Albert Einstein famously quipped that God does not play dice with the universe. Stephen Hawking, Einstein’s successor as the iconic scientist of our time, has a position mirroring this.
His latest book, The Grand Design, argues that the universe is indeed governed by “dice” — but there isn’t necessarily a God rolling them. One could characterize Einstein’s position as “God, yes; dice, no” and Hawking’s as “Dice, yes; God, not necessarily.”
The dice, of course, are metaphorical. What is at issue is the claim, arising from the aspect of physics known as quantum mechanics, that, at the subatomic level, the universe is governed by randomness. Though Einstein was one of the founders of quantum mechanics, he resisted the idea that at the fundamental level the world behaves in a random fashion.
Hawking embraces this notion and, with co-author and fellow physicist Leonard Mlodinow, argues that it makes the existence of God unnecessary to explain the existence of the universe. In this view, the universe and its laws arise spontaneously from randomness.
The two are not aggressive anti-theists of the Richard Dawkins/Christopher Hitchens sort. They do not argue against God’s existence. They deal with the subject of religion respectfully, stating that it is reasonable to wonder if the universe was produced by a God or gods.
They frankly acknowledge that our universe and the laws governing it are so finely tuned to allow the existence of life that the sum gives the appearance of having been deliberately designed. There are passages in the book where, as an apologist, I found myself thinking, “Dudes, you’re making my case for me!”
Ultimately, though, the two argue that, despite the appearance of design in our universe, a Cosmic Designer is not necessary and the whole thing can in principle be explained in natural terms.
There is much to admire in The Grand Design. Hawking and Mlodinow convey a lot of high-end physics concepts in an accessible and unintimidating fashion. They don’t burden the reader with complex mathematics, and the writing style is easy to understand and laced with humor.
In one passage they explain the concept of symmetry by noting that “if you flip a donut over, it looks exactly the same (unless it has a chocolate topping, in which case it is better just to eat it).”
Though presenting physics concepts in an engaging and effective way, The Grand Design falls seriously short when it comes to philosophy and theology.
Right at the beginning of Chapter 1 the authors declare philosophy to be “dead,” stating that it hasn’t kept up with science. Really? All those philosophy departments in universities like Cambridge — where Hawking taught until last year — can close up shop?
The alleged demise of philosophy requires more than a single sentence of explanation to back it up — particularly when Hawking and Mlodinow are writing a book pregnant with philosophical implications and assumptions.
The whole enterprise of modern science is built on philosophical principles that cannot be demonstrated, and the two authors know this well. They spend considerable space discussing philosophical issues like what proposed scientific laws do and do not tell us about the universe.
Their own position, which they label “model-dependent realism,” is a philosophical interpretation of natural law — and one that has rivals.
Another glaring philosophical assumption that the two make is scientific determinism — the idea that the laws of nature fully determine what happens in the world. After raising the question of whether there might be exceptions to the laws of nature (miracles), the authors simply assert scientific determinism, stating that it is “the basis of all modern science.” This is an undemonstrated and undemonstrable philosophical assumption.
Whether or not there are exceptions to the laws of nature, their book does not tell us where the laws of nature came from, and even if one does not believe in miracles, one could still hold that the laws of nature were established by God.
So how do the two get around the fact that our universe looks like it was designed to allow life? (E.g., if the gravitational constant of the universe were just slightly higher or lower, there would be no planets where life could exist.)
They initially appeal to the work of Richard Feynman, the 20th-century physicist who argued that, in some circumstances, subatomic particles behave as if they are simultaneously taking every possible path between one point and another. Hawking and Mlodinow take this word picture literally and hold that these particles really are taking every possible path to their destinations.
Then they assert that something similar happens with the universe — that it simultaneously unfolds in every possible way, with every possible set of natural laws, and we just happen to occupy a variation of the universe where the random juggling of natural laws allows life to exist. Existence is not by design; it’s coincidence.
This idea of multiple parallel universes — or a “multiverse” — is familiar from science fiction, and it’s a trendy idea in physics today. The trouble is, it’s not remotely proved. We don’t have observational evidence for the existence of multiple universes, much less for an infinite number of them where the laws of nature are randomly set to every possible combination.
This amounts to appealing to evidence you do not have. If I were walking along a beach and found a message written in the sand — say, “Hi, Jimmy! Isn’t the beach fun?” — I could explain it as something written by an intelligent being. Or, if I postulate an infinite number of other beaches where the grains of sand are arranged randomly, I could say it was just coincidence. The problem is that I don’t have evidence for the existence of an infinite number of beaches, and to conjecture them to get around the implication of intelligent design is to build one’s case with non-evidence.
Hawking and Mlodinow deny that they’re postulating a multiverse just to avoid an intelligent designer, but they don’t offer any sustained arguments for its existence. Nor do they explain the higher set of laws that would be needed to generate a multiplicity of universes with their own local laws.
Ultimately The Grand Design is long on assertion and short on argument. The authors also fail to inform the reader of just how tentative, hypothetical and debatable a lot of their concepts are.
While the book may try to get across concepts in physics that are deep, its reasoning on philosophy and theology is shallow, and the book fails to offer convincing reasons why we should not take the apparent intelligent design of the universe to be exactly what it appears to be.
Jimmy Akin, a senior apologist at Catholic Answers, blogs at NCRegister.com.
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“The authors also fail to inform the reader of just how tentative, hypothetical and debatable a lot of their concepts are.” That comment is ironic. Millions of people hear sermons and recite scripture every Sunday. I wonder how often they’re informed just how tentative, hypothetical and debatable that material is.
Since God is far superior to humans, he is in no way threatened by our sincere questions. Regardless of how deep or profound our questions may seem to us, our deepest questions must seem like simple 2+2=4 arithmetic to God. There are many who deny his existence, but God is in no way threatened by their lack of faith in him. A century ago, most people would have said that man could never fly, travel to the moon, nor perform a heart transplant. Though they were sincere in their beliefs, they were sincerely wrong. Many who deny the existence of God are sincere. God still loves and reaches out to them. However, to paraphrase the song from the 70s, they have been “Looking for God in all the wrong places.” God exists and seeks to have a relationship with all people. He has no need to prove his existence. That proof exists in the lives of hundreds of millions of people whose lives he has changed. However, to find God, one must be open to finding him and exercise the God-given faith he grants to all who honestly seek him. A darkened room may be filled with unseen treasure. Though obscured by darkness, the treasure is real and exists within that room. God is a reality, unfortunately, some have simply not discovered him. Rev.Billy Graham once said that people were created with a God-Shaped Void in their Hearts. No person or any material thing can fill this void except God Himself. Unfortunately, many have tried to fill that void with everything except a relationship with God. http://www.christianretirement.com in the Heaven page. Only uninformed or unintelligent reasoning says there is no God. As born-again Christians, we can enjoy a personal and meaningful relationship with him.
In “The Grand Design” Stephen Hawking postulates that M-theory may be the Holy Grail of physics…the Grand Unified Theory which Einstein had tried to formulate, but never completed. It expands on quantum mechanics and string theories.
In my e-book on comparative mysticism is a quote by Albert Einstein: “…most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty – which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of all religion.”
E=mc², Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, is probably the best known scientific equation. I revised it to help better understand the relationship between divine Essence (Spirit), matter (mass/energy: visible/dark) and consciousness (f(x) raised to its greatest power). Unlike the speed of light, which is a constant, there are no exact measurements for consciousness. In this hypothetical formula, basic consciousness may be of insects, to the second power of animals and to the third power the rational mind of humans. The fourth power is suprarational consciousness of mystics, when they intuit the divine essence in perceived matter. This was a convenient analogy, but there cannot be a divine formula.
In “The Grand Design” Stephen Hawking postulates that M-theory may be the Holy Grail of physics…the Grand Unified Theory which Einstein had tried to formulate, but never completed. It expands on quantum mechanics and string theories.
In my e-book on comparative mysticism is a quote by Albert Einstein: “…most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and most radiant beauty – which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive form – this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of all religion.”
E=mc², Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity, is probably the best known scientific equation. I revised it to help better understand the relationship between divine Essence (Spirit), matter (mass/energy: visible/dark) and consciousness (f(x) raised to its greatest power). Unlike the speed of light, which is a constant, there are no exact measurements for consciousness. In this hypothetical formula, basic consciousness may be of insects, to the second power of animals and to the third power the rational mind of humans. The fourth power is suprarational consciousness of mystics, when they intuit the divine essence in perceived matter. This was a convenient analogy, but there cannot be a divine formula.
Ron, my brother, please find other places to push your morally and religiously relative beliefs.
James,
You might, however, revise it to mean: Be conscious that Jesus is divine in body and in spirit. It is just an analogy. Many of the most prominent mystics were Catholic. I certainly did not intend any offense.
Randomness is, truly, a relative perspective. What may be seemingly random to us may be simple determinism for God. Also, remember that the only intelligent statement that science can make concerning God is, “Either God exists, or He doesn’t.” End of discussion. Science is a great tool, as long as we don’t take it as an end in itself.
In “The Grand Design” Hawking has really messed up things. In his earlier book “A Brief History of Time” he advocated a no-boundary model. According to this model the universe will have no beginning and no end, it would simply be. It means that the universe has never begun, it was always there. Only that it has gone through unending cycles of expansion and contraction, but it has never completely died down. When the universe has come to a zero size after a contraction, all the physical laws of the earlier universe remained intact. From there the universe has again started a new life. But this beginning cannot be said to be an absolute beginning, and this beginning should not be confused with the beginning of a universe practically from nothing due to a vacuum energy fluctuation in a void. The latter beginning can be called an absolute beginning, because in this case there will be no pre-history, no prior universe that has left its seed at its demise. In “The Grand Design” Hawking has never said that he has abandoned his earlier model. Rather he has written in one place that in no boundary model the universe will have no beginning. Or if it was having a beginning, then that beginning was governed by the laws of science and does not need to be set in motion by some god. This generation of the universe cannot be called a spontaneous generation from nowhere, because the seed of the universe was already there. Therefore a scientist who is advocating the no-boundary model cannot at the same time say that as because there is a law such as gravity, so the universe can and will create itself from nothing. A universe that would simply be cannot again pop into existence from nothing. So it is presumed that Hawking in his book “The Grand Design” has mixed up two distinct models of cosmology that try to explain origin of the universe:
1) The no-boundary model,
2) The popping-up model.
In case of no-boundary model we will not raise any question regarding the origin of the physical laws that will govern the beginning of the universe, because all those laws will already be there in the seed of the universe. But in case of popping-up model we will ask just those questions. Whence appeared those laws that governed its beginning? In case of no-boundary model we will rather question the validity of the model itself. This model is valid only if time is imaginary, not only at the beginning of the universe, but throughout its life, from beginning to end, because Hawking himself has written in “A Brief History of Time” that if at any point of its past history the universe had entered from imaginary time into real time, then there would be a singularity, and all the laws of science would break down there. Scientists will also be at a loss to specify as to how the universe began its course. Here is a quote from Hawking’s book: “…the universe could be finite in imaginary time but without boundaries or singularities. When one goes back to the real time in which we live, however, there will still appear to be singularities.” Here he is admitting that we live in real time and that in real time there will be singularities. Only in imaginary time there will be no boundaries or singularities. Then he goes on to suggest that the so-called imaginary time is really the real time, and that what we call real time is just a figment of our imagination. So as per Hawking himself the no-boundary model is a valid model so long time is imaginary, not real. Imaginary time behaves just like space, and so in imaginary time the universe instead of having three dimensions of space and one dimension of time will have only four dimensions of space and no time dimension. If imaginary time is another dimension of space, and if present time is imaginary time, then present time must also exhibit all the characteristics of space. Time is imaginary means we can go back to the earlier periods of our life if we wish. But I can go back to the place where I have spent my childhood days, but that does not mean that I can go back to my childhood period also. So there is no evidence that present time is imaginary time. If present time is real time, then as per Hawking there was a singularity in the past, and therefore this present universe was having an absolute beginning. But Hawking proposed the no-boundary model in order to eliminate this singularity at the beginning of the universe, and if singularity again comes back, then there is no reason for upholding that model any more.
Perhaps the most serious objection that can be raised against no-boundary model is this: Even if it is conceded that in no-boundary model beginning of the universe will be governed by known laws of science, still one thing is sure and certain in this scenario. Beginning of any universe can never be governed by its own laws, because a universe that has not yet come into existence cannot have any laws in it. Its beginning can only be governed by physical laws left by the universe just prior to it. If what I have said here is correct, then how could Hawking apply quantum gravitational law and Feynman’s sum over histories at the beginning of our universe? So how could he say that there would be no singularity at the beginning? How did he come to know that the physical laws left by the earlier universe just prior to ours were exact replica of the laws of our universe?
I waited for a year to buy the paperback and save needed money.
I then wasted $18.00 plus tax.
180 pages to get to say that “M-theory…IF it is finite…”
What I got from the book is this my epiphany:
“The increase in knowledge decreases God’s workload.”
Mauro.
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