God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion (23 page)

The more indirect the evidence, the more difficult it is to do decide whether or not a hypothesized particle is real. We can never know if some future theory will do away altogether with these currently favored objects, so we cannot prove they exist with complete certainty. However, in the case of the electrons, photons, neutrinos, and perhaps a few other key particles, I think we can reasonably presume that they will remain as ingredients in any future theory, and we can take them to be real “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

If you are wondering about quarks, they have never been observed, as electrons and muons are, by the tracks they leave in particle detectors. In fact, the current standard model predicts that quarks never will be seen as free particles. Quarks are bound together in nuclei by a force that grows stronger as you try to separate them. It's like trying to separate two oppositely charged ions in water. They discharge as electrons flow from one to the other through the water.

So the reality of quarks is still somewhat open. But, the longer they remain part of any successful theory, including whatever eventually replaces the standard model, the greater the confidence we will have in treating quarks as real.

A more controversial issue is the status of the reality of some of the other ingredients of physics theories (only physics, and perhaps astronomy, has this problem) that many prominent theoretical physicists would like to consider “more real” than the particles of the standard model. These are the quantum fields that are the basic mathematical objects in the theory, while the particles
are treated as the excitations (quanta) of these fields. These physicists, and I believe they are many, are “Platonic realists” who follow Plato and his doctrine of
forms
described in
chapter 2
. They consider the idealizations of our theories the true reality and the particles we actually observe the distorted shadows on the wall of Plato's cave.

Note, however, that quantum fields are not the “fields of energy” that you will often see referred to in popular literature as the reality with which quantum mechanics has replaced “material reality.” Fields of energy are fields of matter because energy and matter are equivalent.

Applying Platonic metaphysics to quantum mechanics, the wave function, a type of quantum field, is “real” and so its simultaneous “collapse” throughout the universe grossly violates relativity. However, the much more rational and parsimonious position is that the wave function is simply a human-invented mathematical object that can do anything its inventors want it to do, so long as any calculations made using it agree with the data. We have never observed a wave function or quantum field, or even a classical electromagnetic field. All that our detectors ever register are localized hits that look very much like particles. Furthermore, the empirical fact remains that no information or object has ever been observed to travel faster than the speed of light.
³⁵

IS QUANTUM MECHANICS COMPLETE?

All his life Einstein argued that quantum mechanics had to be “incomplete.” After a long series of debates with Bohr in which Einstein tried and failed to refute the uncertainty principle because of Bohr's brilliant responses, Einstein eventually accepted quantum mechanics as a “statistical theory.” But he objected to the widely accepted philosophical interpretation of the theory, called the
Copenhagen interpretation
, championed by Bohr, in which properties have no meaning until they are measured.

In 1935, having just settled in at Princeton after leaving Europe, Einstein and two young colleagues, Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen, wrote a classic paper arguing that for a theory to be complete, every element in that theory must have a counterpart in physical reality.
³⁶

In conventional quantum mechanics, the momentum and position of a particle cannot be simultaneously measured. Yet it is generally assumed that a particle still possesses both properties. Note that because of the de Broglie relation, the momentum of a particle is inversely proportional to the wavelength of the corresponding wave. We have already seen how a beam of particles collectively has wave properties, which are associated with its wave function. Thus the beam intrinsically can have a well-defined momentum while each particle has a well-defined position.

In 1952, David Bohm proposed an alternate interpretation of quantum mechanics, based on an earlier idea of de Broglie's, in which the motions of particles are controlled by unobserved subquantum forces, or so-called
hidden variables—
or, as de Broglie called them,
pilot waves
.
³⁷
The theory was deterministic in principle but probabilistic in practice, giving the same empirical results as the conventional theory. That appeared to make it untestable.

However, in 1964, physicist John Bell proved a remarkable theorem that showed how to empirically distinguish between conventional quantum mechanics and any theory of local hidden variables. Recall from
chapter 5
that “local” means limited to information transfer at the speed of light or less. In 1982, the proposed experiment, usually referred to as the “EPR experiment,” was performed in France by a team led by Alain Aspect.
³⁸
The result agreed perfectly with conventional quantum mechanics and ruled out local hidden variables forever. Subsequent independent experiments have confirmed this result.

Bohm and his supporters were undaunted. They simply said that the Bohmian theory was nonlocal; that is, it allowed influences to move faster than the speed of light.
³⁹
Basically, Bohm's subquantum force was described mathematically as being produced by a
quantum potential
, which was the combined effect of all the particles in the universe. The observed quantum behavior was the result of the simultaneous, superluminal (actually, infinite speed) interaction of the particle in question with the rest of the universe.

In the case of the EPR experiment, the results are usually interpreted to imply that a measurement performed on a particle at one point in space affects the results of a measurement at a distant point, even though any signal between the two would have to travel faster than the speed of light.

Here again we find the emergence of a holistic universe. Needless to say,
the theists and spiritualists were again delighted, and Bohm himself took up spirituality and began writing on the “wholeness” of reality.
⁴⁰
Quoting theologian Philip Clayton, “The [Aspect] experiments force upon us a view that lies well outside any commonsense conception of matter.”
⁴¹

Still, most physicists were not carried away with these results. After all, the Aspect experiment was just another one among thousands confirming the predictions of standard quantum mechanics. Furthermore, the experiment did not in fact demonstrate a superluminal connection between two particles. Nowhere has it ever been shown that a measurement of one particle specifically affected the measurement of its partner from the same source. Experiments always produce statistical distributions of the measurements of many particle pairs and compare them with statistical predictions of the theory of local hidden variables as opposed to quantum mechanics. We saw previously that in the double slit experiment, the wave picture does not apply to individual particles but to ensembles; the same is true here. Once again we find that quantum mechanics is a theory that calculates probabilities and not the behavior of individual particles.

While Bohm's model still has its supporters, the fact that it implies superluminal transfers of information violates relativity. This would be acceptable if superluminality were observed, but it never has been (reports of superluminal neutrinos are problematical). In fact, it can be proved that superluminal information transfer is forbidden in any theory consistent with the axioms of relativistic quantum field theory, which is the basis of all the achievements in theoretical particle physics since before World War II.
⁴²
The “nonlocality” of quantum mechanics that is always bandied about by authors is in the minds of these authors. Until superluminality is observed, physicists should stick to the simplest model that is consistent with all existing knowledge.
⁴³
The wave function is nonlocal, but it is also an abstract mathematical object like the price of a car. You can't drive a number.

And what about Einstein's objections to the conventional interpretations of quantum mechanics? Interpretations is pluralized here because there are more than one that still are conventional in the sense that they statistically predict what we observe, and as long as they do that successfully, it's the best we can do. Einstein was a scientific realist who believed that the ingredients
of our models had to have “counterparts” in reality. But, we have no right and indeed no need to make that assumption. As has been mentioned several times already, and will be elaborated upon further in
chapter 7
, the models we use in physics are invented by physicists for the purpose of describing and predicting observations. They have to agree with the data, so they must have some connection to reality, but the true connection need not exist in one-to-one correspondence; it remains behind a veil that empirical science alone cannot penetrate. Models are artifacts. If we view quantum mechanics as an artifact, then as long as it successfully describes the data, it is complete. Why does every element in that theory have to have a counterpart in physical reality, as long as the theory does the job it is supposed to do?

As we saw in the previous section, we can more reasonably assign reality to localized particles than quantum fields or wave functions. Even when we are measuring a “wavelength” we are detecting particles, not waves. Furthermore, particles do not travel faster than light. And even if they did, this would not imply a holisitic reality. We can never determine with complete certainty whether particles or fields, or neither, are the ultimate reality, and so we should not be making grand metaphysical claims about a theory that is simply designed to describe observations and indeed does so very well.

Some foolish men declare that Creator made the world. The doctrine that the world was created is ill-advised, and should be rejected. If god created the world, where was he before creation? If you say he was transcendent then, and needed no support, where is he now? No single being had the skill to make the world—for how can an immaterial god create that which is material? How could god have made the world without any raw material? If you say he made this first, and then the world, you are face with an endless regression. If you declare that the raw material arose naturally you fall into another fallacy, for the whole universe might thus have been its own creator, and have risen equally naturally. If god created the world by an act of will, without any raw material, then it is just his will made nothing else and who will believe this silly stuff? If he is ever perfect, and complete, how could the will to create have arisen in him? If, on the other hand, he is not perfect, he could no more create the universe than a potter could. If he is formless, actionless, and all-embracing, how could he have created the world? Such a soul, devoid of all modality, would have no desire to create anything. If you say that he created to no purpose, because it was his nature to do so then god is pointless. If he created in some kind of sport, it was the sport of a foolish child, leading to trouble. If he created out of love for living things and need of them he made the world; why did he not make creation wholly blissful, free from misfortune? Thus the doctrine that the world was created by god makes no sense at all.

—Jinasena (ninth-century Jain master)
¹

CREATION MYTHS

S
cience and religion are not necessarily incompatible because the view of the cosmos we get from science differs so dramatically from that presented in sacred scriptures and cultural traditions. Only fundamentalists take those stories literally and that forces them to conclude that science is simply wrong. For them, science and religion are incompatible and no one has to write a book to prove it.

However, the majority of believers today recognize that these creation stories are myths. No doubt they were meant to convey some message, but whatever it is, it has nothing to do with science. Science does not conflict with religious myths any more than it does with
Harry Potter.
Although sometimes based on actual events and personages, myths are basically fictions.

We have already seen how theologians and lay believers have tried to come to grips with Darwinian evolution. Basically they say it is God-guided, but that is contrary in principle to the Darwinian model and is just an unacknowledged form of intelligent design. Furthermore, evolution implies humanity is an accident—in total disagreement with the universal religious belief that we are special. Many will disagree, but these are two places where science and religion are fundamentally incompatible.

In the last two chapters we discussed some of the physics issues that enter into the religion-science dialogue. We saw that considerable misunderstanding exists about the metaphysical implications, if any, of quantum mechanics. In later chapters we will evaluate the inferences people have made about a place for quantum consciousness, an end to reductionism, and the emergence of higher-level principles in complex systems that supposedly point toward a universe of purpose. We will see that the empirical facts simply do not support these pious hopes.

In this chapter let us continue the physics discussion by moving from the subatomic world to the cosmos.
²
Just as people have always found the argument from design convincing based on their observations of events around them, they have turned their attention to the heavens and asked, “How could all of this have happened by chance?”

In his 2006 bestseller,
The Language of God
, Francis Collins, who, as mentioned earlier, is director of the National Institutes of Health, former head of the Human Genome Project, and an evangelical Christian, gives the typical theist view: “I cannot see how nature could have created itself. Only a supernatural force that is outside of space and time could have done that.”
³
Strangely he seems to be able to see how God created himself. The usual theological response to this question is that God always existed and so was not created. But then, why couldn't the universe itself have always existed and thus not have been created?

We saw that William Paley's natural theology was once a good scientific argument for a creator. Until Darwin came along, science had no explanation for the complexity of life. Now it does. Similarly, the argument for a cosmic creation was also quite reasonable at one time, a miracle seeming to be necessary to explain creation. However, it is still a God-of-the-gaps argument, and now science has filled all the known gaps with plausible scenarios for an uncreated universe. Let us run through the theological arguments first, and then we'll see why they fail.

BIG BANG THEOLOGY

As briefly mentioned in
chapter 5
, nineteenth-century physics and cosmology provided several good scientific reasons to argue that something miraculous had to happen for the universe to come into existence. Let us now discuss these in more detail, starting with the principle of
conservation of mass
.

Conservation of Mass

Until the twentieth century, all observations indicated that the total mass of a system could not change unless some mass was either inserted from outside the system or removed to the outside. Measurements with chemical reactions, for example, seemed to bear out this principle. The character of the individual bodies carrying mass could change, as in chemical reactions, but the total mass remained the same. The universe obviously has mass, so where did it come
from? In the theological view, it came from nothing,
creation ex nihilo
, by the miraculous mass-creating act of God.

Conservation of Energy and the First Law of Thermodynamics

Similarly, the universe contains energy. The law of conservation of energy says that the total energy in an isolated system is conserved. Like mass, energy can change from one form to another as long as the total stays constant. For example, a falling body loses potential energy but it gains kinetic energy in an equal amount as it falls.

As we have seen, the first law of thermodynamics is a generalized form of the law of conservation of energy that distinguishes heat from other forms of energy and work. The origin of the universe seems to imply a miraculous violation of the first law.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics

The other great principle of thermodynamics, the second law, also once provided strong support for a created universe. Recall that the second law says the entropy, or disorder, of an isolated system must either stay the same or increase with time, that is, become more disordered. The universe is presumably an isolated system and now contains order, so it had to be at least as orderly or more orderly in the past. So it seems to follow that some intelligence must have done the ordering.

The Big Bang

Perhaps the most important cosmological claim of virtually every religion is the creation itself. For there to have been a creator, there had to have been a creation. And that means that the universe must have had a beginning in time. The big bang is claimed as evidence for such a beginning.

The idea behind the big bang was first proposed in 1927 by astronomer and Belgian Catholic priest Georges-Henri Lemaître, although he did not use the term
big bang
. He showed that an expanding universe was perfectly consistent with Einstein's general relativity.
⁴

Einstein did not approve, however, reportedly telling Lemaître, “Your math is correct, but your physics is abominable.”
⁵
Einstein still held the traditional belief that the universe is a static “firmament,” as implied in the Bible and most other scriptures that present creation myths. But “static” here is not meant to imply that objects are all at rest. They are moving about, but their average distance apart stays the same.

Einstein had inserted into his gravitational equation in general relativity a factor called the
cosmological constant
that provided a repulsive force to counteract the gravitational attraction that otherwise should make the universe collapse. Although the cosmological constant is often referred to as a “fudge factor,” this is a misnomer. Such a constant is required in Einstein's equation, although no value is given. If positive, it produces a gravitational repulsion. If negative, we have an additional attraction.

Lemaître's theory was not well recognized until 1930 when the eminent English astrophysicist Arthur Eddington wrote an article referring to Lemaître's expanding universe as a brilliant solution to outstanding problems in cosmology.
⁶

In the early 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble, working at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, discovered that many of the diffuse objects in the sky called
nebulae
were in fact distant galaxies. The universe extended well beyond our home galaxy, the Milky Way. Later in the decade Hubble and his assistant, Milton L. Humason,
⁷
estimated the distances to galaxies using a technique invented by Henrietta Swan. This they combined with measurements of the redshifts of the spectral lines from stars in the galaxies that had been measured by Vesto Sipher.

In
chapter 6
we saw how the light emitted from a high-temperature gas is characterized by “spectral lines” of well-defined frequencies. Different gases have different spectra. These can appear two ways, either as bright
emission
lines in a darker background or as dark
absorption lines
in a light background. In the latter case the atoms in the gas selectively absorb light passing through it at well-defined frequencies. By observing the spectra of light from stars, astronomers are able to decipher the composition of the surface of the star. The element helium was observed this way in the sun before it was discovered on Earth, hence the name, derived from
helios
, Greek for “sun.”

Hubble and Humason showed that compared to laboratory measurements, the pattern of spectral lines of galactic gases was most often shifted to lower frequencies. This is called a
redshift
since the lowest-frequency visible light is red in color. A few had “blueshifts” to higher frequency, notably the only galaxy visible as a diffuse object to the naked eye, Andromeda.
Hubble and Humason found that the amount of redshift from a galaxy was roughly proportional to its distance from us, although there was a lot of scatter in the data points. The proportionality factor became known as the
Hubble constant.
However, two recent books have pointed out that Lemaître published an estimate of this factor two years earlier based on the same data.
⁸

Lemaître provided an explanation of the observations, consistent with Einstein's equation: the universe is expanding, so as time goes by almost all galaxies are receding from us.
⁹
The observed redshift is the Doppler effect that results from these galaxies' recessional speeds.
¹⁰
Hubble's data, along with other published results, showed that the galaxies were moving away from one another as if from a giant explosion, where those galaxies with higher speeds have moved the farthest apart. This became known as the big bang, a derisive term introduced by astronomer Fred Hoyle who favored a steady-state universe.

When Einstein realized that the cosmological constant was not needed for agreement with observations, he called it his “biggest blunder.” For many years the cosmological constant was assumed to be zero. However, no theoretical reason has yet been found for equating it to zero, and, as we will see, it may not be.
¹¹

Referring to the big bang, in 1951 Pope Pius XII told the Pontifical Academy, “Creation took place in time, therefore there is a Creator, therefore God exists.”
¹²
Lemaître wisely advised the pope not make this statement “infallible.” Theists make much of the fact that Lemaître was a priest and that his belief in a creation may have given him the idea of the big bang. Perhaps it did, but he was a good scientist and had excellent scientific reasons for proposing the big bang.

Believers were overjoyed when the big bang theory was confirmed in a whole series of astronomical observations, starting with the serendipitous discovery of the cosmic background radiation by radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1964.
¹³

Of course, the big bang theory looks nothing like the story of creation found in the Bible or in any other religious scripture. But, as promised, biblical errors and contradictions will not be used to argue the incompatibility of science so long as they are not taken literally. Still, theologians continue to use the big bang to argue that the universe had a beginning. Robert Jastrow, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, called this the most powerful evidence for the existence of God ever to come out of science.