Thank God for Luck

I have been reading Stephen Hawkings latest book. “The Grand Design”. The take-away theme from the book: the latest understandings science has accumulated in the recent decade point strongly to the case that god is not necessary to have created the universe.

Last year I had attended a debate between theologian Dr. William Lane Craig (philosopher) and Dr. Victor Stenger (physicist) where the existence of God was debated. One of several “proofs” Craig offered for the existence of a god (from a philosophical standpoint) was the argument that even within the overwhelming life-hostile conditions, our universe is so “finely tuned” that it could not possibly be due to “luck” that we exist. Therefore our existence in this universe is thus proof of a creator god.

This position, that the vast number of variables of constants, physical properties and conditions are so statistically overwhelming against the existence of life in our universe, is called the Anthropic Principle. The recent physics should indeed bear this out – as Hawkings and others have suggested – if the number of dimensions in our universe varied only slightly, as they likely do in other universes [Multiverses ¹], atoms could not combine to form molecules, stars could not form, matter would not coalesce into planets and life could not evolve. How is it we ended up so incredibly lucky?

I got to thinking about this recently one evening as I tried to sleep. I suffer from horrible insomnia and pondering the origins of the universe or mentally balancing my checkbook do not serve me well in my pursuit of sleep. Nevertheless I got to thinking about a post I had written last month about the odds of winning the lottery.

The odds of holding the winning lottery ticket are 1 in 5,000,000,000. Actually those odds are substantially better than the postulated number of Multiverses which is calculated to be 10⁵⁰⁰. (I don’t have enough space here to post all the required “zeros”). But, the fact remains that occasionally people DO actually win the lottery and become multi-millionaires.

Now if you happen to be one of those lucky lottery millionaire winners, you have two distinct options from which to conclude regarding your goof fortune: you were either simply the recipient of luck or god smiled down upon you and intentionally chose to make you a millionaire. It’s one or the other; it can’t be both.

Then in this larger sense, all of us are “cosmic millionaires” – we can either conclude that we are the lucky recipient holders of the winning Universe Lottery Ticket, -OR- that we were intentionally placed here by a benevolent god.

I have seen interviews of lottery winners who seem more than eager to profess their fortune to a benevolent deity. But is there another explanation; does one need a god to win the lottery, or does one simply need to happen to be holding the winning ticket?

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1. The concept of multiverses -- an ensemble of universes -- the outcome of the originating process that generated our own universe, and as an explanation for why our universe appears to be fine-tuned for life and consciousness.

Something from Nothing

“You can’t get something from nothing”, as the old saying goes. But it turns out there is an exception; one thing you CAN get from nothing is – a Universe.

It is truly a remarkable time indeed to be living on this planet. Although there is much yet to learn, for the first time in history humanity is on the cusp of truly understanding how WE came to be. I woke up this morning to the announcement of Stephen Hawking’s latest book “The Grand Design” in which he explains that we need not a god to explain the creation of the universe. The universe can, and most probably did, come from “nothing”.

For a number of years I personally was on the fence as an “Agnostic”. Loosely this definition meant one who did not believe in a Theistic god; and certainly not a mythological biblical god of wrath and salvation. The Agnostic posture allowed me to remain open to the possibility of some “cause” for our ultimate existence. That has since changed as I have educated myself more deeply into the origins of our existence.

This view has also sometimes been referred to as Deism; sort of acceding to god as the ultimate creator for lack of a better explanation. Some of our earliest American scientists were deists; Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, for example. Their skepticism of organized religion influenced their design in drafting the core governance of this nation. But at that time in history, they had neither sufficiently advanced technology nor the means of experimentation which would come in later times.

But now, Hawking’s contribution is both remarkable and timely in this point in human history. This is not his accomplishment alone but through standing on the shoulders of the giants who came centuries and decades before him; Newton, Einstein, Penrose, Krause, and many more – the combined body of knowledge which has brought us to the cusp of our understanding of our true origins.

Though I am not a sufficiently good enough writer, let alone science writer, to adequately convey the concepts for which I have barely the intellectual skills to grasp myself, I'll give it my best shot:

Essentially, the universe is not made of “nothing”. All that we can see, stars, galaxies, dust, gasses, all the observable “stuff” amount to less than 1% of the makeup of our the universe. What we don’t see is the roughly 70% of the universe that is made up of Dark Matter and the remaining 30% which constitutes Dark Energy.

The stuff we don’t see, the nothing is really not “Nothing”. But more importantly, it fully explains why our universe is expanding and why the rate of expansion is accelerating. And it explains how the preexisting concoction of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, like fuel and air, could result in a Big Bang, lit by a match called Quantum Fluctuation… particles which spontaneously come into existence and annihilate one another randomly. These particles mostly balance one another out, but sometimes they are out of balance... and POP - a universe is born.

The ramifications for this are history making; for the first time on this planet Man no longer needs the belief in a supernatural creator god as an explanation for how our universe came to be.

To help explain the science behind the concept, follower blogger and skeptical cohort, Dr. Mom (aka: The Mother’s Handbook) just recently sent me a YouTube link to an excellent explanation of this “nothingness”, the composition, origin and fate of our universe, by Dr. Lawrence Krauss. “A Universe From Nothing”. It is well worth devoting an hour to watch.

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Post Script:
As pleased as I was to hear of the release of Hawking’s new book, I also learned today that sadly, our fellow blogger whom I posted about yesterday, Penny, did not survive her injuries. My thoughts are with her family and friends today as well.

Such confluence of events reminds me that, for all the things that science can tell us about the world we inhabit; it is inadequate in helping us reconcile what it means to be Human. I closed yesterday’s post with a quote from my friend and documentary subject, Jerry Andrus. I didn’t think that merely scant hours later, two significant sources of information would make my universe simultaneously seem both so infinitely large and yet exceedingly small.