_
The End of Materialism and a Return to God [Part 2]
In this second installment, we are going to get into the deeper meat-and-potatoes of the ramifications and shortcomings of materialism from a scientific viewpoint.
First, let’s talk about physical laws. It is widely recognized that the universe is assembled and behaves according to a given set of physical laws. The fact that we do not yet fully understand all those laws does not negate this premise. For example, we know that a collection of molecules, each comprising two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, at standard temperature and pressure (STP), and in the presence of sufficient gravity to collect them in a pool will yield a clear liquid we call water, no matter where in the universe these conditions are met. This is because the same physical laws at work here on earth are the same as they are elsewhere. No occasionally, you’ll hear a scientific authority propose the idea that the laws of physics could be different at other remote locations in the universe, but this is really hypocritical when you think about it. Physicists peer into the vast expanses of the universe with radio and optical telescopes that gather a wide variety of data, and from that information can tell us how far away a distant galaxy is, how fast it is traveling based on the Doppler effect, and even the mass and chemical composition of its stars through spectrometry. How can we do this and get dependable results? That’s because the laws of physics on which these devices are designed that also govern the nature of the distant information gathered, and that establish the underlying mathematics used to analyze that information, are the same at the location of the remote object as they are here. That’s why it works. Were this not so, then the very notion of performing calculations on distant astronomical bodies and publishing the results would be utter nonsense and pure fantasy.
Second is the fundamental scientific principle that everything that we can observe is physical. We cannot observe or measure things that are purely spiritual, for example, but everything that is physical is observable by some means, even if we do not yet have the technology to observe every aspect of the physical. Since everything we can observe is physical, then everything we observe must be governed by physical laws. It cannot be any other way. Again, it doesn’t matter that we don’t as yet understand the full extent of those laws. No matter if its atoms or airplanes, the laws governing them are the same as the laws built into the greater physical universe of which they are a component.
Finally, the processes defined by these physical laws can never produce a result that exceeds, contradicts, or otherwise operates outside the boundary of those laws. Everything that these physical laws produce will be defined by and conformed to those very same laws. To put it another way, no component of a system can exceed the properties of the system that contains and defines it. One way to look at this is like a deck of cards. All kinds of games with a multitude of rules can be derived from this deck of four suits of thirteen values each, and an almost infinite combination of hands can be dealt from them. But at the end of the day, no game or hand can ever be anything more that what these fifty-two cards will allow. No game rules or hand combinations can exist outside those that are contained within and defined by this fifty-two-card deck. The parameter defined by those cards contains all the possible sequences and combinations. This system could never produce hands that contain values for a game with sixty-five distinct cards, for instance, nor suddenly produce additional suits. The total system that represents your car and all its subsystems enables it to move at a maximum speed of, let’s say 120 mph. That same system, as designed and constructed by its manufacturer, will not roll off the assembly line doing 500 mph. By the same rules, a propeller-driven steamship cannot motor itself to the moon. No system, nor any part of it, can ever achieve anything beyond the limits of the properties that govern it.
Let’s recap: the universe operates according to a definitive set of physical laws; everything that is observable is physical and therefore must be subject to those same physical laws; no substance or process resulting from those laws can ever exceed the limits of those laws, nor be in violation of them. There are no exceptions. Observations that seem to defy known physical laws cannot actually be operating outside the laws of the universe, but in reality are merely operating according to a part of those laws with which we are not yet familiar.
These are all sound, established scientific principles. The trouble is that those in the scientific community—particularly physicists—routinely apply this universal axiom prejudicially, and as a result, often hypocritically. Take the human brain for example. Physics typically dismiss the workings of the brain as biology or even psychology. But this is merely an excuse to avoid dealing with its unpredictable and volatile nature. Just because it’s capable of independent thought, does that mean that the brain and its subsystems are not physical? If it is physical, then it is built and operates according to the same physical laws that govern all other physical things.
This brings us to some remarkable and inescapable conclusions. For one, it means that any process that occurs in the brain—including thought—must have a physical reality. This may seem almost bizarre at first, but careful consideration shows it must be so. Consider a drawing of a unicorn displayed on a computer monitor screen. Is it real? Most people would say no because you can’t touch or handle it. So what is it? Isn’t it a collection of coherent, meaningful information? Is the information real? Let’s send the image to the printer. Now you’re looking at a printout of the unicorn on a piece of paper that you can handle. Is this real? The answer’s not so clear now, is it? The printout comprises physical ink on a physical piece of paper that can be viewed, copied or photographed. It can be shown to anyone who would understand immediately what it was. Physical photons reflect off the physical image on the physical paper and convey its physical information to your physical eyes. It is a coherent collection of meaningful information. The information is physical. It’s real. Let’s run the information through a CAD laser cutter that can project it into three dimensions and cut the object out of solid material. Is it real now? You can’t have the real effect of the finished model without real information as the cause—unless you’re going to argue that the unicorn model is a paranormal materialization.
So, let’s look again at the original image on the monitor. Now is it real? Of course it is.
Thoughts in the brain are essentially no different than information in a computer. They are a collection of coherent, meaningful bits of physical information that can have a real, observable effect in the physical world. The computer on which you are now viewing this file is a real, physical construction that came into existence from the thoughts of many human brains. If those thoughts were not physical part of reality, they could never have given rise to the real, physical effect of your computer. Thoughts are real, physical things.
What about our intelligence? It must have come from somewhere. Yes, evolution has many hypotheses that try to explain it—there are over forty competing theories in evolutionary circles that offer different reasons how the human brain could have possibly evolved far beyond the needs for this for our mere survival. But whatever the merits of these various ideas might be, they all sidestep the most compelling fact. All components of a system conform to the laws governing that system, and cannot operate outside those laws or in a way that contradicts them. If the universe produced intelligence, then we cannot avoid the realization that the universe itself must then also be intelligent! There’s no getting around this—if the universe did not have an inherent intelligence built into it, then we have to conclude that it produced a component that operates outside of the very universal laws that produced it. Good luck trying to defend that particular argument! I’d particularly like to see a materialist explain how the universe has no intelligence and yet can create intelligence.
Here’s another brain twister for you (pun intended). What about the imagination, or literally, our ability to manifest images in the brain? Are the images conjured in the mind real? Remember, the human brain is a component of the physical universe, and therefore must be built according to the same laws that govern everything else in the universe. If so, can the human brain behave in a way that’s contrary to the laws that shaped it and are built into its matrix? By now, you know the answer. We don’t normally think of the brain in this way because we have a very egocentric way of viewing the universe around us—we look at “we” as somehow being a separate reality than when we look at everything else. But when you step back from self and consider the greater scheme of things, it’s clear our brains (as well as the rest of us) must be an integral part of the world around us. Biological systems are formed according to physical laws, and brains are a component of such systems. The startling conclusion then is that anything that can be imaged in the human brain in a coherent and meaningful pattern must be in accordance with the physical laws that govern its form and function, and so must be physically possible to exist in the universe! Think about it—how could the physical convolutions of the brain and the electro-chemical processes that take place in it, all which are in accordance with the physical laws that created it, produce a result contrary to or outside of those laws?
The implications of this realization are staggering. Philosophers have been saying for centuries that we can accomplish whatever it is we can imagine (or literally, image). The difference here is that the traditional realm of this purely philosophical argument has been elevated it to a sound, scientifically reasonable principle. Everything we humans create begins with mental images in the brain, after which we use our hands to devise means by which we can transform that image into its material equivalent in the visible world. But there’s nothing to say that, given a complete understanding of the laws that allow us to transform invisible thought into visible reality, and a highly advanced technology based on those laws, that we might convert those images directly to reality.
Picture a juicy apple. My, that looks good. Poof! Enjoy. But be careful what you think.
These concepts pose several challenges to a strictly materialistic interpretation of the universe. For one, how can physics come to a Theory of Everything if it does not consider the unique processes of the human brain? From where did humanity obtain the ability to transcend the demands of its environment, and moreover, to purposefully transform the environment in radical and unnatural ways—a thing not possible according to evolution? If the human brain is intelligent, and so the universe itself must be intelligent, how can science continue to maintain that evolution is not intelligent? And if an intelligent universe is finally conceded, where did that intelligence come from? And since physics represents that the origin of the universe was a true creation (i.e., something brought forth out of essentially nothing), how can physicists continue in their search for the answer to this mystery focus solely on smashing particles into tinier and tinier pieces while disregarding the one assemblage of matter—the human brain—that displays the very same kind of spontaneous creation that they are seeking? And if the universe was a true creation, how can it be said that the creative faculty of the human brain doesn’t mimic in some way the mechanics of the greater universal creation, a brain that is the product of the physical laws that sprang forth from that very universal creation?
Albert Einstein, while not a believer in the Judeo-Christian faith, was in fact a theist who believed there was something that established the order and form of the universe. His guiding principle was, “If there are laws, there must be a lawgiver.” The God of the Bible is indeed a creator, and a giver of laws that established the nature and order of all things. The Bible says that we were made in that God’s image—amazingly enough, we too are creators, and impose our order over our surroundings just as this Biblical principle implies. The universe must have an inherent intelligence, otherwise there’s no way it could have given rise to the intelligent circuitry in our brains. But the God of the Bible is also intelligent, and its passages tell us that this intelligence is reflected throughout the order of the creation.
So I think that in the end when the materialists finally run out of material to explain all that we observe (and I argue that we have already reached that point), they will be left without recourse except to entertain the disturbing notion that they have traveled full circle through godless pragmatism back to Aristotle’s Prime Mover—the God of Galileo and Copernicus and Gregor Mendel and Isaac Newton and James Maxwell. And Einstein’s lawgiver, of whom he said did not roll dice.
In this second installment, we are going to get into the deeper meat-and-potatoes of the ramifications and shortcomings of materialism from a scientific viewpoint.
First, let’s talk about physical laws. It is widely recognized that the universe is assembled and behaves according to a given set of physical laws. The fact that we do not yet fully understand all those laws does not negate this premise. For example, we know that a collection of molecules, each comprising two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen, at standard temperature and pressure (STP), and in the presence of sufficient gravity to collect them in a pool will yield a clear liquid we call water, no matter where in the universe these conditions are met. This is because the same physical laws at work here on earth are the same as they are elsewhere. No occasionally, you’ll hear a scientific authority propose the idea that the laws of physics could be different at other remote locations in the universe, but this is really hypocritical when you think about it. Physicists peer into the vast expanses of the universe with radio and optical telescopes that gather a wide variety of data, and from that information can tell us how far away a distant galaxy is, how fast it is traveling based on the Doppler effect, and even the mass and chemical composition of its stars through spectrometry. How can we do this and get dependable results? That’s because the laws of physics on which these devices are designed that also govern the nature of the distant information gathered, and that establish the underlying mathematics used to analyze that information, are the same at the location of the remote object as they are here. That’s why it works. Were this not so, then the very notion of performing calculations on distant astronomical bodies and publishing the results would be utter nonsense and pure fantasy.
Second is the fundamental scientific principle that everything that we can observe is physical. We cannot observe or measure things that are purely spiritual, for example, but everything that is physical is observable by some means, even if we do not yet have the technology to observe every aspect of the physical. Since everything we can observe is physical, then everything we observe must be governed by physical laws. It cannot be any other way. Again, it doesn’t matter that we don’t as yet understand the full extent of those laws. No matter if its atoms or airplanes, the laws governing them are the same as the laws built into the greater physical universe of which they are a component.
Finally, the processes defined by these physical laws can never produce a result that exceeds, contradicts, or otherwise operates outside the boundary of those laws. Everything that these physical laws produce will be defined by and conformed to those very same laws. To put it another way, no component of a system can exceed the properties of the system that contains and defines it. One way to look at this is like a deck of cards. All kinds of games with a multitude of rules can be derived from this deck of four suits of thirteen values each, and an almost infinite combination of hands can be dealt from them. But at the end of the day, no game or hand can ever be anything more that what these fifty-two cards will allow. No game rules or hand combinations can exist outside those that are contained within and defined by this fifty-two-card deck. The parameter defined by those cards contains all the possible sequences and combinations. This system could never produce hands that contain values for a game with sixty-five distinct cards, for instance, nor suddenly produce additional suits. The total system that represents your car and all its subsystems enables it to move at a maximum speed of, let’s say 120 mph. That same system, as designed and constructed by its manufacturer, will not roll off the assembly line doing 500 mph. By the same rules, a propeller-driven steamship cannot motor itself to the moon. No system, nor any part of it, can ever achieve anything beyond the limits of the properties that govern it.
Let’s recap: the universe operates according to a definitive set of physical laws; everything that is observable is physical and therefore must be subject to those same physical laws; no substance or process resulting from those laws can ever exceed the limits of those laws, nor be in violation of them. There are no exceptions. Observations that seem to defy known physical laws cannot actually be operating outside the laws of the universe, but in reality are merely operating according to a part of those laws with which we are not yet familiar.
These are all sound, established scientific principles. The trouble is that those in the scientific community—particularly physicists—routinely apply this universal axiom prejudicially, and as a result, often hypocritically. Take the human brain for example. Physics typically dismiss the workings of the brain as biology or even psychology. But this is merely an excuse to avoid dealing with its unpredictable and volatile nature. Just because it’s capable of independent thought, does that mean that the brain and its subsystems are not physical? If it is physical, then it is built and operates according to the same physical laws that govern all other physical things.
This brings us to some remarkable and inescapable conclusions. For one, it means that any process that occurs in the brain—including thought—must have a physical reality. This may seem almost bizarre at first, but careful consideration shows it must be so. Consider a drawing of a unicorn displayed on a computer monitor screen. Is it real? Most people would say no because you can’t touch or handle it. So what is it? Isn’t it a collection of coherent, meaningful information? Is the information real? Let’s send the image to the printer. Now you’re looking at a printout of the unicorn on a piece of paper that you can handle. Is this real? The answer’s not so clear now, is it? The printout comprises physical ink on a physical piece of paper that can be viewed, copied or photographed. It can be shown to anyone who would understand immediately what it was. Physical photons reflect off the physical image on the physical paper and convey its physical information to your physical eyes. It is a coherent collection of meaningful information. The information is physical. It’s real. Let’s run the information through a CAD laser cutter that can project it into three dimensions and cut the object out of solid material. Is it real now? You can’t have the real effect of the finished model without real information as the cause—unless you’re going to argue that the unicorn model is a paranormal materialization.
So, let’s look again at the original image on the monitor. Now is it real? Of course it is.
Thoughts in the brain are essentially no different than information in a computer. They are a collection of coherent, meaningful bits of physical information that can have a real, observable effect in the physical world. The computer on which you are now viewing this file is a real, physical construction that came into existence from the thoughts of many human brains. If those thoughts were not physical part of reality, they could never have given rise to the real, physical effect of your computer. Thoughts are real, physical things.
What about our intelligence? It must have come from somewhere. Yes, evolution has many hypotheses that try to explain it—there are over forty competing theories in evolutionary circles that offer different reasons how the human brain could have possibly evolved far beyond the needs for this for our mere survival. But whatever the merits of these various ideas might be, they all sidestep the most compelling fact. All components of a system conform to the laws governing that system, and cannot operate outside those laws or in a way that contradicts them. If the universe produced intelligence, then we cannot avoid the realization that the universe itself must then also be intelligent! There’s no getting around this—if the universe did not have an inherent intelligence built into it, then we have to conclude that it produced a component that operates outside of the very universal laws that produced it. Good luck trying to defend that particular argument! I’d particularly like to see a materialist explain how the universe has no intelligence and yet can create intelligence.
Here’s another brain twister for you (pun intended). What about the imagination, or literally, our ability to manifest images in the brain? Are the images conjured in the mind real? Remember, the human brain is a component of the physical universe, and therefore must be built according to the same laws that govern everything else in the universe. If so, can the human brain behave in a way that’s contrary to the laws that shaped it and are built into its matrix? By now, you know the answer. We don’t normally think of the brain in this way because we have a very egocentric way of viewing the universe around us—we look at “we” as somehow being a separate reality than when we look at everything else. But when you step back from self and consider the greater scheme of things, it’s clear our brains (as well as the rest of us) must be an integral part of the world around us. Biological systems are formed according to physical laws, and brains are a component of such systems. The startling conclusion then is that anything that can be imaged in the human brain in a coherent and meaningful pattern must be in accordance with the physical laws that govern its form and function, and so must be physically possible to exist in the universe! Think about it—how could the physical convolutions of the brain and the electro-chemical processes that take place in it, all which are in accordance with the physical laws that created it, produce a result contrary to or outside of those laws?
The implications of this realization are staggering. Philosophers have been saying for centuries that we can accomplish whatever it is we can imagine (or literally, image). The difference here is that the traditional realm of this purely philosophical argument has been elevated it to a sound, scientifically reasonable principle. Everything we humans create begins with mental images in the brain, after which we use our hands to devise means by which we can transform that image into its material equivalent in the visible world. But there’s nothing to say that, given a complete understanding of the laws that allow us to transform invisible thought into visible reality, and a highly advanced technology based on those laws, that we might convert those images directly to reality.
Picture a juicy apple. My, that looks good. Poof! Enjoy. But be careful what you think.
These concepts pose several challenges to a strictly materialistic interpretation of the universe. For one, how can physics come to a Theory of Everything if it does not consider the unique processes of the human brain? From where did humanity obtain the ability to transcend the demands of its environment, and moreover, to purposefully transform the environment in radical and unnatural ways—a thing not possible according to evolution? If the human brain is intelligent, and so the universe itself must be intelligent, how can science continue to maintain that evolution is not intelligent? And if an intelligent universe is finally conceded, where did that intelligence come from? And since physics represents that the origin of the universe was a true creation (i.e., something brought forth out of essentially nothing), how can physicists continue in their search for the answer to this mystery focus solely on smashing particles into tinier and tinier pieces while disregarding the one assemblage of matter—the human brain—that displays the very same kind of spontaneous creation that they are seeking? And if the universe was a true creation, how can it be said that the creative faculty of the human brain doesn’t mimic in some way the mechanics of the greater universal creation, a brain that is the product of the physical laws that sprang forth from that very universal creation?
Albert Einstein, while not a believer in the Judeo-Christian faith, was in fact a theist who believed there was something that established the order and form of the universe. His guiding principle was, “If there are laws, there must be a lawgiver.” The God of the Bible is indeed a creator, and a giver of laws that established the nature and order of all things. The Bible says that we were made in that God’s image—amazingly enough, we too are creators, and impose our order over our surroundings just as this Biblical principle implies. The universe must have an inherent intelligence, otherwise there’s no way it could have given rise to the intelligent circuitry in our brains. But the God of the Bible is also intelligent, and its passages tell us that this intelligence is reflected throughout the order of the creation.
So I think that in the end when the materialists finally run out of material to explain all that we observe (and I argue that we have already reached that point), they will be left without recourse except to entertain the disturbing notion that they have traveled full circle through godless pragmatism back to Aristotle’s Prime Mover—the God of Galileo and Copernicus and Gregor Mendel and Isaac Newton and James Maxwell. And Einstein’s lawgiver, of whom he said did not roll dice.