Reconciling Physics with Christianity

Given an accurate set of initial conditions, the outcome of any situation can be determined.  For example, if you know that a ball was thrown at a certain velocity and went a certain distance, you can figure out how long it was in the air and at what angle it was released.  A thorough examination of this illustration could even account for factors that seem negligible, such as air resistance or the variation of acceleration due to gravity as a result of the ball's changing distance from Earth's center.  If the ball were to hit a tree branch, as long as we could deduce the spring constant of that limb, we could say for certain where the ball would land, so long as we're given enough details about the motion of the ball and of the branch at the instant before the collision. 

Now, let's take this example and apply it to, say, the universe.  Assuming that the Big Bang Theory is true (which, of course, I do not), we should be able to anticipate every occurrence in all of creation (ironic, I know).  All we would need to determine exactly what would happen tomorrow is the set of initial conditions provided by that hot, dense baby of a universe that we started with all those billions of years ago and the formulas that describe whatever the heck was going on with it when it started to change and expand, along with the values of any variables therein that correspond with December 28th, 2013 (or December 28th, 13800002013, whichever you prefer).  Though I would probably spend far more than the next twenty four hours following this universal equation to its end, I would get there.  We could have super computers crunching numbers for every person at every second of every day, so that nothing would ever come as a surprise, and we could decide from the get-go whether our lives were worth living.  Am I going to get a job?  Find a girl?  Live long?  Prosper?  You wouldn't have to ask; you would know.  Actually, some super rich physicist would know and would probably charge you for the answer, knowing the world we live in, so you'd probably want to be a little more specific with him than I was with you.

Now, I'm not being completely fair, I'll admit.  I don't know how small scientists believe our universe started out, but I have a feeling it was subject to the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, meaning, basically, that we can only know so much about its particles' behavior and couldn't predict with complete certainty just what each particle would do with itself (things start disagreeing with Newton when they get really, really small or really, really fast).  But the idea is still very much the same, and the concept still very much applicable.  If we did know how it all started, then applied everything that we have discovered up until now, I'm sure we could devise a pretty darn good model to predict all of the things.  It would be just as simple as throwing the ball; you're told how the ball started moving and all you have to do is plug in the time to find its position at any given moment.  The ball doesn't care whether you've thrown it, yet; so long as you don't tell any lies about the way you plan on throwing it, it's going to move the same way every time.

I agree that much of what I've said so far is true.  I believe that thing about the ball and the branch.  I can gel with all of the intricate parts of the system, (air resistance, gravity, blablabla) as well.  I even think that all of the events in your life and mine are predetermined, though not by some all-inclusive formula but, rather, by God.  Here are a couple of reasons why. 

First off, forever is a long time, and things in our world simply don't appear out of nowhere.  I think that any non-religious person would agree with me on these two points.  I find it difficult to reconcile these two facts without some creator.  At what point did nothing become something, in order to give birth to our universe?  More importantly and more fundamentally, what was the catalyst and how did the universe appear?  Where's the conservation of energy and matter?  If there was no moment when everything out there sprang into being, if it's all been around forever but expansion only started recently (if you can call something that happened billions of years ago a "recent" development), then wouldn't this whole universe expanding thing have happened infinitely long ago?  Eternity is a difficult thing to wrap your mind around, but suffice to say that if there was no moment of creation (or mysterious coming into being , to be more politically correct), then everything would literally have happened forever ago-- that's the nature of eternity. 

The second reason is because math is a thing.  I took probability and statistics last semester, and if the math gods are confident enough to say that something didn't happen if they're 95% sure, then I don't know how any mathematically savvy human could give credit to any of the theories out there that don't involve intelligent design.  Let's throw the whole universe thing out the window and just look at our planet.  Do you know how unlikely it is that every species evolved from a teeny-tiny single-celled organism?  I'm not talking biologically-- I'm talking statistically.  What are the chances that some creature walking around with no ears (we'll call him Scruffy) gave birth to a little Scruffy Jr. with a system of hearing complex enough to work well enough to make him biologically superior, then that Scruffy the Third would inherit that same mutation from his daddy and so on?  Our ears use a hammer next to an amp made out of bones near some hairs in water that send electrical impulses to our brain.  That's how we hear things.  There's no reason that any of these individual parts would survive through generations without the others, and the chances of all of them occurring at once in a usable arrangement are beyond laughable.  As a self-proclaimed mathematician, I simply can't subscribe to the idea that an unfathomable number of these statistically impossible coincidences led us to where we are now in a mere four and a half billion years.

There had to be a designer, and an intelligent one at that.  I find it more sensible and more probable that there's a God in heaven than that any of the modern theories of the origin of the universe or the evolution of man are true.  I've been asked by more than one person how I can reconcile my religious beliefs with my pursuit of a career in physics.  I don't believe that there is any conflict between the two.  To me, physics is man's way of describing God's creation, and the fact that we don't have it all figured out (and never will), only bears testament to the magnificence of his handiwork.  In high school, when I asked my physics teacher why I (an aspiring English major at the time) should care about his class, he told me "So that you can quantify your world!"  And he was close-- it just isn't my world to quantify.