Deadlines are looming, so I have a bunch of half baked thoughts from this specific video.
What is reality?
In the below video by Arvin Ash (a prominent science YouTuber), he tries to explain what magnetism is to the deepest level in current physics theory.
The thumbnail shows little tiny particles called virtual photons passing between the north and south poles of magnets. These particles are “communicating” force, and are transferred via positive and negatively charged particles. So, what is a charge? They don’t know. What are virtual photons? They “pop” in and out of existence, so they can’t be detected (how convenient). How do you know they pop in and out of existence then. This is a property of a current theory called Quantum Field Theory, which states the universe is not a vacuum, but all space is occupied by an energy field, (which below is shown as a 2 dimensional function, and “particles” are just spikes in this “field”. So particles can just appear or disappear because the field can just flatten out.
All reality is really just a mathematical function, and particles (as waves) can combine and spike up, or cancel each other and disappear. To complicate this further, quantum particles, are each in their own field and are mostly independent with each other, but there is some kind of limited interaction, and this interaction is how “mass” is manifested, which is a resistance to change when the quantum field of one particle is interacting with other fields.
So What is Reality Again?
Honestly, although I really like learning about this kind of stuff, because I can appreciate (barely) the math behind it. But objectively, this is clearly more weird and fantasy sounding than the traditional view of “Heaven and Earth, spirit realm and physical realm”. I do think that math captures something deeply foundational to the universe, but also that math is mental concept (i.e. Law) that is given by God, and as such, Quantum Field Theory can be used in a form of TAG (Transcendental Argument for God).
Demons and Spirits
All this doesn’t get us to my current big questions, which is what are spiritual beings? I think for now, I want to equate the following concepts:
Mind = Spirit = Consciousness
And these things are composed of “information.” Science also has this concept that all matter and energy can be abstracted to information. Our spirit (as information) does not actually reside in the physical quantum field, but in a spiritual field that your brain can access. The brain is accessing and processing this information, much like a microprocessor isn’t data, it processes data. When you die, your information lives on, but the body and brain do not.
What is Death and Judgement
So with this crude theory, I believe I have combined both secular science theory and Christian world view on how our spirits can live on. Within this theory, death is just the transfer of your information to another realm, potentially in storage, or in another container with its own processing capability (i.e. new body). Judgement is God examining your information, like how a programmer can view your source code and look for defects, and decide to transfer your program to a new computer, or just discard the faulty software.
When viewed like this, God is judging not your actions (i.e. the faulty output of your actions in this world), but the quality of the mind/spirit that creates the output. Becoming a follower of Jesus in your life means accepting Jesus as a software author/debugger to correct the code of your spirit.
Works Vs. Faith
I believe this resolves the theology of Works vs. Faith, because works is the output of your software, but faith is speaking about an intrinsic quality of the software. Your software has to be authored/debugged by Jesus. Properly coded software will create proper output. There should be no distinction between the output and the mind that creates that output. So Protestants and Catholics, stop with the silly arguments, good works come from a good spirit, stop splitting hairs.
Purpose of Life
So God created this world and life as a form of factory to create minds/spirits. They are initially created with crude information, and the information is processed by human brains during our life. Life experiences such as education, testing, suffering, and relationships help develop our spirits. The complexity of the mind requires this development process, a vast and diverse set of inputs. Also in our lives, we will be presented with information of Jesus, and our programming must either accept that information into our programming or reject it.
Standard of Software Acceptance
As the author of life, God can set a QA standard for our spirits. I believe that standard is based entirely on our spiritual utility. In Christian terms, this is our ability to love God and each other. In my own language, its the ability to take in resources and generate useful output. A calculator has to generate correct calculations to be useful as a calculator. A failure to have spiritual utility is manifested when a person is of insufficient output for the given input. For example, how much love is wasted when people indulge in excessive self pleasure seeking, wealth accumulation, individual status seeking, etc.? How many of these vices are corrected when Jesus transforms us and we desire to emulate his example?
Malicious Actors in the Simulation
This world is filled with Malicious Actors trying to prevent us from developing these desired spiritual qualities. So under the simple premise that the ONLY thing that matters is “Love God/Love your neighbor as yourself”, instead we get deceptive alterations like “Love is Love”. Why Satan and his followers desire to stop humanity from developing this virtue perhaps is rooted in that Satan also had the free will to develop this virtue, and he rejected it, and has been consumed with the desire to not have God’s lowly creation of man surpass his value to God in the coming kingdom. And as such, life has become filled with this animosity.
Half Baked Conclusion
The whole science thing in the beginning was just a springboard to saying that although we live in a “physical world”, there is an underlying reality, that goes beyond our imagination. And I’ve been trying for years to make sense of it, to combine science and religion, and well, I feel like I’m getting close. Its really fun to come up with crazy theories, although I’ll recognize its not super novel, maybe just barely ahead of other more interesting thinkers on YouTube.