Monday, December 30, 2019

A Look Back and Forward: Top Posts Written in 2019


Three years ago, on December 30, 2016 I wrote my first blog entry that introduced this blog devoted to a discussion of science and biblical Christianity. I want to thank all of you who have been readers of my thoughts through these last three years.

The World Wide Web was actually invented in the same building as the office that I use when I am at CERN doing research. (The opening figure above shows the plaque posted in the basement hall commemorating the development of the World Wide Web.) Nevertheless, I am constantly amazed by the way that the Web has changed the world. Because of this remarkable invention, people from every corner of the globe can interact and share information. As a result I have readers from every continent on the earth and from a vast variety of countries with different political systems and religious backgrounds. I am grateful for all of you. If this blog has been beneficial to you I would ask that you continue to tell others about it and spread the word.

The front page of my blog has a section with the most viewed blog posts over the last year and over the life of the blog. I'd like to highlight the five top posts that were actually written during this last year. So here is a list of the most read blog posts that were written in 2019:

Monday, December 23, 2019

A Simulated Universe: Missing the Obvious


My children refer to many of my jokes as "dad jokes," a term that applies to the silly, kind of dumb humor common to us "older" dads. I do admit that my sense of humor was formed when I was a teenager in the 1970's and tends toward the kind of silly, ridiculous, sometimes witty gags typical of Monty Python, or maybe Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther movies. It may be embarrassing to admit that there are far too many Monty Python skits or Pink Panther dialogues that I can recite from memory and that will cause me to laugh out loud just thinking about them. Simply mention "the cheese shop" or "the staff interrogation" and I may launch into a poor British or French accent as I recite some of the "hilarious" dialogue. Given that you can tell a lot about a person from their particular sense of humor, there may be some of you who have now completely lost all respect for me as a scientist or as a human being. (That last line was meant as a joke and reflects my "dad joke" capabilities.)

Now most of the previous paragraph has nothing to do with this blog post. But in order to introduce the topic of this post I was trying to think of a situation where somebody completely misses the most obvious thing right in front of them, while focusing on other less favorable options. My mind wandered to a scene in the movie "The Return of the Pink Panther" where inspector Jacque Clouseau is reprimanding a "blind" beggar with an accordion and a "minkey" for a minor offense, while he is completely oblivious to a major bank robbery going on just behind him. Of course, I then had to watch the video clip of this movie scene on YouTube, which led me down a rabbit hole to a series of many other Pink Panther and Monty Python videos, (similar to the virtual reality rabbit hole I referred to in my last blog post, which does actually bring us to the subject of this entry.)

Here I follow up on my previous discussion about the hypothesis that we may live in a virtual reality universe rather than a physical universe. Such a scenario was proposed by the philosopher Nick Bostrom in his 2003 paper "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" More recently a video by "Inspiring Philosophy" based on a 2007 paper by the informational computer scientist Brian Whitworth titled "The Physical World as a Virtual Reality" presents the same idea. Previously, I focused on some of the scientific ideas presented in that paper and showed that Whitworth doesn't seem to fully understand the science and that he selectively applies just those scientific principles that he thinks supports his hypothesis. But the biggest flaw in Whitworth's argument is that he doesn't even consider the possibility that there is a transcendent God who created the universe. Because he is oblivious to this obvious possibility, he completely misses the best option regarding the true nature of our universe.

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Do We Live in a Simulated Universe?

Some time ago a reader asked me to look at a video by "Inspiring Philosophy" that discussed whether or not our universe might only be a simulation so that we might actually live in a virtual reality universe rather than a physical universe. That video was based on a 2007 paper by the informational computer scientist Brian Whitworth titled "The Physical World as a Virtual Reality." The reader's question, the video, and the paper sent me on a prolonged investigation as I read various papers on this provocative notion that we live not in an actual physical universe, but in some kind of computer simulation. The modern form of this argument was proposed by the philosopher Nick Bostrom in his 2003 paper "Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?" It seems appropriate that I was sucked into the "rabbit hole" of the virtual reality hypothesis since one of the classic movies that proposed our world is just a computer simulation was the 1999 film The Matrix, which also referenced the Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole in the dialogue when Morpheus is about to reveal to Neo the truth about their simulated universe and he says, "You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes." This journey of mine investigating the rabbit hole of a simulated reality has taken some time and consequently, I have not written a blog entry in about a month.

In some sense I'm not sure that this post is warranted or relevant for my blog. The purpose of my blog is to discuss various aspects of the relationship between science, Christian faith, and objective thought. I don't believe that my investigation into this subject necessarily gives much insight or adds much to the many writings that discuss this idea. Most of the articles that I find persuasive actually debunk the idea that we are simply a simulated universe such as those by physicists Sean Carroll or Sabine Hossenfelder or by informational scientist Brian Eggleston, and you can follow the links by clicking those authors' names above to find good reasons to disregard the simulation idea. It seems to me that those who take the idea seriously are not so much the educated scientists, but popular tech figures like Elon Musk who has promoted and popularized the simulation idea. I tend to side with the vast majority of expert scientists who believe there is much more evidence against the idea that we live in a simulation, rather than the few computer scientists and popular figures who have promoted the idea as probable.

But since I have spent far too much time deep in the rabbit's burrow on this subject, I probably should devote some space here to discuss a few ideas and see if there is any way I can relate the subject to the broader theme of this blog: that of science and the Christian faith. Rather than focus on the philosophical aspect of the simulation hypothesis (after all, the modern resurgence of this idea came from a philosopher not a scientist), I will focus on some of the scientific aspects of the original video (which was actually entitled "Digital Arguments for God's Existence") and the paper by Brian Whitworth on which it was based. In my next blog post I will discuss some of Whithworth's assumptions that are biased, presumptuous, and erroneous, and show that once those assumptions are reconsidered, then the idea that there is a transcendent intelligent creator God actually best explains his data.