Science clings as dogmatically to its metaphysical materialism as Orthodox Jews do their prayer shawls and yarmulkes. According to the scientific mind-set, the universe and all it contains must be sufficiently self-explanatory. To look outside it, to speculate that something could exist outside it, is superstition or, even worse, religion—the unpardonable thought crime.
Of course, with everyday research science should deal only with the immediate material evidence (reverting to the god-of-the-gaps phenomenon wouldn't be wise here). When, however, confronting the biggest question, that of cosmogony, science's a priori materialistic presuppositions have forced it into the goofiest speculations.
In Cosmic Jackpot (Houghton Mifflin, 2007) physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies shows us some of those speculations. Though not (it seems) a Christian, Davies remains enough in awe of creation that, even if unconvinced about God now, he's not hostile, either.
In this book Davies deals with "anthropic coincidences," the mind-bogglingly precise balance of universal physical forces that all but scream Design! Providence! Teleology! In order to get around the politically incorrect fact that the odds of such a finely tuned universe such as ours, so suited for life, arising by chance are all but impossible, scientists now propose that the universe isn't uni-, but rather multi-, a multiverse. After the big bang, space (supposedly) began a process of "eternal inflation," in which it keeps growing forever. All of which means, wrote Davies, that "what we have been all along calling the 'universe' is, in this theory, just an infinitesimal part of a single 'bubble,' or pocket universe, set amid an infinite assemblage of universes—a multiverse—itself embedded in inflating space that exists without end."
These other universes, just over the horizon of ours, solve the anthropic problem: because there are billions of other universes—maybe even an infinite number—then the fact that ours just happened to have life is no big deal. Create enough universes and, sooner or later, one of them will come out like ours, perfectly balanced for human existence.
Of course, to call the evidence for these other universes "slim" would be ludicrously generous. Even so, the speculation regarding them doesn't stop here. We're now told that while many of these other universes are real, ours is likely fake, a computer simulation created by a race of super-intelligent beings from one of these other universes. Davies quotes Oxford professor Nick Bostrum, a pundit of the simulation argument, who says: "There is a significant probability that you are living in [a] computer simulation. I mean this literally: if the simulation argument is true, you exist in a virtual reality simulated in a computer built by some advanced civilization."
According to Davies, however much this idea sounds like The Return of the Jedi meets The Matrix, if we accept the idea of a multiverse, we can't rule out the simulation argument. In fact, the odds of us—i.e., our universe, our planet, our senses, our minds, our thoughts—being fake are greater than the odds of us being real. "These universes will then spawn a vast number of fakes," wrote Davies, "so that in the total mix of real and fake universes, fake ones will overwhelmingly predominate. Therefore our universe is very, very likely to be a fake."
The simulation argument also solves the anthropic problem nicely too: our universe really isn't so suited for life, and that's because there is no life. We're all just computer simulations—zeros and ones—nothing else.
Even if one accepts this theory, it still doesn't answer the question of who created the universe out of which this advanced civilization arose that programmed its Macs to simulate us.
And folks wonder why I sometimes express skepticism about science? And people have chided me for not bowing down to every decree and pronouncement issued ex cathedra in the sacred name of the scientific method, no matter how blatantly contradictory those pronouncements are to the Word of God. Please!
Computer simulation? Right. The only thing I'm waiting for now is some "progressive" Seventh-day Adventist to insist that we need to be open to this simulation argument because, well, after all, it's the latest in science; and heaven forbid we be seen as opposed to the latest and greatest in science, no matter how goofy and contrary to our most basic beliefs.
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Clifford Goldstein is editor of the Adult Sabbath School Bible Study Guide. He also appears on the Hope Channel program Cliff!
Stevan Mirkovich
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Is Science Destroying Itself
Nice article Cliff. Really enjoyed it. The sort of thinking that needs infinite numbers of universes basically does away with the relevance of "science" itself it seems to me. Thanks again.
Sean [Pitman]
When No Amount of Evidence is Enough!
After reading Goldstein's article posted above, my thinking immediately switched to the experience of Jesus when faced with the increasing opposition to his mission by the leading theologians and politicians of his time. They first argued that he had not been schooled in the finest Jewish educational institutions, then they asked for evidence of his Messianic claims. When he fed the five thousands, they ridiculed this by arguing that providing bread and fish to a large crowd on a single occasion could never compare with the feeding of two million Israelites for 40 years in the desert by Moses.
When he brought the daughter of Jairus back to life, they responded by saying that Jesus himself had stated that she was asleep. When he raised Lazarus back to life who had been dead for four days, they rejected this miraculous evidence of divine power by claiming that Jesus was in fact performing these feats by the power of Beelzebub. Then Jesus resurrected himself from the tomb. Did this undeniable evidence of divine power force them to admit that they had been wrong all along? Not so! They started persecuting and killing those who did believe that Jesus was in fact imbued with divine power.
This means that, probably no amount of scientific evidence suggesting that life on planet earth was the result of design instead of natural selection and gene mutation will ever suffice for those who have closed their minds to anything that seems to question the theory of Darwinian evolution and common descent. In spite of this, if Jesus kept providing evidence of his divine origin to those who were manifesting an insane antagonism towards his mission, this means that we need to do the same and strive to provide as much as feasible all the scientific evidence we are able to discover in support of the fact that neither the universe nor life on earth could ever be fully explained by the action of the undirected action of the forces of nature.
Nic Samojluk
Cosmic Crackpot
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