Aristotle believed “in an intelligent natural world that functions according to some deliberate design.” Likewise, Einstein stated that “the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible.” This is because, as the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking wrote, “Everything in the universe follows laws, without exception” (“The Grand Design,” Hawking and Mlodinow). As a result of these laws, we can understand and even predict future events.
Hawking adds that even the characteristics of the entire universe “appear to have a design that is both tailor–made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration.” This means that all of the physical constants – gravitational, nuclear forces and at least 30 other forces – have been finely calibrated to support existence and even life and can’t be changed without serious consequences. It’s like entering a restaurant and finding balloons, “happy birthday” signs with your name loudly painted on all of them, and your favorite foods and friends – everything designed for your birthday party. You instantly know that someone planned a surprise party for you!
However, not according to Hawking! In this, his latest book, he writes,
• “The discovery recently of so many laws of nature could lead some back to the idea that this grand design is the work of a grand Designer. Yet the latest advances in cosmology explain why the laws of the universe seem tailor-made for humans, without the need for a benevolent creator.”
Therefore, before you thank your wife for your wonderful surprise party, consider the possibility that all of these fortuitous arrangements might have just happened naturally, without anyone planning them. But how could something to intricate and fortuitous have just happened? Hawking explains that,
• “As recent advances in cosmology suggest, the laws of gravity and quantum theory allow universes to appear spontaneously from nothing.”
Well, if entire universes with their laws of physics just appear, don’t be too quick to thankfully hug your wife. You might ask, “Where does his evidence for multiple universes come from?”
Not from science! There’s doesn’t exist the smallest thread of hard, observable evidence that there is even a second universe, let alone an uncountable number as Hawking’s theory requires. He surmises that if there is such a number, then it stands to reason that one of them would be just right for us. It’s merely a matter of the throw-of-the-dice. If you throw ten dies a countless number of times, they should come up as ten “sixes” at least once! In the same way, if you visit enough restaurants, it’s likely that you’ll find one that happens to be celebrating your birthday.
But if you think a little further about what Hawking is saying, you might also ask, “How can Hawking appeal to ‘the laws of gravity and quantum theory’ to justify his strange idea that multiple universes spring into existence uncaused from nothing? There aren’t any ‘the laws of gravity and quantum theory’ in nothingness! Just nothing at all!” That seems reasonable.
Besides, I never see things springing into existence out of nothingness and uncaused, while Hawking is suggesting that entire universes just pop into existence. I would think that such frequent additions could disrupt life in this universe. Even the arrival of a new mouth to feed can disrupt our lives, but not so Hawking’s countless universes! Where is the evidence for spontaneous creation? Hawking insists that,
• “Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist. It is not necessary to invoke God.”
Many wish that a few thousand dollars would just spontaneously appear in the palm of their hand, but it just doesn’t seem to happen. OK, I admit that I don’t know everything. Perhaps the “spontaneous creation” of multiple universes is possible even though no one has ever detected them. Indeed, perhaps I don’t exist, and the “I” that I think is me is just an impersonal consciousness that dreams up everything else?
Well, maybe I can’t absolutely disprove this idea, but I’ve got to go with the evidence that I have, and this tells me that I do exist, and this conclusion seems to work for me. It gets me out of bed in the morning. Likewise, it seems more likely that the incredible design – the laws of physics, the universe, and our own existence – requires a Designer rather than nothing at all!
At this point, the evolutionist thunders his indictment:
• “This is just another God-in-the-gaps argument. You assume that there must be a God to explain existence because science hasn’t yet provided a convincing explanation. However, it’s just a matter of time until science does provide that explanation.”
However, there are several unfounded assumptions buried here:
1. Simply because science has provided many explanations doesn’t mean that science can provide all explanations.
2. Scientific explanations fail to supplant God. Rather, they affirm the presence of design wherever we look. This gives us even more reason to invoke a Designer!
3. Scientific explanations fail to support an anti-God hypothesis. Instead, they call into question the idea that things just happen and appear without adequate causation – God. Science also tells us that matter/energy is neither created nor destroyed as anti-God hypotheses would require. Science also proclaims the breakdown of all systems as Creationism would predict.
Besides, birthday parties don’t just appear. They’re planned and engineered by agents who have adequate intelligence and resources to pull them off. If Hawking had claimed that his multiple universes were caused by a turtle, he would be laughed out of the university. However, he is asserting something even more absurd – that the generation of a universe has even a lesser cause than a turtle – nothing at all! I’ll put my money on the turtle! Better yet, I’ll invest it in an omnipotent God who has proved Himself in so many ways.
Mann: Not from science! There’s doesn’t exist the smallest thread of hard, observable evidence that there is even a second universe, let alone an uncountable number as Hawking’s theory requires.
ReplyDeleteAnd yet extrapolations from existing theories based upon "hard, observable evidence" lead to these "multiverse" hypothesis.
Mann: There aren’t any ‘the laws of gravity and quantum theory’ in nothingness! Just nothing at all!” That seems reasonable.
Then you're making the mistake of thinking that there waS "nothing" prior to Planck time, Daniel. The hypothesis all indicate that there was/is some "background" space/time if you will, in which this universe creation, with their own local space/times takes place.
Mann: Besides, I never see things springing into existence out of nothingness and uncaused, while Hawking is suggesting that entire universes just pop into existence.
Quantum Vacuum fluctuations are a tantalising hint to the "something from nothing" claims you make.
Hawking's suggestions are backed by scientific hypothesis, Daniel, none of which has shown itself to be "superior" as yet (to my knowledge at least). You seem to discount them without knowing anything about them.
Mann: I would think that such frequent additions could disrupt life in this universe.
And you'd be incorrect. I suspect that, for the most part, these "baby-universes" are causally closed, and therefore can't/won't interact.
Mann: Likewise, it seems more likely that the incredible design – the laws of physics, the universe, and our own existence – requires a Designer rather than nothing at all!
And yet Occam's razor would have us accept the multiverse theories rather than the supernatural designer theory.
The supernatural designer theory also seems to be sterile.
Mann: Better yet, I’ll invest it in an omnipotent God who has proved Himself in so many ways.
And yet, the hypothesis which you're championing has no reasonable formulation, provides no further insight into phenomenon, explains everything (there is no observation with which it is not compatible) and therefore explains nothing, is not parsimonious, and goes far beyond what the evidence dictates.
A Deistic deity would be an explanation far more compatible with the evidence we see around us. Even more compatible would be some sort of universe creating/generating mechanism..oh wait, that's exactly what Hawking is talking about.
I'd be very interested in knowing the content of this "God Hypothesis" you champion Daniel. What predictions does it give? What new insights does it yield? What would falsify it? How can it be tested? etc :-)
Havoc, I don't know where to start. Perhaps I won't!!!
ReplyDeleteThat could be for the best, as acceptance of reality and what science shows us about it don't appear to be too be a high priority for you ;-)
ReplyDeleteI would ask of Havok that even though his priority seems to be with acceptance of the reality and what sciences shows,I would like for him to relate some conceivable,tangible data that supports Hawking's hypothesis. There are millions of believers about the supernatural creator that find the reality of it to be tangible and very conceivable;which appears to me to say it isn't a God Hypothesis as it is more-so a reasonable and believable proof from the beginning of time. Has science proved any of this about Hawking's Theroy ?
ReplyDeleteArgument ad populum, Harrison?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure there is actually much of any content to the "God Hypothesis".
I don't know the details of exactly what Hawking proposes in his book (I think he does mention M-brane theory), but I expect that they match the evidence we currently have.
I'm unaware of any fleshed out "God Hypothesis" which doesn't seem to suffer from at least as many issues as scientific theories with which it competes.
With a little less snark, it seems that most/all of the arguments which try to demonstrate a designer are like the following:
ReplyDeleteP1 Hypothesis A, B & C are offered to explain phenomena X
P2 A & B (scientific hypothesis) are implausible or do not offer a complete explanation
C Therefore C (Theism, Christianity particularly) is the explanation for X
What such arguments fail to demonstrate is that the theistic hypothesis is more probable, more plausible, and/or offers a better explanation for the phenomena in question, and all the arguments which I've bumped into (fine tuning, origin of the universe/first cause, intelligent design, origins of life, etc, etc) seem to suffer this same problem.
Sure, the God of Classical (Christian) Theology is an explanation for fine tuning, but it is far from economical (postulates an entirely new class of "stuff"), fails to provide an explanation for other phenomena (problem of evil) and seems just plain implausible and/or incoherent (problems of timeless agency, simple minds, omnipresence and thought, etc).
I'm starting to recognize a pattern with you David. After posting two or three times talking about subjects people obviously don't respond to, you pick a fight with the atheist, or psychologists. The reality is that although you are a teacher in a bible college, your students obviously don't care enough to respond or even read your little invisible blog here. The only person that even engages you in conversation is havok, and myself on occasion. Without us, you would futilely blog unintelligent have truths and evidenceless, so called, scientific facts. This blog is cry for attention. Making uninformed comments, and assumptions about what atheists believe, and what psychologists adhere to based on your personal experience only shows to the world how ignorant you are to the reality that Christianity is one religion amongst thousands in the world. It is ignorance like yours that is the cause of wars. You have no respect for other peoples beliefs or cultures. Hurry up and move to the south. You'll fit in nicely with the rest of the snake handling, racist, homophobic, white southern baptists.
ReplyDeleteit's actually the Darwinists who are committing a kind of God-of the-Gaps fallacy. Darwin himself was once accused of considering natural selection "an active power or Deity" (see chapter 4 of Origin of Species). But it seems that natural selection actually is the deity or "God of the Gaps"for the Darwinists of today. When they are totally at a loss for how irreducibly complex, information-rich biological systems came into existence, they simply cover their gap in knowledge by claiming that natural selection, time, and chance did it.
ReplyDeleteAndrey: When they are totally at a loss for how irreducibly complex, information-rich biological systems came into existence, they simply cover their gap in knowledge by claiming that natural selection, time, and chance did it.
ReplyDeletePlease demonstrate the existence of these "irriducibly comples" systems (Behe's examples fail, btw) taking scaffolding and various other mechanisms into account, and go on to provide an explanation of how they did come into existence ("God did it" is not an explanation) and you might actually have a point to make..
If you can show that something is "IR", that known evolutionary mechanisms cannot/do not account for it, but don't provide your own explanation, then we're both left with "I don't know".
First, when we conclude that intelligence created the first cell or the human brain, it's not simply because we lack evidence of a natural explanation; it's also because we have positive, empirically detectable evidence for an intelligent cause. A message (specified complexity) is empirically detectable. When we detect a message, like "Take out the garbage, Mom" or 1,000 encyclopedias, we know that it must come from an intelligent being because all of our observational experience tells us that messages come only from intelligent beings. Every time we observe a message, it comes from an intelligent being. We couple this data with the fact that we never observe natural laws creating messages, and we know an intelligent being must be the cause. That's a valid scientific conclusion based on observation and repetition. It's not an argument from ignorance, nor is it based on any "gap" in our knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThere is a difference between explaining ongoing natural processes and the origins of natural processes. To use an analogy, just because a software program runs without the creator being present doesn't mean we should say there was no personal creator. Also, evolutionary theory has its own gaps that are assumed to occur without support by direct evidence. This is not to say that a broad theory of science has to explain every detail before being accepted. However, when it comes to evolutionary theory, far more gaps are accepted than are typical for other scientific theories.
ReplyDeleteThere is another reason why Dr. Behe's ideas should not be equated to the God of the gaps idea. In the past, the gaps were generally due to lack of information about certain natural processes. In contrast, Dr. Behe's ideas involve processes where we do have information. That information, though not complete, is sufficient to indicate problems with postulating completely naturalistic explanations.
Andrey: A message (specified complexity) is empirically detectable.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but a message as you're using the term, is medium independant, yet you seem to be claiming that DNA is a message. DNA is certainly not medium independant. In fact, DNA, and the process of DNA->RNA->protein transcription is nothing more than physics/chemistry at work.
You seem to be listening too much to people like Stephen Meyer and Bill Dembski, and not enough to practicing scientists.
You've failed to demonstrate in any fashion that intelligence is/was required. Your claiming Behe's ideas hold muster, when currently there are no biological structures which have been shown to be irriducibly complex.
Basically, you've simply made some bold assertions without justification.
Andrey: we know that it must come from an intelligent being because all of our observational experience tells us that messages come only from intelligent beings. Every time we observe a message, it comes from an intelligent being.
ReplyDeleteWe infer that these come from an "intelligence" because we know a little something about the capabilities of said intelligence. Archaeology does a similar thing - we infer something is a tool, for instance, because we have a good idea of what the "intelligence" around at the time was likely capable of.
Now, since the ID movement avoids mentioning anything about the purported "designer", then these inferences would seem to be unavailable to us in our investigations.
In "The Grand Design" Stephen Hawking postulates that the M-theory may be the Holy Grail of physics...the Grand Unified Theory which Einstein had tried to formulate and later abandoned. It expands on quantum mechanics and string theories.
ReplyDeleteIn my e-book on comparative mysticism is a quote by Albert Einstein: “…most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty – which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of all religion.”
E=mc², Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity, is probably the best known scientific equation. I revised it to help better understand the relationship between divine Essence (Spirit), matter (mass/energy: visible/dark) and consciousness (f(x) raised to its greatest power). Unlike the speed of light, which is a constant, there are no exact measurements for consciousness. In this hypothetical formula, basic consciousness may be of insects, to the second power of animals and to the third power the rational mind of humans. The fourth power is suprarational consciousness of mystics, when they intuit the divine essence in perceived matter. This was a convenient analogy, but there cannot be a divine formula.
Ron, cribbing the best known equation in physics and twisting it to promote some brand of mysticism, something I doubt Einstein would have had much patience for, seems pretty lame, as does advertising your e-book without bothering to interact with the blog post and/or comments attached.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. Thought I responded to Havoc.
ReplyDeleteI said This was a convenient analogy, but there cannot be a divine formula. My e-book is free because 39 mystics, religious leaders and scholars freely gave me their advice.
Hawking and Einstein are often compared, as in my opening sentence.
Ron, I briefly skimmed your book, and it appears to be heavy on claims and light on justification for those claims. You are careful to insulate yourself from having to provide any with assertions that the divine is beyond rational knowing, seemingly ineffable.
ReplyDeleteI was browsing, so if there is anywhere you show/argue that souls exist, overcome the problem of interaction, show that our minds survive brain death, demonstrate what modern science heavily suggests - that the mind is a product of the brain, that the experiences of mystics is anything more than in their brains, etc, then I'd be interested in you pointing out where I ought to look. Thanks ;-)
Havoc,
ReplyDeleteYour sarcasm is only surpassed by your cynicism. Dark matter is 25% and dark energy about 70% of the critical density of this Universe. Perhaps the millions of mystics recorded in the past 3,000 years have had some insight into that darkness. Science has its limits as any dedicated scientist will admit.
Thanks for the compliment. I find sarcasm to alleviate some of the tedium of people making grand proclamations founded on what appears to be ignorance (such as your claims regarding dark matter and energy).
ReplyDeleteAs for cynicism, did you mean it as a pejorative, or as a reference to the Greek Cynics? :-)
Do you have any evidence for this claimed link between dark matter, dark energy and mystical experiences?
Also, I hope you realise that, while scientists don't know a whole lot about dark matter/dark energy, they're not completely ignorant either.
"Science" has limits, in that it is limited to rational enquiry - you can't just make stuff up unfortunately ;-)
ron,
ReplyDeletewhat your attempting to reason is that the lack of evidence is evidence. By that reasoning, one could substantiate any outlandish claims to attempt to explain where science leaves off. So, since science cannot explain much of what happens in the gaps between universes, that must mean that they are held together by an intricate tapestry of leprechauns holding hands. Just because we don't know today, doesn't mean we won't know tomorrow. It wasn't that long ago in human history when people thought the world was flat.
To the Greek Cynic and Dusk, I said "Perhaps the millions of mystics recorded in the past 3,000 years have had some insight into that darkness." I believe it, you don't, and the vast majority of people don't care. I think we can agree that the unknown far exceeds the known.
ReplyDeleteSubrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Nobel physicist, in 1959 invited me to the University of Chicago's Yerkes Observatory. He introduced me to mysticism and the universality of the Universe. Chandra once said "God is man's greatest creation." He wasn't questioning God just people who shape God to their preferred image.
Ron, your belief in some weird connection between dark matter/energy and the experiences of mystics seems to be completely unjustified. I might be misinterpreting you, but you also seem to attribute "intention" of some kind to this matter, something which is an enormous leap beyond the evidence
ReplyDeleteI don't see how your position can be justified or rational :-)
Ron,
ReplyDeleteJust because the unknown far exceeds the known, that doesn't substantiate any claims to mysticism. Again, you are attempting to claim that the lack of evidence is evidence. No matter how eloquently you put it, it will never be true. No matter what professors you talked to, no matter what reasoning, God is a faith based belief. We may speculate, we may attempt to hypothesize, but all is conjecture. If you are attempting to prove any connection between the unexplained and some sort of mysticism, or spiritual power, you will have to prove so with solid evidence, otherwise you're just beating a dead horse.
I thought this blog was "Mann's Word: Defending the Christian faith and promoting its wisdom against the secular and religious challenges of our day." Let's move on from Christianity:
ReplyDeleteNon-Theists vs. Atheists
Confucianism (unlike Taoism), much of Buddhism and most of the Samkhya of Hinduism are non-theistic: they simply omit the concept of God. Many atheists, however, seem intent on attacking the idea of God.
Ultimate reality is what is is, whether we think, believe or desire otherwise. If there is a God, not believing does not change that. If there is no God, then believing will not make it so. Mystics seek the universal reality which underlies our conceptualizing and imagining. I was personally introduced to mysticism by a Nobel physicist who said “God is man’s greatest creation." In my e-book on comparative mysticism is a chapter "To the non-religious." You do not have to be religious or a believer in God to be a mystic, although most of the prominent mystics were both
So Ron, how would mystics know whether they were in touch with this so called "universal reality" and not just "exploring" their own minds?
ReplyDeleteIs there any sort of useful method of determining true from false (even provisionally, as we see with intersubjective rational empirical enquiry, ie. science), or is it simply so much navel gazing?
Given the often seemingly contradictory nature of what mystics claim (God, no-God, etc) there doesn't seem to be.