2009 sees Darwin's bicentennary. As part of that, I was asked to contribute to yet another debate between Atheist and Theist accounts of Evolution. I followed my previous colleague, an intelligent disciple of Dawkins who followed the usual idea othat the Universe can only be explained via scientific means. This is my reply with a few details changed to preserve the identities of members of the school.
Homily gave to the sixth form at Eltham College on Wednesday 19th November 2008 as part of the series on Evolution and Darwin.
I have a confession to make.
I’m afraid I have no choice
but to agree with
my esteemed atheistic colleague here.
I believe in Evolution.
Of course,
to Professor Dawkins,
that makes me obscurantist and disingenuous.
What that means is,
Dawkins doesn’t like religious folk
who dare to argue with him.
So let’s be clear.
There is evidence
that the universe was created
in some gargantuan explosion
thirteen thousand million years ago,
expanding and evolving ever since.
More recent evidence
from Saul Perlmutter
shows that the Universe
will continue to expand
until the stars burn out,
matter becomes diverse,
and loses cohesion
Even fundamental particles
will decay into nothingness.
And so to quote my colleague:
"People and planets and stars will become dust.
And the dust will become atoms
and the atoms will become nothing!
…The destruction of reality itself!"
Oh wait, sorry, no that’s Davros.
I do apologise.
[PAUSE]
As a mathematician,
I have no problem with Evolution at all.
I have studied many evolution equations
such as the Lotka-Volterra equations
describing oscillating populations
of foxes and rabbits,
or the Ricci flow equations
describing how the curvature of space
can evolve in time.
To understand Evolution,
we need something to evolve
and a rule by which it evolves.
Mathematics produces several models
which fit the observed data of evolving space-time.
For the large scale,
there is Einsteinian General Relativity;
for the small, quantum mechanics;
for the middle Newtonian mechanics.
The trouble is,
none of them match up
to produce a coherent theory of everything.
You might think that’s okay,
but if the Universe expanded
from something very small
to something very large,
then at some point the Universe
would be described simultaneously by Relativity
and Quantum mechanics.
So what do you do
if your two most favourite theories
refuse to kiss and make up when it counts?
You look for a new theory.
Strings!
[PAUSE]
Replace particles with little wavy strings
and a lot of problems go away!
However you do end up with five
(or six, depending on your reckoning)
different string theories
– type I,
– type IIA,
– type IIB,
– heterotic SO(32)
– and heterotic E8 x E8.
SO(32) is a 496 dimensional Lie Group, E8 is a 248 dimensional Lie Group.
Five string theories – we only want one?
“Ah,” says Ed Witten,
“if you stick them all in 11 dimensional
they all become the same one!”
So, our understanding of Evolution insists
that we become 11-dimensional.
No problem with that,
except that we can’t observe
these extra 7 dimensions.
However,
according to the theory,
there have to be parallel universes.
Parallel universes explain the Big Bang
· two big 10 dimensional
drumskins smash together
creating ripples
that turn into strings
that turn into us
as well as producing
another universe.
Quantum theory allows for this,
producing a universe for each possibility.
So there is a Universe
where my colleague,
clad in dog-collar
argues passionately for shamanism.
a universe
in which Barney the dinosaur
is president of America.
a Universe in which Victor Meldrew
while combing his shoulder length auburn hair,
sings sweet rhapsodies to Billie Piper
in a mellow baritone.
And now there is a problem:
by definition,
Parallel Universes cannot be observed.
String theory puts forward no testable results,
and yet this theory is being touted
to be the theory of the real world.
Multiple universes
in which every possibility can occur
pile up on top of each other.
None of them can be scientifically tested,
yet our present understanding of Evolution
requires them.
But Occam’s razor says
the simple answer is usually the best.
The existence of God?
It’s certainly no less scientifically viable.
[PAUSE]
“Ah,” says Dawkins,
“but God is complex”
at which point
St Thomas Aquinas,
John Lennox
and Keith Ward clout him
from behind with
Summa Theologiae volume I
saying
“you’ve not read this at all have you?
If God were material then you’d be right
but He isn’t made of anything!
Your argument falls down
because you confuse
the philosophical notion of simplicity
with your own view as to what it must mean
to be simple. ”
The truth is, in “the God Delusion”
Dawkins really shows up
that he does not understand
any philosophy at all.
And why should he?
He’s only a scientist
and philosophical questions are not scientific.
You can read the God Delusion if you like.
Personally,
I’d recommend that atheists read Bertrand Russell
- at least he actually thinks before he writes.
You see Dawkins cannot understand
that ideas,
consciousness,
and thoughts exist
and are neither material
nor reducible .
You can divide the brain up
into temporal lobes,
hippocampus, cerebral cortex et c.
You cannot divide a thought into any parts.
Can Science answer the question:
“what is a thought?”?
Can science even isolate a single thought?
If it can, can it determine what that thought is about?
How?
[PAUSE]
There exist questions
that Science cannot answer,
and for all the statements
that Dawkins, Darwin and Evolution
do intelligently demonstrate,
the statement “God does not exist”
is not one of them.
It is a metaphysical question, just like “what is a thought?”
Science can verify
the observable aspects of my being,
but it cannot pick up on the fact
that I am conscious.
To say that humans have evolved consciousness
is not obviously explained
either by Dawkins or any other scientist.
This means that there needs to be
another way of explaining to account for consciousness
– explanation from the point of view
of being a person as a whole,
not reduced to a collection of atoms.
Dawkins cannot accept that,
because he believes every aspect
of humanity to be accounted for by Science.
We need to account for
the existence of matter and consciousness,
science and personal explanation.
Returning to Occam’s razor,
the simplest explanation is that
there is God,
an eternal and non-material consciousness
who did set the evolutionary process
going via the Big Bang
and shares with us
His aspects of consciousness
and personality.
God doesn’t exist
because of the gaps in our knowledge.
Rather,
the existence of God explains
why science is actually to make explanations
in the first place.
On a personal note,
it is God that spurs me on in mathematics
- who allows me to see the wonder
and beauty of His world,
His Creation.
Perhaps one day
He’ll show me precisely how wrong I was,
and how right I am.
2 comments:
i And the dust will become atoms
and the atoms will become nothing!
Actually it's is just one instance where a beautiful theory in modern physics turned out to be wrong. This predicted that one of the universal omponents of matter, the proton, would decay. So test this a huge tank of liquid was buried in the ground which should have detected a few proton decays a year. But the tank's been down there for 27 years and no decay has ben detected at all. So it seems very likely that all stable matter has an infinite life-time.
Physicists don't usually like to admit it, but there are universal and crucially significant aspects of the cosmos that they can't explain at all. One of these is how matter can exist while consisting almost all of the space between its subatomic components. and there are also very large problems in cosmology.
I predict that a theory will be developed that will describe details of a cause actin in addition to all the forces and prove a lot of theoretical claims contemporary physics to be wrong.
This theory will indicate that a survivable cosmos will last indefinitely and that the universal cause could be thought of as god-like, although not like the god of any religion.
Sorry, I was being a little melodromatic. We discussed that very point about the longevity of the proton shortly afterwards.
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