God, Man and Physics

The God Hypothesis:
Discovering Design in our "Just Right" Goldilocks Universe
by Michael A. Corey
(Rowman & Littlefield, 256 pp., $27)

GOD'S EXISTENCE is not required by the premises of quantum mechanics or general relativity, the great theories of twentieth-century physics --but then again, it is not contravened by their conclusions either. What else can we do but watch and wait?

The agnostic straddle. It is hardly a posture calculated to set the blood racing. In the early 1970s Jacques Monod and Steven Weinberg thus declared themselves in favor of atheism, each man eager to communicate his discovery that the universe is without plan or purpose. Any number of philosophers have embraced their platform, often clambering onto it by brute force. Were God to exist, Thomas Nagel remarked, he would not only be surprised, but disappointed.

A great many ordinary men and women have found both atheism and agnosticism dispiriting--evidence, perhaps, of their remarkable capacity for intellectual ingratitude. The fact remains that the intellectual's pendulum has swung along rather a tight little arc for much of the twentieth century: atheism, the agnostic straddle, atheism, the agnostic straddle.

The revival of natural theology in the past twenty-five years has enabled that pendulum to achieve an unexpected amplitude, its tip moving beyond atheism and the agnostic straddle to something like religious awe, if not religious faith.

It has been largely the consolidation of theoretical cosmology that has powered the upward swing. Edwin Hubble's discovery that the universe seemed to be expanding in every direction electrified the community of cosmologists in the late 1920s, and cosmologists were again electrified when it became clear that these facts followed from Einstein's general theory of relativity. Thereafter, their excitement diminished, if only because the idea that the universe was expanding suggested inexorably that it was expanding from an origin of some sort, a big bang, as the astronomer Fred Hoyle sniffed contemptuously.

In 1963 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson inadvertently noticed the background microwave radiation predicted by Big Bang cosmology; when Robert Dicke confirmed the significance of their observation, competing steady-state theories of creation descended at once into desuetude. And thereafter a speculative story became a credible secular myth.

But if credible, the myth was also incomplete. The universe, cosmologists affirmed, erupted into existence fifteen billion years ago. Details were available, some going back to the first three minutes of creation. Well and good. But the metaphoric assimilation of the Big Bang to the general run of eruptions conveyed an entirely misleading sense of similarity. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius took place in space and time; the Big Bang marks the spot at which time and space taper to a singularity and then vanish altogether.

It follows that the universe came into existence from nothing whatsoever, and for no good reason that anyone could discern, least of all cosmologists. Even the most ardent village atheist became uneasily aware that Big Bang cosmology and the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis shared a family resemblance too obvious profitably to be denied.

Thereafter, natural theology, long thought dead of inanition, began appearing at any number of colloquia in mathematical physics, often welcomed by the same physicists who had recently been heard reading its funeral obsequies aloud. In "The God Hypothesis: Discovering Design in our "Just Right" Goldilocks Universe," Michael A. Corey is concerned to convey their news without worrying overmuch about the details. His message is simple. There is a God, a figure at once omnipotent, omniscient, eternal, and necessary. Science has established his existence.

AT THE very heart of revived natural theology are what the physicist Brandon Carter called "anthropic coincidences." Certain structural features of the universe, Carter argued, seemed finally tuned to permit the emergence of life. This is a declaration, to be sure, that suggests far more than it asserts. Structural features? Finely tuned? Permit? When the metaphors are squeezed dry, what more is at issue beyond the observation that life is a contingent affair? This is not a thesis in dispute.

Still, it often happens that commonplace observations, when sharpened, prompt questions that they had long concealed. The laws of physics draw a connection between the nature of certain material objects and their behavior. Falling from a great height, an astrophysicist no less than an airplane accelerates toward the center of the earth. Newton's law of gravitational attraction provides an account of this tendency in terms of mass and distance (or heft and separation). In order to gain traction on the real world, the law requires a fixed constant, a number that remains unchanged as mass and distance vary. Such is Newton's universal gravitational constant.

There are many comparable constants throughout mathematical physics, and they appear to have no very obvious mathematical properties. They are what they are. But if arbitrary, they are also crucial. Were they to vary from the values that they have, this happy universe--such is the claim--would be too small or too large or too gaseous or otherwise too flaccid to sustain life. And these are circumstances that, if true, plainly require an explanation.

Carter was a capable physicist; instead of being chuckled over and dismissed by a handful of specialists, the paper that he wrote in 1974 was widely read, Fred Hoyle, Freeman Dyson, Martin Rees, Stephen Hawking, Paul Davies, Steven Weinberg, Robert Jastrow, and John Gribbin all contributing to the general chatter. Very few physicists took the inferential trail to its conclusion in faith; what is notable is that any of them took the trail at all.

THE ASTRONOMER Fred Hoyle is a case in point, his atheism in the end corrected by his pleased astonishment at his own existence. Living systems are based on carbon, he observed, and carbon is formed within stars by a process of nucleosynthesis. (The theory of nucleosynthesis is, indeed, partly his creation.) Two helium atoms fuse to form a beryllium intermediate, which then fuses again with another helium atom to form carbon. The process is unstable because beryllium intermediates are short-lived.

In 1953 Edwin Salpeter discovered that the resonance between helium and intermediate beryllium atoms, like the relation between an opera singer and the glass she shatters, is precisely tuned to facilitate beryllium production. Hoyle then discovered a second nuclear resonance, this one acting between beryllium and helium, and finely tuned as well.

Without carbon, no life. And without specific nuclear resonance levels, no carbon. And yet there he was, Hoyle affirmed, carbon based to the core. Nature, he said in a remark widely quoted, seems to be "a put-up job."

INFERENCES now have a tendency to go off like a string of firecrackers, some of them wet. Hoyle had himself discovered the scenario that made carbon synthesis possible. He thus assigned to what he called a "Supercalculating Intellect" powers that resembled his own. Mindful, perhaps, of the ancient wisdom that God alone knows who God is, he did not go further. Corey is, on the other hand, quite certain that Hoyle's Supercalculating Intellect is, in fact, a transcendental deity--the Deity, to afford Him a promotion in punctuation.

And Corey is certain, moreover, that he quite knows His motives. The Deity, in setting nuclear resonance levels, undertook his affairs "in order to create carbon based life forms."

Did He indeed? It is by no means obvious. For all we know, the Deity's concern may have lain with the pleasurable intricacies of nucleosynthesis, the emergence of life proving, like so many other things, an inadvertent consequence of his tinkering. For that matter, what sense does it make to invoke the Deity's long term goals, when it is His existence that is at issue? If nothing else, natural theology would seem to be a trickier business than physicists may have imagined.

AS IT HAPPENS, the gravamen of Corey's argument lies less with what the Deity may have had in mind and more with the obstacles He presumably needed to overcome. "The cumulative effect of this fine tuning," Corey argues, "is that, against all the odds, carbon was able to be manufactured in sufficient quantities inside stellar interiors to make our lives possible." That is the heart of the matter: against all the odds. And the obvious question that follows: Just how do we know this?

Corey does not address the question specifically, but he offers an answer nonetheless. It is, in fact, the answer Hoyle provides as well. They both suppose that something like an imaginary lottery (or roulette wheel) governs the distribution of values to the nuclear resonance levels of beryllium or helium. The wheel is spun. And thereafter the right resonance levels appear. The odds now reflect the pattern familiar in any probabilistic process--one specified outcome weighed against all the rest. If nuclear resonance levels are, in fact, unique, their emergence on the scene would have the satisfying aspect of a miracle.

It is a miracle, of course, whose luster is apt to dim considerably if other nuclear resonance levels might have done the job and thus won the lottery. And this is precisely what we do not know. The nuclear resonance levels specified by Hoyle are sufficient for the production of carbon. The evidence is all around us. It is entirely less clear that they are necessary as well. Corey and Hoyle make the argument that they are necessary because, if changed slightly, nucleosynthesis would stop. "Overall, it is safe to say"--Corey is speaking, Hoyle nodding--"that given the utter precision displayed by these nuclear resonances with respect to the synthesis of carbon, not even one of them could have been slightly different without destroying their precious carbon yield." This is true, but inconclusive. Mountain peaks are isolated but not unique. Corey and Hoyle may well be right in their conclusions. It is their argument that does not inspire confidence.

THE TROUBLE is not merely a matter of the logical niceties. Revived natural theology has staked its claims on probability. There is nothing amiss in this. Like the rest of us, physicists calculate the odds when they cannot calculate anything better. The model to which they appeal may be an imaginary lottery, roulette wheel, or even a flipped coin, but imaginary is the governing word. Whatever the model, it corresponds to no plausible physical mechanism. The situation is very different in molecular biology, which is one reason criticism of neo-Darwinism very often has biting power. When biologists speculate on the origins of life, they have in mind a scenario in which various chemicals slosh around randomly in some clearly defined physical medium. What does the sloshing with respect to nuclear resonance?

Or with respect to anything else? Current dogma suggests that many of the constants of mathematical physics were fixed from the first, and so constitute a part of the initial conditions of the Big Bang. Corey does not demur; it is a conclusion that he endorses. What then is left of the anthropic claim that the fundamental constants have the value that they do despite "all odds"? In the beginning there was no time, no place, no lottery at all.

MATHEMATICAL physics currently trades in four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak forces governing the nucleus and radioactive decay. In general relativity and quantum mechanics, it contains two great but incompatible theories. This is clearly an embarrassment of riches. If possible, unification of these forces and theories is desirable. And not only unification, but unification in the form of a complete and consistent theoretical structure.

Such a theory, thoughtful physicists imagine, might serve to show that the anthropic coincidences are an illusion in that they are not coincidences at all. The point is familiar. Egyptian engineers working under the pharaohs knew that the angles of a triangle sum to more or less one hundred and eighty degrees. The number appears as a free parameter in their theories, something given by experience and experiment. The Greeks, on the other hand, could prove what the Egyptians could only calculate. No one would today think to ask why the interior angles of a Euclidean triangle sum to precisely one hundred and eighty degrees. The question is closed because the answer is necessary.

THE GRAND HOPE of modern mathematical physicists is that something similar will happen in modern mathematical physics. The Standard Model of particle physics contains a great many numerical slots that must be filled in by hand. This is never counted as a satisfaction, but a more powerful physical theory might show how those numerical slots are naturally filled, their particular values determined ultimately by the theory's fundamental principles. If this proves so, the anthropic coincidences will lose their power to vex and confound.

Nonetheless, the creation of a complete and consistent physical theory will not put an end to revived natural theology. Questions once asked about the fundamental constants of mathematical physics are bound to reappear as questions about the nature of its laws. The constants of mathematical physics may make possible the existence of life, but the laws of mathematical physics make possible the existence of matter. They have, those laws, an overwhelmingly specific character. Other laws, under which not much exists, are at least imaginable. What explanation can mathematical physics itself provide for the fact that the laws of nature are arranged as they are and that they have the form that they do? It is hardly an unreasonable question.

Steven Weinberg has suggested that a final theory must be logically isolated in the sense that any perturbation of its essential features would destroy the theory's coherence. Logical isolation is by no means a clear concept, and it is one of the ironies of modern mathematical physics that the logical properties of the great physical theories are no less mysterious than the physical properties of the universe they are meant to explain. Let us leave the details to those who cherish them.

The tactic is clear enough. The laws of a final theory determine its parameters; its logical structure determines its laws. No further transcendental inference is required, if only because that final theory explains itself.

This is very elegant. It is also entirely unpersuasive. A theory that is logically isolated is not necessarily a theory that is logically unique. Other theories may be possible, some governing imaginary worlds in which light alone exists, others worlds in which there is nothing whatsoever. The world in which we find ourselves is one in which galaxies wink and matter fills the cup of creation. What brings about the happy circumstance that the laws making this possible are precisely the laws making it real? The old familiar circle.

ALL THIS leaves us where we so often find ourselves. We are confronted with certain open questions. We do not know the answers, but what is worse, we have no clear idea--no idea whatsoever--of how they might be answered. But perhaps that is where we should be left: in the dark, tortured by confusing hints, intimations of immortality, and a sense that, dear God, we really do not yet understand.

----------------------------
David Berlinski is a senior fellow of Discovery Institute and the author of "A Tour of the Calculus" and "The Advent of the Algorithm." His most recent book is Newton's Gift (Free Press).

"You're simply lawyering on the lack of evidence. Don't forget to change your tune if it turns up; you wouldn't want to look like Gish."

No, I'm simply asking you to substantiate a claim that you made (i.e. that there was no evidence of big leaps in design introductions).

I even attempted to give you an example (duck-billed platipus) of such a design leap to aid in your explanation, but you seem determined to avoid substantiating your claim at all costs.

Intelligent Design is responsible for the genetically modified organs we see growing in pigs and rats in laboritories. - Southack

"It's also responsible for the wheel. I don't buy it as proof of God/aliens, period." - VadeRetro

I'm not selling it.

All that I did was to answer your request for an event that could be explained by Intelligent Design but not by Evolution. The genetically modified organs we see growing in pigs and rats in laboritories today clearly meets your prerequisites, and your desire to postulate on god and aliens rather than reflect on the sincere answer to your own question marks your own disingenuousness...

Most Darwinians claim that Evolution is dependent upon:
1. Appropriate environment,
2. Natural Selection, and
3. Random Mutations.

You weren't paying attention, because I very carefully stated it, though I knew that this is the kind of response I'd get. Degrees of freedom are unverified premises. We can ignore #1 (since it essentially cancels out with the second list). Selection essentially means "death". Are you saying that death is an unverified phenomenon? While you may be willing to contest it, I am pretty sure that everything dies, and that we aren't all dying at exactly the same time from exactly the same causes. We all get selected out of the gene pool eventually, whether it is death due to organ failure in old age or death due to adolescent stupidity. Therefore, this is not a degree of freedom. As for random mutation, that is also self-evident as it occurs literally everywhere all the time in biology. It is how we end up with weird genetic disorders and other anomalies.

3 degrees of freedom versus 2, yet you picked the loser and wrongly ascribed Occam's Razor as your reasoning.

I think you need to recount. Demonstrable facts aren't open variables, and don't confuse the hypothesis with the premise. Remember, the point of this isn't to determine how a specific case of speciation occurred, but to determine both what is possible and what is probable.

"As for random mutation, that is also self-evident as it occurs literally everywhere all the time in biology. It is how we end up with weird genetic disorders and other anomalies."

Self-evident to you, unproven to the scientific world. Random mutation might be responsible for self-evolution, but then again, it might not.

What you are trying to say is that since everything about Evolution is obvious, that Occam's Razor supports it, and that's a ridiculous tautology.

List all that is required for Evolution. List all that is required for Intelligent Design. Count the number of items and then apply William's theorem. If you can do it honestly, then you'll begin to see why Evolutionists don't quote Occam's Razor in any serious debate...

Yes. I am acting that way because you said that producing an example or demonstration of a computer program self-forming in a random environment was "trivial".

It is trivial to demonstrate the validity of the mathematics. Our computers are a bit slow to give a really nice example in a reasonable amount of time (i.e. you probably would turn up your nose at examples that ARE tractable as being too simple). On the other hand, quantum computers can sift extremely large combinatorial spaces in one shot, so that would make the O(k^n) into a O(n), which does make it trivial. And while very simple quantum computers have been built, I certainly don't own one.

Now you seem to be backtracking; perhaps seeking intellectual refuge in the wilderness of potential future engineering breakthroughs...

Don't be a twit. It isn't fantasy engineering, but just substantially fancier versions of existing capabilities. I'm not backtracking; what you take as backtracking is me dropping an argument that isn't going anywhere and trying to drag the argument back to a relevant point. I'm working a lot of hours these days (starting yet another new company) and don't have time to spend on this forum arguing facts that people aren't interested in hearing or even doing the most rudimentary research on.

Let me make this clear: not only were you WRONG to claim that such an exercise was trivial, but you were deceptive when you tried to extrapolate from that alleged triviality the false point that this was mathematically proven.

And this is exactly the kind of bullshit I don't have time for. Have you ever actually picked up a math text relevant to the subject we are talking about? It IS mathematically proven and a fundamental theorem that is used in a dozen different technical fields. The only reason I learned it was that it was a necessary mathematical foundation for work I do. You certainly won't find any mathematicians that will refute it. And it is simply laughable that you blithely confuse "infinite" with "finite but extremely large", which is something no one with any type of serious mathematics background would do. With all due respect, you clearly are not qualified to argue advanced topics of mathematics. You handle the evolution/ID argument pretty well but you are out of your league on the matter of the mathematics.

Self-evident to you, unproven to the scientific world. Random mutation might be responsible for self-evolution, but then again, it might not.

Stop twisting the argument. The hypothesis is that mutation/selection are adequate to cause speciation. Mutation exists and selection exists. These are verified premises. That mutation/selection causes speciation is purely hypothetical as we do not have any specific evidence of it happening even though there is nothing to suggest it is not possible. This hypothesis doesn't even demand that speciation IS caused by mutation/selection, only that it is a possible mechanism of many.

I've noticed in the last few responses to things I've written that you are having difficulty with reading comprehension. It would be a lot more fruitful if you actually addressed what I wrote rather than what you think I said.

No, Natural Selection means that the most adapted species will survive and thrive. It is the least adapted species that dies off.

This is a different way of saying the same thing as it applies to biology. "Natural selection" is actually about reproductive success and the termination of reproductive capability, which usually (though not always) means death in living organisms. "Death" may have been a poor bit of shorthand, but when I thought about it, what you wrote wasn't right either. I don't think anyone questions that there is variation in the level of reproductive success of individual organisms in a population.

"The hypothesis is that mutation/selection are adequate to cause speciation. Mutation exists and selection exists. These are verified premises. That mutation/selection causes speciation is purely hypothetical as we do not have any specific evidence of it happening even though there is nothing to suggest it is not possible." - tortoise

It is because mutation and selection (in regards to speciation) are hypothetical that one must list them as individual degrees of freedom when working out an Occam's Razor problem for how speciation is achieved (i.e. via Evolution or Intelligent Design).

Post #194 does that. Please refer back to it.

Yes. I am acting that way because you said that producing an example or demonstration of a computer program self-forming in a random environment was "trivial". - southack

"It is trivial to demonstrate the validity of the mathematics." - tortoise

Well, since you say that it is "trivial", you'll have no problem producing a demonstration of the mathematics for random noise creating a working version of Abode PhotoShop.

Trivial, indeed...

"Don't be a twit. It isn't fantasy engineering, but just substantially fancier versions of existing capabilities. I'm not backtracking; what you take as backtracking is me dropping an argument that isn't going anywhere and trying to drag the argument back to a relevant point."

You said that producing this demonstration is "trivial". You claim that it doesn't require "fantasy engineering".

Please, show me an example of a useful software program self-forming in a random environment.

These are your claims, after all, and you do repeatedly claim that the demonstration is "trivial", so you'll have no trouble producing this demo, correct?!

One irony to all of this is that, when and if mankind does finally find God, it will be science, not religion, that will find him.

You can say that again. It's too bad that many of either the religous or scientific persuation are so dogmatic that they are blind to the similarities of the philosophies.

I get a kick out of the "Creationists" vs. the "Evolutionists". What a phony issue -- there is nothing precluding a God from setting up an evolutionary mechanism to accomplish his creations (except perhaps a belief in the infallibility of men in writing, translating, editing, and interpreting a bible). In fact it would to be testiment to a greater (and comprehensible) God to fashion this mechanism. And it is clear induction that evolution is a real process that shapes phylogeny.

Ultimately, it may be that God is nothing at all -- the singularity that brought forth the whole universe! The all.

"It IS mathematically proven and a fundamental theorem that is used in a dozen different technical fields. The only reason I learned it was that it was a necessary mathematical foundation for work I do. You certainly won't find any mathematicians that will refute it."

No, what you are citing is folklore, not science. Nobel Prize winner Illya Prigogine CONCLUSIVELY proved, back in 1987, that the very highest possible levels of order could NOT self-form in a chaotic system. There is a limit in every system as to the maximum level of order that can form naturally from chaos.

That's science. Folklore is that a million monkeys typing on a million keyboards for a million years will produce the collected works of Shakespeare. That's what you're trying to say when you claim that useful software programs can just form on their own in a computer if you leave it on long enough.

It is because mutation and selection (in regards to speciation) are hypothetical that one must list them as individual degrees of freedom when working out an Occam's Razor problem for how speciation is achieved (i.e. via Evolution or Intelligent Design).

It is sufficient that we know such a process is possible, both for intelligent design and evolution. I've actually been intentionally ignoring the direction you are taking it because you won't like the results. For example, how do we verify this premised designer? By what process was the design accomplished? What were the physical mechanisms used for speciation by the hypothetical designer?

I can construct a very reasonable argument for the possibility of mutation/selection causing speciation without invoking anything that isn't trivially verifiable in chemistry and mathematics. Remember, the hypothesis is whether or not speciation is possible by these various mechanisms, not what actually CAUSED speciation. For the construction of a valid hypothesis we don't need to exhaustively test the outcome (and I am praying that the reason this is true doesn't have to be explained), but only construct a logical sequence from non-false premises. Note that "non-false" does not equal "true", though "true" is a subset of "non-false". All the "non-false, non-true" premises are what count against you in Occam's razor. The designer is a non-verified premise and therefore non-true, though it IS non-false and therefore an acceptable premise. Note that if man started doing serious gene engineering, man as the designer could be a valid hypothesis in some cases with a verifiable designer premise.

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