By: Ken Pedersen
The Mental Dimension of Reality
By definition, a miracle is an outstanding, mysterious occurrence for which science has no explanation. This paper discusses ten incredibly mysterious, outstanding occurrences that science cannot even begin to explain;
Miracle #1 – Existence
Why does anything exist? You can imagine an infinite number of versions of reality, from empty, black voids of nothing to raging chaotic versions of hell. Why does this amazingly orderly collection of galaxies, stars, and planets exist? Why this intricate, complex dance of energy and information? How and why does this reality exist?
The scientific community has absolutely no idea of why anything exists. Their “scientific non-explanation” is just a dogmatic belief that it was all accidentally caused by some undiscovered but accidental equations.
Miracle #2 – Consciousness
What is consciousness? How does three pounds of neurons support the emergence of this self-awareness we are experiencing? How do trillions of entwined molecules create us and our lifetime of memories, thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and adventures? How do billions of neural networks processing digital information give rise to the grandeur we experience?
What is this magnificent mental dimension our minds inhabit? Where did it come from and why?
Again, most scientist offer the “non-explanation” that, consciousness, your mind, and you are the result of a vast string of meaningless and purposeless accidents.
Miracle #3 – Energy
Everything, atoms, molecules, galaxies, planets, and you are madeof intricately interwoven patterns of just three different types of extremely tiny energy fields. Science has discovered energy to be an invisible, immaterial, force that can take a wide variety of forms, but cannot be destroyed. What is this mysterious, magical force? How can immaterial tiny fields of nothing combine to create everything, absolutely everything?
Science has discovered very accurate math models of what energy does, how it behaves in all its various forms. However, we have no idea of what created or sustains this immortal force. And no one on this planet even begins to comprehend what this magical, indestructible, force actually is.
Miracle #4 – Life
What is life? Life takes on an amazing variety of forms, from bacteria, to plants, to insects, to thousands of animal species. Biologists have discovered its incredible complexity and its remarkable dependence upon the extremely sophisticated DNA based digital information processing systems that contain the designs, capabilities, and rules that sustain the millions of different lifeforms.
How does a collection of “dead” molecules magically create life? Where did all this information stored within these billions of DNA programs come from? What is life and why does it exist?
The “scientific non-explanation” is again that life is a purposeless random accident.
Miracle #5 – Information
Information somehow forms all the rules that control the flow of energy through time as it creates the physical dimension of reality. Where did these rules come from? How are they stored? How are they enforced? How was this information all perfectly designed to choreograph this incredibly, intricate dance of atoms and molecules?
Amazingly, the mental dimension of reality is pure information. Perceptions, memories, thoughts, imagination, emotions, beliefs, everything in the mental dimension is the result of our minds manipulating and processing information. You are a stored library of information that you are constantly expanding and processing as you travel through life.
Where did all this information that we experience in the mental dimension come from? Why can we process and comprehend so much of it?
The popular “scientific non-explanation” is that this entire intricate dance of energy and information is a purposeless random accident, your mind is an illusion, and the mental dimension, if it exists, is also a meaningless accident.
Miracle #6 – Intelligence
Our minds canexplore the vast universe and the infinitesimal realm of subatomic particles. We can manipulate tools, mathematics, language, music, art, technology, laws, to create the modern world. Any other species that has ever existed on Earth would rightly consider our intelligence to be an amazing superpower.
Why does this level of intelligence exist? Why are our capabilities in perception, memory, learning, and imagination so beautifully effective? Why does math allow us to model reality’s behavior? Why does the mental dimension even exist and why is it so incredibly accessible to the capabilities of our intelligence?
As engineers explored new technologies, I often felt that they were purposely designed into reality, just waiting for us to find and play with. Our level of intelligence and the things to be explored in the mental dimension seemed to be a matched set, somehow designed and destined to interact.
Why is this vast mental dimension just waiting to be explored and experienced? Why do we have these super powers?
The “scientific non-explanation” is that our intelligence is a purposeless, meaningless accident.
Miracle #7 – The Fine Tuning of Layers of Complexity
Science has found the design of reality to be incredibly, incredibly, fine-tuned. Gravity is less than 10-35 times as strong as the electromagnetic force. If it were not, our stars and galaxies would not be possible. That is just one of hundreds of relationships that had to be incredibly fine-tuned for us to exist.
Furthermore, reality is composed of layer after layer of more and more complex designs, from the basic quantum fields up through atoms, stars, stardust, molecules, planets, chemistry, living cells, the DNA/RNA information processing system, and the millions of sophisticated DNA programs. The top, most complex, layer of this multilayered design is your brain and the marvelous things it can do.
It is all an incredibly fine-tuned and amazingly complex design. Each new layer is perfectly designed to anticipate what is required for the emergence of the next, more complex, layer of the design. No one has any explanation for how this fine-tuning and layered complexity could have possibly happened without intelligent guidance.
However, the official “scientific non-explanation” is, repeat after me, it is all caused by a vast string of meaningless random accidents.
Miracle #8 – Free Will
The physical dimension of reality is governed by the information that forms the laws of nature. Science has been amazingly successful at mathematically modeling the behavior of most of these laws. This success has led to most scientists believing that absolutely everything is controlled by math equations. Consequently, they believe that free will does not exist.
Sabine Hossenfelder, one of today’s most popular and influential theoretical physicists, has recently written a book, “Existential Physics”1,that many are calling the physicist’s Bible. You may think that you have free will, however, she believes that every thought you have and every decision you make, was predetermined billions of years ago by the mathematical rules that she maintains control everything that happens in the physical and mental dimension of reality.
This is total nonsense, free will exists and is an incredibly important feature of the design. It enables each of us to experience the adventure of roaming the mental dimension of reality and writing our unique life story. Without it, reality would be a predetermined, robotic, meaningless waste of energy and time.
Physicists have no explanation for free will, so, they claim it does not exist. Curiously, here they flip-flop and claim absolutely everything is predetermined by math. However, if everything is predetermined by math, then there can be no random accidents. They cannot have it both ways.
Miracle #9 – Emotions
Reality would be a very cold, uninteresting place if no one cared, no one valued anything, no one experienced desire or disappointment or joy. Yet you could imagine realities designed without these things.
Thank God, we are very emotional beings. We love to laugh and experience fun and excitement. We love striving and achieving. We thrive in a loving community of family and friends. We love life. Love is what makes life worth living and love is possibly the only thing that most would willingly die for.
Emotions bring caring, meaning and purpose to our adventures in this mysterious mental dimension. They are the cherry on top of this magnificent design.
Of course, the “scientific non-explanation” for emotions is that they are all the purposeless result of an accidental combination of accidental chemicals in your accidental brain.
The Tenth Miracle – The Mental Dimension of Reality
Imagine you were tasked with designing a meaningful reality. Since an unperceived, unappreciated reality would be truly meaningless, your design must include a mental dimension populated with conscious beings that could experience, contemplate, and appreciate their existence.
There are a wide range of possible levels of consciousness and mental capabilities as demonstrated by all the species of animals on Earth. However, imagine that you wanted to design a reality in which at least one species was intelligent enough to learn to use language, math, tools, and their imagination to build societies, invent technologies, develop worldviews, and really experience and explore the beauty and challenges of your design. Then imagine that you wanted them to really care about their lives, to experience adventure, achievements, joy, laughter, friendship, and love.
If designing such a meaningful reality were your goal, then somehow you must;
- Create a magical force capable of both building and sustaining an orderly physical dimension that can support the emergence of all the intricate layers of required complexity
- Then create a layered set of information-based rules to guide the behavior of this foundational force as it flows through time
- Because your task is so incredibly difficult, you must fine-tune these rules to create amazingly intricate and sophisticated layers of complexity in your design, with each layer perfectly anticipating the needs of the next more complex layer
- Then within this multilayered physical dimension you must somehow create all the miraculous capabilities necessary to create and sustain the desired mental dimension; life, consciousness, intelligence, imagination, free will and emotions.
In other words, to design a meaningful reality, you must first design and create the first 9 miracles we have discussed on your path to designing and creating the Tenth Miracle, this gloriously mysterious mental dimension that we live in.
Summary
Science has absolutely no explanation for any of these 10 miracles. They do not fit into the prevailing Scientific Materialist worldview of an accidental, meaningless, purposeless reality. So, scientists just dismiss these unexplainable miracles as being irrelevant random accidents that are not worthy of their consideration.
Because of this atheistic worldview, they arrogantly see themselves as being well above all these childish musings about “How and Why” any of this happened. Concepts like purpose, meaning, intelligent design or God are seen as fairy tales that only the gullible and less intelligent would consider.
However, in the last 80 years science has discovered the incredible complexity and sophistication of the multilayered design of reality and life2. Any serious mathematical analysis of how many incredibly precise, lucky accidents it would take to design this reality, quickly reveals that the concept of this being an accidental universe is totally absurd2.
For anyone, who has not been brain-washed by the simplistic, atheism of Scientific Materialism, the only viable answer to “How and Why” these ten miracles exist, is that they are the result of an intentional, intelligent design, focused upon creating the mental dimension of a meaningful reality.
Ken Pedersen retired as a Vice President of Raytheon managing Advanced Systems a research and development organization. He has a doctorate in electrical engineering with a background in system engineering, information processing, mathematics, and physics. He is the author of two books, Jenny’s Universe, (O, Books 2002)was published in English, German and Polish and Modern Science Proves Intelligent Design, (Archway Press, 2019). Both discussed what science has discovered about the design of the universe and life. He has published numerous technical and inspirational articles. Ken lives with his wife, Anne, at Canyon Lake in the Texas Hill Country.