God and Nature: Above Reason, Not Against Reason

Both science and theology use evidence to formulate models of what we think the world is like and what we think God is like. Often what the evidence shows us is that nature and God are beyond our comprehension! The evidence leads to mysteries that we cannot fully comprehend; many times reality must be described in a way that doesn’t make sense. In theology, the trinity and the dual nature of Christ are both paradoxes that cannot be totally understood by our human mind. In science, quantum mechanics and the nature of light have the same issues of mental obscurity.

The Doctrine of the Trinity teaches that one God is three persons.  This is not illogical nor is it contradictory; but it certainly is a paradox! God is three “whos” and one “what”; this is not a logical contradiction. It is stated well in the Athanasian Creed from the fourth century.

Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith. Which faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the catholic faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance.

For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, is all one, the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal.[1]

Our minds cannot comprehend the Trinity, but this is what is described by the writers of the eyewitness accounts of what Jesus taught. This evidence leads us to the conclusion that one God is also three persons. The Trinity may be above reason, but it is not against reason.

Evidence from the Apostolic Writings also lead us to the conclusion that Jesus was God and a human at the same time.  Comprehending this doctrine is a bit easier than the trinity, but still a mystery!  How can something be two different things at once?  Here is a description from the Council of Chalcedon:

We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach men to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the same perfect in Godhead and also perfect in manhood; truly God and truly man, of a reasonable soul and body; consubstantial with us according to the manhood; in all things like unto us, without sin; begotten before all ages of the Father according to the Godhead, and in these latter days, for us and for our salvation, born of the virgin Mary, the mother of God, according to the manhood; one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the distinction of natures being by no means taken away by the union, but rather the property of each nature being preserved, and concurring in one Person and one Subsistence, not parted or divided into two persons, but one and the same Son, and only begotten, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the prophets from the beginning have declared concerning him, and the Lord Jesus Christ himself taught us, and the Creed of the holy Fathers has handed down to us.[2]

These mysteries are not limited to Christianity!  Paradoxes also are forced by the evidence when studying the natural world. Take light and electrons for example.  Under one set of conditions they will do exactly the same thing as water waves and sound waves.  Change the situation and they will act as if they are little tiny baseballs.  Try to come up with a mental picture of that!  Light and electrons acting as if they are both particles and waves is a paradox, but is a major doctrine of science.

Paradoxes abound in the world of the very small. We must use quantum mechanics to describe really tiny things.  The evidence forces us to believe realities like an electron can be anywhere in the universe at any given moment and can even go back in time.  Richard Feynman, who definitely understood quantum mechanics better than almost anyone on the planet during his lifetime, remarked, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Quantum mechanics and light may both be above reason, but they are not against reason.

In order to understand and explain reality we need to compare our theories, models, and explanations with something familiar.  Since we don’t have much experience with God or with very tiny things, so we have a tough time imagining what they are like!  The data we have on God and much of the data we get about light and sub-atomic particles is unlike anything we have ever experienced before! 

The difficulty really is psychological and exists in the perpetual torment that results from your saying to yourself, "But how can it be like that?" which is a reflection of uncontrolled but utterly vain desire to see it in terms of something familiar. [3]

The same difficulty occurs when attempting to understand God.

Objections to the Trinity break down in the fact that they insist on interpreting the Creator in terms of the creature.[4]

            One attempt to explain quantum mechanics is the Many World’s Interpretation.  On this explanation, every time a decision is made, the universe actually “splits” into both possibilities.  This creates an almost infinite number of “parallel” universes with every possible world represented.  This is similar to how we explain the theology of God’s Middle Knowledge.  In this view, God can know all possible worlds; He knows all future possibilities and knows how we would respond (choose) given any set of circumstances.  In our attempt to understand reality, we must resort to the use of descriptions and explanations that often sound impossible; this happens when trying to understand both the natural world and when trying to understand God.

It should be expected that God and nature are both a mystery. Since God created the universe, we should not be surprised that we see a reflection of the creator when we study nature.  Light is two things that are one. God is three things that are one. No one truly understands quantum mechanics. No one truly understands the nature of God. God’s creation and revelation are both hard to understand fully, but neither are illogical.

If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could

make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.[5]

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[1] Athanasian Creed

[2] Chalcedonian Creed

[3] Richard P. Feynman, The Messenger Lectures, 1964

[4] Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Baker, 1984

[5] C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Simon & Schuster, 1952

Multiverse Data Points to a Designer

Dr. John Gribbin, Cambridge University graduate, astrophysicist, and Visiting Fellow in Astronomy at University of Sussex, as well as author of the very popular book, In Search of Schrodinger’s Cat, concludes that an intelligence outside of our universe created the universe in which we live.  Here is his argument, summarized from his book, In Search of the Multiverse[1]

The book begins with an introduction to quantum mechanics, leading to the claim that the only way to reconcile quantum mechanics with the Big Bang is through the Many World’s Interpretation; Gribbin uses the fact that quantum computing works as a proof of the Many Worlds Hypothesis being the best interpretation of quantum mechanics.  Dr. Gribbin recognizes that our universe is exceedingly fine-tuned for life and provides several examples, which he calls “cosmic coincidences.”  He even mentions, “Invoking a Designer to explain the energy levels in carbon and oxygen” may seems reasonable today.[2]  The middle of the book includes a discussion about time and thermodynamics, spatially infinite universes, other universe models and inflation; all leading to string theory as the organizing model that brings all of these things together.

Dr. Gribbin concludes the book with a discussion about whether our universe is simply a computer simulation or perhaps an artificial construct of beings from another universe. His conclusion is that superior beings created our universe because they could; creating for the same reasons that we paint a picture or climb a mountain.

The very fact that we exist seems to be the best evidence available that we do indeed live in a Multiverse. The best mathematical description of that Multiverse that we have today is the string landscape, which Leonard Susskind has shown to be essentially the same as the Many Worlds ‘landscape’ of Hugh Everett, an idea expressed most clearly in recent times by David Deutsch. From either perspective, Ted Harrison’s refinement of Lee Smolin’s idea of the evolution of universe to include the role of intelligent designers of universes completes the picture. There is no puzzle about the cosmic coincidences after all. The Universe was indeed set up to provide home for life; but once the universe got started, life evolved through a process of natural selection with no need for outside interference. It isn’t so much that Man was created in God’s image, but that the Universe was created in the image, more or less, of the universe of the Designers.[3]

After a thorough explanation of all the current cosmological science, Dr. Gribbin concludes that our universe was created by an intelligence outside our universe that chose to create in their image. Some classic “proofs for God” are contained here; framed instead in a naturalist’s world view. 

The Cosmological Argument: Our universe did have a beginning and was “created” by an intelligence outside our universe.

The Teleological Argument: The fact that the universe is fine-tuned for life to exist is simply because another intelligence planed it to be that way. 

The Argument from Math, Science and Logic: The fact that the universe is intelligible to us is because an intelligent mind created it; we are created in the image of the creators.

Dr. Gribbin goes out of his way to make sure the reader understands that the “intelligence” outside our universe is not God and that after these intelligent beings create, life will naturally emerge through evolutionary processes.  

Nature’s evidence points us to a Designer.  Approaching this data with a naturalistic world view forces you into a conclusion such as Dr. Gribbin’s.  Looking at the same data with an openness to all possible conclusions can point you to a God that is able to answer not only the scientific questions, but can provide an explanation for the more important concepts such as morality, justice, human value, and love.

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[1] John and Mary Gribbin, In Search of the Multiverse, John Wiley & Sons, 2009

[2] ibid page 41

[3] ibid pages 199-200

The Multiverse Does Not Disprove God

Along with evolution, the multiverse is regarded by many as a way for science to remove the need for God.  Both evolution and multiverse theory are viable theories and neither one should just be dismissed simply because they seem to contradict the Christian world view; this dismissal unnecessarily alienates a large proportion of society from the truth of Christianity. As almost all scientific research in the last 100 years has shown, the more we understand God’s creation, the more that creation points us to God. Research into the multiverse actually strengthens apologetic arguments for the Christian faith.  I am using Who’s Afraid of the Multiverse by Jeff Zweerink as an outline and the main reference for this article.[1]

Some basic background is necessary to understand why a multiverse has been proposed.  First, there is a limit to how much of the universe we can directly observe. We can only “see” the parts of the universe from which light has had time to come to us.  As time goes by, more light will make it to earth, so we will be able to see more and more of the distant universe.  At the same time, however, the amount of matter and energy in the portion of the universe we can observe will shrink once the expansion rate of the universe exceeds the speed of light. So, while we will be able to increasingly detect more of the universe, the density of what we will be able to detect will actually decrease. The crucial point here is that space does not end at the edge of what we can observe and we will never directly detect anything beyond that edge.

Second, it is generally accepted that the universe is exceedingly fine-tuned for life to exist on earth.  (There has already been much written on this; if you need more of an explanation, go here and here.)

Third, there is an abundance of evidence that the universe experienced a brief period of hyperinflation very early in its history. This rapid, early expansion of the universe is necessary to explain why we observe the universe to be uniform in every direction.  The hyperfast expansion at the start of the universe takes small regions with the same temperature and expands them to a size comparable with the observable universe. Inflation is also necessary to show why the universe has close to a flat geometry.  A simple definition of “flat” means that two parallel beams of light remain separated by the same distance regardless of how far they travel. Inflation is also necessary to explain why we don’t see a multitude of cosmic defects (like magnetic monopoles) as the universe cools.  Go here to read about a recent measurement that supports inflation.

Lastly, the possibility of many different universes naturally arises from the most popular unification model. “Unification” has been a major goal of physics ever since Isaac Newton.  Newton showed that the forces we experience on earth are the same as the forces in the heavens; unifying the heavens and the earth.  Since then, we have been able to show that electricity, magnetism, light, and the forces that exist inside the atom can all be explained with the same theoretical framework; namely quantum mechanics.  Gravity, the lone hold out to this unification process, has proven incompatible with quantum mechanics.  String theory is the most successful and popular theory that attempts to unify general relativity (gravity) and quantum mechanics.  What comes out of string theory, though, is a potentially enormous number of different universes with possibly different laws of physics.

Multiverse theory comes from these four major pieces of evidence (the universe is larger than what we can detect, fine tuning, inflation, string theory).  Just like the word evolution, the term multiverse has several meanings.  While a multiverse always involves regions beyond what we can observe, the MIT physicist Max Tegmark has classified multiverse models into four levels.

The first type of multiverse is uncontroversial and has good evidence for its existence.  A “Level 1 Multiverse” simply means that the universe is larger than what we can see; there are parts of our universe that are not directly observable.  Inflation implies the existence of a level 1 multiverse. The only unknown with the level 1 multiverse is its size.

A “Level 2 Multiverse” is one in which other universes exist, each with different laws of physics.  This is what most scientists are referring to when they use the term multiverse. Evidence for a level 2 multiverse also comes from inflation, but with the added observation that when the hyperinflation period stopped, things would have to be exceedingly fine-tuned for all parts of the universe to stop expanding in the same manner; giving us the uniformity we observe in the universe. Mathematical calculations to “fix” this problem of the extreme fine-tuning give the possibility of many “bubble universes” forming; the vast majority of these having different physical laws from ours.  The fine-tuning we observe in our universe can be explained as simply a “selection effect” – meaning that we just happen to be in the one lucky universe where the physical laws match those necessary for life.  A level 2 multiverse requires a particular theoretical understanding of inflation for which there is almost no observational or experimental evidence.

One interpretation of quantum mechanics describes the “Level 3 Multiverse.” Simply stated, this model describes parallel universes arising from quantum uncertainty and probabilities and from the concepts of decoherence and unitarity.  Quantum mechanics is described very well in mathematical terms, but how this mathematical description is to be interpreted is still a matter of great debate. No specific observational evidence exists that specifically points to this interpretation of quantum mechanics; parallel universes instead are a philosophical preference of one interpretation over another.

An infinite number of universes describes a “Level 4 Multiverse.” This, I believe, is what most people are thinking of when they think of a multiverse. This also explains the fine-tuning we see in the same manner as the level 2 multiverse. There is currently no observational evidence to help us decide whether an infinite number of universes exist, but the larger problem with an infinite number of universes is that it would explain too much!  An infinite number of universes means that anything could be explained away by using the selection effect; in such a model every possible situation - no matter how improbable - occurs somewhere, so on what basis would science itself operate?

Here is a selection of Dr. Zweerink’s conclusions (all taken from Who’s Afraid of the Multiverse) from his work with multiverse models:

A large proportion of the scientific community disagrees with or simply does not support multiverse theories.  Some scientists argue that these models are unscientific because they offer no testable predictions.  Others contend that simpler solutions explain fine-tuning without invoking the existence of completely separate universes that, by definition, forever lie beyond scientists’ ability to detect.

In a Christian context, the apologists battle does not directly concern the supposed or actual existence of the multiverse. Instead, it is the naturalist’s claim that the multiverse provides an adequate, comprehensive, and consistent explanation for humanity’s existence here on Earth without the need of a supernatural Designer. 

Whether the multiverse proves true or false substantially affects none of the fundamental Christian doctrines.

At first glance, the multiverse theory seems to effectively buttress the human “selection effect” explanation for the fine-tuned appearance of our universe. Yet as research into multiverse scenarios advances, it appears that they may simply move the design “up one level.” In other words, instead of just one universe requiring fine-tuning to support life, it appears that any multiverse-generating mechanism also requires a high degree of fine-tuning to reproduce the observable universe in which we live.

Go here to watch a recent lecture by Dr. Zweerink regarding the multiverse.

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[1] Jeffrey A. Zweerink, Ph.D., Who’s Afraid of the Multiverse, Reasons to Believe, 2008