Stephen Hawking has a new book coming out (The Grand Design, with Leonard Mlodinow). Among other things, he points out that modern physics has progressed to the point where we don’t need to invoke God to explain the existence of the universe. This is not exactly a hot flash — I remember writing an essay making the same point for a philosophy class my sophomore year in college — but it makes news because it’s Hawking who says it. And that’s absolutely fine — Hawking has a track record of making substantial intellectual contributions, there’s every reason to listen to him more than random undergraduates waxing profound.
This issue is, of course, totally up my alley, and I should certainly blog about it. But I can’t, because I’m on hiatus! (Right?) So, as an experiment, I made a video of myself talking rather than simply typing my words into the computer. Radical! Not sure the amount of information conveyed is anywhere near as large in this format, and obviously I didn’t sweat the production values. I fear that some subtleties of the argument may be lost. But if we’re lucky, other people elsewhere on the internet will also talk about these questions, and we’ll get it all sorted out.
Let me know if the Grand Video Experiment is worth repeating and improving, or whether it’s just a waste of time.
Something that I should have said, but didn’t: there doesn’t need to be some sophisticated modern-physics answer to the question “Why is there something rather than nothing?” The universe can simply exist, end of story. But it’s still fun to think carefully about all the possibilities, existence and non-existence both included.
The Archbishop of Canterbury rushed to defend ‘God’ after hearing from Hawking. The Archbishop is afraid, worried. After all, even if Hawking is 10% right, the Archbishop face ridicule, even lost of his job. He has to explain to his flock they’ve been worshiping nonsense for centuries!
I am so fortunate we live in times as interesting as that of Galileo. Galileo, like Hawking, dared to refute Church doctrine; dared to teach those funny men in strange uniforms a bit of reality. During his time, Galileo said the Earth orbits around the Sun. Basic laws of physics allows it, and in fact demands it. No God is required to make it happen, or to predict their motions. Denouncing Galileo, the Pope said God made the Sun orbit around the Earth, its motion is a sacred secret, and and whole matter of heaven motion is impossible for mere human to understand. Therefore, it requires humans to just worship it.
Centuries later, nothing has changed. Church doctrine remains wrong, primitive, stupid and delusional. And science continues to win on every single issue, trumps everything else on its ability to deliver reliable knowledge.
Just adding the detail that one shouldn’t really apply Gödel’s theorem to a probabalistic theory like quantum mechanices–a quantum mechanical theory won’t correspond with the type of deterministic formal logical system that Gödel was talking about.
As for the larger question, “proofs” like this are really an attack on the sort of God that your fundamentalist conservative Baptists think up. The point of religion isn’t about making testable predictions. It isn’t even about telling you about how the world works. It is not a construct of logos, of fact.
It’s a construct of mythos, of meaning. It’s a framework of understanding from which to approach facts, because, as has been repeatedly and rigorously proven by psychology, humans are incapable for logically evaluating all facts before them and making decisions–we inherently need some sort of framework to look at the world. It’s why you can have an atheistic religion like Buddhism be considered a religion–Buddhism provides a structure from which to approach scientific facts and worldly experience.
It’s also why I’ve noticed that the more atheistic you are, the more you tend to be into comic books and pop culture. It’s not that you believe that the X-Men are or whatever, but there is a mental gap of story that is needed.
Well, I would say that many of the people who take too seriously the question Why is there Something instead of Nothing are assuming that “nothingness is somehow more natural or likely than existence”. But i don’t know why should this be, why they think that, nor have I seen evidence for that (hiden) assumption.
Following some ideias above about nothing, the “real nothing” and what implies, I’d like to say, there is no nothing because there can’t be a reason for nothingness being somehow more natural or likely than existence. That follows from nothing (;-))as postulated by some.
BTW, that “nothingness is somehow more natural or likely than existence” is kinda strange… To what “natural” could the author be refering to?
Hi Miles,
You omitted the beginning of the sentence. That we need justification is precisely the point.
Best wishes
Peter
So, if we project the laws of our universe onto whatever the cause of the universe (cotu from here on) is, then the cotu exists in a warped (or unwarped, if we are the warped) time line, that is infinite. The cotu is governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, and due to its infinite existence, and quantum burps, it will create, and has created anything and everything.
This is nothing new, just another mechanism for the creation of the universe. Just because you chose to project laws from within our universe onto the cotu, does not make it part of the universe. You can say you now have laws which can govern the cotu, and if it does exist, these laws could lead to the creation of our universe.
However, what have you done more, then someone who says that whatever created the universe is a god, governed by some other set of laws? Your set of laws can be seen in the universe here, but their existence here does not prove their existence in the cotu.
There is still no evidence that the cotu is what you have defined it as, so it does not prove god can only exist without having an influence on the universe. Your definition of the cotu may be the right one, and one day be either proved or disproved, but neither has happened yet, so it remains just another theory.
@21:Peter You nailed it on the head
A graduate student here said that Goedel’s theorems do not apply to Quantum Mechanics, because of the probabilistic nature of QM, and hence QM is not a formal logical system. This is not true, because the probabilistic nature of QM is one of the postulates and hence QM is a formal system.
Related to the question of what are the Natural Laws, and their relation to our world, the best way to understand them is within a platonic metaphysics; see paper by M. Tegmark called “Mathematical Universe” and a paper of mine entitlied “Temporal Platonic Metaphysics” on the arxiv.
“Well, I would say that many of the people who take too seriously the question Why is there Something instead of Nothing are assuming that ânothingness is somehow more natural or likely than existenceâ
The question makes perfect sense without any such assumption.
It’s also only one variant of a more general question – why the Universe is the way it is, when it could have been realized in an infinite number of different ways.
Peter, yes “when” there is nothing no explanation is required and is the only logical starting point for explaining why there is something at all.
So how can something come from nothing? Well “when” there is nothing everything is lacking:
1. There is no “law” of causality.
2. There is a total lack of “things” (conservation laws for example) that could prevent something to be created from nothing.
3. There is total lack of “conditions” that need to be fullfilled for something to be created from nothing.
So nothing is actually “unstable”. It is enterly logical that all that exists is created from nothing. This is also consistent with the Big Bang of course.
“So nothing is actually âunstableâ. It is enterly logical that all that exists is created from nothing.”
Nonsense. Absolute nothingness is permanent as there is *no time* and *no change,* it’s a state which cannot evolve.
Thank you for your post, it was very interesting, but……i could not get to the end of it because of the very unplaisant acoustics and echo, which i think might have turned other people off (like me). Worth repeating? Yes, absolutely, but with better sound.
Hi Peter,
I think you missed my point. We do have justification that the universe exists, I’d even go so far as to say we have a multitude of evidence to suggest such a thing. We do not have justification that any gods exist. In fact, we have a good deal of circumstantial evidence to the contrary.
1) Most of the reasons for invoking the actions of gods have been shown to have natural explanations by science: disease, the origin of man, the origin of other creatures and plants, the origin of the earth, the origin of the sun, the origin of the stars and planets, the origin of the cosmos, and how the brain works. We do not understand everything about all of these topics, and our current, best explanations may be wrong, but at the very least the progress science has made in closing the gaps of our understanding suggests that it would be foolish to cling to the same god explanation the ancients used.
2) The variety of god claims out there strongly suggests that people want to believe in gods, and psychology tells us that if people want to believe something, they often find a way.
3) The contradictory god claims that exist to this day mean that at least most of the True Believers are wrong.
4) A lack of evidence where we would expect to find evidence, say from prayer or other benefits to believers.
None of these prove the nonexistence of god; the evidence is merely circumstantial. Then again, the effectiveness of homeopathy has not been disproven. It has merely been shown not to work in numerous studies, but as all true believers know, it just hasn’t been tested under the right conditions đ
Best wishes,
Miles
Sean, you really are painfully self-obsessed.
A. Mikovic #82:
Yes, probablities of QM are part of the axioms of QM. No, this axiom is not the same as the set of axioms that Gödel assumed when formulating his theorem. He most certainly did not use some sort of modal logic in proving his theory, and the Uncertainty Principle already leaves a notion of undecidablility built into the theory.
If you were using Gödel’s theorem to say that Newtonian mechanics, or General Relativity can’t possibly describe everything in the universe, fine, though there are some trickier points of the philosophy of math that could be raised.
But quantum mechanics significantly muddies that picture, and if you’re going to make the claim that Gödel’s theorem shows that QM can’t describe the universe, its incumbent on you to show why this very, very technical proof applies to QM, which is a very different mathematical construct from the types of formal systems, such as arithmetic, that Gödel was talking about.
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Ian said: “When will you learn that theology and science are different endeavours, different approaches, which seek the truth, and as such cannot be in conflict.”
Nope. Empirically false. Theology has come into conflict with science many times.
Also, I’m not sure how an inability to come into conflict follows from the fact that two different endeavors use different approaches to seek truth.
When it makes truth claims, the only way that theology can avoid coming into conflict with science is by relegating its claims to the safety of the unobservable. If theologians have developed useful methods for learning about unobservable things (gods, souls, etc.), one has to wonder why these methods don’t also work to derive truth claims about observable things.
AI, Apart from what exist there is actually nothing. What changes is nothing –> nothing + something else đ
But it is bad wording, nothing “unstable”.
I’d like to riff on this for a moment, because I think it poses an interesting scenario. If by “nothing” we mean that, in addition to there being no universe, there are also no laws whatsoever, then I would postulate that the existence of the universe becomes even *less* surprising. Why?
Well, let’s start with the assumption that nothingness (in the stuff-free and rule-free sense) is the default state. The conceptual problem with the universe seems to be that there is no apparent path from this state of nothingness to the universe we now live in â the old “you can’t get something from nothing” trope. But if there are no laws in this nothingness, what could possibly serve as an obstacle to the spontaneous appearance of something such as our universe? Absent conservation laws and causality rules (not to mention any notion of time or space), I would argue that a law-free nothingness should be a chaotic thing (nothing?) indeed, with spontaneous generation of stuff and/or laws an *expected* result.
This is not to say that I consider this argument a solution to the question of where our universe did in fact come from; rather, I present this as one possible solution in the scenario where not even QM can be assumed to hold in the “presence” (an oxymoron, I realize) of true nothingness.
You do not give us enough information in this post to trust such a dogmatic statement such as “End of Discussion.”
Having watched your excellent lecture at Google on the Arrow of Time, I understand Your point though.
Someone recommended to me that I watch your video believing it to be the clincher to their argument.
So, a physicist studying the physical universe, with methods and tools that rigorously include only information about the physical universe only finds the physical universe as defined with those methods and tools. I’m waiting for the man to bite the dog in this. I’m also wondering where the place of equal protection under the law or freedom of association, etc. are in your universe since those aren’t required under this scenario either.
You do know that if someone believes that a god created the universe exactly as it really is, as opposed to how any group of people believe it to be at any given time, which would, of course, include physicists, then nothing you discover with science could conflict with the belief in that god. And, let me break this gently to you, I’ll bet if you put it to most religious people that way, they’d agree with the idea.
I’m wondering, why does what other people believe about this matter so much to some atheists?
Theology has come into conflict with science many times.
Well, science has come into conflict with science many times. Politics has, philosophy, … Which of those do you want to negate? And, by the way, just what is this “religion” that is one defined thing you’re going on about on this thread so sloppily? Hey, how about if we say “the male gender” has come into conflict with science many times. I can tell you what “the male gender” is. How about sexist old white men who work in the sciences and hinder the careers of women and minorities in the sciences? Now, I’ll bet those conflicts could be documented.
If you can’t get it in your head that there was no Creator, then you simply push the Big Question back to the likes of the child’s “well who made God” and “who made God’s God” so it’s Gods all the way up … which is highly, um, unsatisfying.
A. E. Newman. Your scenario is derived from our experience of the physical universe in which things come from other things, have a beginning, etc. How do you know that would be true for a God which was above the physical universe and so would possibly be above any of the notions, habits, rules, …. laws of logic and physics, we have derived from our experience of the PHYSICAL universe. You know not everyone who is religious is a novice at that kind of argument, whereas its my experience that a majority of atheists seem to be.
I’ll wait for an answer to my first question without getting into a discussion about other things.
Always plenty of room for God at Hilbert’s Hotel. The couches are comfortable too.
The other day he was telling me about the unitary evolution of information in the universe and how it was really cool how information is encoded in the states of the universe. Turns out that it is virtually impossible to remove his existence from hilbert space because there are states that allow people to believe in him, so unless one could find a way to remove those states he will always exist. It’s too bad to hear that Stevie Hawking has grown senile, but there’s plenty of room at Hilbert’s for him too.
Hawking is a scientist. That makes him reasonably qualified to comment of what science does or does not need, don’t you think?
Theology, on the other hand, presupposes the existence of god, and would not exist as a discipline without that presupposition, which means that the only two things concerning god that theologians CAN’T creditably comment is 1. whether or not god exists, and 2. whether or not god is necessary.