Butterflies and Time Machines
Psalm 31:15-16
“My times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. Make thy face to shine upon thy servant: save me for thy mercies’ sake.”
Ray Bradbury’s classic 1952 short story “A Sound of Thunder” featured a company called Time Safaris Inc. They took clients back in time to the date evolutionists believe dinosaurs roamed the Earth. They find a dinosaur which is about to die, then allow the clients to shoot it. During one safari, a character slips off the force-field pathway and, unknowingly, treads on a butterfly, killing it. On return to the present, they discover that the present is different from the present they left. Evolution has proceeded by a very different route because of the death of that butterfly.
As a teenager, brought up to believe evolution, the story seemed plausible to me. Evolution would surely multiply such errors. But researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory have suggested that quantum physics gives a different answer – that the proceeding evolution would correct itself and little overall change would occur. Bradbury’s story led to the coining of the term “the butterfly effect”. The Los Alamos researchers suggest there is no butterfly effect. Who has it right?
The answer is, of course, neither. For so many other reasons, we know that Darwinian evolution, requiring increased new information, is impossible. So Bradbury’s short story was based on a false premise. But so was the Los Alamos research. Their computer model, however sophisticated, is a designed environment and can therefore never simulate random processes. Meanwhile, the revelation of God’s word in Scripture stands as the only true key to the past.
Prayer: Lord, we thank You that our times are in Your hands. We look to You, our God, for our hope and our salvation. Amen.
Author: Paul F. Taylor
Ref: DOE/Los Alamos National Laboratory. “Simulating quantum ‘time travel’ disproves butterfly effect in quantum realm: Evolving quantum processes backwards on a quantum computer to damage information in the simulated past causes little change when returned to the ‘present’.” ScienceDaily, 29 July 2020. < www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200729114750.htm >.
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