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Home , Anthropic principle, John Polkinghorne

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Colossian 1:15-17 – Christ is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by him all things were created, in heaven and on , visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through him and for him and he is before all things and in him all things hold together.

A Little History In the mid-20th century science faced a conundrum. The recent advances in modern science were describing a that was far larger than anyone had ever expected. Modern showed that our was some 100,000 light-years across and had somewhere on the order of 300,000,000,000 . Not only this, but the universe had numerous other ridiculously far away from our own. Current number suggest that there are somewhere along the lines of 300,000,000,000 galaxies in our universe each with approximately 300,000,000,000 stars. These numbers suggest that there are some 90,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in our universe! Louis Giglio has a video called Indescribable that talks about the size of the universe and what that says about God. I highly recommend it.

One problem that came with a universe of this size was how to understand the motion of the galaxies. There were two basic options. The universe was either static or it was dynamic; the galaxies are either in motion or not. The prevailing view of the cosmos was a steady-state view where the stars were fixed in their positions. However, this didn’t work well with the new size of the universe. The problem is gravity. Gravity is an attractive force1 between any two objects of mass. It is the reason that we are attracted to the surface of the earth. It is also the reason that we have the tides, as the moon’s gravity exerts a force on the waters of the earth.

The problem with a static view of the universe can be demonstrated with a thought-experiment. Imagine two billiards balls on a billiards table. The attractive force between them is negated by the pull of the earth and the friction of the table surface. If these same two balls were placed in empty space, far from any other massive objects, then one would find that the attractive force of gravity would slowly bring the two balls together.

This is the main issue with having a static universe that is as big as we now know it is. A static universe would not be static for long, because gravity would soon cause the galaxies to start moving towards each other. There were some early scientists who suggested models of the universe that would allow for the massive number of galaxies but with none of them in motion, but these had their own problems and didn’t fit the empirical evidence well.

So it was determined that the universe must be in some sort of motion. There were three main options, either it was expanding, contracting, or moving randomly. Well Edwin Hubble, the scientist the satellite is named after, began studying the problem of the motion of the universe and rather than finding the various galaxies in random motion, he found that they are all moving away from each other, and from us, at a rate proportional to their distance from us. likens this to a balloon, with many dots on it, inflating.

1 Newton described it as a force, but according to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity it is actually a curvature of 4- dimensional space-time. This distinction is negligible for the analysis above. At any point each dot is moving farther away from every other dot. In the same way the universe is now understood to be expanding with every galaxy moving farther away from every other galaxy.

If the universe is expanding then it makes sense that in the past it would have been smaller than it is now, and in the deep past it would have been smaller yet. Well this naturally leads to some point where the universe was at its smallest, and it is at that point that we have what is called the Big Bang. It is a fairly logical progression from the discovery of the expanding universe to some sort of initial starting point. Interestingly the idea of the universe having a starting point met some resistance in the field of Science because it smacked of theism. Many scientists were uncomfortable with the Big Bang Theory because it suggested a creator. How odd it is that now Christians are the ones who are quickest to dismiss the Big Bang Theory.

The Anthropic “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” – Psalm 19:1

In reference to Genesis 1, premier Old Testament scholar Gerhard von Rad wrote, “ found in the science of that time an instrument it could use unhesitatingly to unfold the content of faith”. If we had that same liberty, and I think we do, then using the science of our day (Big Bang, and all) as an instrument to unfold the content of faith would look very much like the .

The anthropic principle grew up over time with a number of scientists who found that some of the physical constants that determined the shape that the universe took were very tightly constrained. In other words, there are certain attributes of the universe, such as gravity, that require very specific values in order for the universe to eventually produce life. This is sometimes referred to as ‘fine-tuning’ and it suggests to many that there is more than just wild chance steering the universe. Polkinghorne writes “The universe was billions of years old before life appeared on it, but it was pregnant with that possibility from the beginning”2.

The anthropic principle gives us a view of a creation that started with the Big Bang and was slowly guided towards -based life and finally humanity. It gives us a history of creation in which God is actively involved in the everyday workings of the world. It has been said that the anthropic principle is a kind of anti- Copernican revolution, meaning that where Copernicus found that humanity was no longer the geographical center of the universe, the anthropic principle suggests that humanity is the teleological (purpose-oriented) center of the universe. It establishes humanity’s unique status in the cosmos.

There are a number of books that describe the various ideal situations that combine to form the anthropic principle. The classic text is by Frank Tipler and John Barrow and is called The Anthropic , which is over 700 pages and is rather dense. More popular books have been published on the topic by and , but these are not written from an orthodox Christian point of view and I have yet to find a full-length book that approaches the concept from a Christian perspective. discusses it briefly in The Language of God, and John Polkinghorne builds it into many of his books, but these are fairly truncated accounts. A quick, concise read is John Polkinghorne’s Faraday Paper No. 4 available online, called The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate. It gives a good overview of what the anthropic principle says and how it points to God.

2 (Polkinghorne, The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate - Faraday Paper No. 4 2007) How it works The anthropic principle suggests that the universe is fine-tuned to support carbon-based life and specifically humanity. It suggests that chance alone cannot explain the incredible precision inherent in some of the qualities of the universe. Here are some examples; there are many more that could be listed.

Stephen Hawking writes that the initial energy of the Big Bang had to be ridiculously precise. Modern Science tries to understand how the universe looked right after the Big Bang using computer models. They have found that the initial rate of expansion of the universe had to be very precise, otherwise gravity would have won out and collapsed everything again. In fact, from Hawking says that this rate of expansion could not have been off by “1 part in a hundred, thousand, million, million” (1/100,000,000,000,000,000) otherwise the whole universe would have recollapsed.3 Francis Collins adds to this that “if the rate of expansion had been greater by even one part in a million, stars and could not have been able to form”.4 So from the very beginning of the universe we can see God’s hand at work.

God’s involvement continues however, the weak nuclear force is a force that works in nuclear reactions. There is very little wiggle room in the strength of this force. If it were smaller then water could not form, and stars could not burn long enough to sustain life. If it were larger, explosions could not happen and carbon would not appear anywhere in the universe except within stars.

This last one has dramatic effects on the ability for life to exist in the universe. Without carbon there can be no carbon-based life-forms and only stars provide the right environment for the production of carbon. (This implies that we are all made from stardust which is pretty fun.) There is a popular story about the scientist who was trying to understand how the carbon molecule was formed. He found that it could only be formed under very intense conditions, but also very precise conditions. These conditions had to produce a that would intensify the bonds between the three atoms (which combine to make carbon) long enough for a stable carbon molecule to form. This resonance is related to a force called the strong nuclear force and had that force been different by even 1%, carbon couldn’t form and carbon-based life would be impossible. Polkinghorne writes that “Hoyle, atheist though he was, is reported to have said that the universe was a ‘put-up job’”5 meaning that Hoyle could not justify this kind of precision by mere chance.

A number of scientists have noted the extreme amount of order and uniformity that must have been imbedded in the early universe. suggests that the odds of this happening are 1 in 10123 or 1/1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0006. This amount of order in the early universe is vital to its long-term stability. But even more interesting is the fact that there is a precise amount of disorder within this order. This disorder was necessary for the formation of anomalies such as matter, stars and galaxies, which were necessary for the formation of carbon, which is necessary for the formation of life. There is a very delicate balance in our wild universe between the uniformity that allows order, and the anomalies that allow newness and life. This parallels very well to our understanding of God.7 C.S Lewis’ famous quote from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe describes God as a wild lion who “Of course is not safe, but he’s good”.

3 (Hawking 1988, 121-122) 4 (Collins 2006, 73) 5 (Polkinghorne, The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate - Faraday Paper No. 4 2007, 2) 6 Quote in (Polkinghorne, The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate - Faraday Paper No. 4 2007, 2) 7 C.S. Lewis talks about God in this way in The Problem of Pain. One last observation by Polkinghorne: we discussed earlier the vast size of the universe. It turns out that this size is remarkably important to the long-term life of the universe. According to Polkinghorne the roughly 300,000,000,000 galaxies in our universe, each with approximately 300,000,000,000 stars, are necessary to give the universe time enough to produce life. He writes “only a universe at least as big as ours could have lasted the fourteen billions years required to enable beings to appear on its scene”8

Interpretation Much of the work in developing the anthropic principle has been done by secular scientists, and for this reason the interpretation of the data hasn’t always pointed to God. There are essentially three main options for what the anthropic principle means.

1. God played an active role in the creation of every aspect of the universe. He didn’t just light the fuse and step back, but he has been involved in every tiny detail of its evolution. Humanity has always been the teleological (purposed) center of the universe. 2. We are just lucky. The odds were against the formation of a universe that could produce life, but it happened anyway. Yay! 3. The beyond-astronomical odds of our universe being just fit for life are no more than just statistics that point to the necessity of a . If the odds of our universe producing life are 1 in a million, then there must be at least a million other . If the odds are 1 in a trillion, trillion, then there must be at least a trillion, trillion other universes. The vast majority of the other universes had inferior initial conditions and remain lifeless and futile.

It should be obvious that any of these options go beyond the realm of scientific inquiry. Number 2 perhaps doesn’t, but it is just not a satisfying conclusion when faced with the evidence and suggests a presupposition that there can be nothing behind the workings of the universe. Option three requires as much faith, and is just as metaphysical in nature as option one. There is one other option we could entertain, which would be God creating a mature universe. This is somewhat necessary for a 10,000 year old earth, since most of the stars that we see are more than 10,000 light-years away, and thus would take more than 10,000 years for their light to reach our eyes. This begs the question of why God would create something that appears old, but isn’t. Is God trying to deceive us, or test us? It also leads to the rather existential possibility that God created everything five minutes ago and even my writing of this sentence is actually just part of the built-in memory that God embedded into the universe.

The issue is clearly outside the purview of science and thus falls into the realm of theology. Thus we can describe (very scientifically) how our God, who creates and sustains every passing moment, has created all things, and has placed humanity, made in His image at the center of it. The anthropic principle is our best bet at allowing theology to use Modern Science as an instrument to unhesitatingly unfold the contents of faith. It can’t prove God’s existence, science never can, but it can aid us in worshipping the God who is behind all that we see and don’t see. Louis Giglio’s Indescribable video takes on new depth when we understand, that not only is God so great that he made the universe as he did, but that God is so personal that everything that is so awe- inspiring about the universe was created with the purpose of bringing into existence humanity in the image of God.

8 (Polkinghorne, The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate - Faraday Paper No. 4 2007, 2) Recommend Readings Collins, Francis S. The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. New York: Free Press, 2006.

Hawking, Stephen W. A Brief History of Time. New York: Bantam, 1988.

Disclaimor: Hawking is not a Christian so some of his interpretation should be taken lightly, but he offers a lucid description of the advances of modern science, especially in the early chapters.

Polkinghorne, John. Belief in God in an Age of Science. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.

—. "The Anthropic Principle and the Science and Religion Debate - Faraday Paper No. 4." The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion. April 2007. http://www.st- edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/resources/Faraday%20Papers/Faraday%20Paper%204%20Polkinghorne_E N.pdf (accessed July 12, 2012).