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Science's Alternative To an Intelligent Creator
Hugh Pickens writes "Discover magazine has an interesting article on the multiverse theory — a synthesis of string theory and the anthropic principle that explains why our universe seems perfectly tailored for life without invoking an intelligent creator. Our universe may be but one of perhaps infinitely many universes in an inconceivably vast multiverse. While most of those universes are barren, some, like ours, have conditions suitable for life. The idea that the universe was made just for us — known as the anthropic principle — debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter proposed that a purely random assortment of laws would have left the universe dead and dark, and that life limits the values that physical constants can have. The anthropic principle languished on the fringes of science for years, but in 2000, new theoretical work threatened to unravel string theory when researchers calculated that the basic equations of string theory have an astronomical number of different possible solutions, perhaps as many as 101,000, with each solution representing a unique way to describe the universe. The latest iteration of string theory provides a natural explanation for the anthropic principle. If there are vast numbers of other universes, all with different properties, at least one of them ought to have the right combination of conditions to bring forth stars, planets, and living things." So far xkcd is simulating just one single universe.
a universe without first posts
This is news? I thought that this idea has been around for a while, or at least it was the logical conclusion of having a multiverse. A livable universe doesn't exist "just for us," it just so happens that out of all of them, at least one of them would end up hospitable. Kind of like planets and solar systems.
Is that really "101,000," which is hardly an "astronomical" number, or is it supposed to be 10^1000? The article was correctly quoted, and with a quick search I couldn't find another source for the number of possible multiverses.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I could swear that this has got to be the third time Discover has run almost this exact same story, but I unfortunately recycled about ten years of the magazine this summer.
The latest iteration of string theory provides a natural explanation for the anthropic principle.
And now, quoting Caroline Miller:
The Anthropic Principle is based on the underlying belief that the universe was created for our benefit. Unfortunately for its adherents, all of the reality-based evidence at our disposal contradicts this belief. In a non-anthropocentric universe, there is no need for multiple universes or supernatural entities to explain life as we know it.
I think Occam's razor fits just right here. If we don't need a zillion universes, why would we say they exist?
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
The anthropic princple in general just says that the Universe is the way it is because if it were not nobody would be here to see it. That does not imply that it was 'made for us', it just means that because we are seeing it, conditions are the way they are.
I think science is what you end up with if you don't accept "it just is" as an answer.
anthropic principle: if you find fish that you must be looking in water.
biologist principle: the system evolves to use whatever the environment has to offer - if you have a world of water, then you can get fish.
An explanation that requires whole alternative universes fails the occam's razor test for me.
Are you kidding?! I have every intention of reading the full article, but I haven't yet. But my knee-jerk reaction to the notion that the universe is perfectly tailored to support life is ridiculous! the universe is rather hostile to life. The universe wants everything to be dead. The fact that life rarely exists indicates this quite well. The combination of factors that lead to life as we know it are extremely rare.
First, I'm not sure I agree that the universe seems perfectly tailored for life. 99.99% of the universe is empty space in which no life as we know it can survive. It seems to me that "perfectly tailored" would mean something other than "99.99% unusable".
Second, I don't know how this solves any God-related problems. The question is "Why is there anything?" The God-related answers usually hinge on the idea that, as we understand it now, the physical universe we can observe does not have within it the ability to create itself. (Hence lots of arguments about "First Cause" and such.) So, it is posited, something outside our physically observable universe must exist which is subject to different rules and created our universe (and with it, us).
So, there's a mind-bogglingly huge multiverse; fine. But why is it there? Why is any of the universes there? The one we live in doesn't seem to have been capable of creating itself, and the ones that arose in parallel with it can't have created it either, since they didn't exist at the time it didn't exist.
And third, unless you have an observation, which for the moment I'll describe as "a number and a unit of measure which can (at least in theory) be independently checked by someone else", you're not doing science. As this "theory" of multiverses proposes (infinitely?) many parallel worlds which we cannot observe in any way, it's not a science at all. It's just another religion made up by people who want to avoid using that word.
The idea that the universe was made just for us â" known as the anthropic principle â" debuted in 1973 when Brandon Carter...
That's not the way I've always heard it, it's more along the lines of:
Question: Why is the universe the way it is?
Answer: Because if it were any other way, we wouldn't be here to observe it and pose the question.
Sort of like Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" on a cosmic level.
Lil' Thindime, lilting a lacrimose lament, krashes the kwaint konfines of Kokonino Kounty
It's very simple. We began with Percussion (Big Bang), now we're moving toward Strings. Next will obviously be Brass and Woodwind. I don't care much who banged the drum or plucked the strings, who blew the brass or woodwinds. Whoever we're looking for, we know he'll have a musical degree and a conductor's baton.
Every time you run in to a roadblock, just tweak your calculations until they fit what you see. Shouldn't our formulas be based off of our observations, and not the other way around?
I'm personally a big fan of relative gravity, but touching einsteins theory of relativity seems to be anathema. A ridiculous notion since relativity itself debunked newton's theories, theories come and go as our ability to observe grows. Scientists shouldn't be afraid of it.
..the fact that life exists in this universe can be seen as simply a curious coincidence..
I know this might seem pedantic, but isn't "coincidence" when two or more things happen. So, if my friend and I turn up at the same place at the same time, without planning to do so, that's coincidence.
So, our existance in the Universe is merely "incidence". It is not 'co-' with anything else.
The String Theorist says "hey, I just found this really cool mathematical technique which allows me to express the observed laws of Nature in a different way." We say "Ah, but now you have to explain why your theory fails to predict the existence of only one type of Universe". The String Theorist waves his hands a bit and says "perhaps all of the possible types of Universe exist, it's just that we can only see this one." So then we ask, where did this multiverse come from?
In both cases the gorilla in the room is Bill Ockham's shaving instrument - in order to explain what is, something much bigger and more complicated has to be postulated which is not observable.
Personally, I think String Theory is going to be another Phlogiston or Ptolemaic Epicycles - both of these required observed behaviour to be explained by the unobservable, whether it was the negative mass phlogiston that left heated materials, or the invisible angels needed to keep the Sun and all the planets revolving around the Earth. Both were "scientific" orthodoxy for some time.
The fundamental mystery is still "Why is there anything at all?", and none of the current "explanations" actually have any explanatory power. We should recognise this. (And perhaps put more physics effort into cheap, safe nuclear power and solar energy? But that's just applied physics, even if it is far more likely to keep physics departments open for the next fifty years or so.)
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"the idea of this universe being particularly suited to life"
... And if there are multiple parallel universes, then in all universes that are not suited to life, there will be no life to ask, "why isn't this universe suited to life". So only in the universes that are suited to life, could there be lifeforms asking, why is this universe suited to life.
Asking therefore "that the universe was made just for us", is clearly totally wrong. Its not about us at all. Its just that life can survive and exist in this universe.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world... those who understand binary and those who don't.
No, the bible just counts mod 6001. Next year the universe will be 0 years old. Again.
My UID is prime. Hah!
Sorry, you're in the wrong universe, try that one over there.
Yep, all those scientists are just trying to disprove god. The research is just a nice byproduct.
"Imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it's still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise."
... the whole idea that there are multi-verses goes right against the grain of science itself, multiplying entities needlessly.
The two general explanations are:
Universe is eternal
Universe is not eternal (eternal something else exists "outside" the universe that caused our universe)
Out of those two, you have a few options:
1) Universe is eternal, the universe is godless
a) Universe is eternal, the universe is god (i.e. reality/god = same thing)
2) Universe is not eternal, the universe is godless
a) Universe is not eternal, the universe has a god "outside" the universe (which is a misnomer, technically the universe would be 'inside' god, or made out of god, god being the substance of all existence, in this case).
Those are the most parsimonious explanations, if you want to be honest with yourself.
Religion replaces "it just is" with "God did it" which means about the same thing: "No idea."
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Are they sure it's not 101010 solutions? That would be "42" in binary.....
to disprove the unseen. Why am I not surprised?
Newton was not "debunked".
His theory had a scope that doesn't conflict with relativity under most of the conditions that appear within the human experience.
If you use numbers and values that apply within the scope of the theory, it works great and has tremendous predictive value. Whole industries are built on using just his stuff.
Yes, it doesn't apply to some values (that's where Relativity comes in) but it isn't wrong. It just isn't complete enough. Being "not complete" is not "debunked".
If only most scientists actually stopped and checked even their most basic concepts for paradoxes, people wouldn't spend so long debating such obvious statements.
Time is another one. Follow the paradoxes in that one and having time travel ends up proving that such a universe universe would be incapable of remembering your relative position and velocity at all.
There was a thread about philisophy last week. A general lack of it is exactly why so much of science has gaping holes that people stare far too long into.
"the idea of this universe being particularly suited to life" ... And if there are multiple parallel universes, then in all universes that are not suited to life, there will be no life to ask, "why isn't this universe suited to life". So only in the universes that are suited to life, could there be lifeforms asking, why is this universe suited to life.
Asking therefore "that the universe was made just for us", is clearly totally wrong. Its not about us at all. Its just that life can survive and exist in this universe.
Imagine how tough it would be if we were to live in one of those Universes that were not suitable for life! I guess we should thank God that he put us in this one.
Phew!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I find preachy Creationists to be highly annoying. But I also find shrill atheists to be highly annoying. Not all scientists are atheists, and not all theists are anti-science. Religion and Science are both a part of this world just as much as politics and money. Get over it, they're not going away in the next couple millennia.
For those who must say that God exists, try this: science is for understanding how we exist, spirituality is for understanding why . It's far more mind-boggling for a God to have worked out the delicacy of our whole existence in advance by designing the laws of physics that would play out Correctly all the way from Big Bang to Big Crunch, than it would have been if we were just modeled directly in clay and moved around like puppets at the slightest whim. For those of you who must take the "seven days" literal view of Genesis, then consider this: since God's view of time is not the same as ours (Psalm 90:), we may indeed still be in His Sixth Day (day of Man), awaiting His Seventh Day (day of Rest) (Revelations 20:).
For those who must say that God does not exist, try this: your position is just as unprovable as theirs, and yet raising your voice to argue your point is just as pointless as theirs. There is no arguing with religion. It's not that they are right, it's that the whole exercise is just as bad for the blood pressures of everyone involved. Yes, continue to fight for equality of position and separation of Church and State, as this is important. Quibbling over scriptures (as I admit I am doing above) will not change many minds. Both the Priest and the Atheist are fond of telling someone that they are Wrong, without any way of proving the point once and for all. The fact is, science doesn't know everything and will never know everything. Stick to proving negatives with observations; teaching axioms and laws and theories and hypotheses built from observations; and showing how science, unlike faith, can be proven wrong with evidence and this is a good thing. If they want to pray to their flying spaghetti monster, until it's impinging on your personal rights, just leave them to it.
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If the universe is perfectly tailored for anything, it sure as hell isn't life. Maybe empty space or black holes, but seeing how, as far as we know, life only has appeared as a thin film covering the surface of one tiny planet revolving around one insignificant star, maybe we're a little biased in our views of what is common or uncommon in the universe.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
There. That's the important part. The whole point of the anthropic principle is that we shouldn't be surprised to find ourselves in a universe that allows intelligent life. If the universe didn't support it, we wouldn't find ourselves in it.
The argument for God's existence through the anthropic principle is simply "doing it wrong." The point of the anthropic argument is to remove the supposed necessity for an intelligent creator.
No, the anthropic principle is not science. Of course, it also doesn't rely on the existence of multiple universes.
"The use-mention distinction" is not "enforced here."
This is like a two brook trout debating whether or not deserts exist.
-=Bang Bang=-
I think I'm about to puke. The Anthropic Principle in its purest form does nothing but make the observation that our surroundings obviously support lifeforms such as ourselves who in turn are able to make observations about their surroundings.
It really, really does not matter how many universes are out there. This is ours, and it exists without any need for justification. Sure, theoretically a vast number of universes could have parameters that make life impossible (like, say, because they have no temporal dimension), and just as unprovably many universes could exist that do support life in some form.
There is no discrepancy, there is no need for an explanation - at least scientifically speaking. Only religion demands an explanation, because it introduces the concept of "meaning".
To make a more earth-bound analogy: assume, somewhere in the desert, there is a volcanically heated pond of slime. The conditions in this pond are unique: it has a water temperature of 70 degrees Celsius and only a few uncommon amino acids can be found in the slime, making it a hostile environment for most known forms of life. However, in time, a type of cyano bacteria evolves that can handle the heat and live off the odd amino mixture.
Now, suppose that, by some freakish accident, the cyano bacteria were intelligent. They ask questions like "why is this pond so superbly designed to support us?". Of course, we as humans looking into the slimey pond, recognize the absurdity of the question right away, but the bacteria remain ignorant as to the stupidity of their premise.
They go on to ask "surely there must be an omnipotent creator who made this pond just for us". Again, looking from the outside in, we know better, but for the bacteria it's a huge deal. Next, they discover secularism and say "well, if there is indeed no creator, we must find another explanation why this pond is exactly the right kind of pond, because it is so exquisitly tailored to our needs!"
Then it dawns on the bacteria: "hey, maybe there is an infinite number of pools with different environments! So the explanation for the Bacteric Principle lies in the fact that one out of infinity has exactly the features we need!" At this point, we as outside observes realize the futility. The bacteria will never understand that the number of pools does not matter, because it was them who evolved to live there, it was never the pool that had to be adapted to them...
This is where we are now. And, just like the outside observer looking in, I realize the futility. But it nevertheless frustrates me immensely.
For those who must say that God exists, try this: science is for understanding how we exist, spirituality is for understanding why.
I hear this a lot but I have not found it to be true. No religion gives a real understanding of the why, or even goes more than one or two trivial steps through an answer -- "Why do we exist?" "Because God made us this way" "Why?" "Uh...". The Munchausen Trilemma still holds.
I am also unconvinced that it's impossible to make a good argument for atheism. "Is there a god?" is not directly answerable, but it would be possible to show evidence that religions and religious beliefs are best explained as the products of human nature and human history, not divine influence.
I'm not militant or anything, but just telling people to shut up and leave the questions alone isn't going to fly.
Visit the
The problem is with the singular and definite "The Anthropic Principle". There are at least four Anthropic Principles, the Weak, Strong, Participatory and Final Anthropic Principles (WAP, SAP, PAP and FAP). The Weak Anthropic Principle is so uncontroversial it's virtually a platitude. At the other end of the scale the Final Anthropic Principle is so way out that Martin Gardner suggested it would be better renamed the Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle, if only that had a convenient abbreviation. A lot of the argument over "The" Anthropic Principle comes about because people are arguing about different Anthropic Principles.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
Religion does not seek, it claims to know the answer. This is pure arrogance, as it offers little proof other than some text that it claims is written by god.
The problem with paradoxes is simple. If you throw out any theory with paradoxes, you can start by dumping :
-> big bang theory
-> quantum mechanics
-> relativity
-> newtonian physics
There wouldn't be much left :
Indeed if scientist respected the laws of mathematics there would be no paradoxes in physics. Any theory containing even a single paradox would be thrown out the window immediately, like they are in mathematics. You could simply say time travel has the potential to create paradoxes ... and is therefore impossible ...
It wasn't to be : It wasn't very practical with physics theory. After all, the big bang theory requires FTL travel (faster than light) and a "limited" suspension of at least causality, along with changing a few universal constants here and there (in fact even Genesis is more likely : suppose an "eternal" being, alive or not created our universe, and you don't have any causality problems. Who created the creator ? Nobody, he's always been. Mathematically that's simple to express and quite consistent. Of course the 7-days stuff of Genesis is a bit more problematic). Oops. Physicists weren't quite ready to dump that one.
Newton's physics would be thrown out, due to the black body radiation paradox (has nothing to do with black holes). But as long as nothing was there to replace it, nobody really thought throwing it out was a good idea.
Relativity would get thrown out due to Schwarzchild geometry (black holes), and quantum mechanics would get thrown out for a hundred reasons, it's "known paradox count" is somewhat of an embarrassment really.
So physics just "tries to get along" with paradoxes, which never works in practice, so basically experiments just like to get close to paradoxes, because in the real world they don't exist. Therefore the paradoxes we're seeing in theories are really something that's not described, rather than a real paradox. Sometimes we really can't get close enough to take a look, which is the case with black holes, or the edge of the universe (if there indeed is one, like the big bang theory predicts), in that case we're stuck, and the only option is to search for the needle in the haystack some other place.
That obviously brings the problem which paradoxes are acceptable and which aren't. Nobody's given even a basic answer to that one though. Apparently paradoxes are acceptable as long as they only manifest in places we know nothing about.
Paradoxes are also the real reason for the claim "passing through a black hole makes anything possible", which is simply another way to say that once you've proven 1=2, you can prove anything, no matter how wrong. Of course the problem is in our understanding of black holes, which is mathematically inconsistent, the problem is not that inside black holes anything is possible. Same goes for any other paradox in physics.
Of course many people believe that since there are many "paradoxes" in physical theories, especially quantum mechanics, everything is really possible, if you only think hard enough about it. However history does show us that every single time we approached a paradox in experiment, it turned out our theories produced the paradox, and the world disagreed with our theories.
You can resolve the black body paradox of Newton's theories yourself. Google the "black body radiation problem" (the third link is nice). Then heat up a piece of metal until it glows. According to Newton's physics if you do that, the universe should explode (calculate this for yourself). Or to put it mathematically, the energy output in radiation should "approach infinity", which is another way of saying "this should produce a huge bang". There you've just explored one of the great historical paradoxes. All paradoxes are like this.
The problem is that creationists, atheists, and agnostics are all missing the bigger picture and missing the point (but, if we must assign a winner, agnostics come closest.) The question as to whether there is a creator is nonsensical as far as we can fathom. Consider the two possible scenarios: 1) "There is a creator; call it god. Some entity created everything." 2) "There is no god. Nothing created the universe; it just came into existence." Neither of the only two possible scenarios makes any sense. They both fail in the same way: you can't have something come from nothing; whether that be the universe or the creator that made the universe. You don't need to be a philosopher or particularly logical to see this. In fact, you could argue that atheists are creationists since they believe the universe created itself. So, what are we left with? I can think of two things. But, first I'd like to point out that a true agnostic is one who sees the paradox and futility in taking a position on this. At least that is what I term an Agnostic; one who doesn't know (anything about the origin of the universe) and doesn't care (because they know its futile, not because they are apathetic). So what can we conclude if our two seeming scenarios are ludicrous? 1) The first is simplistic... there is an explanation and it is beyond any semblance of what we deem as logical. Or even asking the questions of why and how the universe exists is not even the right question. How else would you overcome a paradox? By changing the rules of the game. This means that our language, our thoughts, our logic, etc DO NOT APPLY. We are either too simplistic, lacking the proper whatever to understand what is going on. 2) The one I like the most is this: In a more philosophical bent, it can be argued that the universe (in the most encompassing definition of the word) can not be 'explained' since there can always be an explanation for the explanation; always a viewpoint from outside to that which you have just explained; similar in concept to the paradox that you can always divide something in half to get something smaller. The universe by its very definition of encompassing everything means nothing can be outside of it. It can't be explained or else it couldn't exist. Basically, its a paradox as far as we can see it.
The problem with paradoxes is simple. If you throw out any theory with paradoxes, you can start by dumping : -> big bang theory
I agree on that one.
-> quantum mechanics
Lost me there, quantum mechanics beautifully captures the logic of timeless superposition of all possibilities in uncertainty. Paradoxes are both true and false here and existence is a question of resolution.
-> relativity
No, I don't agree here either. Here, time is the process by which existence itself changes - if existence were always true, nothing could change - change is both creation and destruction in 1, relativity is the realm of certainty in spacetime. It is the question of time's existence that causes light speed to be an observable constant regardless of both position and velocity. i.e. speed of light being the same because the question is the same.
Einstein was very careful to avoid paradoxes. If some still remain, then they must still be consistent with known paradoxes.
-> newtonian physics
There wouldn't be much left :
Indeed if scientist respected the laws of mathematics there would be no paradoxes in physics. Any theory containing even a single paradox would be thrown out the window immediately, like they are in mathematics. You could simply say time travel has the potential to create paradoxes ... and is therefore impossible ...
... yes, I would say the creation of such paradoxes gives you no certainty in the consistency of any observations, or even of the density function of matter. The rather high degree of consistency observed is the anthropic principle in action.
One of the things that confuses me about this article is its assumption that science is providing an alternative to an intelligent creator. If there are multiple universes, doesn't the question shift to who made the multiple universes? If there are infinite universes, how and why is there an infinity of physical universes existing in the first place? As far back as science goes in describing the origins of things, people will ask, "Okay, but who or what set up the whole process in the first place?" These questions will never be answered and will always exist as long as we do.
For me, it's weird and disturbing to think there's just this bunch of physical universes here for no reason. It almost feels more illogical that it would exist out of the blue than for there to be something that "made" it all. We'll get better and better at describing the actual physical processes of what created our universe and possibly others, eventually accurately describing the Big Bang and maybe even what came before, but that will always raise the question in my mind, "Great, but I still don't know how or why the hell all these processes are here in the first place! Why is all this stuff here?!" It's a maddening question.