No, fellow amateurs, I have not delved into a John Nash style madness a la ‘A Beautiful Mind’. However, I may in fact out myself as a quintessential nerd by admitting that when the movie came out and I was 13 I wept at the loss of intellectual genius portrayed in the film. I’d like to blame hormone imbalances due to puberty, but instead I’ll just own up to it. After all, I’m going to be writing about digital physics here, so we’re getting into some unorthodox, nerdy material in any case.

What is digital physics?

In brief, it is the theory that the fundamental component of our current reality is information. Not stuff – matter and mass – not energy – frequency and vibration – but information. Some have used this idea to argue that the entire universe is a computer simulation. I know what you’re thinking…

But seriously, the concepts introduced to popular culture through ‘The Matrix’ have ended up deserving serious investigation, particularly with high definition virtual reality and augmented reality becoming mainstream for consumers.

Keep in mind that notions that seem strange to us are not new to physics at all.

Quantum mechanics, now around a century old, demonstrates that our reality is not solid or fixed. Rather, it is probabilistic and only collapses to what we observe when we observe it and that the observation is actually what causes our observed reality to emerge. Not totally on board? Feeling like Keanu? No worries: even some of the very scientists who originated the theory said directly that nobody really understands quantum mechanics. Indeed, there are many different interpretations of quantum mechanics – ranging from total determination to total randomness – that all look the same experimentally. Check out Alvin Plantinga’s ‘Where the Conflict Really Lies’ for a much better description if that’s your thing. Fair warning: the book contains philosophy, logic, and theism.

Nonetheless…

Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.
– Neils Bohr

Despite our general presumption to the contrary, we are living in a finite resolution universe. When you go to the movies you are not actually seeing continuous motion but rather a sequence of still pictures played at a rate that your eye can’t distinguish from live action. Similarly, what we call actual live action has a theoretical resolution too. It’s just that the resolution – 10^44 frames per second (written out below) – is almost incomprehensibly beyond what we can produce or analyze.

I believe that the fundamental aspect of the universe is information. As a Christian, I also believe that the source of that information is God, and without His sustaining power the universe simply wouldn’t continue to literally blink in and out of existence 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times every second – there’s your 10^44. Yes, that’s an actual number: it’s the reciprocal of Planck time, the smallest theoretical unit of time.

But what’s the point of all this? Weren’t we supposed to hear about the bankruptcy of Hanjin Shipping, South Korea’s largest shipping firm and the seventh largest in the world, and how their ships are stranded out of port and their crews are running out of resources on the high seas?

Here’s why the context is crucial:

If information and our observation of it quite literally determine our world, then we are in an acutely real sense engaged in an information war. But it is not enough just for new information to arise in order to change our reality. In my previous article I wrote about ‘the dog whistle point’ where so much new information is being revealed that we are overwhelmed and nothing actually happens in reaction to revelations that, each on its own, would have been earth-shattering in times when there wasn’t so much insanity abounding.

New information can lead to changes in the thoughts, priorities, values, worldviews, decisions, and actions that will determine what reality we, our children, and our grandchildren – God willing – will live in. But it is absolutely critical that new information be consciously processed. Otherwise it won’t affect our reality.

If we are actually going to create the world that we want to exist, then we must be prepared to speak the truth when new information or events roll out that cause the empire of lies to be exposed in such a way that denial is no longer an option even for some of the most hardened people who have bought into the deception. Keep in mind that lies are inherently unstable and will eventually decay and break down.

Make no mistake: the lies are crumbling and the world is changing. One shipping company going under doesn’t mean the end of the world as we know it, but the current system is so unstable and susceptible that the next piece of information might. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the world will end. But the world will change based on how we deal with that information. It’s physics. Yet it’s so much more.

The truth is stable. The truth is what ultimately controls our reality. Jesus is the truth. If you don’t know Him yet, then ask Him to show you who He is. He’ll meet you right where you are. He is faithful. He created everything: including you. He is God. He died for you. He rose from the dead. He is alive. He loves you. He wants you to come home.

This article originally appeared September 9, 2016 on The Amateur Society website here.