Why God Did Not Create the Universe
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
If it's just the way the universe works, I'm okay with that. But I'd at least like to know why the author thinks it's just the way the universe works.
The alternative is to just not write the article, and that's not a good way to get young people interested enough to go through decades of study. Science in popular media is about recruiting the next generation of scientists, even if that goal isn't explicit.
If it involves a bunch of complicated math and physics, then at least show me the crap I can't understand. If I have time I'll work on it, and if not at least I have a better idea of how someone got from point A to B.
It seems fairly well-developed with lots of interesting references.
One has to ask why the notion of a creator is necessary to begin with; sure, we're lucky the universe exists as it does but on the other hand if we didn't need to breathe space travel would be a lot cheaper, so our current form is a limitation as much as an adaptation. And if this being does exist, prior to the universe as we know it, then where? In a higher dimension of some sort? In this context, the notion of a creator is a proxy for our lack of knowledge rather than a positive demonstrable.
As for multiple universes, try the number line. Consider how some functions can iterate endlessly upon themselves without falling into an oscillating or steady state. In abstract terms, what you have there is a one-dimensional universe populated by point beings whose only property is that of position, but which can yield exhaustively complex behavior nonetheless. All iterative functions 'exist' simultaneously for all permutations of their starting values whether or not anyone is actually calculating them at any given moment. You can expand this concept to include more than one dimension, or alternative geometries, or indeed any axiomatic formal system, with the one fundamental constraint being that completeness and consistency are mutually exclusive. We could do worse than consider our own existence from a similar perspective.
These are all valid opinions if you want to hold them, but they don't address the OP's point. This article is entitled "Why God Did Not Create the Universe". So, how does the idea that there are reliable laws that govern the operation of our universe show why "God did not create the universe"? What about the idea that an astonishing number of randomly lucky and successful permutations occurred in the correct succession out of an infinite number of wrong potential permutations, how does that demonstrate the article's title?
Evolution is the same way; it's all well and good, but none of it explains _why_ species change, just _how_. Learning how species change is all well and good too, but it is not useful in the debate over the existence of god(s). I wish the creationist v. evolutionist group would just accept that already.
I think it all depends on the perspective you take. A religious person would read this article and spend it marveling at how anyone can believe that God does not exist, even when presented with evidence of all the effort and precision necessary to form a world like ours from an infinite expanse of random blackness, where the potential that things would randomly occur so correctly as to create intelligent humans and a hospitable environment for them is essentially as close to nil as possible.
However, if you then found out I had been going into a different casino only betting 3 times and walking away every hour of my life you would understand that it was just by chance that you happened to be there on the day that I won three times in a row. There is nothing to explain - no divine powers.
This is what Hawkings is arguing for the multiverse. Because there are many possible universes, the fact that ours has all the right qualities to sustain life is an inevitability. It's inevitable that one would be created and because we exist, we must inhabit one.
So I think that this has nothing to do with empirical science?
However, I disagree with your implied argument that one is unnecessarily multiplying entities by postulating multiple universes rather than the philosophically more economical single being. When people postulate a God, they usually ascribe infinite power and potential to that being. By contrast, the idea of multiple universes assumes that they are individually finite and have fundamental limitations, which is in line with empirical experience.
Given available evidence at least some postulated deities have become increasingly unlikely, but this is not the case of all. Some might have merit if only they where actual observed from time to time.
Imagine someone was able to calculate where the ball will fall with only a glance of the roulette wheel…
Or someone who is able to go from casino to casino every hour of his life? Without requiring a full night of sleep and somehow always have enough cash with him to travel from casino to casino and always play 3 times at roulette?
You're making an implicit assumption; something exists, therefore it was created by an intelligent being. If God exists, this has to apply to Him as well, otherwise it's equally acceptable to say that whatever there was before the Big Bang is "eternal."
On a certain level, this is true. It depends on how you define 'god' as a concept.
[edit post downvote. I found this genuinely surprising. This Hawking piece (the full title was "Stephen Hawking on God, Science and the Origins of the Universe") is a beautifully simple explanation of a profound and complex topic. Based on Einstein's dictum that if you can't explain something simply then you don't really understand it, its simplicity was an achievement.]
The book is called The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow.
the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing
Really? I'm having as hard a time believing in that as many of you might have believing in creation.
Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
Sounds like God to me.
"The strong anthropic principle suggests that the fact that we exist imposes constraints, not just on our environment, but on the possible form and content of the laws of nature themselves."
It's understandable that we see "The Mind of God" in those laws. It give us comfort to put a label on them and see something other than quantum randomness in it all.
Given the sheer size of the Universe, I'm personally not too surprised, but that's just gut-feeling.
You mean to "support life as we know it". It's perfectly possible that under different laws of physics, life would still exist, that is to say, reproducible organisms could still exist but under a totally different form. Under the laws of physics of our universe, life exist as it is because this how the laws allow it to exist.
How precise are you defining these to be? The Moon's distance from earth increases yearly for example. The magnetic field fluctuates over time, possibly causing havoc to migrating animals. This argument seems like a confusion of cause and effect.
My circular bowl was designed perfectly for my circular water to sit within...
The moon's placement is also such that it's the same size as the sun when viewed from the earth, making total solar eclipses more stunning, and intelligent life viewing them may become a more inquisitive species, and maybe more likely to innovate Agriculture, and so sit around in cities considering philosophical questions. But is this the only Destined Entity?
Just as today's humans consider cats and apes to be not self-aware enough to be Destined Entities, maybe some future specimens of humans will consider today's humans in the same way. Or maybe humans today will create some future planet-wide automated intelligence that becomes self-aware, and be the Destined Entity, and the Anthropic Principle will really be the Robotic Principle.
But just as today's humans are the result of thousands of trial-and-error experiments of evolution, an automated intelligence has more likelihood of becoming self-aware if there are many separate instances of it. If it's planet-wide, then different vastly separated planets are needed. So perhaps a moon for the earth increases the ease with which humans can adapt to space colonization, then Mars providing the next challenge, then terraforming Venus, more difficult, until humans blast off into other solar systems, eventually colonizing the galaxy. And one day, one of those planet-wide automated networks on one of the colonized planets will become self-aware enough to be considered the Destined Entity the Universe came into existence for.
Such a self-aware automated intelligence will reminisce with itself that the moon "Luna" of old "Earth" had the correct placement not only to deflect asteroids, but also to display solar eclipses with a spectacular corona, and provide a baby step for space colonization by humans.
The moon has not always been at the distance away from earth that it is now. The moon is moving away from earth at about 1.5 inches per year. Thus, one cannot argue about its placement because it has not always been at the distance it is now. What people knew about the moon before the 20th century is merely an artifact of when literate man appeared on earth.
I mean that is much less far out than the existence of a God who have always been there.
Here we have left empirical science and moved on to "anything can happen" speculative fiction, where authority counts as sufficient evidence, and the lack of observations maybe explained away.
Any hypotheses which does not differentiate between "ordering" and "organization" is not actually a science, it's a cargo cult.
I read the whole article but I read less than half of the article before checking who wrote it and was surprised. I thought it was written by someone who was not in a 'science' field.
(clipped from article) "Today we use reason, mathematics and experimental test,in other words, modern science." (Whose "we"?)
"Albert Einstein said, "The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible." He meant that..." (Why are "we" being told what Einstein meant?)
"..latest advances in cosmology explain why.." (I thought science explained how?)
"Many improbable occurrences conspired to create.." (why the choice of such terms?)
"We need liquid water to exist, and if the Earth were too close (to the sun), it would all boil off; if it were too far, it would freeze." (who is his audience?)
"The laws of nature form a system that is extremely fine-tuned." (more odd terminology..laws form? And luck forms laws? I understand his meaning, but perplexed by the choice of words to convey a non-Creator position)
"..the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing." (so, "laws that allow" existed before "nothing"?)
"Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist." (spontaneity occurs when life exists..how can anything spontaneous occur prior to existence? And spontaneous creation is the reason why we exist? Again, what happened to how? Back to the drawing board as far as articulating to John Q Public, no?)
In regards to comments: + I like this question: "Why do multiple instances of intelligent life and mostly consistent laws of physics mean that there is no Creator?" + "..the notion of a creator is a proxy for our lack of knowledge rather than a positive demonstrable." It's interesting to think about what the notion of a Creator could be from someone who thinks there is no Creator?" A "no-Creator-notion" :) Basing a conversation on that notion limits the conversation...even sucks the life out it.
+ People saying proof of God tells me that both those who think there is a God and those who do not think there is a God can provide an identity for God and therefore know when particular information becomes proof...this to me seems like pre-knowledge of God claimed by those claiming there is no God (?). Proof..what is it good for? A court of law comes to mind; a dispute; something is at stake in a court dispute and an outcome will occur when "proof" sides with the victor...or does the victor side with proof (?). How do we identify proof? Proof is conjured up to confront someone...a set of criteria is demanded (how limiting or fair is the criteria?).
+ "small minds talk about people, medium minds events, and great minds ideas" (society needs people dealing with all of these issues...a collective perspective..but yes, if persons are mono-manic about one of those issues, watch out)
Sorry if many of you think I've posted excess.
How do you recognize a deity? Which observable, ideally measurable, features should one be looking for?
The concept of god used to be simple: Anything more powerful then me is a god. A very simple test and the existence of gods is obvious.
Then we started to add more and more and also expect more and more from our gods. Currently we seem to expect them to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omni-whatever… which is really pushing it beyond even internal consistency, let alone observable reality.
I wonder what would (in the 21ste century) be considered evidence of a "god"?
Would we classify an actual existing Zeus as "god" or just as a member of a more powerful intelligent species? Would we apply the term "god" to the god of the Hebrews? Or would we rather consider it to be a very advanced alien?
Imagine this speculative scenario: Next week a very powerful non-human entity will manifest itself on earth. It will claim that it is the representative of the creator of the universe and that has seen how the creator made life on earth.
What could it present as evidence which would convince you that what it was saying is actually true? What evidence would convince you that it's not just a delusional alien with more scientific and technological knowledge and very advanced technology?
But even beyond that, I heavily disagree with the whole discussion. If I haven't missed some important new advance, the whole parallel universes theory and much of the theories of what happened before or during the beginning of the Universe are not really science. Most of it is based on some speculative interpretation of the mathematical formulas of quantum physics and/or string theory.
But there is no reason those formulas have to be an accurate description of the physical laws in those boundary conditions, where they are known to break hard. So basically they make assertions based on a mathematical theory (which is not bad per se), but those assertions cannot be falsified, as they all operate outside the boundaries of the Universe itself. Non-falsifiable theories are just not science.
The same goes for the strong anthropic principle. This is again making statements that are inherently not testable. That might be philosophical speculation, but it's not hard science.
This is particularly strange as Hawking uses those borderline scientific theories to discount a religious speculation; but both theories are non-falsifiable by definition, so what's the point? I'm not religious, but I don't see the big difference between two non-falsifiable cosmologies there.
.
Example:
o Major premise: All men are mortal.
o Minor premise: Socrates is a man.
o Conclusion: Socrates is mortal.
.
Example:
o Major premise: All men are mortal.
o Minor premise: Socrates is a man.
o Conclusion: Socrates is a Conservative.
Furthermore, any argument that excludes 'god' in its premises cannot validly contain 'god' in its conclusion.
I've spent many, many hours on this God thing, and at the end of the day you can't prove nor disprove there is a God. Sure, you can assume all sorts of attributes about a God that don't make sense or are silly -- big old guy with beard in the sky. But the idea that there is some greater intelligence out there with some sort of interest in mankind? It's just impossible to know, one way or another.
Now some will tell you that because it is impossible to know, there must be a god. I.e, that we can put whatever thing we like under the category "god" -- one story is as good as another. Actually, this "creative story-telling for stuff we don't know" is a critical part of being a human, even being a scientist. As long as the stories don't contradict observable reality. So that's okay, up to a point.
Some will tell you that because we don't know, there must not be a God. If you can't prove it, it doesn't exist. Or put better: why add terms to an equation where no extra terms are needed? You see this in Hawking's essay -- once we figured out the theory, didn't need a God anymore.
The problem here is that this smacks of the caveman, when told about airplanes, said that the other person was either a fantastical liar or crazy. In his mind he is being uber-rational. From our point of view he's being childish and silly. Certainly things exist that we have not experienced. We do not know everything, and many things we think we know we are mistaken about. This is the way it has always been. It is part of being our species at this point in time.
So we're left not-knowing. And that bugs folks. I had a good friend that was an atheist tell me last week that sure, he didn't know, but he felt like he had to take sides. He felt like certain Christians he knew were somehow harming rationality, and it was up to him to sort of balance the scales. Many other people are profoundly disturbed by not-knowing and go the other way.
As for me? I've decided that while I cannot accept your story about an angry guy in the sky, the idea of not-knowing -- and the greater idea of our relationship to not-knowing, our relationship to the unknown, is a critical part of being alive. I choose to call that Great Unknown God, simply because, well, that's the traditional name for powers that are outside of our scope of knowledge. This allows me to enjoy both the work of the scientist and the priest.
The above statement does not in any way infer that evolution did not result in humans. Subtle but important.
How do you know? If you were framing your statement scientifically it would be "Evolution may not be required for Homo sapiens to exist", which, of course, scientists already understand. Theories are subject to change, and even be discarded altogether in light of better information, unlike faith which cannot change.
What certain institutions define as faith may not have changed in thousands of years.
Peoples personal beliefs and understanding of the spiritual change over time. I know mine have.
1. You accept that questions can be removed from and (more frequently) new questions can be added to the closet.
2. You do not add a question we already have an answer for into the closet.
3. You do not remove a question from the closet unless you have an answer.
It's all about knowledge voids and what we use to fill it (pretty much as you say in the last paragraph). But I've always been amused to see Atheists getting all het up about the non-existence of God (it's the main reason I don't identify as one). It is as if disproof is fundamental to their understanding of the universe.
My take is pretty simple; I have absolutely no idea of any of the big answers (and even some of the little ones) but I'm pretty excited to see the progress being made and, maybe, I might get some more awesome answers in my life time.
Beyond that, what does it matter :) The perspective is that we are a tiny dot on a tiny dot on a pinhead in the centre of an ocean. No matter what you believe about the origins and future of the universe our time here is barely a flicker - it doesn't seem worth worrying about not having the answers, instead lets go grab all we can before it's over :)
Correct. In the same way you can't disprove that a race of super intelligent massive squid like monsters live at the center of the earth.
There are an infinite number of things which:
1.) We have no evidence that they exist
2.) They don't exist
There are only a finite number of things which:
1.) We have no evidence that they exist
2.) They exist
What puts God into the second category rather than the first? The first contains unimaginably more things...
> I've spent many, many hours on this God thing, and at
> the end of the day you can't prove nor disprove there
> is a God.
Non-existence is the default state of anything you can think about. You need to prove that things do exist, not the other way around. Therefore unless you proved something exists, it doesn't exist.
Nobody would ever seriously discuss that conclusion on any other subject than God, that's getting tiring, admit it.
Are you asking me if a giant squid exists somewhere? Probably not. Unicorns that can sing and dance? Highly unlikely. FSG? I kinda don't think so.
But you're the person making up the details. Yes, any detailed explanation of anything that is unknown is more likely false than true. But to say "therefore unless you proved something exists, it doesn't exist" is the height of fallacy. Lots of things exist that I (or nobody else) can prove.
That's my point: in your eagerness for some kind of "answer" you jump too far the other way -- nothing exists unless I can prove it. This is as bad, really, as those who have some large detailed story of a Flying Spaghetti monster that they "know" to be true. If you don't know, you don't know. That's it. End of story.
Looking back through history, I can say with some degree of confidence that whatever our world-of-knowledge was at any one time, there has always been a bigger world that we were unaware of. Many times a world for which we have no language to describe. Hard to talk about Quantum Dynamics with Francis Bacon. For every pond we swim around in, there is always a bigger pond.
This leads me to believe that the unknown is a huge part of our experience. A Great Unknown exists with things in it that will highly interest us and affect our lives. This is just from induction. Not a particular myth that you might find fault with -- the unknown itself. The idea that nothing exists effectively unless we can prove it is a horrible idea. It's really, well, fundamentalism, when you get right down to it.
So you can go on arguing octopuses, pink elephants, Thor, whatever. It really has no relevance on what I'm talking about. If you'd like to call the unknown Thor, have at it. Works for me. I like Thor better than "Bob". But let's not fight over particulars, because that misses the point entirely.
As Hawking put it in another article, there might be a philosopher's God, but he's not somebody that could come down and talk to you. Hawking here still goes off the deep end -- I have no idea if something unknown to me could communicate to me or not. Or -- to put my response to Hawking differently -- can the laws of physics still be valid and things happen for which I have no explanation? Why of course they can. That's just common sense. The opposite belief -- that somehow mankind has a model of reality such that nothing unusual can happen? That's as bad as other folks who think their holy book is a science book. Both groups of people are assuming a certainty that just isn't there.
A Great Unknown exists with things in it that will highly interest us and affect our lives.
"Things" in it? Hard to say. Depends on the definition of "things". Although I do agree that whatever the case we would likely have great interest in it.
"and affect our lives"
Not necessarily. And here, again, is a reason I'm led to believe you're theist. If you believe the height of conventional scientific wisdom then the universe will expand indefinitely, and we will simply be left more alone. To suggest that we are to be affected by something unknown is to take a position to the affirmative, as a theist would.
I see nothing unique about our present state of knowledge to feel like the series will change significantly.
No unwarranted optimism was intended. In fact, future stages may be terrible, but we will be highly interested in them and they will deeply affect our lives.
Can you gave some examples, and also tell how you know these things exist?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methods_of_detecting_extrasolar...
However there is no hint of the existence of any form of God; nor is there any logical necessity for his existence. When something has no evidence to exist and no logical reason to exist, of course you may always fancy that it does, but this is empty of meaning or use. Therefore I pretend that "agnosticism" is a lack of decision. Either you want to believe, and do so, or you don't and then you're atheist and there's no need to beat around the bush.
Then of course I'll admit that I'd rather be confrontational than gently neutral, because there is so much to despise, hate about organised religion, that it even poisons good rationalists minds :)
It's not that things currently unknown can't exist; we know from the experience that the opposite is true. But any theory predicted on the existence of an unknown factor is meaningless, unless it yields an accurate falsifiable prediction - and such predictions are only possible for cases there the unknown factor is narrowly defined.
A general unknown factor whose presence is sufficient to provide an answer to any problem in which it appears as a term is not a useful concept. Non-existence here is not a matter of impossibility, but of imponderability.
I don't want to give any spoilers but it takes up the various issues raised by the Hawking article and in this discussion.