In “Physics: A cosmos in the lab,” a review of A Big Bang in a Little Room: The Quest to Create New Universes by Zeeya Merali, cosmologist Andreas Albrecht writes at Nature,
The question of cosmic origins, and the possibility that humans might create new universes, can connect with religious concerns. These form a substantial thread through A Big Bang in a Little Room that significantly reduced the book’s appeal to me. I am an atheist. I respect that many people are deeply religious (some are very close to me) and that religion can have a positive, even beautiful, role. And I know many religious people who do superb science. But I find most attempts to connect religious questions with the fundamental questions of physics and cosmology (or vice versa) deeply unsatisfying.
Does your favourite interpretation of quantum mechanics or apparent fine-tuning of the fundamental constants provide evidence for or against a divine creator? Deeply religious people know better than to leave something so important to them to fads in physics. And when people do engage in these debates, they seem to find a reason to believe what they want to believe, regardless of how the science unfolds.
More.
Rubbish. Fine-tuning is the most obvious fact of the universe and efforts to undermine the evidence for it have driven crackpot cosmology for decades. The crackpots now turn on the very idea of evidence to protect their position.
First, no one cares what Dr. Albrecht finds “deeply unsatisfying”; he can find himself another universe if he likes, and take his fads in physics with him.
Second, “deeply religious people” feel constrained by facts, evidence, and truthfulness, not by the view—attractive to so many Darwinian atheists—that “evolution” bred a sense of reality out of us.
The choice matters to science and we fear we know which one most of them have made.
By the way, why are atheists so solicitous about theists who, they fear, will lose their faith? The reality is that the only faith many of us are rapidly losing is in government of science by atheists. Take the unstoppable crises of peer review, for example.
Why are we better off with science’s affairs run by people who believe that if they win they survive and that none of us evolved so as to grasp reality anyway?
Note: We confess we don’t know why all this sounds like BioLogos on steroids either.
See also: Evolution bred a sense of reality out of us
Ethan Siegel tackles fine-tuning at Forbes
and
Copernicus, you are not going to believe who is using your name. Or how.
An oldie but goody,, The late atheist Christopher Hitchens, in an after the debate midnight confession, conceded that the ‘fine-tuning argument’ is very powerful:
At the 8:15 minute mark of the following video, Richard Dawkins is set straight by Steven Weinberg, who is an atheist himself, on just how big the ‘problem’ of the 1 in 10^120 Cosmological Constant is:
A few quotes:
further note:
Here is the paper from the atheistic astrophysicists, that Dr. Ross referenced in the preceding video, that was withdrawn because of mounting evidence for a Cosmological Constant, that speaks of the ‘disturbing implications’ of the finely tuned expanding universe (1 in 10^120 cosmological constant):
Here are the verses from the Bible, which were written well over 2000 years before the discovery of the finely tuned expansion of the universe, that speak of God ‘Stretching out the Heavens’; Job 9:8; Isaiah 40:22; Isaiah 44:24; Isaiah 48:13; Zechariah 12:1; Psalm 104:2; Isaiah 42:5; Isaiah 45:12; Isaiah 51:13; Jeremiah 51:15; Jeremiah 10:12. The following verse is my favorite out of the group of verses:
Of related note:
He can live in his fake universe. It is a possible universe, eh?
As a Christian, my faith rests on four major pillars:
1. An inexplicable and profound peace, joy, and love that fills and overflows my life. I’d also add the occasional miraculous outcomes or events, but I’ll tell you that they don’t seem to have the “staying power” of a day-by-day experience.
2. A chain of trust, testimony, and dedication to the point of death that traces its way back through godly men and women back to Jesus Christ, the Son of God . . . or as believers in India express it, the only human Avatar of God.
3. The wisdom, guidance, and maturity that comes from reading the Word of God, deriving trustworthy principles from them, and finding them engraved onto my life by the working of the Holy Spirit, and often through suffering.
4. A multitude of improbable prophecies regarding the Messiah being fulfilled, including the prediction that he would die, which would soon be followed by the destruction of Jerusalem, along with a time frame.
The fact that science and archaeology seem discover things mentioned in the Bible but also often come to the opposite conclusions is simply indicative that “Science” is never static but continually changing, revising, and overthrowing things that were once considered “facts.”
A true scientifically minded person should never be doctrinaire, and conversely, the announcement of some new discovery should never be taken as proof or disproof of a person’s faith. The smug professor who announces that “we” in science now know better, is either a fool or a devil, because science is never settled.
To me the spectacular complexity in the DNA code, in interlocking chemical cycles, in cellular structures, screams design. One would think it would speak to anyone with an open mind. Nevertheless, the evolutionist has an amazing capacity for faith in things that haven’t “yet” been discovered, such as a reasonable, demonstrable mechanism for all this to happen. They won’t admit it, but the evidence is simply not there, nor can anyone show how the complexity level (i.e. information content) of a system can ratchet itself up from some random slime.
But my faith doesn’t rest on this observation. To me Darwinism is simply bad science that’s way outlived its usefulness as a model. Just like people who try to sell designs for perpetual motion machines, give me a working model from a biochemistry lab.
Similarly the fine tuning argument makes me suspect that some or all of these constants actually derive themselves from a common source, and that they are not independent. On that point, I agree with the book’s author, and you can see why.
For me, science and the scientific method is a wonderful tool! But it is simply incapable of taking the place of our dynamic connection with the living God!
-Q
Denyse said, “We confess we don’t know why all this sounds like BioLogos on steroids either.”
I don’t see anything above that sounds like BL at all, Denyse, except your obvious sympathy with the (favorable) religious implications of cosmic fine-tuning, which people at BL (including Francis Collins and me) also tend to like. For example, this: http://biologos.org/blogs/ted-.....e-part-two
I confess I don’t know what you were driving at: care to elaborate?
By the way, I’ve never seen any steriods anywhere in BL’s office, but then I don’t go there very often.
‘By the way, why are atheists so solicitous about theists who, they fear, will lose their faith’
Yes, I was very touched by that concern. I found it quite poignant
Well, some theists do lose their faith in God, and by all accounts, it can be a painful process, almost like experiencing a death in the family or a divorce. I would be concerned if it happened to someone close to me.
In valid science:
‘The bigger the claim the bigger the burden of proof’
so an older universe, more than one universe, a larger universe are three vastly greater claims, that have a vastly greater burden of proof the the most reasonable scientific cosmology model that should be the new standard: now available review edition 6.3 🙂
‘Distant Starlight and the Age, Formation and Structure of the Universe’
Paperback: http://www.amazon.com/dp/1519262205
Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0181C4Q1W http://www.researchgate.net/pu.....nfographic
The following is an excellent video, (imop). It points out the ‘none too fine tuning’ that you would expect from a smooth Big Bang. It seems, the problem to get rid of solar anomalies is to always use the fall back cosmic sledge hammer – an asteroid smashed it into conformity to Big Bang expectations. It works every time!
https://youtu.be/s9_o7NGTkJc
Really? That’s certainly not my experience. It’s more along the lines of “it was the most liberating thing, getting rid of the shackles of ‘religion’ blah blah blah Dawkins blah blah blah science blah blah blah”
And in turn, I warn deeply religious atheistic cosmologists not to put their faith in the infinitesimal possibility that fine-tuning is but “apparent”.