The idea that the universe is a giant, evolving computer that is processing information is something that I find very likely to be true. This is what this thread is about, and then I'll explain how this relates to religious beliefs such as the belief in the existence of God, resurrection, miracles, the afterlife, and especially revealed information. As you will see, I'm going to be writing about a lot of different things in this post that digress from Islam such as information theory, computers, computer programs, the universe, black holes, the brain, genes, memes, living things, evolutionary game theory, the holographic principle, simulated reality, and several other things which are all related somehow. I will also make a few points about Christianity and the Bible. And I think that the discussions in this thread can diverge into other areas ranging from science and philosophy. So, that's the reason why I didn't post this thread specifically in the Islamic section.
A lot of the things that you're going to read in this post are some of my wandering and sketchy thoughts on God and religion. They still make some sense to me, in my own head, but it's a lot more difficult to explain these abstractions to others. Fortunately, these are not arguments that you have heard hundreds of times from other theists or from other Muslims. They are mostly my own arguments in which I point out connections between Islam and a computational theory of the universe. There are other things which I have read elsewhere and thus I provided links and sources for them. Also, there is no link or an external website for this long post of mine and that's because I typed it here for the first time.
In fact, some of the Muslims with whom I have shared these ideas think that I have entered a 'dangerous territory' because I'm incorporating philosophy and scientific theories into my understanding of Islam, and therefore, all of this could be misinterpretations of Islam. I do agree with them that these could be misinterpretations, but I don't think that there is anything wrong with looking at at any religion from a scientific or a philosophical perspective if that truly makes sense to me. Also, I'm not claiming that I certainly know that these ideas are true. I am somewhat skeptical about them even though I think that they are more likely to be true.
However, I don't know exactly how absurd the atheists are going to find all of this stuff. Many of you guys will probably find these ideas to be extremely ridiculous, or delusional, or crazy, or a massive pile of garbage, or mental gymnastics, or a bullshit application of computer terms to explain the universe, or some philosophical crap, or whatever that you're thinking of. If you think so, then just say it. Just be honest and say whatever that you're thinking. I don't care. And of course, you can refute whatever points that you want to.
Also, you might think that I'm being selective or that I'm cherry picking the Quran since I'm not talking about some of the more problematic issues about Islam such as the verses in the Quran which are believed to be contradictory by many, the violence committed by extremist Muslims, suicide bombers, jihad stuff, gender-related issues, etc. But, that is not my intention, and I have expressed my opinions on those particular topics in the past in many different threads. If you still want to talk about those things, then feel free to do that in this thread, or ask questions, and I'll try to answer them even though they might be repetitions of what I said earlier.
I posted this thread not to convert anyone, but it's mainly for discussion only, and I had these ideas in my head for a long time. I wanted to see what kind of feedback I receive from both theists and atheists in this forum. Again, I don't care if I get harsh criticisms, but I'd just like to see your opinions and/or arguments. Also, most of you probably think that my religious views stem from my upbringing and social conditioning and therefore has little to do with my own genuine search for the truth. However, on the contrary, I feel that my faith has mostly grown from my own reflection and less based upon external influences. That's why I wanted to specifically present some of my own arguments in this thread. And these arguments are some of the things that makes me think that there is a higher probability for Islam to be true. In other words, I am not claiming to have any certainties about what I am going to post right now but, again, just a higher probability.
Even though I think it is more likely that none of you will believe this stuff, you might learn things which you didn't know before, at least. So, it's probably not going to be a complete waste of your time if you read this. I know it's a pretty long post, but you can read however much you want to, and I've summarized it at the end.
Universe as a Computer
Although the universe does seem to be like a huge computer to me, and the analogy works, I'm not saying that the universe is necessarily a computer. All I'm saying is that this is the best philosophical theory that I've come across to describe how the universe functions and thus it is more likely to be true that the universe is a computer, and not just as a metaphor, but in a literal sense. The more I think of the universe as a computer, the more it makes sense to me because I realize that everything in nature along with we human beings are essentially physical systems which are storing and processing information. So, from that perspective, it looks to me as if all our networks and interactions in this planet are just some of the things that are happening in a massive computer which itself is running on some kind of a program. At a larger scale, all the atoms in the universe are analogous to the bits inside a laptop or a computer, and through the countless atomic collisions and rearrangements, the universe is performing a computation. So we can think of the laws of physics as a software, the matter and energy as the input, and the results of the computation as the output.
The astronomical patterns were simple when the universe first began. Then, after the universe cooled down, stars began to form which then became grouped into galaxies, and then each of the galaxies became group into clusters, and then each of the clusters became grouped into superclusters. The superclusters are sort of like web databases spread throughout the universe with each of them containing different galaxies and producing different outcomes as they evolve. In one of the galaxies, called the Milky Way, there is a planet in which there was an emergence of many complex and intricate patterns such as plants, animals, human beings, language, society, culture, food, sex, literature, and even technology. Furthermore, there may even be other planets in the universe which possess similar things to ours which we don't know about yet.
I also read a book titled "Programming the Universe," by Seth Lloyd, in which the author argues that the universe is a quantum computer:
"The universe is made of bits. Every molecule, atom, and elementary particle registers bits of information. Every interaction between those pieces of the universe processes that information by altering those bits. That is, the universe computes, and because the universe is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, it computes in an intrinsically quantum-mechanical fashion; its bits are quantum bits. The history of the universe is, in effect, a huge and ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computer." (Lloyd, 3)
Everything that we do in our lives is a part of the universal computation as well because we are processing information. This is an idea which falls under the study of digital philosophy which, in essence, views that all mental and physical activities are digitized information processing. Likewise, this is also true for the cells, DNA, and everything in our bodies because they process information in a systematic manner. Genetic processes such as joining, copying, partitioning, complementation, trimming, replacing, fragment code exchange and crossover, and replication and transmission, for example, are all examples of simple computations operating in our bodies which themselves have built up over billions of years in a deep algorithmic process. And speaking of genes, in a book titled "Meta Math," by Gregory Chaitin, the author explains how our genes are similar to a computer software, and this is also a concept that I agree with.
"What is this software like? It isn’t written in 0/1 binary like computer software. Instead DNA is written in a 4-letter alphabet, the 4 bases that can be each rung of the twisted double-helix ladder that is a DNA molecule.Adenine, A, thymine, T, guanine, G, and cytosine, C, are those four letters. Individual genes, which code for a single protein, are kilobases of information. And an entire human genome is measured in gigabases, so that’s sort of like gigabytes of computer software." (Chaitin, 67).
Thinking is also a type of information processing. As you may already know, the human brain is able to perform many types of computations and it can also do things which even computers cannot do. The brain also records and reproduces information from our past experiences along with the emotions that are associated with those experiences, and like an instant replay, when confronted with a similar experience later on, it will oftentimes reproduce or recreate information about the original experience to guide our current actions. In other words, the brain is able to retrieve information that was stored from the past and this is an important process which is shared by computers as well. And of course, there are many other processes that occur in the brain which makes it a computational device and here are some of them:
"Under this model, computer science is able to transpose terms that apply to computers with those that apply to the human brain, and vice versa. Thus, terms such as memory, storage, thinking, bit, content, transmission, etc. are applied with no distinction to communication between machines, between humans, or between humans and machines (Leeuwis, 1993, 31). The model of communication applied within this information transforming process is the basic sender-signal-channel-receiver model. Lakoff refers to this as the conduit metaphor of communication which is based in a general metaphor for mind, 'in which ideas are taken as objects and thought as the manipulation of objects. An important part of this metaphor is that memory is ‘storage.’ Communication in that metaphor is the following: ideas are objects that you can put into words (or store as bits), so that language is seen as a container for ideas, and you send ideas in words over a circuit, a channel of communication to someone else who then extracts the ideas from the words' (Lakoff, 1995, 116)."
Full article: http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/sholle.html
The basic life functions of living things in this planet is another thing which involves information processing and thereby suggesting that nature has computational properties. All the various organisms can be thought of as digital organisms living in a 3-dimensional world because many of their activities can be symbolically modeled into a program in a computer. For example, certain computer viruses can be created in such a way so that they self-replicate, evolve, use logic systems, share data with the copies of themselves, thrive within certain habitats, and then become extinct some time in the future, and these are all computer-simulated properties which are associated with those of living things in the real world. There is even a computer simulation known as "Tierra" in which the behavior of the computer programs are created in a way that they model or imitate the daily activities of real-life organisms:
"Tierra is a computer simulation developed by ecologist Thomas S. Ray in the early 1990s in which computer programs compete for central processing unit (CPU) time and access to main memory. At present, the commonly accepted definition of life does not consider any computer program to be alive, however, Tierra is an example of an artificial life model; in the metaphor of the Tierra, the evolvable computer programs can be considered as digital organisms which compete for energy (CPU time) and resources (main memory). In this context, the computer programs in Tierra could be considered evolvable and can mutate, self-replicate and recombine." - Wikipedia
So, I think that the fact that these computational properties are so similar to the natural ones in the real world is a another reason why I think that the universe itself is a type of computer. Our brains, genes, living things, galaxies, planets, rocks, and everything else are processing bits of information in a systematic manner as they evolve which is what makes them more similar to computer programs. Likewise, there are scientists and thinkers who maintain that even the universe is a computer and that the laws of physics are the programs which it is running on. Also, massive objects in space called "black holes" are theorized to be powerful quantum computers which can perform almost any computation depending on how they have been "programmed." Below is an interesting article from Scientific American that explains in more details how the universe is performing a computation while drawing connections from the relationship between black holes, information theory, and the holographic principle. It especially talks about the computational nature of black holes. Here it is:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Black...puters.pdf
Assuming that the universe is a computer, who or what is possibly running the whole cosmological computer is the subject that I'll be turning to.
A Program with a Mind of it's Own
According to my knowledge, most religious people think of God as a person. I didn't actually hear any of them saying otherwise (except for deists and pantheists, of course). I don't disagree with the belief that God is personal either. In Islam, however, God is not viewed as someone who has a face, hands, feet, eyes, and other body parts just like a human being (i.e. we don't believe in an anthropocentric God). He is only a person in the sense that he has some of the attributes or qualities of a human being, but it doesn't mean that he looks like a human being, as the Quran says, "No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision. He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things" (6:103). This means that we cannot ever understand or comprehend the essence of God nor what He looks like. In other words, God cannot be perceived by the human imagination. And that is in respect to His primary attribute. The secondary attributes, however, are many and some of them are the All-Aware, the Most High, the Alive, the Eternal, the Preserver, the Wise, the Hidden, the Perceiver, the Resurrector, and the Watcher, for example, and we have to understand all of these secondary attributes of God in relation to His primary attribute which is unknowable.
From a computational worldview, however, I've been also thinking that God may be a "program," not just a person. This program has many features as that of a person such as intelligence, emotions, awareness, love, anger, forgiveness, will, intentions, etc. But again, I don't know whether or not these attributes are understandable in human terms especially if God is like a cosmological computer program. And more importantly, I want to emphasize that I do not know if this is the correct understanding of the primary nature of God. This is just a conception or a model of God that seems to be the most likely to me if the universe itself is a giant computer as I have explained earlier. Also, I don't know if the words "all-powerful" and "all-knowing" can be understood in the sense that most people think of them. There may be a higher-level meaning to them which is not similar to their literal definitions. If God was all-knowing (omniscient) and all-powerful (omnipotent) in the literal sense that we define them - then I don't think it is reasonable to believe that God created us to test our faith and yet He knows everything about future actions and our present conditions, and then, doesn't do anything to prevent us from going to Hell even though He knows that this would happen before He created us. Therefore, I don't think that the idea of "all-knowing" and "all-powerful" holds true for a deity in the same sense that we think of them. I know that I could be wrong, but that's an opinion that I find to be the most honest and reasonable in respect to my understanding of the "omni" attributes of God.
In theory, this program can be treated as if it's a person and one which possesses consciousness. It may have a mind of it's own, so to speak. And it's alive. So in that sense, there's a possibility that God is a "personal program," but yet a very mysterious one, because we don't know exactly how this program works, what it looks like, what it is made of, how it thinks, and many other aspects.
How can a program be conscious? Well, I've read in a few articles that a program can be said to have consciousness depending on how you define the word "conscious". There are certain definitions of consciousness in relation to computational properties that, when applied to a computer program, the program can be considered to be conscious (although not conscious in the same sense as are we human beings). You can see some of those definitions and their applications on page 4 in the first link below:
Conscious Machines and Consciousness Oriented Programming
A Computational Model of Machine Consciousness
If the universe itself is a huge quantum computer, and an extremely powerful one, then it seems very possible to me that the program behind it is also intelligent and that it has a mind or a consciousness. But, we don't know what it really feels like to have such a consciousness because we cannot step out of our own consciousness. I think that we ourselves are sort of like biological computers with feelings, ideas, and self-awareness living in a 3-dimensional world. Our brains and the rest of our body is a mechanical system, of course, but yet it is able to produce feelings and intentions unlike other objects. My point is that, if we can possess these qualities, and if our consciousness is a part of the universal computation, then I don't think it's an unreasonable notion to believe that the program that created all this complexity and living things in this planet also has consciousness and intelligence. I'm not saying that this is necessarily true, but that this is an inference that can be made that if the universe is a computer, as I have briefly argued so far, then I don't think that it is absurd to think that it is running on some kind of a 'master program' which itself is (possibly) intelligent.
Going a little deeper into religion, how this program interacted with certain human beings in the past is the topic of the next section.
Scriptures, Poetry, and Moral Codes
If the universe is a computer, and if it's running on a program which is conscious, intelligent, and alive, then it's possible that this program is also capable of communicating with its creations by sending signals or messages to them. It can print out or reveal information about itself and also assign attributes to itself (i.e. which is God revealing himself through words). So, the program seems to be self-referential because it can talk about itself by referring to itself. I think that it can also communicate in a special type of higher-level programming language and that's why many of the verses in the scriptures are not to be taken literally but, instead, have a highly abstract (or a figurative) meaning behind them. That makes them quite ineffective for our understanding.
The program is also able to generate or print out rhyming verses such as the ones found in the Quran and send them to a person's head. Actually, I do think that the Quran is a type of "computer-generated poetry" since I believe that the universe itself is a computer and that God is the program behind it. Also, I think that there is a good reason to believe that it is very unlikely that Muhammad wrote the entire Quran by himself, and the reason for this is that he was an illiterate man, and there is no indication that he had lessons from someone else on linguistic/literary, historical, theological, and/or scientific fields of study. So, for people at that time, the Quran was a miracle. Even today, most of the Quranic scholars and experts consider the literary aspect of the Quran to be something amazing while knowing the fact that Muhammad was not a trained poet nor was he able to read.
The Quran also includes a challenge which is to produce a single chapter in Arabic which is similar to the linguistic eloquence as that of the Quran, as it says, "And if you are in doubt as to that which We have revealed to Our servant, then bring a single chapter like it, and call your witnesses besides God if you are truthful" (Surah 2:23).. Some of the most skilled poets and writers (both Arabs and non-Arabs) have tried to meet this challenge, but as predicted in the Quran, nobody was able to meet the challenge since the past 14 centuries. From a computational perspective, this is as if a program generated a text or a chapter in a book and then the book is telling everyone "If you claim that I am the creation of a human, then let's see if your tiny little minds can simulate me!" Of course, not being able to imitate or reproduce something like the Quran doesn't necessarily mean that it cannot be ever done. However, I don't think that the said verse is necessarily false either because no one has been able to meet the challenge according to my knowledge.
I also believe that the scriptures in the monotheistic religions have an evolutionary nature behind them. God has sent revelations to many prophets in the past, but during the course of time, the original information became distorted or changed by human beings who wrote them down. Some put in the their own thoughts into the scriptures and thus they are not the actual word of God. Some of them are even lost completely. However, I believe that the information contained within the scriptures when they were first revealed are from the same God. That's why there are so many similarities between them. For example, there are revelations such as the Ten Commandments, Torah, Bible, the Quran, and there may be other scriptures as well which are of a divine origin. These books contained revelations from God but gradually became corrupted by human copyists and editors. The Quran, however, contains everything that was important from all the earlier works that were revealed to the prophets and it is the uncorrupted word of God. (or such is the Muslim point of view). That's why there are differences between the monotheistic religions along with many similarities.
To my understanding, there are many devout Christians who do not claim that every single verse in the Bible is the infallible word of God. Also, many will tell you that Bible was originally written in Hebrew and that some of the English translations still do not effectively translate the original message of Jesus. They recognize that the Bible had human authors and there may be some distortion, so they tend to concentrate on the spirituality in the bible and not on supposed flaws. On the other hand, there are indeed a fair amount of inerrantists, especially amongst the more hardcore Protestants, who believe that the entire Bible is the word of God without having any corruptions at all.
The point is that God changed or updated the set of laws for mankind each time a new book was sent to us. They are part of an evolving process which are produced as a result of the massive computation going on in the universe. In that sense, I believe in a God who updates or revises his own laws and then changes them. It's kind of like "installing" a new program on a computer which then "over-writes" the information from the older versions although it still contains many of the same features and settings as the ones before.
I think that these scriptures were revealed through specific people in history (or through "prophets") who play the role of being "communication channels" for transmitting God's information to the rest of humanity. God is the sender, the prophets are the channels, and we are the receivers of these divine laws. These revealed information may have evolved through time and they were being fine-tuned in a sense, or they were going through selection pressures, which gradually gave birth to different religions with a different set of moral codes for each of them. This is a process that could be similar to how the laws of nature were fine-tuned and settled down at a certain point in time. Also, there could be a mathematical nature behind the religious moral codes because, in my opinion, physics and almost everything has a mathematical basis. In the same way that the laws of physics are determined by mathematics, the laws of morality may have also developed and frozen out according to certain mathematical equations which we do not know of. However, these laws or instructions are not imprinted in our bodies unlike the millions of instructions carried in our cells and DNA. They are external laws which have been programmed for us to follow after they were revealed to us and then written down in pages over the course of human history. So, from a computational perspective, I think of all the revealed scriptures as "control systems" designed by an intelligent program which are intended to manage, command, and regulate the behavior of the receivers of the information.
Also, it seems to me that there are different levels of order that emerged within this giant cosmological computer that we live in. The main levels of order are the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, and then the laws of biology. First, the laws of physics were fine tuned, then the the laws of chemistry were fine tuned, and then the laws of biology were fine tuned to create life through evolution. After we human beings were created through these laws (from physics to chemistry to biology), I believe that another level of order began to emerge after the 3 were completed, which are the moral laws. Just like there are biological instructions for our cells, proteins, DNA, etc. (at a micro-level), there are also moral codes that were revealed to us and they are instructions for us (at a macro-level). These moral codes may have frozen out gradually and evolved in an algorithmic fashion and maybe that's the reason why there are differences between the commandments of the different monotheistic religions.
To clarify, this is obviously just a metaphysical concept and that's why I cannot prove that the moral codes found in the scriptures have an objective reality such as the laws of physics or the genetic instructions in our bodies. My argument is that if God created the universe with all these different laws of nature (which is something that deists also believe), then, I don't think it would be an extraordinary leap of faith to believe that the same God has created laws for human beings as well. That's basically the point that I was trying to get at in the previous paragraph.
Resurrection by a Black Hole Computer
The day of resurrection is believed to be a time when everyone comes back to life. Such a thing might sound like something from a science fiction story, but if the universe is a computer, then it can be argued that the program behind this computer can also possibly reverse the process by restoring our consciousness and our bodies to an earlier point in time (like a system restore in an ordinary computer) or perhaps He runs a type of reversible computation in the universe which somehow reconstructs our bodies.
In Islamic belief, the end of humanity on this planet will come at the blowing of a "trumpet" as mentioned in the Quran. This is going to happen twice. The first time, the trumpet will blow and that's when doomsday will occur, and the second time, the trumpet will blow again and that's when resurrection will take place, as stated in the Quran, "The Trumpet will (just) be sounded, when all that are in the heavens and on earth will swoon except such as it will please Allah (to exempt). Then will a second one be sounded, when, behold, they will be standing and looking on!" (39.68). This trumpet will create an extremely powerful sound wave that will bring death to everyone who will be walking on this planet during that time (although there may be other creatures who still survive the sonic blast). The science behind the deadly power of sound is that our bodies are affected by the sound vibrations that are going through us. When our bodies are exposed to high frequency infrasounds, those vibrations are absorbed by the bones, tissues, and other organs in our bodies, and then it causes our body parts to resonate or vibrate at a frequency beyond the normal, healthy range, which can then cause us to lose consciousness or even die eventually.
However, the Quran does not tell us from where the sound is coming from nor what is the source of the sound. The sound of the Trumpet might be produced from some place on earth; it could come from an object somewhere in the galaxy that we live in; or perhaps even from an object farther away in space. But, ultimately, no one knows for sure where the Trumpet exists nor what it's nature is.
There is something in space which I learned about that could be similar to the sounding of the trumpet. In the center of the Perseus galaxy, there is a black hole that creates powerful sound waves, although I don't know how that really happens. I think that the sound might be produced by the movement of the surrounding gas near the black hole (or something like that). And the black hole creates a B-flat note in a frequency which is over a million billion times lower than the limits of human hearing. Here's a quote from an article about this where it says:
"In musical terms, the pitch of the sound generated by the black hole translates into the note of B flat. But, a human would have no chance of hearing this cosmic performance because the note is 57 octaves lower than middle-C. For comparison, a typical piano contains only about seven octaves. At a frequency over a million billion times deeper than the limits of human hearing, this is the deepest note ever detected from an object in the Universe." - NASA Science
In my opinion, the sound waves from a black hole might be a scientific explanation for the sound waves created by the "Trumpet." The sound is happening right now, and maybe we won't be able to hear the sound whenever it happens (if it is below the human range of hearing), but I think that this could happen some time in the future and that the sound can affect our consciousness. Now surely, even though a black hole can create sound waves, it is still questionable to me whether or not that the "trumpet" is actually a black hole that is going to make this sound on the day of resurrection. However, there is still a reason why I think that the trumpet might be a black hole even though it is not a proof that this is true, and the reason is because of the many similarities between these two things which makes the trumpet more likely to be something real.
There is also a giant black hole at the center of our own galaxy (known as Sagittarius A*):
Milky Way black hole deemed galactic glutton
Also, there is another reason why I think that the trumpet is a black hole. The reason is because this idea matches with another verse in the Quran which says that when that day comes (i.e. the Day of Resurrection), the sun and the stars will begin to be "wrapped up" in darkness. The stars will "fall" and then they will lose their brightness. They will disappear from our sight. This event will happen when the trumpet is blown because these verses are talking about the Day of Resurrection specifically.
"When the sun is wrapped up [in darkness]; And when the stars fall, dispersing;" (81:1-2)
Similarly, we know that spacetime becomes "curved" around a black hole and as a result even light gets pulled into it. This is because of the intense gravity of a black hole. And that's the reason why the stars "fall" into this dark region of space. So, I think that there is a good possibility that the above verses are describing the effects of a black hole on the surrounding stars in our galaxy.
How does all of this support the idea of resurrection? Well, this may sound like something from a science fiction story, but if black holes are the most powerful 'quantum computers,' and if they can be made to perform any computation depending on the collection of matter that falls into them as mentioned in this article (which I posted earlier as well), then, I think it is possible that a black hole could re-arrange all the atoms that we are made of and put them back into a single piece which constitutes a human being. From an information theory perspective, each and every one of us can be described by a 'bit string' and the same applies for any other physical system. If the information about ourselves is preserved somewhere and computed in a reversible fashion, then in my opinion, this may be a mechanism which allows physical resurrection. The Islamic view is is that resurrection is a physical process according to the Quran, as it says:
"Does man think that We cannot assemble his bones? Nay, We are able to put together in perfect order the very tips of his fingers." (75:3-4)
So, it's not just the soul that departs from the body and goes off into a different plane of existence when we are resurrected. The entire body also gets resurrected according to Islamic belief. Interestingly, I also read in an article that a black hole may have the physical resources and the computational power to re-create a physical system after it evaporates. This can even happen to human beings on a spaceship who gets swallowed by a black hole.
"Passengers on a spaceship would like some guarantee that when they fall into this black hole and get smooshed into the singularity, they can be recreated as it evaporates," Lloyd told New Scientist. "With a few simple precautions, the travellers would be almost exactly the same, with less than an atom of difference." - New Scientist
Here's another article: Retrieving Data from a Black Hole
I think that these ideas of "retrieving data" and humans being "recreated" out of a black hole might be a scientific explanation for resurrection. If we are a mass of coded quantum information, then I think it's possible that a black hole could perform a computation on those bits (or units of information) that fell into it and then somehow reconstruct the original. Or maybe it's going to be something like that.
Again, the trumpet that I was talking about will blow a second time, as the Quran says, "Then will a second one be sounded, when, behold, they will be standing and looking on!" This is when we will get resurrected. And if the trumpet is a black hole, then the second blowing of this trumpet may suggest that this is when we get thrown out of the black hole (and that's why we will hear the sound again). We may be deposited back into the universe or, if not, then we may be thrown into another reality where space and matter are dimensionally shifted. Maybe the newly created matter takes one of the other 8 or so theorized spatial dimensions, or maybe even two or three, and creates the reality in the connected universe through which the massive black hole has torn into. Heaven and Hell might exist in these extra, hidden dimensions.
Even though there is no evidence of Heaven and Hell, their existence may not be so improbable as many people think it is because even in theoretical physics there are models of the existence of "branes" and "large, extra dimensions." Our reconstructed bodies might be transported to another brane, or to another dimension, and I think this is possible because in string theory, it is believed that there are hypothetical particles called "gravitons" which can travel from one brane to another and thus carry information between the branes (as you can see in this illustration). And it's possible that our reconstructed bodies, whatever they are made of, can travel from one brane to another in a similar way that the gravitons move freely throughout the branes. I'm not saying this is what necessarily happens to the soul and body, but if it does, then here's a plausible mechanism which might be an explanation for how we would enter a different dimension of existence.
Now, going back, I'm going to briefly re-state all the reasons on why I think it is possible that the "trumpet" is a black hole that can resurrect us:
(1) Both of them are capable of emitting powerful sound waves; (2) The sound of the Trumpet will cause everyone to die, and I think this is scientifically possible because it's known that a very high range of infrasound or a certain frequency of sound waves can actually kill a person (google "sonic weapons"); (3) There is a supermassive black hole in our own galaxy and this makes it more likely that it can create sound waves in the future if it becomes more active; (4) After the second blowing of the Trumpet, everyone will be restored to life, and similarly, it is theorized that black holes may be the most powerful quantum computers which preserve information and that they can even recreate the objects that fell into its singularity atom by atom (including the atoms of you, me, and everyone else); (5) There are verses in the Quran which say that the sun and the stars will "fall" and lose their light and that they will become "wrapped up" in darkness when the Trumpet blows, and this is what happens to stars when they come close to a black hole, which is another reason why I think that the Trumpet might be a black hole.
Therefore, I find it unlikely (although not impossible) that all these things about the Trumpet mentioned in the Quran match with the descriptions of a black hole just by a coincidence. In other words, I think that these connections are something that was pretty improbable (but, again, not impossible) to have been predicted through mere guesswork by someone living in the 7th century and then coincidentally match with the current scientific knowledge related to black holes that I mentioned above. But, this is just a theory of mine and I know that I could be totally wrong about this whole Trumpet thing.
Hints of a Tracking System
One of the interesting concepts in relation to a computational view of reality is the preservation of information and how much of it can be stored in a finite surface area. As an analogy, all the matter and energy that exist in the universe are like the pixels on a computer screen (space being the screen). And from a physics point of view, this idea has a relationship with something called the "holographic principle." This principle states that the information content is proportional to the surface area of a region of space and not it's volume. "The holographic principle states that the entropy of ordinary mass (not just black holes) is also proportional to surface area and not volume; that volume itself is illusory and the universe is really a hologram which is isomorphic to the information 'inscribed' on the surface of its boundary." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
I have learned that many of today's theoretical physicists suggest that the three dimensions of reality that we observe may in fact be a two-dimensional information structure which is “inscribed” on some sort of a cosmological horizon. Similarly, in this article, I read that one of the implications of the holographic principle is that all of our 3-dimensional experiences may be a 'projection' from a 2-dimensional vibrating surface encompassing the entire universe. Hence the universe is a type of "hologram."
Now, I'm going to jump to something from the Quran, and then I'll explain how it relates to the concept of information storage and the holographic principle which I mentioned above. However, I'll admit that this is something very sketchy and thus I'm not sure if this is the correct interpretation of the Quran. It just seems that this is possible. But, anyway, the thing is that we Muslims believe that all of our actions are being "recorded" in a "book" (or something like a scroll). As stated in the Quran:
"This Book speaks about you with truth. Verily, We were recording what you used to do." (45:29)
All our actions are being written down in this book. Even the fact that I'm typing this post is being written down in the book. However, the "writing" in the book may not be the type of writing that we are thinking of. It may consist of words, numbers, colors, symbols, zeros and ones, or maybe something else. And similarly, the "book" may not be a book that we are familiar with or one that we have seen in the present world. It may be something very huge, or just a flat surface, or some kind of a membrane perhaps which stores information about ourselves and what we did in our lives. The point is that, even if the "book" exists, I cannot comprehend the exact nature of such a book due to my inability to understand things which are beyond my terms of experiences that I can relate to in this world.
That being said, in one article, I read that there's a "concrete sense" in which information is stored on the surface of any given region of space (along with the surface of a black hole). Then, it says that according to theoretical physicists, if that is correct, then it is possible that we are "fully joined" to processes that are taking place on a 2-dimensional surface as suggest by the holographic principle. So, the movements of my fingers, my hands, the neurological activities in my brain, and every other action that I have done could be affecting that surface because we are connected to it. Here' s the article that I was referring to (see the link below). It is an excerpt from a book titled "The Hidden Reality," by Brian Greene, and I will just quote the part which talks about the relationship between our own actions in this world and a "distant surface" that we are connected to.
"If this line of reasoning is correct, then there are physical processes taking place on some distant surface that, much as a puppeteer pulls strings, are fully linked to the processes taking place in my fingers, arms, and brain as I type these words at my desk. Our experiences here and that distant reality there would form the most interlocked of parallel worlds. Phenomena in the two - I’ll call them Holographic Parallel Universes - would be so fully joined that their respective evolutions would be as connected as me and my shadow."
Full article: http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jun/03-...t-hologram
If such an idea correct, as quoted above, then I think that this might be a hint or a likely explanation for the Islamic belief that all our actions are being recorded in a book as if they are being encoded or stored into some kind of a 2-dimensional surface. We may be connected to that 2-dimensional surface as the quote above suggests. And if that is true, then all of our movements, actions, and maybe even our thoughts are causing changes within the region of that surface. This may also suggest that my actions are being inscribed onto that surface which, in relation to Islamic belief, could be a scientific interpretation of the idea that all of our actions are automatically being "written" onto the pages of a book. Muslims believe that everyone will be shown their book of deeds on the Day of Judgment because as per the Quran, this will be day when the "pages are laid open" (81:10).
In that sense, the universe is processing our own behavior as well since our actions are producing new information, and those information get registered by the computational nature of the universe. The book is like a tracking system that continuously stores and updates information about everything that we are doing. And it is recording our good deeds as well as our bad deeds (or sins). But, we can also delete our sins by asking for forgiveness and by praying. They are information about our lives which can be stored, retrieved, or even deleted from the book.
Life as a Game in a Simulated Reality
I think of life as a game, but this is my own opinion based on my faith in Islam and connecting this to the concept of evolutionary games which are played by genes, nature, animals, and almost everything else. The game is taking place inside a computer which is the universe itself. We are the players. Our deeds are being written down in a "book," as I mentioned above, and the book acts as a type of score sheet for recording the points that we are earning and losing every day. In this game, there are winners and there are losers. Those who believe in God and cooperate with Him, will be the winners, and they will go to Heaven. Those who don't believe in God and don't cooperate with Him, will be the losers, and they will go to Hell. So, that makes Heaven and Hell as the "payoffs" of the game which may last for eternity (or for a very long time if not eternity). And the rules for playing the game and how to win it are outlined in the Quran.
However, all games have a selfish motivation behind them because the point of playing them is to simply win. So, I think that games are ultimately driven by self-interest. We are playing them for ourselves. This is a similar thing that we see in the Abrahamic religions. We have been programmed into a 'selfish' game because we are being told to believe in God and His revelations just to go to Heaven. Additionally, things such as love, kindness, good actions, teaching others, giving charity, and many other things may have an altruistic drive behind them, but, at the same time, these are all selfish acts from a religious point of view because a religious person is also doing them for his own rewards in the afterlife.
Speaking of an afterlife, do I think that atheists and even non-believers of Islam - or the "losers" - deserve Hell for eternity? No, but I still believe that this is a rule from God even though I don't understand how this is a rational or a moral judgment for those who lost such a game. I cannot see things from God's perspective and that's why I can't really tell who deserves what (aside from my own opinions). Also, I don't know what "time" feels like in Heaven and Hell because I've never been there before. Maybe even the concept of "eternity" is something that we cannot fully understand while thinking about it in a time-bounded universe.
As I said earlier, there are many other games going on in nature. These are mathematical games in which plants, animals, and bacteria are constantly competing with each other for their own survival and trying to be successful in propagating their genes. This is the evolutionary game, and this is something which falls under a field of science called evolutionary game theory. All the organisms act as players or contestants who are trying to increase their chances of surviving and reproducing as time goes on. And they play by using "strategies," and the strategies are algorithmic, just like computer programs. However, the main players who apply all these different strategies are actually the genes:
"At first glance it may be surmised that the contestants of evolutionary games are the individuals present in each generation who directly participate in the game. On reflection however we see that individuals live only through one game cycle, and instead it is the strategies that really contest with one another over the full time span of these recursive games. So it is ultimately genes that play out a full contest – genes of STRATEGY (i.e. selfish genes). The contesting genes are not just present in an individual and his/her direct linage; they are also present to a relational degree in all of the individual’s kin." - Wikipedia
In that sense, genes are selfish because they are using tricks and strategies against other competing genes for their own propagation. Therefore, it seems that altruism does not exist in nature, but is merely self-interest disguised as altruism. Genes are working for their own survival. And all of these strategic interactions and the results are known as the evolutionary game.
While all these little evolutionary games were being played out with an evolving set of parameters and goals, eventually, there was a time when we humans came into appearance. Humans can be thought of as "winners" of the evolutionary game because we have made an amazingly long journey from being dust particles in space to a collection of atoms which went through various evolutionary changes and then finally emerged as walking creatures that possess higher-level thought processes and a greater intelligence than all the other animals in the planet. So, the whole process looks like a "struggle" to me which itself is a part of the evolutionary game.
But, I don't think that the game was over for us yet. After making our way through all the odds and obstacles that faced us during our journey of becoming human, and thus being the winners of the evolutionary game, God created another challenging game for us. I think of it as proceeding to the final stage of a game after winning all the previous stages. This was the religious game and I think that it started spreading through "memes." Memes are beliefs and ideas that were being transmitted from one person's brain to another and then registered into their memories. They can copy and replicate themselves just like genes. In a book titled "The Selfish Gene," by Richard Dawkins, the author explains how both genes and memes are 'selfish' because they are only working to increase the production of their kind. Genes came first, and after humans arrived, the memes took over the game and thus they are oftentimes referred to as the "new replicators." From that moment on, religious memes, especially that of a belief in God, began to take shape and replicate in people's heads. And I think that this is the time when the new game was started.
In my opinion, however, there may be an objective reality behind these religious memes other than just merely being created by the human mind itself. I think that an intelligent program, or God, injected these memes into the minds of Jesus, Muhammad, Abraham, and all the other prophets and they are what we call "revelations." And the scriptures that were sent to them also contain memes because they are a collection of words which have been passed on, recited, and even memorized by many of the believers. These are some of the memes that were being transmitted from person to person. Also, if the universe is a computer, and if God is like a master program, then I think that makes it more likely that these memes were created by the program since memes (in theory) have several computational properties which are very similar to those of our genes. You can read about some of them in this article and also in a book titled "The Electric Meme," by Robert Aunger.
The day when everyone is resurrected, the Quran says that some of the non-believers will ask God to to send them back to earth so that they can have another chance to earn Paradise by pleasing Him. They will say, "Our Lord! We have seen and we have heard. Now then send us back (to the world). We will work righteousness, for we do indeed (now) believe" (32:12). But God won't allow them a retry because now they already believe in Him and thus they would automatically win if they entered the "game" again. Everyone gets only one chance unlike in ordinary video games where you can go back and play again to win.
Also, those who disbelieve in God and his signs and revelations are labeled as "losers" in several verses in the Quran as one of them says, "To Him belong the keys of the heavens and the earth; and those who denied the signs of Allah, it is they who are the losers" (39:64). And the word "loser" is another reason why I think that all of us are like players inside a game in which there are winners and losers. And what are the "signs of Allah"? Well, I think of them as "clues" to His existence which include things such as all the different animals, plants, the foods that we eat, the water that we drink, sex, reproduction, our brains, our hearts, emotions, intelligence, consciousness, the earth, and many other things. To me, all of these things are clues for the existence of God, or the existence of something intelligent operating in the universe, whether it is a person, a program, a field of consciousness or whatever it is.
I think that the game is harder for some people. There are many people who live in poverty, hunger, they are homeless. etc. Some people are also born with mental and/or physical problems. And sometimes bad things happen to good people which they don't really have any control over, such as getting killed in some kind of an accident, for example. So, why does God allow these things to happen? I don't know why, but the Muslim belief is that God's mercy is greater on those people who still believe in Him even though they are suffering in their lives. It's kind of like earning more points in a virtual game by succeeding in a more difficult stage. So, I think that God made the game harder to test people's faith in Him. And furthermore, there is no evidence for His existence which is what makes the game so hard in the first place. However, I think that there are still "clues" or "signs" which point to an intelligence as I mentioned in the paragraph above.
Also, there is a common religious belief that is shared by Muslims which is the belief in miracles. We believe that only prophets were able to perform miracles, and not anyone else, but they were able to do so only through the power and by the will of God. And I think of miracles as something similar to "hacks" or "cheat codes" in a simulated reality (i.e. the simulation being the universe itself). When people used to witness these miracles, or seemingly impossible events, they became more convinced that all the civilizations and everything else that they see in the real world might be programmed into some type of a computer or a computer simulation. They become more aware that what they think is "true" reality may be a small reflection of another reality which is the actual reality. Then, they started realizing that they might be conscious characters inside a simulation - or a "game" - and maybe that's why there are special hacks behind it. They became believers. And then, they were willing to follow the instructions contained in the scriptures because they felt that those were the rules on how to play the game successfully and thereby get rewarded with Heaven.
Summary
Well, the whole post was mostly on how and why I think that the universe is some kind of an elaborate computer and how this seems to match with some of the Islamic beliefs. I explained that the stars, galaxies, planets, Earth, life, human beings, animals, plants, and everything in the universe are part of a massive computation and that these things are also able to store and process information. In that sense, the universe behaves like a giant computer, and I think that it really is a computer, so this is not just a metaphor. And that being said, I'm not saying that such a view of reality is necessarily true. It's just a metaphysical theory that makes sense to me.
Then, I started talking about my idea of how a master program which is running the cosmological computer might be a program that is "conscious" and "alive." It sounds pretty crazy, in my opinion, but I think it's still possible for a program to be conscious and have a mind of its own after reading the articles that I posted. So, the point is that the program can be thought of as an intelligent being that is controlling the entire universe. Of course, I don't know whether or not this is the correct understanding of God. I just think that all the complex and organized physical systems that exist in this planet are a result of some kind of a higher intelligence, not a result of blind and accidental causes. Most of the universe is probably cold, empty, and lifeless, but even then I still find it beautiful.
This master program, or God, has chosen certain people in the past as his communication channels to transmit his messages instead of speaking to everyone. This is like a sender-signal-channel-receiver model of God's word and this is something that correlates with the computational theory of the universe. Also, as you may already know, there are many similarities between the scriptures of the monotheistic religions, but there are also many differences between them. I think that the differences exist because the older ones were updated and/or modified by the later ones. I believe that the Quran is His last set of revelations and that the previous scriptures were over-written by the last one. And I think that this is something that is similar to the concept of data erasure through an overwriting process in a computer. The only difference is that this was happening the real world (which itself is another computer).
The rules and guidelines contained in the Quran are like the rules in a "game." The book tells us that there will be winners and there will be losers. And there's going to be only one chance to play. Winners go to Heaven and losers go to Hell. The game might be taking place in a simulated reality in which we are the players.
I also talked about a possible mechanism for resurrection. According to the Quran, we believe that a trumpet will blow and it will cause everyone to be resurrected. In this post, I hypothesized that the trumpet might be black hole because black holes are also known to create sound waves. Also, black holes may be extremely powerful quantum computers that exist in space, as explained in the links that I posted, and by performing a computation, I read that it is possible for them to recreate a human or an object that fell into the singularity. I think that this could be a similar physical process that allows resurrection. And resurrection might be a type of reversible computation that reconstructs our bodies.
Essentially, my point is that all these things are related to each other and I think that's why they further support the idea of the universe being a computer (or a type of simulation perhaps), and following from there, I think that the fact that these connections exist even though the people during those times didn't think of the universe as a giant computer (or maybe they believed that but only at a subconscious level if so) makes it more likely that these religious beliefs are a disclosure of the computer-like nature of the universe rather than being just a coincidence (although that is still possible).
A lot of the things that you're going to read in this post are some of my wandering and sketchy thoughts on God and religion. They still make some sense to me, in my own head, but it's a lot more difficult to explain these abstractions to others. Fortunately, these are not arguments that you have heard hundreds of times from other theists or from other Muslims. They are mostly my own arguments in which I point out connections between Islam and a computational theory of the universe. There are other things which I have read elsewhere and thus I provided links and sources for them. Also, there is no link or an external website for this long post of mine and that's because I typed it here for the first time.
In fact, some of the Muslims with whom I have shared these ideas think that I have entered a 'dangerous territory' because I'm incorporating philosophy and scientific theories into my understanding of Islam, and therefore, all of this could be misinterpretations of Islam. I do agree with them that these could be misinterpretations, but I don't think that there is anything wrong with looking at at any religion from a scientific or a philosophical perspective if that truly makes sense to me. Also, I'm not claiming that I certainly know that these ideas are true. I am somewhat skeptical about them even though I think that they are more likely to be true.
However, I don't know exactly how absurd the atheists are going to find all of this stuff. Many of you guys will probably find these ideas to be extremely ridiculous, or delusional, or crazy, or a massive pile of garbage, or mental gymnastics, or a bullshit application of computer terms to explain the universe, or some philosophical crap, or whatever that you're thinking of. If you think so, then just say it. Just be honest and say whatever that you're thinking. I don't care. And of course, you can refute whatever points that you want to.
Also, you might think that I'm being selective or that I'm cherry picking the Quran since I'm not talking about some of the more problematic issues about Islam such as the verses in the Quran which are believed to be contradictory by many, the violence committed by extremist Muslims, suicide bombers, jihad stuff, gender-related issues, etc. But, that is not my intention, and I have expressed my opinions on those particular topics in the past in many different threads. If you still want to talk about those things, then feel free to do that in this thread, or ask questions, and I'll try to answer them even though they might be repetitions of what I said earlier.
I posted this thread not to convert anyone, but it's mainly for discussion only, and I had these ideas in my head for a long time. I wanted to see what kind of feedback I receive from both theists and atheists in this forum. Again, I don't care if I get harsh criticisms, but I'd just like to see your opinions and/or arguments. Also, most of you probably think that my religious views stem from my upbringing and social conditioning and therefore has little to do with my own genuine search for the truth. However, on the contrary, I feel that my faith has mostly grown from my own reflection and less based upon external influences. That's why I wanted to specifically present some of my own arguments in this thread. And these arguments are some of the things that makes me think that there is a higher probability for Islam to be true. In other words, I am not claiming to have any certainties about what I am going to post right now but, again, just a higher probability.
Even though I think it is more likely that none of you will believe this stuff, you might learn things which you didn't know before, at least. So, it's probably not going to be a complete waste of your time if you read this. I know it's a pretty long post, but you can read however much you want to, and I've summarized it at the end.
Universe as a Computer
Although the universe does seem to be like a huge computer to me, and the analogy works, I'm not saying that the universe is necessarily a computer. All I'm saying is that this is the best philosophical theory that I've come across to describe how the universe functions and thus it is more likely to be true that the universe is a computer, and not just as a metaphor, but in a literal sense. The more I think of the universe as a computer, the more it makes sense to me because I realize that everything in nature along with we human beings are essentially physical systems which are storing and processing information. So, from that perspective, it looks to me as if all our networks and interactions in this planet are just some of the things that are happening in a massive computer which itself is running on some kind of a program. At a larger scale, all the atoms in the universe are analogous to the bits inside a laptop or a computer, and through the countless atomic collisions and rearrangements, the universe is performing a computation. So we can think of the laws of physics as a software, the matter and energy as the input, and the results of the computation as the output.
The astronomical patterns were simple when the universe first began. Then, after the universe cooled down, stars began to form which then became grouped into galaxies, and then each of the galaxies became group into clusters, and then each of the clusters became grouped into superclusters. The superclusters are sort of like web databases spread throughout the universe with each of them containing different galaxies and producing different outcomes as they evolve. In one of the galaxies, called the Milky Way, there is a planet in which there was an emergence of many complex and intricate patterns such as plants, animals, human beings, language, society, culture, food, sex, literature, and even technology. Furthermore, there may even be other planets in the universe which possess similar things to ours which we don't know about yet.
I also read a book titled "Programming the Universe," by Seth Lloyd, in which the author argues that the universe is a quantum computer:
"The universe is made of bits. Every molecule, atom, and elementary particle registers bits of information. Every interaction between those pieces of the universe processes that information by altering those bits. That is, the universe computes, and because the universe is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, it computes in an intrinsically quantum-mechanical fashion; its bits are quantum bits. The history of the universe is, in effect, a huge and ongoing quantum computation. The universe is a quantum computer." (Lloyd, 3)
Everything that we do in our lives is a part of the universal computation as well because we are processing information. This is an idea which falls under the study of digital philosophy which, in essence, views that all mental and physical activities are digitized information processing. Likewise, this is also true for the cells, DNA, and everything in our bodies because they process information in a systematic manner. Genetic processes such as joining, copying, partitioning, complementation, trimming, replacing, fragment code exchange and crossover, and replication and transmission, for example, are all examples of simple computations operating in our bodies which themselves have built up over billions of years in a deep algorithmic process. And speaking of genes, in a book titled "Meta Math," by Gregory Chaitin, the author explains how our genes are similar to a computer software, and this is also a concept that I agree with.
"What is this software like? It isn’t written in 0/1 binary like computer software. Instead DNA is written in a 4-letter alphabet, the 4 bases that can be each rung of the twisted double-helix ladder that is a DNA molecule.Adenine, A, thymine, T, guanine, G, and cytosine, C, are those four letters. Individual genes, which code for a single protein, are kilobases of information. And an entire human genome is measured in gigabases, so that’s sort of like gigabytes of computer software." (Chaitin, 67).
Thinking is also a type of information processing. As you may already know, the human brain is able to perform many types of computations and it can also do things which even computers cannot do. The brain also records and reproduces information from our past experiences along with the emotions that are associated with those experiences, and like an instant replay, when confronted with a similar experience later on, it will oftentimes reproduce or recreate information about the original experience to guide our current actions. In other words, the brain is able to retrieve information that was stored from the past and this is an important process which is shared by computers as well. And of course, there are many other processes that occur in the brain which makes it a computational device and here are some of them:
"Under this model, computer science is able to transpose terms that apply to computers with those that apply to the human brain, and vice versa. Thus, terms such as memory, storage, thinking, bit, content, transmission, etc. are applied with no distinction to communication between machines, between humans, or between humans and machines (Leeuwis, 1993, 31). The model of communication applied within this information transforming process is the basic sender-signal-channel-receiver model. Lakoff refers to this as the conduit metaphor of communication which is based in a general metaphor for mind, 'in which ideas are taken as objects and thought as the manipulation of objects. An important part of this metaphor is that memory is ‘storage.’ Communication in that metaphor is the following: ideas are objects that you can put into words (or store as bits), so that language is seen as a container for ideas, and you send ideas in words over a circuit, a channel of communication to someone else who then extracts the ideas from the words' (Lakoff, 1995, 116)."
Full article: http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/papers/sholle.html
The basic life functions of living things in this planet is another thing which involves information processing and thereby suggesting that nature has computational properties. All the various organisms can be thought of as digital organisms living in a 3-dimensional world because many of their activities can be symbolically modeled into a program in a computer. For example, certain computer viruses can be created in such a way so that they self-replicate, evolve, use logic systems, share data with the copies of themselves, thrive within certain habitats, and then become extinct some time in the future, and these are all computer-simulated properties which are associated with those of living things in the real world. There is even a computer simulation known as "Tierra" in which the behavior of the computer programs are created in a way that they model or imitate the daily activities of real-life organisms:
"Tierra is a computer simulation developed by ecologist Thomas S. Ray in the early 1990s in which computer programs compete for central processing unit (CPU) time and access to main memory. At present, the commonly accepted definition of life does not consider any computer program to be alive, however, Tierra is an example of an artificial life model; in the metaphor of the Tierra, the evolvable computer programs can be considered as digital organisms which compete for energy (CPU time) and resources (main memory). In this context, the computer programs in Tierra could be considered evolvable and can mutate, self-replicate and recombine." - Wikipedia
So, I think that the fact that these computational properties are so similar to the natural ones in the real world is a another reason why I think that the universe itself is a type of computer. Our brains, genes, living things, galaxies, planets, rocks, and everything else are processing bits of information in a systematic manner as they evolve which is what makes them more similar to computer programs. Likewise, there are scientists and thinkers who maintain that even the universe is a computer and that the laws of physics are the programs which it is running on. Also, massive objects in space called "black holes" are theorized to be powerful quantum computers which can perform almost any computation depending on how they have been "programmed." Below is an interesting article from Scientific American that explains in more details how the universe is performing a computation while drawing connections from the relationship between black holes, information theory, and the holographic principle. It especially talks about the computational nature of black holes. Here it is:
http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Black...puters.pdf
Assuming that the universe is a computer, who or what is possibly running the whole cosmological computer is the subject that I'll be turning to.
A Program with a Mind of it's Own
According to my knowledge, most religious people think of God as a person. I didn't actually hear any of them saying otherwise (except for deists and pantheists, of course). I don't disagree with the belief that God is personal either. In Islam, however, God is not viewed as someone who has a face, hands, feet, eyes, and other body parts just like a human being (i.e. we don't believe in an anthropocentric God). He is only a person in the sense that he has some of the attributes or qualities of a human being, but it doesn't mean that he looks like a human being, as the Quran says, "No vision can grasp Him, but His grasp is over all vision. He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things" (6:103). This means that we cannot ever understand or comprehend the essence of God nor what He looks like. In other words, God cannot be perceived by the human imagination. And that is in respect to His primary attribute. The secondary attributes, however, are many and some of them are the All-Aware, the Most High, the Alive, the Eternal, the Preserver, the Wise, the Hidden, the Perceiver, the Resurrector, and the Watcher, for example, and we have to understand all of these secondary attributes of God in relation to His primary attribute which is unknowable.
From a computational worldview, however, I've been also thinking that God may be a "program," not just a person. This program has many features as that of a person such as intelligence, emotions, awareness, love, anger, forgiveness, will, intentions, etc. But again, I don't know whether or not these attributes are understandable in human terms especially if God is like a cosmological computer program. And more importantly, I want to emphasize that I do not know if this is the correct understanding of the primary nature of God. This is just a conception or a model of God that seems to be the most likely to me if the universe itself is a giant computer as I have explained earlier. Also, I don't know if the words "all-powerful" and "all-knowing" can be understood in the sense that most people think of them. There may be a higher-level meaning to them which is not similar to their literal definitions. If God was all-knowing (omniscient) and all-powerful (omnipotent) in the literal sense that we define them - then I don't think it is reasonable to believe that God created us to test our faith and yet He knows everything about future actions and our present conditions, and then, doesn't do anything to prevent us from going to Hell even though He knows that this would happen before He created us. Therefore, I don't think that the idea of "all-knowing" and "all-powerful" holds true for a deity in the same sense that we think of them. I know that I could be wrong, but that's an opinion that I find to be the most honest and reasonable in respect to my understanding of the "omni" attributes of God.
In theory, this program can be treated as if it's a person and one which possesses consciousness. It may have a mind of it's own, so to speak. And it's alive. So in that sense, there's a possibility that God is a "personal program," but yet a very mysterious one, because we don't know exactly how this program works, what it looks like, what it is made of, how it thinks, and many other aspects.
How can a program be conscious? Well, I've read in a few articles that a program can be said to have consciousness depending on how you define the word "conscious". There are certain definitions of consciousness in relation to computational properties that, when applied to a computer program, the program can be considered to be conscious (although not conscious in the same sense as are we human beings). You can see some of those definitions and their applications on page 4 in the first link below:
Conscious Machines and Consciousness Oriented Programming
A Computational Model of Machine Consciousness
If the universe itself is a huge quantum computer, and an extremely powerful one, then it seems very possible to me that the program behind it is also intelligent and that it has a mind or a consciousness. But, we don't know what it really feels like to have such a consciousness because we cannot step out of our own consciousness. I think that we ourselves are sort of like biological computers with feelings, ideas, and self-awareness living in a 3-dimensional world. Our brains and the rest of our body is a mechanical system, of course, but yet it is able to produce feelings and intentions unlike other objects. My point is that, if we can possess these qualities, and if our consciousness is a part of the universal computation, then I don't think it's an unreasonable notion to believe that the program that created all this complexity and living things in this planet also has consciousness and intelligence. I'm not saying that this is necessarily true, but that this is an inference that can be made that if the universe is a computer, as I have briefly argued so far, then I don't think that it is absurd to think that it is running on some kind of a 'master program' which itself is (possibly) intelligent.
Going a little deeper into religion, how this program interacted with certain human beings in the past is the topic of the next section.
Scriptures, Poetry, and Moral Codes
If the universe is a computer, and if it's running on a program which is conscious, intelligent, and alive, then it's possible that this program is also capable of communicating with its creations by sending signals or messages to them. It can print out or reveal information about itself and also assign attributes to itself (i.e. which is God revealing himself through words). So, the program seems to be self-referential because it can talk about itself by referring to itself. I think that it can also communicate in a special type of higher-level programming language and that's why many of the verses in the scriptures are not to be taken literally but, instead, have a highly abstract (or a figurative) meaning behind them. That makes them quite ineffective for our understanding.
The program is also able to generate or print out rhyming verses such as the ones found in the Quran and send them to a person's head. Actually, I do think that the Quran is a type of "computer-generated poetry" since I believe that the universe itself is a computer and that God is the program behind it. Also, I think that there is a good reason to believe that it is very unlikely that Muhammad wrote the entire Quran by himself, and the reason for this is that he was an illiterate man, and there is no indication that he had lessons from someone else on linguistic/literary, historical, theological, and/or scientific fields of study. So, for people at that time, the Quran was a miracle. Even today, most of the Quranic scholars and experts consider the literary aspect of the Quran to be something amazing while knowing the fact that Muhammad was not a trained poet nor was he able to read.
The Quran also includes a challenge which is to produce a single chapter in Arabic which is similar to the linguistic eloquence as that of the Quran, as it says, "And if you are in doubt as to that which We have revealed to Our servant, then bring a single chapter like it, and call your witnesses besides God if you are truthful" (Surah 2:23).. Some of the most skilled poets and writers (both Arabs and non-Arabs) have tried to meet this challenge, but as predicted in the Quran, nobody was able to meet the challenge since the past 14 centuries. From a computational perspective, this is as if a program generated a text or a chapter in a book and then the book is telling everyone "If you claim that I am the creation of a human, then let's see if your tiny little minds can simulate me!" Of course, not being able to imitate or reproduce something like the Quran doesn't necessarily mean that it cannot be ever done. However, I don't think that the said verse is necessarily false either because no one has been able to meet the challenge according to my knowledge.
I also believe that the scriptures in the monotheistic religions have an evolutionary nature behind them. God has sent revelations to many prophets in the past, but during the course of time, the original information became distorted or changed by human beings who wrote them down. Some put in the their own thoughts into the scriptures and thus they are not the actual word of God. Some of them are even lost completely. However, I believe that the information contained within the scriptures when they were first revealed are from the same God. That's why there are so many similarities between them. For example, there are revelations such as the Ten Commandments, Torah, Bible, the Quran, and there may be other scriptures as well which are of a divine origin. These books contained revelations from God but gradually became corrupted by human copyists and editors. The Quran, however, contains everything that was important from all the earlier works that were revealed to the prophets and it is the uncorrupted word of God. (or such is the Muslim point of view). That's why there are differences between the monotheistic religions along with many similarities.
To my understanding, there are many devout Christians who do not claim that every single verse in the Bible is the infallible word of God. Also, many will tell you that Bible was originally written in Hebrew and that some of the English translations still do not effectively translate the original message of Jesus. They recognize that the Bible had human authors and there may be some distortion, so they tend to concentrate on the spirituality in the bible and not on supposed flaws. On the other hand, there are indeed a fair amount of inerrantists, especially amongst the more hardcore Protestants, who believe that the entire Bible is the word of God without having any corruptions at all.
The point is that God changed or updated the set of laws for mankind each time a new book was sent to us. They are part of an evolving process which are produced as a result of the massive computation going on in the universe. In that sense, I believe in a God who updates or revises his own laws and then changes them. It's kind of like "installing" a new program on a computer which then "over-writes" the information from the older versions although it still contains many of the same features and settings as the ones before.
I think that these scriptures were revealed through specific people in history (or through "prophets") who play the role of being "communication channels" for transmitting God's information to the rest of humanity. God is the sender, the prophets are the channels, and we are the receivers of these divine laws. These revealed information may have evolved through time and they were being fine-tuned in a sense, or they were going through selection pressures, which gradually gave birth to different religions with a different set of moral codes for each of them. This is a process that could be similar to how the laws of nature were fine-tuned and settled down at a certain point in time. Also, there could be a mathematical nature behind the religious moral codes because, in my opinion, physics and almost everything has a mathematical basis. In the same way that the laws of physics are determined by mathematics, the laws of morality may have also developed and frozen out according to certain mathematical equations which we do not know of. However, these laws or instructions are not imprinted in our bodies unlike the millions of instructions carried in our cells and DNA. They are external laws which have been programmed for us to follow after they were revealed to us and then written down in pages over the course of human history. So, from a computational perspective, I think of all the revealed scriptures as "control systems" designed by an intelligent program which are intended to manage, command, and regulate the behavior of the receivers of the information.
Also, it seems to me that there are different levels of order that emerged within this giant cosmological computer that we live in. The main levels of order are the laws of physics, the laws of chemistry, and then the laws of biology. First, the laws of physics were fine tuned, then the the laws of chemistry were fine tuned, and then the laws of biology were fine tuned to create life through evolution. After we human beings were created through these laws (from physics to chemistry to biology), I believe that another level of order began to emerge after the 3 were completed, which are the moral laws. Just like there are biological instructions for our cells, proteins, DNA, etc. (at a micro-level), there are also moral codes that were revealed to us and they are instructions for us (at a macro-level). These moral codes may have frozen out gradually and evolved in an algorithmic fashion and maybe that's the reason why there are differences between the commandments of the different monotheistic religions.
To clarify, this is obviously just a metaphysical concept and that's why I cannot prove that the moral codes found in the scriptures have an objective reality such as the laws of physics or the genetic instructions in our bodies. My argument is that if God created the universe with all these different laws of nature (which is something that deists also believe), then, I don't think it would be an extraordinary leap of faith to believe that the same God has created laws for human beings as well. That's basically the point that I was trying to get at in the previous paragraph.
Resurrection by a Black Hole Computer
The day of resurrection is believed to be a time when everyone comes back to life. Such a thing might sound like something from a science fiction story, but if the universe is a computer, then it can be argued that the program behind this computer can also possibly reverse the process by restoring our consciousness and our bodies to an earlier point in time (like a system restore in an ordinary computer) or perhaps He runs a type of reversible computation in the universe which somehow reconstructs our bodies.
In Islamic belief, the end of humanity on this planet will come at the blowing of a "trumpet" as mentioned in the Quran. This is going to happen twice. The first time, the trumpet will blow and that's when doomsday will occur, and the second time, the trumpet will blow again and that's when resurrection will take place, as stated in the Quran, "The Trumpet will (just) be sounded, when all that are in the heavens and on earth will swoon except such as it will please Allah (to exempt). Then will a second one be sounded, when, behold, they will be standing and looking on!" (39.68). This trumpet will create an extremely powerful sound wave that will bring death to everyone who will be walking on this planet during that time (although there may be other creatures who still survive the sonic blast). The science behind the deadly power of sound is that our bodies are affected by the sound vibrations that are going through us. When our bodies are exposed to high frequency infrasounds, those vibrations are absorbed by the bones, tissues, and other organs in our bodies, and then it causes our body parts to resonate or vibrate at a frequency beyond the normal, healthy range, which can then cause us to lose consciousness or even die eventually.
However, the Quran does not tell us from where the sound is coming from nor what is the source of the sound. The sound of the Trumpet might be produced from some place on earth; it could come from an object somewhere in the galaxy that we live in; or perhaps even from an object farther away in space. But, ultimately, no one knows for sure where the Trumpet exists nor what it's nature is.
There is something in space which I learned about that could be similar to the sounding of the trumpet. In the center of the Perseus galaxy, there is a black hole that creates powerful sound waves, although I don't know how that really happens. I think that the sound might be produced by the movement of the surrounding gas near the black hole (or something like that). And the black hole creates a B-flat note in a frequency which is over a million billion times lower than the limits of human hearing. Here's a quote from an article about this where it says:
"In musical terms, the pitch of the sound generated by the black hole translates into the note of B flat. But, a human would have no chance of hearing this cosmic performance because the note is 57 octaves lower than middle-C. For comparison, a typical piano contains only about seven octaves. At a frequency over a million billion times deeper than the limits of human hearing, this is the deepest note ever detected from an object in the Universe." - NASA Science
In my opinion, the sound waves from a black hole might be a scientific explanation for the sound waves created by the "Trumpet." The sound is happening right now, and maybe we won't be able to hear the sound whenever it happens (if it is below the human range of hearing), but I think that this could happen some time in the future and that the sound can affect our consciousness. Now surely, even though a black hole can create sound waves, it is still questionable to me whether or not that the "trumpet" is actually a black hole that is going to make this sound on the day of resurrection. However, there is still a reason why I think that the trumpet might be a black hole even though it is not a proof that this is true, and the reason is because of the many similarities between these two things which makes the trumpet more likely to be something real.
There is also a giant black hole at the center of our own galaxy (known as Sagittarius A*):
Milky Way black hole deemed galactic glutton
Also, there is another reason why I think that the trumpet is a black hole. The reason is because this idea matches with another verse in the Quran which says that when that day comes (i.e. the Day of Resurrection), the sun and the stars will begin to be "wrapped up" in darkness. The stars will "fall" and then they will lose their brightness. They will disappear from our sight. This event will happen when the trumpet is blown because these verses are talking about the Day of Resurrection specifically.
"When the sun is wrapped up [in darkness]; And when the stars fall, dispersing;" (81:1-2)
Similarly, we know that spacetime becomes "curved" around a black hole and as a result even light gets pulled into it. This is because of the intense gravity of a black hole. And that's the reason why the stars "fall" into this dark region of space. So, I think that there is a good possibility that the above verses are describing the effects of a black hole on the surrounding stars in our galaxy.
How does all of this support the idea of resurrection? Well, this may sound like something from a science fiction story, but if black holes are the most powerful 'quantum computers,' and if they can be made to perform any computation depending on the collection of matter that falls into them as mentioned in this article (which I posted earlier as well), then, I think it is possible that a black hole could re-arrange all the atoms that we are made of and put them back into a single piece which constitutes a human being. From an information theory perspective, each and every one of us can be described by a 'bit string' and the same applies for any other physical system. If the information about ourselves is preserved somewhere and computed in a reversible fashion, then in my opinion, this may be a mechanism which allows physical resurrection. The Islamic view is is that resurrection is a physical process according to the Quran, as it says:
"Does man think that We cannot assemble his bones? Nay, We are able to put together in perfect order the very tips of his fingers." (75:3-4)
So, it's not just the soul that departs from the body and goes off into a different plane of existence when we are resurrected. The entire body also gets resurrected according to Islamic belief. Interestingly, I also read in an article that a black hole may have the physical resources and the computational power to re-create a physical system after it evaporates. This can even happen to human beings on a spaceship who gets swallowed by a black hole.
"Passengers on a spaceship would like some guarantee that when they fall into this black hole and get smooshed into the singularity, they can be recreated as it evaporates," Lloyd told New Scientist. "With a few simple precautions, the travellers would be almost exactly the same, with less than an atom of difference." - New Scientist
Here's another article: Retrieving Data from a Black Hole
I think that these ideas of "retrieving data" and humans being "recreated" out of a black hole might be a scientific explanation for resurrection. If we are a mass of coded quantum information, then I think it's possible that a black hole could perform a computation on those bits (or units of information) that fell into it and then somehow reconstruct the original. Or maybe it's going to be something like that.
Again, the trumpet that I was talking about will blow a second time, as the Quran says, "Then will a second one be sounded, when, behold, they will be standing and looking on!" This is when we will get resurrected. And if the trumpet is a black hole, then the second blowing of this trumpet may suggest that this is when we get thrown out of the black hole (and that's why we will hear the sound again). We may be deposited back into the universe or, if not, then we may be thrown into another reality where space and matter are dimensionally shifted. Maybe the newly created matter takes one of the other 8 or so theorized spatial dimensions, or maybe even two or three, and creates the reality in the connected universe through which the massive black hole has torn into. Heaven and Hell might exist in these extra, hidden dimensions.
Even though there is no evidence of Heaven and Hell, their existence may not be so improbable as many people think it is because even in theoretical physics there are models of the existence of "branes" and "large, extra dimensions." Our reconstructed bodies might be transported to another brane, or to another dimension, and I think this is possible because in string theory, it is believed that there are hypothetical particles called "gravitons" which can travel from one brane to another and thus carry information between the branes (as you can see in this illustration). And it's possible that our reconstructed bodies, whatever they are made of, can travel from one brane to another in a similar way that the gravitons move freely throughout the branes. I'm not saying this is what necessarily happens to the soul and body, but if it does, then here's a plausible mechanism which might be an explanation for how we would enter a different dimension of existence.
Now, going back, I'm going to briefly re-state all the reasons on why I think it is possible that the "trumpet" is a black hole that can resurrect us:
(1) Both of them are capable of emitting powerful sound waves; (2) The sound of the Trumpet will cause everyone to die, and I think this is scientifically possible because it's known that a very high range of infrasound or a certain frequency of sound waves can actually kill a person (google "sonic weapons"); (3) There is a supermassive black hole in our own galaxy and this makes it more likely that it can create sound waves in the future if it becomes more active; (4) After the second blowing of the Trumpet, everyone will be restored to life, and similarly, it is theorized that black holes may be the most powerful quantum computers which preserve information and that they can even recreate the objects that fell into its singularity atom by atom (including the atoms of you, me, and everyone else); (5) There are verses in the Quran which say that the sun and the stars will "fall" and lose their light and that they will become "wrapped up" in darkness when the Trumpet blows, and this is what happens to stars when they come close to a black hole, which is another reason why I think that the Trumpet might be a black hole.
Therefore, I find it unlikely (although not impossible) that all these things about the Trumpet mentioned in the Quran match with the descriptions of a black hole just by a coincidence. In other words, I think that these connections are something that was pretty improbable (but, again, not impossible) to have been predicted through mere guesswork by someone living in the 7th century and then coincidentally match with the current scientific knowledge related to black holes that I mentioned above. But, this is just a theory of mine and I know that I could be totally wrong about this whole Trumpet thing.
Hints of a Tracking System
One of the interesting concepts in relation to a computational view of reality is the preservation of information and how much of it can be stored in a finite surface area. As an analogy, all the matter and energy that exist in the universe are like the pixels on a computer screen (space being the screen). And from a physics point of view, this idea has a relationship with something called the "holographic principle." This principle states that the information content is proportional to the surface area of a region of space and not it's volume. "The holographic principle states that the entropy of ordinary mass (not just black holes) is also proportional to surface area and not volume; that volume itself is illusory and the universe is really a hologram which is isomorphic to the information 'inscribed' on the surface of its boundary." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle
I have learned that many of today's theoretical physicists suggest that the three dimensions of reality that we observe may in fact be a two-dimensional information structure which is “inscribed” on some sort of a cosmological horizon. Similarly, in this article, I read that one of the implications of the holographic principle is that all of our 3-dimensional experiences may be a 'projection' from a 2-dimensional vibrating surface encompassing the entire universe. Hence the universe is a type of "hologram."
Now, I'm going to jump to something from the Quran, and then I'll explain how it relates to the concept of information storage and the holographic principle which I mentioned above. However, I'll admit that this is something very sketchy and thus I'm not sure if this is the correct interpretation of the Quran. It just seems that this is possible. But, anyway, the thing is that we Muslims believe that all of our actions are being "recorded" in a "book" (or something like a scroll). As stated in the Quran:
"This Book speaks about you with truth. Verily, We were recording what you used to do." (45:29)
All our actions are being written down in this book. Even the fact that I'm typing this post is being written down in the book. However, the "writing" in the book may not be the type of writing that we are thinking of. It may consist of words, numbers, colors, symbols, zeros and ones, or maybe something else. And similarly, the "book" may not be a book that we are familiar with or one that we have seen in the present world. It may be something very huge, or just a flat surface, or some kind of a membrane perhaps which stores information about ourselves and what we did in our lives. The point is that, even if the "book" exists, I cannot comprehend the exact nature of such a book due to my inability to understand things which are beyond my terms of experiences that I can relate to in this world.
That being said, in one article, I read that there's a "concrete sense" in which information is stored on the surface of any given region of space (along with the surface of a black hole). Then, it says that according to theoretical physicists, if that is correct, then it is possible that we are "fully joined" to processes that are taking place on a 2-dimensional surface as suggest by the holographic principle. So, the movements of my fingers, my hands, the neurological activities in my brain, and every other action that I have done could be affecting that surface because we are connected to it. Here' s the article that I was referring to (see the link below). It is an excerpt from a book titled "The Hidden Reality," by Brian Greene, and I will just quote the part which talks about the relationship between our own actions in this world and a "distant surface" that we are connected to.
"If this line of reasoning is correct, then there are physical processes taking place on some distant surface that, much as a puppeteer pulls strings, are fully linked to the processes taking place in my fingers, arms, and brain as I type these words at my desk. Our experiences here and that distant reality there would form the most interlocked of parallel worlds. Phenomena in the two - I’ll call them Holographic Parallel Universes - would be so fully joined that their respective evolutions would be as connected as me and my shadow."
Full article: http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jun/03-...t-hologram
If such an idea correct, as quoted above, then I think that this might be a hint or a likely explanation for the Islamic belief that all our actions are being recorded in a book as if they are being encoded or stored into some kind of a 2-dimensional surface. We may be connected to that 2-dimensional surface as the quote above suggests. And if that is true, then all of our movements, actions, and maybe even our thoughts are causing changes within the region of that surface. This may also suggest that my actions are being inscribed onto that surface which, in relation to Islamic belief, could be a scientific interpretation of the idea that all of our actions are automatically being "written" onto the pages of a book. Muslims believe that everyone will be shown their book of deeds on the Day of Judgment because as per the Quran, this will be day when the "pages are laid open" (81:10).
In that sense, the universe is processing our own behavior as well since our actions are producing new information, and those information get registered by the computational nature of the universe. The book is like a tracking system that continuously stores and updates information about everything that we are doing. And it is recording our good deeds as well as our bad deeds (or sins). But, we can also delete our sins by asking for forgiveness and by praying. They are information about our lives which can be stored, retrieved, or even deleted from the book.
Life as a Game in a Simulated Reality
I think of life as a game, but this is my own opinion based on my faith in Islam and connecting this to the concept of evolutionary games which are played by genes, nature, animals, and almost everything else. The game is taking place inside a computer which is the universe itself. We are the players. Our deeds are being written down in a "book," as I mentioned above, and the book acts as a type of score sheet for recording the points that we are earning and losing every day. In this game, there are winners and there are losers. Those who believe in God and cooperate with Him, will be the winners, and they will go to Heaven. Those who don't believe in God and don't cooperate with Him, will be the losers, and they will go to Hell. So, that makes Heaven and Hell as the "payoffs" of the game which may last for eternity (or for a very long time if not eternity). And the rules for playing the game and how to win it are outlined in the Quran.
However, all games have a selfish motivation behind them because the point of playing them is to simply win. So, I think that games are ultimately driven by self-interest. We are playing them for ourselves. This is a similar thing that we see in the Abrahamic religions. We have been programmed into a 'selfish' game because we are being told to believe in God and His revelations just to go to Heaven. Additionally, things such as love, kindness, good actions, teaching others, giving charity, and many other things may have an altruistic drive behind them, but, at the same time, these are all selfish acts from a religious point of view because a religious person is also doing them for his own rewards in the afterlife.
Speaking of an afterlife, do I think that atheists and even non-believers of Islam - or the "losers" - deserve Hell for eternity? No, but I still believe that this is a rule from God even though I don't understand how this is a rational or a moral judgment for those who lost such a game. I cannot see things from God's perspective and that's why I can't really tell who deserves what (aside from my own opinions). Also, I don't know what "time" feels like in Heaven and Hell because I've never been there before. Maybe even the concept of "eternity" is something that we cannot fully understand while thinking about it in a time-bounded universe.
As I said earlier, there are many other games going on in nature. These are mathematical games in which plants, animals, and bacteria are constantly competing with each other for their own survival and trying to be successful in propagating their genes. This is the evolutionary game, and this is something which falls under a field of science called evolutionary game theory. All the organisms act as players or contestants who are trying to increase their chances of surviving and reproducing as time goes on. And they play by using "strategies," and the strategies are algorithmic, just like computer programs. However, the main players who apply all these different strategies are actually the genes:
"At first glance it may be surmised that the contestants of evolutionary games are the individuals present in each generation who directly participate in the game. On reflection however we see that individuals live only through one game cycle, and instead it is the strategies that really contest with one another over the full time span of these recursive games. So it is ultimately genes that play out a full contest – genes of STRATEGY (i.e. selfish genes). The contesting genes are not just present in an individual and his/her direct linage; they are also present to a relational degree in all of the individual’s kin." - Wikipedia
In that sense, genes are selfish because they are using tricks and strategies against other competing genes for their own propagation. Therefore, it seems that altruism does not exist in nature, but is merely self-interest disguised as altruism. Genes are working for their own survival. And all of these strategic interactions and the results are known as the evolutionary game.
While all these little evolutionary games were being played out with an evolving set of parameters and goals, eventually, there was a time when we humans came into appearance. Humans can be thought of as "winners" of the evolutionary game because we have made an amazingly long journey from being dust particles in space to a collection of atoms which went through various evolutionary changes and then finally emerged as walking creatures that possess higher-level thought processes and a greater intelligence than all the other animals in the planet. So, the whole process looks like a "struggle" to me which itself is a part of the evolutionary game.
But, I don't think that the game was over for us yet. After making our way through all the odds and obstacles that faced us during our journey of becoming human, and thus being the winners of the evolutionary game, God created another challenging game for us. I think of it as proceeding to the final stage of a game after winning all the previous stages. This was the religious game and I think that it started spreading through "memes." Memes are beliefs and ideas that were being transmitted from one person's brain to another and then registered into their memories. They can copy and replicate themselves just like genes. In a book titled "The Selfish Gene," by Richard Dawkins, the author explains how both genes and memes are 'selfish' because they are only working to increase the production of their kind. Genes came first, and after humans arrived, the memes took over the game and thus they are oftentimes referred to as the "new replicators." From that moment on, religious memes, especially that of a belief in God, began to take shape and replicate in people's heads. And I think that this is the time when the new game was started.
In my opinion, however, there may be an objective reality behind these religious memes other than just merely being created by the human mind itself. I think that an intelligent program, or God, injected these memes into the minds of Jesus, Muhammad, Abraham, and all the other prophets and they are what we call "revelations." And the scriptures that were sent to them also contain memes because they are a collection of words which have been passed on, recited, and even memorized by many of the believers. These are some of the memes that were being transmitted from person to person. Also, if the universe is a computer, and if God is like a master program, then I think that makes it more likely that these memes were created by the program since memes (in theory) have several computational properties which are very similar to those of our genes. You can read about some of them in this article and also in a book titled "The Electric Meme," by Robert Aunger.
The day when everyone is resurrected, the Quran says that some of the non-believers will ask God to to send them back to earth so that they can have another chance to earn Paradise by pleasing Him. They will say, "Our Lord! We have seen and we have heard. Now then send us back (to the world). We will work righteousness, for we do indeed (now) believe" (32:12). But God won't allow them a retry because now they already believe in Him and thus they would automatically win if they entered the "game" again. Everyone gets only one chance unlike in ordinary video games where you can go back and play again to win.
Also, those who disbelieve in God and his signs and revelations are labeled as "losers" in several verses in the Quran as one of them says, "To Him belong the keys of the heavens and the earth; and those who denied the signs of Allah, it is they who are the losers" (39:64). And the word "loser" is another reason why I think that all of us are like players inside a game in which there are winners and losers. And what are the "signs of Allah"? Well, I think of them as "clues" to His existence which include things such as all the different animals, plants, the foods that we eat, the water that we drink, sex, reproduction, our brains, our hearts, emotions, intelligence, consciousness, the earth, and many other things. To me, all of these things are clues for the existence of God, or the existence of something intelligent operating in the universe, whether it is a person, a program, a field of consciousness or whatever it is.
I think that the game is harder for some people. There are many people who live in poverty, hunger, they are homeless. etc. Some people are also born with mental and/or physical problems. And sometimes bad things happen to good people which they don't really have any control over, such as getting killed in some kind of an accident, for example. So, why does God allow these things to happen? I don't know why, but the Muslim belief is that God's mercy is greater on those people who still believe in Him even though they are suffering in their lives. It's kind of like earning more points in a virtual game by succeeding in a more difficult stage. So, I think that God made the game harder to test people's faith in Him. And furthermore, there is no evidence for His existence which is what makes the game so hard in the first place. However, I think that there are still "clues" or "signs" which point to an intelligence as I mentioned in the paragraph above.
Also, there is a common religious belief that is shared by Muslims which is the belief in miracles. We believe that only prophets were able to perform miracles, and not anyone else, but they were able to do so only through the power and by the will of God. And I think of miracles as something similar to "hacks" or "cheat codes" in a simulated reality (i.e. the simulation being the universe itself). When people used to witness these miracles, or seemingly impossible events, they became more convinced that all the civilizations and everything else that they see in the real world might be programmed into some type of a computer or a computer simulation. They become more aware that what they think is "true" reality may be a small reflection of another reality which is the actual reality. Then, they started realizing that they might be conscious characters inside a simulation - or a "game" - and maybe that's why there are special hacks behind it. They became believers. And then, they were willing to follow the instructions contained in the scriptures because they felt that those were the rules on how to play the game successfully and thereby get rewarded with Heaven.
Summary
Well, the whole post was mostly on how and why I think that the universe is some kind of an elaborate computer and how this seems to match with some of the Islamic beliefs. I explained that the stars, galaxies, planets, Earth, life, human beings, animals, plants, and everything in the universe are part of a massive computation and that these things are also able to store and process information. In that sense, the universe behaves like a giant computer, and I think that it really is a computer, so this is not just a metaphor. And that being said, I'm not saying that such a view of reality is necessarily true. It's just a metaphysical theory that makes sense to me.
Then, I started talking about my idea of how a master program which is running the cosmological computer might be a program that is "conscious" and "alive." It sounds pretty crazy, in my opinion, but I think it's still possible for a program to be conscious and have a mind of its own after reading the articles that I posted. So, the point is that the program can be thought of as an intelligent being that is controlling the entire universe. Of course, I don't know whether or not this is the correct understanding of God. I just think that all the complex and organized physical systems that exist in this planet are a result of some kind of a higher intelligence, not a result of blind and accidental causes. Most of the universe is probably cold, empty, and lifeless, but even then I still find it beautiful.
This master program, or God, has chosen certain people in the past as his communication channels to transmit his messages instead of speaking to everyone. This is like a sender-signal-channel-receiver model of God's word and this is something that correlates with the computational theory of the universe. Also, as you may already know, there are many similarities between the scriptures of the monotheistic religions, but there are also many differences between them. I think that the differences exist because the older ones were updated and/or modified by the later ones. I believe that the Quran is His last set of revelations and that the previous scriptures were over-written by the last one. And I think that this is something that is similar to the concept of data erasure through an overwriting process in a computer. The only difference is that this was happening the real world (which itself is another computer).
The rules and guidelines contained in the Quran are like the rules in a "game." The book tells us that there will be winners and there will be losers. And there's going to be only one chance to play. Winners go to Heaven and losers go to Hell. The game might be taking place in a simulated reality in which we are the players.
I also talked about a possible mechanism for resurrection. According to the Quran, we believe that a trumpet will blow and it will cause everyone to be resurrected. In this post, I hypothesized that the trumpet might be black hole because black holes are also known to create sound waves. Also, black holes may be extremely powerful quantum computers that exist in space, as explained in the links that I posted, and by performing a computation, I read that it is possible for them to recreate a human or an object that fell into the singularity. I think that this could be a similar physical process that allows resurrection. And resurrection might be a type of reversible computation that reconstructs our bodies.
Essentially, my point is that all these things are related to each other and I think that's why they further support the idea of the universe being a computer (or a type of simulation perhaps), and following from there, I think that the fact that these connections exist even though the people during those times didn't think of the universe as a giant computer (or maybe they believed that but only at a subconscious level if so) makes it more likely that these religious beliefs are a disclosure of the computer-like nature of the universe rather than being just a coincidence (although that is still possible).
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