Acts of God in a Physical World, Part 2

God is Here, Really

If God exists, does she act in the world? For many of us, that question can only be answered in the affirmative by way of deeply personal experiences. And there is always an acknowledgment that we have encountered a reality far beyond our understanding. Though I am a physicist, I don’t mind believing in something I don’t understand. Physicists in fact do that sort of thing all the time — for instance in our faith that a Grand Unified Theory probably exists and might one day be understood. However, the proposal that God acts in the material world does pose some physics questions worth pondering.

Consider even the relatively benign act of God speaking into a person’s mind. Human minds emerge from brains, which are composed of atoms, which obey well-defined equations. A message from a human friend affects my thoughts, that is to say it alters the behavior of matter in my brain from the course it otherwise would have followed. This can of course happen because my friend is a physical being communicating through physical channels such as sound, and the atoms in my brain follow the usual equations when responding to that input. A message from God would also need to alter the flow of physical processes in my brain, but how might this occur?

I used to think that God existed primarily in some other non-physical realm. His communicating with me, or otherwise acting in the world, would thus constitute breaking the laws of physics. God need not be bound by natural laws, so there would be no fundamental inconsistency. However, I no longer favor that picture, because of two shifts in perspective. First, I see how masterful God can be in using physical creation, complete with its governing laws, to accomplish his purposes — for instance in human evolution. Second, I see possibilities for how we might have been pinning God to the wrong location. What if God, or at least the aspect of God with whom we interact, were fully incarnate in the physical universe — as we might have guessed all along from some bits of theology? (Here, I use “incarnate” not in the narrower sense of Christians referring to Jesus, but in the broader sense of Christians and others perceiving God’s presence in other matter as well.)

In the previous essay, I discussed why I find persuasive the model of a personal God who acts in the world. (By “model” I mean to imply that we can at best approximate truths about God, and we can only do so by using metaphors. By “personal” I mean that the model includes elements such as intelligence, consciousness, and ability to communicate.) Going back to the story of my trip to the airport, suppose we were talking about a well-connected human friend trying to help me catch that flight. He could contact several people, gather information, and call in some favors. He would likely set multiple options running in parallel, in case one fell through. There is no physics problem with that scenario. Human minds emerge from matter and energy, and for that reason are able to act in the material world.

Physicist Freeman Dyson (1923–2020) proposed that God’s mind might also be emergent from the stuff of the physical universe, but on a much grander scale than are human minds. An attractive element of this proposal is that it would be completely natural, even expected, for God to act in the world. This calls to mind the widely accepted theological concept of panentheism (not to be confused with pantheism). In panentheism, God is not identical to the universe but is nonetheless present in all matter. Dyson’s proposal is a sort of limited panentheism; God’s mind emerges from some (but probably not all) matter. However, this is not a merely philosophical panentheism, but one with teeth. For all practical purposes, there is no other realm where God abides — he actually makes his home in the physical universe where we reside as well.

Here, a note of caution is in order. If there is a physics of God, as Dyson’s idea implies, then we might expect the details to be forever beyond our understanding. But if we proceed with humility, we might find something helpful along the way.

For a speculative illustration about just one of the ways God might be incarnate in the physical world, let us consider ants. An ant colony constitutes an intelligence, a so-called superorganism, on a higher scale than the individual ants from which it emerges. The superorganism has capabilities and a will far grander than those of individual ants, for instance in being able to direct a change of location for the colony. It also sends communications to individual ants. We can say that part of the higher being is within each ant, and that each ant takes part in the life of the emergent being. What if such a thing also happens with humans? We would be largely unaware that this was going on, just as the ants are at best vaguely aware of the colony intelligence.

I find many reasons to question this particular hypothesis, but I also find elements of plausibility. For instance, we know that cross-brain functionality exists in humans. When two people interact, unbeknownst to their conscious minds, electrical impulses in certain areas of their respective brains synchronize with one another. In other words, there is a cooperativity which creates something more than the sum of its parts. Perhaps a portion of every human brain is reserved to contribute to God, with inter-brain cooperativity being sufficient to support God’s emergence. Given that we have upgraded the building blocks from ant brains to human brains, it seems possible that a higher emergent being could have God-like properties, including self-awareness and unfathomable plans of her own. It is also tantalizing to note the synergy with theological concepts such as the mystical body of Christ being formed from people, human bodies being temples of the Holy Spirit, and related ideas from diverse religions.

Since we have no evidence for this sort of emergence from human minds, atheists should complain that this speculation merely exchanges one likely fictional God for another. But for people who find persuasive the idea of an interacting God, this illustration sketches one way in which God might be hidden in the material world rather than in a disconnected spiritual realm. I don’t know, and don’t expect to ever know, how God is incarnate in our physical world. I also do not know how God Incarnate relates to God the Creator. But I find the idea of a fully incarnate God, with whom we interact, compelling for both physical and theological reasons. I also find that this picture provides strong motivation in guiding my actions, since presumably they help to shape God, much as they shape other co-inhabitants of the physical universe.

With science in mind, I have suggested that we should consider a picture of a fully incarnate God. Even so, the ancient metaphorical language (which does not need science to speak truth) remains intact and powerful. God can dwell in us, and we can participate in the life of God. I don’t understand God, but I trust God. And such a trust can only be developed through experience. We must each taste and see that the Lord is good, and therein lies the beginning of any real understanding.