Cosmology: The Collapse of the Concept of An Eternal Universe and the Discovery of Creation Physics and Astronomy: The Collapse of the Idea of A Random Universe and the Discovery of the Anthropic Principle Quantum Physics and the Discovery of Divine Wisdom The Natural Sciences: The Collapse of Darwinism and the Victory of "Intelligent Design" Psychology: The Collapse of Freudianism and the Acceptance of Faith Medicine: The Discovery of How "Hearts Find Peace" Society: The Fall of Communism, Fascism, and the Hippie Dream The Movement Toward Religious Morality Conclusion

One area of science that shatters the materialist myth and gives positive evidence for theism is quantum physics.

Quantum physics deals with matter's tiniest particles, also called the "sub-atomic realm." In school, everyone learns that matter is composed of atoms. Atoms are made up of a nucleus and several electrons spinning around it. One strange fact is that all of these particles take up only some 0.0001 percent of the atoms. In other words, an atom is something that is 99.9999 percent "empty."

Even more interestingly, further examination shows that the nuclei and electrons are made up of much smaller particles called "quarks," which are not even particles in the physical sense; rather, they are simply energy. This discovery broke the classical distinction between matter and energy. It now appears that only energy exists in the material universe, and that matter is just "frozen energy."

There is a still more intriguing fact: Quarks, those packets of energy, act in such a way that they may be described as "conscious." Physicist Freeman Dyson, when accepting the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion (2000), stated that:

Atoms are weird stuff, behaving like active agents rather than inert substances. They make unpredictable choices between alternative possibilities according to the laws of quantum mechanics. It appears that mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent inherent in every atom.15

In other words, there is information behind matter, information that precedes the material realm. Gerald Schroeder, an MIT-trained scientist who has worked in both physics and biology and authored The Science of God, makes a number of important comments on this subject. In his more recent book, The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth, Schroeder explains that quantum physics-along with other branches of science-is the tool for discovering a universal wisdom lying behind the material world. As he puts it:

It took humanity millennia before an Einstein discovered that, as bizarre as it may seem, the basis of matter is energy, that matter is actually condensed energy. It may take a while longer for us to discover that there is some non-thing even more fundamental than energy that forms the basis of energy, which in turn forms the basis of matter.16

John Archibald Wheeler, professor of physics at Princeton University and recipient of the Einstein Award (2003), explained the same fact when he said that the "bit" (the binary digit) of information gives rise to the "it," the substance of matter.17 According to Schroeder, this has a "profound meaning":

The matter/energy relationships, the quantum wave functions, have profound meaning. Science may be approaching the realization that the entire universe is an expression of information, wisdom, an idea, just as atoms are tangible expressions of something as ethereal as energy.18

This wisdom is such an omniscient thing that it covers the whole universe:

A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information, of wisdom.19

This means that the material universe is not a purposeless and chaotic heap of atoms, as the atheist/materialist dogma assumes, but instead is a manifestation of a wisdom that existed before the universe and that has absolute sovereignty over everything that exists. In Schroeder's words, it is "as if a metaphysical substrate was impressed upon the physical."20

This discovery shatters the whole materialist myth and reveals that the visible material universe is just a shadow of a transcendent Absolute Being. Thus, as Schroeder explains, quantum physics has become the point at which science and theology meet:

The age-old theological view of the universe is that all existence is the manifestation of a transcendent wisdom, with a universal consciousness being its manifestation. If I substitute the word information for wisdom, theology begins to sound like quantum physics. We may be witnessing the scientific confluence of the physical with the spiritual.21

Quantum is really the point at which science and theology meet. The fact that the whole universe is pervaded by a wisdom was revealed in the Qur'an 14 centuries ago. One verse reads:

Your god is God alone, there is no god but Him. He encompasses all things in His knowledge. (Qur'an, 20:98)

15. As quoted in Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God (New York: Touchstone, 2001), 7.
16. Ibid., 8.
17. Ibid., 8.
18. Ibid., 28.
19. Ibid., xi.
20. Ibid., 48.
21. Ibid., xii.