Why Talk About God?
B.W. Wojciechowski, April 2024
This is not theology. It is a search for understanding using current scientific knowledge.
People talk about God because, like Alfie, they too wonder “What’s it all about.” A systematic look at our universe can help. This essay is based on current science and the concept of possibilities and probabilities. The widely accepted definition of God, based on St. Thomas Aquinas’ 5 “proofs,” has a medieval feel that I find obscure. Nevertheless, St, Thomas’ proofs 2 and 5 also appear in my arguments while 4 tackles the idea of purposeful, intelligence-directed evolution.
To avoid excessive verbiage, I too will present my views in point form.
1. Most people, including serious scientists, believe there is a beginning and an end to everything, including the universe.
2. Currently cosmologists identify the beginning of our universe as the Big Bang (BB). They are bold enough to tell us this took place 13.8 billion years ago.
3. However, no one has described what it was that Banged. They say it was a “singularity.”
4. This means nothing to me, and they fail to elaborate on how it contained all the energy of the universe or how it was formed.
5. No Black Hole will ever Bang like that. It simply eats mass and grows larger. That is what we observe to date. No one has explained how this singularity, much more massive than any observed Black Hole since it contained the universe and all its existing Black Holes, could even exist.
6. Worse, when the singularity Banged the debris had properties that we do not understand.
7. To make up for this, cosmologists postulate a period during which the very dense and energetic products of the Bang underwent “inflation.”
8. Now we know that when a gas is allowed to expand its temperature decreases. That cooled the initial products of the Bang and created more understandable conditions.
9. The period of inflation lasted only 10–33 seconds. There is some argument about this, but it was a very short time.
10. After inflation the universe was about 10–26 meters in diameter, having started as a dimensionless singularity. As far as physical evidence before inflation goes, there is little. It is a theoretical gimmick to solve an ill-understood event but it leads us to a more understandable state so we can explain what happened after inflation.
11. After inflation the universe started obeying physical laws that until recently, we thought we understood very well.
12. All was well until Dark Energy and Dark Matter entered the discussion on cosmological phenomena. Now we know that we do not understand the post-inflation BB as well as we would like.
13. At this point we have theories, equations, and constants that fit everything we observe in the physical universe of space, energy, and matter, very well. We understand all but the Dark stuff.
14. But all is not lost. The theories describing everything we have understood to date and measured are based on 26 dimensionless parameters in the fundamental equations describing our observations of the universe and all that is in it. More than likely these parameters will remain valid, so let us proceed using them as a basis.
15. These parameters have been measured with great precision, some to a precision of ten or more digits.
16. Every physical event and object in the universe we have observed and studied is the result of the size and interaction of these 26 parameters.
17. This may be surprising but consider that the vast literature in English is based on the interaction of just 26 letters of the English alphabet.
18. The values of the 26 universal parameters are critical to the formation of the universe we live in. There are studies of the sensitivity of the universe’s nature to the values of the parameters. These show that some of the parameters must be as they are within a very small fraction of a percent of their established value while others may be just a single digit of a percent off.
19. Large departures would not result in the universe we inhabit. Though the firm numbers attached to the parameters could vary somewhat I do not know how any changes would influence the interplay in the overall picture. Probably the numbers must be what they are otherwise we would be living, or not, in a different universe.
20. The parameters govern not just physics and cosmology. Biological life forms are also strictly the result of the 26 parameters. We would not exist if the parameters were other than they are, but additional requirements must be fulfilled for biology to thrive.
21. The complexity of what we see in nature requires more than the 26 parameters, Biology depends on an incredibly clever and complex code inscribed on a molecule of DNA.
22. Whereas the 26 parameters constrain the possibility of what can exist, the natural formation of things in the universe depends on the probability of chance encounters, conditions, and reactants that will result in the appearance of an observed product or event.
23. But, the probability of DNA being formed by chance encounters in nature to provide the foundation of biological life is very small. DNA is not just a complex molecule. It conveys a complex code. DNA is best explained if we assume that it was formed by some influence other than pure chance. We do not know what that could be.
24. Not only does a specific DNA record the code of a biological entity. It supervises the construction of a duplicate of the entity that its code records.
25. But there may be an answer as to how DNA is formed. We know that probabilities can be altered by the purposeful manipulation of events. Perhaps DNA was designed and constructed by such manipulation.
26. This is not a pipe dream. We humans are constantly manipulating probabilities. That is what we call progress.
27. Think of Steam Engines, Airplanes, Computers, and even the ancient Aqueducts. All these things are possible according to the 26 parameters, but all have zero probability of arising by chance.
28. We alter probabilities by manipulating probabilities to design and create things we want.
29. We are the “creators” of unlikely objects. Airplanes are not things that arise spontaneously. We have created them.
30. It is clear that Alfie’s question is more profound than first it may appear. What is going on, why, and how are we to explain and justify the existence of the universe and the many specific things that make us possible?
31. Is there a designer behind the initial singularity, and the highly specific values of the 26 universal parameters that were fixed by the BB? The chances of the specific 26 parameters and their values being a random occurrence are small indeed, perhaps zero.
32. Is there a primordial intelligence that has set off the BB and has a purpose for our highly unlikely universe?
33. Did someone/something manipulate chemical reactions to allow the highly unlikely but vitally necessary DNA to form?
34. Is human evolution leading to an increasingly capable human species just a purposeless random happening?
35. What is the purpose of our intellectual and technological development and our drive to know more? Crocodiles have survived for millions of years and are happily thriving. They do not need cell phones.
36. Is someone interested in our progress? It is unusual considering Earth’s biological past. Dinosaurs did not create a civilization over many tens of millions of years, we have done it in less than half a million.
37. One may ascribe all but the initial singularity to chance and avoid further debate. But that is an intellectual copout.
38. The Creator Hypothesis explains the origins and purposes of “it all” quite well. The Theory of Relativity quantifies large-scale physical events equally well within its range of applicability. But Relativity examines a different aspect of reality, it is quantitative. The God Hypothesis is probabilistic and considers the probabilities of the formation of what we observe.
The above listing is an attempt to show that many highly unlikely things have combined to assure our existence. The list is far from being complete when it comes to the essential requirements making biology and our presence possible. To say that if it were not so, we would not be here to ask the question, is intellectually vapid or worse. It is not skepticism.
A skeptic is not an agnostic (I know nothing) or a denier (you are wrong). A skeptic (tell me more) simply wants to be better informed so he can come to a conclusion that satisfies him.
A skeptic does not just harbor doubts.
He investigates and researches.
He does not assert
and believe that he has the answer.
Miguel de Unamuno, Rector of the University of Salamanca 1864–1936
My somewhat lose translation.
