II. Working Criterion
A. Introduction
While not defining God, it will be useful to have a term or criterion that will guide the process of forming an understanding. As such, for the purposes of this essay, the term “God” will be used to mean “that which deserves to be worshiped, one to whom we will be willing to direct prayers, be obedient to, to hold in awe and be faithful to.” This criterion was outlined in Philosophy of Religion by James Hall, published by The Teaching Company of Chantilly, VA in 1983[1].
B. Religion and Science
The question of the existence and nature of God has sometimes been approached from one of two paths: science or religion[2]. While many believe that these two approaches are opposed to each other[3], it is suggested that both paths will get to the same place, even though the conclusions might appear different[4]. As Lord John Emerich Edward Acton wrote in the 19th Century, “there should be no contradiction between the truth of God and the truth of science.” If both views and paths are analyzed with an open mind, this statement can be accepted.
The two approaches or views might be understood using the following relationship: where the senses end, imagination begins, and where imagination ends, faith begins[5]. As discussed in the essay on imagination, our imagination allows us to form mental impressions of things that are beyond our immediate senses. However, these mental images require some basis, either from memory or from extrapolation of remembered sensory impressions[6]. Without some concrete sensory impression, our imagination is helpless.
Science is very good at explaining things that can be observed[7], but merely because science can explain things we observe does not mean it can explain things that are impossible for us to observe (Heisenberg[8] notwithstanding). Science, by its nature, seeks things that can be tested empirically, so it seeks to find a concrete “something” which can be sensed and tested. Science is very good at analyzing empirical data and making predictions (theoretical constructs based on empirical concepts) about effects or even the existence of elements or particles. However, these predictions are always subject to change or revision as new data are discovered or as new effects are found and only are finalized when the ultimate effect or element is identified via our senses. See, for example, Gravitons[9], which are hypothetical elementary particles that mediate the force of gravity in the framework of quantum field theory[10], Gluons[11], which are subatomic particles that keep protons and neutrons in tact, but the existence of which has not at this time been proved to our senses, the Higgs Boson which is a hypothetical particle[12] thought to be the carrier of a force that generates the masses of all fundamental particles[13], the protophobic X boson (a particle that only interacts with electrons and neutrons at very close range; it is not a mass-bearing particle and is not governed by any of the four known forces, thus researches have proposed that it could be evidence of a fifth fundamental force of nature), Dark Matter[14] which is theorized as accounting for many otherwise unaccountable observations[15] about our universe[16] (such as a universe which seems to be expanding at an accelerating rate instead of at a slowing rate)[17], superpartners (used in the supersymmetry theory to explain questions such as “why forces have the strengths they do or even why does the universe look the way it does)[18], inflatons (a particle, still hypothetical, which filled the universe before the Big Bang) and sterile neutrinos (neutrinos which do not interact with other particles[19]). In fact, the Higgs and Graviton particles are perfect examples of how science can use its imagination with regard to things that it has some basis for imagining. However, there must be some basis before a leap can be made. This is simply not so with the concept of God since we have nothing which can serve as a base and from which we can extrapolate.
In this, Dark Matter is simply another manifestation of science’s attempt to “account” for phenomena that do not match theoretical predictions, to find things that seem to be inferred from theory, but are invisible. But, see the discussion in footnotes on the immediately preceeding portion of this section (94 et seq.).
For example, in the 19th century, precise calculations of the orbit of Uranus disagreed with accurate observations. In 1846, Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams proposed that the influence of another planet, as yet unseen, might cause this discrepancy. Le Verrier was able to tell observes where they should look and once they looked, they discovered Neptune. Neptune was the “Dark Matter” of this situation.
Still further, Fredrich Bessel, proposed that jittery movements of two stars, Sirius and Procyon, occurred because each star had a companion star that was invisible to the telescopes of that time. Decades later, astronomers had tools that were sensitive enough to detect the stars’ partners, and found very dense Earth-sized stars, which we call white dwarfs. The white dwarfs were the “Dark Matter” of that situation.
In 1930, Wolfgang Pauli postulated new subatomic particles, neutrinos, to account for “missing” energy and momentum in radioactive decays. The neutrinos were the “Dark Matter” of the Pauli postulation.
Still further, in 1692, Isaac Newton posed a “Dark Matter” problem: one body acting on another body at a distance in a vacuum without the mediation of anything else. For Newton, space could not be a void, there had to be something yet undetermined (i.e., Dark Matter”) to support the forces between the two bodies. Centuries later, this “Dark Matter” was determined by James Clerk Maxwell to be electric and magnetic fields.
Einstein’s theory of general relativity has space being a material medium with a non-zero density which can bend to account for gravity (i.e., “Dark Matter”).
Dark Matter is thus used to account for effects which seem to have no apparent cause.
Science constantly seeks to explain what our senses tell us and to find relationships to extend our knowledge and abilities. Science uses a method of imagining what might cause a phenomena that is sensed then testing then defining a relationship or reason connecting that imagined phenomenon to what can actually be sensed, then testing the relationship on things that can be sensed to determine the accuracy or validity of the relationship[20].
In general, it can be said that science is seeking perceived regularities in workings of the universe, forming a tentative explanation of how the regularities both illuminate and reflect underlying laws of nature, and testing the explanation by making predictions that can be verified or refuted through further experiment and observation. Sometimes the process can be expedited, or even facilitated, by asking the right question. However, it should be noted that the mere fact that something cannot be confirmed by observation has not prevented science from discovering and confirming (through indirect means, such as developing mathematics which describes the unobservable thing and then testing the accuracy of those mathematics and if they prove accurate to infer that the basic event occurred). This approach has been successfully used in the case of Black Holes and the existence of the interior of a Black Hole which lies beyond the Event Horizon of a Black Hole as well as to prove the existence of Dark Matter (see the discussion of the footnotes in this section of the essay) Just so the predictions are observable and verifiable.
However, there is a limit to this method as what cannot be imagined in some reliable manner cannot be tested, or described in a manner that the description can be tested and verified. The creation of the universe we inhabit lies at this limit. While our existence clearly indicates some sort of beginning[21], there simply is nothing available to our senses which could form the basis of a reasonable extension (imagination) of what might have occurred before the universe as we know it came into existence. It is interesting to observe that many theories regarding the universe break down because the theorists do not recognize that there might be something that existed before our universe as we know it existed. Merely because we cannot sense, or do not have the ability to sense, something that might have existed prior to the universe as we know it existed does not mean that nothing existed prior to the universe as we know it existed. It is egocentric to believe that nothing existed, or exists, merely because we humans do not have the ability to sense what was or is there. We should not be so self-centered as to believe that simply because we do not or cannot know of something that it does not exist. We must accept the possibility that there are things in the universe that we do not, and perhaps cannot, know.
But that does not mean that those things do not exist or did not exist. The key statement is the universe as we know it. Our knowledge of our universe and hence our imaginations is limited by our ability to observe, comprehend and measure. The abilities of humans do not, and should not, limit the universe, it only limits our knowledge of the universe. For this reason, the term “universe” as used in these essays will mean that which we can sense. In other words, our universe ends where we can no longer sense (this accounts for advances in technology which extends our senses, there will ultimately be a limit to what we can sense, no matter how sophisticated our equipment, see, e.g. Heisenberg Principle). When the limit of our senses is reached, we can imagine, but whatever we imagine cannot be tested for its correctness or its falsity because we cannot sense beyond that limit. There may have been one or more universes in existence but not universes which we have the ability to know. This concept seems to support the theory of God used later in this essay.
Our imagination ends at the beginning of the universe as we know it. What happened before that universe was created must be taken by science on faith – faith that something happened to give rise to a universe in which we can exist. No matter what that “something” was, it must be taken on faith that it was there since it is impossible for us to rely on senses for this time before our universe. Therefore, while science may not identify that something as “God,” it appears that this “something” is merely another name for what religion calls “God.”
Religion, on the other hand, uses nearly the same method as science, but merely uses different indicia and relationships. Religion looks at what can be sensed (nature, humans, animals, etc) and immediately makes the jump to what cannot be sensed as the initiator of what can be sensed. This initiator is identified by religion as “God.”
Science assumes that the “something” which initiated our universe is totally neutral whereas religion assumes (hopes) that that “something” (aka “God”) is benevolent. No matter what it is called, both science and religion seek the same thing, both reach a point where imagination is useless and both religion and science move beyond that point using faith. Both are seeking “that which is unknown, unknowable and unimaginable”, they merely identify it differently.But see, the section below titled “First Cause Revisited” for more on this subject.
Science and Religion converge at the end of the universe
Scientists have determined the age of our universe using a variety of methods. One method uses the ages of the oldest stars[22], another method uses the expansion rate of the universe, the Hubble constant. According to research, the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old. Since light speed is the fastest speed possible, the size of the universe can be determined by simply multiplying the age of universe, 13.8 billion years, by the speed of light, 300,000 meters per second. Thus, our universe is 130.4 x 1021 meters in diameter[23]. Beyond that, we simply cannot see or observe because light cannot reach us beyond that. Beyond that is a blank space as far as we are concerned. It is much like the blank space on the maps of the Middle Ages which simply stopped at a point and marked everything else as “nothing”.
The smallest distance we can reliably measure is the Planck distance of 10-35 meters[24]. Thus, between these two limits, 1.3 x 1023 meters and 10-35 meters, is the absolute limit of our ability to observe and sense. Since science is based on observable events and empirical evidence, science is restrcted to these limits and, according to science, our universe is exists only within these limits. Using the relationship: where senses end, imagination begins, and where imagination ends, faith begins, yields the result that since our senses end at the just-discussed limits of the universe and we must rely on our imagination as to what exists beyond these limits. Since imagination relies on and is based on past observations to build what is being imagined and it is impossible for us to go beyond these limits, our imagination will be useless because what we imagine cannot be based on any observable fact or fact that can be proved or disproved using empirical methods, and what we imagine cannot be proved or disproved. Hence, what lies beyond the limits of our universe must be taken on faith. Religion relies on faith where imagination ends. Therefore, since neither science nor religion can identify what is beyond the limits of our universe, both must rely on faith for answers to what lies beyond our universe. While religion calls this “God,” and if science does not simply ignore it, science must rely on some sort of faith that “something” (which religion calls “God”) is out there, even if that something is beyond us and beyond our ability to observe and understand. Hence, science and religion perfectly converge at the boundaries of our universe[25]. It is also noted that this view is confirmed in the essay “God,” in the section “First Cause Revisited” in which the concept of a particle randomly appearing which is permitted by quantum mechanics and which particle contained all of the matter and energy of our universe and which caused the Big Bang is rationalized with the concept of First Cause of religion by attributing the First Cause as causing the particle and rationalizing this by saying that first particle was God.
Einstein gets the final word regarding the conflict between religion and science
As stated by Albert Einstein:
“Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”
Therefore, we should be aware of the necessity of coupling both religious and
scientific concepts in approaching this issue[26].
[1] It might be noted that the modern English word “God” is derived from a root meaning “to call.” The people of Biblical times often used the word “el” which means “powerful. The word YHVH is used to describe God’s essence and is not simply another name for God. When Jews translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek, they felt that it was inappropriate to place YHVH in the Greek translation, so the substituted Lord. This practice gave birth to the modern term Adonai, the Hebrew word for Lord. To further confuse the situation, when vowels were added to the Hebrew bible, the word YHVH had the vowels associated with Adonai added thereby making the word unpronounceable and basically mysterious. This means that God really has no name which is as it should be.
[2] There have been several approaches to reconciling science and Torah: in matters of conflict, Torah is right and science is wrong (Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn); or our understanding of Torah should be reexamined (Rambam); or the two (Torah and science) relate to different realms of life to wit: knowledge and piety (Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowiz). Spinoza famously tried to resolve this conflict by viewing God and nature as being one and the same thus making God wholly immanent. According to Spinoza, since God is nature, God is everything that is – from the stars in heaven to the thoughts of man. Man is merely a “mode” or “part” of nature and thus is governed by the laws of nature (whereby man thus has no free will because man is not an independent entity, but a part of nature and nature can act in or exist in no other way than it does). Thus, Spinoza solved the problem by rejecting the concept of a transcendent God and viewing “God” as simply another word for “everything that exists” thereby making “God” totally immanent and not at all transcendental.
[3] Some have tried to resolve the “conflict” by saying that the science and religion ask different questions: science asks “how?” and religion asks “why?” Science seeks facts, religion seeks meaning. However, this simplistic difference does not fully explain either and certainly emphasizes the dichotomy between the two. There simply are certain things that science cannot explain, yet there are certain “whys” that science can explain in terms of “hows.” Therefore, we must find another answer, one which allows both science and religion to co-exist in our world. For an interesting discussion of the “rift” between science and religion, see The Great Rift by Michael E. Hobart (Harvard University Press, 2018) in which the religion-science divide is examined through the history of advances in mathematics and symbolic representation.
[4] In fact, Maimonides in his Guide to the Perplexed contends that the more we learn about science, the more we contribute to our knowledge of God. His argument goes like this: God, Himself, is totally different from our world and, as such, God’s attributes are not knowable to us, and, indeed, any attribute we give God actually diminishes Him by making Him similar to something else (for example, saying “God is good” actually diminishes God by placing him in a category of “good” people such as Mother Teresa); therefore, we can only “know” God by determining what God is not. As our knowledge of science increases, we know more and more about things that are not Devine which had heretofore been attributed to God (for example, we now know what causes weather and storms but before such occurrences were attributed to God); therefore, we now know that God is not weather, so we know more about what God is not and hence our science has actually helped us in our understanding of God.
[5] Science dwells in the domain of senses and imagination, and religion dwells in the realm of faith – what occurs where imagination and sense end. Science is in the realm of “is” and religion is in the realm of “ought to be” and “why?”
[6] The sensory impression relied upon for one’s imagination need not be an impression of that particular individual since humans are capable of describing their impressions in a manner that is understandable to others.
[7] As discussed in “The Grand Design,” by Stephen Hawking and Mlodinow, “Today most scientists would say a law of nature is a rule that is based upon an observed regularity and provides predictions that go beyond the immediate situations upon which it is based..” They further state:
There is no picture- or theory-independent concept of reality…model-dependent realism: the idea that a physical theory or world picture is a model (generally of a mathematical nature) and a set of rules that connect the elements of the model to observations.
According to model-dependent realism, it is pointless to ask whether a model is real, only whether it agrees with observation. If there are two models that both agree with observation, …then one cannot say that one is more real than another. One can use whichever model is more convenient in the situation under consideration.
This seems to confirm the characterization of science using observed, or observable, events for its principles and theories.
[8] See, Principles of Modern Physics by Robert B. Leighton, published by McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc. in 1959, in which The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is defined as the indeterminacy or uncertainty that is unavoidably introduced into an experimental measurement of physical quantities by the measurement process itself whereby we can never exactly and precisely know the measured quantity. In order to observe a particle, one must shine a light on it. By shining a light on a particle, the particle is impacted by at least one quantum of light, which changes its momentum. Thus, it is impossible to observe both the location and momentum of a particle. Another way of viewing this principle is that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that there are limits to our ability to simultaneously measure certain data. For example, the more precisely one can measure position, the less precisely one can measure speed and vice versa. The best way to envision this problem is to consider photographing a body in motion: if the photograph is taken using a high speed shutter, the image will be sharp and crisp and its location will be precisely known, but the speed of the body will not be known; on the other hand if the photograph is taken with a very slow shutter speed, information about the body’s motion will be discernable, but the blurriness will make a precise determination of its location impossible. The shutter speed is analoguous to the energy of a probe.
[9] What is the World Made Of? Atoms, Leptons, Quarks, and other Tantalizing Particles by Gerald Feinberg, published by Doubleday Anchor Books in 1978.
[10] See also Einstein’s theory of gravity. Einstein’s general theory of relativity explains gravity as a distortion of space (or more precisely, spacetime) caused by the presence of matter or energy. A massive object generates a gravitational field by warping the geometry of the surrounding spacetime.
[11] See, “The glue that binds us,” Scientific American, May 2015, volume 312, Number 5, pages 42-49.
[12] But see, “The Higgs at Last” by Michael Riordan, Guido Tonelli and Sau Lan Wu in Scientific American, October 2012, Volume 307, number 4, pages 66-73. . On 4 July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced they had observed a new particle in the mass region around 126 GeV. This particle is consistent with the Higgs boson but it will take further work to determine whether or not it is the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. If not, then some of the scientists at CERN believe the Standard Model may be wrong and a multiverse model will have to be investigated. These scientists believe that the multiverse model represent chaos
[13] The Higgs boson is a hypothetical massive elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics. Its existence is postulated to resolve inconsistencies in theoretical physics. The Higgs boson is the only elementary particle in the Standard Model that has not yet been positively observed in particle physics experiments (but see the preceding footnote). It is a consequence of the so-called Higgs mechanism, the part of the SM explaining how most of the known elementary particles obtain their masses. The Higgs boson is often referred to as “the God particle” by the media.
[14] To be entirely correct, the term Dark Matter might be used in connection with the unfound matter which attracts and thus which hold galaxies together while the term Dark Energy might be used in connection with the unfound energy that repels and thus which causes the universe to expand at an accelerating rate rather than at a slowing rate as might be expected. Actually, the term “Dark Matter,” which was first introduced by the Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky in 1930 to explain movment of galaxies, and then used in the 1970’s by the American astronomer Vera Rubin to explain otherwise unexplainable movement of single galaxies, is a bit misleading and it should really be called “Transparent Matter” because light passes through it. Our senses, such as our sense of sight, react to electromagnetic effects; whereas “dark matter” has no electromagnetic interaction. Scientists believe that Dark Matter exists because of its interactions with things we can detect: gravitational interactions which cause the stars in our galaxy to revolve at speeds too great for ordinary matter’s gravitational force to rein in; galacy clusters which move too fast to be accounted for only by matter that we can see; the gravitational lensing of light; and the trajectories of visible matter from supernova expansion that cannot be fully explained using gravity from matter that we can see. However, in the interest of economy of content, and because this work is not intended to be a scientific work with the science being used to make a point and not as the focus, the terms may be used interchangeably with the exact meaning being left to the individual reader based on the context. But see, “Dark Matter Drops a Clue,” by Carla Moskowitz, Scientific American, June 2015, Volume 312, Number 6, pages 15-17. See also, “Myseter of the Hidden Cosmos” by Bogdan A. Dobrescu and Don Lincoln, Scientific American , July 2015, pages 33-39 in which it is suggested that searches for dark matter have focused on a single unseen particle, but have been unsuccessful at finding it and the search should, instead, be extended to complex dark matter (dark atoms, dark molecutes and even clups of such particles which could make up hidden galactic disks that overlap with the spiral arms of the Milky Way and other galaxies) which will be an entire world of particles and forces that barely interact with normal matter. See also, “Black Holes from the Beginning of Time” by Juan Garcia-Bellido and Sebastien Cleese, Scientific American, July 2017, Volume 317, no. 1, pages 38-43, in which it is speculated that “dark matter’ really is a population of black holes which were born less than one second after the big bang.
[15] Recently, the entire concept of Dark Matter has been questioned because scientists have been unable to experimentally prove or confirm the existence of Dark Matter. An alternative theory is that there is no extra matter but the basic equations of gravity (such as the inverse square law, as first introduced by Albert Einstein need to be rethought and perhaps upgraded, modified (Modified Newtonian Dynamics, NOMD), or even replaced. For more on this topic, see “Is Dark Matter Real?” by Sabine Hossenfelder and Stacy S. McGaugh, Scientific American, August 2018, Volume 319, Number 2, pp 36-43.
[16] Dark energy appears to be a modern re-incarnation of Einstein’s cosmological constant – a fudge factor to make equations consistent with observation instead of questioning the equations and perhaps concluding that they are in error or are based on faulty assumptions, see the footnote immediately above this one. It might also be observed that astrophysics is not the only scientific discipline to use a “fudge factor”. Just as astrophysics visualizes much of the matter in the universe as “Dark Matter,” scientists have also visualized much of the Earth as being populated by a kind of microbial analogue: micororganizms that are known to exist, but have never been grown in a laboratory. Such microbes could account for as much as 80 per cent of all bacterial genera that live outside the human body. However, the existence of dark matter has been indirectly and inferentially confirmed by agreement of several approaches that are independent of each other. The inference occurs because astronomers have determined how much ordinary matter is identifiable so that what remains is “dark matter”. These approaches have determined that only between 4.6% and 5.2% of the universe is composed of ordinary matter (such as protons and neutrons) with the remaining matter being undetectable, hence “dark”. These approaches are: (1) by comparing the observed cosmic abundance of deuterium to the theoretical predictions of what our billion-degree early universe left as a relic; (2) through direct spectroscopic detection of hydrogen gas between galaxies; and (3) from the pattern of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background.
[17] As discussed in the section of this essay titled “Science and Religion converge at the end of the universe,” the universe that is available to our understanding and senses is 1.3 x 1026 meters in size. What lies outside of that boundary is not, and cannot, be known to us. It is possible that something in that unknowable region is something that is influencing the expansion of our universe. This “something” would qualify as “Dark Matter”. However, this dark matter does not lie within our universe but lies outside our universe. Thus, the term “Dark Matter” must be expanded beyond what we normally think of to include matter that lies outside our universe as well as matter that lies inside our universe.
[18] See, “Supersymmetry and the Crisis in Physics,” Scientific American, May 2014, Volume 310, Number 5, page 34.
[19] Wolfgang Pauli, who suggested the idea of the neutrino said “I have done a terrible thing…I have postulated a particle that cannot be detected.” The neutrino still vexes physicists today with their fundamental properties being open to debate, such as the origin of their masses, the nature of neutrino antimatter and the number of neutrino species in existence. The Standard Model cannot accommodate all the complexities of the neutrino.
[20] Francis Bacon is widely credited with introducing the modern scientific method which first makes a statement based on certain facts, then examines that statement and verify or deny that statement based on observed results.
[21] With regard to the “beginning” of the universe, in their book The Grand Design, Hawking and Mlodinow discuss the issue of the beginning of time by using the concept of curved space:
The issue of the beginning of time is a bit like the issue of the edge of the world. When people thought the world was flat, one might have wondered whether the sea poured over its edge. This has been tested experimentally: One can go around the world and not fall off. The problem of what happens at the edge of the world was solved when people realized that the world was not a flat plate, but a curved surface. Time, however, seemed to be like a model railway track. If it had a beginning, there would have to have been someone (i.e., God) to set the trains going. Although Einstein’s general theory of relativity unified time and space as space-time and involved a certain mixing of space and time, time was still different from space, and either had a beginning and an end or else went on forever. However, once we add the effects of quantum theory to the theory of relativity, in extreme cases warpage can occur to such a great extent that time behaves like another dimension of space.
The authors then use this analysis to conclude:
In the early universe-when the universe was small enough to be governed by both general relativity and quantum theory-there were effectively four dimensions of space and none of time. That means that when we speak of the “beginning” of the universe, we are skirting the subtle issue that as we look backward toward the very early universe, time as we know it does not exist! We must accept that our usual ideas of space and time do not apply to the very early universe. That is beyond our experience, but not beyond our imagination, or our mathematics. If in the early universe all four dimensions behave like space, what happens to the beginning of time?
The realization that time can behave like another direction of space means one can get rid of the problem of time having a beginning, in a similar way in which we got rid of the edge of the world. Suppose the beginning of the universe was like the South Pole on earth, with degrees of latitude playing the role of time. As one moves north, the circles of constant latitude, representing the size of the universe, would expand. The universe would start as a point at the South Pole, but the South Pole is much like any other point. To ask what happened before the beginning of the universe would become a meaningless question, because there is nothing south of the South Pole. In this picture space-time has no boundary-the same laws of nature hold at the South Pole as in other places. In an analogous manner, when one combines the general theory of relativity with quantum theory, the question of what happened before the beginning of the universe is rendered meaningless. The idea that histories should all have closed surfaces without boundary is called the no-boundary condition.
Over the centuries many, including Aristotle, believed that the universe must have always existed in order to avoid the issue of how it was set up. Others believed the universe had a beginning, and used it as an argument for the existence of God. The realization that time behaves like space presents a new alternative. It removes the age-old objection to the universe having a beginning, but also means that the beginning of the universe is governed by laws of science and doesn’t need to be set in motion by some god..
However, merely because our concept of time can be viewed as being irrelevant, does not per se mean that the universe occurred spontaneously out of nothing. Thus, there might be something occurring, just not in our concept of time.
With further regard to the creation of the universe, using principles of quantum physics, Hawking and Mlodinow conclude that the universe can be self creating. That is something can be created out of nothing; the universe self-created out of nothing. Their reasoning includes a requirement of a law of nature is that energy of an isolated body surrounded by empty space be positive, that is work has been done to assemble the body. Negative energy would have to be done to separate that body, and for small bodies in space, the negative energy balances the positive energy. Using this concept, and the observation that black holes have positive energy, Hawking and Mlodinow conclude that bodies such as stars or black holes cannot just appear out of nothing. However, when viewed on a universal scale rather than on an individual system scale, whole universes can. The next step in their argument is that because gravity shapes space and time, gravity allows space-time to be locally stable but globally unstable and using the scale of the entire universe, the positive energy of matter can be balanced by the negative gravitational energy and thus there is no restriction on the creation of the universe when it is viewed as a whole. Furthermore, since at such an instant, time has no meaning, thus, these authors conclude “Because there is a law like gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing…Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing,…”
However, Hawking and Mlodinow do not answer the question that is immediately presented: “where did the gravity come from?”
See, also, Fifty Shades of Nothing by Edward Feser, Mosaic Magazine of New York, NY, July 24, 2013.
It should be observed that the Hawking/Mlodinow model of the universe is consistent with the universe of universes model used in this essay as the universe inhabited by humans and described in Genesis is but one universe of an untold number of universes. Each of these universes could self-create as suggested by Hawking/Mlodinow and still be within the universe of universes concept of this essay. If the Hawking/Mlodinow model is used, the concept proposed in this essay that several universes were tried before the present one became available is especially pertinent as the Hawking/Mlodinow model uses the anthropic approach of using the present state as the starting point and analyzing backwards to determine what conditions must be present at the beginning to result in our present state. The Hawking/Mlodinow model of the universe having all possible beginnings with only one being the most probable also complies with the approach used in this essay.
Yet another approach to the problem was suggested by Hans Reichenbach in his book The Rise of Scientific Philosophy published by the University of California Press (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1951) pages 203-214. Reichenbach suggests that instead of pushing the date of the initial stage of our universe back, if a formula could be devised which determines for every state a preceding state and place this formulation into the concept of an expanding universe, the origin of our universe could be comprehended: “The question of the origin of the universe would then be answered in the same way as a question of the smallest number: the formula of the expansion would say that there is no origin of the universe but that there is an infinite series of calculable states ordered in time.” The time before and after this event is disregarded.
Yet other ways of envisioning the origin of our universe are also outlined in Reichenbach’s book and include: a small enclosed universe filled by a glowing gas which has a disturbance that stars and expansion which, after a length of time, reaches equilibrium but which is dead because of thermodynamic degradation whereby small disturbances cannot start any major change; and a solution that envisions time as running in first one direction and then reversing and running in the opposite direction. The point where time reverses itself would not be a sharp demarcation but would correspond to the point we identify as the beginning of our universe.
There is still another theory that suggests our universe was created out of nothing. This is the so-called Quantum foam creation theory. This theory holds that the “nothing” of the vacuum of space actually consists of subatomic spacetime turbulence at extremely small distances measurable at Planck scale. The Planck length is the length at which the structure of spacetime is dominated by quantum gravity. At this scale, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle allows energy to briefly decay into particles and antiparticles, thereby producing “something” from “nothing”. A question is raised as to where the subatomic particles and subatomic particles come from.
Lawrence M. Krass in his book A Universe from Nothing, like Hawking and Mlodinow in their book, uses quantum gravity to explain how a universe can spontaneously appear from nothing and still contain matter so long as the total energy in the universe is zero. Therefore, this theory has the same question as the Hawking Mlodinow theory of where did the gravity come from?
As can be seen, these theories work extremely well after the beginning to predict, confirm or refute conclusions. As discussed above, science works when it has something to sense, it is where things cannot be sensed, such as before the formation of our universe where and when it is totally impossible for senses to be applied to test anything, that science breaks down and moves into the realm of “faith.”
[22] The life cycle of a star is based on its mass. More massive stars burn faster than their lower-mass siblings. A star 10 times as massive as the sun will burn through its fuel supply in 20 million years, while a star with half the sun’s mass will last more than 20 billion years. The mass also affects the brightness, or luminosity, of a star; more massive stars are brighter. Early stars, known as Population III stars, if found, can be used, as well as globular clusters. It is noted that, using the Hubble Space Telescope and gravitational lensing, astronomers have found the most distant star every seen: a blue supergiant located 9.3 billion light-years away from earth, which is at least 100 times farther away than any seen before (this means the light we are seening from this star was emitted just 4.4 billion years after the Big Bang). The star has been named Icarus. Dust from the early universe also provides clues as to the age of the universe.
[23] (13.8 x 109 years)(3 x 105 meters/second)(365 days/year)(24 hours/day)(3600 seconds/hour) = 1.3041 x 1023 meters. However, some estimates use photons of microwave radiation and have expanded the universe to 1026 meters – but what’s 1000 meters here or there?
[24] This scale is so small that quantum theory of gravity must be used to describe what is going on.
[25] Since the universe that is available to our understanding and senses is 1.3 x 1026 meters in size what lies outside of that boundary is not, and cannot, be known to us. It is possible that something in that unknowable region is something that is influencing the expansion of our universe. This “something” would qualify as “Dark Matter”. However, this dark matter does not lie within our universe but lies outside our universe. Thus, the term “Dark Matter” must be expanded beyond what we normally think of to include matter that lies outside our universe as well as matter that lies inside our universe.
[26] See, also, “The New Enlightenment” by Edward O. Wilson, in The Meaning of Human Existence Liveright Publishing Corp (New York, 2014), pages 37-52 where Wilson discusses the confluence of science and the humanities.