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.

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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).

God's existence may not be "required" for quantum mechanics, but for complex mathematical device programming, that's another matter altogether.

All life on Earth is formed via DNA. DNA is comprised of various parings of four root elements: A, C, G, and T components. In math, that's represented as A=0, C=1, G=2, and T=3. 0, 1, 2, 3. That's a mathematical Base 4 system.

These Base-4 groups form the genetic programming of every life form on Earth, wrapped in a physical Double-Helix structure/format. The Base-4 groups are most frequently seen in sub-groups (or sub-programs or sub-routines) known as genes.

These genes are often seen being reused, usually verbatim, in multiple species.

We see such similar programming code re-use in Man-made languages/programs, except that at its most basic point, Man's programming is Base-2 (AKA "binary"), an order of magnitude lower than the Base-4 coding seen in DNA.

The concept that programming an order of magnitude greater than Man's best software - could appear randomly (i.e., without the aid of an Intelligent Designer), is even more ludicrous than the notion that MicroSoft Windows, Linux, and AutoCad would spontaneously form from pure white noise if you left your computer on for several million years.

Quantum mechanics may or may not need a God to exist, but DNA coding was certainly done by someone smarter than we are today.

Very cool and enjoyable essay. It has always interested me that science, for all it's amazing feats, can not and does not even begin to explain the most fundamental questions underlying our existence. Questions like:

"Why are we here?"

"Where are we going?"

"How long have we got?"

Weinberg stated when he recieved his 1978 Nobel prize in physics that "The more we discover about the universe, the more it becomes pointless and meaningless". Sounds like he's trying hard to convince himself.

Regarding the "Goldilocks Universe", Steven Hawking joked about "the anthropomorphic principle of physics", to wit: "Why is the universe exactly the way it is? Because if it was not, we wouldn't be here to ask the question".

The mathematics of western science is powerful and vast, but, as Heins Pagels noted in "The Cosmic Code", all math gives us is descriptions of phenomena, not the phenomena itself. For example, the planets revolve around the sun according to paths described by Newton's differential equations. But the planets are no more solving math equations than they are hanging from strings held by some celestial hand. They are simply moving.

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.

Just my view from the saddle...

As a gravitational physicist, I've heard rants like this quite a bit and they generally represent a fundamental misunderstanding of what is currently 'known'. Many well known physicists have overlooked the finer details and depth of what we have already established, not because they are dim-witted, but because the concepts involved stretch the capacities of human cognition to it's breaking point. It is only after many years that we even begin to fully understand the Great Theories postulated and largely proven decades before.

One example of this relates directly to the notion of a God, and what science can say about it. Few people realize that the scientific method itself has already recursively demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that it is insufficient for a complete understanding of Nature. But this is only unambiguously understood when one understands the full implications of Quantum Field Theory, especially what is known as Objective State Vector Reduction (R. Penrose) and the fact that some quantum coherent states evolve into classical systems in a matter that is non-algorithmic and inherently unpredicatable. Let's be clear: this means that there are Natural processes, clearly identified by the scientific method (they DO occur naturally), that can yield outcomes that cannot, in principle, be predicted in advance. This defeats the notion of scientific objectivism and predictability entirely. It matters not what technology you possess, what great minds you apply, or how lucky you get, the very Laws of Nature forbid such predictability.

This is the very essence of what we regard as 'mind', and 'consciousness'; that is, it possesses the quality of being non-deterministic, at least partly. Where does the 'decision' for a truly 'random' (as humans measure it) come from. It isn't human, as it occurs in Nature. Are these shadows of the mind of God? There has never been a more powerful, damning and thorough argument for the existence of a God than this, yet only in the last couple of years have some of the brightest physicists begun to catch on to this revelation and fully appreciate it's implications. It was only because I've been working directly on the unification issue that I became aware of this profound fact about non-deterministic behavior, and studied it carefully. Most mathematical physicists don't bother with unification: it's too damn hard. But some of us fools keep pressing. But for me, at least, it's about the journey, not necessarily reaching the destination.

In fact, it is amazing how few physicists, or people for that matter, even understand what it means to state a principled truth vs. a practiced truth, yet confusion continues, even in the highest levels of academia. Something weird is going on in the universe and we don't fully understand what it is yet. QFT suggests we probably never will. Any complete theory of Nature will be, in some sense, incomplete, inasmuch as it will necessarily restrict it's scope to those Natural phenomenon that are principally predictable. It's not a huge loss, it could explain the VAST majority of all Natural processes humans are capable of observing, but it leaves just one titillating scintilla of weirdness for which the puny minds of man can only ponder.

But this is only unambiguously understood when one understands the full implications of Quantum Field Theory, especially what is known as Objective State Vector Reduction (R. Penrose) and the fact that some quantum coherent states evolve into classical systems in a matter that is non-algorithmic and inherently unpredicatable. Let's be clear: this means that there are Natural processes, clearly identified by the scientific method (they DO occur naturally), that can yield outcomes that cannot, in principle, be predicted in advance. This defeats the notion of scientific objectivism and predictability entirely. It matters not what technology you possess, what great minds you apply, or how lucky you get, the very Laws of Nature forbid such predictability.

This is the very essence of what we regard as 'mind', and 'consciousness'; that is, it possesses the quality of being non-deterministic, at least partly. Where does the 'decision' for a truly 'random' (as humans measure it) come from. It isn't human, as it occurs in Nature. Are these shadows of the mind of God?

I kinda doubt you'll get many of the Discovery Institute types following you down this road. They may not be hard core fundies like your classical "creation scientists," but I suspect they are still way too theologically conservative to cozy up to the idea of a God "in process" (and therefore not absolutely omnipotent or omniscent) suggested by your musings.

I'm with you, though. I don't understand these physical theories, but have long believed on other grounds that it is not possible for God to be both a conscious persona AND absolutely omniscient and omnipotent, or at least that the idea of such a Diety is severely incoherent. God is the supreme being, and the source of all being, but if conscious and personal then He is capable of learning, of being suprised, of experiencing novelty, etc. In some sense God is evolving.

Indeed I find the notion of "panentheism" (the world is in God) to be the most logically consistent and plausible formulation of theism. Contrary to both classical theism, which holds that the world is totally noncoincident with God, and pantheism, which holds that the world is God, panenthiesm holds that the creaturely universe is part of (but not all of) God. On this view the evolution of the universe is part of the evolution of God Himself, and its laws may indeed be viewed as "shadows of the mind of God".

It may also be, though, that God is not completely conscious of the laws of nature, somewhat as we are not conscious of the processes governing the operation of our own human bodies. It may be that God discovers these laws by a process of "introspection," so that in granting being to universes (I suspect ours is only one of many that have, will or do exist) God is eternally investigating the possibilities of being.

"The concept that programming an order of magnitude greater than Man's best software - could appear randomly (i.e., without the aid of an Intelligent Designer), is even more ludicrous than the notion that MicroSoft Windows, Linux, and AutoCad would spontaneously form from pure white noise if you left your computer on for several million years." -- Southack

Add selection (i.e., users with needs and purposes who interact with the computer) and you will get Windows etc. in just a few short years. The codes evolved as did the languages and the hardware because there were strong selection pressures to increase computing power and complexity.

The Base-4 coding you refer to is misleading. DNA codons consists of four nucleotide bases taken three at a time. This gives 64 possible codons. There are 21 natural amino acids so the code is redundant.

DNA is a linear polymer. The sequence is clearly altered randomly in nature in a great variety of ways -- inversions, translocations, base pair substitutions, deletions, etc. DNA is even shared among widely different species by viral transduction. Bacteria typically acquire resistance to antibiotics through plasmid transfer from unrelated species. All of these phenomena prove that random change is inevitable on a vast scale and that Intelligent Design is an impossibility unless you want to allow that the Hidden Designer molds life by a process that looks exactly like natural selection.

"Add selection (i.e., users with needs and purposes who interact with the computer) and you will get Windows etc. in just a few short years."

Not if there are no programmers. Users can interact all day long for thousands of years, but in a world devoid of programmers, you won't get more sophisticated programs. Likewise, DNA can be altered randomly for thousands of years and still not produce a more sophisticated gene. Programming requires design.

"DNA is a linear polymer. The sequence is clearly altered randomly in nature in a great variety of ways -- inversions, translocations, base pair substitutions, deletions, etc."

DNA is altered randomly just as copying a program over and over will randomly alter programming code eventually, which is to say that the alterations are always negative and usually destructive of the original designed program.

In no way, shape, or form can you copy an old DOS program enough times for random alterations to turn the offspring programs into Windows NT programs.

"In no way, shape, or form can you copy an old DOS program enough times for random alterations to turn the offspring programs into Windows NT programs." -- Southack

You don't understand the power of selection. Take a few billion bacteria descended from a single genetically defined progenitor and treat them with a toxin or withold a vital nutrient and you will likely obtain colonies descended from single mutant individuals that can deal with the toxin or synthesize their own previously required nutrient. The genetic change occurred randomly in the large population but the selection pressure (i.e., toxin or lack of nutrient) caused the mutant strains to replace entirely the ancestral type.

You also need to think differently about your computer program example. Computer codes like DOS and Windows are abstract instruction sets and, unlike the genetic code where every sequence of three bases has potential meaning, this will not be true of computer codes. Additionally, nonsense sequences in the genome are effectively ignored or serve a merely structural function. The first time a computer command mutates it comes to a dead stop and has to be fixed by the programmer. The programmer may fix it by restoring the original command or he may replace that command with a new one he took from a different place in that program or from a different program entirely.

The programmer is merely the agent of selection. He is presumably motivated by a desire to make the program more robust or to do more things faster and more easily but he must always keep the program working. He is not an omnipotent designer but must work with what he has learned and may use trial and error approaches extensively at least until the code has evolved to the point where accummulated conventions prohibit innovations to the basic program. At that point modular programming predominates with whole sections of code being adapted for use with existing programs (i.e., add-ins). As the constraints of speed, memory, user interface, and needs change the programs will change too. Not to mention the fact that poorly written codes are abandoned in favor of better ones due to selection in the marketplace. Randomness and selection exist in the process and it matters not at all that humans are making the selections. All that is necessary for you to do is recognize that selection occurs in nature.

"You also need to think differently about your computer program example. Computer codes like DOS and Windows are abstract instruction sets and, unlike the genetic code where every sequence of three bases has potential meaning, this will not be true of computer codes."

Your claim above is entirely false. Computer instructions are always broken down to their most basic instruction sets (machine code in Binary / Base-2), either by other software or by the CPU itself internally. The only abstract part of computer codes is that programmers usually prefer to view and work with abstract instructions rather than in Binary code. At the Binary (Base-2) level, every possible machine code has a specific meaning. This is identical to DNA codons, except that DNA is broken down to a Base-4 level.

" Additionally, nonsense sequences in the genome are effectively ignored or serve a merely structural function. The first time a computer command mutates it comes to a dead stop and has to be fixed by the programmer."

Again, your claim about computer code is completely erroneous. A computer command can mutate into another computer command and cause unintended behavior, but that does NOT mean that the program will immediately stop all execution.

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