The Pope, the Scientist, the Fundamentalist, and the Aliens

It was a bizarre trifold juxtaposition, even by the standards of bizarrity that mark our Bizarro species.  Three different inputs cranked through my consciousness, all in one week.

On the one hand, there was my first encounter with the statement on the part of Pope Francis that he was open to both welcoming an encounter with alien beings and potentially baptizing them, should they be up for it.  I must have missed it the first time around, but there it was, from the mouth of the Pope. Sure, God loves aliens.  "Who am I to close doors," he said.  Honestly, if anyone could pull off such an encounter successfully, I think Papa Frankie could.

On the other hand, there was the statement by Cambridge cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who in a recent talk reiterated his deep fear that an encounter with alien life would be catastrophic for the human race.  Alien contact should be avoided, and humankind should be more careful as it shouts our presence into the void.

We must be wary, Stephen Hawking warns, for out there in the deep there may be beings whose intellects are so far beyond our own that they will make us significantly less impressed by Stephen Hawking.

And on the other hand, there was Ken Ham, the lumpenfundamentalist responsible for the Creation
Museum, who kinda sorta sides with Hawking on the "don't mess around with the aliens" thing.  I know, that's three hands, but bilateral symmetry is such a terrestrial chordate conceit.  Ken Ham believes the search for alien life is a waste of time, because, well, the universe is only 6,000 years old and change, and was made only for humans.

If there are aliens, they're all going to hell anyway, because Jesus only came to save humans.  That Ken Ham's "God" would create a universe filled with doomed, hell-bound creatures is perhaps not surprising, given that his theology does that to pretty much all of us human beings, too.  

So the fundamentalist and the avowedly atheistic cosmologist worry about alien contact.  Why?

Perhaps because it would shatter the ground of their ethos.  Both fundamentalism and atheistic self-understanding are creatures of the modern era.  Both place human beings and empirical human forms of self-understanding as foundational.  We can grasp everything.  We are what matters.  Being creatures of high modernity, neither Ken Ham nor Stephen Hawking have room for self-shattering mystery.

Neither would hold up well in the face of an encounter with higher forms of being, which would shatter our humanity--and our particular history as a species--as a meaningful basis for a belief system.

But a more ancient form of faith, which hails back deep into the preindustrial memory of humankind?  The one that's rooted in a long tradition of exploring our encounter with the unknowable Numinous, and yet somehow manages to integrate and embrace science?

It sees no threat, and would approach more advanced beings with open arms.

Not a surprise, I suppose.  If you've come to terms with our encounter with an infinite, omniscient, and omnipotent being that transcends time and space, why would aliens bother you?

Stephen Hawking and The Alien God

In thinking about Stephen Hawking's ongoing "the multiverse means no need for God" schtick, I found myself the other day reflecting on something else he'd pitched out there a few years back.

Looking out at the great sprawl of intergalactic space, Hawking said that he was convinced there was alien life out there.  He was also a bit concerned at our noisy efforts to make contact.  Why?  Because if life out there was as much a mess as life on earth, the most likely outcome would be that our shouting out into the great deep would just call attention to our stuff.

"Hey aliens," we'd be saying.  "Look at all the complex organics we have!  And we're delicious!  We taste just like t'chiK'nnn!"

And they'd show up, and it'd be like that closing scene in Apocalypto.  It'd be the end of everything.  We'd be outmatched, outgunned, and out-thought.  A universe as vast as ours has surely spawned beings who are dangerously more powerful than humankind.

So his recommendation?  We should lay low.   Be vewy, vewy quiet.

I found this interesting on a couple of levels.

I do wonder, quite frankly, why any spacefaring sentient being would bother making the trip just to take our [stuff.]  Yeah, we're impressed with our planet and all, but what's most interesting about our world is...what?  I mean, the universe is chock-full of hydrogen for fuel, carbon, and metals.  There's not exactly a shortage out there.  It's an impossibly generous cornucopia, our universe is.

The only thing interesting on this little rocky world, frankly, is life.  And possibly sentience, although many days I find myself doubting it.

But I also find it neat that he sees the logical likelihood of alien life in our time and space.  It makes sense, and I agree with him.  We may never know such beings, given the distances involved.  But they are likely there.

Where I diverge is when we step outside of time and space, and suddenly the same mind that can imagine impossibly advanced alien beings can't quite wrap itself around the idea that perhaps in the vastness of all that is lies a Mind that underlies all being.

Maybe if he visualized God with little antennae.  Hmmm.

M-Theory, M-Theology, and the Nature of God

Hawking and Mlodinow have, in establishing that the nature of the universe involves a functionally infinite array of different universes, inadvertently given viable rational ground for the existence of God.  But...err...which God?

The scope of the M-Theory universe is dizzyingly, immensely, terrifyingly vast, and contains the possibility of almost anything.   Among the panoply of possible modes of being, getting to a being that is omniscient and omnipotent is conceptually easy.  Such a being would be inseparable from the processes of creation that blort all things into reality.  It would be a self-aware and endlessly generative Reality Engine.  But is this the God that Christianity claims is the source and font of all being?

Such an entity easily passes muster as the Unmoved Mover of Aristotle, or the distant, abstracted Clockmaker of Thomas Jefferson and the Enlightenment Deists.   It's also precisely the sort of entity that might have I Am That I Am on its nametag at this year's Higher Being Society Annual Convention. 

So we can kinda work our way to a Creator, immortal, invisible, in light inaccessible, hid from our sight.  But though we may love that old hymn, this isn't enough.  Does the God of M-Theology manifest the single primary defining characteristic of the God Jesus kept on about?  Can we point to such a Creator and assert that God is Love?

Honestly, though the M-playing field has gotten a whole bunch larger, I don't think that's any more difficult an assertion to make than it was back when the universe was only our little linear sliver of spacetime.  The disconnected, unmoved, unfeeling, utterly uncompassionate god-cog of Deism has always been inadequate conceptually, and the One Step Beyond we've taken into the multiverse doesn't change that.

The assumption of a being that is "impassible," meaning beyond the passions and feelings of humankind, is one of the underlying presumptions of most Greek philosophy about the nature of deity.  The Stoic logos, for instance, is neither personal or "feeling."  But the omniscience we suggest as a necessary aspect of such a being incorrectly approaches knowledge as abstraction.  Our human assumption is that an eternal, all-aware being would know things as we know.  We assume that our Creator knows us in the same way that even though I'm sitting in my church office, I know the wall in my living room is red.   Or through our symbolic forms of language or mathematics. 

But this is such a limited way of knowing.   Omniscience has always seemed meaningless absent knowledge that isn't just conceptual in character, but that is ontological in character.  Meaning, the Maker knows all things...knows you...in the same essential way that you know that you now exist. Right now.  As you read this.

Though it's beyond our capacity for grasping, such a being's level of awareness would annihilate any meaningful distinction between itself and others.  In forming us, it knows us, and approaches us as not an it, or an "other," but as a "Thou." 

This being is and always has been the heart and goal of faith.  If love...the highest gift of our faith...is our yearning for participation in the other, and compassion for the other, then within the probabilistic boundaries of a functionally infinite multiverse, our capacity for reason can give assent to the possibility of what faith has always known.  That to which faith cries out, O God, is and always has been, love.  And now that faith is evidently necessary to understand the infinitely manifold providence of creation as it actually is, and infinite love can be discerned streaming up from that probability fountain, well, gosh.  Quantum cosmology and the deep yearning of Christian mysticism seem finally united.

But what does this mean for us?  What does M-Theology do for the way we live our day-to-day lives?

Further up and further in...

Hawking: Atheism Is Dead

The challenge posed by Hawking's M-Theory to God isn't that it assumes that God doesn't exist.  In fact, given the actualization of all possible being that is an essential component of Hawking's summation of quantum physics, a being that we'd recognize as functionally indistinguishable from God has the real possibility of existing.  Eternal.  Omnipotent.  Omniscient.  A being that manifests all those omnis, up to and including a 1980 Dodge Omni, has the likelihood of being true.

If M-Theory holds, this is necessary.

Hawking, atheistic though he may be, has scored an own goal.  Taken at face value, M-theory means the end of atheism.  Or, perhaps to be more fair, it is the point at which the...what's the word...claxonic certitude of both classical and neoatheism and the findings of theoretical physics part ways.  Into the atheistic version of theodicy, into that modern-era cry that There Is No Empirical Evidence, You Morons, there is inserted from M-Theory reasonable doubt.  Let the jury take note.

One can still, of course, be a committed agnostic.  Or one could hate the idea of God, refuting God for the sheer cussedness of it. Or one could reject the idea that God has any relevance to human life, or to our spacetime.  But if you attempt to definitively state that God does not exist, what you say is radically undercut by what M-Theory's insights into the nature of the universe tell us.

The M-theory challenge for theists ceases to be whether God exists.  It is, rather, the last of the three questions above.  What would be the relevance of God in the cosmology that Hawking proposes? Hawking clearly believes that the infinitely random and generative character of reality at a quantum level is in and of itself sufficient for existence.  Everything springs into being because it must.

From his cosmological premise, Hawking would be required to cede that among the 10500 possible permutations of physics that spring forth from singularity might be a self-contained, self-aware, and functionally infinite being that met all the checkbox criteria for God.  Heck, he and Mlodinow are willing to overtly say that somewhere, somehow, there exists a moon made of cheese.

But what he would be unlikely to cede is that such a being would be the Creator.  Even if God exists, such a God would be no more relevant to the broader swath of being than my left nipple.  Yes, it has to be part of being.  But so does everything else that might possibly be. 

This "God" would be impressive, but ultimately just another wacky bubbling output of the seemingly absurd physics that underlies all existence.  It would not be the Creator, but rather a part of the fabric of M-Theory existence, not the first cause, but part of the result.  And if this god-thing is part of the result, well, it's not really God in the way that theists or the world's religious traditions conceptualize God.

To this very logical objection, there is a solid theistic response.   The presumption of causality works just fine within the linear flow of our spacetime, but breaks down completely once we step outside of it.  If you have an Anselm 2.0 God that is eternal, unchanging, all-a-knowin' and a-doin', such a God would be aware of and part of the generative process of bringing all existence into actuality.  Even if generativity can be theoretically asserted as necessary in the quantum mechanic randomness of existence near singularity, parsing such a being out from the processes of that generativity would be meaningless.  As Hawking and Mlodinow note, time does not exist near the moment of singularity.  If a form of being is not bounded by time, then it can't be caused.  It has always been that process.  The two things cannot be said to be different.  In the beginning, both were. One was with the other, and one was the other.

That sounds oddly familiar.

Where that gets us theologically is to a being that can be described meaningfully as a Creator, arising from nothing.  But this is only a slightly larger version of the Deist creator, or the Aristotelian Unmoved Mover.   Yes, the clock is waaay more complicated and a teensy bit wackadoodle, particularly that universe made entirely of hampsters, but it's still the Clockmaker God.  Distant.  Dispassionate.  Sadly autistic, utterly unmoved by joy and unphased by suffering. 

What could such a God possibly have to do with the God asserted by Christian faith?

Further up and further in...

Stephen Hawking Has Proven That God Exists

Although it is alluded to throughout the Grand Design, its core argument against the concept of God lies in Hawking and Mlodinow's interpretation of the nature of the multiverse and the quantum mechanics at play in the early universe. 

The arguments are as follows.  The nature of the universe, say they, is such that it generates all possible structures, physics, and spacetimes.  The number of possible options within the universe is, they suggest, functionally infinite, being at a theoretical minimum of on the order of 10500 potential realities.  That means that while we might see intricacies and divine order in our universe, there are also quite literally billions of sad, stumpy universes that collapse in on themselves or disperse like cosmological flatulence a picosecond after coming into being.  This, according to Hawking, refutes the primary concept of intelligent design, by which one determines the necessary existence of God based on the elegance of the structures of physics.

The second argument from quantum theory is that the multiverse is sui generis, meaning it is self-creating.   Noting that subatomic particles behave in ways that imply they actualize all possibilities, and that at some point near Big Bang singularity the universe existed only at the subatomic level,  Hawking and Mlodinow suggest that it is this characteristic that causes the creation of all potential being.  Again, this is interpreted to indicate that God is not necessary in such a system. 

This is understandable, but it is hardly the only option.  Honestly, what they've done here is amazingly, strikingly, marvelously compatible with belief in God.  If M-Theory holds, it is perhaps the closest science has come to affirming some of the fundamental tenets of faith, and in particular the necessary existence of God.  With only the tiniest bit of conceptual aikido, just the gentlest redirecting touch, it becomes M-Theology.  

Let's take a look at that, why don't we?

Since the Enlightenment, science has been fundamentally empirical.  The scientific understanding of reality has been firmly locked into what can be seen and observed and touched and tasted, to the measurable dynamics of nature.   If it cannot be observed, science has told us, then it is not real, and asserting that there is anything outside of our spacetime has been declared delusional.  We theists, who with a few pantheist and panentheist exceptions tend to conceive of God as existing outside of our reality, well, we're just a widdle kwazy. 

With M-Theory, that has all changed.  At a basic level, this assemblage of quantum theoretics affirms that beyond our universe, beyond what can be seen, there lie all sorts of ineffable marvels that defy even the structures of our physics.  M-Theory, backed by the thrumming power of vast underground accelerators and complex and elegant computer modeling, with all the certitude of scientific observation leaning it's way, affirms the existence of the supernatural.   Beyond our reality, there are immeasurable heavens, says Hawking.  And immeasurable hells, adds Mlodinow, looking a bit spooked.

This is a nontrivial shift in scientific cosmology.

But what about God?  What place does a Creator have in this cosmological system?  Clearly, Hawking and Mlodinow do not believe that it is required.  The infinite generativity of quantum mechanics at the point of singularity are sufficient for them.   Yet, again, they seem very slightly oblivious to the implications of their assertions.  What they are proposing doesn't make God unnecessary.  Quite to the contrary.  M-Theory makes the existence of God defensible from a rational and scientific standpoint.

In my previous blogging on the intersection between multiverse cosmology and theology, I've noted that M-Theory removes the only rational objection to an ancient proof for the existence of God.   That proof was offered up by a 10th Century Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he argued that God was "that than which nothing greater can be conceived."  Because we can conceive of an omniscient, omnipotent and eternally self-aware being, and because something that exists is greater than something that does not, God must exist.

It's a pretty argument, but the problem with it is obvious.  We can think of plenty of things, wonderful, amazing things, that don't exist.  We can imagine that we have our very own flying car.  We can visualize an America that is financially solvent.  We can imagine that Hamas and Likud watch futbol together and roar with laughter.  Within the finite boundaries of our cold, hard reality, there are plenty of things that don't exist, no matter how desperately we want them to.  Just because God is possible, doesn't mean that God actually is.

But with M-Theory, that objection falls away.   Hawking and Mlodinow are really, really adamant about this.  Quantum mechanics tell us that every possible thing exists.  And if all potentiality must by necessity be, then God must by necessity exist.

So Hawking has accidentally given us scientific grounds for belief in the transcendent.   He has also, inadvertently, suggested that God...meaning a being that we'd generally say meets that description...is an entirely probable part of that infinite, eternal, transcendent reality.

The logical question then arises:  what would be the relevance of such a Being?  Hasn't Hawking shown that reality just up and creates itself?  Yeah, maybe there's a God, but so what?

Further up and further in...

Resistance is Futile. Hawking Will Be Assimilated.

The concept of the multiverse has been resisted by nearly every corner of Christianity.  Catholicism has renounced it, although not at the level of the Papal See.   The Young Earth Creationists over at Answers in Genesis haven't said much about it, other than to scratch their heads, mumble confusedly about them newfangled theories, and go back to building their new animatronic diorama of Jesus riding a velociraptor into Jerusalem.

Some gracious and highly intelligent Christians who have embraced a scientific worldview do struggle with the concept, because it seems to subvert the things about this spacetime that they see as evidence of God's design.  I'm thinking, in this case, of folks like NIH Human Genome project director Francis Collins, who sees God's work in the marvelous and intricately interwoven dynamics of our spacetime.  He's not wrong, of course.  I see God at work in creation too, and for many of the same reasons.  But I think, ultimately, that clinging to the idea of a single linear spacetime will prove as pointless as assuming that the earth is flat, or that it is at the center of the universe.  There are some concepts we can let go without doing damage to our faith.

I think when folks like Collins assume that a multiverse is antithetical to Christian faith, they are responding that way for two reasons.  First, because the atheistic scientific proponents of the multiverse present it as by necessity atheistic, and second, because we haven't from the standpoint of faith fully explored the theological ramifications of a multiverse cosmology.

It is that first assertion that needs some non-reflexive testing against the core assertions of Christian faith.  Is a multiverse axiomatically atheistic?   One of the strengths of Christianity as a living faith is that it can incorporate into itself anything it encounters, so long as that thing is not antithetical to the purpose of the Biblical narrative, our view of our Creator, and the essence of what Jesus taught.  Some things, like totally stealing the practice of having an evergreen indoors, are trivial.  Other things, like the use of Aristotle's concept of substance by Tertullian and the Cappadocian Fathers to philosophically frame the relationship between Jesus and God and Spirit, well...that's a bit less trivial.

For reasons I've explored frequently in my blogging over the last five years, I hold that the insights of quantum physics and M-theory are entirely compatible with both theism generally and Christianity in particular.  Hawking and Mlodinow do not see it that way, and perhaps it's a bit cruel to take their candy.

So let's sample it.  Give it a lick.  See how it tastes.  The first question that has to be asked about M-Theory is this:  does it obviate the need for a God, or disprove God's existence?

Further up and further in...

How God Plays Dice

The first of the challenges to faith posed by M-Theory is the apparent randomness in the structures underlying the universe.  The Grand Design takes a good hard look at quantum mechanics, and notes that the model that best represents the nature of subatomic particles suggests that they seem to exist everywhere they could possibly exist.   Meaning, if a subatomic particle is moving from point A to point B, it does so in a straight line.  It also does so in a curve.  And a wildly squiggly and embarrassingly unfunny Family Circus kid-coming-home line.   It also does so by way of taking a bus up to New York to see a revival of Cats, and then coming back.  All of those options occur, but only one is observed.  For subatomic particles, there's no one, simple, straightforward, deterministic path or location in space time.  What ends up "happening" is completely unpredictable.

This means, according to Hawking and Mlodinow's interpretation of the bleeding edge of physics, that our spacetime is fundamentally random.  There is no design, because everything that has arisen has done so because of tiny random variances at the subatomic level, and their echoes in the larger visible structures of our universe.  Einstein once famously rejected the idea of randomness at the foundation of all existence by saying," God does not play dice with the universe." 

Well, says Hawking, hate ta tell ya, but that's exactly what is going on.  God does play dice with the universe.  The whole thing's a crapshoot.

So according to M-theory, everything is random, and could just as easily not have occurred.  Therefore, one might argue, the existence of a Creator who has an intent for our universe or provides purpose and meaning in life can't be defended.  It's just, like, totally random, dude.

But here, Hawking seems to have forgotten the most revolutionary assertion of M-theory.   The universe is not just our time and space.  It is every possible time and space.  It includes realities that may not involve time at all.  It involves dimensions in which the laws of our physics are replaced by other, impossibly alien laws.  It may even involve versions of our own space time in which Glenn Beck is a force for good, though that stretches even my credulity.

Sure, God plays dice.  But according to M-Theory, he rolls a one.  And a six.  And snake eyes.  And gets a Yahtzee.  And makes his saving throw against poison, even though he's only a level one magic user with a constitution of 5.

A multiverse in which every potential possibility is by necessity expressed is cannot be described as random.  It is, rather, complete.  It is utterly thorough.

Precisely what one might expect when an omniscient and omnipotent player sits down at the table to play.