[escepticos] Has Science Found God?

["Pedro J. Hernández" <pjhdez@...>]

De la lista de correo de la Universidad de Hawai:
Has Science Found God?
Victor J. Stenger
DRAFT 3 August 23, 1998
The Premise Keepers
When the results of the Cosmic Microwave Background Explorer (COBE)
satellite first became public in 1992, mission scientist George Smoot
remarked "If you're religious, it's like looking at God." The media loved
it. One tabloid front page showed the face of Jesus (as interpreted by
medieval artists, of course) outlined on a blurry picture of the cosmos.
Reporting on a conference "Science and the Spiritual Quest" held at the
Center for Theology and Science in Berkeley this summer, the July 20 cover
of Newsweek announced: "SCIENCE FINDS GOD." The several hundred scientists
and theologians at the meeting were virtually unanimous in agreeing that
science and religion are now converging, and what they are converging on is
God. As South African cosmologist and Quaker George Ellis expressed the
consensus: "There is a huge amount of data supporting the existence of God.
The question is how to evaluate it."
The Newsweek story noted that "The achievements of modern science seem to
contradict religion and undermine faith." However," for a growing number of
scientists, the same discoveries offer support for spirituality and hints at
the very nature of God." We learn that "Physicists have stumbled on signs
that the cosmos is custom-made for life and consciousness." Big-bang
cosmology, quantum mechanics, and chaos theory all are interpreted as
"opening a door for God to act on the world."
Surveys, however, do not confirm the contention that "a growing number of
scientists" are finding support for spirituality in their scientific
studies. A recent poll of US National Academy of Science members indicated
only seven percent believe in a personal creator, down from 15 percent in
1933 and 29 percent in 1914. If anything, most scientists seem to be moving
away from spirituality rather than toward it.
 Apparently, what are hearing is not the voice of a growing majority of
scientists, but the well-funded, growing voice of a decreasing minority. The
Berkeley meeting was a kind of Premise-Keepers rally for academics seeking
to keep alive their premise that God exists, while science continues to
operate successfully with no need for that premise.
 Stepping Over the Line
In a commentary on the Berkeley meeting, George Johnson of the New York
Times noted that "religious believers seem more eager than ever to step over
the line, trying to interpret scientific data to support the revealed truths
of their own theology."
To theistic believers, human life has no meaning in a universe without God.
Quite sincerely and with understandable yearning for a purpose to existence,
they reject that possibility. Thus only a created universe is possible and
the data can do nothing else but support this "truth."
 However, good science practice demands that everything be open to question,
including the premises that are used when interpreting data. While some
assumptions are always present in the scientific process, all are subject to
change as more powerful and economical assumptions become evident. The
premise-keepers, pure as their motives may be, practice bad science when
they confine their interpretation of scientific observations to a designer
universe.
  To the premise-keeper, the big bang provides "evidence" that creation took
place in time - just as in the Biblical (that is, Babylonian) myth.
Something cannot come from nothing, and so the universe needs a creator.
That the creator must have come from nothing is finessed away. God is a
different "logical type" than the universe - a type that does not require
creation. Theologians do not make clear why the universe itself cannot be of
this logical type.
 The premise-keepers recognize that they cannot prove the existence of God.
They simply express the strong feeling that intelligent design is
demonstrated by the very order of the universe. Unfortunately, science has
little sympathy for feelings and desires no matter how sincere their intent.
The universe is the way it is, regardless of what anyone might want it to
be. If humanity is in fact a grain of sand in an infinite Sahara, as our
telescopes increasingly indicate, then we cannot wish it otherwise. We
should accept the fact and learn to live with it.
 Nonbelievers recognize that they cannot prove the non-existence of God.
They simply argue that a universe without a creator is the most economical
premise consistent with all the data. An uncaused, undesigned, emergence of
the universe from nothing violates no principle of physics. The total energy
of the universe appears to be zero, so no miracle of energy created "from
nothing" was required to produce it. Similarly, no miracle was needed for
the appearance of order. Order can and does occur spontaneously in physical
systems.
  A Universe Fine-Tuned for Life
In recent years, the notion that the laws of physics are "fine-tuned" for
the existence of life has caught the fancy of believing scientists and
theologians alike. Indeed, probably no idea has received more attention in
the latest discussions on religion and science.
The fine-tuning argument rests on a series of scientific facts called the
anthropic coincidences. Basically, they simply say that if the universe had
appeared with slight variations in the values of its fundamental constants,
that universe would not have produced the elements, such as carbon and
oxygen, and other conditions necessary for life.
The fine-tuning argument assumes only one form of life is possible. But many
different forms of life might still be possible with different laws and
constants of physics. The main requirement seems to be that stars live long
enough to produce the elements needed for life and allow time for the
complex, non-linear systems we call life to evolve. I have made some
calculations in which I randomly vary the values of the physical constants
by many orders of magnitude and look at the universes that would exist under
those circumstances. I find that almost all combinations lead to universes,
albeit some strange ones, with stars that live a billion years or more. Life
of some kind would be likely in most of these possible universes.

The God of the Equations
A second, related line of argument is found in the recent dialogues. The
equations of mathematics and physics are claimed to provide evidence for a
Platonic order to the universe that transcends the universe of our
observations.
Recent trends in Christian theology and its rapprochement with science have
moved Christianity closer to a position where deity is to be found in the
order of nature, as a creative entity transcending space, time and matter
responsible for that order. Indeed, the modern Western theological notion of
God is probably closer to Plato's Form of the Good than the white-bearded
Jehovah/Zeus on the Sistine chapel ceiling or the beardless Jesus/Apollo on
the wall.
 And here is where some scientists and theologians currently seem to find a
common ground - in the idea that ultimate reality is not to be found in the
quarks, atoms, rocks, trees, planets, and stars of experience and
observation. Rather, reality exists in the mathematical perfection of the
symbols and equations of physics. The deity then coexists with these
equations in some realm or mathematical perfection beyond human observation.
This God is knowable, not by his or her physical appearance before us but by
its presence as that Platonic reality. We all exist in the "mind of God."
 Past logical disputes over the existence of God were largely confined to
philosophers and theologians. This type of purely logical discourse, in
which little reference is made to observations, is largely disdained by
scientists - believers and nonbelievers alike. Premise-keeper scientists
claim they are going beyond the traditional theological arguments, that they
see direct evidence for intelligent design in their observations and
equations.
 As Paul Davies has put it: "The very fact that the universe is creative,
and that the laws have permitted complex structures to emerge and develop to
the point of consciousness - in other words, that the universe has organized
its own self-awareness - is for me powerful evidence that there is
'something going on' behind it all. The impression of design is
overwhelming." Note the use of "evidence" rather than "proof" in this
quotation.
  Still, a Platonic God need not have anything to do with the God of the
Bible, nor any other imagined deity, abstract or personal. And the equations
need not actually represent a transcendent deity. True that Platonist
physicists view quantum fields and spacetime metric tensors as "more real"
than quarks and electrons. Materialist physicists, by contrast, think that
quarks and electrons are more real than metric tensors or fields of any
kind, these simply being human inventions. But the majority from both camps
of nonbelievers do not view either of these possible realities as deities.
Unlike Sandage, they do not see that a "miracle" was necessary for the
universe and life to exist.
  Still Seeking the God of the Gaps
This illustrates why the claimed convergence of science and religion makes
does not hold up under scrutiny. Look at history. Science has always
explained observations in terms of natural (that is, non-supernatural)
phenomena. Religion has always proposed supernatural explanations to fill
those gaps where science provided no natural explanations, or simply
remained silent. Only one domain of existence has ever been occupied in
either case - the domain of human observations.
 The shamans in ancient forests taught that "spirits" caused rocks to roll
down a hill - until Newton said it was gravity. Priests taught that "God"
created humans in his own image, until Darwin said evolution created us in
the image of apes. And now we have this new breed of scientist-theologians
arguing yet again that just because science cannot explain this, that, or
the other thing, then we still have room for God.
 We cannot explain why the constants of nature have the curious values they
have, so maybe God made them so. We cannot explain the "unreasonable
effectiveness of mathematics," so maybe God invented mathematics.
 Maybe. But is this modern God of the gaps any more plausible than the God
of the shamans and priests? Maybe one day science will fill in these gaps
without the premise of God.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

Victor J. Stenger is professor of physics and astronomy at the University of
Hawaii. Working with many collaborators over the years, Professor Stenger
was involved in experiments that led to the current standard model of
elementary particles. He was one of the pioneers in developing high energy
gamma ray and neutrino astronomy. He is currently a collaborator on
Super-Kamiokande, an experiment in a mine in Japan that has recently
reported the observation of neutrino mass.
 Professor Stenger has written many popular articles and three books: Not By
Design: The Origin of the Universe (Prometheus Books, 1988), Physics and
Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses (Prometheus Books, 1990,
and The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology
(Prometheus Books, 1995).

To subscribe to this list, send an email message to:
        listproc en hawaii.edu
    and type the following into the body of your message:
        SUBSCRIBE AVOID-L FIRST-NAME-HERE LAST-NAME-HERE

Pedro J. Hernández
pjhdez en post9.tele.dk
y a partir del 15 de Septiembre: phgt en correo.rcanaria.es
**La web de Pedro J**
http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/2921/index.htm
alternativamente: www.lanzadera.com/pedrojota