What Computer Science Taught Me About God

This is a frightening time in history, with computing power enabling machine learning and artificial intelligence systems to operate at unprecedented scales and speeds. What’s more is that quantum computing is on the horizon, already crossing the boundary of theoretical to practical.

I am a computer scientist who has read hundreds of articles and papers on the research and theory. I am also a seasoned software engineer who has gained real world practical understanding of the implementation of these theories.

And then at some point in 2020, I took Christianity seriously. Became committed to understanding and learning the Gospel, and testing if it could be true.

Today I write this to declare: I cannot deny the Gospel, the substitutionary sacrifice for us by Christ on the cross, and His literal resurrection.

Computer science taught me 3 things about God. Since you are busy people, I will just list them out here. Then, if you are interested, keep reading and I will dive deeper:

1. God uses algorithms. No algorithm can break the will of God. If you were meant to watch, hear, or meet someone - you were meant to. By the way algorithms are ancient, just Google it. Euclid’s algorithm was invented in 300 BC.
2. God is infinite. In software engineering, we often ask “given infinite resources in X how fast can we do Y”? The catch is of course nothing on this world is infinite, so that is purely a theoretical question to determine which area should be allocated more resources. But since God is infinite, we can do anything in Him.
3. Computers and computer systems are creations, bound and subject to His laws just as any other naturally created animal or object. In the end it’s all wires turning on and off (1s / 0s). Yes quantum computing changes that, but it’s still basically how much current is passing through a circuit.

Now that I have listed these reasons, I will go more in depth. For those of you who have read this far, I thank you. Since you have read to this point I will reward you with this:

This is the end of the article. Go outside now. ❤️