The Mathematical Order of Nature---
Before we explore the mathematical order of the quantum world any further, let’s return briefly to the order of the molecular biological world. We have suggested that it is the mathematical order of the universe that gives rise to its orderly function. We see this extraordinary order in the interior world of the living cell. A protein molecule, for example, functions the way it has been designed and programmed to function. Our cells are full of countless millions of highly intelligent protein molecules that maneuver around the interior world of the cell with great purpose and mechanical dexterity.
These protein molecules have recently been likened to miniature molecular machines that behave exactly like advanced technological machines that have been programmed to perform numerous complex functions. “Wetware” is the term that has been coined to describe cellular and biological mechanisms that resemble the operational complexity of computer software. This unfathomable complexity has led scientist Dennis Bray to recently release a book titled Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell.
At the time of Charles Darwin, the earliest microscopes revealed a disappointing vision of the cell. It was nothing more than a tiny black dot that mysteriously self-replicated into two tiny black dots. But as technology has advanced, the interior world of the cell is beginning to be revealed in all of its glorious complexity. The new vision of the cell is nothing short of astonishing.
Michael Denton, a molecular biologist, is more familiar with the cell than most people, spending much of his life staring down an electron microscope. He suggests that the interior life of a single cell resembles the complexity of a city!
To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity. We would see endless highly organized corridors and conduits branching in every direction away from the perimeter of the cell, some leading to the central memory bank in the nucleus and others to assembly plants and processing units. The nucleus itself would be a vast spherical chamber more than a kilometer in diameter, resembling a geodesic dome inside of which we would see all neatly stacked together in ordered arrays, the miles of coiled chains of the DNA molecules. A huge range of products and raw materials would shuttle along all the manifold conduits in a highly ordered fashion to and from all the various assembly plants in the outer regions of the cell.
We would wonder at the level of control implicit in the movement of so many objects down so many seemingly endless conduits, all in perfect unison. We would see all around us, in every direction we looked, all sorts of robot-like machines. We would notice the simplest of the functional components of the cell, the protein molecules, were astonishingly, complex pieces of molecular machinery, each one consisting of about three thousand atoms arranged in highly organized 3-D spatial conformation. We would wonder even more as we watched the strangely purposeful activities of these weird molecular machines. We would see that nearly every feature of our own advanced machines had its analogue in the cell: artificial languages and their decoding systems, memory banks for information storage and retrieval, elegant control systems regulating the automated assembly of parts and components, error fail-safe and proof-reading devices utilized for quality control, assembly processes involving the principle of prefabrication and modular construction. In fact, so deep would be the feeling of déjà-vu, so persuasive the analogy, that much of the terminology we would use to describe this fascinating molecular reality would be borrowed from the world of late twentieth-century technology. What we would be witnessing would be an object resembling an immense automated factory, a factory larger than a city and carrying out almost as many unique functions as all the manufacturing activities of man on earth.
However, it would be a factory which would have one capacity not equaled in any of our own most advanced machines, for it would be capable of replicating its entire structure within a matter of a few hours. To witness such an act at a magnification of one thousand million times would be an awe-inspiring spectacle.”
The orderliness of nature is nowhere more clearly revealed than in the complex function of the molecular machines inside the cell. There are two main kinds of molecules in the cell: the protein molecules and the nucleic acids that carry genetic information. Nucleic acids constitute both the DNA molecules and the messenger RNA molecules. Messenger RNA (mRNA) molecules functions with an extraordinary intelligence as they enter the nucleus of a cell in search of a highly specific section of DNA code somewhere amongst the six gigabytes of coherent genetic information….
No matter where we look in observing nature we see this same pattern of seemingly intelligent molecules and atoms behaving as though they know exactly what they are doing. If you were to interrupt them and ask them what they are doing they would not be able to explain their pre-programmed behavior to you, but leave them to go on their merry way and you would observe them behaving with all the attributes of intelligence as they bond with their compatriots and function the way they are programmed to function.
It is extremely difficult to escape the conclusion that everything in the physical universe carries information in the form of programming so that it functions the way it was designed to function. This is why intelligent physicists describe the universe as a giant quantum computer at the sub-atomic level. It is no different to the argument that the cell behaves as a microcosmic super-computer complete with its information rich library of genetic material which functions as the blueprint for building every single living thing.
Max Planck was one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century. He is widely regarded as the founder of quantum mechanics. Because of his many contributions to the early development of quantum physics he was awarded the Nobel Prize for physics in 1918. In a speech titled “The Nature of Matter” presented in Florence, Italy, in 1944 he made a startling comment concerning the relationship between intelligence and matter:
As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clear headed science, to the study of matter, I can tell you this much as a result of my research about atoms: There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter.
Planck was perhaps unwittingly pointing toward the reality of the mind of God who has mysteriously programmed all of the building blocks of matter to come together in a glorious symphony of extraordinary intelligence. Information is the product of mind, not of pure random chance. The billions of atoms that constitute the genetic code within the nucleus of the cell mysteriously come together to construct a highly sophisticated biological library of coherent, intelligent data.
Six gigabytes of genetic information self-replicates in the space of one and a half hours! It is estimated that the DNA double helix strands of just one cell are made of approximately 150 billion atoms all held together through the mystery of atomic bonding.
Wherever we study life at a molecular level, we are confronted not only by intelligent design but also by pre-programmed intelligent, operational behavior.
Max Planck suggested that the quantum world points toward the existence of a superior intelligent Mind in which “this Mind is the matrix of all matter.” Lothar Schafer, the distinguished professor of physical chemistry at the University of Arkansas agrees. He says,
In the quantum phenomena, we have discovered that reality is different from what we thought it was. Mental principles – numerical relations, mathematical forms, principles of symmetry – are the foundations of order in the universe, whose mind-like properties are further established by the fact that changes in information can act, without any direct physical intervention, as causal agents in observable changes in quantum states.
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Throughout history many great philosophers and thinkers have concluded that there is a higher reality that is expressed through the universal perfection of mathematics which is an expression of some sort of consciousness that permeates the universe. Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, the famous English astrophysicist, said, “To put the conclusion crudely – the stuff of the world is mind-stuff...and the substratum of everything is of mental character.”
Schafer concludes that
“By every molecule in our body we are tuned to the mind-stuff of the universe.”31 From the perspective of biblical revelation we understand that the universe is ultimately a creation that emerges from the mind of God and that the entire creation can be understood through the language of mathematics. Schafer sought to develop the relationship between “mind-stuff” and matter in the light of quantum mechanics.
Mason, Phil (2012-01-01). Quantum Glory: The Science of Heaven Invading Earth (p. 198). XP Publishing. Kindle Edition.
