From World to God?. Richard L. Sturch
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thought to be a “necessary being,” one who could not not-exist, and could not be otherwise than He is; but the universe quite certainly might not have existed, and might have been quite different. So that an unexplained and inexplicable God is far, far easier to swallow than an unexplained and inexplicable universe in all its vastness and variety through space and time.
geoffrey
You forget that if God did create the universe, he presumably had in mind a plan for it. Every complexity there is in the universe has an answering complexity in the divine brain. God is not simpler than the universe, but much more complicated; for presumably he has other ideas besides that of the universe, and these add to his complexity.
leslie
I’m not sure of that. That in fact is one reason I mentioned God’s free will! An architect’s drawings for a house are in a sense as complex as the house itself (disregarding such things as the composition of the bricks). But the architect’s thoughts, which produced the drawings, did not just leap into existence of themselves. They began with the idea of a two-bedroomed bungalow or whatever, and evolved from that simple beginning. Again, the postulates and axioms of a formal mathematical system are not infinitely complex—they may be very simple indeed—however complex the system itself is which derives from them. And similarly, while the ultimate state of an infinite mind may be infinitely complex, its original essence need not be. God may be simple in Himself, and yet have thoughts which develop and become more complex. That is not so with the universe.
geoffrey
Why not? A basically simple universe might contain great potential for development—like your mathematical postulates and axioms. Have you come across the Mandelbrot Set? It is in effect a kind of graph, based on the extremely simple formula “z squared plus c,” where you start with z=0 and c=anything you like, and each succeeding result of the equation is fed back into it, so to speak, to become the next z. This formula becomes the basis for a graph or pattern of incredible—in fact, literally infinite—complexity. A universe that was very simple at root might come to look very complicated indeed as it developed.
leslie
Along any particular lines?
geoffrey
Along lines dictated by the scientific laws that govern it.
leslie
But these require explanation, don’t they? They can’t be included in the basic “brute fact.”
geoffrey
Possibly: we can discuss that later. But to bring in that argument would be in effect to abandon the last and (you told us) the strongest of your first group of arguments.
leslie
But I haven’t finished yet! “A simple universe might contain great potential for development,” you say. But in so doing you have abandoned your earlier position, that the whole spread of the universe through space and time could be treated as self-sufficient, as a unit. If it can, it is enormously complex, and, what is more, there is nothing in it that is in any way “special” or “privileged” as logically prior to the rest, in the way that God’s decision to create is logically prior to His decision to create this or that detail of the world. If it can’t be treated as a unit, then we are back to the first sub-group: this “simple” universe had a beginning and I want to know what caused this.
A Universe That Happened by Chance?
geoffrey
Some cosmologists have made suggestions about just that. A while ago, Leslie, you mentioned explanations in terms of chance. Well, the beginning of the universe could have been a chance matter, a very unusual quantum event.
myra
That sounds very queer. Could you amplify it, please?
geoffrey
Not as a real cosmologist could, but I’ll do my best, and hope I get it more or less right. It is well established that what is called a “vacuum” in quantum physics is not an empty nothingness. What are known as “virtual particles” are constantly appearing and disappearing within it. They are like the basic particles that make up you and me, but they last only for a tiny fraction of a second. They come into being and pass away at random, without any determining cause: for at the quantum level determinism does not hold. Now the smaller the energy required to produce such a particle, the longer the time it can last. But the universe could very well have zero energy.
leslie
I beg your pardon?
geoffrey
It’s true. The mass, and therefore the energy, of the universe is of course enormous. But its gravitational energy is also enormous, and apparently this counts as negative where the other is positive. Don’t ask me why, but I am assured that this really is so.
leslie
Is that correct? The last time I heard, they were saying that there was an enormous amount of “dark energy” pushing the galaxies apart, counteracting the pull of gravity; and this would presumably outbalance the “negative energy” you speak of.
myra
None of us knows whether this is in fact correct. I think we’d best assume Geoffrey’s position for the moment, just for the sake of argument.
geoffrey
Thank you. Theories may of course change. But the point about the mass and gravitational energy is that the two may very well cancel out, or nearly so. So that if the universe emerged from the “vacuum” as the result of a chance fluctuation, it could continue to exist for a long time, perhaps indefinitely, without relapsing back into nothingness. Hence you could have a simple beginning to the universe which was not caused by anything, any more than the randomly occurring virtual particles are caused by anything.
leslie
It sounds a fascinating—dare I say, an amusing—speculation. But I can’t see that it makes any real difference, even if the energies did balance out. Is the universe that emerges in this way simple? The universe is not just a balance between mass-energy and gravitation-energy! It has far more to it than that: it has laws, and conditions for those laws to operate, and an indescribable web of intricate detail arising from these. Why did this very specific universe leap into being from the vacuum? And, what is more, is the background simple? You still have to explain the origins of the “vacuum” itself.
geoffrey
At least some physicists have suggested that you don’t even need that vacuum. The universe might tunnel its way into existence out of nothing.
leslie
I am glad you don’t seem to endorse their views! For of course no conclusion can follow when there are no premises. There may be laws of nature which say “Given X and Y, there is such-and-such a chance that a virtual particle will appear,” or even “Given X and Y, there is such-and-such a chance that a universe will appear,” though I confess I find the latter hard to believe. But certainly there can be no law that says “With nothing given at all, a universe will appear”; from nothing you can infer nothing.
geoffrey
Frankly, I rather incline to agree with you. I only mentioned this position because it has been held. The other one, which does allow for a basic vacuum, is much more serious.
myra
I wonder if there’s a catch in that position too. It arouses memories, in me anyway, of an old argument one used to hear occasionally before modern advances in cosmology. Theists were apt to cite the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Heat can only pass from one body to a colder body. This means there is a steady tendency for heat to even itself out across the universe; “entropy” tends to increase.
leslie
Meaning?
myra
Oh, dear. Entropy has been described as a measure of how close a system is to equilibrium or uniformity. For instance,