To the possibility of an intelligent designer’s interaction with our physical universe, some have postulated the rather unimaginative objection that the intelligent agent in question would not violate his own laws of nature. This retort ignores the obvious reality that we, although obviously much less capable as human beings, are continuously causing things to happen in this universe that would never happen if the laws of nature were not complemented by purposeful agency. 

To Build a Home

The only reason we don’t call our everyday creative activities miracles is simply because the agents of those events are plainly visible. The construction of a new home is not considered miraculous in the usual sense, although it calls for design and coordinated activities by numerous skilled workers. If, however, we saw a house being built, from empty lot to finished residence, without workers or any other type of visible agency, we might acknowledge that a miracle had occurred. But would it entail a breakdown or violation of the laws of nature? Only in the sense that the outcome would not occur apart from the direction of intelligence derived from an unnatural source.

A miracle, moreover, need not destroy the natural order, but could instead merge smoothly into it. Humans are constantly causing things to happen that would never happen naturally. And if humans can bring about events beyond the reach of natural laws, why couldn’t the maker of the natural order? In the words of C. S. Lewis, “We see every day that physical nature is not in the least incommoded by the daily inrush of events from biological nature or from psychological nature. If events ever come from beyond Nature altogether, she will be no more incommoded by them.”¹

Canceled Science, pp. 206-7

The Nature of Spirit

Let’s extend, for a moment, our speculations from my previous article about the nature of spirit and its interactive ability with this material universe to considerations on the origin of life. If a Spirit is the agent that originated life, then is it reasonable to suppose that agent hand-picked the roughly 100 trillion atoms of various elements comprising a cell and assembled them one after another into specific arrangements to make each cell of a living organism? Moving atoms from an average distance of one meter to the “cell-assembly location” at the speed of light, the sequential assembly of 100 trillion atoms into one cell would take 333 thousand seconds, or about 3.9 days. It just doesn’t seem plausible that the Spirit or agent would create the vast panoply of living things in this way.

But what if his ability to interact with this universe proceeded more along the lines of parallel processing, rather than sequential or serial processing? What if the matrix, or fabric, of the Spirit is life, and to create a fully formed organism, all he has to do is conceive a creature in his mind, decide to realize it in space, and the creature is formed as easily as we conceive a thought and decide to vocalize it into a spoken word? 

Oscillations of Space

But how would the atoms making up the resultant physical organism come to exist in the right locations in space? One suggestion relates to the previously discussed idea that fundamental particles exist as oscillations of space. If this is so, then perhaps the agent merely energizes a region of space with the myriad vibrations requisite for the materialization of the organism conceived in his mind. A fascinating corollary of this suggestion is that he orchestrates creation, or even that he sings it into existence by generating the organized symphony of oscillations comprising the particles of the organism.

In our universe, particles (in the form of matter-antimatter pairs) can be materialized out of the energy of an oscillatory electromagnetic wave. From our perspective, however, this is an energy-intensive method of creating matter. Using Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc², we can estimate that all of the energy needed to run a medium-sized city for an entire year would be required to form an amount of mass equivalent to a single apple. Originating from a higher-dimensional realm, however, it would not seem out-of-the-question for an agent-as-spirit to be able to supply the requisite energy to form matter in our space, and to do it without concurrently forming the same amount of antimatter.

Higher-Dimensional Oscillations

We can extend this speculation the other way by suggesting that unseen spiritual beings, whom some would perhaps call angels, are likewise composed of a “substance” formed by higher-dimensional oscillations, maybe even of light, transposed into localized standing waves, rather than the customary traveling waves descriptive of light in our dimensions of space.

We conclude by returning to considerations of how an immaterial mind could interact with a three-dimensional, physical brain. If our minds are an aspect of spirit, then there must be a sort of overlap between the matrix or fabric of our spirits and the three-dimensional architecture and functionality of our physical brains. We might say our brains are designed and fashioned to be actuated by our spirits. If our brains suffer injury or breakdown with old age, our spirits are less able to operate them in the usual fashion. It may appear that we’re dying, but it’s merely that the hardware we’ve been using all our lives is wearing out. 

This, if true, would offer hope that the death of the body doesn’t mean the end of our lives.²

Notes

1. C. S. Lewis, Miracles: A Preliminary Study [1947] (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), pp. 94-95.
2. See, II Corinthians 5:1, ESV.