Does God exist ? Physical laws, and mathematics

- Science
- Philosophy
- Theology

The basic epistemological framework to research about origins, and the fundamental question of why there is something, rather than nothing, is best based on the faculties of science, philosophy, and theology/religion. 

Gods existence, without attempting to identify his nature, can be done by evaluating science, and philosophical considerations. 
The identity of God is a matter of religion and theology.   



The steps of progression to elaborate an epistemologically solid world view goes as follows:

1. Defining a solid epistemological framework, excluding scientism or verificationism, and permitting a holistic examination of evidence including philosophical and theological considerations.
2. Disposition to analyze the evidence as much honest and unbiased as possible, permitting it to lead wherever it is.
3. Clarifying how the action of (past) intelligent action can be recognized in nature.   
4. Research of scientific evidence and philosophical considerations which after careful evaluation point to Intelligence as a better mechanism to explain our origins than naturalistic explanations.
5. The inference of intelligent design/creationism leads to deism, theism or pantheism.
6. Philosophical considerations lead  to agnostic theism
7. Specifics about various evidence leads to the conclusion of Infinite Creator.
8. Comparative religions and historical evidence point to God of the Hebrews/Abraham.
9. Internal evidence constrains the choice of Judaism. Islam, Christianity, and born-again Christianity.
10. How we proceed in the cumulative case for Christianity is a much more detailed step. Ultimately we are not talking about "proof" like in repeated experimentation...but rather a preponderance of the evidence.  Ultimately it is the conviction of the Holy Spirit to believe in the miracles of Jesus and His Lordship/Deity.

Concluding and pointing to a specific God can be done rationally by adopting a cumulative case, which in my view, in the end, points to the God of the Bible. Point 1 to 5 point to a Creator as better explanation rather than none. 
Point 6 - 10 deal with the identification of a specific God.  





1. something made based on mathematical principles




Johannes Kepler, Defundamentis Astrologiae Certioribus, Thesis XX (1601)
"The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics."

Kepler formulated three major laws of planetary motion which enabled Isaac Newton to devise the law of gravitation. Working from the carefully measured positions of the planets, Kepler mathematically deduced his three laws from the data.


Besides Kepler, Newton,


Galileo, and


Copernicus--viewed the universe as orderly and capable of mathematical description precisely because a rational God had fashioned it so. These brilliant scientists and mathematicians believed that, since God had designed the universe, then "all phenomena of nature would follow one master plan.

One mind designing a universe would almost surely have employed one set of basic principles to govern all related phenomena.





2. The fundamental laws of physics
  Newton’s Three Laws of Motion.
  Law of Gravity.
  Conservation of Mass-Energy.
  Conservation of Momentum.
  Laws of Thermodynamics.
  Electrostatic Laws.
  Invariance of the Speed of Light.





 
Only in the 20th century, it became clear that the incredibly diverse phenomena that we observe in nature are based on just six physical laws, each of which may be described by a simple mathematical relationship. The brilliant mathematical encoding of nature's deep structures, these physical laws can all be written on one side of one sheet of paper.

On the deepest level of the universe, there is cosmic harmony and coherence of the elemental forces and universal constants which govern all of nature. There are certain universal constants that describe the universe mathematically, and, remarkably, this set of constants is critical to the formation of a life-permitting universe.



"The naive view implies that the universe suddenly came into existence and found a complete system of physical laws waiting to be obeyed. Actually, it seems more natural to suppose that the physical universe and the laws of physics are interdependent." —*WH. McCrea, "Cosmology after Half a Century," Science, Vol. 160, June 1968, p. 1297.


As Richards and Gonzalez write: Our very ability to establish the laws of nature depends on their stability. (In fact, the idea of a law of nature implies stability.) Likewise, the laws of nature must remain constant long enough to provide the kind of stability life requires through the building of nested layers of complexity.


The properties of the most fundamental units of complexity we know of, quarks, must remain constant in order for them to form larger units, protons and neutrons, which then go into building even larger units, atoms, and so on, all the way to stars, planets, and in some sense, people.

The lower levels of complexity provide the structure and carry the information of life. There is still a great deal of mystery about how the various levels relate, but clearly, at each level, structures must remain stable over vast stretches of space and time.


And our universe does not merely contain complex structures; it also contains elaborately nested layers of higher and higher complexity. Consider complex carbon atoms, within still more complex sugars and nucleotides, within more complex DNA molecules, within complex nuclei, within complex neurons, within the complex human brain, all of which are integrated into a human body.

Such “complexification” would be impossible in both a totally chaotic, unstable universe and an utterly simple, homogeneous universe of, say, hydrogen atoms or quarks.



So the question arises: 


These Laws of Physics, where did they come from?
What is their origin?
Can laws come about naturally?
How did they come about fully balanced to create order instead of chaos?

The laws themselves defy a natural existence and science itself has not even one clue on how to explain them coming into being naturally. So when you use deductive reasoning, cancelling out all that does not fit or will not work, there is only one conclusion left that fits the bill of why the laws exist, and why they work together to make order instead of chaos.

Deny it as naturalist may, their way if thinking cannot explain away a Creator creating the laws that exist and the fact that they create order instead of chaos. That they are put together and tweaked to be in balance like a formula making everything work together to create all that we see. 

Always ignoring that even one notch off in how one law works with another that total and complete chaos would be the result. And that they cannot even contemplate the first step in an explanation that would fit their world views.
Applying the scientific method:

When all conclusions fit and point into one direction only, what is science supposed to do? According to the scientific method you are supposed to follow the evidence regardless of where it leads, not ignore it because it leads to where you don want to go.


In 1952, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Maurice Solovine, where he expressed how he was struck by the wondrous orderliness of the world.  He wrote:

You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery. Well, a priori one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way.

The next evidence  

At least one hundred requirements constrain the selection of the universal constants to a remarkable degree.




3. Fine-tuning 

Fine-tuning of the Big Bang
Fine-tuning of the  cosmological constant
Fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the universe
Fine-tuning of the  fundamental forces of the universe
Fine-tuning of the subatomic particles
Fine-tuning of  our Galaxy
Fine-tuning of the Solar System
Fine-tuning of the sun
Fine-tuning of the earth
Fine-tuning of the moon

Fine-tuning of the electromagnetic spectrum
Fine-tuning in biochemistry



It is known now that relatively small changes in any of the constants produce a dramatically different universe and one that is not hospitable to life of any imaginable type. Over one hundred requirements constrain the selection of the universal constants to a remarkable degree.

Gribbin stated for example that the flatness of the Universe must have been precise to within 1 part in 10^60. This makes the flatness parameter the most accurately determined number in all of physics, and suggests a fine-tuning of the Universe, to set up conditions suitable for the emergence of stars, galaxies, and life, of exquisite precision.

If this were indeed a coincidence, then it would be a fluke so extraordinary as to make all other cosmic coincidences pale into insignificance. 


Astrophysicist Paul Davies declared:  Our complex universe could have emerged only if the laws of physics are very close to what they are....The laws, which enable the universe to come into being, seem themselves to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design. If physics is the product of design, the universe must have a purpose, and the evidence of modern physics suggests strongly to me that the purpose includes us.
Superforce (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984), 243.











Following is amazing evidence that the world was expressly designed to conform to simple laws that man would readily discover is furnished by the universal law of gravitation: F= Gm[1]m[2]/r^2. Notice the exponent 2. Why is it not 1.9999999 . . ., or 4.3785264 . . ., or something else hard to use in computations? Yet research has been able to specify the exponent as far as the first six digits, giving 2.00000.

Thus, so far as we can tell, the exponent is exactly 2. Coulomb's law of electric force is similar: F = kq[1]q[2]/r^2. In this case, research has established that the exponent is no different from exactly 2 as far as the first 17 digits. Would we find such laws in an accidental universe?

Of course, atheists will immediately claim that they tried, but were unable to recognize such evidence and become believers.

https://rationalreligion.co.uk/legendary-evolutionary-biologist-calls-out-modern-atheism-in-final-interview
http://inters.org/Einstein-Letter-Solovine
https://web.archive.org/web/20110805203154/http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9403/evidence.html

Math does not just describe the universe, it is the base upon which it is made

The Higgs Boson was predicted with the same tool as the planet Neptune and the radio wave: with mathematics. Galileo famously stated that our Universe is a “grand book” written in the language of mathematics. So why does our universe seem so mathematical, and what does it mean? It means that our universe isn’t just described by math, but that it is math in the sense that we’re all parts of a giant mathematical object.

There are many shapes and patterns in nature, involving not only motion and gravity, but also areas as disparate as electricity, magnetism, light, heat, chemistry, radioactivity, and subatomic particles. These patterns are summarized by what we call our laws of physics. Just as the shape of an ellipse, all these laws can be described using mathematical equations.

Why are there, as far as we can tell, exactly 6 kinds of quarks in our Universe? There are also numbers encoded in nature that require decimals to write out – for example, the proton about 1836.15267 times heavier than the electron. From just 32 such numbers, we physicists can in principle compute every other physical constant ever measured.

Life without baggage
Above we described how we humans add baggage to our descriptions. Now let's look at the opposite: how mathematical abstraction can remove baggage and strip things down to their bare essence. Consider the sequence of chess moves that have become known as “The Immortal Game”, where white spectacularly sacrifices both rooks, a bishop, and the queen to checkmate with the three remaining minor pieces. When chess aficionados call the Immortal Game beautiful, they're not referring to the attractiveness of the players, the board or the pieces, but to a more abstract entity, which we might call the abstract game, or the sequence of moves.

Chess involves abstract entities (different chess pieces, different squares on the board, etc.) and relations between them. For example, one relation that a piece may have to a square is that the former is standing on the latter. Another relation that a piece may have to a square is that it's allowed to move there. There are many equivalent ways of describing these entities and relations, for example with a physical board, via verbal descriptions in English or Spanish, or using so-called algebraic chess notation. So what is it that's left when you strip away all this baggage? What is it that's described by all these equivalent descriptions? The Immortal Game itself, 100% pure, with no additives. There’s only one unique mathematical structure that’s described by all these equivalent descriptions. 1

My comment: That means, that the universe operates based on imposed mathematical rules. In the same sense, as the rules upon which the game of chess is established, which are arbitrary, so does the universe operate based on mathematical rules, which could be different, but are impose arbitrarily. 

There is an abstract mathematical representation of what the universe does. The question is, why that representation is actualized: why what it represents is “actually happening”, with the actual stuff our universe is “made of”.
There is a rule or program that is a representation of what our universe is doing. This rule or program is “actually being run” and is “actually generating” the “physical reality” of our universe. As soon as one starts talking about “running programs” some people will immediately ask “On what computer?” But a key intellectual point is that computational processes can ultimately be defined completely abstractly, without reference to anything like a physical computer. This rule just gives an abstract definition of a computation to be instantiated.

One can for example make a picture by running the rule on a physical computer. The rule is just a programmed abstract definition of the computation to do. It’s like the abstract computation 2 + 2 → 4. It’s something that necessarily works the way it does, as a consequence of the abstract definitions that specify it.

So there is a purely abstract computational / math-based rule that directs what the universe does and how it operates. So the question is: why is anything “actually happening” or why is that mathematical program physically instantiated, directing how the universe operates? We can invent a computer program, and it is stored on a hard drive. It is there as an abstract possibility that can potentially be put into operation. There is nothing that says there’s anything “real” or “actual” about it, any more than there is about the abstract mathematical statement 2 + 2 = 4.

After all, we might argue, we perceive definite physical laws in our universe. And surely, we might assume, there’s nothing necessary about these laws; there could perfectly well be a universe with different laws. So there must be something specific about the rule that’s being imposed to the universe, to give its particular laws.

That means that in the end there’s something about our universe that is arbitrary, and that in a sense has to be “explained from outside”. 3  

Mathematics is applicable to the physical world. The physical world literally has a mathematical structure; the physical world is, in a certain sense, a mathematical object.  Modern physics shows the physical world to be breathtakingly mathematically complex. Why is that so? Couldn’t the world have been structureless chaos? Why should it not seem that God created the applicability of mathematics according to a certain blueprint that He had in mind? There is any number of blueprints He might have chosen. God created the physical world on the mental model in His mind.  The Logos (Word) mirrors the mind of God. The cosmos is made on the model of the conceptual or intelligible world that pre-exists in the Logos. God, because He is God, understood in advance that creating the physical world would require a model, and be based on an intelligible idea. God, when he decided to found the cosmos, he first conceived its outlines. Out of these, he composed the intelligible cosmos, equally as an engineer first composes and conceptualizes a machine first in his mind, makes a blueprint, and based on it, the machine is built.  The theist has the explanatory resources to account for the mathematical structure of the physical world and, hence, for the otherwise unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics—resources which the naturalist lacks. 2

1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-the-universe-made-of-math-excerpt/
2. https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/god-and-the-unreasonable-effectiveness-of-mathematics/
3. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/why-does-the-universe-exist-some-perspectives-from-our-physics-project/

Lee Smolin et al.: The Autodidactic Universe 29 Mar 2021
Until recently, most of the research done by theoretical physicists has had the aim of discovering what the laws of physics are. While we haven’t finished that task, we seem to know enough to take a few steps towards answering a deeper question: why are these – and not others that seem equally consistent mathematically – the actual laws? 
There are a number of puzzles concerning the values of the parameters of the standard model, which in one way or another indicate that their present values are special in that they lead to a universe far more complex than would be obtained with typical values.

Heinz Pagels: The Cosmic Code: Quantum Physics As the Language of Nature, page 307
Formulas expressing laws of nature impose constraints on the natural world, maybe even on God. Einstein said one reason he worked on physics was to determine whether or not God had any choice in creating the universe the way He did. Imagine next that the universe is a giant computer and what we see is the "hardware." The design of this computer is being discovered by physicists--these are their theories which tell us what programs can be run on the computer and can be checked by experiments. The physical laws are the invariances the unchanging elements in every possible program. 
 Francis Bacon, who wrote that there are two revelations. The first is given to us in scripture and tradition, and it gUided our thinking for centuries. The second revelation is given by the universe, and that book we are just beginning to read. The sentences within this book are the physical laws-those postulated and confirmed invariances of our experience. If there are those who claim a conversion experience through reading scripture, I would point out that the book of nature also has its converts. They may be less evangelical than religious converts, but they share a deep conviction that an order of the universe exists and can be known.

James A. Haught The Code of the Universe 23 July 2020
There is a cosmic code that codes the structure of reality, written into the very substance of the universe. From quarks to quasars. It is utterly amazing that this hidden code governs virtually all matter — Earth and the moon, our bodies, trees, water, air. How could atoms lock together into substances because of gaps in their outer layers of electrons — electrons eternally streaking at nearly the speed of light? Why do the mysterious electrical parts of atoms whirl forever, like the planets and stars?
Why do electrically neutral atoms seize onto each other, just because their outer electrons lack the magic number of eight? Why do they turn into remarkably different things as they combine? Hydrogen gas and oxygen gas are nothing like water, yet they constitute it. Some carbon atoms lock in tetrahedrons to become diamonds; others lock in layers of six-sided carbon rings to become graphite pencil lead. Why do atoms link into carbon-based molecules that link into amino acids that link into proteins that link into living cells as complex as whole cities — and why does all this link into a thinking, feeling, loving, fearing, aging, dying human?
If an atom were the size of a 14-story building, the nucleus would be a grain of salt in the middle of the seventh floor, too tiny to be seen. Therefore, heavy, rigid steel doesn’t exist the way we think it does. It’s 99.999999 percent vacuum — as vacant as the night sky.
A teenage genius, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, computed that, if a collapsing star has 1.4 times the mass of our sun, its gravity would be too great to be stopped by the resistance of the electrons. He didn’t know it, but he was predicting pulsars, or neutron stars, which later were discovered. Their enormous gravity squeezes the electrons into the nucleus of each atom, where they merge with protons to form a solid mass of neutrons. This material weighs about 10 million tons per cubic centimeter. A c.c. is the size of a bouillon cube. Can you imagine a bouillon cube weighing more than the World Trade Center? But that’s what matter is when the empty space is removed between the nucleus and the electrons of atoms.3


Computer pioneer Stephen Wolfram has been arguing for more than a decade that mathematics has its limits for modeling nature. Instead, he believes that there are rules underlying everything, acting much like computer programs. Computational rules may explain the workings of everything in the Universe. 4



1. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2104.03902.pdf
2. https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Code-Quantum-Physics-Language/dp/0486485064
3. https://medium.com/@haught_86726/the-code-of-the-universe-434335600d7b
4. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140529-universe-ruled-by-a-hidden-code