Dr William Challener, PhD on “Modern Physics and the Attributes of God”
Dr William Challener, PhD in physics, inventor and thought leader, and a man of deep faith in the Christian Presbyterian tradition.
The I-SHARPE club hosted its first external speaker of the academic year on October 19, 2025—Dr William Challener. Dr Challener completed his bachelors degree at MIT and his PhD at UC Berkeley. He has since been an inventor and innovator as well as Principal Scientist at Seagate Technologies and GE Global Research. He has numerous patents and inventions in the domains of photonics and optical and magnetic sensing technologies. He is also a believer and man of deep faith, belonging to the Christian Presbyterian tradition. I-SHARPE was absolutely delighted when he agreed to speak to us and to share his insights on the topic of “Modern Physics and the Attributes of God”. We began our meeting at 2 PM, and in attendance were Dr Tammy al Mansouri, Principal and Head of School at NUI, Ms Feda Aziz, Head of the High School, and Sheikh Ryan Gyllenhammer, High School Instructor on Islamic Studies. This is going to a long post so buckle up!
Dr Challener began by summarizing the contention that Creation exists independently and separately from the Creator (as opposed to pantheism) and further explained that in his view, it is rational to expect that Creation would reveal aspects of the Creator. He further explained that “Modern Physics” has something important to say about God (more on this later).
Dr Challener then discussed 3 attributes of God that are shared between the Muslim and Christian traditions, Omnipresence, Eternality and Transcendence. Omnipresence means God’s presence exists throughout the universe (but not that God himself exists throughout the Universe…again that would be pantheism..different). Eternality is the notion that God exists outside of time and is not “riding along in time” but rather is present throughout time. Finally Transcendence means God exists free from the limitations imposed on creation. This idea then creates the possibility for miracles, for example.
Dr Challener then transitioned to explaining the difference between “Classical” and “Modern” physics, explaining that classical mechanical (Newton) and electromagnetic (Maxwell) physics are different from modern physics and its two main components ie relativity (Einstein) and quantum mechanics (Heisenberg/Schrodinger). Dr Challener then explained certain “strange” phenomenon that can be directly observed and measured based on relativity and quantum mechanics. One famous example is the twin paradox to describe time dilation. Time and length both contract near the speed of light, and hence the idea of “spacetime” as being one thing. Therefore, if God exists outside of space (ie Creation and Creator are distinct) then God must also exist outside of time…therefore Eternality is supported by the relativity based concept of “spacetime”.
Next, Dr Challener explained that mechanical/electromagnetism and even relativity are all deterministic. This is to say that, with enough information on conditions, constants, initial velocities etc, the position of a particle, rocket or baseball can be accurately predicted at any point in time…ie the systems are deterministic. However, quantum physics stands in contrast to these and is “nondeterministic” ie is “probabilistic” meaning that the position of a particle in space cannot reliably be predicted at any given moment. Rather you can model where a particle might be at any given moment and express it as a “wave function” of probability.
Is the particle “real” in quantum mechanics or rather is the wave function “real”…hmmm?
This then leads to an interesting debate between Einstein and Bohr. Einstein posited a rational idea…that particles are real and the wavefunction is just a model of its “behavior”. However, Bohr had a different (and much more radical idea). Bohr posited that the wavefunction was “real” and the particle was “not real”, at least not until the instant that it was measured. Definitely weird. So can this be demonstrated experimentally? I won’t go too deep into it, but the experimental set up is to beam split a laser into polarized components, a horizontal oscillating set of photons and a vertical oscillating set of photons. Then passing these through a crystal that creates a pair of quantum entangled photons known as “biphotons” that are also either horizontal or vertical.
Now comes the theoretical part…if you separate these biphotons by 10 light years, and you force them to change their spin axis to 45 degrees instead of 0 or 90, you would expect each photon to behave independently and randomly choose either +45 or -45. However, this doesn’t happen in actual experimental set ups, the biphotons behave as one. When you force one of the pair to pick +45 of -45 and measure that one, the other separated photon immediately does the same thing! This is to the say the wavefunction for the independent photon collapses and it follows its twin. Now a natural hypothesis here would be that the biphotons have some hidden/unknown intrinsic feature that is coded in them in a way to make them behave the same way. This was later disproven (theoretically) by John Stewart Bell, and (experimentally) by Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeillenger, the latter three shared the Nobel Prize in 2022. Indeed, the quantum entangled photons are behaving outside the norms of spacetime and Einstein originally referred originally to this possibility as “spooky action at a distance”. Dr Challener noted that he has performed this experiment himself and demonstrated the effect, and it is indeed “spooky”! The idea that a photon 10 light years away changes in a way that appears to be influenced completely outside of described spacetime. Therefore, there is an agent or force that exists outside of spacetime, therefore God can be Omnipresent and Transcendent and exist outside spacetime.
There are four possible outcomes of forcing photons to choose a 45 degree axis.
We concluded the meeting with a short question / answer and comments section. Sh Ryan and Dr Tammy shared their insights on how Dr Challener’s findings and discussion relates to the Islamic concept of God. Perhaps the most profound moment came at the end, when Dr Challener was asked why so many physicists believe that their knowledge of natural phenomena and their brilliance in describing these leads to a state of disbelief in revelation and traditional religious thought. Meaning most physicists believe they are too smart to believe in religious mythologies. I won’t be able to summarize Dr Challener’s response but I will do my best. Dr Challener explained that an abundance of intellect or of wealth or of power leads to an arrogance. He cited scriptural sources from his Christian tradition describing these people, and further explaining how God condemns this arrogance. He closed with the idea that faith requires humility, and that those that don’t have it deprive themselves of the benefits of faith and revelation, and in fact close their eyes even to the full possibilities of the empirical evidence. We Muslims could not agree more:)
