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Is Physical Law an Alien Intelligence? (nautil.us)
What if alien life were so advanced that its powers were indistinguishable from physics? It's the one-year anniversary of a startling article which appeared in Nautilus magazine. Long-time Slashdot reader wjcofkc writes: Caleb Scharf, astronomer and the director of the multidisciplinary Columbia Astrobiology Center at Columbia University presents an intriguing thought experiment.
"Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke was being uncharacteristically unambitious. He once pointed out that any sufficiently advanced technology is going to be indistinguishable from magic. If you dropped in on a bunch of Paleolithic farmers with your iPhone and a pair of sneakers, you'd undoubtedly seem pretty magical. But the contrast is only middling: The farmers would still recognize you as basically like them, and before long they'd be taking selfies. But what if life has moved so far on that it doesn't just appear magical, but appears like physics?"
The original submitter included their own counterarguments against the idea, but the astronomer follows his proposal to its ultimate conclusion.
"Perhaps hyper-advanced life isn't just external. Perhaps it's already all around. It is embedded in what we perceive to be physics itself, from the root behavior of particles and fields to the phenomena of complexity and emergence."
"Perhaps Arthur C. Clarke was being uncharacteristically unambitious. He once pointed out that any sufficiently advanced technology is going to be indistinguishable from magic. If you dropped in on a bunch of Paleolithic farmers with your iPhone and a pair of sneakers, you'd undoubtedly seem pretty magical. But the contrast is only middling: The farmers would still recognize you as basically like them, and before long they'd be taking selfies. But what if life has moved so far on that it doesn't just appear magical, but appears like physics?"
The original submitter included their own counterarguments against the idea, but the astronomer follows his proposal to its ultimate conclusion.
"Perhaps hyper-advanced life isn't just external. Perhaps it's already all around. It is embedded in what we perceive to be physics itself, from the root behavior of particles and fields to the phenomena of complexity and emergence."
Indeed there is a strong argument to be made that physics is (part of) God, that whatever existed at the time of the big bang and will continue to exist is God.
I don't have time to go into detail at the moment, but new discoveries in quantum physics align amazingly well with Biblical explanations of the creation of the universe, wording in the ancient explanations that didn't really make sense until we understood quantum physics.
Language issues make it difficult to express in English since "is" has many meanings, Spanish and other languages are more precise, but basically whenever "God" was asked "what are you?" or "who are you?" the answer was "I am what has always been". (Soy que es in Spanish) To the extent that physics is timeless, physics *is* God and God is physics, according to God's word.
There is this branch of Hinduism, part of Advaita Vedanta (non-dualist philosophy; there is no dualism, no "us and God") which says that the universe comes from Gods efforts to know more about itself.
God wanted to understand itself. So it shattered itself into countless shards, forming this universe, everything in this universe and every possible universe.
Each of these shards goes on to experience everything that can possibly be experienced, gathering up all knowledge and information.
Eventually, in some infinitely distant future, these shards combine together again into God.
In that moment, God 'remembers' every experience of every one of its fragments and comes to understand its own nature.
In this philosophy your personal self-experience and self-consciousness is, in fact, God in the far distant future remembering your life, recollecting what it was to be you.
And so, you (the self that dwells within, the one who observes your life and your experiences) really are God.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
"I will prove to be what I will prove to be." In other words, "I am the one that can and will continue to cause things to happen the way I want them to happen, cause people to do what I want them to do, and cause the existence or non-existence of that which I choose."
He Causes To Become. Ye Hawah. He causes to become, not just in existence, but in action and purpose.
Physics is not God, and God is not physics. God created and caused everything that manifests itself as "physics", and he maintains it with his dynamic energy. As for "timeless", only God is timeless. The physical universe had a beginning, and scientists have established that it was approximately 14 billion years ago. And as for the creation account, there's no need for quantum physics to explain it. It's quite simple. God created the physical universe. Then, when he turned his attention toward earth, around 10 billion years later, he first formed the geological characteristics of the planet, then created plant life, then animal life in increasingly complex designs. Last came humans, the first animals with the ability to reason and show the same type of emotional and mental characteristics as God himself, albeit not to his level. His mechanisms for doing any of these things are not stated in the Bible, and many of them are time-critical to the point that they couldn't have happened if left to chance. (There are odds, and they are so miniscule as to be essentially equivalent to zero.)
The Bible isn't a mystery. It's an accurate and reliable guide to human history and future events provided by someone who knows what has happened because he was there and knows what will happen because he will be there and will make it happen. Everyone would do well to heed its counsel.