When theology does cosmology

March 31, 2011 • 9:09 am

As intelligent-design-based opposition to science slowly dissolves, its adherents are rushing to find arguments for God in another field—physics.  I hear these arguments all the time when I’m on the road, and encountered them again this week in Maryland.  They boil down to three assertions:

  1. The “fine-tuning” argument. The physical constants of the universe are tightly constrained, for if they varied even a little, life wouldn’t be here.  Ergo Jesus.
  2. The “why there are laws” argument. We have no explanation for why there are laws of physics that hold throughout the universe. Presumably, without God there would be no “laws” at all.  Ergo Jesus.  A variant of this argument, made by people like Kenneth Miller, is the “science works” argument: because the universe is intelligible by human exploration and rationality, it must have been constructed by God.  Note, too, the similarity of this argument to the “moral law” argument that we see frequently: people have an innate morality, and that innateness is evidence for God.  Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, sees this “Moral Law” argument as perhaps the most powerful evidence for God.  (It’s not of course:  “innateness” could reflect evolutionary wiring, universal instruction or a combination of both.)
  3. The Big Bang argument. This is a just a fancy scientific update of the old Cosmological Argument that everything has a cause, and the ultimate cause must be God. In the case of physics, the argument goes like this:  maybe physics can understand how the universe came from the Big Bang, but what was there before the Bang?  How could something come from nothing?

Many of us are familiar with the rebuttals to these arguments, some of which have been published by Victor Stenger and Steven Weinberg. But since these claims keep coming up, and are likely to form the most common science-based support for God, it behooves us to understand why they don’t hold water.

In some discussion with physicist Sean Carroll about these issues, he referred me to a very nice piece he wrote for the upcoming Blackwell Companion to Science and Christianity, “Does the universe need God“?  In his characteristically lucid prose, Carroll deals with all three of the arguments given above.  I was especially interested in Big Bang arguments, which is why I wrote Sean in the first place.  Carroll explains some of the theories for the origin of the universe, emphasizing this:

The singularity at the Big Bang doesn’t indicate a beginning to the universe, only an end to our theoretical comprehension.  It may be that this moment does indeed correspond to a beginning, and a complete theory of quantum gravity will eventually explain how the universe started at approximately this time.  But it is equally plausible that what we think of as the Big Bang is merely a phase in the history of the universe, which stretches long before that time – perhaps infinitely far in the past.  The present state of the art is simply insufficient to decide between these alternatives; to do so, we will need to formulate and test a working theory of quantum gravity. . .

. . . There are a number of avenues currently being explored by physicists that hope to provide a complete and self-contained account of the universe, including the Big Bang.  Roughly speaking they can be divided into two types: “beginning” cosmologies, in which there is a first moment of time, and “eternal” cosmologies, where time stretches to the past without limit. . .

. . .A provocative way of characterizing these beginning cosmologies is to say that “the universe was created from nothing.”  Much debate has gone into deciding what this claim is supposed to mean.  Unfortunately, it is a fairly misleading natural-language translation of a concept that is not completely well-defined even at the technical level. Terms that are imprecisely defined include “universe,” “created,” “from,” and “nothing.”  (We can argue about “was.”)

The problem with “creation from nothing” is that it conjures an image of a pre-existing “nothingness” out of which the universe spontaneously appeared – not at all what is actually involved in this idea.  Partly this is because, as human beings embedded in a universe with an arrow of time, we can’t help but try to explain events in terms of earlier events, even when the event we are trying to explain is explicitly stated to be the earliest one.  It would be more accurate to characterize these models by saying “there was a time such that there was no earlier time.”

To make sense of this, it is helpful to think of the present state of the universe and work backwards, rather than succumbing to the temptation to place our imaginations “before” the universe came into being.  The beginning cosmologies posit that our mental journey backwards in time will ultimately reach a point past which the concept of “time” is no longer applicable. Alternatively, imagine a universe that collapsed into a Big Crunch, so that there was a future end point to time.   We aren’t tempted to say that such a universe “transformed into nothing”; it simply has a final moment of its existence.  What actually happens at such a boundary point depends, of course, on the correct quantum theory of gravity.

This is fascinating stuff, taking us to the very edge of modern physics.  And it belies the Jebus-lovers’ assertion—one that I encountered on Monday—that scientists simply have “faith” that the universe came from nothing.  No, we don’t have faith that it did, we have hypotheses about how it did, and some of those hypotheses are or will be testable.  The God explanation, of course, is not testable—it’s just a refuge for nescience.

Carroll goes on to examine the fine-tuning and multiverse arguments, some of which are also testable.  He emphasizes that multiverse theory is not a Hail Mary pass thrown by God-beleaguered physicists, but a natural outcome of modern research:

The multiverse is not a theory; it is a prediction of a theory, namely the combination of inflationary cosmology and a landscape of vacuum states.  Both of these ideas came about for other reasons, having nothing to do with the multiverse.  If they are right, they predict the existence of a multiverse in a wide variety of circumstances.  It’s our job to take the predictions of our theories seriously, not to discount them because we end up with an uncomfortably large number of universes.

But go read the piece.  It ends with a nice discussion of why physicists who are exploring cosmological boundaries aren’t tempted by the God Hypothesis.  A nice snippet:

Ambitious approaches to contemporary cosmological questions, such as quantum cosmology, the multiverse, and the anthropic principle, have not yet been developed into mature scientific theories.  But the advocates of these schemes are working hard to derive testable predictions on the basis of their ideas: for the amplitude of cosmological perturbations,[29] signals of colliding pocket universes in the cosmic microwave background,[30] and the mass of the Higgs boson and other particles.[31] For the God hypothesis, it is unclear where one would start.  Why does God favor three generations of elementary particles, with a wide spectrum of masses?  Would God use supersymmetry or strong dynamics to stabilize the hierarchy between the weak scale and the Planck scale, or simply set it that way by hand?  What would God’s favorite dark matter particle be?

This is a venerable problem, reaching far beyond natural theology.  In numerous ways, the world around us is more like what we would expect from a dysteleological set of uncaring laws of nature than from a higher power with an interest in our welfare. As another thought experiment, imagine a hypothetical world in which there was no evil, people were invariably kind, fewer natural disasters occurred, and virtue was always rewarded.  Would inhabitants of that world consider these features to be evidence against the existence of God?  If not, why don’t we consider the contrary conditions to be such evidence?

Indeed! If, as liberal theologians tell us, the “necessary” evils of this world are exactly what God would produce given his penchant for human free will and for physical “freedom” like the movement of tectonic plates, then would a nicer world disprove the God Hypothesis?  Don’t hold your breath, for the nature of the God Hypothesis is that no observation could ever disprove it. That’s why it’s not scientific at all, and why religion and science will never find an amiable concordat.

Stop and watch the birdies

March 31, 2011 • 7:21 am

In the crush and press of everyday life, don’t forget our BirdCams.

Over at EagleCam, the chicks have grown rapidly and are now too big to fit under the parents.  Here is mom a few minutes ago, looking mussed and hassled by her brood:

And the Allen’s hummingbird chicks in California have grown at an astounding rate, barely fitting into the nest.  Just yesterday they were naked little blobs; now they look locked and loaded.  Will they fledge before they can no longer squeeze into their tiny home?



Why is General Electric like the Catholic Church?

March 31, 2011 • 5:08 am

A:  Neither of them pay taxes.

Yesterday’s New York Times has a damning report on General Electric’s tax-avoidance strategy, which includes the clever use of tax loopholes and the sequestering of profits in offshore accounts.  Last year GE made a profit of 14.2 billion dollars. Not only did it pay no taxes, but claimed a tax benefit of 3.2 billion dollars. That means they’re actually making money from the rest of us taxpayers.

This egregiously unfair (but legal) strategy is abetted by the adoption of liberal tax laws in the U.S. beginning in the 1990s and by the many tax breaks contained in George W. Bush’s 2004 American Jobs Creation Act.   The Obama administration is considering cracking down on stuff like this, but G.E., who spent over 4 million dollars in lobbying last year, will of course fight back hard.

A sub-plot involves congressman Charles Rangel, who was head of the Ways and Means Committee in 2008, a committee considering doing away with a lucrative tax break for G.E.  As the Times reports,

The head of [G.E.’s] tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break. As he sat with the committee’s staff members outside Mr. Rangel’s office, Mr. Samuels dropped to his knee and pretended to beg for the provision to be extended — a flourish made in jest, he said through a spokeswoman.

That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee.

The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district. Joel I. Klein, then the schools chancellor, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who presided, said it was the largest gift ever to the city’s schools.

Rangel denies a tit-for-tat deal, which would be illegal, but the Times reports that Rangel actually asked G.E. for school donations earlier in 2008.  And Rangel was of course censured by Congress last year for ethics violations.

G.E.’s behavior of course violates our evolved ethical penchant for fairness (a monkey offered a cucumber slice will refuse it if it sees another monkey getting a grape).  Let’s hope the Obama administration makes corporations like General Electric cough up their just due. In the meantime, you can sign a petition urging the removal of G.E. CEO Jeffrey Immelt, whose salary went from 5.6 million dollars to 15.2 million dollars in 2010.  Disgustingly, Obama has named Immelt as head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness and as Obama’s liaison to the business community.

And while we’re getting rid of this kind of corruption, can we also deep-six the no-tax provision for churches?  LOL! Imagine what a fracas that would cause!

h/t: Matthew Cobb

Talking bears explain kin selection flap

March 31, 2011 • 4:22 am

Over at his website, Lost in Transcription, Jon Wilkins (a professor at the Santa Fe Institute who works on theoretical population biology) has posted on the big kin selection kerfuffle in a piece called “Nowak versus the world.”  Wilkins, apparently, is with the “world”:

I’ll just say that I am not really sure what the authors of the original article were hoping to accomplish. From my read, the article seems to reveal a rather disturbing lack of familiarity with a huge body of scientific literature from the past few decades. Either that, or it represents a rather disturbingly disingenuous attempt to misrepresent that huge body of scientific literature. I’m sure that there are other possible explanations, but I’m not coming up with them off the top of my head.

I also don’t know what the editors at Nature were thinking when they published this paper. Or, rather, I have some personal theories as to what they were thinking, which I am afraid do not reflect well on their competence, professionalism, or honesty.

I love it when Hello Bear compares Nowak et al.’s attitude toward kin selection with Bill O’Reilly’s toward the tides.

Rather than explain the fracas in detail, Wilkins created this LOLzy cartoon in which a pompous top-hatted bear, representing the Harvard team of Nowak et al., gets pwned by a female bear resembling Hello Kitty, but with a mouth!:

How to cross slick surfaces: lessons from birds

March 30, 2011 • 11:03 am

Via the New York Times, I found a new paper in The Journal of Experimental Biology that possibly has lessons for humans.  The lessons are about how to walk over slick surfaces without falling.  And although it’s coming a little late in the season, it’s good advice to remember for next winter.

The authors ran four helmeted guinea fowl (Numida meleagris) over tracks, training them on tracks with a sandpaper segment, providing good traction.  Then they let the birds run over both sandpaper tracks and tracks with a slick segment made of polypropylene.  As you might guess, some of the birds slipped.   Here are some recordings; be sure to watch them since they’re short and LOLzy:

Video 1: Control birds on sandpaper track

Video 2:  Experimental trial, polypropylene.  Bird crosses successfully

Video 3: Experiment trial, polypropylene.  Bird falls on its tuchus.  Note that in this case the bird had its front leg extended forward more than the previous bird.

Here’s the successful bird in a screenshot from video 2:

And the hapless bird from video 3:


The difference is obvious, and was borne out by the authors’ data: to cross slick surfaces, don’t extend a leg way out in front of you, but keep it closer to your center of gravity.

The crucial graph:  the “fall zone” occurs when the upper segment of the limb is at an angle of less than 70 degrees from the ground (legs right below you are 90 degrees).  The plot, taken from the paper, shows speed versus limb contact angle, SP = sandpaper, PP = polypropylene, dots are successful runs, triangles are falls (FAIL!).

What you should learn from this:  when crossing a slick piece of ground, especially ice, keep your steps short and your legs below the body, mincing rather than marching across.  Actually, this had previously been shown in several studies of human locomotion, but how many of us knew about those?

__________________

Clark, A. J. and T. E. Higham. 2011.  Slipping, sliding and stability, locomoter strategies for overcoming low-friction surfaces.  J. Exp. Biol. 214:1369-1378.

Kitteh contest: Ulysses Everett McGill

March 30, 2011 • 9:22 am

Today will be largely a photo day, and here are some good ones from the Awesome Kitteh Contest.  Reader Catilin entered her imposingly named cat:

Ulysses Everett McGill is very long and sleek with bunny fur and coloration like a Goetze’s caramel cream bulls-eye.  You would think his natural beauty would be enough for him, but his habits are decadent and he loves to get fancy.  In this photo Everett is all decked out in an exquisite boa crafted from the finest, hand-selected pot-holder craft kit cotton loops, curling ribbon from freshly unwrapped birthday presents, and a metallic catnip-stuffed sturgeon toy.  Though his disposition is best summed up as “stoically self-righteous,” he has a generous spirit.   Every day he leaves 1/4 of his dinner for his kitteh companion (Fat) Jack to eat, which has led to Jack being put on a diet by the vet.  In his waking hours, Everett enjoys watching my mother blow-dry her hair, eating and regurgitating Plestiodon inexpectatus [JAC: the southeastern five-lined skink] alternately stomping and creeping up and down the stairs, and judging everyone with his judging eyes.

Here are Everett and his companion (Fat) Jack:

Holiday snaps, northern Virginia

March 30, 2011 • 5:54 am

Here are some nonacademic highlights of my trip to Virginia, where I visited my sister, brother-in-law, and their “pet”:

On a lazy Saturday afternoon, we visited Frying Pan Farm Park in Fairfax County, a working farm that’s also open to the public (admission is free).  Fortunately, it was lambing and pigging (?) season, so there were plenty of baby animals to pet.  I’m not sure whether this action is Talmudically prohibited:


Lots o’ lambs, too:

Twin lambs were born only two hours before our visit, and were still wet. Here’s mom and one of them inspecting the afterbirth:


What is a farm without a barn cat? Here’s a tough-looking customer:

But he proved to be a cupcake, staying around for petting, scratching, and purring:

I finally got to go through some of my possessions that were in my mother’s care when she died.  Two of them were notable.  The first is the very album I was listening to at the moment I became an atheist.  Jeremy Manier explained in an article from the Chicago Tribune, reprinted at the Dawkins site:

One of the more colorful scientific de-conversion stories comes from Jerry Coyne, a professor of genetics and evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago. It happened in 1967 when Coyne, then 17, was listening for the first time to the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” album while lying on his parents’ couch in Alexandria, Va. [JAC: it was ARLINGTON, Virginia].

Suddenly Coyne began to shake and sweat. For reasons he still doesn’t understand, it dawned on him at that moment that there was no God, and he wasn’t going anywhere when he died. His casual Judaism seemed to wash away as the album played on. The crisis lasted about 30 minutes, he says, and when it was over, he had left religion behind for good. He went on to study how new species evolve, and found the Darwinian view of nature perfectly in tune with his abandonment of faith.

The good news is that my mother saved the album!  So here it is, a witness—indeed, perhaps even a cause—of my youthful godlessness:

And the ultimate souvenir of childhood, my bronzed baby shoes!  Do people even do this any more?

Finally, I found a LOLzy photo of my two uncles (my mother’s brothers) taken some years ago.   Uncle Bernie and Uncle Moe were partners in the auto-parts business in Pittsburgh, where they made a fortune.  Here they are on the links (Moe’s wearing the convict pants).  This photo makes me giggle, for it seems to be a poster for Jews Who Have Made It.

Moar on Maryland

March 29, 2011 • 4:59 pm

Over at EvolutionBlog, Jason describes in fair detail the public talk on evolution that I gave at the University of Maryland last night.  (Note the presence of a jacket with no tie: a tribute to Hitch).  It’s a good summary, and saves me the trouble of describing it.  It was a treat to meet Jason, but I still claim that he looks about twenty years old.

It turns out I’m a warmup act for Richard Dawkins, who will be talking at Maryland next week.  But my account of the real highlight of my trip, the petting of baby pigs and lambs, will follow tomorrow.