I’ve had God on my mind lately, as I’ve been finishing an invited essay for the upcoming Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity. The title is “Does the Universe Need God?“, and you can read the whole thing on my website by clicking.
I commend the editors, Jim Stump and Alan Padgett, for soliciting a contribution that will go against the grain of most of the other essays. As you might guess, my answer to the title question is “No,” while many of the other entries will be arguing “Yes” (or at least be sympathetic to that view). I think of my job as less about changing minds than informing — I want thoughtful people who are committed Christians reading this volume to at least understand where I am coming from, even if they don’t agree. Think of it as an elaboration of “Why (Almost All) Cosmologists Are Atheists,” which was a bit breezier.
Hopefully there is still a bit of time for tweaking the essay before the editors get back to me with their comments, so please let me know if you think I’m getting something importantly wrong. Again, the whole thing is here, but I’m including the final section (minus the footnotes) as a teaser below the fold. In the earlier sections I do more nitty-gritty cosmological stuff, talking about the Big Bang, the anthropic principle, and meta-explanatory maneuvers. In this section I finally evaluate the God hypothesis in scientific terms.
God as a theory
Religion serves many purposes other than explaining the natural world. Someone who grew up as an altar server, volunteers for their church charity, and has witnessed dozens of weddings and funerals of friends and family might not be overly interested in whether God is the best explanation for the value of the mass of the electron. The idea of God has functions other than those of a scientific hypothesis.
However, accounting for the natural world is certainly a traditional role for God, and arguably a foundational one. How we think about other religious practices depends upon whether our understanding of the world around us gives us a reason to believe in God. And insofar as it attempts to provide an explanation for empirical phenomena, the God hypothesis should be judged by the standards of any other scientific theory.
Consider a hypothetical world in which science had developed to something like its current state of progress, but nobody had yet thought of God. It seems unlikely that an imaginative thinker in this world, upon proposing God as a solution to various cosmological puzzles, would be met with enthusiasm. All else being equal, science prefers its theories to be precise, predictive, and minimal – requiring the smallest possible amount of theoretical overhead. The God hypothesis is none of these. Indeed, in our actual world, God is essentially never invoked in scientific discussions. You can scour the tables of contents in major physics journals, or titles of seminars and colloquia in physics departments and conferences, looking in vain for any mention of possible supernatural intervention into the workings of the world.
At first glance, the God hypothesis seems simple and precise – an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being. (There are other definitions, but they are usually comparably terse.) The apparent simplicity is somewhat misleading, however. In comparison to a purely naturalistic model, we’re not simply adding a new element to an existing ontology (like a new field or particle), or even replacing one ontology with a more effective one at a similar level of complexity (like general relativity replacing Newtonian spacetime, or quantum mechanics replacing classical mechanics). We’re adding an entirely new metaphysical category, whose relation to the observable world is unclear. This doesn’t automatically disqualify God from consideration as a scientific theory, but it implies that, all else being equal, a purely naturalistic model will be preferred on the grounds of simplicity.
There is an inevitable tension between any attempt to invoke God as a scientifically effective explanation of the workings of the universe, and the religious presumption that God is a kind of person, not just an abstract principle. God’s personhood is characterized by an essential unpredictability and the freedom to make choices. These are not qualities that one looks for in a good scientific theory. On the contrary, successful theories are characterized by clear foundations and unambiguous consequences. We could imagine boiling God’s role in setting up the world down to a few simple principles (e.g., “God constructs the universe in the simplest possible way consistent with the eventual appearance of human beings”). But is what remains recognizable as God?
Similarly, the apparent precision of the God hypothesis evaporates when it comes to connecting to the messy workings of reality. To put it crudely, God is not described in equations, as are other theories of fundamental physics. Consequently, it is difficult or impossible to make predictions. Instead, one looks at what has already been discovered, and agrees that that’s the way God would have done it. Theistic evolutionists argue that God uses natural selection to develop life on Earth; but religious thinkers before Darwin were unable to predict that such a mechanism would be God’s preferred choice.
Ambitious approaches to contemporary cosmological questions, such as quantum cosmology, the multiverse, and the anthropic principle, have not yet been developed into mature scientific theories. But the advocates of these schemes are working hard to derive testable predictions on the basis of their ideas: for the amplitude of cosmological perturbations, signals of colliding pocket universes in the cosmic microwave background, and the mass of the Higgs boson and other particles. For the God hypothesis, it is unclear where one would start. Why does God favor three generations of elementary particles, with a wide spectrum of masses? Would God use supersymmetry or strong dynamics to stabilize the hierarchy between the weak scale and the Planck scale, or simply set it that way by hand? What would God’s favorite dark matter particle be?
This is a venerable problem, reaching far beyond natural theology. In numerous ways, the world around us is more like what we would expect from a dysteleological set of uncaring laws of nature than from a higher power with an interest in our welfare. As another thought experiment, imagine a hypothetical world in which there was no evil, people were invariably kind, fewer natural disasters occurred, and virtue was always rewarded. Would inhabitants of that world consider these features to be evidence against the existence of God? If not, why don’t we consider the contrary conditions to be such evidence?
Over the past five hundred years, the progress of science has worked to strip away God’s roles in the world. He isn’t needed to keep things moving, or to develop the complexity of living creatures, or to account for the existence of the universe. Perhaps the greatest triumph of the scientific revolution has been in the realm of methodology. Control groups, double-blind experiments, an insistence on precise and testable predictions – a suite of techniques constructed to guard against the very human tendency to see things that aren’t there. There is no control group for the universe, but in our attempts to explain it we should aim for a similar level of rigor. If and when cosmologists develop a successful scientific understanding of the origin of the universe, we will be left with a picture in which there is no place for God to act – if he does (e.g., through subtle influences on quantum-mechanical transitions or the progress of evolution), it is only in ways that are unnecessary and imperceptible. We can’t be sure that a fully naturalist understanding of cosmology is forthcoming, but at the same time there is no reason to doubt it. Two thousand years ago, it was perfectly reasonable to invoke God as an explanation for natural phenomena; now, we can do much better.
None of this amounts to a “proof” that God doesn’t exist, of course. Such a proof is not forthcoming; science isn’t in the business of proving things. Rather, science judges the merits of competing models in terms of their simplicity, clarity, comprehensiveness, and fit to the data. Unsuccessful theories are never disproven, as we can always concoct elaborate schemes to save the phenomena; they just fade away as better theories gain acceptance. Attempting to explain the natural world by appealing to God is, by scientific standards, not a very successful theory. The fact that we humans have been able to understand so much about how the natural world works, in our incredibly limited region of space over a remarkably short period of time, is a triumph of the human spirit, one in which we can all be justifiably proud.
I find really useful way to think about so-called “fine tuning” – which often deflates many arguments – is to put the question in terms of simulations (e.g. Monte Carlo on a computer). If you think parameter X is “finely tuned” that presumably means something like “of all the possibilities for X, we require X in the range […] in order for life to occur, and this is a region of parameter space that is highly improbable.” In terms of simulations this means that if you generate N universes with X randomly distributed you find a very small fraction are suitable for life (given some conditions to crudely approximate this.)
Now, you can hopefully all see that to actually do this you need a sampling distribution for X. In fact, you need the joint distribution for all parameters of the model universe. If any are truly ‘fixed’ for theoretical reasons you could use a delta function. Just saying that X is random isn’t nearly enough to solve the problem, or really say anything about whether X ~ X_obs is unlikely. The answer to whether X is unlikely to be in the ‘goldilocks zone’ is obviously completely dependent on what distribution you chose for X.
Surely to say some parameter must be tuned – because it’s actual value (or a life-supporting range of values) is unlikely – implies you know the distribution of allowed values. How can anyone know that? What do people assume when they say X (for which we have only ever observed one value) has a value that is improbable?
(I recall Vic Stenger’s done some Monte Carlo simulations running a toy model of stellar evolution under different physical constant. But I’ve not read this in details.)
BTW: there’s a really interesting paper by stats guru Radford Neal on “Antropic reasoning” here. Good to see a real expert of probability theory take on this problem, not just us physicists (who sometimes don’t see all the subtleties or solutions).
After reading:”The Rare Earth Hypothesis” by Peter Ward I concluded the following.
If
1) God didn’t create life (it sure doesn’t look that way)
2)God didn’t play any part in evolution (it sure doesn’t look that way)
3) The Rare Earth Hypothesis is correct (read the book, its worth it)
Then the Man in Charge is a slacker. That or he is a big picture guy, he makes a universe and then moves on.
Truth is when we venture too far from the shadow of experimentalism then we all become bar room philosophers forever beating a dead horse, Prometheus style.
I love science and grow quickly bored with religious or even political arguments. If you want to talk politics, then put it into economic terms or leave me alone. If you want to talk theology then I submit you are delusional in what you pretend to know. Some people find great comfort in playing make believe. The need for religion springs from the fear of our actual insignificance. Some of us are no longer afraid. We are apart of something greater, the scientific community that is doing a fine job of beating back the fog of complexity. I could go on but the horse is already dead.
I think that the focus on God as a scientific theory is overly narrow. Instead, we should focus on God as a theoretical posit more generally, where a theoretical posit is just something in our ontology that we haven’t yet been able to observe directly. Lots of theoretical posits are ones in scientific theories, e.g., electrons and dark matter. But lots aren’t. For instance: (1) In common-sense psychology, we posit that people have beliefs and desires even if we don’t know any science at all. (2) A suspicious wife may posit another woman, even if she doesn’t have any easy way to catch her husband red-handed. (3) A plumber may posit a clog in some pipe if there’s a back up. Sure, these can generally be accommodated by science, but they’re not posited through the use of science, just the use of everyday reasoning.
It’s not too hard to argue that God-as-theoretical posit, even as a non-scientific one, isn’t very good. Even our common sense posits tend to meet certain standards: they do explanatory work, for instance. The God hypothesis doesn’t. Furthermore, we notice there are tons of tensions in the idea: all good, powerful, etc. seems to conflict with evil; intervenes, but never directly enough to be sure it was God; cares a lot about our lives, but never speaks to us directly or reveals Himself. Thus, the idea looks like a mess even if we loosen our standards. So, I think Sean’s point stands even more generally: if you use the methods you usually use to assess theoretical posits, you’ll reject the God hypothesis.
I’l l say this: For being a fictitious entity, God sure gets a lot of attention. 🙂
Even those who know He is fictitious can’t escape devoting their lives, blogs, books and public lectures to discussing Him. (Look at PZ Meyers, God runs his day to day life! Discussing God seems to be all he can find to do with his time and it appears he will sacrifice his entire life to the part of discussing God day in and day out!) Pretty impressive you have to admit!
God may be fake, but even the atheist world can’t help but revolve around Him.
BL- I don’t understand your distinction between science and every day causal reasoning, they are just different ends of the spectrum. Furthermore, we make all kinds ofcommon sense assumptions about the world, including value judgments, and its difficult to think of these as being explanatory.
@Joseph Smidt, #79
That’s because we live in a nation where radical Christianity is so dominant that it completely shapes public discourse. Where atheists are one of the more despised and distrusted minorities, to the point that it can be really difficult to “come out” to people in the community. Atheists here are outspoken about it because the need for a countervailing force is vital. In countries where it’s more common, there’s not nearly the tendency to be so vocal about it.
@AJKamper #81
I see. Well, I give this out as a definition of hell: sacrificing your whole life to discussing something you know is false. (You only get one life!)
“can be really difficult to “come out””
Again, I am impressed that people feel a need to be labeled publicly in terms of an entity that is false. I’m not saying it is wrong! But I think it would be an interesting psychological study to see why people feel compelled to want to have the ability to be publicly labeled in terms of a fictitious entity.
And my original point isn’t that atheists are wrong to do what they are doing. Its to say God is impressive in that He can both be fake and get the entire world, even those who know he is fake, to sacrifice their lives to discussing Him and feel compelled to be labeled in terms of Him. 🙂 He should get some type of kudos for that!
Smidt
So you enjoy making life hell for the rest of us. How very Christian of you.
I think I’m in love with this essay. It dissolves the problem of “creation from nothing” (an issue which I recently encountered in a discussion elsewhere), uses Bayesian reasoning to judge possible explanations, correctly describes parsimony in terms of Kolmogorov complexity, points out the theory-saving in and the predictive issues of God as a hypothesis… brilliant all around.
@AnotherSean,
I agree that there’s no principled distinction between scientific and casual, everyday reasoning. Scientific reasoning is just common sense gone sufficiently reflective and sophisticated. My point is that even when we significantly loosen the standards that Sean uses to evaluate how good of a hypothesis God is, we get the same result. The idea is just that the theist looks like she’s committed to using very different standards when it comes to evaluating the God-hypothesis than she herself uses for pretty much everything else.
As for value judgments, I take it that those generally are in a different category. To put the matter loosely, claiming that God did such and such or that electrons are thus and so commits me to the existence of God and electrons. Claiming that genocide is wrong or that ice cream is tasty doesn’t commit me to anything existing nor does it generally impose restrictions on what the world is like. It’s only when we start claiming that there are objective facts about these things that it begins to look like we’re walking on metaphysically dubious ground.
@ JosephSmidt, 81
I’m sorry, but this is akin to be saying, “Well, gee, if people think skin color isn’t important in determining the value of a person, then why do so many people say they’re proud to be black?” Because they’ve been persecuted for exactly that! There’s nothing impressive, laudable, or kudo-worthy about the human tendency to hate.
I wouldn’t make it as personal as Ray, but he’s got a point: if American atheists are in what you call hell, it’s because Christians have put them there–not of their own choice.
“Why (Almost All) Cosmologists Are Atheists”
Why (Almost All) Cosmologists’ theories are possibly rubbish?
In answering the question: Does the Universe Need God?, i only have this to say. I have always lumped the gods and goddesses with war: “What is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Say it again! Uh-uh! Listen to me.”
In my opinion the more important question is “Why in the 21st century scientists still need to waste their intelectual capacity to disprove the existence of gods?” Fortunatly they do (it is obviously necessary), but to me that whole situation is utterly absurd!
I liked the article quite a bit, and think it provides a respectful but still pretty biting critique of theistic cosmology. One minor quibble: in assessing the options for explaining the “fine tuning” of the standard model parameters, you don’t mention Lee Smolin’s Cosmological Natural Selection proposal. Maybe you don’t really like it but its a) in part testable, and has so far passed the tests its been subjected to and b) provides a mechanism for addressing the fine tuning question that doesn’t rely on a “final theory”, which seems like a good thing since candidate final theories, like super strings or loop quantum gravity seem to if anything provide even more greater scope for universes with physical laws different from our own (hence greater need for fine tuning) than the standard model.
Only some people need a god to justify their views/existence. I don’t need a god, and neither does the universe.
Great article Sean.
As God, I can confirm that Sean is absolutely correct here.
Love, and I really mean it,
God
Poor Sean, for all of your intellect and eloquence I feel your loneliness all the way over here. Leave the world and its workings to science, and love and spirtuality to God.
#75. Sphere Coupler,
I appreciate your point of view, and I have been down similar paths as you, and I ultimately chose to be a Christian. So, I can dig it. However, I already knew how the sky is blue. I know all about the different refraction rates of each wavelength of light. However, that doesn’t tell me why blue’s wavelength is longer than red. Nor does it address why longer wavelengths should refract more rather than less. Truthfully, there is no law of science that says it should be one way or the other, but it is one way, and not the other.
These choices all seem arbitrary, but every single “choice” inexorably leads to another and another and another until we have the wonderful tapestry that is the entire Universe.
You’ve elegantly shown me how. I won’t find out why on this blog. That doesn’t bother me because I do know where to look for that answer.
That you’ve taken a non-committal stance on the overall question saddens me. You are an intellectual, and a person I’ve already come to admire, and yet you are staying on the sidelines. That is anti-intellectualism to me. That saddens me a little.
But, I guess I really don’t know you, so…I don’t know…
–Robert
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Atheists are evidence of god’s existence. Cosmologists who deny god can exist must be poor cosmologists, unless they have identified the boundaries of space. I didn’t hear about that. Every electronic computer programmer knows that only 2 things exist, On or Off, All or Nothing. Where in All is not god? Where in Nothing is anything but god? I guess my problem with atheists is the same as every other religionist I know. They want to define god their way and reject other definitions. From what I was taught God has no boundaries so fence him in at your own peril. The vinegar is just right.
The God hypothesis tends to be framed in ultimate terms: “an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent being. (There are other definitions, but they are usually comparably terse.)” but it might be more useful to scientific consideration to think in penultimate terms. While this might at first invoke a “Huh?” response, it’s a device fairly common to modern science fiction, with roots in literary and religious writing unto ancient times.
The ancient form of the device suggests that our reality is merely the dreams or imaginings of a prior reality. The modern form of the device suggests that our reality is a virtual reality existing entirely within a massive piece of software. Either way, “God” ends up being defined, not by extreme adjectives (e.g. omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent), but simply by the contingency of our reality, relative to that prior reality.
Admittedly, a consideration of penultimacy immediately raises the issue of infinitely nested realities, but that is still useful, if only because we are rapidly moving toward the ability to “nest” new universes within our own, and may need to wrestle with the “God” issue from the other side of the divide. Programmers inevitably learn that being the “creator” vests one’s self with neither omniscence nor omnipotence over one’s creation. Even for “God,” there may be limits, and because of those limits, “God” may need to use shortcuts and cut some corners, and “God’s” creatures might get hints of their creator by noticing anomalies in the programming.
Maybe that is what relativistic and quantumn physics represent, that when we press beyond the normal perception of our reality, to the infinitely small, or the infinitely large, or the infinitely fast, we start to see distortions that maybe we were never intended to get around to.
Or maybe not.
The point is, the possibility of being in a nested reality bears some consideration, is hard to categorically deny, and leaves open the kind of designed contingency that we tend to associate with the existence of “God,” even if that “God” has little to do with the declarations of most of theology.
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I do believe the universe needs god. Either for physical or emotional support;god is one of the many things that gives people hope. Science, is honestly not so comforting.
I may not be a professional or anything, but I certainly know that things just don’t go ‘boom’ and you have a universe. Some things, science just cannot prove.
Delusion:
1. That something is comforting doesn’t (necessarily) make it true; only comforting;
2. If the universe didn’t ‘just go boom’ and exist, how come god went ‘boom’ and exists?
(Special pleading + argument from incredulity.)