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Jonathan Edwards and Quantum Physics

By Ron Wood

This week I held a tiny human being, the daughter of our daughter, born just a week ago. The awe-inspiring evidence of the miracle we call life was laid afresh in my arms. As I held this precious baby, I did not respond “What a coincidence!” but “Thank You God!”

This month I completed reading two very different books. The first was A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards. The second was The Quantum Brain. To my understanding, classic biblical theology and the newest discoveries in quantum physics seem to be in great agreement.

Jonathan Edwards was a famous theologian, writer, and preacher who lived in America prior to her independence from England . With his Puritan roots and his solid education, he became a brilliant scholar and a thoughtful observer. He lived in the time when classic Calvinism held sway but the fervor of renewal movements leading to Baptist churches and Methodism began to take hold. Both a pastor and a missionary, he took his family into perilous places to minister to native Indians. He was a contemporary of two very different, but mutually respectful friends- secularist Benjamin Franklin and revivalist George Whitefield.

Edwards fought his own culture wars by means of what he wrote and preached. His kind of thinking, his predominant paradigm, can clearly be seen in our history as the prevailing philosophy of America ’s educated leaders during the debates, the battles, and the framing of the founding documents that forged America as a distinct nation. For example, The Declaration of Independence reads, “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” and says that men “…are endowed by their Creator…” This was their common worldview.

Edward’s brilliant mind and persistent stance for his positions caused him to be controversial. Once he felt that he had arrived at the truth of a matter, he would not compromise, especially regarding Christian doctrine or moral issues in the community.

His scholarly writings reflect one grand theme that he often returned to and focused upon later in life - the Personal Creator. The majority of philosophers of his day believed that the universe – humanity, nature, and all of creation - seemed cruel and mechanical albeit having a divine origin. Edwards held to a subtle but critical difference from deist thinkers. While they could accept and believe in a Creator, they assumed that God was distant and impersonal. Deists believed that God had created the universe, wound it up like a clock, but then withdrew to allow cold forces to play out their hand of chance.

In contrast, Edwards held to his conviction that at the center of the universe was a Person – a caring, loving, approachable Creator who desired to enjoy restored fellowship with humanity. This fellowship would result only as they were saved from their ancestral rebellion and personal sin. He believed this salvation was provided through Jesus’ atonement on the cross and by His resurrection. This is what Edwards preached.

Edward’s theology caused him to conclude that anyone who was a genuine partaker of this salvation as a free gift would invariably show the fruit of holiness of lifestyle as a result. He documented many accounts of this observable transformation in peoples’ lives during the outpourings of spiritual renewal that occurred in the cities around him. So he fervently preached for people to repent and yield to God’s grace.

In modern education, culture, and popular knowledge, ever since Darwin’s day, contemporary science and much of society has grown more antagonistic toward any philosophical framework or ethos which includes the notion of a personal Creator.

As a Bible-believer, and as a man whom God has endowed with the ability to apply critical thinking, I reject the assumption that order evolved out of chaos. I don’t have the faith to believe that this exquisitely designed universe occurred by chance. In this regard, I have to give atheists credit for being stronger believers than myself. Their leap of faith to credit order and life as having occurred ex-nihilo is beyond me. I’ll tell you why.

The book The Quantum Brain* by Dr. Jeffrey Satinover is a synthesis of some of the latest thinking regarding how organic systems are organized at the quantum level. While Satinover is not an advocate for Intelligent Design, he does an honest presentation of the facts as they are known at this point and leaves conclusions as a matter of faith. His understanding of the neural net allowing for the human brain’s huge computing capacity is fascinating.

In my opinion, the latest scientific observations and interpretations both microscopic and macroscopic: from interior tiny molecular machines in a living cell all the way up to the expanding galaxies of the universe from the Big Bang, all point to an intricately interacting purposeful design which coincidentally is very bio-centric and hospitable to life on planet Earth. Can all this be due to chance? Charles Darwin wrote to a colleague in a letter saying twice, “…the universe is not the result of chance.” (Lord Farrer, letter #307, 1881, More Letters of Charles Darwin , Appleton, 1903, New York)

One researcher who developed ideas regarding quantum mechanics as it relates to electrons - which can seemingly appear and disappear as though being teleported, and will react in certain unexplainable ways (particle versus wave, as do photons) only when being observed or measured - said this: “If I get the impression that Nature itself makes the decisive choice of what possibility to realize, where quantum theory says that more than one outcome is possible, then I am ascribing personality to Nature, that is, to something that is always everywhere. Omnipresent eternal personality which is omnipotent in making decisions is exactly what in the language of religion is called God.” (*page 213- attributed to Frederik Jozef Belinfante, colleague of Wolfgang Pauli, in John Barrow, “The World Within the World”)

Astronomers, mathematicians, and physicists alike are stumped by the Hubble telescope’s discovery of distant galaxies speeding apart from one another at such a rate that they should be disintegrating yet they are not. What holds things together? No one knows. So the concept of “dark matter” occupying the vacuum of empty space is invented. Some undetectable force is still at working sustaining matter, energy, and time. We live in this matrix oblivious to the quantum properties around us on a molecular or stellar level.

The Bible gives us inside information from the One who was there in the beginning - our Creator, the One who became a man to redeem us - Jesus our Lord: “For by him were all things created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible… he is before all things and in him all things hold together…” (Colossians 1:16-17) “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth… so God created man in his own image…” (Genesis 1:1; 27)

The accurate account of creation as detailed in the opening chapters of Genesis are not a myth. They fit the facts as being discovered now by open minded researchers. At the heart of all of ordered creation is a Creator who injected into the universe which he made something that could not self-originate: information. God supplied the necessary information (the data; the DNA) to cause order to come out of chaos, life out of death, beauty out of ashes. God did this act of creation merely by speaking. God said, “Let there be light…” and so illumination by means of photons began to occur.

Our body can detect photons by means of the retina in our eyes. Through the marvel of the human eye we can easily observe the beauty of our world. What a miracle this is! Sandia National Laboratory scientists recently manufactured a video screen 10 feet high and 11 feet wide with 20 million pixels linked by 64 high speed computers operating in parallel. Yet the human eye has 120 million pixels that can transmit images in vivid color or in low light, has auto-focus, is self-adjusting, self cleaning, self-repairing, can perceive objects in 3-D, capture rapid motion, easily follow movement, and can refresh its “screen” almost instantly. And each of our brains has more neurons networking to process this data than there are stars in the universe!

To say “God is a genius” is an understatement. He is brilliant. God’s original word supplied the information required to create order, supplied the power to create energy and matter, established the boundaries of space and time, set up the proper conditions to allow for life to exist, and then created the diversity of life we see in all its forms, including mankind made in his image.

From molecular bonding of rocks to the unique DNA self-replicating codes present in humans, an Outside Influence acted upon our world. Apart from his original word, we would not have come into existence. Apart from being sustained by his word now, we would cease to exist. I agree with Jonathan Edwards - at the heart of the universe there is a Person, the Infinite-Personal God who is revealed in the Bible and is made known to us in the Person of his Son, Jesus our Savior who is Christ the Lord.

“Jonathan Edwards and Quantum Physics” © 2009 by Ron Wood. To write to us or to request speaking engagements, send your email to: ronwood@centurytel.net .



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