problem.
For example, if it turns out that it is possible for me to travel into the future, and there is a fixed future for me to travel into, then it would seem I have no free will. No matter what I do I will end up at the same future.
Of course there's a bunch of thought regarding parallel universes, etc. but none of this touches on the "problem of evil" which is entirely different.
If you lined up all of the arguments on one side or the other, the arguments stating that there is no free will pretty much whomp on those in favor of free will.
Still, I believe passionately in free will regardless. I was most likely predestined to do so!
There are a number of ways to approach this problem: assuming God's existence, or assuming no God. Thinking about a single universe, multiple unrelated universes, or multiple related universes. Limited God vs. infinite God. Materialism vs. Idealism, etc.
Most of the good arguments are in favor of predestination. Your (and my) own intuition is in favor of free will.
I believe there will be an answer to this question and I don't believe that the Calvinists or other simple-minded folk have come up with the answer ... although they love to self-righteously trumpet the supposed fact that they have solved this problem ... or that they read it in some King James Bible somewhere (with special magical glasses of course that other interpreters don't seem to have access to.)
P.S.: Let the flames begin. I need some practice for when I get to go skinny-dipping in the fiery lakes.
Nope, just preknown. We experience time as linear, and can only go forward.
God on the other hand lives out side the 4 dimensions we can know,
and can see the beginning and the end. Hard concept for me for sure,
but about the only way I can make any sense of it.
Some wag said I think, you have to be crazy to understand quantum theory.
Check here for some good stuff on this subject. khouse.org
No mass, no time. Jesus was able to recreate his earthly body inside
a closed room, when he appeared to the deciples. They thought he>br> was a spirit. But "doubting" Thomas placed his hand in the wound
in His side, proving that he was flesh and bone. Not by the way
"Flesh and Blood"
Does a thought have mass, time dimension? If not what is it?
Where does it go, when we die?
Oh, well, thanks for setting me straight. Nothing like having an arrogant expert to help out a poor dunderhead like me.
You have "problems" about free will, the existence of God, and determinism. I have answers, informed by God's Word the Bible, and consistent with the world as we find it. I am completely content to live and die in my faith in these simplistic answers.
I thank God that I never finished up that PHd in Philosophy, otherwise I might be an arrogant expert with lots of problems too.
FReegards, SFS
LOL you guys are so punny!
Some Christians believe so.
Some Christians believe so.
Oops - here:
Is Calvinism Inconsistent with Free Will? - Loraine Boettner
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