Faith Versus Fact : Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible (9780698195516) (26 page)

We've already covered one item on the list above: the “inevitability” of humans having evolved, which on inspection doesn't seem so inevitable.
As for the origin of life
, we've made enormous progress in understanding how it might have happened beginning with inert matter, and I'd be willing to bet that within the next fifty years we'll be able to create life in the laboratory under conditions resembling those of the primitive Earth. That doesn't mean that it did happen that way, of course, for we'll probably never know. But reproducing such an event would falsify the religious claim that a natural origin of life is simply impossible without God. And the religious answer hasn't stopped the intense effort by chemists and biologists to find a naturalistic solution.

To the layperson, our consciousness seems scientifically inexplicable because it's hard to imagine how the sense of “I-ness”—and our subjective sensations of beauty, pleasure, or pain—could be produced by a mass of neurons in our head. Yet consciousness subsumes at least four phenomena: intelligence, self-awareness, the ability to access information (being unconscious versus “conscious”), and the first-person sense of subjectivity. Only the last—the so-called hard problem of consciousness—seems baffling, for it's difficult to imagine how a brain that can be studied objectively produces feelings that are subjective.
Neuroscience has already made
substantial inroads on the first three phenomena (brain interventions, both mechanical and chemical, as well as scans of brain activity, are putting together a neurological picture of what's required for these phenomena), and that field is already knocking on the door of the hard problem.
Ultimately, its solution may elude us for one reason: we're using our limited cognitive abilities to tackle a research project that is hard even to frame. That doesn't mean that we should abandon this work, only that the most recalcitrant problem of science isn't the origin of life, or the origin of the laws of physics, but the evolution and mechanics of our brains and the minds they produce. This is the result of a peculiar recursion: we're forced to use an organ that evolved for other reasons to study how that organ makes us
feel.

The “problems” of the laws of physics and the effectiveness of mathematics are connected, but only the first needs explanation. It's important to realize at the outset that the very term “laws of physics” is tendentious, for the word “law” implies a lawgiver, implying a creative god. But the laws of physics are simply
observed regularities
that hold in our universe, and I'll use “laws” in that sense alone.

And those laws are in fact a precondition of our existence, for without them we couldn't have evolved—or even existed as organisms. And by “we,” I mean all species. If the laws of physics and chemistry varied unpredictably, our brains and bodies wouldn't work, for we couldn't have stable physiology, genetic inheritance, or the ability to reliably collect and process information about the environment. Imagine what would happen, for instance, if the impulses in our nerves, which depend on chemistry, traveled at widely variable speeds. Before we could pull our hand from the fire, or detect a predator, we might be burned or eaten. If we couldn't control the acidity of our
blood within a fairly narrow range (one of the functions of our kidneys), we'd die. Nor could evolution have operated, for that process depends on environments being fairly constant from one generation to the next. If that constancy didn't exist, no species could last for long.

Thus, as with the “fine-tuning” problem of the laws of physics, which we'll discuss shortly, we can devise an “anthropic principle of biology”: there
must
be stable laws of physics, or life wouldn't have evolved to the point where we could discuss these laws. Where natural theology comes in, as it does with physical laws, is the claim that the laws are “fine-tuned” by God to permit the existence of humans.

But if there are such laws, then the usefulness of mathematics is automatically explained. For mathematics is simply a way to handle, describe, and encapsulate regularities. As you might expect, there is in fact no law of physics—no regularity of nature—that has defied mathematical description and analysis. In fact, physicists regularly invent new types of mathematics to handle physical problems, as Newton did with calculus and Heisenberg with matrix mechanics. It's hard to conceive of
any
regularity that couldn't be handled by mathematics. So “
the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences
,” as the physicist Eugene Wigner titled one of his scientific papers, simply reflects the regularities embodied in physical law.
The effectiveness of math is evidence not for God, but for regularities in physical law.

One of the enduring goals of physics is to derive more fundamental laws from less fundamental ones: that is, to unite seemingly disparate phenomena under a single theory that reduces the number of subtheories. Classical Newtonian physics, for example, is now seen as a special case of quantum mechanics, and thermodynamics as a special case of statistical mechanics. The attempt to find a “theory of everything” unifying the four great forces of physics has been largely successful: so far only gravity has eluded union with the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces. It is likely that this kind of amalgamation will continue on many levels, but it's also likely that in the end we'll reach a set of principles or descriptors that can be reduced no further. At that point we'll simply have to say, “These are, as far as we know, the irreducible laws of our universe.” But what does it add to our understanding to say “and these laws are God's creation”? It adds nothing, but merely yields another unanswerable: where did that
God
come from?

But the existence of physical laws, even if we can't understand their constancy, raises a separate question. Even if those laws are
required
for our existence, why are they such as to
allow
our existence? To many believers, the answer is “Because God deliberately made them compatible with human life so that we, his most special creature, could evolve.”

This brings us to the most pervasive—and, to the layperson, the most convincing—claim of natural theology: that of the “fine-tuning” of physical laws. After discussing it, I'll take up the remaining natural theological arguments for God: the “Moral Law” and our ability to hold beliefs that are true.

The Argument for God from “Fine-Tuning”

The “fine-tuning” argument for God, also known as the “anthropic principle,” makes the following claim: Many of the constants of physics are such that if they differed even slightly, they would not permit the existence of our universe or the evolution and existence of humans who were supposedly the object of God's creation. Because we
do
exist, the values of these constants are too improbable to be explained by science, which suggests that they were adjusted by God to make life possible.

A full 69 percent of Americans
support some version of this argument, agreeing that “God created the fundamental laws of physics and chemistry in just the right way so that life, particularly human life, would be possible.”
Even scientists are susceptible to the argument. Kenneth Miller has decried “god of the gaps” arguments, but relents a bit when those arguments involve physics:

It almost seems
, not to put too fine an edge on it, that the details of the physical universe have been chosen in such a way as to make life possible. . . . If we once thought we had been dealt nothing more than a typical cosmic hand, a selection of cards with arbitrary values, determined at random in the dust and chaos of the big bang, then we have some serious explaining to do.

The “serious explaining,” of course, includes considering God.

But at the outset we must ask whether the constants of physics really do
fall within a narrow range that permits human life. The answer is yes—but for only some of them. The constants that could not vary much from their measured values without making life as we know it impossible—and we'll need to discuss the meaning of “life as we know it”—include these: the masses of some fundamental particles (for example, protons and neutrons), the magnitude of physical forces (the strong and electromagnetic forces, as well as gravity), and the “fine structure” constant (important in forming carbon). If gravity were too strong, for example, planets could not exist long enough for life to evolve, nor would organisms be possible, as they would be flattened. The mass of the proton is 99.86 percent that of the neutron, and if it were even slightly smaller, stars like the Sun couldn't exist, for the nuclear fusion that powers their existence could not occur.

The observation that some constants must be close to what they are to make life physically possible is called the “weak anthropic principle.” And it seems easy to refute this as evidence for God. If the constants didn't have those values, we wouldn't be here to measure them.
Of course
they must be consonant with human life.

But theists claim more than that, proposing what is called the “strong anthropic principle.” This principle is simply the weak version with the added explanation that the constants fall within a narrow range of values because that's where God put them. As the argument goes, the values of those constants are
highly improbable
among the array of all possible
physical constants, and because their values currently defy scientific explanation, that improbability is evidence for God. This is, of course, a “god of the gaps” argument, resting on our ignorance about what determines physical constants. But because this principle sounds authoritative and involves arcane issues of physics unfamiliar to the average person, it is often invoked by theists. It is in fact the most effective weapon in the arsenal of the new natural theology.

But do we really know that science will never be able to explain these constants of physics? No, of course not. We don't understand why they have the values they do, but we're making progress, and the conceptual gap that supposedly harbors God is closing.

Even the premise of “fine-tuning” is dubious, for we're not sure
how much
one can vary some of the constants without making life impossible.
Certainly the masses of protons and neutrons must be relatively close to their present value, but other physical constants need not be that precise. The cosmological constant and the entropy of the early universe, for instance, could have been substantially larger than they are without affecting our presence, for those changes would simply reduce the number of galaxies in the universe without affecting their fundamental properties. Stars could still exist, as well as planets that could harbor life. After all, God needed only one solar system to house the creatures who worship him, so why the superfluous billions of uninhabited planets?

Further, we don't know how improbable the values of the constants really are. Such a claim makes the crucial assumption that all values of constants are equally likely and can vary independently. It also assumes that there is no deep and unknown principle of physics that somehow constrains physical constants to have the values we see. Given our complete ignorance of the proportion of “physical-constant space” that could be compatible with life, there's simply nothing we can say about how improbable life is.

The fine-tuning argument for God gets even weaker because it includes the proviso “life as we know it”—that is, carbon-based life. But creatures sentient enough to perceive and worship God need not be the kind we know and love: our imaginations are limited by the life with which we're familiar. There could, for instance, be life based on silicon instead of carbon, life that could live at higher or lower gravity, or life that could have come into being instantly, rather than having evolved. After all, the Abrahamic God is omnipotent and so could fine-tune life for whatever universe he created, rather than fine-tune the universe for life.

Indeed, why should life be based on matter at all? To many people, God is a humanlike spirit, one with feelings and some sort of consciousness. Couldn't he create a race of similar immaterial but worshipful beings: bodiless minds that lack his powers? After all, any being with the power to determine physical constants could create any conceivable form of life, and God already is said to create souls, which are in effect bodiless minds. Why not just have a conclave of souls instead of material beings on Earth? The problem is that we simply don't know what forms of humanoid life—and here I mean “sentient, rational beings made in God's image”—are possible. Nor can theists explain why souls must have bodies.

Most important, there are other explanations for fine-tuning that don't invoke God. The simplest is that if we inhabit the only universe there is, we simply got lucky: that our universe had the right physical constants to permit and support life as we know it. In other words, in the bridge game of cosmology, we drew a nearly perfect hand—at least for carbon-based humanoid life.

The odds of this are immensely increased, however, if there is more than one universe: the equivalent of billions of hands of bridge being dealt at once. The concept of a “multiverse”—many universes that are independent of one another—falls naturally out of several current and popular theories of physics, including string theory and the idea of cosmic inflation: the very rapid expansion of the universe just after the Big Bang. If those theories are true, then there may well be multiple and independent universes. Further, the constants of physics will differ among those universes. Given that, it becomes probable that some universes will have the right physical constants to allow life as we know it, and lo, we happened to evolve in one of those. If you deal a huge number of bridge hands, one that's perfect, or close to it, becomes probable.