Hawking and Archbishop 'could both be right' on God
Updated on 03 September 2010
Following Stephen Hawking's latest contribution to the debate over the existence of God, astronomer John Gribbin writes for Channel 4 News how it is possible there is a creator, but that creator may not correspond to the Church's idea of God.
The God question has surfaced once again, thanks to Stephen Hawking's latest contribution to the debate.
Hawking says that the laws of physics do not require the existence of God, but the Archbishop of Canterbury, hardly surprisingly, says that there was a creator of the Universe (just why this should be front page news in The Times remains a mystery; the big news would be if the Archbishop did not believe in God!).
It looks like the irresistible force meeting the immovable object. But could they both be right? Is it possible that there was a creator, but that the creator did not correspond to the Church's idea of God? I believe that the same scientific ideas on which Hawking bases his claim make for a compelling argument that this is indeed the case, although that may not please either side in the debate.
The first thing to be said is that the physics on which all this is based is not particularly new. It is called M-theory, and it dates back to the end of the twentieth century. It has only made news just now because the most famous living scientist is beating the drum for it.
The reason why M-theory is relevant to the God debate is that it provides a natural solution to the puzzle of why the Universe we live in appears to be designed for the benefit of life forms like us. A whole range of "cosmic coincidences" have produced a Universe that is, like Baby Bear's porridge in the Goldilocks story, "just right" for us.
For example, if gravity were a little stronger then stars like the Sun would burn their fuel more quickly in order to hold themselves up, and they would not last long enough for intelligent life to evolve. Or if gravity were weaker, stars would never form at all and the Universe would simply be a sea of gas.
One explanation for this would be if the Universe had been specifically designed for our benefit. This is essentially the Archbishop's position. But for decades, there has been an attractive, but speculative, alternative solution to the puzzle.
Goldilocks ended up with porridge that was just right because she had a choice of bowls of porridge: some too hot, some too cold, some just right. Is it possible that our Universe is just one among many (an array of universes commonly called the Multiverse) and that in some gravity (for example) is too strong for life to exist, in some it is too weak, and in some it is just right? In other words, do we live in a Goldilocks universe?
Although science fiction writers loved the idea, it remained only a speculation until M-theory came along. The physicists who discovered M-theory were not looking for a theory of the Multiverse. They were trying to find a "theory of everything" that would describe all of the laws of physics in one mathematical package.
They succeeded, and only then discovered that the simplest version of M-theory requires the existence of a multitude of universes, each in its own set of space and time dimensions, with different laws of physics in each universe. The Multiverse fell out of the equations without them asking for it.
This means that among the multitude of universes there must be at least one where conditions are, entirely by chance, just right for beings like us to exist. This is the nub of Hawking's argument that there is no need for God. But there is more to M-theory than this.
One of the surprises in all this is that it turns out to be easy to make a new universe. Science fiction fans are familiar with the idea that black holes could be gateways to other universes. Science now agrees, and goes farther. A black hole that forms in one universe is not merely a gateway to another universe, but may create a new universe, in the form of a big bang expanding in its own set of dimensions, and, crucially, with its own set of physical rules such as the strength of gravity.
I hope you can see where this is going. To make a universe, you only need to make a black hole, something that would be within the capability of a civilisation only slightly more advanced than our own.
An even more advanced civilization might be able to do what we cannot – set things up so that the new universe has values of things like the strength of gravity chosen by the creator(s). But they could never interfere with the new universe once it was up and running.
So the Archbishop could be correct in thinking that there was a creator, and Hawking could be correct in thinking that there is no omniscient god watching over us. But I suspect neither of them will be pleased with my conclusion.
John Gribbin is a Visiting fellow in astronomy at the University of Sussex, and author of In Search of the Multiverse (Penguin).
