Edward P. Tryon has proposed that the universe was produced ex nihilo by a quantum fluctuation. This sounds like something which ought to be amenable to computer simulation, in fact a cousin to the computer simulation of the Von Karman vortex street which also requires a random fluctuation to break the initial symmetry.
Let us identify the Big Bang, a singularity at the Planck level, with the Creation described in the Book of Genesis, which we will not take too literally. Making a godless computer simulation of the Big Bang available on the Internet would demolish the Book of Genesis. Genesis presents the Universe as having been created by a Supreme Spirit, God, to Whom we should be grateful (but the expression of gratitude is for our benefit only). This God is an active and personal God, and not just some summary or personification of physical laws. A working computer simulation of the Big Bang would make Him redundant.
Of course, after the production of such a simulation some people would cling on to God as a sort of Cosmic Umpire (Who wrote the computer program?), but Genesis presents God as definitely the bowler and not just the umpire, to use a cricketing analogy. If such a simulation is produced, adopting the Cosmic Umpire position as a fallback position is always possible, but then God is definitely just a matter of private belief at which we can shrug our shoulders.
Like KARMAN.BAS, the simulation of the Big Bang would be available on the Internet in source code. It would be a proper simulation and not just a cartoon, so we could see that there is no cheating (the author has encountered people who are unable to distinguish between a simulation and a cartoon). The classic language in which to write the simulation would be Modula-2, but we will have to settle for what we can get. Let's just think about it in Modula-2 anyway.
Different modules could be written by different people, and assembled over the Internet. There is some nice technology to use here, and soon we might be feeling very pleased with ourselves. The question is whether we are just looking at a monument to human pride like the Tower of Babel or London's new 'Millenium Dome'?
What are the difficulties? Well first we need a Theory of Everything, but this will surely be forthcoming soon. The author is primarily a computer programmer rather than a theoretical physicist, but he is prepared to wait and has other things to be getting on with in the meantime.
Secondly we have the problem of Baugh's Conjecture, which says that our computer simulation will need to run in exponential time since it is the ultimate high-energy quantum mechanical many-body problem. Since we are made in God's image, we can surely produce the source code of such a program, but finding a computer to run it on could be a problem.
Perhaps quantum computers will be the answer here, or perhaps not. We will have to wait and see, this being an active area of research. It would be nice to have a single computer program which runs on a classical computer for small problems, and a quantum computer for big problems. That way we can be sure that our quantum computer is not just an analogue computer in disguise. Personally the author thinks that quantum computers will turn out to be a disappointment, but that could be a case of 'not invented here' syndrome (not of religious bias!).
Quantum mechanics is all about joint correlations, and where the author has proposed a natural Vernam cipher that is really just a tautology. If there is a God, then note that He is free at any time to control the weather by setting a joint correlation between quantum randomness in one place and randomness somewhere else, just so that any desired effect may be produced. Such a joint correlation would be undetectable and there would be no apparent violation of the Laws of Physics as we perceive them. It could take such a 'Hand of God' correlation to get the Big Bang actually going in our computer simulation. Our programming might be otherwise correct, but there might be no Big Bang until we set an artificial extra-physical correlation.
This argument contains the built-in assumption that randomness really exists and there is no underlying deterministic theory. The onus is on atheists to show otherwise, and to come up with a computer simulation of the Big Bang distributed as source code on the Internet. We are not necessarily setting an impossible task, and there is definite victory to be achieved by completing it.
One stepping stone is likely to be the EPR-complete computer simulation of quantum mechanics, and that is the author's current interest. This may turn out to be ironic because the author is a Catholic (see Love is for Life, produced by the Irish Bishops, for the best representation of his views). He is riding more than one horse in the race.
Now the author hasn't delivered on quantum mechanics, and it may be objected that this article is piling one speculation on top of another. That objection is upheld, and the author is willing to keep quiet for the time being, but then let the atheists keep quiet as well. Technical discussions are always welcome, but misleading propaganda is not.
It is indeed possible that the Creation of the Universe proceeds in accordance with the laws of physics, as Tryon proposes, but that is not telling the whole story. We will only know the whole story when we try to duplicate it by means of computer simulation.
David PorthouseDisclaimer: The views expressed here are of course the author's personal views, and do not represent the doctrine of any religious organisation. Nevertheless, note that the strongest correlation we have to date is between being a Catholic (De Broglie, this author) and being a realist in the interpretation of quantum mechanics. That doesn't prevent other Catholics from adhering to the Copenhagen interpretation, but it is easy to see why Catholics would not be keen on positivism outside the domain of natural philosophy. Of course, other people would claim to be realists as well, Marxists for example, but the contribution of Marxism to this subject has been insignificant. David Bohm was an occasional Marxist, but that is all one can say.