September 13, 2010 Category: BioLogos Features
"Science and the Sacred" frequently features essays from The BioLogos Foundation's leaders and Senior Fellows. Today's entry was written by Karl Giberson. Karl Giberson is a science-and-religion scholar and active participant in America’s creation/evolution controversy. He has published more than 100 articles, reviews and essays for Web sites and journals including Salon.com, Edge.org and Perspectives of Science & Faith and has also written four books, including Saving Darwin.
This piece first appeared at The Huffington Post.
Stephen Hawking is talking about God again.
His new book, due in America in September 7, has the champions of atheism all excited. Jerry Coyne is ecstatic that the new book will put to rest the claim that the heroic cosmologist is "religious, even in a deistic sense."
In the précis for the book, Hawking says" In The Grand Design we explain why, according to quantum theory, the cosmos does not have just a single existence, or history, but rather that every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously. We question the conventional concept of reality, posing instead a "model-dependent" theory of reality. We discuss how the laws of our particular universe are extraordinarily finely tuned so as to allow for our existence, and show why quantum theory predicts the multiverse-the idea that ours is just one of many universes that appeared spontaneously out of nothing, each with different laws of nature."
Hawking's grand claims are indeed based on science -- sort of. Quantum mechanics is a real scientific theory, established beyond all doubt to be the way the world works. But quantum mechanics, like everything in fundamental physics, is deeply mathematical and not everything mathematical has a counter part in the real world. Not every solution to an equation corresponds to something that is actually happening.
Physicists have had lots of practice in solving equations with many solutions and then examining the solutions to see which ones, if any, correspond to the real world. Even something so simple as the equation for the path of a baseball has two solutions. One solution will correspond to, say, the path that the baseball took as it rocketed off the bat of David Ortiz. But there will be another solution to the equation that will describe a very different baseball -- one that is clearly not coming off the bat of David Ortiz. In freshman physics, students learn to toss these "non-physical" solutions aside.
Physics is the art of looking for equations that somehow describe the real world, finding the solutions to these equations, and then matching the solution against the real world. The importance of connecting the mathematical descriptions to the physical reality is essential. When Hawking says that "every possible history of the universe exists simultaneously," he is making an assumption that his freshman professor probably told him not to make -- namely that every solution to one's equation describes a real physical reality.
"Every possible history of the universe" is a remarkable set of narratives. "Possible" in this case, would loosely mean "not-self contradictory." So we have universes more or less like this one but with interesting differences -- the French won in North America instead of the English; Hitler was successfully assassinated. Or the earth is at the center of the solar system. Reality TV was never developed. And, of course, there will be all the universes where the laws of nature are just different enough to prevent life from existing. And universes that never really got going because gravity was too strong and they collapsed immediately after they were born. We are being asked to believe that all these universe actually exist.
If all these many universes exist, then one mystery of our universe is dispelled -- the so-called "fine-tuning" puzzle. Our universe is unexpectedly hospitable to life, a fact that many have suggested provides support for belief in a purposeful Creator. But, if all possible universes exist, then of course one will be like this one. We do know that this one is "possible" since it is "actual."
It is entirely possible that these histories are real. If we have learned anything from physics, it is that lots of crazy things are true. But physicists have always anchored their more speculative theories in careful observation. When Newton was developing his theory of gravity he waited anxiously for new observational data so he could be sure he was on the right track. Unfortunately, the multi-verse enthusiasts have no such caution. It appears that the impossibility of actually finding real evidence for alternative "histories," has become a license to make confident and grandiose claims without such evidence.
SarcasticFringehead:The anthropic principle has been a thorn in the side of many hardcore atheists and materialists. The odds that this one universe would exist in such a way as to allow for the development of life and consciousness is very remote indeed. Hawking's "all potentialities exist simultaneously" idea, is a way around it.
But not really.
There is absolutely no proof, as of yet, that there are multiverses around us.
All of those serious minded "show me the proof" types, are jumping on an unproved and imaginary bandwagon.
DefiningReality: Here's a thought: Does M-Theory, rather than removing God, make His existence far more probable.
January: In philosophy these days, formulations for "all possible worlds" are treated as thought experiments. No one uses them to claim proof. They are hypotheses that at best lead to creative strategies for thinking. So far as I know we have no confirmable statistical evidence for anything to compare with Hawking's "any possible history." Indeed, that denies or ignores science's actual dependence on data.
I am willing to read Hawking as offering a thought experiment. Perhaps he has chosen to compare his theory against traditional religion's notion of a creator God because that also is a thought experiment. Neither is good science. Hawking does avoid the sad fact that when religion becomes an excuse for explanation of natural events, it decays into superstition. We deserve better from someone of Hawking's eminent status.
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Lenny - #29762
September 13th 2010
Without empirical evidence, he’s doing religion not science—and he’s hoist on his own petard: if every possible universe exists, then self-aware universes would seem to be included, as well as universes with effectively supreme beings, and universes in which something indistinguishable from “magic” actually works. And since the multiverse MUST contain “universes that have a God,” this might turn out to be one of them.
Isn’t it grand when you can drop the fetters of empirical observation and fantasize?
nedbrek - #29766
September 13th 2010
Let us ignore the multiverse theory. What is the difference between Hawking’s origin story (where the Big Bang gives rise to itself through the laws of physics), and the Biologos story? Is this not God of the gaps (even worse, a God is who just tacked on to the side)?
conrad - #29769
September 13th 2010
I think the book is his cry for help. It is his way of writing “Invictus”
‘Out of the night that covers me,’ ‘Black as the pit from pole to pole’ ‘I think whatever Gods my be’ ‘For my unconquerable soul’
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