Many of those who do not practice any religion and see no merit in traditional God-beliefs still find it hard to be full-fledged atheists. Although not religious in the usual sense, these nonbelievers have not yet completely freed themselves from all religious or metaphysical notions, most of which have no rational foundation. They will tell you that they intuitively feel that something still must be "out there," some power that is responsible for the universe and the laws that govern it. After all, they ask, "How can something come from nothing?"
One such religious notion is the story of creation: Once upon a time there was nothing and then, miraculously, there was something. But, is that the only possibility? Why couldn't there always have been something? If there never was a transition nothing-to-something, it follows there was no creation and, therefore, no creator, personal or otherwise.
Of course, creation ex nihilo, the creation of the universe out of nothing, is a major component of virtually all religious belief. On the other hand, modern cosmology suggests that the universe was not created, that it is eternal in time.
Theologians, theist authors, and debaters have developed several arguments that they maintain proves that the universe can't be eternal, that it had to have a beginning. I will start with the frequently heard claim that an eternal universe can't exist for mathematical reasons. The argument made is that in an infinite universe it would take an infinite time to reach from the beginning to the present.
However, this is a strawman that exploits the fact that most scientists as well as laypeople improperly use the term "infinity" when they really mean endless or unlimited. An eternal universe is not the same as an infinite universe. Time is the number of ticks on a clock. In the eternal universe that number is endless, not infinite. Counting backwards in time, the eternal universe has no beginning -- not a beginning an infinite time ago. The time interval from any moment in the past to the present is finite. So an eternal universe is mathematically possible.
The second argument for a cosmic creation that theologians and Christian apologists have been using for decades now is that the universe, and time itself, began with a singularity identified with the big bang. This singularity is a point in space-time of unlimited density. This claim is based on a theorem derived from Einstein's general relativity and published by Stephen Hawking and Roger Penrose in 1970, which concluded that the universe began with a singularity.
Over 20 years ago now, Hawking and Penrose admitted that there was no singularity because their calculation, while not wrong as far as it went, had not taken into account quantum mechanics. See page 50 of Hawking's 1988 bestseller A Brief History of Time. I do not know of a single working cosmologist today who says the universe began with a singularity.
Some Christian authors and debaters also refer to other more recent calculations claiming these require the universe to have a beginning. To give the shortest possible rebuttal, I will just quote the Cal Tech cosmologist Sean Carroll, who wrote me in an email: "No result derived on the basis of classical general relativity can be used to derive anything truly fundamental, since classical general relativity isn't right. You need to quantize gravity."
So the universe need not have had a beginning. But let's suppose for a moment that it did. That fact alone would not prove it was purposefully created. Another premise must be made to show that. The assumption must be added that everything that begins has a cause. Once again, this ignores quantum mechanics, where events commonly occur without cause. This is the case for the atomic transitions that give us light and the nuclear decays that give us nuclear radiation. They all happen spontaneously, without cause. In short, all attempts to prove that the universe had to have a beginning caused by God fail on several fronts.
The third creationist argument called the anthropic cosmological principle, made by a whole army of Christian theologians and authors, is that the universe is fine-tuned for life, in particular, human life. Here the story is even more complicated because several notable physicists think such fine-tuning does exist, although they attribute it to natural causes rather than a creator God. I identify with an opposition group of physicists who see no need to invoke the anthropic principle at all. We can offer natural explanations for all the values of all parameters claimed to be fine-tuned (see The Fallacy of Fine-Tuning, in press).
The claims that evidence for a cosmic creation can be found in physical observations are based on a gross misunderstanding of basic physics. Several theist authors have carelessly lifted out of context a quotation from Hawking's A Brief History of Time:
If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million, the universe would have collapsed before it ever reached its present size. (pp, 121-122)
This is presented as an example of the incredible fine-tuning of the universe. However, those making that claim ignore Hawking's explanation seven pages later for why no fine-tuning was needed. There he describes the inflationary cosmological model, in which the universe began with a tiny period of very rapid, exponential expansion. While still new in 1988, inflationary cosmology is now well-established. Hawking says,
[In the inflationary model] the rate of expansion of the universe would automatically become very close to the critical rate determined by the energy density of the universe. This could then explain why the rate of expansion is still so close to the critical rate, without having to assume that the initial rate of expansion of the universe was very carefully chosen. (p. 128)
So the rate of expansion of the universe is not fine-tuned at all. Its value is exactly what it should be.
This is only one of the thirty or so other parameters that theists claim were fine-tuned by God. Reasonable explanations based on known physics and cosmology can be given for them all. Computer simulations show that some kind of life is possible in universes over a wide range of parameters.
The erroneous claims I have discussed here are widely disseminated in Christian literature and appear frequently in debates and discussions on religion and science. They are rarely challenged by scientists who have the necessary technical knowledge required to discern the validity of arguments based on mathematics, physics, or cosmology. Instead these scientists choose to remain outside the fray. The unwillingness of most scientists to engage in the very real war between science and religion is handing victory to religion by default.
Timothy Beal: In the Beginning(s): Appreciating the Complexity of the Bible
Elaine Howard Ecklund, Ph.D.: Religious Scientists: Faith in the American University
Deepak Chopra: Why God's Future Depends on Science
Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.: Creationists Destroy Creationism with Their Own Words
5) You also greatly misunderstand quantum mechanics. The theory says that we cannot predict an event. It does not say that events are uncaused. For example in alpha decay I cannot determine when an atomic nucleus emits an alpha particle but it is caused by the atomic nucleus. When was the last time your watch emitted an uncaused (in your words) helium 4 nucleus? In addition some interpretations of Quantum mechanics are determinate, so no matter how you spin it quantum mechanics does not help you.
6) As for fine turning well at least you did not resort to multiple universes, but again you are confusing the main part of the theists arguments with cartoon versions. Hawking claim on p127 requires more fine-turning than what he trys to explan away on p121. The fine turning arguments also includes the low-entropy conditions at the beginning of are universe, the fine turning of gravity etc. ALL attempts to explan fine-turning require either more stringent fine turning or multiple universes.
All the best
I am, however, very disappointed by your position on this though, and I see it as a clear example of Brandon Carter's point that ideologically pre-disposed scientists will find ways to ignore or even deny evidence for anthropic privilege in the observation. You spend your time fighting a culture war with a specific group of fanatics and I believe that this motivates you to find ways to downplay and deny potentially fruitful science.
What makes you so sure that we aren't simply a specially necessary function of the thermodynamic process? The physics doesn't apply just to Earth, you know?
Why otherwise would you automatically assume that there isn't a bio-oriented cosmological structure principle in effect, like an energy conservation law that requires carbon based life over a specifically defined region of the observed universe and over an equally specific time in its history?
For example only:
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2004/09/30/2003204990
Anyway, my confidence comes from the fact that I think that I have very good reason to think that I know the rest of the story, so I see what you do as being harmful to science, but you are far from alone.
Again, my apologies... I have new respect for you as a person.
http://www.indcatholicnews.com/news.php?viewStory=16815
* I'm surprised that, in responding to the admittedly flawed argument against an eternal universe, you refer to time as ticks on a clock. That is surely only true for local time. The universe you refer to as eternal is the multiverse or megaverse, in which there is no evidence of a "clock" whatsoever. Come to think of it, aren't you the author of Timeless Universe?
* Many "fine tuning" parameters can be explained or at least reinterpreted. The one that convinced Steven Weinberg, Leonard Susskind, and other giants in your field of the anthropic principle is the cosmological constant, sitting out there 120 decimal places to the right of zero for no apparent reason. Mind you, it's the weak anthropic principle they are invoking, but anthropic all the same. If you dispute WAP, you need to deal head on with their arguments, not the easy ones presented by ill-informed and truthiness-inclined apologists.
Best regards,
Clay
Lenny also says that 'we will be hardpressed to answer the ID critics if his multiverse fails, since we will have no explanation of nature's fine-tunings'... so the best that Vic can hope for is a disagreement between scientists as to whether or not fine-tuning exists or not.
http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0405189
Course, we DON'T have a multiverse without either, a final theory, or a complete theory of quantum gravity, so the "appearance of design" that Susskind refers to gives creationinsts the stronger argument until or unless one of the above happens, or if we're lucky some real scientist will produce a true cosmological principle that resolves the problem of the flat yet expanding universe from first principles.
Denialism... will never win...
Time is what you read on a clock. In fact, the clocks is in Boulder ten miles from where I live. Why shouldn't it apply to all our observations?
In Timeless Reality (Prometheus Books 2000) I described particle motion as going both ways in time, so that on any given path the clocks cancel giving zero time. This is a reification of Feynman paths
in which every possible path occurs.
The calculation that is off by 120 orders of magnitude is the worst calculation in physics history. It is obviously wrong and should be ignored. A recent calculation using the holographic model is right one. It is too new to say its the answer. But as long as there are plausible explanations for data, no one can claim fine tuning.
How do I get my messages to wrap properly?
This is not the same as an infinite universe, which makes no sense. Mathematicians will tell you there is no number equal to infinity.
We may ask if this then means that questions about the existence of God (or Plato’s Prime Mover) are scientifically relevant? I would say that based on the validity and reliability of the theories that spring from idealism and dualism, it certainly is.
If a logical argument can be made for the existence of God, and if that argument conforms to the principle of sufficient reason and gets by Ockhams Razor, then we can assert that God exists without a doubt. The nature, personality or characteristics of God is as irrelevant to science as the nature and laws of other universes in the multiverse. What is more important is that we know that God and a multiverse exist without a doubt. What goes on beyond that is subject to the imagination.
The characters in a computer game meet all the rules of logic. Yet they do not exist.
You've failed in the first step. Define 'God'. Then construct a logical argument for it. No fair crafting your definition through special pleading, either!
Mortimer J Adler made a brilliant cosmological argument for the existence of God and I will refer you to John Cramer’s discussion of it. John Cramer is a Professor of Physics at the University of Washington.
http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1995/PSCF3-95Cramer.html
In my view, there is more convincing evidence to be found in the groundbreaking research done by Dr Pim van Lommel in near death experiences. He showed that in some instances, consciousness may be detached from material existence. People that were clinically dead for a few minutes (flat EEG, in other words zero brain activity) at times reported conscious experiences while they were dead, sometimes even describing things that happened around them while they were dead. He concluded that it seems as if the mind is not necessarily the result of biochemical reactions in the brain, but that it rather seems as if the brain is an instrument used by the mind to manifest itself in the physical world.
http://www.towardthelight.org/neardeathstudies/pimvanlommelarticles.html
A flat EEG does not mean zero brain activity. It only detects activity in the outer layer of the brain.
The NDE can be generated physically. It is just an effect of oxygen deprivation,
As a person who had studied psychology for more than five years, I have to say that Van Lommel’s conclusion rings true. The mind is as much affected by the physical world and the biochemistry in the brain as the brain is affected by the mind. If a person suffers from depression, the biochemical imbalances in the nervous system may be managed by medication. However, the biochemical imbalances are also affected positively purely through counselling. As cognition is a construct of the mind rather than the result of physical reactions in the brain, one would have to conclude that the mind is in the driving seat while the brain is the vehicle.
This can be illustrated by studying lesions to the brain that affect memory functions. If the damage is not permanent and the brain repairs itself, memory functions return. In the case of long term memories that return, one may ask where the memories were stored while the brain was damaged? From Van Lommel’s model, one can deduce that the brain is rather like a computer that connects to the internet. If the computer is damaged, the internet is still there.
At some point, the physicist Roger Penrose suggested that the mind may be nothing more than a quantum computer, processing and storing all the information in the brain itself, no internet required. To me, this seemed like a plausible explanation for near death experiences since an EEG would not detect quantum fluctuations. However, Max Tegmark did the math and concluded that whatever the brain's quantum nature is, it decoheres far too rapidly for the neurons to take advantage of it. http://www.sustainedaction.org/Explorations/problem_with_quantum_mind_theory.htm
There is thus reasonable grounds to suspect that mind and body is mutually inclusive in life but not necessarily in death. This points to dualism -- in other words the body and the soul so harshly refuted by Hawking and his friends.
Although they are no doubt brilliant physicists, Hawking, Mlodinov and Stenger seem to overplay their hand. Unless they employ specialists in other fields, they should stick to physics and leave philosophy and all other scientific disciplines to those that specialise in it. Selectively mentioning articles that would support their worldview is bias and unscientific.
Hawking claims:
[In the inflationary model] the rate of expansion of the universe would automatically become very close to the critical rate determined by the energy density of the universe. This could then explain why the rate of expansion is still so close to the critical rate, without having to assume that the initial rate of expansion of the universe was very carefully chosen. (p. 128)
And Vic ASSUMES:
So the rate of expansion of the universe is not fine-tuned at all. Its value is exactly what it should be.
Vic, son, do you seriously think that these unprovable theoretical speculations disprove anything that the creationists claim without even having a final theory to justify that these aren't just scientific games of mental masturbation?
Seriously Vic... yours and Hawking's religion, Copernicanism, is a counter-evidential belief that you cannot justify any better than creationists can justify theirs.
Praise Copernicus... god of the antifanatic...
You also know that there are a minority of reputable physicists who will point this out, and Hawking's speculation doesn't make it so...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation_%28cosmology%29
"One of the most severe challenges for inflation arises from the need for fine tuning in inflationary theories. In new inflation, the slow-roll conditions must be satisfied for inflation to occur. The slow-roll conditions say that the inflaton potential must be flat (compared to the large vacuum energy) and that the inflaton particles must have a small mass. In order for the new inflation theory of Linde, Albrecht and Steinhardt to be successful, therefore, it seemed that the universe must have a scalar field with an especially flat potential and special initial conditions."
I have a lot more that I'd like to say about Inflationary theory, because that question doesn't even arise when your project expansion backwards UNLESS you pre-assume a singularity. Then you HAVE to invent a band-aid... otherwise, your conclusion would most naturally be much different.