Speaker argues for proof of God

God exists and modern science can prove it, Jacob Zvi Brudoley argued in a speech hosted by Dartmouth’s Chabad on Friday. His controversial statements — such as his claim that anyone who disagrees with him simply cannot handle the truth — often drew incredulous looks from the audience.

“Really, if you look at modern science, it points to the existence of God,” Brudoley said, “God is demonstrating his existence through science.”

Brudoley drew an analogy to the science-fiction movie “The Matrix” to illustrate the problem of assuming that the observable world is the entirety of reality. He asked the audience to imagine a character in a video game who knew nothing outside the game. That character would think, “This is the physical world, this is science, this is objective,” he said.

“How could you prove the existence of a creator in that world?” Brudoley asked the crowd, drawing a parallel to the search for God in today’s world.

He said that the only way to understand reality is through empiricism, a philosophy that relies only on provable statements. Referencing the philosophy of 16th century French thinker Rene Descartes, Brudoley argued that the existence of one’s mind is the only verifiable fact because it is not subject to skewed perception.

A materialistic view of the world — a view that does not accept God and instead attributes everything in the universe to the workings of matter— is inherently flawed, he explained, because it does not take into account consciousness or free will.

“There is no way to explain consciousness scientifically,” Brudoley said. “It is impossible.” Although modern science can show a correlation between thought and brain activity, he added, it has not proven consciousness.

Brudoley labeled materialism “psychotic” and “Neopagan” and asserted that modern scientists dispute the existence of free will because the concepts of God and morality are too terrifying for them to face.

“I think there’s a massive, big, big group delusion going on in academia right now,” he said.

Instead, quantum physics points towards a more coherent view of the universe, Brudoley said. He cited the findings of the Copenhagen Conference, a 1937 meeting of physicists, to argue that all reality is subjective. This interpretation of the Copenhagan Conferences’s findings is very controversial among physicists.

“There is no objective physical world unless you make an observation,” he said.

Because a material universe cannot explain subjectivity, and subjectivity is a proven factor in quantum theory, a materialist view of the universe must be incorrect, he said.

Brudoley also drew on the Big Bang theory and the idea of quantum entanglement to show that every particle of the universe is connected. Quantum entanglement is a property of matter that causes two linked particles to exhibit related behavior regardless of how far they are separated. Since all particles were linked together prior to the Big Bang, Brudoley said, all matter in the universe is entangled. Drawing on this idea, he asserted that all consciousness is therefore interconnected.

“Everyone in this room has one single common identity,” he said. “There’s only one individual, and that is God.”

Brudoley, an instructor in the department of psychology at Kansas University Medical Center, came to the College as the speaker for the second annual Dr. Tzvi Yehuda Saks Memorial Lecture on Torah and Science hosted by Chabad.