From The River of God by Kim Cimio — Part II. Culture, Chapter 6
It is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment. (Hebrews 9:27)
What quantum physics reveals about a digital universe, how it has been used by Eastern religions and simulation theory, and why Christians should neither reject nor worship science.
Is the world analog or digital?
Many people mourn the loss of cursive writing and analog clocks, and some argue that analog is better because the world itself is analog: between 1:00 and 2:00 there are infinite moments, while a digital clock shows only discrete steps, and screens are made of dots. Common sense says digital is an imperfect approximation of an analog reality. But the world is digital. Analog is only how we perceive reality because we can’t see it as it truly is. We learned this through quantum physics. Energy, light, and likely even space and time come in smallest units that cannot be divided further.
What did quantum physics discover about reality?
In 1900, Max Planck found that energy is emitted in discrete packets he called quanta. In 1905, Einstein explained the photoelectric effect by proposing that light consists of quanta, later called photons, which won him the Nobel Prize. In 1913, Niels Bohr showed electrons occupy only specific energy levels. Consequences followed. Turn a dimmer down far enough and the lamp gives no light at all, because there is no half photon. If space and time are quantized, Zeno’s paradox of Achilles and the tortoise loses its force. Particles make “quantum leaps,” vanishing and reappearing at another level. Through quantum tunneling, particles pass barriers they shouldn’t, which is why the sun shines. The same photon sometimes passes through a window and sometimes reflects, with no rule, only probability. And entangled particles behave as one system across vast distances.
What is Schrödinger’s cat, and what is the many-worlds interpretation?
Quantum physics was so strange that some of its founders resisted it. Einstein called entanglement “spooky action at a distance” and said, “God does not play dice with the universe”; Bohr replied, “Einstein, stop telling God what to do.” Schrödinger devised his cat thought experiment to mock the mainstream Copenhagen interpretation: if a quantum event decides whether poison kills a cat in a box, must the cat be both dead and alive? Many people think the cat illustrates quantum physics, but it was meant as a criticism. One answer is the Many-Worlds Interpretation: at every quantum event the universe branches, producing effectively infinite worlds. It has become hugely popular in entertainment, as in Spider-Man: No Way Home and Into the Spider-Verse. Quantum physics is now part of popular culture.
Does quantum physics support New Age and Eastern religious ideas?
In the double-slit experiment, single photons still create an interference pattern, as if each passes through both slits, but when detectors observe which slit they pass through, the pattern disappears. Observation changes the outcome. This undermines the idea of the scientist as a detached “fly on the wall” and invites speculation. Paul Davies suggests the universe produced consciousness to collapse quantum superpositions. The New Age movement claims quantum physics proves that your mind shapes reality, echoing the Buddhist saying “Everything is created by the heart.” Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics links wave-particle complementarity to yin and yang and quantum interconnectedness to Eastern mysticism. Most scientists think this goes too far, and what quantum physics actually says differs greatly from New Age claims. But many books on quantum physics are written from a New Age perspective.
Are we living in a simulation, and why does it matter?
Some people think the world is digital because it is literally a computer simulation, as in The Matrix. Rizwan Virk, Elon Musk and Nick Bostrom take this seriously; Bostrom argues that if advanced civilizations run many simulations, simulated beings would vastly outnumber real ones. In Ready Player One, people learn the danger of living too much in a virtual world, and in The Matrix some escape. But if we are stuck in a simulation, there is no way out. The bigger problem is moral. In a game like Grand Theft Auto you can kill and steal without guilt. If life is only a simulation, right and wrong disappear. The Columbine shooters wore black trench coats like Neo. The simulation hypothesis may sound attractive, but it can destroy the meaning and morality of life.
How did science move from asking “why” to only calculating?
Aristotle explained everything through four causes: material, formal, efficient and final (purpose). Things fall because they move toward their proper place, so every motion has meaning within an ordered cosmos. Modern science dropped the question of purpose. Galileo didn’t ask why things fall but how, calculating the speed of falling objects. Science became about mechanism, not meaning. Quantum physics went further: scientists often don’t even try to understand how things work, only to calculate probabilities. N. David Mermin’s phrase “Shut up and calculate!” captures it, and Sean Carroll laments the loss of deep questions. This mirrors society. Confucian Korea gave life a clear purpose through filial duty; today’s schools teach how to live but not why, producing capable people without a sense of purpose.
What is science, and does it reject the spiritual world?
Many people say, “I don’t need God because I have science,” treating science as an alternative to religion. But what is it? The word comes from the Latin scientia, knowledge, but science is a particular way of knowing: a rational, systematic investigation of the physical world. It studies only the physical, even when investigating something like ghosts. This has misled people into thinking science rejects the spiritual. It doesn’t. It doesn’t say “there is nothing beyond the physical,” only “we study the physical.” Francis Bacon described three approaches to knowledge: the spider spinning speculation from itself, the ant merely collecting facts, and the bee gathering and transforming. Science was the bee. Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler, and above all Newton’s discovery of gravity, proved its power and replaced Aristotle’s system.
How reliable is scientific knowledge according to philosophers like Hume, Popper and Kuhn?
David Hume argued that induction, reasoning from past observations to general laws, cannot be rationally justified. No number of white swans proves all swans are white, but one black swan refutes it. Bertrand Russell’s chicken, fed every morning, concludes this will always happen until the day it is slaughtered. Karl Popper concluded that science can’t prove universal laws, only falsify theories; science is a collection of theories not yet falsified, which is why we now speak of theories rather than laws. Thomas Kuhn showed that science advances through paradigm shifts, like geocentrism giving way to heliocentrism, and that acceptance depends on social factors. As Max Planck said, a new truth triumphs because its opponents eventually die. If scientific truth depends on prevailing paradigms, it is partly a social construction, and that calls for humility.
What is scientism, and why is it a problem?
Scientism is an excessive belief in the certainty of science, treating it as the only reliable way to know anything and raising it to the level of religion. Richard Dawkins treats God’s existence as a scientific hypothesis and faith as harmful. If a scientist doesn’t believe in God, that is his choice, but saying “science rejects God” abuses his position, as if science had jurisdiction over the spiritual. Popularizers like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking and Carl Sagan often promote scientism rather than science. It even enters the church; I heard a Christian scientist say that if science disproves our faith, we should give it up. Scientism rests on positivism, whose verification principle says only verifiable statements are meaningful. But that principle can’t itself be verified, which is why philosophers abandoned it. “Science is the only way to truth” is a claim, not a finding.
How should Christians relate to science?
Science is the most important field in society today. “Scientists say” commands attention in a way “theologians say” does not; we speak of “doctor’s orders,” never “pastor’s orders.” But we should ask whether science deserves that much trust. Its philosophical foundation is weak. An honest scientist would say, “I am developing a hypothesis that can withstand attempts to prove it wrong, and my work is shaped by my culture,” not “I have found absolute, timeless truth.” And with quantum physics, science has given up understanding much of the world, reducing itself to calculating probabilities. Christians once opposed science as harmful to faith. Today the danger is the opposite: embracing it as an authority above all. We are to be in the world but not of it, and to “take every thought captive to obey Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5). We should neither reject nor worship science.
Source: Kim Cimio, The River of God (Vision & Logic, 2025), chapter 6, “The World is Digital.” Answers are condensed from the book in the author’s words.
