Sy Garte

Sy Garte is a scientist, but more importantly in this post is that he was an atheist who became a Christian. What motivated him to do that? What evidence did he find so convincing?

He discusses in an interview that can be found here:

https://www.cslewisinstitute.org/resources/the-side-b-stories-sy-garte/

Well, yeah. I mean it started with quantum physics, which I had to learn as a chemistry major. I started as a chemistry major in college. And we learned all these things, but we learned them as, “This is how things work. This is what it is. There’s something called the Uncertainty Principle, which means you can never know the position and the momentum of an electron at the same time.” And I remember thinking, “You can never know? How is that possible?” But I put it out of my mind.

I also did chemistry at university, and therefore also had to learn about quantum mechanics (QM). Garte asks "How is that possible?" It is possible because that is the nature of the universe. It is no different in that respect to the electromagnetic force. How can it possibly be that negative charges are attracted to positive, but repulsed by other negative charges? That is how the universe is.

Asking why it should be like that is a good question, and we do not know and perhaps never will. But Garte seems to think there is some mystery here on another level.

But as I grew older and I began reading and I wasn’t just studying this stuff, I began realizing that there’s an awful lot in modern physics that doesn’t fit with determinism or materialism. Almost all of quantum mechanics, which is undeniably true, is not something that makes any sense in terms of our normal, logical, human way of thinking. It just doesn’t. And nobody says that it does. But what we know is that it’s true. It’s why we’re talking to each other. I mean, it’s the basis of modern technology, so it has to be true. And I didn’t get that. And I started wondering about that. And I’m not a physicist, so I couldn’t go into any detail about it, but it just seemed strange to me.

This is where it gets bizarre. The whole point about learning QM as part of a university chemistry course is so you understand how things happening at the quantum scale, where it is all random and uncertain, determine what happens at the macroscopic scale (our scale; the scale we perceive things at), where it is deterministic.

Arguably the most important law in chemistry is the second law of thermodynamics, which basically say entropy always increases (or stays the same). It is universal; it applies to any system that is changing, whether that is a light bulb shining, your stomach digesting food, a rock falling, whatever - at the macroscopic scale, anyway. It is the ultimate deterministic law, because it say the system has to go in the direction of more entropy, never the direction of less entropy.

At the quantum scale, however, it is very different. At the quantum scale it is random; there is no second law. Entropy can go down almost as often as it goes up. But here is the point that Garte seems to have missed. It is that randomness at the quantum scale that leads inevitably to the certainty, the determinism at the macroscopic scale.

When he says "there’s an awful lot in modern physics that doesn’t fit with determinism or materialism" he is absolutely wrong. Far from being at odds with it, determinism is a consequence of QM.

Skipping ahead, he talks about learning about biochemistry. 

And I was a full atheist, but again, I got chills up and down my spine when I learned this material. I looked around at my classmates, and they were just writing everything down, like I was, but somewhere were in my mind, I was saying, “How did this happen? There’s no way this could have happened by spontaneous, random chance.” I never thought, “This is design. This is God.”

So his belief is founded on ignorance. He could not imagine how it could come about by nature, so he assumes it must be God.

And during that time, I became more open to the possibility of God, and I think that openness allowed me to finally be susceptible to the effects of the Holy Spirit, and that’s when I began to have some dreams and some other experiences, which I now know were the direct action of the Holy Spirit in my life.

So in the end his Christianity (as opposed to belief in an unspecified god) was because of some dreams? He believes Jesus was resurrected because of his dreams? Personally, I have a lot of dreams, and I strongly believe none of them are true.

He discusses a ciuple.

And the first dream happened while I was agnostic, just barely agnostic. It was quite a while ago. And I had no idea what to make of it. I thought it was just a crazy thing. And this was the dream where I was … It was a nightmare where I was holding on by my hands at the edge of a cliff, and I’m afraid of heights, so that was a very terrifying dream, and I didn’t know what to do. And then I heard a voice say, “What’s wrong? Just let go,” or maybe just, “Just let go,” and I thought that was crazy. “If I let go, I’ll fall down,” and I said, “No, I can’t let go.” And the voice was insistent. It kept say, “Just let go.” And so eventually, I didn’t know what else to do. I was losing my grip, anyway, so I let go, and as soon as I let go, the world turned 90 degrees, so instead of hanging off the cliff, I was lying on the ground, with my hands clutching a boulder on the ground, and I was perfectly fine. And there was a man there. And then I woke up. And I had no idea what that was all about. And the man who was there had the voice that I heard. And he was standing not far from me, and I didn’t put it out of my mind, but I had no idea what it was all about. And for a long time I didn’t know what it meant to say, “Just let go.” Let go of what? And obviously something was holding me back, and that was later that was realized that that was the first time the Holy Spirit came to me directly and told me what to do.

And it turned out that letting go was exactly what I had to do, of all the garbage that had entered my mind from childhood on, that was blocking me from making any progress towards understanding reality and truth. And when I let go of that, and that doesn’t mean I let go of science. It doesn’t mean I let go of rationality or anything related to intellectual honesty. It meant I let go of all the mythology that I had learned about, the impossibility of God, the evil of religion, all of that garbage I had to let go of. And eventually I did. It took time, but eventually I did.

Here is another dream.

And that was the one… Where I’m by myself outside of a walled garden, and I know there’s a garden inside. I’m not sure how I know that, but it’s surrounded by this very steep wall which you can’t see over, and I’m circling around it, trying to find the way to climb up, and I can’t climb up, because every time I try, I fall down again. There’s no good handholds or footholds, so I’m getting very frustrated. I’m walking around, and all of a sudden, there’s a man standing there, and he says, “What’s the matter with you? What are you trying to do?” And I said, “I’m trying to get into the garden! There’s a garden there, and I can’t get over the wall.” And he said to me, “Open the door. It’s right there.” So I did. There was a door, I opened it, and I walked in. And by then I knew that that meant something. I knew who the man was, and I knew what the garden was, and at that point, I decided, more or less. I don’t know exactly when, but at that point, I decided it was time to open the book.

Even his dreams say nothing about Jesus coming back from the dead, and yet he is convinced that happened!

On another site he says:

I believe in the resurrection of Christ because I believe in God, and in Jesus Christ as the incarnation of God on earth, ....

I guess belief in Christianity came first, and from that came belief in the resurrection. But then, why Christianity?

Seems he converted to Christianity on the basis of:

• Misunderstanding the relationship of QM to the world we perceive
• Inability to imagine how biochemistry could evolve
• His dreams

Me, I find that rather insubstantial, but I suppose if it is enough for him...