In the third instalment of a five-part series, we discover humans are significant in the universe after all. (Read parts 1 and 2.)
We’ve been looking at Psalm 8 and have discovered that stargazing should make us wonder why God the creator should have anything to do with us.
At this point, if you were sceptical about the existence of the creator himself, I could point you to proofs of a designer in the universe. For example, I could use the ‘fine-tuning’ argument for the existence of God—the fact that there are over 20 fundamental physical constants in the universe that all work together to make the universe work as it does, and that can’t be explained as a coincidence—at least, not yet. If any one of these constants had been a tiny bit different, life couldn’t appear. For example, if the force of gravity was even slightly different by a colossally tiny factor (1 part in 1040), no life-supporting stars could exist. Or I could talk about the statistical improbability of life itself emerging—the fact that even a small protein has 1095 possible folding combinations, and the chances of a protein folding by accident into a functional life-conducive shape during the lifetime of the universe is something like 1 in 1065.
But then you might come back with an answer—the multiverse. Do you know about the multiverse? The multiverse is a philosophical theory, born out of reflection on cosmology and quantum theory. It’s the idea that we are just one out of a gigantic number of different possible universes. The multiverse is a way to solve the problem of the fine-tuning of the universe. Since there’s such a huge or infinite number of possible universes, it’s no problem that our universe just happens to exist by chance—a universe with impossibly fine-tuned life-supporting physical constants, where proteins folded in just the right way. The multiverse is an act of faith; it’s not a scientific hypothesis in the strict sense. There is no scientific evidence for the multiverse; in fact, there’s no experimental test that anyone has conceived that could possibly prove it or disprove it. It’s a philosophy that tries to solve the apparent design of the universe without resorting to a designer. The multiverse theory is complex, physically and philosophically, and it seems to me to be the last resort of the desperate. But if you’re philosophically committed to atheism, that’s what you’ve got at your disposal at the moment.
But actually there’s a bigger problem with my proofs for a designer. You see, even if my arguments for the existence of a cosmic designer were true and irrefutable, and even if you believed them, what does that actually prove? That there is a great designer—a purpose—to the universe doesn’t say anything about you and me.
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that there is a great grand design to the existence of the 70 sextillion-plus stars out there. Say there is some grand 13-billion-year-old design to it all, and that God the creator is behind it all. So what? What on earth would that have to do with you, your life, your relationships, your joys, your sorrows, your acts of kindness, your feelings of guilt at those evil things you’ve said and thought and done, your goals, your children, your ethics, your conviction that it’s wrong to hurt and right to love, and your death as you dissolve back into the dust you came from? What is that to God? Why does that matter at all in this gigantic universe?
Yet this is the question of our poet, as the song continues:
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
you have put all things under his feet,
all sheep and oxen,
and also the beasts of the field,
the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
whatever passes along the paths of the seas.(Ps 8:5-8)
This is actually a real puzzle—a problem—the crisis of the song—that this God, the one who made the heavens for some reason, deliberately and personally sees you and me as important. You and I are a key part of his creation. We (as the song says) are “crowned … with glory and honor”. We are rulers. We have dominion.
These words ‘rule’ and ‘dominion’ recall the words of Genesis 1-2. They are used to describe the reality that humans are put on the earth by God himself to care for it, not to exploit it for our own ends. It’s a statement of our glory and our responsibility, not a statement of our God-given right to use the world any way we want. Our poet in this biblical song recalls these words to express wonder at the fact that we specks of dust are somehow glorious in God’s eyes. The evidence of the stars suggests that we are nothing, but God himself, the creator of the stars, says we are something. We have been made by God for a purpose in this world: we have responsibility. We have responsibility to God to do what is right—to rule the works of God’s hands. And, as the rest of the Bible points out, we have a responsibility to live rightly in our relationships with each other—to honour God, to care for his world, to care for each other, to live under his loving rule.
But that’s the problem. That’s the puzzle. How is it that such a great creator—such a great and super-powerful supreme being—has given us specks of dust this responsibility?
Verse 9 gives us no answer:
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
The song ends where it began. It hasn’t solved the puzzle; it has just expressed it. God is great in the earth, and somehow, for some reason, we are important to him.
To be continued …
Lionel Windsor,
Let’s do some fact checking here:
You claimed “20…constants… work together…can’t be explained as a coincidence”. You need to show that these constants are not locked into those values together to claim an unexplainable coincidence.
You claimed that “if any one of these [20] constants had been a tiny bit different, life couldn’t appear”. Can you please show some evidence as scientific research has shown that life could appear in different conditions? Just read the Scientific American January 2010 issue for great insight.
You claimed that if the force of gravity was even slightly different by a colossally tiny factor (1 part in 10|40), no life-supporting stars could exist. Physicists working on this problem disagree with you. Could you please provide some evidence for your view?
Scientists working on multiverse problem disagree with your claim that “the multiverse is a philosophical theory” and “the multiverse is an act of faith; it’s not a scientific hypothesis”. The multiverse is actually a scientific hypothesis as it can be falsified. You can do the math and falsify it. Scientists have actually falsified several types of the multiverse options.
You claimed “that there’s no experimental test that anyone has conceived that could possibly prove it or disprove it”. Can you please show some evidence to support this assertion? Several string theory tests have been suggested and one has already been conducted to test to string theory which is a stepping stone to test to some types of multiverse theories. And several methods have been suggested to test the possibility of multiverses.
So your conclusion is wrong that multiverse theory is philosophical and faith based. Jumping to conclusion that there is a deistic god instead of a group of spirits behind this is a faith based assertion. And jumping from deistic god to the God of the Bible does not logically follow. I think your premises are wrong and the conclusions do not logically follow.
Hi Marc,
Thanks for your comments – since I’m not an astronomer or cosmologist, I’m very happy for experts to check my facts and correct me on these technical points.
The final paragraph of your comment is a complete misrepresentation of the logic of my post – the logic of my post is actually the other way around.
It’s important for me to reiterate the reason that I brought up these cosmological arguments in my post. I’m not mentioning them because I think they’re knock-down arguments for the existence of a deistic God. I’m mentioning them as examples of possible arguments for a cosmic designer that have very limited, if any, ultimate value. I’m not, in the end, very impressed with these cosmological arguments for the existence of a designer. As I said, I can see that they could have some validity, but even if they do, they don’t in the end tell us very much about the God of the Bible, the Father of Jesus Christ.
Since I don’t think a lot hangs on these cosmological arguments, I haven’t thoroughly chased down all the footnotes about them, so I’d be glad for somebody with more technical knowledge to prove me wrong.
Now, you’ve also misrepresented me in your selective quoting of the details of my post. I actually said that the 20 constants “can’t be explained as a coincidence—at least, not yet”. The “at least, not yet”, which you left out when quoting me, is crucial to my argument. I’m not saying it’s theoretically “unexplainable”, just that it’s currently “unexplained”. I do concede that the coincidences might be explained at some point in the future as mutually interdependent in some kind of physically explainable relationship, a “theory of everything”, for example. But at the moment, as far as I can tell, they haven’t been (do you have evidence otherwise?). What this shows is that we’re not dealing here with knock-down scientific evidence against the existence of a designer; we’re talking about faith—faith in the scientific enterprise, that one day it might explain things that it can’t currently explain. It’s a reasonable faith, because the scientific enterprise has proved to be remarkably fruitful in the past. But it’s still faith.
Please tell me more about the January 2010 issue of Scientific American. Are they arguing that life could arise in other universes with different physical constants? That would be interesting.
Much of my information about the multiverse comes from science broadcasts such as this one. While there are some theories around that people claim can test for the existence of the multiverse, my distinct impression is that this is still very much in the realms of speculation and so I have no qualms about sharing in the general and quite healthy skepticism about the enterprise. People are coming up with quite interesting ideas about possible tests, which is an important and valid thing to do, but as far as I can tell it’s still all in the realms of rather imaginitive theorising and mathematics rather than verifiable empirical “science”. It is not a hypothesis “in the strict sense” (another important qualifying phrase that you left out when quoting me). My point is that there’s no experiment that actually has been conceived within the realms of current empirical scientific possibility (beyond mathematics or speculation) that could test for the multiverse itself. OK, I believe you that there are tests for string theory, but this is (as you say) merely a “stepping stone” towards a possibility that may (or may not) have future value for proving or disproving the multiverse, not a test for the multiverse itself.
My information about the actual details of the fine tuning of the universe comes from Alistair McGrath’s Science and Religion: An Introduction (1998). McGrath may well have updated the figures in his later book A Fine-Tuned Universe: The Quest for God in Science and Theology (2009), which I haven’t read. Again, I’d be happy to hear from anybody who wants to correct me about these details (or, of course, to correct McGrath).
PS here’s the tantalising introduction to the article about looking for life in the multiverse in the Scientific American. Since I’m not a subscriber, I can’t read the entire article, but I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has read it. The introduction suggests that the article is full of fascinating, suggestive but very tentative speculation.
Hi Lionel,
<blockquote>The multiverse theory is complex, physically and philosophically, and it seems to me to be the last resort of the desperate.<blockquote\> But it’s the first resort of a huge chunk of science fiction. Alternate history is popular at the moment, although, sadly, not as much as chick lit with fangs.
Hi, Lionel,
Sorry if I misrepresented the logic of your post. I just don’t follow your logical link from the God of the Bible to the creation of our universe.
Re “at least, not yet”. Even if these are “unexplainable” it does not logically follow that a god must be behind it.
When you use the language like “faith in the scientific enterprise” it makes me wonder if that “faith” means the same in religious context. Using this kind of language is not helpful as scientific facts are testable unlike religious faith claims (fallacy of equivocation).
If you really think that multiverse theories are not hypothesis “in the strict sense” can you please show why those are not falsifiable? It is of course irrelevant if we cannot falsify those today. Anyways as I mentioned before that I know at least one suggested test how to verify/falsify if our universe is right next to another parallel universe.
You claimed that your information comes from In Our Time BBC podcast. I listed that episode couple of weeks ago and I don’t think it advocate that “scientific enterprise is faith” or “the multiverse is a philosophical theory” or that multiverse theories is not testable. Can you tell me what they said that you actually used in your article?
Alistair McGrath is not a cosmologist or physicist, he is a Christian apologist. He is not the source you should use to make fine tuning claims. Can I ask why you are skeptic about multiverse theory if you have not studied it? Many Christians seems to strongly advocate against it based on theological ground without ever bothering to read any scientific papers about it.
January 2010 issue of Scientific American shows for example how a universe could support life without the weak nuclear force. If you are interested in that I can email you that article.
Hey Marc,
To answer your comments and questions in order:
1) The fact that the co-incidence of certain phenomena is “unexplainable” is usually used as a piece of evidence supporting a more comprehensive, hitherto unrecognised, reality behind the phenomena. As far as I can tell the only proposals for the comprehensive reality behind the co-incidence of physical constants currently on the table are a cosmic designer, and the multiverse. The multiverse theory is pretty complicated (and therefore, e.g., fails Ockham’s Razor). But I never posited the fine-tuning argument as a logical knock-down argument for God – I introduced it as an a possible “proof” with significant problems, and then went on to discuss the problems. I stand by what I originally said.
2) I’m using the word “faith” the same way the Bible does – to mean “trust”. Sometimes “trust” is instantly testable, sometimes it isn’t immediately testable. Trust can apply in many different areas of life. It seems you have a different definition for faith. I’m glad I’ve had the opportunity to point out that your definition of faith isn’t the Bible’s definition, nor mine.
3) By the “strict” sense of a scientific hypothesis I mean the empirical, rather than the theoretical or mathematical, sense. You’ve only mentioned a theoretical / mathematical test. If you can show me an empirical test for the multiverse that is actually possible to carry out, I’ll change my mind.
4) Here’s the blurb on the site: “The idea of a multiverse is still controversial, some argue that it isn’t even science, because it is based on an idea that we may never be able to prove or even see. But what might a multiverse be like, why are physicists and cosmologists increasingly interested in it and is it really scientific to discuss the existence of universes we may never know anything [sic]?”. From memory, these are the questions that Melvyn was exploring, and I didn’t hear any particularly convincing answers to the last one.
5a) There’s no point giving me Alistair’s job description: the issue we’re discussing is whether he’s right or not about the figure of 10^40. As it happens, Alistair is a quite widely read author with, among other things, a PhD in molecular biophysics. So in my mind he’s trustworthy as a basis for my rather simple purposes of describing a “proof” that I think has some very limited value. I’ve so far been happy to take Alistair at his word on this one. If you show me some hard evidence that “Physicists working on this problem disagree” that the number is 10^40, I’ll change my mind. Maybe the article from Scientific American will help – but see my comments below.
5b) Since I don’t think a lot ultimately hangs on the truth or falsity of the multiverse theory, I haven’t invested massive amounts of time in reading lots of detailed scientific literature on it. I’m not strongly advocating against the multiverse on theological grounds; I’m just saying that from what I’ve read and heard it’s not very convincing (at least, not yet). I’m quite willing to be convinced, but so far you haven’t pointed me in the direction of any empirical proof.
Assuming it’s legal, I’d love to receive the article (you can contact me here). However, from words and phrases in the introduction to the article (e.g. “may have emerged”, “Assuming they exist”, “these findings suggest”), I suspect it’s not a strictly scientific paper, but rather a summary of speculative thinking of some physicists based on certain proposed theoretical possibilities of current physical theories. Don’t get me wrong; imagination is a good thing. Scientific enterprise thrives on imagination and speculation, and it’s very entertaining to boot. But if the introduction is anything to go by, it’s not particularly an empirical proof of anything – yet.
Hey Roger,
I blame the multiverse for the fact that Douglas Adam’s fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy (whose subject matter was, in fact, the multiverse) was so woefully dull and unfunny compared to its predecessors. Perhaps there’s an alternate reality where the book is funny.
Hi Lionel,
Thanks for the posts – just read them now.
Providentially, earlier this week I went to the Sydney Observatory and had the evening tour on a cloudless night. It was wonderful, and had me praising God for the billions of stars flung into the sky!
Besides chatting to the tour attendant about the reason why Pluto has suffered his poor end, we got talking about so-called Dark Matter. And what was most interesting about that conversation was that the tour operator suggested that it was a matter of faith which scientists placed on the concept of Dark Matter. Which reminded me about our ultimate presuppositions when observing the universe (or multiverse!?).
I’m very glad for having the eyes of my heart opened to see that it’s God’s glorious creation!
Hi Lionel,
To answer your comments:
1) We can not explain the gravity at the moment, but it does not mean there is a supernatural explanation to it. Occam’s razor states that the simplest solution is usually the correct one. A natural event is a simpler solution than a supernatural one (see gravity example), because cosmic designer just multiplies the need for explanation. Occam’s razor works against your suggestion.
3) You are creating your own definition “strict” sense of a scientific hypothesis. Scientists don’t care how the theory is disproved; there is no “strict” sense for them. Empirical test for a parallel world: observe, measure and calculate all mass and all the gravity effects of our universe (or locality). If the gravity is leaking out (in) of our universe (locality) it shows that there is something outside our universe.
4) The idea is of course controversial because so many Christians who don’t know anything about cosmology have started to talk against it (like evolution controversy). Alistair McGrath who is not a cosmologist or physicist is widely read and quoted and is creating this kind of controversy. Just like Galileo’s theories were only controversial because Christians created the controversy.
5a) Alistair McGrath molecular biophysics who ironically ranted that Richard Dawkins should stay away from religious discussion because Dawkins does not have a theological education. You seem to take his word for a cosmological question that he without a proper training offers.
5b) You claim that you are not strongly advocating against the multiverse on theological grounds, but you write about it in a theological article advocating that “scientific enterprise is faith” or “the multiverse is a philosophical theory”. Sorry, you link the multiverse and theology, and dismiss multiverse not based on scientific ground; I have to conclude that your theology influences your view on this.
Scientific American article is aimed for ~lay people. It is not a scientific paper, but I’ll sent you also scientific studies of fine tuning.
Hey Marc,
1a) You’re making big philosophical claims about “simplicity” and its relationship to theism and materialism. I’d just like to point out that yet again, you are talking here about philosophical presuppositions and a philosophical mode of thought, rather than empirical science per se. That’s OK by me, but the word “philosophical” seems to upset you a lot, so you should realise that’s what you’re doing.
1b) Ockham’s razor is more methodological than ontological, and is better stated, “pluralities should not be multiplied without necessity”
1c) We are looking for a “simple” solution to the gravity issue (a theory, a particle, etc.). The multiverse, by definition, is not simple in the same sense.
3a) Are you saying that scientists don’t care about empirical verification, i.e. real-world experimentation? By denying this, you’ve just pulled the rug away from the whole scientific enterprise as we know it.
3b) As I understand it, one of the key features of the the kind of multiverse that could solve the fine-tuning problem is that the individual universes are, like “bubbles”, causally isolated from each other. You’ve presented a possible empirical verification for another “universe” with causal gravitational connections to our own (this is M-theory, isn’t it?). But how could the existence of such a causally connected universe solve the problem of the fine tuning of our own universe? This kind of “weak” multiverse doesn’t seem relevant to the particular issue under discussion – but if you can show its relevance I’d be grateful.
4) You’ve previously challenged me to read more about the multiverse. OK, although I don’t think much hangs on it. Now I’m going to challenge you to tell me what historical sources you have used to conclude that it is only Christians like Alistair McGrath who have created the controversy about the multiverse. Clearly there are plenty of non-Christians who also have issues with its lack of empirical verifiability too.
5) You still haven’t offered any evidence to dispute what Alistair McGrath actually said. There’s really no point attacking him personally; you just need to show that he’s said something that’s actually wrong. I’m still waiting.
6a) All I was doing was advocating weakly against the multiverse on philosophical grounds. The context for my “advocacy” was a post where I was trying to show that arguments for and against a cosmic designer have little, if any, ultimate theological value. Your logic seems to be assuming that “philosophy” is the same as “theology”, and that somehow I’m using theology as a “basis” for disproving the multiverse. Your assumptions are incorrect, and indeed they make no sense of what I actually wrote.
6b) You have, yet again, seriously misquoted me. I never said “scientific enterprise is faith”. I was talking about your own quite reasonable trust (“faith”) in the scientific enterprise. That’s why I actually said, “we’re talking about faith—faith in the scientific enterprise, that one day it might explain things that it can’t currently explain.”
Marc,
My apologies – just after I wrote the previous comment (#5) I received your e-mail with the SA article and a couple of links to articles on fine-tuning. I haven’t read them yet, but I’m assuming you sent them to me because they call Alistair McGrath’s figure of 10^40 into question.
Before I make any more comments on this post, I’ll get into some reading – it’ll probably be a few weeks. I’ll post another comment down the track if my reading causes me to change my mind on any of these issues.
Thanks,
Lionel
OK Marc, I’ve started to read one of the articles you sent me about stars in other universes. So far I’ve looked at the intro and conclusion and I can’t see at all how it’s relevant to my assertion.
I said:
The article you pointed me to is looking at the specific question of star formation. It deliberately ignores questions of whether such stars could support life, and deliberately restricts its investigation to 3 parameters which are most relevant to stars, not life.
While the conjectural physics represented in the article is a perfectly valid activity, it doesn’t actually say anything at all about my assertion. Did you have any other reason for pointing me to this article?
Lionel,
The study shows that you can change the gravitational constant for example by a factor of 100 and stars still form. The study deliberately ignores questions of whether such stars could support life as it is assumed that those stars will not support life. The key question is do any of those star go supernova (page 28) as supernova explosions are a key source of elements heavier than oxygen (Let’s ignore the question if universes without supernovae can support life). So if some of the original stars go supernova the universe will have same ingredients as ours for life to form satisfying the criteria that such universes could support life. Because the star formation is critical for the life (as we know it) supporting universes Fred Adams has deliberately restricts his investigation to 3 parameters.
This is why Alistair McGrath’s gravity related argument is refuted.