"Does science make belief in God obsolete?"

[bjorn]

The conference on "Origins —?the BIG Questions" October 3–4, 2008 at CIT, has a related web page at the John Templeton Foundation www.templeton.org/belief/.

This week, the question is “Does science make belief in God obsolete?”, with essays from Pinker, Ward, Hitchens (the reknown scientist), Miller, Stenger, Schönborn and more.

Interesting stuff which very much shows the demarcation lines (there are several).

[bjorn]

A few highlights from Stenger:

1: The universe could come from nothing:

Prior to the twentieth century, the simple fact that the universe contains matter also provided strong evidence for a creation. At the time it was believed that matter was conserved, and so the matter of the universe had to come from somewhere. In 1905 Einstein showed that matter could be created from energy. But where did that energy come from?

This remained unanswered for almost another century until accurate observations with telescopes determined that an exact balance exists between the positive energy of matter and the negative energy of gravity. So, no energy was required to produce the universe. The universe could have come from nothing.

He has said this for some time, however I think it gets curioser and curioser. One wonders if he really knows what nothing is. Is nothing nothing (no laws, no energy, no gravity, no subatomics, no vacuum, no nothing) or really something (e.g. a "balance").

Smells IMHO of special pleading not even to mention that there may indeed be a rather large gap between the metaphysical nothing and the physical something.

2: The universe began with maxium disorder and low entropy

Independent scientific support for a creation was also provided by a basic principle of physics called the second law of thermodynamics, which asserts that the total disorder or entropy of the universe must increase with time. The universe is growing more disorderly with time. Since it now has order, it would seem to follow that at some point in the past, even greater order must have been imparted from the outside.

But in 1929, astronomer Edwin Hubble reported that the galaxies were moving away from one another at speeds approximately proportional to their distance, indicating that the universe was expanding. This provided the earliest evidence for the Big Bang. An expanding universe could have started with low entropy and still have formed localized order consistent with the second law.

Extrapolating what we know from modern cosmology back to the earliest definable moment, we find that the universe began in a state of maximum disorder. It contained the maximum entropy for the tiny region of space, equivalent to zero information.

What became of the Copernican principle (which may be taken as that the universe is (roughly) homogeneous in space and time and isotropic in space)? And how many other scientists agree with a high entropy origin (I don't know, so I ask)?

3: Man is too small

If he is to have any control over events so that some ultimate plan is realized, God has to poke his finger into the works amidst all this chaos. Yet there is no evidence that God pokes his finger in anyplace. The universe and life look to science just as they should look if they were not created or designed. And humanity, occupying a tiny speck of dust in a vast cosmos for a tiny fraction of the life of that cosmos, hardly looks special.

Perhaps not physically. However, both the "Privileged planet" hypothesis and the question of the connection between size and significance, indicate that Stenger here (not surprisingly) chooses the angle that best suits his purpose.

4: The universe is too large for God

The universe visible to us contains a hundred billion galaxies, each with a hundred billion stars. But by far the greatest portion of the universe that expanded exponentially from the original chaos, at least fifty orders of magnitude more, lies far beyond our horizon. The universe we see with our most powerful telescopes is but a grain of sand in the Sahara. Yet we are supposed to think that a supreme being exists who follows the path of every particle, while listening to every human thought and guiding his favorite football teams to victory. Science has not only made belief in God obsolete. It has made it incoherent.

At least it has made Stenger's argument incoherent when it comes to theology.

In short, distorting and dismissing (by not even mentioning) obvious replies, do not quite give the confidence Stenger needs for his rather controversial interpretations.

[humphreyclarke]

Aug 6, 2008 9:50:19 GMT bjorn said:

A few highlights from Stenger:

2: The universe began with maxium disorder and low entropy

I’m at a bit of a loss on the entropy issue as I only have a rudimentary understanding of physics. I tend to stick to fine tuning issues where I can refer to Paul Davies and Martin Rees. As I understand it the big bang theory implies that the universe began in a state of maximum entropy. However, maximum possible entropy at the singularity would necassarily be zero. As the singularity expands, the maximum possible entropy increases as more and more microstates become available. Therefore the universe can begin in a state of maximum entropy and then continue to increase in entropy due to expansion. The expansion allows the maximum possible entropy to increase faster than the actual entropy thus the universe gets more 'disordered' overall. But room for 'order' to increase is provided in the gap.

However from reading around I have found that the idea of a High Entropy big bang is something of a bugbear for Roger Penrose and he argued strongly against it in 'The Emperor's New Mind' and 'The Road to Reality'. Unfortunately his reasons for objecting to it are a complete mystery to me as I don't own either book and in the preview copy on amazon the relevant pages are obscured. Best I can find is a quote from RTR where he says:

Now let us return to the extraordinary 'specialness' of the Big Bang. The fact that it must have had as absurdly low entropy is already evident from the mere existence of the Second Law of thermodynamics. But low entropy can take many different forms. We want to understand the particular way in which our universe was initially special...It seems to me that this apparent thermal equilibrium in the early universe has grossly misled some cosmologists into thinking that the Big Bang was somehow high entropy 'random' (i.e. thermal) state, despite the fact that, because of the second law, it must have actually been a very organized (i.e. low entropy) state. A prevalent view seems to have been that the resolution of this paradox must lie in the fact that, soon after the Big Bang, the universe was 'small' so that comparatively few degrees of freedom were available to it, giving a low 'ceiling' to possible entropies. This point of view is fallacious, however, as was pointed out [earlier]. The correct resolution of the apparent paradox lies in the fact that the gravitational degrees of freedom have not been thermalized along with all of those matter and electromagnetic degrees of freedom...In fact, these gravitational degrees of freedom -providing a huge reservoir of entropy -are frequently not take into account at all...Rather than sharing in the thermalization that, in the early universe, applies to all other fields, gravity remains aloof, its degrees of freedom lying in wait, so that the second law would come into play as these degrees of freedom begin to become taken up. Not only does this give us a Second Law, but it gives us one in the particular form that we observe in nature. Gravity just seems to have been different!...physicists have tried to come to terms with this puzzle and related ones, concerning the origin of the universe. In my opinion, none of these attempts comes at all close to dealing with the puzzle...

Anyone know what his objection actually is?

[humphreyclarke]

Aug 6, 2008 9:50:19 GMT bjorn said:

A few highlights from Stenger:

Loved George Ellis's review of his book.

physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/27736

What the book in fact contains is a melange of homespun philosophy, amateur biblical interpretation and a smattering of scientific data served up under the pretence of being a proof.

[bjorn]

Great review - thanks!

As I have these books by Penrose, I'll check what he writes on the entropy issue - which I of course should have done before asking any of you questions on it (the peril of being on the more spontaneous side is that one tends too often to write on the spur of the moment).

[bjorn]

Aug 6, 2008 10:22:02 GMT humphreyclarke said:

Aug 6, 2008 9:50:19 GMT bjorn said:

A few highlights from Stenger:

2: The universe began with maxium disorder and low entropy

I’m at a bit of a loss on the entropy issue as I only have a rudimentary understanding of physics. I tend to stick to fine tuning issues where I can refer to Paul Davies and Martin Rees. As I understand it the big bang theory implies that the universe began in a state of maximum entropy. However, maximum possible entropy at the singularity would necassarily be zero. As the singularity expands, the maximum possible entropy increases as more and more microstates become available. Therefore the universe can begin in a state of maximum entropy and then continue to increase in entropy due to expansion. The expansion allows the maximum possible entropy to increase faster than the actual entropy thus the universe gets more 'disordered' overall. But room for 'order' to increase is provided in the gap.

However from reading around I have found that the idea of a High Entropy big bang is something of a bugbear for Roger Penrose and he argued strongly against it in 'The Emperor's New Mind' and 'The Road to Reality'. Unfortunately his reasons for objecting to it are a complete mystery to me as I don't own either book and in the preview copy on amazon the relevant pages are obscured. Best I can find is a quote from RTR where he says:

Now let us return to the extraordinary 'specialness' of the Big Bang. The fact that it must have had as absurdly low entropy is already evident from the mere existence of the Second Law of thermodynamics. But low entropy can take many different forms. We want to understand the particular way in which our universe was initially special...It seems to me that this apparent thermal equilibrium in the early universe has grossly misled some cosmologists into thinking that the Big Bang was somehow high entropy 'random' (i.e. thermal) state, despite the fact that, because of the second law, it must have actually been a very organized (i.e. low entropy) state. A prevalent view seems to have been that the resolution of this paradox must lie in the fact that, soon after the Big Bang, the universe was 'small' so that comparatively few degrees of freedom were available to it, giving a low 'ceiling' to possible entropies. This point of view is fallacious, however, as was pointed out [earlier]. The correct resolution of the apparent paradox lies in the fact that the gravitational degrees of freedom have not been thermalized along with all of those matter and electromagnetic degrees of freedom...In fact, these gravitational degrees of freedom -providing a huge reservoir of entropy -are frequently not take into account at all...Rather than sharing in the thermalization that, in the early universe, applies to all other fields, gravity remains aloof, its degrees of freedom lying in wait, so that the second law would come into play as these degrees of freedom begin to become taken up. Not only does this give us a Second Law, but it gives us one in the particular form that we observe in nature. Gravity just seems to have been different!...physicists have tried to come to terms with this puzzle and related ones, concerning the origin of the universe. In my opinion, none of these attempts comes at all close to dealing with the puzzle...

Anyone know what his objection actually is?

The last paragraph is verbatim snips from pages 726-32 of RTR (Chapter 27.13).

I must admit I have some challenges with providing quick answers or a short summary, as the whole argument goes on for almost 50 pages... And then Penrose explains his own perspective in chapter 30 which is another 50 pages, focussing on the 27.13 issue in 30.14 (page 861-865). And there are a lot of key elements and arguments in between, to set up a proper ontological framework (he does not agree with the 'Copenhagen interpretation' - ref. e.g. page 865). I think I have to read through it a few times over some weeks (or months) first

One quote, though, which hopefully may clear up matter (or energy) a bit (at least to me):

In 27.13, I drew attention to the extraordinarily special state in which the universe appears to have started out. The main way in which this state was special, and which gave its absurdely low entropy, was a very precise spacial isotropy and homogeneity...

So much for Stenger's "maximum disorder"...