God, the Multiverse, and Everything

Modern Cosmology and the Argument from Design

Rodney D. Holder

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351932684
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Modern cosmology tells us that the universe is remarkably 'fine-tuned' for life. If the constants of physics or the initial conditions at the Big Bang were different by the smallest of margins then the universe would have been dull and lifeless. Why should the universe be so accommodating to life? Many cosmologists believe that the existence of many universes can explain why ours is so special. In this book Rodney Holder subjects this 'multiverse' hypothesis to rigorous philosophical critique. A multitude of problems is exposed. Going substantially further than existing treatments, Holder argues that divine design is the best explanation for cosmic fine-tuning, specifically that design by God is a superior explanation in terms of both initial plausibility and explanatory power, and is therefore the most rational position to take on the basis of the cosmological data.

Chapter 1

Scientific Naturalism and the Alternative of Design

Of this fair volume which we World do name,
If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care,
Of him who it corrects, and it did frame,
We clear might read the art and wisdom rare;
Find out his power which wildest powers doth tame,
His providence extending everywhere,
His justice which proud rebels doth not spare,
In every page, no, period of the same.

(William Drummond [1585–1649], Sonnet, The Book of the World.)

The Challenge of Scientific Naturalism

Many people today believe that science has removed the need for God as an explanation for the existence of the universe or the arrival of ourselves in it. They are encouraged by some notable present-day scientists who propagate such a view, often with a vehemence which transcends the sober and rational atmosphere of debate normally obtaining within their own scientific disciplines. Thus Professor Richard Dawkins believes that, in the light of the theory of biological evolution, ‘we don’t need to postulate a designer in order to understand life, or anything else in the universe’.¹ Peter Atkins argues that ‘the universe can come into existence without intervention, and that there is no need to invoke the idea of a Supreme Being in one of its numerous manifestations’.² Professor Stephen Hawking, whilst less militant, sees God as purely a First Cause, the need for which is obviated if we can explain how the universe has no boundary in space-time.³

It might seem that in the light of modern science there is no room for God. On being asked by Napoleon why the Creator was nowhere mentioned in his system of the world, the French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace (later the Marquis de Laplace) is famously said to have replied,’ Sire, I have no need of that hypothesis.’ Was Laplace right to exclude God as an explanation, or was his colleague Lagrange more to be commended in commenting, when the Emperor told him of this incident, ‘Ah, but that is a fine hypothesis. It explains so many things.’?⁴

In fact, matters are not so simple. After all, Laplace was himself a practising Roman Catholic, so his remark can hardly have been made with atheistic intent. Furthermore, Leibniz had already criticized Newton for invoking God as intervening in the creation to prevent the decay and instability of the solar system, since, as Leibniz put it, it was demeaning for the Creator to have to remedy the defects in his craftsmanship. Laplace’s nebular hypothesis, an important precursor of modern theories of the origin of the solar system, did away with the need for such interventions, which Newton had seen as evidence of design, but which could equally well be ascribed to faulty workmanship. I agree with Lagrange’s comment on the power of the theistic hypothesis, but we must be careful to invoke it only where it is needed.

Dawkins, Atkins and Hawking are exemplars of what I shall call ‘scientific naturalism’. I define scientific naturalism to be the position that all physical events can be explained solely, and exclusively, in terms of other physical events. As Dawkins puts it: ‘The kind of explanation we come up with … will make use of the laws of physics, and nothing more than the laws of physics’.⁵ Similarly Peter Atkins writes:’… there is nothing that cannot be explained’,⁶ and he means ‘explained by science alone’.

The view I wish to defend against scientific naturalism I shall call ‘theism’, by which I mean that the universe was designed by a supernatural being akin to the God of the great monotheistic religions. Indeed I shall for convenience call this being ‘God’ from now on. However, I recognize that theism is not the only possible non-naturalistic hypothesis. An alternative would be the ‘extreme axiarchism’ of John Leslie, a Neoplatonist position according to which the universe is brought about by its own ‘ethical requiredness’.⁷ It is not my intention here to make the case for theism as the most probable non-naturalistic hypothesis, though I believe it is so, and that arguments of the kind adduced by Richard Swinburne for the economy and simplicity of theism would show this.⁸ I shall also ignore the major argument against theism, i.e. the problem of evil, which should also be taken into account in the more general cumulative building up of the case for theism. Naively one might expect this adversely to affect the probability that the universe was created by a good God, but in drawing any conclusion one would need to consider the many reasons theologians have advanced as to precisely why the permitting of evil in the universe would not contradict God’s goodness.⁹

The central issue I shall examine is whether the origin and evolution of the universe as understood by modern cosmology, utilizing the laws of physics, are uniquely and adequately explained in terms of scientific naturalism alone. My intention is to show that science cannot do without metaphysical assumptions, and the assumptions it uses ought to lead scientists logically to embrace non-naturalism. In particular, the science of cosmology may be suggesting that science itself provides reasons for doubting scientific naturalism. My main focus will be on the by now well-publicized evidence of the ‘fine-tuning’ of the universe.

In theological terms, this book constitutes an exercise in ‘natural theology’. Natural theology concerns the knowledge of God available to all human beings without recourse to special revelation.¹⁰ I therefore take it as read that this is a legitimate enterprise for Christians (and my own particular perspective is that of a Christian theist) to be engaged in. Roman Catholic theology has certainly always thought so, but there is a strong strand of Protestant theology which totally rejects this whole approach. Thus Karl Barth regards natural theology as presumptuous and apologetics (the defence of the faith, as opposed simply to its proclamation) as illegitimate.

I have engaged with Barth’s thought elsewhere,¹¹ and whilst I agree with him that God’s revelation in Christ, as attested in Holy Scripture, is central, I disagree as to the illegitimacy of natural theology, which I see as preparatory to presenting Christ. In this book I am wanting especially to think and argue as a scientist, and I cannot imagine any scientist rejecting an approach which looks at the universally available evidence for belief—indeed, that religion rejects evidence is precisely Richard Dawkins’s complaint.

The Argument from Design

Traditionally, at any rate in Christian theology, a number of arguments or ‘proofs’ have been advanced for the existence of God. These ‘proofs’ belong to natural theology as defined above, and include the ontological, cosmological and design (alternatively termed teleological) arguments. In this book I shall primarily be concerned with presenting a version of the argument from design informed by the discoveries of modern cosmology.

The ontological argument proceeded from the concept of God to his existence. St Anselm famously argued that, if we define God as ‘That than which nothing greater can exist’, and if we agree that something which exists in reality is greater than something which exists only in conception, then it follows that God exists. Some very illustrious philosophers have believed in the argument in one form or another (e.g. Descartes and Leibniz), even if many have regarded it with suspicion (e.g. Kant). It is in fact notoriously difficult to refute. Indeed, contrariwise, Alvin Plantinga has shown how the argument can be formulated so as to be valid. Plantinga’s version has the interesting consequence that, if God be possible, then he exists.¹²

The cosmological argument (or, rather, one version of it) began from the observation that there is a universe, and asked for the explanation of its existence. At its simplest, the question is, ‘Why is there something rather than nothing?’. Famously, Leibniz argued from the Principle of Sufficient Reason that there must be an explanation, namely God. Many philosophers would dispute the Principle of Sufficient Reason and affirm that the universe itself could be the stopping point for explanation. But, given that in science we seek for explanations of the phenomena we observe within the universe, it does not seem unreasonable to seek for an explanation of the cosmos itself.¹³

The argument from design points beyond the existence of the universe to certain striking features of it. These are that the universe exhibits a regularity and intricacy in its make-up which are suggestive of its having been designed. This kind of argument goes back at least to St Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways, the fifth of which pointed to the ‘guidedness of nature’, from which one was to infer the existence of one who directs all things to their goal, ‘and this we call “God”’.¹⁴

Hume criticized the argument in a number of ways, pointing for example to the lack of analogy between mechanical artefacts pointing to a human designer and natural phenomena pointing to God. If the argument points to anything it may not be the unique God of Christian revelation, but to a pantheon of gods. Kant, even more fundamentally, believed we could have no knowledge of transcendent realities, only the phenomena of experience, and that the perceived order in the world is imposed on the phenomena by our human minds rather than given by God.

These criticisms can be answered.¹⁵ However, since this book is not a general treatise on the argument from design, but a detailed examination of one particular version of it, I content myself with just a few remarks, referring the reader to the philosophical literature for the broader discussion. Thus, it does not actually seem at all unreasonable, when answering the global question as to why there is order in the universe for science to uncover, that the answer might be rather different from that to the typical scientific question, ‘What is the cause of this particular feature within the universe?’. Even so, scientists themselves certainly point to invisible entities with highly counter-intuitive and unfamiliar properties when seeking answers to the latter question. How much more likely, then, that we should need to appeal to a very special being for an answer to the first question. And again, one could certainly appeal to notions of simplicity and economy to infer one designer rather than many.

Kant’s position regarding the human imposition of order also does not seem to square with how scientists see the world. For example, quantum theory seems to be forced on us by the reality of the external world, which exhibits such strange and startling phenomena at the micro-level, rather than being a human creation imposed on the world.¹⁶

Interestingly Max Planck, the great pioneer of quantum theory and a deeply religious man, showed how the constants of nature could be combined to define natural scales of length, time, mass and temperature. The fact that these turned out to be very different from anthropocentrically defined scales demonstrated for Planck that there really is an ultimate reality independent of the human mind.¹⁷ These constants and scales will be important for our discussion later on.

Then consider the tremendous success of science, from eradicating smallpox to putting a man on the moon. The manifest ability of science to manipulate and predict the behaviour of the world surely speaks of an underlying reality, which we do have at least some purchase on. Moreover, as Brian Davies points out, if order is imposed by the human mind, we would be led to the startling conclusion that nature would cease to function in the orderly fashion uncovered by empirical science if there were no humans to observe it!¹⁸

Notwithstanding Hume and Kant, the argument from design was famously revived by Archdeacon William Paley¹⁹ who produced the following memorable analogy. Paley described himself walking across a heath and finding a watch on the ground. On examining the intricate mechanism of the watch he is struck by the idea that the watch was obviously designed by a clever watch-maker, for a purpose—to tell the ...