In today's The Times, in Eureka magazine, there is a small article by John Polkinghorne entitled 'Where is God at the LHC?' (it can be found online here). Polkinghorne was Professor of Mathematical Physics at the University of Cambridge between 1968-1979 and the 2002 recipient of that infamous award - the Templeton Prize. In this shameful piece of reasoning in the form of an article, Polkinghorne commits such trecherous acts of logic, it is hard to imagine him being a mathematician at all.
The LHC, which goes online later this month after a year’s delay, will, it is hoped, reveal the elusive Higgs boson and help resolve some deep mysteries about the Universe. Polkinghorne’s article is really a poor philosophical argument, likely presented to appease readers of The Times. What follows is a criticism of the standpoint he advocates.
He begins by stating the Universe 'is certainly not full of ideas stamped "Made by God", for the Creator is more subtle than that'. Presumably, Polkinghorne would not be making the same assertion if we did find compelling evidence for God's existence in the Universe. Thus begins his support of the 'science tells you how, religion tells you why' so called 'argument'.
After some explanation of the Physics, Polkinghorne plainly defines his position - 'To believe in a Creator is not to answer the question of who lit the initial touch paper, but to address the much deeper question of why there is something rather than nothing'. This statement makes a fatal assumption; it presumes that value statements regarding the universe are valid questions. They may be grammatically sound, but do they really mean anything beyond their own mere existence? Why are trees vengeful? Why do chairs smell of purple? Why does Bigfoot eat humility? These questions are pure nonsense. They mean nothing and to attempt to find an affirmative answer to them is futile.
Polkinghorne asks that we should 'look to see if there might be signs of a divine Mind behind the order of the Universe'. He poses the question 'why is science possible at all?' and why can we humans understand the universe in the first place? The latter question is perhaps unqualified at this time. Currently, we know embarrassingly little about the Universe. Dark matter and energy, which makes up well over 90% of all the 'stuff' there is, has remained elusive. That does not rule out the possibility that we will someday understand the Universe, and Polkinghorne is right to ask this kind of question.
But does the fact that we can, or will at some point, understand the Universe, mean that God is behind it? It most certainly does not, even though Polkinghorne somehow thinks it does; he asks 'Is it all just our luck, or is it a sign that a divine Mind does indeed lie behind cosmic order?' Polkinghorne is simply advocating the god of the gaps. Incredibly, he asserts that all our current physical theories - M-Theory, Multi-verses, the Big Crunch, - are just the same as 'luck'. It is a shame that such a highly qualified physicist holds this view. We are so ignorant, despite our best efforts, about just how it all got here, that we have to honestly and openly suspend judgement and work hard on the problem; not wildly assert that the god ‘I’ happen to believe in did it. It begs the question 'who did god then?' and makes wild leaps of faith regarding 'his' nature.
At best, Polkinghorne's argument might suggest an incredibly intelligent (but not omniscient) force of some very strange kind is behind the universe, but this is just as, or much less likely than any current theory around. But as for a prayer-answering, omnibenevolent and human-like god (the Protestant God in Polkinghorne's case), he is way off the mark.
3 comments:
Anecdotally, I've noticed that a surprising number of mathematicians are religious. Without qualifying this assertion, perhaps Polkinghorne's article gives some insight into why this might be. Mathematicians seem to conflate physics with mathematics; If something can be modelled mathematically, it inherits the beauty of the mathematics. By inferring beauty in physics, it is a small step to assert that the beauty is designed. In my view, this is a gross misrepresentation of the relationship between mathematics and physics. Mathematics is just a modelling tool and nothing more. There is no reason why the maths should accurately describe the *actual* reality.
BTW, your comment box appears to be a little broken in firefox - arrow keys don't work and spell correction is off.
In find the Polkinghorne argument specious. Those who wish to cling to ideas of a creator god always wheel out the idea that, there being "something rather than nothing", this must have been by someone's intent. Why? Then there's the argument from design? Well, if it hadn't worked out this way it would have worked out another way. Then they say that if this or that had been a millitweak to the right or left at such and such an attosecond within the first nanosecond of the Big Bang the universe wouldn't have happened as we know it, and wuoldn't contain human life. So what? It does, and it does because it does, and it does because it didn't do it another way. Why can't people get their heads round that? I don't think you have to be a physicist to conceive of the idea that things just happen. If they didn't, they wouldn't. Simple as that. Anyway, do we know for sure that the Big Bang wasn't just one of an infinite number of such, that the universe isn't swelling and contracting, swelling and contracting, Big Bang to Big Crunch, every X trillion years? Sometimes I think it takes a thicky like me to see what physicists don't see because they don't see the wood for the trees, whereas we lackbrains seem the simpler picture.
Its pretty clear that there's no way that science and religion will reach an agreement on wether god exists or not. By definition it can't be done, faith means believing without proof and it certanly isn't the main goal of science to do so. But every time I read about a case like this one, in which someone tries to prove the existance of god with some scientific discovery, it is actually more clear to me that god doesn't exist. It's not the scientific fact or discovery itself that proves it, rather than the way in which religious people (or believers) try to adapt their obsolete and flawed way of thinking in order to keep up.
There's no specific fact that that proves that god doesn't exist, there probably never will be, but there are a lot that prove that god is an invention and they stand out whenever there's an important scientific discovery or event, like evolution or the big bang, or the experiments at the LHC.
Long ago, when man kind knew a lot less about nature than what we know now it was fit to explain everything through god, but science has advanced and with each step it takes religion struggles to keep up. And the more they try to keep up it becomes more evident that their fight is becoming more and more pathetic... and dangerous.
Campbell, btw, I like your posts.
Post a Comment