God: The Failed Hypothesis (17 page)

Physicists invent mathematical models to describe their observations of the world. These models contain certain general principles that have been traditionally called “laws” because of the common belief that these are rules that actually govern the universe the way civil laws govern nations. However, as I showed in my previous book,
The Comprehensible Cosmos,
the most fundamental laws of physics are not restrictions on the behavior of matter. Rather they are restrictions on the way physicists may describe that behavior
²⁵
.

In order for any principle of nature we write down to be objective and universal, it must be formulated in such a way that it does not depend on the point of view of any particular observer. The principle must be true for all point of views, from every “frame of reference.” And so, for example, no objective law can depend on a special moment in time or a position in space that may be singled out by some preferred observer.

Suppose I were to formulate a law that said that all objects move naturally toward me. That would not be very objective. But this was precisely what people once thought—that Earth was the center of the universe and the natural motion of bodies was toward Earth. The Copernican revolution showed this was wrong and was the first step in the gradual realization of scientists that their laws must not depend on frame of reference.

In 1918 mathematician Emmy Noether proved that the most important physical laws of all—conservation of energy, linear momentum, and angular momentum—will automatically appear in any model that does not single out a special moment in time, position in space, and direction in space
²⁶
. Later it was realized that Einstein’s special theory of relativity follows if we do not single out any special direction in four-dimensional space-time.

These properties of space-time are called
symmetries.
For example, the rotational symmetry of a sphere is a result of the sphere singling out no particular direction in space. The four space-time symmetries described above are just the natural symmetries of a universe with no matter, that is, a void. They are just what they should be if the universe appeared from an initial state in which there was no matter—from nothing.

Other laws of physics, such as conservation of electric charge and the various force laws, arise from the generalization of space-time symmetries to the abstract spaces physicists use in their mathematic models. This generalization is called
gauge invariance,
which is likened to a principle I more descriptively refer to as
point-of-view invariance.

The mathematical formulations of these models (which are provided in
The Comprehensible Cosmos)
must reflect this requirement if they are to be objective and universal. Surprisingly, when this is done, most of the familiar laws of physics appear naturally.

Those that are not immediately obvious can be seen to plausibly arise by a process, mentioned in chapter 2, known as
spontaneous symmetry breaking.

So where did the laws of physics come from? They came from nothing! Most are statements composed by humans that follow from the symmetries of the void out of which the universe spontaneously arose. Rather than being handed down from above, like the Ten Commandments, they look exactly as they should look if they were not handed down from anywhere. And this is why, for example, a violation of energy conservation at the beginning of the big bang would be evidence for some external creator. Even though they invented it, physicists could not simply change the “law.” It would imply a miracle or, more explicitly, some external agency that acted to break the time symmetry that leads to conservation of energy. But, as we have seen, no such miracle is required by the data.

Thus we are justified in applying the conservation laws to the beginning of the big bang at the Planck time. At that time, as we saw earlier in this chapter, the universe had no structure. That meant that it had no distinguishable place, direction, or time. In such a situation, the conservation laws apply.

Now, this is certainly not a commonly understood view. Normally we think of laws of physics as part of the structure of the universe. But here I am arguing that the three great conservation laws are not part of any structure. Rather they follow from the very lack of structure at the earliest moment.

No doubt this concept is difficult to grasp. My views on this particular issue are not recognized by a consensus of physicists, although I insist that the science I have used is well established and conventional. I am proposing no new physics or cosmology but merely providing an interpretation of established knowledge in those fields as it bears on the question of the origin of physical law, a question few physicists ever ponder.

I must emphasize another important point, which has been frequently misunderstood. I am not suggesting that the laws of physics can be anything we want them to be, that they are merely “cultural narratives,” as has been suggested by authors associated with the movement called postmodernism
²⁷
. They are what they are because they agree with the data.

Whether or not you will buy into my account of the origin of physical law, I hope you will allow that I have at minimum provided a plausible natural scenario for a gap in scientific knowledge, that gap being a clear consensus on the origin of physical law Once again, I do not have the burden of proving this scenario. The believer who wishes to argue that God is the source of physical law has the burden of proving (1) that my account is wrong, (2) that no other natural account is possible, and (3) that God did it.

Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

If the laws of physics follow naturally from empty space-time, then where did that empty space-time come from? Why is there something rather than nothing? This question is often the last recourse of the theist who seeks to argue for the existence of God from physics and cosmology and finds that all his other arguments fail. Philosopher Bede Rundle calls it “philosophy’s central, and most perplexing, question.” His simple (but booklength) answer: “There has to be something
²⁸
.”

Clearly many conceptual problems are associated with this question. How do we define “nothing”? What are its properties?

If it has properties, doesn’t that make it something? The theist claims that God is the answer. But, then, why is there God rather than nothing? Assuming we can define “nothing,” why should nothing be a more natural state of affairs than something? In fact, we can give a plausible scientific reason based on our best current knowledge of physics and cosmology that something is more natural than nothing!

In chapter 2 we saw how nature is capable of building complex structures by processes of self-organization, how simplicity begets complexity. Consider the example of the snowflake, the beautiful six-pointed pattern of ice crystals that results from the direct freezing of water vapor in the atmosphere. Our experience tells us that a snowflake is very ephemeral, melting quickly into drops of liquid water that exhibit far less structure. But that is only because we live in a relatively high-temperature environment, where heat reduces the fragile arrangement of crystals to a simpler liquid. Energy is required to break the symmetry of a snowflake.

In an environment where the ambient temperature is well below the melting point of ice, as it is in most of the universe far from the highly localized effects of stellar heating, any water vapor would readily crystallize into complex, asymmetric structures. Snowflakes would be eternal, or at least would remain intact until cosmic rays tore them apart.

This example illustrates that many simple systems of particles are unstable, that is, have limited lifetimes as they undergo spontaneous phase transitions to more complex structures of lower energy.

Since “nothing” is as simple as it gets, we cannot expect it to be very stable. It would likely undergo a spontaneous phase transition to something more complicated, like a universe containing matter.

The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent. As Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, “The answer to the ancient question ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’ would then be that ‘nothing’ is unstable
²⁹
.”

In the nonboundary scenario for the natural origin of the universe I mentioned earlier, the probability for there being something rather than nothing actually can be calculated; it is over 60 percent
³⁰
.

In short, the natural state of affairs is something rather than nothing. An empty universe requires supernatural intervention—not a full one. Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.

Notes

¹
Conservation of energy was not immediately recognized but was already implicit in Newton’s laws of mechanics.

²
Richard Swinburne,
The Existence of God
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 229.

³
It is commonly thought that only nuclear reactions convert between rest and kinetic energy. This also happens in chemical reactions. However, the changes in the masses of the reactants in that case are too small to be generally noticed.

⁴
Stephen W. Hawking,
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
(New York: Bantam, 1988), p. 129.

⁵
Technically, the total energy of the universe cannot be defined for all possible situations in general relativity. However, in V. Faraoni and F. I. Cooperstock, “On the Total Energy of Open Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Universes,”
Astrophysical Journal
587 (2003): 483-86, it is shown that the total energy of the universe can be defined for the most common types of cosmologies and is zero in these cases. This includes the case where the density is critical.

⁶
Alan Guth,
The Inflationary Universe
(New York: Addison-Wesley, 1997).

⁷
The mathematical derivation of the curves on this plot is given in appendix C of Victor J. Stenger,
Has Science Found God? The Latest Results in the Search for Purpose in the Universe
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), pp. 356-57.

⁸
The mathematical proof of this is given in appendix A, Stenger,
Has Science Found God?
pp. 351-53.

⁹
Pope Pius
XII
, “The Proofs for the Existence of God in the Light of Modern Natural Science,” Address by Pope Pius
XII
to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, November 22, 1951, reprinted as “Modern Science and the Existence of God,”
Catholic Mind
49 (1972): 182-92.

¹⁰
William Lane Craig and Quentin Smith,
Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).

¹¹
Clifford M. Will,
Was Einstein Right? Putting General Relativity to the Test
(New York: Basic Books, 1986).

¹²
Stephen W. Hawking and Roger Penrose, “The Singularities of Gravitational Collapse and Cosmology,”
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London,
series A, 314 (1970): 529-48.

¹³
Hawking,
A Brief History of Time,
p. 50.

¹⁴
Keith Parsons, “Is There a Case for Christian Theism?” in
Does God Exist? The Debate between Theists & Atheists,
J. P. Moreland and Kai Nielsen (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1993), p. 177. See also Wes Morriston, “Creation
Ex Nihilo
and the Big Bang,”
Philo 5,
no. 1 (2002): 23-33.

¹⁵
William Lane Craig,
The Kalâm Cosmological Argument,
Library of Philosophy and Religion (London: Macmillan, 1979);
The Cosmological Argument from Plato to Leibniz,
Library of Philosophy and Religion (London: Macmillan, 1980).

¹⁶
Smith in
Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology,
by Craig and Smith; Graham Oppy, “Arguing
About
The
Kalam
Cosmological Argument,”
Philo
5, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2002): 34-61, and references therein; Arnold Guminski, “The Kalam Cosmological Argument: The Questions of the Metaphysical Possibility of an Infinite Set of Real Entities,”
Philo
5, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2002): 196-215; Nicholas Everitt,
The Non-Existence of God
(London, New York: Routledge, 2004), pp. 68-72.

¹⁷
David Bohm and B. J. Hiley,
The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics
(London: Routledge, 1993).

¹⁸
I discuss this in detail in Victor J. Stenger,
The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995).

¹⁹
Quantum mechanics becomes classical mechanics when Planck’s constant
h
is set equal to zero.

²⁰
David Atkatz and Heinz Pagels, “Origin of the Universe as Quantum Tunneling Event,”
Physical Review
D25 (1982): 2065-67; Alexander Vilenkin, “Birth of Inflationary Universes,”
Physical Review
D27 (1983): 2848-55; David Atkata, “Quantum Cosmology for Pedestrians,”
American Journal of Physics
62 (1994): 619-27.

²¹
Victor J. Stenger,
The Comprehensible Cosmos: Where Do the Laws
of Physics Come From?
(Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006), supplement H.

²²
J. B. Hartle and S. W. Hawking, “Wave Function of the Universe,”
Physical Review
D28 (1983): 2960-75.

²³
Hawking,
A Brief History of Time,
pp. 140-41.

²⁴
E. P. Tryon, “Is the Universe a Quantum Fluctuation?”
Nature
246 (1973): 396-97; Atkatz and Pagels, “Origin of the Universe as Quantum Tunneling Event”; Alexander Vilenkin, “Quantum Creation of Universes,”
Physical Review
D30 (1984): 509; Andre Linde, “Quantum Creation of the Inflationary Universe,”
Lettere Al Nuovo Cimento
39 (1984): 401-405; T. R. Mongan, “Simple Quantum Cosmology: Vacuum Energy and Initial State,”
General Relativity and Gravitation
37 (2005): 967-70.