The Odds & the Ends

The Chances of Our Three-Tiered Reality Being a Meaningless Accident Are Nil

Atheists believe that the universe and everything in it is a meaningless accident. For hundreds of years, they have maintained that science supports their belief in an accidental universe. This is false.

In the last 75 years, modern science has discovered the design of reality and has shown that it is mathematically impossible that this complex, multilayered design could have emerged from a series of random accidents.

Just a few decades ago, humanity had not discovered computers and did not appreciate the power of digital information processing. Now science has discovered that three remarkably sophisticated digital processing systems form the structure of, first, the physical dimension of reality; second, of all life; and finally, of the mental dimension of reality. Consider what we have learned.

Digital Processing System #1
Physical Reality

The essence of physical reality is three quantum fields: the electron, the up quark, and the down quark. Amazingly, these quantum fields are immaterial tiny clouds of pure energy that encode digital information scientists call their quantum state. The quantum fields act as digital processors that enforce a strict set of rules that control how they will manage the value of their quantum state as they flow through time.¹

The quantum computing that controls the behavior of these elemental quantum fields results in the emergence of just a few very special stable patterns of energy and information: protons, neutrons, and the atoms they can create. These larger patterns of quantum fields are all new, more complex, digital processing systems that create and enforce new, more complex layers of rules.

For instance, atoms act as tiny digital computers, constantly monitoring and controlling what discrete energy levels they will allow their electrons to have. Different atoms on the periodic table have different numbers of electrons, and that creates a different set of rules defining how each of the 92 atomic elements can behave.

The digital processing of this atomic alphabet results in the emergence of different types of molecules, which are all unique spatial combinations of atoms. Molecules are effectively complex parallel processors, each enforcing a unique set of rules (chemical properties) entirely determined by the composite rule set created by their spatial array of these tiny atomic computers.

Hydrogen clouds, galaxies, stars, radiant energy, stardust, molecules, planets—everything in physical reality emerges from all of this digital processing at the quantum field, atomic, and molecular levels. It is a magnificently complex and mysterious processing system, with each layer precisely anticipating the information required by the next layer of the design. As discussed in the book A Fortunate Universe,² these rules and values had to be fine-tuned precisely as they are for this system to enable the emergence of Earth and all of its wondrous possibilities.

Digital Processing System #2
DNA & Life

Science has discovered that the foundational unit of all life, a living cell, is a highly complex digital processing system. Cells are tiny robotic-like communities controlled by the digital program stored within their DNA molecule.

The DNA program starts with the capability to control the remarkable complexity of a single cell, creating and controlling protein workers in automated factories assembling millions of parts per second. Somewhere within its 6.2 billion bits' worth of digital code, DNA stores the design of your entire body: every cell, every capillary, every organ, your brain, your senses, your physical and mental capabilities.

It has recently been discovered that over 80 percent of the DNA code is being used to produce RNA.³ Scientists are beginning to explore the remarkable complexity and sophistication of the resulting immense program stored in human DNA. This "software sophistication" starts with the fact that it takes several totally different sections of code, cooperating in a mysterious but elegant manner, to achieve the specific features and processes that create you.

The DNA program is also a marvelously adaptive program, which expresses and suppresses sections of code and their actions, depending upon the situation—the type of cell, the current state of that cell, and the environment. This results in entire sections of code being used only on a very selective basis. The intelligence to do the selecting is somehow written into the DNA program itself.

The computer system that reads and acts upon this huge adaptive program has to be contained within the structure of the cell. However, there are hundreds of different types of cells in your body, and the physical and chemical conditions within any one cell constantly vary with time. Consequently, your body has hundreds of different types of time-varying organic computer systems reading and acting upon the digital program stored in your DNA, and you have over 32 trillion cells constantly performing this processing.

It is a giant step in digital processing capability to go from the rigid rules controlling the quantum fields, atoms, and molecules of System #1 to the remarkably complex adaptive program stored within your DNA and the myriad of different time-varying organic computer systems reading that code.

Digital Processing System #3
The Mental Dimension

The mental dimension mysteriously emerges from the digital processing of a network of over 86 billion neurons within your brain. Each neuron is a digital processing device that can turn on or off about two hundred times per second, depending upon the sum of its received inputs. Consequently, the information-handling capability of your brain emerges from vast interconnected networks of these digital processing neurons.

Your senses take information from the physical world and translate it into a code that nerves carry to the brain. Then digital networks in your brain process this code and somehow translate it into your experiencing the physical world in full color, with surround-sound, tastes, fragrances, and pain or pleasure.

Your memory prioritizes these experiences and "decides" which ones to "remember"; these are encoded into structural changes in selected neuron networks. Based upon studies of how digital neural networks "learn," it is thought that further structural changes in the wiring of our neural networks allow us to learn from our memories.

However, we have no analogies for how these digital processing networks might cause the emergence of curiosity or imagination or creativity or free will or emotions. At this point, all we have is speculations. However, all of these mental superpowers must emerge from the activity of this vast digital processing network.

To glimpse the complexity of this processing network within your brain, assume we could "inflate" the elemental quantum fields (electrons and quarks) to the size of marbles. On this scale, atoms would be hundreds of miles in diameter, with only a handful of these "marbles" inside each of them. Neurons would be tens of thousands of miles long, each with hundreds or even thousands of interconnections. Your brain would be 15 million times larger than our solar system out to Pluto. Each of its trillion-trillion-trillion quantum fields (the "marbles" in your brain) could be making digital decisions more than a trillion-trillion-trillion times per second.

All of this quantum processing supports the emergence of all of the higher-order digital processing being executed by this vast network of neurons. Then, of course, the miracle happens: consciousness and the whole mental dimension emerges into reality within your brain.

The information processing of the mental capabilities that emerge from system #3 is a giant step in information-handling complexity over the adaptive coding instructions of the DNA-stored program of system #2.

Reality would be a dark, silent, unappreciated waste of energy and information without a mental dimension. Try to imagine a meaningful purpose for any design of reality that did not culminate in a mental dimension. For that matter, try to imagine a meaningful design of reality that did not include free will or emotions. A network of intelligent, emotional minds, each capable of writing and living its own story is the ideal cherry on top of this reality sundae. It is the only goal that could result in this total design being meaningful.

Most scientists believe that consciousness, your mind, and the entire mental dimension somehow emerge from all the digital processing that goes on within system #3. Yet despite all we have learned, we still have no idea of how consciousness emerges or even exactly what it is.

The Probability of Accident versus Design

I am a system engineer. System engineers start with an objective, a goal, and then use the rules of physical reality to build layers of technology—components, subsystems, and software—that they then assemble into a final system designed to achieve that original goal.

Any system engineering analysis of how the mental dimension stands upon all the layers of digital processing below it and results in the emergence of the most complex information-processing layer of the design would have to conclude that the mental dimension is the goal, the purpose, of the entire design.

Now, how and why do these three digital processing systems exist and constantly execute these layers of interlocking rules? It is one thing for atheists and scientific materialists to claim that all of reality is caused by a series of random accidents. However, if we wish to honor the scientific method, we must examine the mathematics of what random accidents can and cannot do.⁴

Ignore for a moment the big mysteries, such as: Why do energy and information exist and take the form of interacting quantum fields? What is this force we call life? And what is this magical thing we experience as consciousness? Assume that energy, information, life, and consciousness are all given, and all we need to do is to mathematically model and examine the complexity of each of the three digital processing systems that science has discovered so as to evaluate the probability that they (and thus, reality) could have resulted from a series of random accidents.

The Probability of System #1
Physical Reality

Quantum fields, relativity, radiant energy, an immortal energy force guided by intricate layers of information processing rules—physical reality is bizarre, beautiful, amazingly complex, and elegantly designed. But most scientists simply overlook the immense complexity, bizarre beauty, and total impossibility of random accidents resulting in our physical universe, so let's move on to examine the probabilities of the DNA program emerging by accident.

The Probability of System #2
DNA Processing

Many scientists have studied the probability of random accidents writing our DNA program. Douglas Axe⁵ and others have shown that it is mathematically impossible that, within the time and opportunity constraints of life on Earth, random accidents could have stumbled upon the DNA code required to design even a few of the thousands of different proteins in our bodies. And finding the protein codes is a very small part of creating the entire DNA program.

The Probability of System #3
The Mental Dimension

Your brain is quite possibly the most complex design in the universe, and your mind the most sophisticated information-handling system in the universe. As a system engineer who has participated in the design of some of our most sophisticated information-processing systems, I firmly believe that the probability of accidentally wiring the over 90,000,000,000 neurons in your brain and nervous system and then accidentally causing electrons and quarks to form intelligent minds with free will, imagination, emotions, and all the other mental powers we are blessed with is zero. And it could not be just an accident that these resulting capabilities are the only capabilities that could result in the entire multilayered design of reality having a meaningful purpose.

Evidence & Mathematics Versus an Imagined Multiverse

A system engineer has to honor what the mathematics of information theory and probability theory have to say about what random accidents can do. Any serious mathematical analysis of the three extremely complex digital processing systems that form reality quickly leads to the conclusion that it is absurd to believe that it all could have been caused by random accidents. These three interconnected systems must be the result of an intentional design, and because of their amazing complexity and the intricate beauty of how they interact to achieve their goal, it has to be a very intelligent, intentional design.4

This amazing scientific fact is not a secret. Many atheists who understand probability theory and system engineering have reached the same conclusion. Others stubbornly hold fast to their atheism by throwing all the scientific evidence and mathematical analysis under the bus and blindly claiming that everything has to happen somewhere, in some imagined multiverse.

The Grand Overarching Digital Design

For the last 80 years, physicists have been on a quest to find a mathematical system that would unify the rules of quantum mechanics and relativity in hope of discovering the Grand Unified Theory that would explain the essence of reality.

While such a unifying equation would truly be a grand achievement, I don't believe it could capture the essence of reality. That is because scientists have already revealed the essence of reality to be the immortal force—i.e., energy—and the finely tuned, interlocking layers of information-processing rules it is compelled to obey in the three interconnected digital processing systems I have described.

Today, the Grand Question is not how to make quantum mechanics and relativity compatible. Rather, the Grand Questions are: Where did all of these layers of information-processing rules come from? Why does the immortal force—energy—exist and dance to those rules? And why do all the layers of rules fit together so perfectly to guide the flow of energy and information from networks of quantum fields to the emergence of life and then on to the creation of consciousness and networks of intelligent, emotional minds?

To date, scientists have not found the Grand Unified Theory; instead, they have discovered the Grand Overarching Digital Design of energy and information that creates the structure and heartbeat of reality. The question now is: What impact should the scientific discovery of these unbelievably complex, cooperating information-processing systems have on the worldview of a rational person in the 21st century? What impact should it have on you and your view of life? As for me and many others, we used to be atheists.

Notes
1. Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe (Vintage, 2000).
2. Luke Barnes, A Fortunate Universe (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
3. Jonathan Wells, Zombie Science (Discovery Institute Press, 2017).
4. Ken Pedersen, Modern Science Proves Intelligent Design (Archway Publishing, 2019).
5. Douglas Axe, Undeniable (HarperOne, 2016).