Intelligent Design &
Simulation Theory
By: David Deschesne
Editor/Publisher,
Fort Fairfield Journal
March 14, 2018
What if we and all of our perceived reality was merely a 3D holographic simulation in an advanced civilization’s computer? That is a possible scenario some theoretical physicists, cosmologists and atheists have unwittingly arrived at in their attempt to rule out any form of intelligent designer. While they may rule out a Creator-God, the potential for intelligent design from a higher form of consciousness or advanced civilizations still, to their chagrin, persists.
Intelligent Design
While it has been layered with religious connotations over the past several decades, Intelligent Design is actually a very generic, non-religious term. It could be referring to the God of the Bible, but it could just as easily be referring to any advanced form of consciousness in an as yet to be perceived entity in this universe, or perhaps another. Or, it could simply be an advanced civilization. Reflecting on the term generically, we are surrounded by evidence of Intelligent Design of a terrestrial origin but simply take it for granted.
For example, take a modern paper clip. It is composed of steel, coated with zinc or chromium to help prevent rust, and is formed into a specific and functional shape. The form of the paperclip itself is evidence of Intelligent Design because those elements do not occur in that form in nature, nor are there any random processes that would mass produce paperclips on their own.
When we look at a paperclip we know it was designed by someone with intelligence, even though we never met them. We know the steel was mined from the earth, refined, extruded and formed all by creatures with intelligence—humans. Outside of people who have family members that work in a paperclip manufacturing plant, most people have never met these intelligent designers who conceive, form, maintain the machinery and package the paperclips. But we know that intelligence was impressed upon them all the same.
The same goes for anything made by the hand of man. An airplane, an automobile engine, a computer chip, or a horse buggy are all products that required some form of intelligence to be impressed upon raw materials in order to form them into the functional units they ultimately become. Even an atheist who never met the person who assembled the automobile engine has to admit that somebody with intelligence had to design and build it because automobile engines do not form on their own out in the wilderness by random natural processes, no matter how many billions of years you allow.
However, when confronted with the same level of complexity in the natural world, from the structure and replication of DNA to the intricately mechanical portions of a cell, or the 17 step chemical cascading process that takes place in blood clotting, all the way to the highly structured and organized collection of cells that ultimately make up conscious living beings, those same atheists who will admit the complexity of an automobile engine was designed by someone or something of intelligence completely shut their mind to the idea that a similar form of advanced intelligence must also be at work to form and compose the highly intricate, complex structures of life we find in nature. It’s not so much that they don’t want a generic intelligent designer, per se, but rather, they don’t want to allow that thought to enter their heads because then it opens up the possibility of there being a God—or some form of advanced consciousness that is greater than they are. To atheists—some of whom turn into physicists and cosmologists—man is where intelligence stops. While they will admit intelligent design for everything created by man, they will stubbornly refuse to allow that idea to interfere with their “random natural processes” theory/religion of how irreducibly complex living organisms are formed. It is this stubbornness that caused mechanistic-minded physicists and cosmologists, in their attempt to rule out intelligent design, to actually confirm it as the most plausible explanation for our existence and reality.
The Goldilocks Universe
We take the forces that make up our universe for granted. They are unseen, invisible, yet they are finely tuned and if only a few parameters are slightly tweaked out of alignment our universe—and life as we know it—would never have come into existence.
For example, We have gravity, electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces that hold atoms together and govern their interaction with each other.
In Dr. Hugh Ross’ book, The Creator and the Cosmos, (NavPress, 1995) he cites over two dozen parameters in the universe that must have very specific values in order for life of any kind to exist. Some of these are:
- strong nuclear force constant
- weak nuclear force constant
- gravitational force constant
- electromagnetic force constant
- ratio of electron to proton mass
- velocity of light
- fine structure constant
- average distance between galaxies
- decay rate of the proton
- ground state energy level of 4Helium
- polarity of the water molecule
These are just some of the parameters that have to exist within very strict values. If any one is out of skew, life as we know it doesn’t exist.
Ross points out in his book that the natural processes evolutionists believe occurred in the early days of the earth that ultimately brought about highly complex life forms did not have enough time to get all of the elements together in the right order and proportion by themselves using random natural processes alone.
On a more micro scale, think of all the processes that go on in a human body and have to work perfectly every second of the day or death will result. Some of these processes are metabolism, digestion, respiration, heartbeat, neural synapses, blood clotting, the immune system, body temperature, waste excretion, etc. If any of these goes out of whack, the body can suffer drastic and possibly irreparable consequences.
In the television documentary series, What We Don’t Know, Cosmologist, Martin Rees notes, “Human beings are made up of 10,000 trillion, trillion atoms. The important thing is not that we’re made up of those atoms, but the way those atoms are combined which determines the complexity of life.”
Many Universes Theory
The general view of most physicists is the fine tuning of the universe has absolutely nothing to do with intelligent design but rather, is largely accidental.
In attempting to rule out any form of Intelligent Design, these physicists claim that our Earth isn’t special, that it’s just one of millions of other planets orbiting millions of other stars in the millions of galaxies in our known universe. They also take a leap of faith almost as profound as any religious zealot by extrapolating their “many earths” theory to many universes. The Many Universes theory, in attempting to explain how life originated in ours, says that there are an infinite number of universes in existence, each with its own beginning and each with its own parameters. Given that there may be an infinite number of universes, it isn’t surprising that one of them developed with all the right parameters to support life as we know it in our own universe. If the laws of our universe were just one set among a limitless set of possibilities, then it allows for the laws of chance to provide at least one universe formed where we could even exist. Our values for gravity, the Cosmic Constant and electrical charge of protons and neutrons would be just one set of a limitless number of other parameters in a limitless number of other universes. Therefore, our universe and life in it wasn’t all that special or surprising. Martin Rees coined the term, “Multiverse” to describe the whole ensemble of an infinite number of possible universes, out of which ours is but one.
Atheists celebrated their “victory” over intelligent design by believing they had finally been able to rationalize the fine tuning of our universe and its ability to support life by random processes alone. However, that victory was short-lived. Since there was no way to empirically prove or disprove their theory, these atheists/cosmologists relied on a form of faith similar to that used by religions to support their ideology and that is where the theory begins to get shaky for them if they want to keep an intelligent designer out of the equation.
In attempting to rule out Intelligent Design, the Many Universes theory had in a way set a trap—one that leads back to a potential for Intelligent Design. For example, in an infinite number of universes, where ours possessed just the right parameters for our life to have evolved, it is also conceivable for other universes to also have parameters fine-tuned for life to exist even if it is different than ours. It is then conceivable that those life forms were older than ours and could have developed advanced technologies to either “seed” other planets in their universe, or planets in other universes. These advanced civilizations then would be the “Intelligent Designers” of us under this model. Or, rather than physical seeding, a much more esoteric model has been developed. This model suggests that those advanced civilizations may have actually created a type of computer program similar to our 3D gaming systems and that we and all of our physical reality are merely simulations experiencing a reality that was programmed for us to exist in. Inside that virtual reality world we are composed merely of pixels and the “laws of nature” are computer code programmed by that advanced civilization. In this sense, by using the thought experiment of “Many Universes” to provide a way for life and all of our fine-tuned universe to have formed by random chance, the door was open to the possibility of another life-form, or even another consciousness to be extant that could have conceived our existence into being—Intelligent Design.
Simulation Theory
The movie industry has done a pretty good job of conceptualizing Simulation Theory. The most notable is The Matrix (Warner Bros., 1999) where it illustrated how the consciousness of the human is tricked into perceiving an artificial world so computers can harness the physical energy of the unwitting human’s body. A lesser known, but equally good movie also came out in that same year called The Thirteenth Floor (Columbia Pictures, 1999) where reality was a simulation inside a simulation inside a simulation. A comedic movie with Adam Sandler called Pixels (Columbia Pictures, 2015) depicts an advanced civilization utilizing our video gaming formats of the 1980s to invade earth.
Other movies take a more introspective approach to reality by suggesting it is all in the mind, or all conscious perception. Some examples in no particular order are Inception (Warner Bros., 2010), Somewhere in Time (Universal, 2000), What Dreams May Come (Universal, 1998), Source Code (Summit, 2011), Interstellar (Warner Bros. & Paramount, 2014), Vanilla Sky (Paramount, 2001) and Cloud Atlas (Warner Bros., 2012).
Simulation theory suggests that our makeup and all of our perceived physical reality is really just a simulation in an advanced civilization’s computer. Alternatively, it could also be extrapolated to a simulation constructed by pure consciousness with no actual hardware or electronics employed in the process.
Support for the theory was recently advanced by Quantum Gravity Research in a theory called Emergence Theory. They have postulated an 8 dimensional crystalline model of reality, called the E8 lattice, that is projected down to a three dimensional “quasi-crystal” which represents our familiar dimensions of height, width and depth. Emergence Theory also allows for Planck-length (the smallest unit of measure possible, many times smaller than an atom) entities that can be fit together like pixels in a 3D holographic virtual reality space that ultimately construct what we perceive as solid matter. Check out their professionally produced documentary video, What is Reality on YouTube.
Quantum physics does prove this out to a point. When examining the nature of matter at the size of atoms and smaller scientists have found there is no “solid,” it’s primarily empty space with atoms being nothing more than hazy probability clouds that only appear solid when they are observed by a conscious being. At all other times, atoms are waveforms of energy spread out over space and time.
In this sense, God or god-like beings would be the originator of the program—whether a computer-based construct where our perceptions are governed by computer rules within a pre-programmed matrix of possibilities in computer hardware running Artificial Intelligence-based software; or the much more abstract
“Wetware” model where the Intelligent Designer is more of a Divine Mind, or First Consciousness, that is then envisioning and perceiving all of reality through fractals of itself expressed within the simulation through the brains of individually-existing entities interacting with each other in a world created purely by that consciousness alone.
Both ideas are plausible and could be what is described in overly simplistic terms by the authors of the books that ended up in the Bible.
Since those concepts are beyond our ability to empirically measure, they have to be relegated to a probability scale. Whichever may ultimately be the truth, the reductionist who wants to attribute all of reality to random chance has to consider these are real possibilities: that irreducibly complex life forms more likely than not have at their genesis, an Intelligent Designer. Whether we call that designer God, Consciousness or an advanced civilization is up for debate. But there can be no debate that some form of intelligence is impressing order on the information systems that we perceive within our reality.
