Science Guy Explains It All For You
Why is it that some very smart people, who happen to be gifted and excel in the sciences, think that such intelligence and talent gives them the credentials to pontificate on stuff about which they know less than nothing? Here’s an example in a column from LiveScience.com:
Over the past few centuries, science can be said to have gradually chipped away at the traditional grounds for believing in God. Much of what once seemed mysterious — the existence of humanity, the life-bearing perfection of Earth, the workings of the universe — can now be explained by biology, astronomy, physics and other domains of science.
Although cosmic mysteries remain, Sean Carroll, a theoretical cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology, says there’s good reason to think science will ultimately arrive at a complete understanding of the universe that leaves no grounds for God whatsoever.
If you start with materialist assumptions, perhaps.
Carroll argues that God’s sphere of influence has shrunk drastically in modern times, as physics and cosmology have expanded in their ability to explain the origin and evolution of the universe. “As we learn more about the universe, there’s less and less need to look outside it for help,” he told Life’s Little Mysteries.
God’s sphere of influence? What is He, Russia? “God’s sphere of influence is growing in Central Asia as the Cossacks carry out their pogroms.”
Gobs of evidence have been collected in favor of the Big Bang model of cosmology, or the notion that the universe expanded from a hot, infinitely dense state to its current cooler, more expansive state over the course of 13.7 billion years. Cosmologists can model what happened from 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang until now, but the split-second before that remains murky. Some theologians have tried to equate the moment of the Big Bang with the description of the creation of the world found in the Bible and other religious texts; they argue that something — i.e., God — must have initiated the explosive event.
Actually, in the case of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, those texts state that He made the stuff that had to exist in order for the Big Bang to take place. But whatever.
As he explained in a recent article in the “Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), a foremost goal of modern physics is to formulate a working theory that describes the entire universe, from subatomic to astronomical scales, within a single framework. Such a theory, called “quantum gravity,” will necessarily account for what happened at the moment of the Big Bang. Some versions of quantum gravity theory that have been proposed by cosmologists predict that the Big Bang, rather than being the starting point of time, was just “a transitional stage in an eternal universe,” in Carroll’s words. For example, one model holds that the universe acts like a balloon that inflates and deflates over and over under its own steam. If, in fact, time had no beginning, this shuts the book on Genesis.
Given that Genesis is not meant to be a scientific text, this statement is ridiculous. But there’s another problem that occurred to me: notice that what cosmologists are seeking to explain is what happened “at the moment of the Big Bang.” The real question, and the one I doubt it is possible for scientists to answer, is: what happened the second before the Big Bang? I’m not proposing a “God of the gaps” idea here, because I would contend that however you explain the mechanism of creation, you still have God working in and through that at every moment. But where did the mechanism come from?
Other versions of quantum gravity theory currently being explored by cosmologists predict that time did start at the Big Bang. But these versions of events don’t cast a role for God either.
Of course they don’t, because it is not the place of science to try to “cast a role for God” in describing what happened. Nor is it the place of science to rule God out—just because we can explain something doesn’t mean that God has no hand in it. Saying that, which this article repeatedly does, is like saying that because I know how a plum pudding is made means that Mrs. Smith had no role in making it. Plum puddings don’t generally spontaneously generate from the ingredients, especially if the ingredients don’t exist ahead of time.
Another way to put it is that contemporary physics theories, though still under development and awaiting future experimental testing, are turning out to be capable of explaining why Big Bangs occur, without the need for a supernatural jumpstart. As Alex Filippenko, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Berkeley, said in a conference talk earlier this year, “The Big Bang could’ve occurred as a result of just the laws of physics being there. With the laws of physics, you can get universes.”
I’ve heard this a lot lately, and consider what Lilippenko is saying. He is claiming that the “laws of physics” have an existence independent of any physical reality. That is to say, before there was either matter or energy, the laws of physics were just out there. Or alternatively, matter and energy are eternal, which raises all kinds of questions of its own. This is where things start to slide downhill, and before long we’re talking non-theistic religion, as you’ll see in a moment.
Theologians often seize upon the so-called “fine-tuning” of the physical constants as evidence that God must have had a hand in them; it seems he chose the constants just for us. But contemporary physics explains our seemingly supernatural good luck in a different way.
Some versions of quantum gravity theory, including string theory, predict that our life-giving universe is but one of an infinite number of universes that altogether make up the multiverse. Among these infinite universes, the full range of values of all the physical constants are represented, and only some of the universes have values for the constants that enable the formation of stars, planets and life as we know it. We find ourselves in one of the lucky universes (because where else?).
Some theologians counter that it is far simpler to invoke God than to postulate the existence of infinitely many universes in order to explain our universe’s life-giving perfection. To them, Carroll retorts that the multiverse wasn’t postulated as a complicated way to explain fine-tuning. On the contrary, it follows as a natural consequence of our best, most elegant theories.
Once again, if or when these theories prove correct, “a multiverse happens, whether you like it or not,” he wrote. And there goes God’s hand in things.
As Victor Frankenstein says of the experiments of Dr. Pretorius in The Bride of Frankenstein, “This isn’t science. It’s more like black magic.” What Carroll does here is 1) define the terms; 2) create the theory; 3) declare ex cathedra that reality fits the theory; 4) eliminate God. Presto!
I’m no scientist, and even less a mathematician, but I’d like to think that I know a thing or two about logic, and logic says that just because you devise a (wholly speculative, completely untestable, and non-observable) theory doesn’t mean that you’ve described reality. You may have come up with some pretty “elegant” mathematics, but to then assume that reality must conform to them is to suggest that the variables and constants that you plug into them must of necessity be correct.
Another role for God is as a raison d’être for the universe. Even if cosmologists manage to explain how the universe began, and why it seems so fine-tuned for life, the question might remain why there is something as opposed to nothing. To many people, the answer to the question is God. According to Carroll, this answer pales under scrutiny. There can be no answer to such a question, he says.
And here’s where Carroll falls completely over the edge. Science is not about teleology, ie., providing the raison d’etre of anything, except to explain why a given mechanical function is necessary in order for a given result to come about. But Carroll, because he is so smart and so gifted as a scientist, is convinced that science has no boundaries. There is no question it cannot answer, and if there is no answer that science can give, then there must be no answer.
And people say Christians are arrogant know-it-alls who think they have a monopoly on the truth.
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16 comments
In many cases scientists are ignorant technicians. They may be brilliant in their field, but the only history and philosophy they know may be only what they learned in high school.
[1] Posted by Br. Michael on 9-19-2012 at 05:56 PM · [top]
I just this week finished Werner Heisenberg’s memoir, Der Teil und das Ganz, and was thinking about how much we lose when our scientists are so specialized that they have no real understanding of philosophy and an elementary school level understanding of theology. Of course the book is primarily concerned with the development of quantum mechanics, but it also goes into ethics, politics, metaphysics and religion, and it’s surprising to find a twentieth century giant of science relating conversations about Platonic, Kantian and Positivistic conceptions of reality, in light of relativity and the discoveries of the quantum world.
Heisenberg does not come off as a conventional Christian believer, but he observes rightly to his wholly unbelieving friends that science is no help in determining value, and sees no scientific problem with concluding that the great overarching order of the universe could conceivably be characterized as a person. He also suggests that the ancient conceptions found in religious narrative and in Platonic speculation provide a superior framework for science than the science-derived theories of the positivists.
[2] Posted by rick allen on 9-19-2012 at 06:09 PM · [top]
Very interesting, Rick. Thanks for that.
[3] Posted by David Fischler on 9-19-2012 at 06:29 PM · [top]
Three words - Gödel’s incompleteness theorems.
[4] Posted by Daniel on 9-19-2012 at 06:55 PM · [top]
“Why is it that some very smart people…” Pretty much the same reason that some who are knowledgeable in theology and issues of faith like to pontificate on science, politics, and international relations. They may well be knowledgeable, but not without a great deal more study.
[5] Posted by APB on 9-19-2012 at 07:20 PM · [top]
Actually, APB, my BA is in political science with a focus on international relations, and it’s an area I’ve kept up with over the years (I wrote a paper in seminary, for instance, on the thought of Reinhold Niebuhr on nuclear weapons and deterrence theory—you can find it in the Summer 1985 issue of Perspectives in Religious Studies). Science, or more accurately, cosmology, on the other hand, is a hobby. So, care to actually dispute anything I said in the post?
[6] Posted by David Fischler on 9-19-2012 at 08:33 PM · [top]
DF,
I only answered your question. Please reread my post carefully. It was not directed at you, necessarily. Think about the various priests, bishops, archbishops, cardinals, etc who have been in the news, often covered here and at T19, and it shall become clear.
APB
[7] Posted by APB on 9-20-2012 at 04:42 AM · [top]
Ummm, Sean Carroll isn’t some stereotypical math geek who popped his head up from his calculator to put his foot in his mouth over philosophy and religion. Although his professional home is in physics and cosmology, he has published in _Faith and Philosophy_, and he did a fairly widely known debate against Dinesh D’Souza over naturalism versus theism a year ago or so. His credentials don’t make him right, but he has thought somewhat seriously about materialism and theism. To his great credit, he is committed to discussing these issues respectfully and without ad hominem argument.
As for his position, my limited understanding is that he holds that cosmology and physics may well provide a thorough model of the universe’s origin that doesn’t invoke God. In other words, cosmology might provide a model showing how something might come from nothing on its own without a Creator, just as biology showed very thoroughly and with much evidence how increasingly complex species could evolve from more basic life forms without any teleology . Of course, this remains to be seen. But what’s interesting here is that Carroll like Lawrence Krauss in A Universe from Nothing goes beyond the basic Humean point that it’s possible the universe’s existence is a brute fact to say:
1) From recent measurements of cosmic background radiation (which is directly observable as a fraction of network TV static), we know that the universe’s geometry is flat.
2) Because gravity can have negative energy in a flat universe, the total energy of the universe is zero.
3) Because the universe has no net energy/matter, quantum mechanics describes how the universe can self-generate itself . I believe, but may be mistaken that such self-generation is conceptually related to the uncertainty principle and the creation of virtual particles and their ensuing dark energy in the precisely defined vacuum space of general relativity. Note that a vacuum space while lacking visible mass is not absolute emptiness of all energy or mass and has a definite geometry.
3.1) This is what Alex Filippenko means above by “with the laws of physics you can get universes.” To use David’s pudding analogy, the pudding has net zero ingredients—the positive ingredients exist but their energy and mass are canceled out by an equivalent amount of negative ingredients, e.g. the negative energy of gravity. No person or process needs to make net ingredients ex nihilio if certain symmetries in the physical laws break/evolve accordingly.
***
The above may or may not affect the faith of the ideal Christian who is also perfectly rational. But it does undermine the theologian’s cosmological argument, which argues from the existence of the universe to the existence of a Creator.
***
David rightly calls attention to the origin of the existence of the laws of physics and nature. What an extremely mysterious, abstract, and difficult question!
Without raising nightmarishly hard questions about philosophical induction and natural laws going back to David Hume (ok fine, I’ll raise some of them parenthetically—do laws merely describe regularities/patterns in physical fact or are they somehow independent of physical reality? Are laws independent of description and mental life? do laws determine what make counterfactual and explanatory claims true?), let’s just say that many modern physicists treat laws before the Big Bang differently than David seems to above. If I remember A Brief History of Time properly, people like Steven Hawking would say that because time began with the big bang, to speak of laws before the Big Bang is nonsense. Talking about what happened one second before the Big Bang is like asking what is north of the North Pole. I’m not a scientist either although I do have some training in the philosophy of physics, so please fill in the details or correct me if you have good insight here.
What’s interesting here about modern physics though is that many theories are accepted on indirect evidence before being directly if ever observed. For example, scientists accepted the theory of the atom based on indirect but empirical evidence. No one ever saw an atom, but chemists did infer their presence from patterns of chemical combinations. You might say a key inspiration for atomic theory the law of definite proportions in chemistry is “elegant mathematics;” it shows how the ratio of hydrogen mass to oxygen mass in water is 1:8 at molecular and macro scales.
How does that apply here? String theory is not empirically verified, but it is a rigorous attempt to mathematically work out some known physical symmetries. It’s interesting because it generates an infinite number of sets of physical laws, including 10^520 sets of physical laws for universes roughly similar to our own. Why does that matter? Historically, scientific progress works by reducing possibilities to definite measurements and explaining measurements and laws in terms of more fundamental constants and laws, e.g. boiling electricity and magnetism down into one fundamental force. So when string theorists began to consistently generate a separate physics for a huge number of different universes, it was a bit like finding a theory of gravity that told you a billion places the moon might be at a given instant. People thought, “this theory is too vague; we need to narrow it down.” But then scientists began to wonder if the laws of physics weren’t that special after all. What if the physical constants buried in the heart of the laws of physics weren’t necessarily driven by a more fundamental entity? Maybe, the density of energy in the universe doesn’t reduce down to a more fundamental variable or force but just is. For years, people searched for a theory that would explain the Earth’s unique distance from the sun, but now we have observed thousands of other planet-sun combinations and learned that there is no relevant law. Some planets are close and others are far, just like some coins are face up and others tails up.
In this light, the physical constants in the universe that one happens to find oneself in are basically the product of chance. All the solutions to string theory are possible universes, and all the solutions to Newton’s laws are factors determining whether a coin lands on heads or tails…
————————
This air is so thin, let’s dial it back a bit. David wisely tries to avoid the “God of the Gaps” approach which invokes God to explain (causally?) natural phenomenon. “God of the Gaps” is bad news because (i) it’s probably not Biblical in confusing Creator and Creation (Does anyone have anything to support this? What are some relevant scriptures?) and (ii) as science fills in explanatory gaps, the “God hypothesis,” what I would call theism as a materialist explanation, is substantially discredited. So a big question here is, is David still invoking the God of the Gaps to explain the existence of our Laws of Nature? I suspect he is in the most abstract way I can imagine, but I need to ponder this. A test is this: if future physicists found a material explanation for our law of nature in either some form of anthropic chance and/or an empirically validated string theory, would that discredit a rational agent’s faith in David’s faith? In other words, if the cosmological argument were completely devastated and science did account for the origin of the universe successfully without appealing to God, what would that mean for the Church?
Can we have a faith that doesn’t invoke philosophical arguments? Wouldn’t such a faith be more consistent with total dependence on divine revelation to know God or gain information about Him? Is it Biblical to read with reason “the book of nature” in search of God?
[8] Posted by The Plantagenets on 9-20-2012 at 05:29 AM · [top]
“the theologian’s cosmological argument, which argues from the existence of the universe to the existence of a Creator.”
I think the cosmological argument takes as its starting point, not the existence of the universe, but its order.
The argument from the multiverse I have always found rather stopgap. “Sure, this universe seems particularly subject to laws that very precisely allow for the development of stars, elements, planets, life and intelligence, but there may be an unimaginably high number of other universes in which total chaos prevails.” I’m not sure why that “may be” should be taken as a conclusion of science, without any verification. How the mathematical models suggest it I have to admit I haven’t a clue. Nevertheless, it appears to me more a search for an explanation of how all of reality might be conceptualized as a net lack of order, so that the sum total, so to speak, of everything is nothing. It’s an interesting approach, but I don’t think that there’s any way that one can speak of it as “science.”
“Is it Biblical to read with reason “the book of nature” in search of God?”
The psalmist speaks of the heavens declaring the glory of God, and St. Paul states that anyone can know of God from the creation. We have developed those notions rather astronomically, but I don’t think they are alien to the trajectory of a biblically-based faith.
“Subtle is the Lord, but he is not malicious.”
[9] Posted by rick allen on 9-20-2012 at 07:39 AM · [top]
Thanks, APB. I appreciate that.
[10] Posted by David Fischler on 9-20-2012 at 07:44 AM · [top]
Much to contemplate, Plantagenets. Carroll may indeed have more acquaintance with metaphysics and theology than I gave him credit for, but I still believe that he he makes what amount to leaps of faith that are not warranted by science, but rather by the underlying materialist philosophy.
[11] Posted by David Fischler on 9-20-2012 at 07:55 AM · [top]
Heisenberg, Hawking, and now the new crop. Taking explanation of how it works and using that to determine how it came about. And of the question of purpose, “oh that can’t be known”. Nice way to dismiss that issue. And what of salvation? Is this all there is? The Christian knows the answer. Wonder what the physicist will come up with.
[12] Posted by Capt. Father Warren on 9-20-2012 at 08:04 AM · [top]
Actually science supports the Biblical view and is a contributor of evidence to the invisible qualities and forces of nature in the “kosmos”.
[13] Posted by iamaworm on 9-20-2012 at 09:51 AM · [top]
Science Guy has dismissed the God of the Gaps. Big deal - I never believed in that God anyway.
[14] Posted by Roland on 9-20-2012 at 12:53 PM · [top]
David, I agree that there’s a real jump from science to total materialism. David Albert, a philosopher of physics with a Ph.D in physics, went nuts a few months ago pretty publicly against Lawrence Krauss for claims similar to Carroll’s, accusing him of rank scientism. It must be very tempting for physicists to think “we’ve come this far without God, so we can keep going.”
But this sort of inductive projection and generalization can backfire against science interestingly. If you were alive 110, 300 years ago, there would have been all sorts of pressures from deterministic, classical mechanics to throw out free will (rightly or wrongly). But we now know enough quantum mechanics to give free will a little more breathing room. Maybe.
[15] Posted by The Plantagenets on 9-20-2012 at 01:59 PM · [top]
At the risk of reiterating a point that has possibly sufficiently been made, regarding whether the “cosmological argument” is too much out of the biblical mainstream, I would point to the following, the 13th chapter of the Book of Wisdom. I appreciate, of course, that this is not a canonical book for most Protestants. But it certainly illustrates that this sort of thinking was not uncommon among the Jews before the birth of Christ:
[1] For all men who were ignorant of God were foolish by nature;
and they were unable from the good things that
are seen to know him who exists,
nor did they recognize the craftsman while
paying heed to his works;
[2] but they supposed that either fire or wind or swift air,
or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water,
or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world.
[3] If through delight in the beauty of these things
men assumed them to be gods,
let them know how much better than these is their Lord,
for the author of beauty created them.
[4] And if men were amazed at their power and working,
let them perceive from them
how much more powerful is he who formed them.
[5] For from the greatness and beauty of created things
comes a corresponding perception of their Creator.
[6] Yet these men are little to be blamed,
for perhaps they go astray
while seeking God and desiring to find him.
[7] For as they live among his works they keep searching,
and they trust in what they see, because the
things that are seen are beautiful.
[8] Yet again, not even they are to be excused;
[9] for if they had the power to know so much
that they could investigate the world,
how did they fail to find sooner the Lord of these things?
[16] Posted by rick allen on 9-23-2012 at 10:24 PM · [top]
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