Deity in the Universe
In a recent article we talked about the difference between and immanent and transcendent deity. As a quick reminder a transcendent deity is one where the deity is thought to exist separate from the universe, like the Christian God, whereas an immanent deity is part of the universe and is often seen as coming into existence as part of the creation process.At the conclusion of the discussion I suggested that perhaps it might be useful to see if the universe its self exhibited features that were compatible with an immanent deity. Well that is what I will try to do here. It is however important to understand that the signs and features discussed do not constitute proof but simply provides a hint as to what the truth may be.
Beginnings
The first thing to consider is the creation event its self. The Christian view of a transcendent deity almost always has as a feature the belief that the deity was intimately involved in the creation event. This implies that the deity existed before the creation event and was external to it. An imminent deity on the other hand would not need to exist before the creation event and would come into being as part of that event.Physicists and cosmologists have been working at producing a good theory of how the universe started but a common feature of most is that time came into being as part of the creation event. This means that to talk about what came before the creation event is simply absurd. There was no before! This lack of a ‘before’ makes understanding how an proposed transcendent deity could have been intimately involved with the act of creation very difficult indeed and the concept of the deity existing before the creation event simply does not fit with this view of creation. An imminent deity, coming into being as part of the creation event however fits rather nicely!
Then there is the question of how the deity its self came into being. With a transcendent being it is generally assumed that there was no creation of the deity but that he/ she had simply always existed. With the reservation about the concept of ‘before’ discussed above this is an acceptable, if unhelpful, answer. An immanent deity would come into being as part of the creation act and recent studies into information technology have given an insight as to how that may have happened.
One area of research in the field of artificial intelligence is that of emergent behaviour. Here a large number of independent, but linked, systems produce behaviour that can not be explained by looking at the behaviour of the individual elements them selves. A good, but limited, example of this is an ant colony. Individually each ant is rather dumb, but as a colony they display behaviour that come very close to being ‘intelligent’ by human standards.
For the deity to come into existence through the process of emergent behaviour however there are two prerequisites. Firstly there must be a communications method between the elements involved, in this case each individual part of
the universe and secondly some sort of ‘processing’ capability.
The first prerequisite, that of timely and comprehensive communications between all parts of the universe, could potentially be addressed by the phenomena of quantum entanglement. Here physicists have demonstrated that it is possible for things, particles and small molecules so far, to be ‘linked’ in such a way that information can instantly pass between them. This would potentially provide the communications media between everything in the universe. As an aside it would also perhaps go some way to explain things such as divination and sympathetic magic where one thing can affect another across both space and time.
The second prerequisite, that there is a requirement for each part of the universe to in some way be able to process information, was until recently rather difficult to see in action. That certain elements of the universe did have the ability to process information was easy to see, all life for example processes information to some extent or another, it was however difficult to see how a rock or individual atom did it. This is important because if the deity is immanent then one would expect that every part of the universe to participate in the deity and not simply arbitrarily selected parts.
Recent work by people such as Seth Lloyd and Y Jak NG have shown that the universe, that is to say all the matter and energy in the universe, can be thought of as a giant computer. It seems that the energy and matter in the universe can interact to perform calculations and that a computing machine so envisioned is not a single system, like a pc, but a vast number of simpler but interacting computing systems. Such a system would be a vast and massively parallel computer where the laws of physics are the software. Just what you would need to generate intelligence through the process of emergent behavior!
Today
The nature of an immanent deity would be so much a part of the nature of the universe, arising out of its very existence as it does, that you would expect to see the signs of it in the very fabric of existence. There are indeed aspects of some theories in physics that do lend them selves to such an interpretation.The idea of the universe as a giant computer has been discussed above in the context of emergent behaviour but one question to ask of such a system is what exactly would it be computing? Well one answer that seems to fit the evidence is that the universe, powered by ‘standard model software’ computes quantum fields, people, stars and planets and the forces that hold them together and how they all interact. In a very real way it is computing itself and every part of the universe is contributing to that calculation.
This fits very well with the idea of an immanent deity where the deity is part of everything that exists and that everything is also part of the deity.
Another area where an immanent deity would be expected to show its nature on the fabric of the universe is in the nature of embedded. We have suggested that sentience, intelligence, is a direct result of the nature of the universe and arises from it. It is natural therefore to expect that sentience is deeply part of the nature and rules of the universe.
Now this would imply that sembeddedcould have an impact on the universe beyond the simple case where a sentient creature modifies his environment. Indeed if the universe as a whole was sentient, the very essence of an immanent deity, then we would expect to see sentience deeply embedded in the laws that govern the universe.
A shadow of such a link between sentience and the laws of physics is where the mere presence of a sentient observer affects the very fabric of the universe. One of the many strange effects that scientist have demonstrated is that it is possible to put a system into state called superposition.
This is where one or more measurable thing about something, its colour for example, is undefined until it is measured by a sentient being. This is a bit like a ball being both red and blue and only deciding which of the two it is when somebody actually looks at it!
This effect was first proposed by Schrödinger who suggested putting his cat into a state of superposition ’where it was both dead and alive’ until he opened the box to look. What the cat about this suggestion was not however recorded. Physicists have managed to reproduce this effect, without the need of a cat it must be said, many times and the effect of a sentient observer is well documented.
The fact that the universe somehow seems to know when it is being observed by a sentient being does point to sentience being deeply part of the very fabric and rules of the universe.
The fabric of the universe gives us another insight as well. If the deity was immanent, found in every part of the universe and every part of the universe part of it, then we would expect that no part of the universe would be any more important than any other. An immanent deity suggests that there are no special places.
A transcendent deity on the other hand implies that certain places and directions are indeed more important than others. The place the transcendent deity ‘lives’ would be a very important place and this is reflected in concepts such as heaven and hell, both special places. The act of creation would also be a special time if a transcendent deity was responsible rather than the creation being a natural consequence of the laws of physics.
So does the universe exhibit features that support the idea of special places and times? A number of things would seem to indicate that unfortunately for a transcendent deity the universe does not! Indeed it seems to be quite the opposite.
Firstly scientists have observed that the laws of physics exhibit T symmetry. That is to say that you can not tell which way time is flowing from looking at the laws of physics in operation. For example if you were to see a video of two pool balls colliding and subsequently moving apart you would have no way of knowing whether the video was being played forward or backwards! The laws of physics operate just fine in either direction.
Astronomers looking far into space to the edges of the observable universe are in effect looking back in time, the light from the stars takes many many millions of years to reach us! What they see is the same laws of physics in operation playing out the same story as in their lab back on Earth. The universe it would seem does not recognise any special time!
Another effect that astronomers have found is that when you look at the sky with a radio telescope you hear a rather irritating hiss, rather like the hiss you get on your radio when it isn’t tuned to a station properly! At first they thought that the hiss was a fault in their equipment then some interference generated by man and even birds nesting in the telescope! Eventually they found that the hiss was part of the universe its self, and even more extraordinary it sounded very much the same wherever they pointed their telescope.
This hiss is thought to be the remains of the initial creation event, cooled by many long years and stretched out as the universe expanded. The key thing however is that no matter where you point your telescope you get the same hiss and that every part of the sky sounds very much like every other. From this we can see that the universe seems to have no special places in space or time to be and no special direction to look in. it is said to be homogeneous and isotropic. This is just what you would expect from an immanent deity but most certainly not from a transcendent one.
Endings
So from what we have seen can we definitively say that the deity is immanent rather than transcendent? Well no. To do so we would first need to establish that there was a deity, of any sort, at all. However if we proceed from an assumption that there is a deity of some sort then the observable universe does seem to be rather more compatible with the concept of an immanent deity than a transcendent one.People may argue, with some justification, that a transcendent deity could easily create a universe that had all the attributes we have talked about. Simply showing that the universe exhibits features that seem to favour an immanent deity does not exclude a transcendent one. However if we accept that argument, and accept a transcendent deity, then we must ask why did the deity create the universe to look this way rather than any other way? If however we accept an immanent deity then we can say that the nature of the universe is a consequence of the nature of the deity.
Which one of these options do we go for? Well that has to be a personal decision but Occam’s razor would suggest that the concept of an immanent is a better bet!