Noise, Signal and the Existence of God

Well, the Atheist is correct also. God does not exist. To which the Pantheist replies of course He does. Also. He is everything. The Atheist claims He is unnecessary. The Pantheist that He is inseparable, indistinguishable from reality. Consider, in fact, the following proposition: Infinite noise is indistinguishable from an infinitely complex signal. We suppose this to be true in a practical sense, that we cannot design a mechanism to differentiate between the two. It may also be true in a theoretical sense, but that is not necessary to the argument. (Neither, for that matter, is the idea of infinity. But we use it for convenience.) Suppose the universe to be either infinite noise, or infinitely complex signal. Now infinite noise would not seem to imply the existence of God. Indeed it might even be claimed to imply the absence of God. But what would the term an infinitely complex signal be but a characterization of God, or at least a God? It might not be the God you had in mind, but it would certainly contain all possible, finite, conceptions of God, including yours. And including any Atheist's. (We are sort of using signal in a more general sense than usual. The idea of a signal would seem to imply at least a sender, but we are assuming an infinitely complex signal can just be, or perhaps be self sent. This avoids the problem of first cause. And see below.) So now the Atheist has a problem. He can characterize the universe as infinite noise, in which case it is indistinguishable from an infinitely complex signal, and thus God, or at least a God, the God of our universe, Who is our universe. Or he can claim the universe is not noise, or not just noise. But this implies it is, or has, a signal. So where, or from what, can such a signal come from? Or the signal just is, 'self sent,' as above. ( And of course, any noisy residue, still infinite, still qualifies as infinite noise, and still an infinitely complex signal.) So one is left arguing the proposition. But here, the burden is on the denier, to produce a device capable of distinguishing between the two, noise or signal. Or one is left arguing the terms. What, for instance, is infinite noise? What is an infinitely complex signal? Just because they are indistinguishable, does that mean one, by implication, is the other? For one thing, noise comes in different flavors. There are many different ways to characterize noise, and each different type of noise itself has many different characterizations. Thus, not only to we have white noise, we also have different colors of noise, and we have different kinds of white noise, and so forth. Which of these is infinitely complex? Or does it matter? After all, we need just consider whatever kind of noise that the universe is, and indeed just to whatever degree of complexity the universe is.

Also, one might suppose that noise is far more likely than a signal, therefore in all probability we have noise but not signal. But let's look at the reality. We suppose the universe is just noise. Yet, we have the collected works of William Shakespeare. In fact, we have many thousands of copies of the collected works of William Shakespeare. So clearly, if the universe is infinite noise, it contains large segments of signal, or noise with correlations. And how many correlations do we have? Who can put the limit on them? Can we always find one more, so that in any practical sense we have infinitely many? But that is all an infinitely complex signal is: Noise with infinite correlation. Now some of this correlation is going to be pretty opaque, and beyond our understanding. Some will always be beyond our understanding. Some, however, will be transparent, and comprehensible to our understanding. So we are faced with the claim of the Atheist: Infinite noise, but only finite (length) correlation. But now on whom is the burden of proof? It would seem that the burden is again on the Atheist, to find the last correlation, and that rather with infinite noise, we can always find one more correlation, that is more (longer) signal. Thus infinite correlation. Thus an infinitely complex signal. And note the Atheist's claim of finding the last correlation is insufficient, as that could equally be caused by the Atheist having only a finite parsing machine, and that with a larger machine he will always find more signal. Thus the claim is more properly phrased that even with an infinite parsing machine, he can only find finite (numbers of) correlation. Indeed, even with the universe as noise, we have the implication of life, a signal, manifest in our universe. How much more so might an infinitely complex signal be alive? And with infinite noise, are we limited to finite life, or is there always that with more correlation, that which is more alive? From the other direction, an infinitely complex signal will always contain segments, uncounted infinitely many in fact, which cannot be parsed by any finite mechanism. These segments are effectively noise, indeed, infinite noise, since, no matter how sophisticated we make the mechanism, uncounted infinitely many still will not be parsed. So the proposition presents a bridge between two viewpoints: Signal vs noise; God vs no God. One can regard reality as noise, and that God does not exist. Or the universe as an infinitely complex signal, and God. The lesser claim here is that indistinguishability does not imply identity. But, should a person choose one point of view, he cannot have proof either way, either supporting his position or disproving the other. It becomes just a matter of point of view. Or attitude. The evidence for each one is the same as the evidence for the other. It is just the same object which is evaluated from either point of view. (Although, of course, one can always pick and choose such evidence as one prefers.) The transcendent perspective is, of course, to pick both.

And that is the greater claim: That both are true. The universe is both infinite noise and infinitely complex signal, both at once, much the same as the superposition of predestination and free will, discussed earlier. God is not, and is. Actually, its a little trickier than that. 'Is not,' that is noise, and 'is,' that is signal, are just alternate descriptions of God, just as free will and predestination are just alternate descriptions of reality. Atheism, therefore, is just an alternate description of God, along with the many other limited Theistic beliefs. Just by the way, we can characterize one possible infinitely complex signal as one which is (apparently) stochastically self similar, at all scales. Here though, segments at all scales, can only be approximately parsed, to any scale, since there is (effectively) noise at all scales. Note the argument that the signal, or the noise, we are discussing might be fixed in time fails, and is thus not relevant. We can always expand the definition to include another dimension, the time dimension, so we are discussing a signal, or a noise, for and in all time. Indeed, we can add any number of dimensions we wish. Note also one can argue that the particular, infinitely complex signal which represents the universe does not 'contain' God. That it is missing that particular correlation. But by analogy, consider an (uncountably) infinite set of signals consisting of an infinite series of 0's , 1's 2's through 9's. We propose this proposition is equivalent to the claim that the signal of the universe has no 9's. But the set of all infinite series goes to infinity as 10n, where as the series missing 9's. goes to infinity as only 9n. The first series becomes infinitely larger in number as n goes to infinity. That is, the probability of picking a signal without a 9, out of the set of all signals, goes to zero. And finally, we need only use n large enough. We have used infinitely complex signal, and infinite noise. In fact, we need only use complex enough, and noisy enough, to be indistinguishable by creatures at our scale, on all sufficiently long, but finite time lengths. Thus, a finite, albeit perhaps very large, universe is enough to contain us, and our God, on any scale that we can conceive or perceive Him.