Orderly Universe: Evidence of God?

Since writing my book "Irreligion" and some of my recent Who's Counting columns, I've received a large number of e-mails from subscribers to creation science (who have recently christened themselves intelligent design theorists). Some of the notes have been polite, some vituperative, but almost all question "how order and complexity can arise out of nothing."

Since they can imagine no way for this to happen, they conclude there must be an intelligent designer, a God. (They leave aside the prior question of how He arose.)

My canned answer to them about biological order talks a bit about evolution, but they often dismiss that source of order for religious reasons or because of a misunderstanding of the second law of thermodynamics.

(See Complexity and Intelligent Design for my Who's Counting discussion of biological and economic order and complexity arising out of very simple programs.)

Because the seemingly inexplicable arising of order seems to be so critical to so many, however, I've decided to list here a few other sources for naturally occurring order in physics, math, and biology. Of course, order, complexity, entropy, randomness and related notions are clearly and utterly impossible to describe and disentangle in a column like this, but the examples below from "Irreligion" hint at some of the abstract ideas relevant to the arising of what has been called "order for free."

Let me begin by noting that even about the seemingly completely disordered, we can always say something. No universe could be completely random at all levels of analysis.

In physics, this idea is illustrated by the kinetic theory of gases. There an assumption of disorder on one formal level of analysis, the random movement of gas molecules, leads to a kind of order on a higher level, the relations among variables such as temperature, pressure and volume known as the gas laws. The law-like relations follow from the lower-level randomness and a few other minimal assumptions. (This bit of physics does not mean that life has evolved simply by chance, a common mischaracterization of evolution.)

In addition to the various laws of large numbers studied in statistics, a notion that manifests a different aspect of this idea is statistician Persi Diaconis' remark that if you look at a big enough population long enough, then "almost any damn thing will happen."

A more profound version of this line of thought can be traced back to British mathematician Frank Ramsey, who proved a strange theorem. It stated that if you have a sufficiently large set of geometric points and every pair of them is connected by either a red line or a green line (but not by both), then no matter how you color the lines, there will always be a large subset of the original set with a special property. Either every pair of the subset's members will be connected by a red line or every pair of the subset's members will be connected by a green line.

If, for example, you want to be certain of having at least three points all connected by red lines or at least three points all connected by green lines, you will need at least six points. (The answer is not as obvious as it may seem, but the proof isn't difficult.)

For you to be certain that you will have four points, every pair of which is connected by a red line, or four points, every pair of which is connected by a green line, you will need 18 points, and for you to be certain that there will be five points with this property, you will need -- it's not known exactly - between 43 and 55. With enough points, you will inevitably find unicolored islands of order as big as you want, no matter how you color the lines.

A whole mathematical subdiscipline has grown up devoted to proving theorems of this same general form: How big does a set have to be so that there will always be some subset of a given size that it will constitute an island of order of some sort?

Ramsey-type theorems may even be part of the explanation (along, of course, with Diaconis' dictum) for some of the equidistant letter sequences that constitute the bible codes. Any sufficiently long sequence of symbols, especially one written in the restricted vocabulary of ancient Hebrew, is going to contain subsequences that appear meaningful.

Finally, of more direct relevance to evolution and the origin of living complexity is the work of Stuart Kauffman. In his book, "At Home in the Universe," he discusses what he has termed the aforementioned notion of "order for free."

Motivated by the idea of hundreds of genes in a genome turning on and off other genes and the order and pattern that nevertheless exist, Kauffman asks us to consider a large collection of 10,000 light bulbs, each bulb having inputs from two other bulbs in the collection.

Assume that you connect these bulbs at random, that a clock ticks off one-second intervals, and that at each tick each bulb either goes on or off according to some arbitrarily selected rule. For some bulbs, the rule might be to go off at any instant unless both inputs are on the previous instant. For others it might be to go on at any instant if at least one of the inputs is off the previous instant. Given the random connections and random assignment of rules, it would be natural to expect the collection of bulbs to flicker chaotically with no apparent pattern.

What happens, however, is that very soon one observes order for free, more or less stable cycles of light configurations, different ones for different initial conditions. Kauffman proposes that some phenomenon of this sort supplements or accentuates the effects of natural selection.

Although there is certainly no need for yet another argument against the seemingly ineradicable silliness of "creation science," these light bulb experiments and the unexpected order that occurs so naturally in them do seem to provide one.

In any case, order for free and apparent complexity greater than we might naively expect are no basis for believing in God as traditionally defined. Of course, we can always redefine God to be an inevitable island of order or some sort of emergent mathematical entity. If we do that, the above considerations can be taken as indicating that such a pattern will necessarily exist, but that's hardly what people mean by God.

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John Allen Paulos, a professor of mathematics at Temple University, is the author of the best-sellers "Innumeracy" and "A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper," as well as of the just-released "Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why The Arguments for God Just Don't Add Up " His "Who's Counting?" column on ABCNEWS.com appears the first weekend of every month.

Any thoughts as to what God was doing for infinity prior to creating the universe?

That question implies the passage of time, which is a function of our universe. What God was doing was being. He's always in the "now".

A question can be faulty for a number of reasons, the most grievous one being a faulty or unproveable assumption built into it.

“Have you stopped beating your wife?” is the classic example of that.

If you’ve never beaten your wife, that question has no answer.

“How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?”

That assumes that there are angels, they dance, and they can get really tiny.

The answer to that is four, by the way.

The 'why' mode throws the inquiry into the intention aspect.

Perhaps. There are, of course, why questions that don't: "Why is the sky blue?" for example.

But I think in the main it's true of the subject of this thread. I agree with those who say "if you can prove it scientifically, it isn't God" with the inverse also being true.

Science deals only with that which can be detected by the senses (and their extensions) and that has size, locations, quantity.

By definition this places God outside the realm of science.

We shouldn't forget that for all it's benefit and value, science limits itself to the smallest sphere of knowledge, we can know more than we can know by science alone. But we have to use other tools in addition to science.

thanks for your reply.

He's always in the "now".

Good. Kind of like the rest of us. I tried living in the future, but the software was all written in Spanish.

THREAD HIJACK ALERT

why questions that don't

Yes, there are, but they are defective. Most of the most consistent writers and answerers of questions avoid 'why' questions altogether unless they want to enter into the discipline of psychology for a moment and instead use 'how' questions that call for some kind of explanation, as in descriptive sciences or sciences of law, or even historical science.

He's always in the "now". Good. Kind of like the rest of us. I tried living in the future, but the software was all written in Spanish. THREAD HIJACK ALERT

I wasn't trying to hijack the thread. You asked an interesting question and I was giving you an honest answer. Time is a function of our reality, related to the expansion of the universe. Most who believe in God believe that he exists outside of time. A standard definition of infinity is time without end. So your question about what God was doing for "infinity" was meaningless.

I was trying to convey that God, outside, of time, is self-existent, eternal, timeless. It's a difficult concept to wrap ones mind around, but it's been discussed and theorized about by philosophers for eons.

Good points thanks.

And, I think illustrative of the limits of science. It measures, describes and creates models of the physical universe.

Very interesting and useful knowledge, but still a level below the questions posed by the article.

thanks for your reply.

My answer introduces nothing not already on the table according to your question. This tells us you have introduced the component of faith whereas I merely accept the premise you established.

So here’s the logic in my answer, which is not based on faith but on your premise that a question can be asked about “what God was doing for infinity” (in other words, you cannot ask a question about God and then deny your opponent the right to answer simply because you claim God doesn’t exist):

Intelligence is quantifiable, therefore can be described as hierarchical, following which we can logically conclude God occupies a higher rung on that scale than humans. Logic dictates that God as creator of the universe has the capacity to understand and to answer questions pertaining to the origin of that entity we know as time, and that we have far less of such capacity.

The opposing arguments to each of these points are illogical.

the unbeliever in the inerrancy of the human heart.

Good point. And that notion screams of pride because they know they make mistakes and lack knowledge in many areas. One day this is right, the next day more knowledge is added that may counteract prior knowledge or it exposes prior knowledge was off base a bit. Trial and error.

But God is All Knowing, All Truth - His Word never changes - He is The Creator of all. To accept that - pride needs to be left at the doorway before entering into Truth. How costly would that be for those who's education and chosen careers are about God is irrelevant and/or may have 'some' part in the creation. Years spent learning and teaching is all for naught - they were on the wrong path all along. The more one is puffed up in himself w/his knowledge, the more unteachable they are. Pride has consequences in this life and eternally.

I understand that, and my hijack alert was poking fun at my own response which arguably could have sent the thread into a discussion of illegal immigration, as so often happens on other threads here.

I was just having some fun.

I understand the concept you were trying to convey. Time most definitely is a concept tied to a physical universe, and while it’s a hard concept to grasp, it doesn’t exist outside of it.

As far as we know.

There’s also no reason to rule out multiple universes, although the phrase seems like an oxymoron. In fact, science predicts that this is a reality. The theoretical thinking and equations are far too sophisticated for me, but my original question for discussion about what God was doing before the creation of this universe could have easily been answered with “What makes you think this is the only universe?”.

Good points. The beauty and complexity of a single snowflake alone, unique to every other snowflake since the beginning of time, is evidence of an amazingly creative and artistic Being beyond human comprehension.

Outside of Him revealing Himself to His creation in written form (the Word), spiritual form (miracles) and physical form (Jesus Christ of Nazareth) we can’t begin to fathom how great a God created this intricate, ordered and complex system we live in. To approach the world through a purely materialist world view, as evolutionists do, will never explain DNA etc.. They leave out the most important part, the Originator who is not material in nature (but spiritual) and does not need to behave according to man’s materialist expectations or theories, rather he reveals His character through the material world to glorify Himself. If you approach the tapestry of creation this way you can appreciate the artist and seek Him out rather than run around in circles chasing your “evolved” tales.

I agree that God could have (or will) create other universes, although that falls into the realm of speculation. From a strictly biblical viewpoint we know that God is creating children through humanity. The children of God are to be part of the ruling family of God with Godlike powers. Who is to say that our destinies don't include a hand in the creation of other universes?

So I would agree that it's very possible for there to be other universes, especially if theoretical mathematics allow for it.

Intelligence is quantifiable, therefore can be described as hierarchical, following which we can logically conclude God occupies a higher rung on that scale than humans.

I'm on thin ice even raising these questions here, and I'm mostly playing devil's advocate, but it gets people to think. Of course, then they hit abuse, and I get banned, but I like to live dangerously.

Why do you think God is smarter than you? Being more powerful is not the same as smart. You could go back in the middle ages with a submachinegun, and you'd be considered God.

God may have destroyed the earth in Noah's Flood, but how smart was that? It didn't change a thing. Noah immediately got drunk, the survivors built the Tower of Babel, and nobody learned a lesson. The world is at least as sinful now as it was before the Flood.

What exactly did it accomplish?

Any sufficiently long sequence of symbols, especially one written in the restricted vocabulary of ancient Hebrew, is going to contain subsequences that appear meaningful.

Well, duh! "Sufficiently long" is exactly what?

No universe could be completely random at all levels of analysis.

Proof for other "universes"? (Hint: remember "sufficiently long"). For the only universe we know of, the statement is absolutely true. We are here. IOW that statement is another useless statement.

Psalms 14:1 The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. They are corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that doeth good.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Romans 1:22 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools..

Romans 1:22-23 Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

I believe it all so by worldly standards, I am a fool.
I make NO APOLOGY for believing the Bible. NONE. I am not an “apologist”.

Well finite minds want to be infinite like God.

As these finite minds shake their fist, at God, they look all the more foolish when the OBVIOUS keeps getting in the way - orderly design. Even Genesis starts out with the necessary order for LIFE.

You’re right.

ONLY God “creates” from nothing.

Humans may create but they start with what God has CREATED. Any part needed to “create” God CREATED for their use.

You know, it must be very frustrating to be a atheist.

It stated that if you have a sufficiently large set of geometric points and every pair of them is connected by either a red line or a green line (but not by both), then no matter how you color the lines, there will always be a large subset of the original set with a special property. Either every pair of the subset's members will be connected by a red line or every pair of the subset's members will be connected by a green line

Really? Given a sufficiently large set of randomly flipped quarters lying on a sufficiently large surface, You will discover a large subset of these quarters lying with the same face showing. So what?

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