How Programming has Strengthened My Faith in God

If you are not a programmer, becoming one might change the way you see the world around you. If you really get into object oriented programming you start see things in your own life as defined by variables, methods and functions. One thing I did not expect is that it strengthened my faith in God.

It hit me one time, playing around with an Unreal games code that it would be fun to play with the universes variables the same way you play with a games variables such as gravity and friction. Suddenly things start falling up instead of down with the mere flick of a boolean (true/false) variable.

Then the question arises. Who did define the variables of our universe? I have a hard time believing any programmer can say "no one" with a straight face. It is like me saying "who set the variables in this program?" and someone trying to convince me no one wrote the code and it just appeared out of thin air.

Anyone who has studied physics knows there are certain things in our universe that are constants. Variables that are always the same, such as gravitational constant or atomic mass unit or electric constant. These are all set values and equations. But when you ask how these variables got set, the subject might quickly change or be answered with "it just is the way it is."

But being a programmer, I know that nothing is ever just the way it is without someone setting it the way it is. Do you know what a program would look like without a programmer? Nothing. And you cannot build or compile nothing and come out with something.

An atheist recently tried to suggest that the big bang theory and evolution some how disproved an intelligent creator, but reality is, no matter what you believe about how the universe formed, you cannot get away from the simple truth that physical constants had to come from some where. The Newtonian gravitational constant is not 6.673(10) × 10⁻¹¹ m³ kg⁻¹ s⁻² just "because reasons." Someone made it that way.

In fact, learning physics seems very much like reverse engineering the universe to see how it is programmed. Some think that science can some how disprove God's existence or involvement. To me, science is the study of God's variables. If programming has taught me one thing, it's that it takes a lot of effort to get anything at all to happen and to suggest that the variables of the universe are just so for no reason makes about as much sense as code inserting itself into my text editor.