But who created the laws of physics?
Bookworm on Sep 02 2010 at 9:53 am | Filed under: Uncategorized
Just asking. And why is it somehow more intellectually chic to believe in aliens than in God?
What’s really embarrassing that it is an atheist (that would be me) who has to ask these questions.
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30 Responses to “But who created the laws of physics?”
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Hawking is incoherent. If something arises spontaneously out of nothing, it means that no-thing, including gravity, exists. Gravity does not work in the absence of time or space, both of which were non-existent until the Big Bang.
As for string theory, give me a break. There’s no way to test it, which for some atheists, makes it bullet-proof. ”Well, as soon as we are able to test Oompha Loompha, I have no doubts that it will explain everything, including the non-existence of God. But until that glorious day, you’ll just have to trust me when I say Oompha Loompha is the real thing!”
Who created the laws of physics? It’s turtles all the way down!
“And why is it somehow more intellectually chic to believe in aliens than in God?”
Because they don’t want to think about aliens wiping out their little planet.
They like to believe God, is the primary threat. As if their little mortal pathetic limbs could reach out against God. But it makes them feel good. Powerful. Powerful enough to deal with aliens as equals. As if.
As an (applied) physicist, I was intrigued to read articles in the American Physics Society magazine saying that String Theory has never made a prediction that has been verified by experiement. However, the author noted that String Theory is such “consensus science” that a theoretical physicist that did not espouse it would never get tenure or be allowed to publish research.
Does that sound anything like another scientific consensus that no “real” scientist dares question (hint: initials are AGW or, now that it isn’t getting warmer anymore, CC) Why supposedly intelligent people people constantly present (as facts) their opinions on subjects that no one can speak of with any certainity is beyond me.
Moving on to God: the existence (or non-existence) of God is a subject is that the ”natural” sciences should have nothing to say. By definition, science, the study of nature, cannot be expected to explain the “supernatural.” The universe has always seemed to demand a divine explaination but it may be our lack of understanding of its mechanisms that make it appear so. To primitive people with no exposure to modern technology, things we take for granted as created by man, would seem comprehensible only as supernatural objects. Conversely, once they learn how, for example, a CT scanner works and understand that it was made by men, such as themselves, would that justify them in concluding that since one apparently magical device was really a natural object that everything in the universe is therefore a natural object and God is therefore proven not to exist.
Demonstrating that we understand portions of universe does not say we do, or even that we can, understand everything about the universe. Even if we eventually do understand “life, the unverse, and everything” we will be no closer to proving the existence (or non-existence) of God. That should be obvious to anyone intelligent enough to study a hard science.
In science, you only strive to prove your theory is correct by explaining past observations, making predictions and confirming these predictions by experiments or observations. You never try to prove your theory by showing every other theory is wrong for the simple reason that while there is only one most correct (but usually incomplete) theory, there are an infinite number of incorrect, or less correct, theories.
God, if God exists, is (to paraphrase) not only beyond our present understanding but beyond what we can understand. Perhaps the existence of God should be left to each person to decide upon because on this subject, the most ignorant human being knows as much as the best educated. To (try to) quote one of favorite authors: “Even the wise cannot know everything, and being wise, they should not expect to be able to.”
garyp
After such a well written and thoughtful post and I almost hesitate to add….
Oh yeah, prove it – Hawking!
I enjoyed a book called “Not Even Wrong” about the stranglehold that string theory has on the public practice of physics.
“It’s turtles all the way down!”
LOL!
It’s turtles down to the Planck distance, then from there it’s only probabilistic turtles.
I think,
Maybe,
It’s the arrogance of believing that he knows so much that is troubling. You see that, too, among highly educated physicians. In every age, they are certain that everything that is worth being known is already known. Has already been discovered. They know it all. And that is never true.
There is so much still to be learned. Especially at the quantum level. There’s a book by Brian Greene I have to dig up and reread when I have time. One experimental phenomenon he notes is – if I remember correctly – that of two quarks of opposite persuasion split apart to move in opposite directions. Normally tied together in cause and effect, they are now flying apart and appear to be free of persuasion on each other, at a great distance apart. But then you influence one of them – and the other, at a distance, is immediately affected. Somehow, someway, they remain “tied” together in cause and effect.
There is plenty of amazing mystery left for us to investigate in this wondrous universe. And while none of it proves or disproves God, it leaves a lot of room.
If you use the laws of physics, order spontaneously comes from chaos, something from nothing. But more surprising is that Stephen Hawking has been using God to round out his theories until now?
Could Glenn Beck mentioning God on the national mall have spooked people this bad?
Explain to me again why the Whole Thing has to have been created at all? Maybe it just is.
Charlie, “it just is” implies that it always has been, which doesn’t jibe with what we know about the structure and behavior of the universe. The evidence overwhelmingly points to a “singularity,” the sudden emergence of something from nothing.
If so, then something led to that singularity. Unless something from nothing is routine.
There are also other universes, connected to Hawking’s Radiation. Universes within blackholes, for example, rather than nothingness.
Twenty-five years ago, my daughter began her GATE (Gifted And Talented Education) experience in a Southern CA combination 4th-5th grade class. She was among some of the brightest little minds around…a group of kids who, frankly, thought they were pretty hot stuff. The very first “lesson” Mr. Snyder taught was brief but so memorable, she recalls it today like it happened last week. He walked up to the blackboard and drew an enormous circle, large enough to just about fill the entire board. Mr. Snyder (who turned out to be an outstanding teacher, btw) then asked the class the following question: ”How much of this circle do you think I would need to shade-in, to represent the portion of knowledge, ALL KNOWLEDGE, that mankind has thus far come to learn/understand?” After a pause, the class began to collectively shout out various answers… “A quarter of it — NO! more like half! — I think it would be at least an eighth of a pie — I’m sure we’ve conquered at least three-fourths!” Etc etc etc. Much to Mr. Snyder’s amusement, this group went on with their guesstimates for several minutes. When finished, he walked back to the blackboard and announced, ” I’ll now reveal the answer on just how much humankind has, to this point, learned/absorbed/discovered in the field of ALL knowledge…” He then took his piece of chalk and staccatoed an TINY pinpoint mark within the giant circle. Little mouths dropped. Silence. Lesson learned!
I suggest Dr. Hawking take Mr. Snyder’s 4th-fifth grade Gate class as soon as his schedule might allow.
Whether you believe in God or not, assume for the moment that He exists. Now assume that He created the universe out of nothing, and then recognize that to the best of our knowledge, we exist in _one_ universe, which now appears to us to be just one of many…all of which, we must assume, were created by the same God.
Now…given all that…someone thinks he can comprehend the entity which we call God???
Makes me wonder what an ant thinks of a human…or the sun…or ….well….what else do you suppose an ant can comprehend?
Who says we can comprehend God? But maybe He can communicate as much of Himself as we’re capable of understanding, which is a good deal to start with, and the part He considers it important for us to know.
I think God is a layers-of-the-onion type of deity. In the 17th century, Galileo gets his hands on a primitive telescope and notices that Jupiter has moons. Wow, the universe just got a lot more interesting!
Meanwhile, Newton/Leibniz invent calculus, laying the foundation for people three centuries later who would send robot spacecraft out to Galileo’s moons. Whoa, bodacious vulcanism on Io and Europa hoarding vast amounts of water! The universe gets more interesting again.
Back in physics, Newton sets us up to study the universe with the expectation that it follows certain laws—an expectation that helps us methodically push out our boundaries of knowledge. Einstein comes along to offer new insights into the properties of time and space, and other physicists begin delving into the atom to find it has immensely more complicated underpinnings than we had supposed.
Goaded by the increasing (and dazzling) beauty of the structures we’re finding, our monkey minds come up with ever more sophisticated tools for probing and analyzing. And wouldn’t you know it, as our tools become better, the things they find become ever more impressive and inspirational in terms of making us want to probe even deeper.
Remember the aroma clouds in the 1940s cartoons that would waft into a room and pull characters by their noses toward the wonderful-smelling source? God is that aroma cloud.
These pictures, Charles, seem to advance your argument quite well.
Trish, the implication is that the amount of knowledge they know is far far inferior to the status quo Dot
Mike D,
Are you thinking of entanglement?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100901091938.htm
BrianE,
Yes, it is quantum entanglement I’m thinking of. This Wikipedia article does a good job describing it in (relatively) layman’s terms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_entanglement
I’d thought that Brian Greene described an actual experiment where the entanglement effect at a distance was proved… but the article seems to indicate that that hasn’t happened yet. All the more reason for me to dig up that book from my stacks this weekend, to find that relevant chapter and reread it!
Book! What a great site. Thank you, thank you!
Something can be unknown (because we haven’t learned enough) or unknowable (because no amount of learning can help). Logical arguments advanced by science or faith that that presume to “close in” on the unknowable become exercises in nonsense. For example, to say that knowledge of God and the universe is a mere one percent or ninety-nine percent points up the same difficulty, that of adducing a percentage of an unknown whole. There is little reason to suppose that we are halfway, no way, or near the end of the mysteries of time and space and no reason at all to suppose that, if God is God, we can become equal to that being, power, and knowledge.
But more to the point, both God and the universe are worthy of serious and passionate study. However, the mind in pursuit of knowledge that ignores the limits of logic and reason troubles me. It leads to all sorts of nonsense about God while offering an alternate cause of the universe (which, for all we know, may be one of billions or a molecule in a cosmic chair). After all, a human mind is but a bit of dust examining other bits of dust, whether they are stars, galaxies, or other objects all of the same whole cloth and fabric of space. One might as well expect a river to rise higher than its source as to suppose a mind can think thoughts beyond its own.
No wonder the words, “In the beginning God . . . ” have offered an entirely satisfying answer to human curiosity and faith, and to those who take a step toward God are never disappointed. And those who have never done that or think it’s a self-induced delusion find, strangely enough, comfort in starting with “In the beginning the laws of physics . . . .” It isn’t quite fair, I suppose, to say that the “laws of physics” as a sufficient starting point begs the question, for so does beginning with God. Either starting point tempts one to ask, “But who made God” or “Who made the laws of physics?”
Yet, if human beings can’t tell the difference between the idea of God and the idea of physics, we are indeed in far more trouble than we may think.
It seems to me, when the question of how anything — the universe, the planet, life, us — was created, I run across people who insist the only explanation is an Intelligent Designer causing that something to appear out of nothing, and in particular, with complete indifference to or even in violation of the rules of nature. I’m perfectly comfortable with the notion that the universe arose in accord with laws of nature. I’m even comfortable with the notion that the laws of nature are tuned in such a way that our universe, or one “close enough for government work” was not that unlikely. Same for planets, and same for the origin and subsequent evolution of life. Science is about discovering the rules by which the universe operates, not finding excuses to suspend them whenever something hard to explain comes up.
We may ask who created the rules themselves, and that’s a reasonable question. But I have to wonder, is there any reason we have to assume they were created? Maybe the rules have always existed. Or maybe some rules have always existed, and those gave rise to the laws of nature we all know and love.
I don’t know how to tell the difference. And I don’t think either Stephen Hawking or the Discovery Institute know how to tell, either.
This is a case of where we have to be very careful with language when we discuss origins.
Creation involves a conscious act. If we say something is created, volition is implicit.
However, just popping into existence might get around the problem of how the universe came to be. Slightly amending how Charles put it above, perhaps “it just came to be.”
But that’s an effect without a cause, and even Hawking shrinks from saying you can have that. So, he posits that the Big Bang was the result of gravity acting in some inevitable manner, even though gravity cannot possibly exist in the absence of time and space. There was no time or space “before” the Big Bang, so where the hell and when the hell did gravity exist? What medium contained it such that it could be gravity?
Certainly “it just came to be”, or “it just happened” is insufficient.
But the problem with debating “cause and effect” about the singular Big Bang effect is that time and space would not have existed either, prior to the Big Bang. Doesn’t a cause, followed by its effect, require both time and space to exist? The effect follows the cause in time, but what if there IS NO TIME? You can’t discuss what conditions were like BEFORE the Big Bang, because there was no “before” – that requires time to have meaning, and it didn’t.
If you accept that we understand these things, and aren’t just pondering equations on a blackboard that are nothing more than our latest attempt at an incorrect framework theory about the origin of the universe replacing a slightly more incorrect framework theory about the origin of the universe. I think of it this way: One mile away, there sits a target that represents “the correct understanding of how the universe was created.” The current model takes three steps in the correct direction toward that target. But it’s only three steps in the correct direction of a MILE.
We’re making the same intellectual mistake that intellectuals often make: Assuming we already know everything, and that the current theories are absolutely correct. Especially concerning something as mysterious and obtuse as a singular moment of creation of time, space and matter, it is the very height of arrogance and pride that demandeth the fall.
Wags like to say: That desktop where you’re typing right now, it may feel solid to you, but you KNOW, it’s almost completely empty space. It’s practically empty! It just has a LITTLE more stuff in it than the air around you! Nothing is solid, everything is empty space!
In one minor sense, they’re correct: The ratio or percentage of “void filled with material” compared to “void that has no electrons or protons or neutrons occupying space” is very low. But that is the incorrect model of reality. The reality is that that space is as full as it CAN be, and that makes it DAMNED FULL INDEED! It’s STUFFED with material, is the truth – it’s as full as it can be, and furthermore, that material is all strongly connected; and that’s why it’s solid.
That’s the more correct view of reality. To look at it merely as “almost completely empty” is totally missing the point. And gets you nowhere in understanding reality nor in USING reality for our own modest creational abilities.
…the problem with debating “cause and effect” about the singular Big Bang effect is that time and space would not have existed either, prior to the Big Bang.
Maybe, maybe not.
I’ve been following blogs such as Starts With a Bang, and the occasional issue of Scientific American, and there are a number of proposals for what may have existed before the Big Bang.
The author of SWaB shows in one of his posts that the universe could easily have existed forever, and the “Big Bang” more properly refers to the period when inflationary pressure built up to the level where it provoked the creation of “extra” space and mass-energy.
Other possibilities include “brane (as in membrane) theory” in which “branes” float in an eleven-dimensional space. (I’ll go ahead and make the joke about this being Zombie Space. “Braaaiins!!!”) What we know as the Big Bang occurred when two of these “branes” slammed into each other, the energy from the collision translated into areas of inflation and creation of mass-energy.
And there are other speculations in which the Big Bang was not necessarily a singularity, but merely a restricted point to which a previous universe shrunk down before expanding again. (Those speculations may not be supportable not that a repelling force seems to have been observed.)
The fundamental point is, whatever happened, it is assumed by scientists to have happened in accordance with rules, and these rules can be discovered or worked out. These rules may be quite alien to what we’re used to in this universe, but if we can ever work out what these rules are, we will find that they give rise to our familiar universe as at least one possibility. Scientists do not believe that the universe arose, or indeed that anything else happened, because of anything happening by itself, out of nothing, for no particular reason.
Charles Martel … a little gift for you.
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/08/cassini-gallery/all/1
Karl said,
> Scientists do not believe that the universe arose, or indeed that anything else happened, because of anything happening by itself, out of nothing, for no particular reason.
I agree with them and you. I tried to be careful in my comment about describing the Big Bang as a possible event, not a proven actuality. And just because the concept of “before” might not have been possible as a description, such as in “before the Big Bang”, that is not the same thing as saying it happened for no reason nor by itself.
The oh-so-infallible scientists were certain – absolutely certain!- that due to their calculations of total universe mass, that our universe would never be able to slow its expansion nor eventually contract. As with global warming, and as with all things Obama, it was considered settled science. Then they began discovering vast quantities of previously undetected “dark matter” – or discovering the EFFECTS of such dark matter from which they posited the existence of the dark matter itself. Now they are unsure. Or at least some of them are.
OH! How I wish I didn’t have to keep butting my head against the sneering superiority of those who consider things to be settled science. When it never really is settled at all. The problem is not merely the settled science – the problem lies with those who would take that settled science and USE it to control your life in directions you don’t wish to go. Vaccines for your children that you are certain will actually harm them. Global warming! Global warming! Global warming! – and the resultant need to send us all back to a standard of living relevant to the 17th Century. Or of uncivilized tribes cowering in mud-daubed huts, fearful of the thunder. The ozone hole and how we are all facing imminent extinction and we MUST MUST MUST simply do something, NOW! I’m sick of their certainty and their theories and the subsequent demands for control over my life in ways they have absolutely no right to demand.
>>I’m sick of their certainty and their theories and the subsequent demands for control over my life in ways they have absolutely no right to demand.>>
Besides – they’re illogical. They also claim there is no God, therefore there is no after life. And we humans aren’t “exceptional”, we’re just higher order animals. And of course, we are simply evolved animals because we’re all the result of evolutionary force.
But we _must_ stop any future evolution. Never mind that if by our actions we poison the earth, we’ll simply all die – which of course, we’ll do anyway in time – but our species will die and the earth will either heal itself or become something else. In other words, we will become extinct, and some other creature will appear. And since there is no afterlife, it’s no different than if all of the bison in North America died. Oh wait…! And guess what..the plains are still there – with no bison except those which we’ve brought back from extinction. And why does it matter? the environmentalists get all batty about the numbers of animals that are going extinct – but animals have _always_ gone extinct – even way before the human had any direct action on any of them.
So logically, we’re just a species that exists in the present, and we may destroy our environment and become extinct. Why don’t they just let it be!