Quantum Physics, Eternity, and Love

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
"He has set eternity in their hearts." Ecclesiastes 3:11

"We are not yet in contact with ultimate reality." James Jeans (Cambridge, 1930).

"The scientific world often shocks us by its appearance of unreality" (Eddington, Cambridge, 1930).

Quantum physics suggests that when the Bible refers to God making us in His image, it was not referring to his sex, or race, or age, but his intellect and spirit, which He breathed into us. God is, above all things, love--and we yearn for the perfection of that imperfect love that we see around us daily--the parent giving all for the child, people risking their lives to save a stranger, or even a soldier helping his enemy. But such love is fickle and conditional.

The same parent that would give all for a child might the next moment strike them in anger. Half of Americans who kiss and say "I do, until death do us part," later say "I quit."

Our love is fickle and conditional, but we all seek an unconditional, eternal love because we were created in the image of perfect Love, and we will not be complete again until we are re-united with that Love--which even modern physics suggests is more real than so-called reality itself.

Since the early 20th century, thinkers like Sir James Jeans, Arthur Eddington and others have marveled that, at the sub-atomic level, our "concrete reality" ceases to be so-called matter and becomes, in effect, levels of organization of energy. They wrote that reality is not matter but mathematics, and the Creator of mathematics was a Mathematician. They also used Boolean algebra (1 x 0 = 0) to prove that mathematics was the same thing as logic. They then noted that humans' ability to deduce abstract mathematics such as E=MC2 not from observation but from logic shows that we are in the image of the Mathematician/Logician/Creator.

James Jeans, in The Mysterious Universe" (Cambridge University Press, 1930), wrote, "Many would hold that the outstanding achievement of the twentieth-century physics is not the theory of relativity with its welding together of space and time, or the theory of quanta with its present apparent negation of the laws of causation, or the dissection of the atom with the resultant discovery that things are not what they seem; it is the general recognition that we are not yet in contact with ultimate reality."

Eddington (The Nature of the Physical World, Cambridge University Press, 1930), wrote, "In the scientific world the concept of substance is wholly lacking, and that which most nearly replaces it, electric charge, is not exalted as star-performer over the other entities of physics. For this reason the scientific world often shocks us by its appearance of unreality. It offers nothing to satisfy our demands for the concrete."

Jeans also wrote in The Mysterious Universe, "A scientific study of the action of the universe has suggested a conclusion which may be summed up, thought very crudely and quite inadequately...that the universe appears to have been designed by a pure mathematician... the universe can be best pictured...as.. pure thought...of a mathematical thinker. If the universe is a universe of thought, then its creation must have been an act of thought. Modern scientific theory compels us to think of the creator as working outside time and space which are part of his creation, just as an artist is outside his canvas."

"In the beginning was the Word", says John 1:1. The Word was the Thought, the Thinker, the Creator--outside time and space as we know it. And we, created in His image but outside of eternity, long for the eternal because this world is too big to comprehend but too small to satisfy.

If we captives of time and space cannot grasp the finite world about us, how much less can we grasp the infinite--but the Infinite has grasped us.

"The Kingdom of Heaven is within you," Christ said. That Eternity in our hearts became "the Word made flesh," and dwelt among us, and if we are willing, will dwell within us, that we too may dwell in the eternal with the Father who loves with an unconditional unchanging love transcending time and space.

Bill Brown
Xiamen University
www.amoymagic.com