The Universe, A Creator, and Us:
The Origins of the Universe and Life
By
Prof. David Wilkinson, Princeton University,
and
Rev. Dr. Charles Rush, Christ Church, Summit
January 24, 1999
Genesis 1
Preface:
Prof. David Wilkinson
of the Princeton University Physics Department
visited Christ Church
to give a talk on the current state of scientific
knowledge about the origins of the universe and life.
His talk included some personal reflections.
Dr. Charles Rush, Senior Minister at Christ Church, followed with some
theological views on these matters. The two presentations are transcribed here.
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Dr. Wilkinson's Remarks
ligion
and belief in a Creator seem to be a ubiquitous
characteristic of
our
species, and none other. Among Homo Sapiens, even the most primitive
cultures have creation myths to account for the universe, the sun, the
earth, the animals, and themselves. We seem to have a deep-seated need
to understand our existence and our surroundings. How else can we deal
with the troubling questions of our existence?
Some have suggested that science might offer some insights into this,
the most fundamental of human questions. With all of our spectacular
advances in astronomy and cosmology, doesn't science have something to
say about creation and the Creator? That is the theme I'd like to
explore with you this morning.
My own thoughts and beliefs are strongly influenced by the perspectives
gained as a scientist, working to better understand the early
development of our universe. I hope that you find something helpful in
these perspectives.
What does today's science have to say about the creation of the
universe?
The question might be put like this: Is a Creator needed to account
for the origin of the universe, or can science offer a
plausible alternative explanation?
I'd like to emphasize the careful phrasing of the last sentence: can
science offer a plausible alternative explanation? We should expect no
more from science. By its very
nature
science is incomplete and provides no ultimate truth. It is absurd to
even attempt to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of God.
Such a program is clearly outside the domain of science, and success is
only claimed by people who don't understand the scientific enterprise
or by exploitation authors, such as Prof. Tipler, a physicist at
Louisiana State University.
The truth is that physics, as we know it today, is very poorly prepared
to address basic questions such as: How was the universe created? or,
What was there
before
the universe was created? Let's face it. Physics can't even tell us
what electric charge, or mass really are, or where the elementary
particles get their properties. Physics is better at
predicting.
Given the initial conditions, what will happen next? At best, it takes
plausible theories and predicts new phenomena, but the track record
there is not so good. Most
really fundamental
questions are still unanswered, and the sad truth is that physicists
really don't know how to
begin
to answer such questions.
So, does science help us at all to think about creation and our role in
the universe? I think so. Modern cosmology establishes a
perspective
a broad, objective view of how important, or insignificant, we are in
the grand scheme of things. Let's look at what we know.
(Incidentally, as I frequently remind my students, the most important
question in science is how do you know that? We'll have some time in
the discussion after coffee to explore those questions.)
Do we occupy a special place in the Universe?
The Earth seems to us like a very large and comfortable place,
wonderfully designed for our use and pleasure. From a cosmic
perspective it looks quite different. We live on a tiny speck of rock
orbiting a very ordinary star, one of 100 billion in a huge galaxy of
stars we call the Milky Way. Our sun is
not
located at the center of the Milky Way; we orbit the center, about 1/3
of the distance from the center to the edge. Viewed from outside the
galaxy, our sun would appear completely insignificant. Finally, the
Milky Way itself is only one of about 100 billion galaxies in our
Universe.
How insignificant
we are in the vast cosmic picture!
How big is the Universe?
Astronomers measure distance by how long it takes for light to
reach us from a planet, star or galaxy. Some numbers help to set the
scale. The Moon is 1 light-second from Earth. The Sun is 8
light-minutes away, it's about 10 light-hours to the edge of our solar
system, and 15 light-years to the nearest star. Our Milky Way galaxy
is 100,000 light-years across, and it's 2 million light-years to our
nearest neighbor--the Andromeda galaxy. Finally, it takes 15 billion
light-years for light to reach us from the edge of our observable
universe. Again, our little solar system, even our whole galaxy, is of
very little consequence.
How long have we been around?
Paleontologists date our oldest ancestors at a few million years.
The universe is 15 billion years old. Homo Sapiens have been on the
Earth for a tiny fraction of the age of the universe. Put in terms we
can think about, if the Universe were a year old, the entire history of
man would have taken place in the last 3 hours of December 31; writing
would have been invented in the last 10 seconds of the cosmic year.
What do we know about the Universe?
The most extraordinary characteristic of our universe is that it is
expanding.
Those billions of galaxies are receding from us in all directions. The
more distant the galaxy, the faster it is moving away. We appear to be
at the center of a gigantic explosion. All of the matter we see
rushing away from us was here 15 billion years ago; that was the big
bang. But wait a minute! If we are at the center of the expanding
universe,
doesn't that make us
special? Once again nature played a trick on us. It turns out that every
observer on every galaxy in the universe looks out and sees the
same thing, galaxies rushing away with the observer at the center. Only two
universes have that property; we live in one of them, the other is
unstable.
In the big crunch, 15 billion years ago, the universe was extremely hot
and dense. The
heat radiation
from those early times is still with us as a bath of microwave
radiation, filling the universe. Originally the radiation was very
hot, billions of degrees. The expanding universe cooled that radiation
until now it's temperature is
only 2.7 degrees above absolute zero.
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson of the Bell Telephone Laboratories
discovered this radiation in 1964 in Holmdel, NJ. It is strong
evidence that we live in a big bang universe.
When the universe was only 100 seconds old, conditions were just right
for making
helium.
Physicists calculate that at this early epoch 23% of the matter in the
universe was turned into helium by nuclear reactions. This prediction
is in remarkably good agreement with measurements of the helium
abundance in the universe today. The astonishing thing is that we can
learn about physics in our tiny corner of the universe and apply what
we learn to understand things that happened minutes after the big bang,
under the most extreme conditions.
Shouldn't we then be hopeful that physicists will be able to carry out
calculations for even earlier times, maybe even back to the creation
epoch? Well maybe, but that seems to me a long way off. Some pioneers
have tried. Jim Hartle at UC Santa Barbara and Steven Hawking at
Cambridge University have tried to construct a
wavefunction of the universe.
This is intended to study the possibility that our universe was created
spontaneously out of a vacuum in much the same way that virtual
particles and anti-particles are created and annihilated spontaneously
in the sub-atomic world. This ambitious program has not succeeded, but
perhaps it is a first tentative step.
Another intriguing idea is that our universe may be only one of a
nearly
infinite
number
of universes, each with a different set of physical constants, leading
to different conditions in each universe. We're lucky; our universe is
one where life is possible. The
Anthropic Principle
is a version of this idea. According to this principle, our universe
exists because we are here to observe it.
No observer? No universe.
Only universes that can produce intelligent life will be observed, and
only they exist, in some philosophical sense. So, Nature tries an
infinite number of times and occasionally a universe is created that
leads to conscious life. By definition, we are in one of the lucky
universes. Are there really an infinite number of universes? We don't
know. What's worse, no one has any idea how to find out.
What is our role in the universe?
Life in the universe is not ubiquitous. Indeed, the universe is a very
hostile
place for life as we know it. Perhaps some forms of life are adaptable
to the extreme conditions on other planets or in interstellar space.
Searches for intelligent life in nearby regions of our Milky Way Galaxy
are underway at a very modest pace. (Too modest I think, given the
potential for success.) The discovery of evidence for other intelligent
life in our Galaxy will have enormous philosophical and scientific
consequences for our species. We should get on with a serious effort
to detect extraterrestrial intelligence. (Perhaps by doing away with
special prosecutors and investing the money in science.)
Is man a special animal? I don't believe so. I have always been
impressed by many physical characteristics that we share with animals.
Indeed, recent studies show that humans and chimpanzees share 99% of
their DNA. It will be fascinating to understand
why, with so much in common, we and the chimps have evolved along such
different paths. The important new science of
'genetic archaeology'
traces the common DNA patterns in animals and plants. By programming
computers to introduce mutations at expected rates, an evolutionary
"tree of life" is constructed that is remarkably like the one built up
over the years by paleontologists. This technique produced some
surprises. Humans are apparently more closely related to mushrooms
than to trees, and we're more like sponges than fish. (Perhaps this
explains the behavior of someone you know.) By using genetics to trace
out the evolutionary paths of animals and plants, we are gaining
fundamental knowledge about how life developed on Earth.
Humans, however, have developed the remarkable ability to
think abstractly
and to
communicate
complex ideas. These seem to be the traits that most distinguish us
from other animals. Understanding how this happened is the key to
knowing just how
unique
the human species really is. Still, our relationship to other forms of
life is strong. Young children seem to sense this instinctively. They
are fascinated by all things alive.
A physicist thinks about life on the atomic and molecular scale. How
do atoms fuse together to make the complex molecules and structures
necessary to life? It seems almost miraculous to me that the
relatively simple properties of a few atoms, principally carbon,
oxygen, nitrogen and hydrogen can lead to the enormously complex
molecules that make life possible. I was recently told that the
structure of a
single molecule of the protein myosin, is so complex that it would take the age of the universe for that
molecule to visit each of it's energy states as fast as it can. Even
the most futuristic digital computers will be too slow to accurately
predict the multiplicity of energy states in a single protein
molecule. Life depends on the fact that relatively simple atoms can
bind together to form structures of enormous complexity. These are the
vital building blocks of living organisms.
I am particularly impressed at how much
"advanced planning"
was needed in order to construct an
early
universe that would evolve into the one that we know. Conditions in
the very early universe were radically different from those now, and
even the elementary constituents were fundamentally different. At the
time that helium was formed, the temperature in the universe was a
billion times higher than it is now. Protons and neutrons were banging
around in a sea of gamma-rays. Earlier than that, even the protons and
neutrons were broken down into their constituent quarks. Atoms (as we
know them) only appeared after 300,000 years, and organic molecules of
great complexity could probably not have formed until planets with
atmospheres and seas developed, a few billion years after the big
bang. Evolution from a relatively simple plasma of a dozen or so basic
constituents to the enormously complex structures of living creatures
is a marvelous process. Was this process pre-planned or accidental?
Science has no answer, but if it was an accident, there must have been
many trial runs to get it right, because the probability of hitting on
this particular solution seems very, very small. Or, was it all
planned from the start?
The Future
We live at an
extraordinary time
in human history. Our numbers are increasing at an alarming rate, our
knowledge of natural science and our ability to advance technology are
growing exponentially, and we are now entering the scientific age of molecular biology. On
a cosmic time scale, humans will progress from basic survival to
masters of our fate in an instant of time -- a brief tick of the
cosmic clock. But we
cannot
stay on an exponential growth curve. We will run out of energy, or
seriously damage the environment with our wastes. There
must be
a final state in which human activity comes into equilibrium with the
available resources of the Earth and Sun, if our species is to survive
the next few hundred years. Of course, we may not make it to the final
state. We may make a terrible mistake, or we may just be unlucky and
end up like the dinosaurs.
If we do learn to live in equilibrium with the Earth and Sun, I can
imagine a future where most of us will be artists, philosophers,
scientists, and ministers. If so, our species will have more time and
resources to devote to investigations of the deep questions of life and
creation. My guess is that much progress will be made in the next few
hundred years, but the ultimate truth will still elude us.
Dr. Rush's Remarks
far as I am concerned, theology is second order reflection. Our
theological reflection, especially in cosmological matters, is wholly
dependent upon our scientific understanding of the universe. I simply
presume this, it seems so obvious. That means, of course, that there
is no absolute theological reflection, any more than there is an
absolute scientific reflection. The theological task is to think
through the meaning of our universe.
In cosmology, it seems to me that science and theology are
different orders of reflection on the same reality. Science is
interested in measurement, causation, mechanical principle; Theology
asks about meaning, morals, purpose, value
especially, in the words of Paul Tillich
about ultimate meaning, purpose and value. These two perspectives,
science and theology are never discrete but always intertwined, just as
fact and interpretation are inextricably connected.
As a theologian, I want to know, 'why are we here?' What is the
purpose of our living? What is our ultimate origin? Our ultimate
destination? How shall we presently order our lives morally and
spiritually in light of what we know about our world and about God?
It is often noted that in the ancient world, they considered the
universe to be relatively static, that they presumed the earth to be at
the center of the universe, that they thought of the world in a three
tiered universe
the heavens above, the earth, and gehenna below. Just as axiomatic for
our age, we presume that the universe is expanding, that all species
are in a constant, if indiscernible evolution. Motion, flux are
axiomatic in our understanding of our world. What does this suggest
about God?
For that I turn to the French paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de
Chardin and his reflections in
The Phenomenon of Man.
But before I do, I want to make his conception as plain as I can
without getting lost in academic lingo.
Teilhard was awed by the fact of human self-consciousness. We are
called Homo sapiens sapiens. In the classical world they would say
that we not only know; we know that we know. We are self-reflective
people, a fundamental prerequisite for thinking in terms of time. We
have evolved to the point where our self-consciousness has become a
substantive force in the process of our evolution. Perhaps this is
most graphically understood in the potential for gene therapy and the
resident potential of scientific understanding once the mapping of the
genome project really develops to its fullest. More broadly there has
been the steepest incline on the curve of human technological progress
in the past century. The exponential growth in the power that we
command has made us keenly aware that we are the guiding force in
shaping the evolutionary destiny of our planet
for better or worse. (Nuclear power, fossil fuels, pesticides, radio,
infrared, computer technology all have enormously changed our world.
As Carl Sagen is fond of reminding us, "intelligent life on another
planet would have had no way of knowing we were here before the
invention of the radio).
It is from this fact that Teilhard has suggested that evolution is
purposive, not in the sense that there is some predestined plan that we
are filling out. Rather, when we look at the evolving world, it moves
in a direction from the inorganic to the organic; from the organic to
the conscious and the self-conscious; from the self-conscious to the
formation of culture. In his view there is not one genesis but rather
several, for each of these breakthroughs profoundly altered the future
shape of evolution.
What would this suggest about God? You may recall the image that
Stanley Kubrick uses in his epic movie 2001. He depicts God as a
monolith, a force of conscious energy. In the presence of this
monolith a band of apes on the plains of Tanzania begin to jump around
excitedly. Suddenly they are approached by another band of apes and
the two groups begin trying to scare one another, using time honored
techniques, to no avail. Suddenly the chief ape from one of the tribes
picks up the thigh bone from the carcass of a dead animal. The spark
jumps the gap and in his ecstatic rage, he begins to use the bone as a
tool, a weapon to kill his opponent. With the simple step, a great
leap forward was taken. Tools became an extension of our natural
ability, and tool making not only extended our range of influence, it
altered our mental activity and structured our consciousness.
What does this understanding about evolution mean about God? It
suggests that God is the force that drives the evolution of our world,
that what we mean by God is something like a supra-consciousness that
both evolves with and pulls forward self-consciousness toward a fuller
level of being.
Teilhard raises the divine question with particular reference to
these pivotal turns in evolution. He calls them an 'involution'
because there is an inward turn that produces something new. Imagining
the earth in this earliest stages in the transition from inorganic
matter to what he calls 'biosphere', the realm of life, he imagines
that there must have been a long period for the development of crystals
and polymers.
"In the first phase of evolution there is a radiating
stage where vast seas of these basic elements are formed and this phase
lasts quite a long time. Then, as we postulate, even though we cannot
replicate it, something happened which produced a new, organic entity.
"Let us look more attentive at this mysterious surface. A character
to be noted at
the onset is the extremely small size and the extremely great
number of the
particles of which it consists. For a thickness of some miles, in
water, in air, in
muddy deposits, ultra-microscopic grains of protein are thickly
strewn over the
surface of the earth. Our imaginations boggle at the mere thought
of counting the
flakes of this snow."
"Thus", he concludes, "wherever we look on earth, the growth of the
'within' only takes place thanks to a double related involution, the
coiling up of the molecule upon itself and the coiling up of the planet
upon itself." In short, there came a point, in the early evolution of
the universe where the formation of the building blocks for organic
life existed in such concentration that there was something like an
enfolding, an 'involution' in Teilhard's terms. He thinks this is very
significant because it suggests a psychic dimension of existence (not
in the sense of Dionne Warwick and Nancy Reagan), but in the sense of
the interiorization of the external. What is so obvious, as you move
up the scale of the evolving order of being, is the growth of this
interiorization. If I might leap forward here to reflect on human
activity, our interior life drives our motivation and self-direction.
We do not merely respond to exterior needs, food, water, sexual
reproduction but to a very complex set of interior factors some
conscious (the desire for reputation, for merit) some subconscious
(unresolved complex's from our childhood). These merely illustrate the
interior character of advanced consciousness.
Thus, for Teilhard, there is not simply one creation but rather a
number of developing plateau's. There is
Cosmogenisis
which Professor Wilkinson has wonderfully described. Then there is
Geogenesis, the formation of the solar system, especially the earth and its moon,
the development of the large geological features (continents and
oceans). Then there came
Bogenssis, the origin of life in all its diverse forms. Another significant
shift came with
Anthropogenesis, the origin of the human species. Finally, we are probably in the
early part of the second phase of
Culturogenesis, the significance of which is that in human culture, behaviors are not
so much genetically determined but instead are learned by being
transmitted from one generation to the next. In times of peace and
prosperity we have been able to concentrate our efforts and magnify
human capabilities through the perpetuation of technological advance.
For the sake of time let me cut straight to the implications of
consciousness for evolution. "Now the consequences of such a
transformation are immense, visible as clearly in nature as any of the
facts recorded by physics or astronomy. The being who is the object of
his own reflection, in consequence of that very doubling back upon
himself, becomes in a flash able to raise himself into a new sphere.
In reality, another world is born. Abstraction, logic, reasoned choice
and inventions, mathematics, art, calculation of space and time,
anxieties and dreams of love
all these activities of
inner life
are nothing else that the effervescence of the newly-formed center as
it explodes onto itself." (ibid. p. 165)
Teilhard's conception of God is something of an analogy forward
from the self-conscious activity present when we develop collectively
tremendous cultural artifacts. If we are self-conscious, then he
imagines God to be supra conscious, the creative force that drives the
principle of Emergence. He says 'We are beginning to see that there is
definitely
more
in the molecule than in the atom,
more
in the cell than in the molecule,
more
in society than in the individual, and
more
in mathematical construction than in calculations and theorems. We are
now inclined to admit that at each further degree of combination
something
which is irreducible to isolated elements
emerges
in a new order." (p. 268) Teilhard doesn't use the word God because it
is too heavy laden from the past with outdated worldviews for what he
is trying to describe. He uses the term Omega Point to describe the
supraconscious function that develops new levels of emergent
consciousness. He pictures this a "pyramid whose apex is supported
from below. That is what we see during the course of the process. And
it is the very same way that Omega itself is discovered to us" (p. 270).
Not surprisingly Teilhard believes that in this phase of our
development, we are radiating out over the world as humans. He
predicts a general direction that we will ultimately develop into a
coordinated and integrated whole. In the meantime what we see is the
movements towards that and recessions as well, coordinated projects of
enormous scope (that integrate our culture and our consciousness) and
wars which rend the fabric of our cultural being. Ultimately speaking,
the direction of our development towards greater integration and
interdependence, underscores the importance of the development of the
moral of love. It is this interior moral motivation that embodies the
telos towards which we are moving. Beyond that it is quite literally
impossible for us to imagine. Perhaps, some of you might have some
prognostications that would fill this out.
To sum up, "if the universe, regarded sidereally, is in the process
of spatial expansion (from the infinitesimal to the immense), in the
same way and still more clearly it presents itself to us,
physico-chemically, as in process of organic
involution
upon itself (from the extremely simple to the extremely complex)
and, moreover, this particular involution 'of complexity' is
experimentally bound up with a correlative increase in interiorisation,
that is to say in the psyche or consciousness" (p. 301). It is the fact
of this consciousness that should fill us with a certain wonder and
awe. Whatever else we might mean by God, it cannot be other than the
direction that this consciousness develops and expands, towards
supraconsciousness.
