God and Nature Fall 2023
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By Paul L. Spaulding
Introduction
Several years ago, I posted these words on Facebook accompanied by a photo of the barren winter trees in our Minneapolis back yard: “Looking out the window at trees in winter, one is struck with the chaotic wisdom of the tangle of branches—each tree expressing its chosen options for where, when, how thick, thin, and long each twig should be. Order, yes, but this is living wood differentiating out into the option-space of its species in a particular macro- and micro-environment. Isn’t that almost like a picture of the whole universe--diverging with beautiful chaos within the option-space shaped by gravity, other forces, and what we call “laws”? God, more than an Intelligent Designer, is really a Performance Artist—each act unfolding well beyond what was once ‘without form and void’.”
From the hot plasma of the Big Bang, the universe differentiates out to what we can see today. From our perspective, gravity, other forces, and what we call “laws” guide the differentiation process. It is my contention that God is the Ultimate Guide in an intimate encounter with the universe. In what follows, I will use the flow of Information(I) directing Energy(E) and the resulting Mass(m) as a way to see how this guided differentiation plays out—both in science and in a Christian understanding of the universe rooted in Scripture.
Introduction
Several years ago, I posted these words on Facebook accompanied by a photo of the barren winter trees in our Minneapolis back yard: “Looking out the window at trees in winter, one is struck with the chaotic wisdom of the tangle of branches—each tree expressing its chosen options for where, when, how thick, thin, and long each twig should be. Order, yes, but this is living wood differentiating out into the option-space of its species in a particular macro- and micro-environment. Isn’t that almost like a picture of the whole universe--diverging with beautiful chaos within the option-space shaped by gravity, other forces, and what we call “laws”? God, more than an Intelligent Designer, is really a Performance Artist—each act unfolding well beyond what was once ‘without form and void’.”
From the hot plasma of the Big Bang, the universe differentiates out to what we can see today. From our perspective, gravity, other forces, and what we call “laws” guide the differentiation process. It is my contention that God is the Ultimate Guide in an intimate encounter with the universe. In what follows, I will use the flow of Information(I) directing Energy(E) and the resulting Mass(m) as a way to see how this guided differentiation plays out—both in science and in a Christian understanding of the universe rooted in Scripture.
God acts by Information: “and God said…”, and by divine Energy: “let there be….” |
Information (I)
The Bible often reminds us that God is informationally rich, conscious, and personal. In Isaiah 1:18, the LORD says, “Come now, let us reason together” (1). Reason: information organized and organizing, purposeful and interactive, is a characteristic of God. Since God is an intelligent, conscious agent, I take Genesis 1:27 to mean that God gave information-processing-consciousness to those created in God’s image. The giving and interpreting of information go well beyond the world of humans and even the familiar animal kingdom. What happens at the cellular level is also more than mere chemical reactions. Physiologist J. Scott Turner says homeostasis—“the relentless striving of living organisms for persistence and self-sustenance” (2)—involves “coupling information about the state of the environment on one side of an adaptive boundary to the matter and energy flows across the adaptive boundary” (3). Information transfer has consequences—intended consequences. Information between cells or people, or from God to the universe and to us, guides, shapes, and chooses between potentialities. Information is integral to reality itself. It is something that is real but cannot be reduced to purely material or mechanical terms. Information is substantive, and while not having mass or energy nor causing any suspension of physical laws, it is irrevocably tied to physical reality (4).
We see some of the ubiquitous nature of Information in the mathematical theory of information developed by Claude Shannon in the late 1940s. But, in Terrence Deacon’s words, this theory left us with a “deflationary theory of information, from which content, reference, and significance are excluded and irrelevant” (5). “MTC [Mathematical Theory of Communication] is not interested in the meaning, ‘aboutness’, relevance, reliability, usefulness or interpretation of information, but only in the level of detail and frequency in the uninterpreted data, being these symbols, signals or messages” (6). This is a reductionist definition of information, or, more exactly, of an “information-bearing capacity (as distinguished from information itself)” (7). Meaning for this information must be supplied by a programmer. There are theological implications here.
The Bible credits God’s wisdom/understanding/word with creation. Psalms 33:6: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made.” Other examples: Psalm 33:9 and Proverbs 3:19. Psalm 19:1-4 (NIV) captures the permeation of information throughout the universe:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
There is no tape recorder picking up the creative and sustaining speech (wisdom, language, information) of God. Yet the voice of God goes throughout the universe. Scientists today pick up a lot more of that speech than David could have dreamed of. Einstein may or may not have had God as the fount of information in mind when he said that he was “moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in the universe… the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence” (8). But he captures the intrinsic nature of Information within the universe. This is where a Christian—and, I would argue, a scientific—understanding of the universe should begin.
Energy(E)
Energy follows Information in the organizing sequence of the universe offered here. The famous equation E=mc^2 reminds us that energy is everywhere. Energy, infused with Information’s ability to effect and guide outcomes and to transfer content and meaning across contexts, birthed the universe. Shannon-information’s noted need for an outside “programmer” opens the door to all the Energy that may arise with consciousness effecting/causing a reality. Information in the hands of an intelligent and energetic “programmer” guides, directs, and shapes options and potentialities, and enables encounters. Thomas Nagel argues that consciousness must be considered to have agency in the physical world (9).
Energy in general scientific parlance is movement, activity, the capacity or power to do work. Isaiah 55:11 reminds us that the capacity to do work is intrinsic to all God’s directives—all God’s information-releases: “my word… that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Elsewhere in scripture, specific language declares God made the earth by his power, or strength—the active capacity to do work (Jeremiah 10:12, and 51:15). Romans 1:20 says God’s “power”—or, we could say, energy or the capacity to do work—is on continuous display in the usual way we track energy—by the results: “[God’s] eternal power and divine nature[,] have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made." Hebrews 1:3 says God, the Son, continuously and effectively demonstrates his power/energy: he upholds the universe by the word of his power. The word translated as power here is Greek δύναμις (dúnamis, source of the English adjective dynamic), meaning power, potential, or ability. The word “upholds” does not depict a static picture, like Atlas holding up the earth or the sky; rather, the Greek term has the sense of an ongoing encounter where God “carries along” the universe. And this continuous sustaining encounter is accomplished with the same word of power that is found in Genesis 1, Psalm 33, or Isaiah 55. Here we see The Performance-Artist at work, actively making/using/handling something that is not-the-artist; but, if the artist were to stop, the performance would stop and the not-the-artist-something would crumble or disappear.
Genesis 1 credits God’s power and capacity with the initial creation of the universe. God acts by Information: “and God said…”, and by divine Energy: “let there be….” Here is agency and “encounter” with the universe. The Big Bang offered Information and Energy into the expanding universe. Information and Energy then produce Mass.
Mass(m)
Fifty years ago, I picked up a book at an outdoor used-book sale entitled The Mystery of Matter (10). It was an anthology on our understanding of matter, the stuff we are made of and surrounded with. It had dozens of articles from authors as wide-ranging as Lucretius, Einstein, Heisenberg, Huxley, and Asimov. It triggered in this philosophy-, theology-, and ministry-minded young man an interest in the relationship of science to biblical theology. Mass—matter—is indeed the stuff we are surrounded with. It can be written as m=E/c^2. Measurable mass is protons, neutrons, and the like, plus every toothpick, pet cat, moon of Saturn, and gas cloud in the space-time continuum. And it is you. And me. Seven hundred pages on the Mystery of Matter couldn’t cover it all.
A biblical perspective of matter/mass begins with God who is Information-Rich. Genesis 1 recognizes the wide variety of what would be categorized as Mass in the many statements that follow: “and God said, let there be… light…”; “the expanse…”; “let the earth sprout…”, etc. In the guided differentiation of the universe, Energy is more basic than mass. The Bible often supports this I/E/m order for understanding the universe and God’s role. For example, Proverbs 3:19 says, in the ESV translation: “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens.” First come wisdom and understanding (I); next, founded, and established, are verbs (E); and then, the earth, the heavens, the deeps, plus everyday things like clouds and dew (m)! (The order of the second part of the parallelism is slightly different in the original Hebrew.)
The universe’s Performance Artist who created and who carries it along is the author of nature’s laws. Things are so orderly, in fact, that some have said the universe is simply what satisfies the equations of the mathematicians. Yet, at the same time, “reality is richer than even the most complicated equation” (11). Atomic physics and quantum theory challenge a casual approach to matter. Because of quantum theory, some philosophers of science now say that, contrary to Einstein’s objection, God does indeed play dice with the universe. Indeterminacies at the quantum level describe potentialities, not the solid, established stuff of Newtonian physics. Actions, free choices, are required to make actualities. But this is simply to say that, at bottom, the universe is dynamic and open, ready, willing, and able to be “actualized” and carried along by its Creator. This same God is the source of life, introducing—actualizing potentialities—and sustaining the self-perpetuating dynamism of the biosphere.
Conclusion
God, the fount of wisdom, initiates the universe by decisive and effective Information, releasing and guiding Energy. Immediately, the differentiation begins. The universe, saturated with Information and Energy and scattered with all manner of mass is the result: (I/E/m). God never leaves this project but carries along this universe by his word of power, (I/E). I would suggest the order offered here is a helpful sequence for science and has always been a Christian view of the universe.
There are amazing things in this universe, and the more we dig the more amazed we get. Glory far beyond Solomon; Glory far beyond human organization of the data. Glory, in fact, enabling human organization of the data. God is involved. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
References
1. All biblical references are from the English Standard Version (ESV), unless otherwise noted.
2. J. Scott Turner, Purpose and Desire (NY, Harper Collins, 2017), 292.
3. Ibid., 221.
4. John F. Haught, God After Darwin; A Theology of Evolution (Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 2000)70.
5. Terrance Deacon, “What is Missing from Theories of Information”, Information and the Nature of Reality, Paul Davies & N. H. Gregersen, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2010). 158.
6. Luciano Floridi: "Semantic Conceptions of Information," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2022
7. Deacon, 158.
8. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, trans. Sonja Bargmann, (NY, Dell, 1973), 49.
9. Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (NY, Oxford University Press, 2012). 114.
10. The Mystery of Matter, Louise B. Young, ed. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1965).
11. Michael Ward, "Imagine There's No Heaven?: C.S. Lewis on Making Space for Faith" in The Story of the Cosmos: How the Heavens Declare the Glory of God, Paul M Gould and Daniel Ray, eds. (Eugene, Oegon, Harvest House Publishers, 2019), 160.
Paul Spaulding is a retired Lutheran pastor, long interested in the relation of biblical faith and science. Paul served congregations in MN, AZ, CA, and IA. Paul has a BA (philosophy, religion, biology) from Concordia College, an MDiv from Luther Seminary, and a DMin in postmodernism from Fuller Seminary. Paul lives with his wife, Renee (also a retired Lutheran pastor), in Harbor City, California.
*A special thanks to ASA member Dr. John Davis, for conversations on this topic.
The Bible often reminds us that God is informationally rich, conscious, and personal. In Isaiah 1:18, the LORD says, “Come now, let us reason together” (1). Reason: information organized and organizing, purposeful and interactive, is a characteristic of God. Since God is an intelligent, conscious agent, I take Genesis 1:27 to mean that God gave information-processing-consciousness to those created in God’s image. The giving and interpreting of information go well beyond the world of humans and even the familiar animal kingdom. What happens at the cellular level is also more than mere chemical reactions. Physiologist J. Scott Turner says homeostasis—“the relentless striving of living organisms for persistence and self-sustenance” (2)—involves “coupling information about the state of the environment on one side of an adaptive boundary to the matter and energy flows across the adaptive boundary” (3). Information transfer has consequences—intended consequences. Information between cells or people, or from God to the universe and to us, guides, shapes, and chooses between potentialities. Information is integral to reality itself. It is something that is real but cannot be reduced to purely material or mechanical terms. Information is substantive, and while not having mass or energy nor causing any suspension of physical laws, it is irrevocably tied to physical reality (4).
We see some of the ubiquitous nature of Information in the mathematical theory of information developed by Claude Shannon in the late 1940s. But, in Terrence Deacon’s words, this theory left us with a “deflationary theory of information, from which content, reference, and significance are excluded and irrelevant” (5). “MTC [Mathematical Theory of Communication] is not interested in the meaning, ‘aboutness’, relevance, reliability, usefulness or interpretation of information, but only in the level of detail and frequency in the uninterpreted data, being these symbols, signals or messages” (6). This is a reductionist definition of information, or, more exactly, of an “information-bearing capacity (as distinguished from information itself)” (7). Meaning for this information must be supplied by a programmer. There are theological implications here.
The Bible credits God’s wisdom/understanding/word with creation. Psalms 33:6: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made.” Other examples: Psalm 33:9 and Proverbs 3:19. Psalm 19:1-4 (NIV) captures the permeation of information throughout the universe:
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they reveal knowledge. They have no speech, they use no words; no sound is heard from them. Yet their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
There is no tape recorder picking up the creative and sustaining speech (wisdom, language, information) of God. Yet the voice of God goes throughout the universe. Scientists today pick up a lot more of that speech than David could have dreamed of. Einstein may or may not have had God as the fount of information in mind when he said that he was “moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in the universe… the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence” (8). But he captures the intrinsic nature of Information within the universe. This is where a Christian—and, I would argue, a scientific—understanding of the universe should begin.
Energy(E)
Energy follows Information in the organizing sequence of the universe offered here. The famous equation E=mc^2 reminds us that energy is everywhere. Energy, infused with Information’s ability to effect and guide outcomes and to transfer content and meaning across contexts, birthed the universe. Shannon-information’s noted need for an outside “programmer” opens the door to all the Energy that may arise with consciousness effecting/causing a reality. Information in the hands of an intelligent and energetic “programmer” guides, directs, and shapes options and potentialities, and enables encounters. Thomas Nagel argues that consciousness must be considered to have agency in the physical world (9).
Energy in general scientific parlance is movement, activity, the capacity or power to do work. Isaiah 55:11 reminds us that the capacity to do work is intrinsic to all God’s directives—all God’s information-releases: “my word… that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Elsewhere in scripture, specific language declares God made the earth by his power, or strength—the active capacity to do work (Jeremiah 10:12, and 51:15). Romans 1:20 says God’s “power”—or, we could say, energy or the capacity to do work—is on continuous display in the usual way we track energy—by the results: “[God’s] eternal power and divine nature[,] have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made." Hebrews 1:3 says God, the Son, continuously and effectively demonstrates his power/energy: he upholds the universe by the word of his power. The word translated as power here is Greek δύναμις (dúnamis, source of the English adjective dynamic), meaning power, potential, or ability. The word “upholds” does not depict a static picture, like Atlas holding up the earth or the sky; rather, the Greek term has the sense of an ongoing encounter where God “carries along” the universe. And this continuous sustaining encounter is accomplished with the same word of power that is found in Genesis 1, Psalm 33, or Isaiah 55. Here we see The Performance-Artist at work, actively making/using/handling something that is not-the-artist; but, if the artist were to stop, the performance would stop and the not-the-artist-something would crumble or disappear.
Genesis 1 credits God’s power and capacity with the initial creation of the universe. God acts by Information: “and God said…”, and by divine Energy: “let there be….” Here is agency and “encounter” with the universe. The Big Bang offered Information and Energy into the expanding universe. Information and Energy then produce Mass.
Mass(m)
Fifty years ago, I picked up a book at an outdoor used-book sale entitled The Mystery of Matter (10). It was an anthology on our understanding of matter, the stuff we are made of and surrounded with. It had dozens of articles from authors as wide-ranging as Lucretius, Einstein, Heisenberg, Huxley, and Asimov. It triggered in this philosophy-, theology-, and ministry-minded young man an interest in the relationship of science to biblical theology. Mass—matter—is indeed the stuff we are surrounded with. It can be written as m=E/c^2. Measurable mass is protons, neutrons, and the like, plus every toothpick, pet cat, moon of Saturn, and gas cloud in the space-time continuum. And it is you. And me. Seven hundred pages on the Mystery of Matter couldn’t cover it all.
A biblical perspective of matter/mass begins with God who is Information-Rich. Genesis 1 recognizes the wide variety of what would be categorized as Mass in the many statements that follow: “and God said, let there be… light…”; “the expanse…”; “let the earth sprout…”, etc. In the guided differentiation of the universe, Energy is more basic than mass. The Bible often supports this I/E/m order for understanding the universe and God’s role. For example, Proverbs 3:19 says, in the ESV translation: “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens.” First come wisdom and understanding (I); next, founded, and established, are verbs (E); and then, the earth, the heavens, the deeps, plus everyday things like clouds and dew (m)! (The order of the second part of the parallelism is slightly different in the original Hebrew.)
The universe’s Performance Artist who created and who carries it along is the author of nature’s laws. Things are so orderly, in fact, that some have said the universe is simply what satisfies the equations of the mathematicians. Yet, at the same time, “reality is richer than even the most complicated equation” (11). Atomic physics and quantum theory challenge a casual approach to matter. Because of quantum theory, some philosophers of science now say that, contrary to Einstein’s objection, God does indeed play dice with the universe. Indeterminacies at the quantum level describe potentialities, not the solid, established stuff of Newtonian physics. Actions, free choices, are required to make actualities. But this is simply to say that, at bottom, the universe is dynamic and open, ready, willing, and able to be “actualized” and carried along by its Creator. This same God is the source of life, introducing—actualizing potentialities—and sustaining the self-perpetuating dynamism of the biosphere.
Conclusion
God, the fount of wisdom, initiates the universe by decisive and effective Information, releasing and guiding Energy. Immediately, the differentiation begins. The universe, saturated with Information and Energy and scattered with all manner of mass is the result: (I/E/m). God never leaves this project but carries along this universe by his word of power, (I/E). I would suggest the order offered here is a helpful sequence for science and has always been a Christian view of the universe.
There are amazing things in this universe, and the more we dig the more amazed we get. Glory far beyond Solomon; Glory far beyond human organization of the data. Glory, in fact, enabling human organization of the data. God is involved. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
References
1. All biblical references are from the English Standard Version (ESV), unless otherwise noted.
2. J. Scott Turner, Purpose and Desire (NY, Harper Collins, 2017), 292.
3. Ibid., 221.
4. John F. Haught, God After Darwin; A Theology of Evolution (Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 2000)70.
5. Terrance Deacon, “What is Missing from Theories of Information”, Information and the Nature of Reality, Paul Davies & N. H. Gregersen, eds. (Cambridge University Press, 2010). 158.
6. Luciano Floridi: "Semantic Conceptions of Information," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2022
7. Deacon, 158.
8. Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, trans. Sonja Bargmann, (NY, Dell, 1973), 49.
9. Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (NY, Oxford University Press, 2012). 114.
10. The Mystery of Matter, Louise B. Young, ed. (New York, Oxford University Press, 1965).
11. Michael Ward, "Imagine There's No Heaven?: C.S. Lewis on Making Space for Faith" in The Story of the Cosmos: How the Heavens Declare the Glory of God, Paul M Gould and Daniel Ray, eds. (Eugene, Oegon, Harvest House Publishers, 2019), 160.
Paul Spaulding is a retired Lutheran pastor, long interested in the relation of biblical faith and science. Paul served congregations in MN, AZ, CA, and IA. Paul has a BA (philosophy, religion, biology) from Concordia College, an MDiv from Luther Seminary, and a DMin in postmodernism from Fuller Seminary. Paul lives with his wife, Renee (also a retired Lutheran pastor), in Harbor City, California.
*A special thanks to ASA member Dr. John Davis, for conversations on this topic.