Hawking and the Heavens

Chesterton once observed that men generally have two attitudes towards dogma: some consciously recognize their reliance upon it, and others attempt to deny that reliance. He concluded that, ironically, it is the latter who are ultimately the more dogmatic.

I was reminded of this observation a few weeks ago [1], when I saw the latest interview with a well-known—and in this case eminent—scientist speaking on matters which fall outside of his professional competence. I am referring to the interview given to El Mundo by Stephen Hawking. In this interview, Prof. Hawking repeated his firm conviction that there is no God, and hence no heaven, no miracles.

That he holds this conviction is unfortunate, but not of primary interest for this article. What caught my interest is the justification of Dr. Hawking”s beliefs [2].

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation.” So many errors, so little time.

For one thing, the first sentence of this statement — and its intended implications — is just silly[3]. At best, it makes the (presumed) observation that in more scientific, “advanced” cultures, there are fewer believers and then concludes that scientific advancement causes a loss of believe.

Perhaps it does, and perhaps it does not, but the reasoning here looks to me more like a post hoc, ergo proper hoc fallacy, a confusion between a correlation and a cause.

As for the second sentence, can science offer a “more convincing explanation” of the how and what and why of the universe”s creation? Errors often come in pairs (at the least!), and this is no exception.

The more obvious error is to say that SCIENCE!TM has both the last and ultimately the only word on this topic. That is scientism plain and simple [4]. The opposite error is to assert that science tells us nothing of value here.

Concerning the former error, science itself runs into one of its fundamental limits when discussing “the beginning” of the universe. There are, after all, multiple meanings to the word “begin,” reflected in its various forms. A thing may begin at its initial time, the first instant of its existence; or it may begin at its bottom, its starting point; or it may begin in the moment at which is is conceived; or again it may begin when it is set in motion. A beginning my be temporal, it may be spatial [5], or it may be ontological.

Now, Dr. Hawking has previously taken issue with the first of these meanings, arguing that in its early stages the universe was small enough to be governed by quantum effects, which blur its beginning such that it has no literal first instant [6]. “We are the product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe” as opposed to being created by God.

Not only is this a false dichotomy (God could, after all, use a quantum fluctuation to “begin” the universe), it also misses the primary point of creation. As physicist and Anglican cleric Dr. John Polkinghorne notes [7]:

Much confusion exists in the minds of many because of a false association of creation with the beginning [n.b. first moment in time] of things. The doctrine of creation is not concerned with temporal origin but with ontological origin. It is proposed as the answer to the question of why anything exists at all, and not to the question of how it all began. God is as much the [active] Creator today as at the instant of the Big Bang, fifteen billion years ago. Therefore, if Hawking is right in supposing that quantum effects in the early universe so fuzzed out what was happening that there was not a literal first instant, that is scientifically interesting but theologically negligible.”

In other words, the notion of God as Creator, or of the universe as a part of creation, does not rest on the idea that the universe has a beginning in time. Indeed, philosophers who have actually studied and understood the thought of Saint Thomas Aquinas (for example) will note that he does not assume such a beginning in time in his Five Ways.

There is an important variation of the cosmological argument (kalām cosmological argument) which does claim (though not assume) that the universe has a beginning in time, but then St. Thomas actually rejects this argument on the basis that he did not think that it could be proven that the universe actually does begin to exist. The Rev. Polkinghorne continues his train of thought by further clarifying that

The thought of the Creator”s sustaining the world has traditionally been expressed in Christian theology by the phrase creatio ex nihilo, creation out of nothing. It does not mean that God used some peculiar sort of stuff called nihil from which to make the universe, but that at all times the universe is being held in being, rescued from the abyss of nothingness, by the divine will alone. When quantum cosmologists gaily characterize their notion of the universe as an inflated vacuum fluctuation…as being the scientific equivalent of creat o ex nihilo, they entirely miss the point. A quantum vacuum is not nihil, for it is structured by the laws of quantum mechanics and the equations of the quantum fields involved, all of which the theist will see as existing solely because decrees that this should be so. There is no area in which the interaction of science and theology is more bedevilled by theological ignorance on the part of scientists than in the discussion of the doctrine of creation.”

The quantum vacuum is not nothing, nor are the laws of physics nothing. Nothing is, quite simply put, no thing, a lack of anything, a lack of existence, a lack of being. This brings me to the other possible error—one which Dr. Hawking is not guilty of, but which the reactionary might be, the error of going too far in the other way.

Physics cannot ultimately answer the question of how (to say nothing of why) creation itself occurs, because creation is an ontological and not merely a physical event. It is logically prior to any number of assumptions which physics must make to function, assumptions such as the existence of a universe (at the least), or that the universe must obey the mathematical models we make of it, that is, that it must be governed in a logical and coherent manner by our theories and laws and axioms.

The second error is to state that since these things are logically prior to physics, therefore physics is not online casino competent to say anything about the beginnings of the universe. It is to reject physics (and, ultimately, much of scientific reasoning) as giving us no information whatsoever. This is just fideism in another form, and fideism is indeed the “opposite error” to scientism.

There is a balance to be struck between faith and reason, between the knowledge we gain from science and the knowledge we gain from revelation (to say nothing about the balances between science and philosophy and theology) [8]. For example, Dom. James A. Wiseman, O.S.B., notes that there is a difference between “making” and “creating”:

The Hebrew verb bara”, translated above as “create,” is regularly used in the Bible when only God is the subject, whereas the verb “asah (“make”) is used with either God or human beings as subject. “Making” is thus analogous to human “manufacture,” by which an object is fashioned so as to receive its particular character, whereas creating is not comparable to what humans can do. God alone could “create” heaven and earth, whatever this activity might mean more exactly” [9].

In light of this, it should be clear that there is no fundamental incompatibility between the idea of God”s “creating” the universe—giving it being—and His “making” it (giving it its form or character, or indeed its material makeup) by use of quantum vacuum fluctuations during the big bang.

As for the dogma of the scientistic worldview, it begins with the dogma that there is nothing beyond science, and ends with denying any plain fact which does not fit this theory. We see odd claims of creation from nothing—though only once on a large scale—so long as we are allowed to begin with a little something, a sort of brute fact such as quantum foam and vacuum field fluctuations. And then, in a similar breath, we hear claims that there are no other miracles, claims which are made on the patently dogmatic grounds that nature cannot alter her course [10]. We are given the absolute dogmas that there is no God, no heaven, and no miracles—as if science could ever actually prove a negative.

Footnotes
[1] While there has been a change in publishing deadlines for Ignitum Today, I”ve never been one to try to blog about the latest headline.

[2] The denial of God”s existence is a sort of act of faith.

[3] It is not, perhaps, quite as silly as his speculation about what God was doing prior to creating the universe: “What was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?” Saint Augustine argued that such speculations of “what did God do before the beginning of time” are meaningless, since without time there is no “before.” One can only anticipate the strange spectacle of a man who argues against the significance of man in the universe become so suddenly anthropomorphic in his speculations about what God did or did not do before the arrival of men.

[4] Speaking of scientism:

As Hawking advances in years, God is clearly very central in his mind. As the L.A. Times observed, Hawking was asked what, besides his wheelchair, he would like to control.

“What I would really like to control is not machines, but people,” he said. Which, some might observe, sounds God-like — in a remarkably ungodly way.”

This quote is almost assuredly meant to be taken tongue-in-cheek, of course, a comment about wanting to control his own body. One the other hand, it”s not phrased in such a way as to imply that that is the ultimate extent of this “control.” How little we have learned since The Abolition of Man

[5] I will not here quibble with any who attempt to argue that space and time are interrelated.

[6] This argument he makes in A Brief History of Time. On the other hand, Fr. Stanley L. Jaki has noted that

It was largely overlooked that Heisenberg”s principle states only the inevitable imprecision of measurements on the atomic level. From that principle one can proceed only by an elementary disregard of logic to the inference that an interaction that cannot be measured exactly, cannot take place exactly” (Miracles and Physics, pp. 47).

Heisenburg”s uncertainty principle provides the actual underpinning of Dr. Hawking”s assertion that the universe has no actual beginning in time.

[7] Quoted from Science and Theology pp. 79-80. This might be compared to Robert J. Russell”s comment that

Though highly speculative, the Hawking/Hartle model of the “quantum creation of the universe” is an example of the kind of challenge presented by quantum cosmology to the relation between theology and cosmology. If there is not “t=0” in the Hawking/Hartle model, does this “disprove” the theological claim that the universe is created? Actually the interaction method produces a more nuanced result than this. Recall that, according the Hawking, the universe has a finite past but no past singularity at “t=0;” the universe is temporally past finite but unbounded. If we had too narrowly reduced the theological meaning of creation to the occurrence of “t=0” in standard cosmology we might well have a problem here!…

But the interaction model provides a surprising new result: The move from the Big Bang to Hawking”s model changes the empirical meaning of the philosophical category of finitude; it does not render it meaningless. With Hawking/Hartle the universe is still temporally finite (in the past) but it does not have an initial singularity. Hence the shift in models changes the form of consonance between theology and science from one of bounded temporal past finitude (found with the Big Bang model) to one of unbounded temporal past finitude (found in the Hawking proposal). Thus, as we theologize about creatio ex nihilo we should separate out the element of past temporal finitude from the additional issue of the boundedness of the past. What the Hawking proposal teaches us is that in principle one need not have a bounded finite past to have a finite past. This result stands whether or not Hawking”s proposal lasts scientifically.”

[8] We can learn something from the science, as Dr. Anthony Rizzi notes in The Science Before Science pp. 230, 232:

If we make this assumption [that general relativity is still valid near the singularity during the big bang], the emperiometric theory, on the face of it, forces us to conclude that this is the beginning of the universe. Why? A singularity is a place where all mathematics breaks down. Since mathematics is our mode of explanation in the emperiometric method, one”s ability to explain is cut off. Hence, if we think that the emperiometric theory is “what is,” then we will conclude that from the fact that explanation comes to a beginning at this instant, so does the universe. Indeed, at this point, the emperiometric theory appears to predict that time and space begin.Of course, we know that real being, not the beings of reason of an emperiometric theory, is the final object of our thought. We will thus not be forced to that conclusion…

We should take predictions of emperiological science with some seriousness (balanced by ontological sobriety). The big bang theory indicates (not proves) that something special is happening near the point of the infinitely dense fireball (the singularity).”

[9] Quoted in Theology and Modern Science: Quest for Coherence, pp. 38.

[10] cf. Staney L. Jaki”s “Miracles and Physics, pp. 82.

Nicene Guy

Nicene Guy

JC is a cradle Catholic, and somewhat of a traditionalist conservative. He earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Austin in the summer of 2014. He is currently a tenure-track assistant professor of physics at a university in the deep south. He is a lay member of the Order of Preachers. JC has been happily married since June of 2010. He and his lovely wife have had two children born into their family, one daughter and one son; they hope to have a few more. He has at times questioned – and more often still been questioned about – his Faith, but he has never wandered far from the Church, nor from our Lord. “To whom else would I go?”

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12 thoughts on “Hawking and the Heavens”

  1. Pingback: Stephen Hawking and The Heavens - BigPulpit.com

  2. great article for such a young man. Science has nothing to teach us about God, but is only good for exploring Gods world.

    1. Thanks for reading! However, I take one small issue with this comment: “Science has nothing to teach us about God.” Now, the scientist is not a theologian, nor are all theologians even good as teachers in things of faith. But to deny that our natural knowledge–which includes modern science–can teach us nothing about God might be a bit of a stretch. The world around us is the beginnings of our knowledge. As St. Thomas notes, “Our natural knowledge begins from sense. Hence our natural knowledge can go as far as it can be led by sensible things” (S.T. I.12.12). In other words, what we know derives from the senses. Now, our natural knowledge alone is not sufficient to inform us of the things of faith; but, faith builds on reason (see Pope St. John Paul II’s “Fides et Ratio”), and modern science is a facet of natural reason.

      Thus, faith can build on the foundation of knowledge–laid in part by modern science–to teach us about God.

  3. It is so nice to have a simple faith. I can move the fingers on my hand at will. This is a power given to me – it is not ‘mine’ – it is not of ‘me’ – it is a gift. Instead of “I think therefore I am” it may be ” I think, therefore He AM Who Am.”
    Can you be smart enough to outsmart yourself?

  4. I am the father of this universe, the mother, the support and the grandsire.
    I am the object of knowledge, the purifier and the syllable OM. Text 17

    I am the goal, the sustainer, the master, the witness, the abode, the refuge
    and the most dear friend. I am the creation and the annihilation, the basis of everything, the resting place and the eternal seed. Text 18

    from The most confidential knowledge. Bhagavad-gita.

  5. It was the point of St. Thomas’s argument – Summa I,q.46, a.2 – that creation in time cannot be proved by reason; it is a matter of faith. He goes on to say that using reasons that are not cogent to prove articles of faith would only cause nonbelievers to laugh. He states that it is by faith alone that we believe that the world did not always exist. Naturally, he did not assume creation in time for his proofs. But the Fourth Lateran Council, in 1215, wrote that God, “by his almighty power from the beginning of time made at once out of nothing both orders of creatures, spiritual and corporeal…” The First Vatican Council, in 1870, repeated the assertion by quoting the earlier council. Thus creation in time is
    established Church doctrine.
    Many scientists, no matter what we say, will go on thinking they can use their expertise to comment on theology and philosophy. But no intellectual system can prove its own completeness, so science cannot prove there is nothing that is beyond its ken. That should be obvious to even the most dogmatic scientist. They should, of course,give serious thought to what they believe, but using science to prove non-scientific assertions is exactly what St. Thomas criticized when he talked about proofs that are not cogent.

    1. “But no intellectual system can prove its own completeness, so science cannot prove there is nothing that is beyond its ken”

      Indeed, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem offers a mathematical proof of this very limitation.

  6. Thank you! Delightful article! So well-written that I actually feel like I understand Hawking’s position! (Being human, his position is far easier to understand than the meaning of “creation ex nihilo”!) It is wonderful (literally) to think of God creating each moment, out of no thing….

  7. I believe the word you want in the second paragraph is “eminent” (renowned, famous), not “imminent” (about to happen).

    Otherwise a very good discussion of the complementary nature of science and theology.

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