The Forbidden Universe (32 page)

Paul Davies explores an ironic and amusing twist to the multiverse theory, one that takes the story into rather unsettling
Matrix
-esque territory. This invokes another
sci-fi
idea that is nevertheless taken seriously by many scientists, that of simulated universes. Building on the ideas of British philosopher Nick Bostrom, Davies explored the implications presented by the simulated universes concept in the ‘design vs. multiverse’ debate.

As Davies pointed out in an article in 2003, since
multiverse
theories posit an infinite number of universes, anything anyone can think of will inevitably happen in one or more of them. Although only rarely will one universe possess the right conditions for life, there will still be masses of inhabited universes. (After all, what’s a small percentage of infinity?) In some of them, civilizations will have arisen that are so technologically advanced they will have developed their own computer-simulated,
Matrix
-style universes. For all we know, we might be living in one. (But how would we ever know if there were no red pills?) After all, a civilization that can simulate one universe can simulate many. As Bostrom points out, the ability to run such simulations wouldn’t remain confined to a civilization’s
scientists, but would eventually filter down to students, schoolchildren, artists and even hobbyists. Programmers might even create universes where the inhabitants are advanced enough to simulate their own universes. The logical outcome would be that the
majority
of universes would be artificially designed.
²⁹

This provocative scenario does, of course, depend on the multiverse theory being correct in the first place, and Davies is far from convinced of this. The point of his paper is that
if
one accepts the multiverse, then one also has to accept that the odds are in favour of our universe actually being simulated. So, pushed to its logical conclusion, even the multiverse theory supports the idea of design!

What surprised Davies was the enthusiasm with which proponents of the multiverse such as Lord Rees took to their idea.
³⁰
They are much more willing to accept that our universe is designed by a computer programmer than that it was designed by a God or gods – even though the distinction is of course, essentially merely semantic. To humanity the Great Programmer(s) would
be
divine and omnipotent – so they might as well be gods.

Even with such prestigious opponents as Wheeler, most physicists and cosmologists accept the multiverse theory. But are so many of the best modern scientific minds simply clinging to it just because they’re afraid of facing the very unwelcome implications of the anthropic principle?

The evidence underpinning the anthropic principle suggests one of two scenarios: either the cosmos was intelligently designed, specifically to produce intelligent life, or there is something about it that makes it
seem
like this is the case. The only suggestion that has been made about what that ‘something’ might be is the multiverse. This presents us with a straight choice between one or the other.
And if the multiverse is wrong then science itself proves that the universe is designed for life.

This choice is recognized by most leading physicists such as Stephen Hawking, who writes that the anthropic principle ‘suggests either intelligent design or, if there are trillions of universes as M-theory proposes, that luck and probability are enough to make our existence feasible’.
³¹
In his 2010
The Grand Design
, co-written with Leonard Mlodinow, he comes down firmly on the side of the multiverse and M-theory, which led to his well-publicized pronouncement that God did not create the universe, while acknowledging that M-theory hasn’t yet been proven. Jim Al-Khalili, however, points out that this is essentially the same logic as those used by religionists. While they use fine-tuning, along with their faith, as evidence for the existence of God, Hawking and his fellow advocates of M-theory seize on it – together with the assumption that there is no God – as evidence for their own hypothesis.
³²

No less a figure than Steven Weinberg, the eminent American Nobel prize-winning theoretical physicist, when discussing the enigma of the vacuum energy, writes that if further research confirms this seemingly miraculous balancing act ‘it will be reasonable to infer that our own existence plays an important part in explaining why the universe is the way it is’.
³³
Susskind calls Weinberg’s statement ‘the unthinkable, possibly the most shocking admission that a modern scientist could make: man’s place in the universe may indeed be at the centre’.
³⁴
Of course, despite those words, Weinberg, champion of the ‘pointless universe’, will not agree for a moment that man is at the centre of things. He goes on:

But if string theory finally and comprehensively falls, as it shows every sign of doing, then we will be left with Weinberg’s reasonable inference that the presence of intelligent life is fundamental to explaining the universe. This would mean that science itself effectively provides overwhelming evidence for the designer universe, which of course means there must be a Grand Designer.

We are often told that science is an evolving,
self-correcting
process, in which its laws and theories are never fixed but merely contingent, the best conclusions that can be drawn from the available data. It is also implicitly understood that future discoveries may completely overturn current thinking and lead to a revision of the theories. But when it comes to the anthropic principle this reasoning suddenly falls by the wayside.

The best available data from physics – the hard facts it has amassed, which can then be tested experimentally and empirically – points unequivocally to a universe fine-tuned for intelligent life. However, the majority of scientists argue that one day we will have better data that will show this to be an illusion. But all their supporting ‘evidence’ is theoretical, speculative and untestable. We can imagine what would happen in any other field of human endeavour if someone admitted they had factual evidence pointing in one direction, but then declared they can think of a hypothetical reason why the opposite, which unfortunately is impossible to test, is true.

Why should this be? Why should the normal rules of science change when it comes to the anthropic principle? The justification for making it a special case is that a designed universe violates one of the most fundamental principles on which the scientific worldview and method is
based. The scientific revolution, we are told, came about when thinkers realized that physical phenomena could best be explained in terms of mechanical processes and laws that are purely a consequence of the way the universe is – without presupposing the existence of a designing and guiding intelligence.

However, as we saw in Part One, this is
not
the way the scientific revolution happened.
All
of its great figures – Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Leibniz – based their work on the understanding that the universe
was
intelligently created and that human intelligence plays a key part in its design and purpose. Bruno even anticipated the existence of other, more advanced extraterrestrial intelligences, which fits the strong anthropic principle even more neatly. None of them would have had any problems with the implications of the anthropic principle; they would have taken it for granted. And they certainly wouldn’t have tied themselves in theoretical knots to evade the evidence staring them in the face.

Opponents of design point out that the hypothesis is just as untestable as the multiverse theory. That is not the case. The hypothesis of creation by deity or deities unknown does allow for the formulation of testable predictions. What predictions? Simply, if the universe is designed for intelligent life then the more our understanding of physics advances, the more we will uncover evidence of such design. Which is, of course, exactly what has happened. The design hypothesis passes that test.

A few scientists have at least been open to the notion of some form of design. Fred Hoyle proposed that the ‘intelligent universe’ (the title of his 1983 book) is a purposeful, creative entity evolving towards some specific end. Hoyle also scathingly dismissed the usual scientific response to the anthropic principle, calling it ‘a modern attempt to evade all implications of purpose in the
Universe, no matter how remarkable our environment turns out to be’.
³⁶

The most high-profile scientific advocate of the design idea now is Paul Davies, who summed his position up in
The Mind of God
(1992):

However, perhaps oddly, the theory that suffers the most from the design interpretation of the anthropic principle is the traditional idea of God as creator, because it exposes the limitations of his divine power.

The God of the Judeo-Christian religion, for example, created worlds from his will and word alone, and fashioned Adam out of clay and Eve from a rib bone. This was not metaphorical, but
literal
. After that particular tour de force tweaking the resonance of the helium nuclei or making a minor adjustment to the strength of the weak nuclear force in order to produce a man and woman millions of years later is something of an anticlimax.

This is not properly understood (or perhaps it is, but evaded) by those representatives of organized religions
who use the evidence for design in support of their own doctrines. We find ourselves in the unusual position of agreeing with a pope, John Paul II, in his 1985 statement that to dismiss the scientific evidence for design in the universe as being a simple coincidence ‘would be to abdicate human intelligence’.
³⁸
But we profoundly disagree that such evidence supports the existence of the God of the Bible, and therefore of the Catholic Church.

The Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, Christoph Schönborn, supremely missed the point when he declared in ‘Finding Design in Nature’, published in the
New York Times
in 2005, that by refusing to accept chance explanations for the way the universe works, the Catholic Church is ‘standing in firm defence of reason’ and that it will again defend human nature by proclaiming that the immanent design evident in nature is real’.
³⁹
He is quite wrong: the evidence of design
disproves
the Catholic teachings about God, and it is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.

However, the ‘designer universe’ concept does support the cosmology of the Hermetic tradition, as well as the Neoplatonists’ and the Heliopolitan theology that we argue lay behind them. Paul Davies notes that the kind of designer suggested by the strong anthropic principle fits the model of the Demiurge – the lesser or, in the words of the Hermetica, ‘second god’, whose creative power is
constrained
by matter – rather than the omnipotent God of Judeo-Christian tradition.
⁴⁰
So in this respect at least, science supports the Hermetic tradition.

At this point the exact nature of the designer isn’t the most important consideration. If we have to use a term that doesn’t commit us to any specific image, we suggest Grand Universal Designer – or the good GUD almighty.

In this chapter we have only explored the
conditions
that made the universe ripe for life. If GUD exists, we should be able to see evidence of his or her hand elsewhere in nature, particularly in the emergence and development of intelligent life. On the other hand, other branches of science may utterly demolish poor old GUD by demonstrating conclusively that certain phenomena could only happen through the workings of pure chance and blind forces. But which way does it go?