You are special.
Don't worry, this is not the start of yet another Joel Osteen sermon. I mean only that your existence, itself a wildly improbable fact, increasingly seems to be the only peg on which cosmologists can hang the existence of our Universe.
Oh, and not just you, by the way. I'm special, too. All of us observers capable of wondering why we are here are special, because we contribute to what is known as the Anthropic Principle. Here's the nub of it, given by Stephen Hawking and a colleague in 1973: "The answer to the question 'why is the universe [the way it is]?' is 'because we are here.'"
There's something odd about that. As the cosmologist George F.R. Ellis notes, the Anthropic Principle sends the arrow of causation winging, feathers first, back to the bow. It declares, to paraphrase DesCartes, "I think, therefore the Multiverse."
Of course, those were the days before Hawking got rich and famous, in part by ending his bestseller A Brief History of Time with this catchy phrase: "for then we should know the mind of God."
Much has happened since then. Hawking has famously declared that we don't need God to explain the existence of the Universe, and less famously he's come out as an anti-realist. The best we can do, the cosmologist says, is to frame model-dependent views of reality. Hawking recently celebrated his 70th birthday, and on the occasion he clarified his views:
The origin of the universe can be explained by the laws of physics, without any need for miracles or Divine intervention. These laws predict that the universe was spontaneously created out of nothing in a rapidly expanding state. ...Our best bet for a theory of everything is M-theory [an extension of string theory].
One prediction of M-theory is that there are many different universes, with different values for the physical constants. This might explain why the physical constants we measure seem fine-tuned to the values required for life to exist. It is no surprise that we observe the physical constants to be finely-tuned. If they weren't, we wouldn't be here to observe them.
"Nothing" he writes,"in this case, no space, no time, no anything! -- is unstable." But he doesn't quite mean the absence of "anything." Krauss posits that the instability is generated by existence of the laws of physics -- in particular quantum gravity. Physicist Sean Carroll has put the position succinctly: "There is a chain of explanations concerning things that happen in the universe, which ultimately reaches to the fundamental laws of nature and stops."
Are the laws of physics fundamental givens? Or is the assertion that something can derive from nothing a logical absurdity? To pose such questions is to invite an exchange of verbal artillery between fervent apologists and exasperated atheists. I want to hold up a flag of truce and entreat all sides to climb out of their trenches.
In the search for answers, there is no reason to stop at M-theory, which is not strictly speaking a theory at all but an ill-defined speculation about how string theory, itself a speculation about quantum gravity, may cohere. To be sure, mathematics, which has often proven a reliable guide, waves its hands in that direction, but it might be fooling. Nature has often surprised even the greatest of physicists.
For instance: when Hawking first wrote about the Anthropic Principle, he and other cosmologists were focused on why gravity is weak enough to allow the Universe to expand for billions of years yet just strong enough to allow galaxies, stars, and planetary systems to form. At the time they thought its tuning had a tolerance of about 0.5 percent. Since then, however, physicists have been astonished to find that the Cosmological Constant -- the mysterious pushback that just ever-so-slightly counters gravity's inward rush -- is just strong enough, no more and no less, to a precision of more than a hundred decimal places. No one has been able to deduce any physical reason why it should be as it is. The Anthropic Principle is here to stay.
So, is that a sign of Divine creation? Some see it that way, but like so much else in our Universe on close examination it fails to support the hypothesis of intelligent design. If we are the aim, it makes no sense to inflate a Universe to at least 46 billion light years in size, stud it with hundreds of billions of galaxies containing hundreds of billions of stars apiece, and then pump it full of energy that will eventually tear the whole thing apart. And yet that is what seems to be happening before our eyes.
Indeed, the Universe, as science has revealed it, bears little resemblance to the description of Divine creation in various Scriptures. Only the most fanciful interpretations and strenuous apologetics can align Scriptures with science, and even then they fail to explain everything from dark energy to wave-particle duality to the periodic bombardment of the Earth by huge bits of rubble left over from the formation of the solar system.
Scientists, it must be said, are not necessarily hostile to religion. But the science-religion controversy has come to dominate the discourse on cosmic origins in ways that may be detrimental to the search for truth. Hawking, Krauss, and many others state their case for laws as the cause in direct opposition to Divine creation -- as if these were the only two possibilities. They are not.
To run just one more flag up the pole, it may be that the Universe we inhabit is a simulation -- one gigantic holodeck, running for purposes we cannot fathom. I doubt that is true, but the proposition is entirely consistent with all observations to date.
I think there are more interesting and fruitful possibilities to consider. I intend to do so in months to come, and I would invite readers to share their ideas. If we tiptoe past the Yaweh or Law Way feud, might we stumble closer to truth? Or better yet, might we construct a model that is both consistent with the evidence and more beneficial than either of those shopworn choices?
Follow Clay Farris Naff on Twitter: www.twitter.com/claynaff
Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.: Peace Breaks Out in the War Between Religion and Science
Anthropic principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What is the Anthropic Principle?
Now, if any of you pointy-headed, atheist intellectuals out there want to disagree with me, remember: There's a job waiting for you below that entails the use of a big roofer's shovel and briquettes of coal.
Putting the hocus-pocus back into science is agenda driven and false.
Are these laws not just descriptions of what happens?
Is even the idea of there being ‘law’ is the last gasp of divine positists?
Were the observations attributed the status of law simply because the observations are repeatable and universal (a bit like the courts, in theory anyway)?
Divine positive doesn’t work in science; it doesn’t work in human society, it doesn’t produce cultures that one could be proud of.
It doesn’t produce true understanding of nature.
Why is one plus one two?
Like how come if I have one apple and one orange I can say I have two things?
Is this evidence of something spooky?
Is this real information or an attribute?
Anything else is pure conjecture.
Secondary corollary: One million years from now, an advanced form of platypus will exist, rendering all other lower forms of life irrelevant.
Looking at the Universe from the warped perspective of a human being, from the warped perspective of this particular time, leads to errors more plausibly attributed to belief rather than science.
It really isn't about you.
Why do people build spaceships?
Because bacteria want to live on other worlds.
When you view "higher" life forms as the biomechnical engineering of the immortals (bacteria), its clear that we are THEIR technology.
Tough questions, but they don't lead to the inference of super-complex creator gods. That's just asserting literally the most unbelievable proposition, that the most complex thing ever just exists and always has. After that, everything is easy...
Now the universe clearly wasn't made of our one species, despite what 50% of our population thinks...
The key claim of M-Theory is not fine-tuned versions of different universes. The 'constants' may be upshots of other realities, related to each other in complicated ways. It's not just some random generator....
I find it suprising that the same people who rail against this notion readily accept what I think is rightly called speculation about other universes where the laws of physics come in an infinite variety (as if that would change anything).
An interesting conclusion one could reach if you -do- accept that there are infinite universes in which every possible set of values in the matrix of physical constants is represented, there is a strong case for the idea that -everything- must exist, somewhere. Yes, in the infinity of chaos, a being such as God might even arise. The multiverse and God take a chicken and egg sort of dynamic under this lens.
Step back for a moment from even the laws of the universe itself. Why do energy and matter exist at all? Why is there "stuff?" This question I think is the unescapable firmament of the perhaps poorly named anthropic principle.
The penultimate question and its answer are expressed in the following mind model I have presented to audiences over the years:
"If there were no humans to perceive the universe - could the universe be 'known' to exist?"
"Of course not. Therefore, perception of creation by human consciousness manifests the universe as a 'state of mind.'"
You are NOT special.
We are a small bit of pollution in an otherwise vast Universe consisting mostly of nothing that came from nothing.
At least that is the best evidence we have yet.
This article is NOT science and the anthropic principle is NOT the Universe exists because we observe it.
We are a by product of an unguided process that happens to be able to understand it...at least at some level.
No magical thinking necessary, because the evidence says none is needed.
I would say that when creationism is attacked using certain context, some popular scientific theories are also attacked. For example, if your argument is that creationism is invalid because nothing existed pre-bang, that would then counter M-theory which relies on that existence. And some in M-theory espouse a multiverse where anything that can possibly exist, does exist in one or more of the universes. So unless you're prepared to say that the universe couldn't POSSIBLY be done by design, M-theory suggests that it has to be that way somewhere. It's one thing to say something didn't happen; quite another to say it couldn't possibly happen under any circumstance.
We use models to help us understand everything around us and explain how it came to be. It's important to remember, "some models are useful; all models are flawed." I can somewhat understand how that might not be recognized in theology, but not science.
That's all I had to say. Please, by all means, do continue.
In the very end we are trying to explain with science something outside the parameters of science