The evolution of the Universe as we know it
Wikimedia Commons/NASA/WMAP Science Team

Given what we now know, what can we say about the possible existence of God? In my last post I discussed the stigmatization of Christians, both here and in Europe, by cultural and political elites on the Left. Much of the hostility of the Left toward Christians can be explained by their belief, apparently justified by the lack of any statement modern science can give about the existence of God, that God is a figment of the believers’ imagination, that God never existed. If I believe that as a modern Leftist, why should I have any patience for biblical arguments from those primitive, modern troglodytes, conservative Christians? Or for that matter, since Christians apparently lack any good judgement, demonstrated by their belief in God, why should I, as a progressive, modern believer in science, trust anything Christians have to say?

A New Argument For the Existence of God 

But is it so transparently true, as many of the progressive elite would like to insist, that God is just a figment of believers’ imagination? It might surprise many people, but I suspect the intellectuals most conducive to the possible truth of the idea of God are the practitioners of that hardest of sciences, physics. Those of us who are physicists have been exposed to  some of the weirdest ideas about the nature of reality, and more than that almost all of us believe them! We believe them because they have been justified by the results of experimentation and observation.

I mentioned some of these things that we believe in my last post, such as the fact a quantum mechanical particle is both a particle and a wave. When it is emitted by some other quantum particle or absorbed, it is spit out as a single entity on being emitted, and gobbled up entirely as a single particle on being absorbed. This is the explanation for the photoelectric effect, for which Albert Einstein received his only Nobel Prize for Physics. (Strange that he should not receive the Prize for his discovery of Special or General Relativity, his greatest contributions to Mankind.)

However, as a particle is propagating from the particle that emits it to the particle that will absorb it, it propagates like a wave to many places that include the particle destined to absorb it, but to many other places as well. If you take the idea seriously, this means the quantum particle has existence in some sense in may places at once! How weird is that? And when it is absorbed, every piece of the particle that has propagated to many different places gets gobbled up at once by the absorbing particle! In the language of the physicist, the state vector of the particle collapses into a single state, the one absorbed by some other particle.

The genuinely really weird things tackled by physics are in what I called in my last post the magic trilogy of special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics rules the behavior of really small objects, at the size of molecules or below. General relativity on the other hand governs the  physical  behavior of the very large, on the size scale of planets and solar systems and above, where all physical objects are accelerated relative to each other. Bear in mind that all accelerations are caused by forces by which physical objects interact; in general relativity these forces are almost always gravitational. Special relativity is a special case of general relativity, where the laws of physics take the same form in all non-accelerated  reference frames (sources of coordinates), which are also called inertial frames of reference.  What makes the inertial reference frames of special relativity different from the inertial frames of classical physics is that the relative velocity of objects at rest in a special relativistic inertial reference frame could be at a velocity close to the speed of light relative to the frame where you are at rest and taking measurements.

In general relativity, it is required that all laws of physics take the same form in all reference frames, including those that are accelerated relative to other inertial frames. Reference frames accelerated relative to unaccelerated inertial frames are called (surprise!) non-inertial frames. If this explanation seems a bit confusing, please consult the video below about the difference between inertial and non-inertial frames of reference.

Currently, what really is driving people in physics insane is the attempt to make general relativity, the mechanics of the very large (solar systems, galaxies, and bigger) compatible with the physics of the very small [quantum mechanics, which rules molecules, atoms, sub-atomic particles, and elementary particles (quarks and gluons)].

In the midst of all this strangeness, what would make a physicist blink twice about the strange hypothesis that some object has many of the same attributes that over the centuries have been attributed to a God or gods? Your automatic reaction might be that there is absolutely no scientific evidence for a God. But is this really true?

This question has inspired a number of physicists, including Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, and Albert Einstein, among the names most widely known, to seriously consider the question. Feynman came to the conclusion that science (at least so far) has no capability to determine if a God exists. He said,

I do not believe that science can disprove the existence of God; I think that is impossible.  And if it is impossible, is not a belief in science and in a God — an ordinary God of religion — a consistent possibility? … Yes, it is consistent.  Despite the fact that I said that more than half of the scientists don’t believe in God, many scientists do believe in both science and God, in a perfectly consistent way.  But this consistency, although possible, is not easy to attain…

Carl Sagan’s beliefs were very similar to those of Feynman. He wrote to Robert Pope of Windsor, Ontario on October 2, 1996 the following:

I am not an atheist. An atheist is someone who has compelling evidence that there is no Judeo-Christian-Islamic God. I am not that wise, but neither do I consider there to be anything approaching adequate evidence for such a god. Why are you in such a hurry to make up your mind? Why not simply wait until there is compelling evidence?

The religious views of that most famous of all physicists, Albert Einstein, were similar in some ways to that of Feynman and Sagan, but he was a little more accepting of the idea. However, the God he believed in was nothing like the personal God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims: He believed in the pantheistic God of Baruch Spinoza. He considered the anthropomorphic, personal God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to be a naive and childlike conception. He stated,

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropological concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem—the most important of all human problems.

In response to a question asking if he considered himself a pantheist, Einstein replied,

Your question is the most difficult in the world. It is not a question I can answer simply with yes or no. I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers, because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.

You can perhaps sense a theme developing here, perhaps even a meme among physicists. We physicists are a skeptical lot, and demand logically consistent theories (with the logic being mathematical) backed up with the evidence of observed data. We are also people who have seen a Universe that is considerably weirder than many if not most non-scientists conceive. While considering such an eerie, mysterious, and surreal reality, it is hard not to wonder how all that strange, self-consistent order of the Universe came to be. And here is where some physicists think they might possibly find a new argument for the existence of God.

This argument is a heuristic “proof” from the design of physical law, and therefore leaves open the possibility for doubt. As a heuristic proof, it mimics the old proof for God’s existence by the design of living creatures, which, as we all know, has been made not credible for many by Darwin’s theory of evolution. Just like the old “proof” from the design of life, the new proof states that the intricate design of physical law requires an appropriate Designer, which would be God. This is one theory that can not (probably) be destroyed the way the old theory was by an evolutionary theory. We can tell from the spectra of far-distant stars, once corrected for the cosmological red-shift, that the most basic laws of physics have not changed for many billions of years, almost all the way back to the big bang.

Fred Hoyle was a very famous British astronomer from the twentieth century who early in his career was a proponent of the “steady-state theory” of the universe. Due to his atheism, Hoyle fiercely resisted the evidence that the universe had a beginning, in fact coining the term “Big Bang” in order to ridicule the theory. He thought the theory was too much an argument for a creator. Later, when the evidence for a Big Bang became overwhelming, Hoyle seemed to change his opinion and noted that there are a very small number of physical constants, which if just slightly changed, would make the resulting universe uninhabitable by any kind of life. indeed, possibly without any stars. These are constants that among other effects determine the ratio of the electrostatic force on a charged particle to the gravitational attraction it would feel close to a mass of ionized gas. Make that ratio suitably small, and the gas would coalesce into a star. Make it too large, and the mass of ionized gas would expand away from each other and no stars would be formed. If the values of these fundamental constants allow star formation, other constants might keep elements heavier than helium from forming  inside a star.

Looking at this fine-tuning of physical constants that permit life, Hoyle made the famous comment that somehow the universe seemed rigged, a “put-up job”, as he put it. He also said,

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.

Below is a video of physicist William Phillips, himself a co-winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics, speaking about this “put-up job”.

At the very end of the video, Phillips notes that these observations are not really a rigorous proof for God’s existence, but he does say they are highly suggestive.

Just how fine-tuned is the universe for life? Consider the video below. Note that the cosmological constant they describe gives the value of the energy density in the vacuum. Since both concentrated energy and mass are sources of gravity, the cosmological constant’s value affects the rate of the universe’s expansion, and has been linked to a mysterious “dark energy”.

My Own Take on the Argument

This argument is not even close to being settled. For example, in response to the fine-tuned universe argument outlined in the last section, those who would rather not believe in God have responded with a multiple universe model, called a multiverse, in which the physical laws and constants are different. Then, by the anthropic principle we happen to find ourselves in one of the few universes in the multiverse that can support life. It seems a much more extravagant way of explaining why we find ourselves in such a finely tuned universe for life, rather than accepting the existence of God. Many such models can be built, but there so far has been no reproducible evidence for them, although there was a false alarm. This multiverse idea seems to me ripe for cutting by Ockham’s Razor.

Nevertheless, other than the observation we are in a universe fine-tuned for life, there still is no scientific evidence for God’s existence. Yet, as a heuristic “proof”, the finely tuned universe does make an almost irresistible call to believe in a God. Unfortunately, it tells us very little about the nature of that God. It is at least as likely that it is the pantheistic God of Spinoza and Einstein, rather than the equally likely personal, transcendent God of the Jews, Christians, and Muslims. We have absolutely no evidence to discriminate between the two. In fact, I see no reason God could not have qualities of both conceptions: A personal, transcendent, yet pantheistic God. After all, there is nothing that says that a pantheistic God does not have aspects of itself completely outside the physical universe, i.e. a pantheistic God does have to be perfectly identical to the Universe. Also, there is no reason a pantheistic God could not have a self-consciousness, with states of consciousness analogous to human emotions. In fact I would be totally shocked if such a complicated entity did not have some kind of consciousness.

The really big problem I have with religious belief is the lack of evidence for any of the alternatives, much the same as for the religious beliefs of Richard Feynman, Carl Sagan, and to a slightly lessor degree, of Albert Einstein. To be able to call myself a Christian, I would at a minimum have to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the incarnation of God on Earth. However, despite the tales from the Gospels of the New Testament, I have no way to judge their truthfulness. For a long time I have greatly wanted to be a Christian, both for the hope of immortality and for the superiority of their ethics based on love for your fellow human.  Unfortunately, in the formation of belief, desire and will are no substitutes for logic and evidence.

Why Should the Left Despise Christians for Their Beliefs; or, Why Is There a First Amendment to the Constitution?

In this post I have ended up writing more about the evidence for God’s existence than about the stigmatization of Christians by people on the political Left, particularly by progressives in the United States. However, everything I have written here should alert people of all political persuasions of the necessity and desirability for religious toleration. Mankind simply has not existed long enough nor thought long enough to say what the nature of ultimate reality might be. No one can declare with absolute scientific certainty whether God exists or not. There is no reason for progressives to feel intellectual or moral superiority over Christians.

In addition, progressives should really think long and hard on why the first citizens of the United States found it necessary to add the First Amendment of the Constitution. Looking at only the first piece of it concerning religion, it declares:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …

Many of those first U.S. citizens or their ancestors had immigrated from Europe, particularly England, to escape religious persecution. Without the safe-harbor of America, they might well have had to resort to arms to defend their beliefs. It took a great many religious wars in Europe that lasted from 1524 to  1697 before rulers in Europe realized it was better to tolerate other religions than suffer the ravages of religious civil war. The immigrants to colonial America had already learned that lesson quite well. If you push a people hard enough to go against their religion, you will surely make a bitter enemy of them. The United States is already coming apart at the seams from our ideological differences. We really do not need to add more conflicts dividing us.

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