Scientists often scoff at religion. Many believe that science increasingly disproves the existence of God. For instance, scientists often point to evolution as proof that there is no Creator. It’s not that religion is outdated, but rather that the current perceptions relating to the parameters of science are mistakenly narrow. As science progresses, science and religion are becoming increasingly complimentary.

About two years ago, I was struck with the notion that the uncertainty phenomena observed in association with particles at the quantum level is potentially evidence of an illusory quality of our Universe, and a Designer. Since then, I’ve been contemplating how it explains better than any other theory of which I’m aware three otherwise substantially unrelated phenomena of physics, including the uncertainty phenomena of quantum particles, the apparent existence of dark matter and energy that makes up over 90% of the Universe but is utterly imperceptible, and why apparently nothing in the Universe moves (or can move, as circumstantially supported ad nauseam by testing of Albert Einstein’s relevant relativistic theories over the past century) faster than approximately 186,000 miles per second (the speed of light) regardless of the relevant observer’s inertial reference frame perspective (which is a freaky and counterintuitive result considered in the context of thought experiments involving inertial reference frames that move relative to each other). This past April, these and other observations culminated in my current opinion that my decade of atheism was fueled by ignorance as opposed to enlightenment, and that the truth of things is not that the Torah is inconsistent with science, but rather that current perceptions relating to the parameters of science are mistakenly narrow as a function of our human species having collectively evolved entirely (except during moments of manned space travel) on a single inertial reference frame in which variables like the pace of time are constant.

In the December 2013 issue of Discover, in the article “Do We Live in the Matrix?”, Zeeya Merali proposed that cosmic rays might provide a test to reveal that our Universe is a computer simulation. See http://discovermagazine.com/2013/dec/09-do-we-live-in-the-matrix#.UsG-5PRDt8E. In the meantime, there is substantial circumstantial evidence to support the theory that we live in something like a computer simulation. For instance, the notion of c, the maximum speed of light or anything else, 186,282 miles per second, is a bazaar one. Why c? What is so special about that speed “c” such that nothing can be faster than c (at least not without going backwards in time)? Why does the speed of a thing observed from different inertial reference frames start behaving funnier the closer it gets to the speed of light (in that the speed inevitably veers logarithmically toward a maximum of c)? One explanation is that we live in a simulation. The notions of pixelation (quantum physics and string theory tell us that our Universe is made up of pixels in that matter and energy are made up of discrete units – e.g., quarks, electrons, photons – each of which, according to string theory, is likely comprised of a “string”) and a grid refresh speed (which one would expect in a simulated environment, like a screen refresh speed in a video game) necessarily lead to the existence of a maximum speed of anything (i.e.: pixel size divided by grid refresh speed), which we have – c, the speed of light. In other words, our maximum speed of anything c constitutes circumstantial evidence of a simulated environment.

Dark matter also constitutes circumstantial evidence that we live in a simulation. Of course, it’s widely theorized that dark matter makes up most of the mass of our Universe. It seems that dark matter is out there because parts of the Universe that we can see, like galaxies, wouldn’t move the way they do without, for example, the gravitational effects of dark matter. But there’s no mass associated with dark matter that we can see. It’s as if dark matter is there only to provide the effect of mass without the mass itself. But why?

Seth Lloyd, a physicist at MIT, estimates that a computer that could simulate reality down to the last quark would be bigger than the Universe itself. So it follows that a simulation would not fill out all parts of the Universe – only the parts that we can see well. In other parts, it might have “place holders” (i.e. something like algorithms or subroutines) that would exhibit the gravitational and other properties of things that should be in those parts, but would otherwise be “blank,” and thereby constitute a minimal drain of the resources of the simulation, which must focus it’s resources on the parts of the Universe that the living organisms populating it can see well.

The uncertain state of particles at the quantum level further constitutes circumstantial evidence that we live in a simulation. In fact, the notion of a simulated Universe might explain the uncertainty embraced by quantum mechanics in a manner that would please even Albert Einstein. Quantum theory proposes, for example, that an electron does not have a precise position until the position is actually observed. Until then, the electron has no precise position. Rather, at any point in time, there are only probabilities relating to the precise position of the electron. To be clear, quantum theory proposes not merely that the precise position of the electron can’t be known until it is observed, but rather that the precise position doesn’t exist at all until it is observed. (For a layperson explanation of this phenomenon, referred to as the “observer effect,” complete with some video demos, see http://www.doubleslitexperiment.com/.) Einstein challenged this notion of chance relating to the position of quantum particles, unsuccessfully, until the day he died. In fact, he famously stated, “God does not play dice with the Universe.”

Well, even if God wouldn’t play with the Universe, a programmer running a computer simulation with a finite amount of resources might. (Obviously, there might be multiple programmers, but I’ll assume for simplicity’s sake a single programmer.) In such an event, our programmer might not want the simulation to newly ascertain such quantum details throughout the Universe at each moment of time all the time. That might drain an undue portion of the simulation’s resources. The simulator might instead program the simulation to not ascertain the contents under a particular rock until someone actually looks under the rock. Until then, our programmer might have decided that a probability function will do just fine.

Of course, all this begs the question: Wouldn’t our programmer, as smart and advanced as he/she must be, work harder to keep us from eventually discovering such clues as those potential clues described above, which arguably suggest a simulated nature of our Universe? Not necessarily. Those who contemplate a simulated universe often do so in the context of noting that, if simulated universes do exist, they surely vastly outnumber the non-simulated “real” universes. Indeed, others have postulated that there is likely only one non-simulated universe – the first universe – and all others after that are simulated. It follows that it’s likely that our programmer him/herself lives in a simulated universe. If so, then a precisely accurate universe simulation necessarily includes our discovery of the artificial nature of our environment. Of course, that logic wouldn’t hold for a first generation universe simulation/s (since their programmer/s live in a/the non-simulated universe). The general point, though, is that we don’t know the purpose of the programmer of any particular universe simulation, regardless of the generation, and we shouldn’t assume that the programmer would work harder to keep inhabitants of the simulation from discovering their own simulated nature.

But there’s another explanation. Once we accept that we live in something like a simulated Universe, we must accept that our simulated Universe was designed by something like a Programmer, and once we accept the notion of a Programmer of our Universe, by definition we accept that our Universe was indeed designed by a Supreme Being. If so, perhaps the clues discussed above are not a function of finite resources. Perhaps instead, our God created the Universe pursuant to its mortal inhabitants ultimately confronting their own arrogance in the context of discovering “on their own” the awesome wonder of Its design by Him down to the last pixel (or string).

At this point, it makes sense to re-approach religion and religious writings in the context of broadened parameters of science. As an example, and more particularly, instead of assuming that the Bible is not literal, and that interpretation of it must bend to science, let’s assume that every aspect of the Old Testament and at least one or more of the Gospels are literally true in the narrow sense of the phrase “literally true,” and that contemporary notions of science are mistakenly narrow as a function of our limited mortal perspective, and that the actual parameters of science as viewed by immortal Energy with a view of the whole of Creation are much broader.

It facilitates discussion to focus on a particular example: Scientists often scoff at the notion that the world is only about 6,000 years old, as many Jews, Christians and Muslims reading citations of passages of generations and years in the Old Testament believe. As support for such dispositions, they often offer circumstantial evidence of the passage of time, such as layers of sediment in the earth’s surface, or evolution, each of which suggest the passage of millions or even billions of years. On the other hand, Einstein proposed that time is an illusion, and that everything in the future has already been determined, and that it is theoretically possible to fast forward (or move backward) in time. Thus, according to Einstein, though we perceive the velocity of time as a constant, the velocity of time is a variable.

If the Universe is something like a stimulation, then our world might indeed be some 6,000 years old, meaning that the simulation started some 6,000 years ago, but that at t=0, the simulation already included information that would otherwise have to be accumulated over billions of years of evolution. Alternatively, perhaps t accelerated at some point thousands of years ago, and prior to that, the equivalent of billions of years (i.e.: measured at today’s velocity of time) of evolution occurred in a burst of activity, with relatively little passage of t. The point is that the assumption that geological sediment and evolution disprove God requires that the pace of time has never varied in the history of the Universe. In a post-Einstein world, that seems like a naive assumption for a species that’s substantially evolved entirely on a single inertial reference frame, namely our planet Earth, a mere speck of sand on a perhaps infinite shore.

So, back to the point – science is catching up with religion. Here’s what doesn’t make sense – in a Universe in which the atheists have got it right, a quantum particle like an electron doesn’t fully exist until it’s observed. Here’s what does make sense – our Universe was created by a Creator who wants us to discover for ourselves the awesome wonder of His Creation, and left clues for us to do so.

-Tom Zuber, Los Angeles, CA