Designed or Undesigned--that is the question

As promised several days ago, I'm going to respond to Victor Stenger's God: The Failed Hypothesis, one piece at a time. In this post, I'll take on chapter 2, 4, and 5, which talk about the issues of evolution, cosmology, and order in the universe.

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all share in common the idea that the universe was created and is sustained by God, even though all three religions define God differently. Stenger, in looking for evidence of God, thinks that if God exists, we should be able to find some physical signs that God was involved in creating the universe, and that he is involved in sustaining it. The evidence that he thinks he should see is a place in the development of the universe (especially the development of human life) where natural descriptions are not enough.

Here's one criterion he uses. "In principle," he says, "the creation hypothesis could be confirmed by the direct observation or theoretical requirement that conversation of energy was violated 13.7 billion years ago at the start of the big bang." He goes on:

However, neither observations nor theory indicates this to be have been the case. ... Remarkably, the total energy of the universe appears to be zero. As famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking said in his 1988 best seller, A Brief History of Time, "In the case of a universe that is approximately uniform in space, one can show that the negative gravitational energy exactly cancels the positive energy represented by the matter. So the total energy of the universe is zero."

So the universe actually just cancels out, and is really nothing after all. But not, as Francis Schaeffer might put it, nothing nothing. Just nothing with some amazing properties.

Which is a very key point in all of this. In his explanation on why there is something rather than nothing, Stenger fumbles around with the idea that nothingness is less stable than, I suppose, somethingness:

[M]any simple systems of particles are unstable, that is, have limited lifetimes as they undergo spontaneous phase transitions to more complex structures of lower energy. Since "nothing" is as simple as it gets, we cannot expect it to be very stable. It would likely undergo a spontaneous phase transition to something more complicated, like a universe containing matter. The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent. (emphasis mine)

This is one of those points where I think Stenger can't ignore metaphysics. Indeed, he tries to shrug it off, but it's actually rather painful to watch:

Clearly many conceptual problems are associated with this question. How do we define "nothing"? What are its properties? If it has properties, doesn't that make it something? The theist claims that God is the answer. But, then, why is there God rather than nothing? Assuming we can define "nothing," why should nothing be a more natural state of affairs than something?

Stenger's use of the word natural is basically consistent, referring to things that follow the same basic laws of physics. The problem, of course, is that he sets this at odds with the concept of a creator God, without bothering to delve into any of the relevant metaphysical questions.

Although he uses the word natural consistently, he does not use the word nothing consistently. Indeed, if "nothing" has properties, doesn't that make it something? He asks the question, but never answers it. The kind of nothingness that he claims will spontaneously become something is not, as I mentioned earlier, nothing nothing. To illustrate what I mean, I'll use Schaeffer's words (from He Is There and He Is Not Silent):

Suppose we had a very black blackboard which had never been used. On this blackboard we drew a circle, and inside that circle there was everything that was--and there was nothing within the circle. Then we erase the circle. This is nothing nothing.

In other words, no laws under which it is likely that "nothing" will spontaneously "decay" into "something." No symmetries to say that "nothingness" is perfectly uniform throughout. Nothing nothing has no symmetries, and no asymmetries. There is nothing measurable about it. That is what, I think, you get without a creator. Schaeffer was wise to dwell on this.

Stenger wants to say that the universe came into existence because it had to, and I agree. That is because I don't think God is a piece of the universe that might, in theory, be cut off from it. God is as inescapable as are the laws of the universe and the truths of mathematics. But here we are getting into metaphysics, and I know Stenger hates that. The point I want to stress, though, is that the God of the Bible need not create a universe from "nothing." Rather, in my view, he created the universe from "nothing nothing," that is, He is the source of all reality, not just matter and energy.

The fact that matter and energy always seem to behave themselves is a testament to the divine act of creation. Of course, when we overly anthropomorphize God, it seems silly to think of a guy like you or me trying to keep all those particles in check; but when we shed all of our childish visions of God, we see that the incredible uniformity that underlies all the diversity of the universe is a symptom of there being only one God, a being so other it is literally breathtaking for me to contemplate.

To say that diversity comes from uniformity naturally is not an argument against God, as Stenger thinks it is. Rather, the fact that meaningful diversity comes from beautiful uniformity is a stroke of divine genius (although intelligence, after all, is hard to actually define).

Well, I have already spent a great many words on cosmology. There is more that Stenger has to say about the design of the universe.

In Chapter 2, Stenger talks about evolution, and I really won't go there. I will simply say that I am with Francis Collins on this one, and my comments on cosmology should also apply to evolution. (I've already blogged a little about evolution here.) However, I noticed something in this chapter that Stenger picks up full force in Chapter 5, which is titled, "The Uncongenial Universe."

Basically the argument goes like this. If there were a God who created this world and human beings in his image, then the universe would be well-suited to human life. By empirical evidence, it is not. Therefore, there is no God.

Here is some of the empirical evidence he cites:

1. Our bodies are not as efficient as they could be if they were designed by an engineer (p. 69)
2. The universe is really big, and there is "an awfully large amount of space where humanity will never make an appearance." (p. 156)
3. The universe is really old. (p. 156-7)
4. It would be practically impossible for us to travel to another planet congenial to our form of life. (p. 158-9)
5. Complex organisms such as humans evolve "by famliar, purely reductive physical processes without the aid of any overarching holistic guiding principle." (p. 162)
6. The portion of the universe that is "structured" is very small (p. 162-3)

Point number 5 can be addressed, I think, in the manner I have already dealt with cosmology. All other points are merely statements of the form, "This certainly isn't how I would've designed the universe." Indeed, the idea that God "wasted" space and time (as implied in a subheading of Chapter 5) presupposes that one already has a good idea of how God should have created the universe. Yet that is exactly how Stenger argues; it is more metaphysics than physics, though he doesn't think it is.

Which leads me to one point I can't stress enough to both theists and atheists. Whether or not you see design in the universe is, in some sense, irrelevant. In order to see or not see design in the universe, you have to anthropomorphize God in some way. Either God created the world as you would have (though perhaps more skillfully), or he created it in a way that you don't like, and in either case you're making God in your image. Note that theists can be just as guilty of this as atheists.

Rather, what we really learn from the fact that God created the universe is that matter is intrinsicaly good. Scripture does not teach us how matter behaves, how far it extends into the universe, or even really what it is in the first place. However, it does teach us that matter is intrinsically good, and thus it makes sense to study it eagerly as scientists.

I think a quote from Robert Wilken's The Spirit of Early Christian Thought will bring my point home:

But early Christian thinkers offer no philosohpical argument for the existence of God drawn from the world of nature. ... They did not argue that there is a God because there is order; rather, they saw design in the universe because they knew the one God. God was not a principle of explanation. In seeking God they sought to understand the God they already knew. (p. 16)

The knowledge of God provides a framework in which all sorts of other knowledge can be properly integrated. Real knowledge about the universe amounts to personal growth within the context of knowing God. Stenger makes the mistake of thinking that science can work outside of this framework.

Ultimately, I get back to my very first point about Stenger from my last post about his book. He fails to give necessary attention to the metaphysical questions that we must answer. If we are the product of chance in a universe where matter is not intrinsically good, then what can we say? Are humans better off alive or dead? Is science worth doing in the first place?

However you choose to answer those questions, if there is no God, then there is no way to justify your choice outside of yourself. It is merely your personal, private truth. A full pursuit of knowledge demands that we have some framework in which to integrate both a description of the universe and an evaluation of our role in it, and its role in our lives. Such a pursuit cannot even begin without the knowledge of God on some level.

I think these chapters contain Stenger's strongest arguments in the whole book, and that is probably because he knows that most about these subjects, from evolution to cosmology. I have argued that he is lacking in his metaphysical interpretation of the science he presents. However, I have not disputed any of his science, and I do not think it is necessary to do so. I understand many Christians feel it is necessary, and I respect that, but I must say I think that is a losing battle. When scientists say, for example, that they have confirmed Darwinism and the big bang through extensive testing, I am inclined to believe them. They can have nothing to gain by falsifying the evidence.

However, scientists can have many reasons to make metaphysical claims and try to back them up with their science. While science may be relevant to metaphysical questions, I think Stenger fails to actually deal with the metaphysics, and therefore his empirical claims don't do all that he wants them to do. There is more that I could say, but I think I'll stop for now.