All Things In One

Watch the above embedded YouTube video for context. At the time of this writing, the video is nearly a year old. For whatever reason, YouTube suggested it to me recently, and I watched it and was intrigued. I’m not inclined to care much whatever that my reaction to it is not timely; I’m using it more as an aide to think through the important issues of the day and explore my thoughts on the ever-burning (at least in my heart and mind) topic of science, religion, and God.

Before I really get to my serious reaction of the main content of the video, I do have to clear up a rather irksome bit of a soundbite from Alex. Time is not the fourth dimension of space. While the single dimension of time can be added to the three of space to obtain a 4-dimensional “spacetime” vector, as in special relativity, or viewed from the metric 4-tensor in general relativity, it is quite inappropriate to suggest that time is another “spatial” dimension. Time in a great many respects has distinctly different qualities and quantitative relationships than any of the three spatial dimensions. Time as the driver of irreversible processes that are linked to the ever increasing entropy of the universe clearly separates it from the three spatial dimensions. The symmetry properties of time are distinctly different from those of space. And, I might add, that this mystery and its full implications are not fully understood by physicists. I think Richard Dawkins understands this to his credit, and that is why he is willing to defer to physicists on this point. Alex apparently does not understand this, and I think it would do him well to be more cautious not to be too confident in ignorance.

Now on to the meat of the matter. I will say by way of soft introduction, that Richard Dawkins vs. Piers Morgan on matters of philosophy, science, and religion seems somewhat unfair. Piers is totally out of his element and makes too many appeals to common sense and expressions of pure belief to make a convincing argument. I think Alex does a great job of pointing this out. However, I’m not totally convinced that Dawkins doesn’t do exactly the same, albeit in a more erudite fashion that almost comes across as a type of reserved wisdom. I think Dawkins is more convincing to an intellectual audience for this exact reason.

So how do I come off saying that Dawkins also relies on appeals to common sense and expressions of pure belief? How could I raise such an accusation at such an obviously level-headed man of science? I think Dawkins quite clearly incriminates himself on these counts. Consider the following quotes from the clip:

“Modern physics is exceedingly mysterious…Our brains were not built to understand the profundities of the origin of the universe…I think it’s amazing that at least some human brains are capable of dealing with this type of stuff. Mine certainly is not.”

There are essentially three admissions in this quote, two direct and one tacit. The first is that physics is mysterious. What does Dawkins mean by this? Given the further clarification given by the rest of the quote, what he is talking about is mathematical complexity that is difficult to understand and often runs counter to common sense or intuition. It is important to note that he is referring mainly to theoretical physics or at least mathematical physics. Many physics theories have had experimental validation, the only true way to verify scientific theories from which hypothesis are generated and tested experimentally. But some theories are exceedingly hard to test scientifically, and so they remain theories with as-yet unvalidated hypotheses. Most of the theories related to the early universe are as such and do not have strong validating experimental evidence, if any, but they certainly do involve extremely complex mathematics. Therefore, they are in Dawkins’s world “mysterious.”

The second admission is that most human beings, Dawkins included, do not have the intellectual capability to understand these complex mathematics. In this admission, Dawkins reveals another truth, which is that Dawkins himself is more than happy to believe these humans and their conclusions simply because they are “scientists.” By his own admission, he does not or even cannot understand the theories by which they generate their conclusions. So by what other mental faculty does he build is worldview other than through trusting these physicists? In the world of Dawkins, it is enough that a group of individuals who are smarter than him have some sort of scientific consensus, even if that consensus is only loosely based on hard evidence.

That doesn’t sound much different to me than the idea of believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ based on the testimony of a few hundred eye-witness accounts from history and generations of believer consensus. One of Dawkins most favorite lines of criticism of Christianity is the entire notion of the virgin birth and resurrection being purely nonsensical, counter to common sense, and utterly ridiculous. He provides no more reasoning on that matter than Piers does on the notion of “before” not having meaning at the origin of the universe. Dawkins has used this line over and over and over in debates, including one that Alex moderated with Jordan Peterson recently. So why is it acceptable for the mathematics of the early universe to be mysterious but not the virgin birth or resurrection of Jesus?

In fact, Alex proves this exact point himself:

“If Piers is unable to believe that Dawkins worldview might be true because it contains this incomprehensible and mysterious element, then I would just want to ask Piers, ‘Can you explain the trinity to me?’”

I could similarly ask the same question, but in reverse:

“If Dawkins is unable to believe that the Christian worldview might be true because it contains this incomprehensible and mysterious element, then I would just want to ask Dawkins, ‘Can you explain the origin of the universe?’”

I think Dawkins most certainly cannot do so. And I don’t blame him for that. I don’t think any human can.

The trouble with the entire argument is that all too often people with a more scientific worldview, Dawkins included, are not willing to accept that they live by faith as much as those who espouse a deity-centric religious worldview. But I ask again, by what other faculty does Dawkins build his view of the universe than by faith if by his own admission the description of the universe by the physicists is beyond his ability to reasonably understand? Add to this the point that a great many scientific theories that are commonly held and believed broadly do not have rigorous scientific evidence to validate them at any believable level of uncertainty.

Dawkins often tries to obscure this by appealing to the remarkable accuracy of quantum physics, for example, in predicting certain experimental parameters to a very high level of certainty (“many decimal places” of course). But this is scientific malpractice at best. Dawkins knows well that these very controlled experiments test very narrowly defined hypotheses within a narrow set of parameters. And while these do help us validate and build scientific credibility of the general theories from which those hypotheses spring, it is gross incompetence to then extrapolate such narrowly generated certainty to certain claims about the origin of the universe or other sweeping narratives that are a part of his worldview.

Let me end on a more technical note, one that I think is both interesting mathematically as well as apt metaphorically for the current topic at hand. The surface of the earth can be described by two spatial dimensions (at least roughly speaking). We recognize that the earth is a 3-dimensional object. However, the constraint of staying on the surface reduces the dimensionality to 2-dimensional space. One such parameterization of these two dimensions is the distance from the north pole and the angular direction of rotation (0-360 degrees) from some given direction.

“What is north of the north pole?” Of course, nothing is north of the north pole. It doesn’t make sense to ask that question, as Alex and Dawkins both properly point out. But they are also implicitly making Piers point for him without knowing it. Piers is struggling to know what words to use to explain what his brain only knows from intuition as described by the word “before.”

Similarly, someone living thousands of years ago with access to an early compass may have asked “what’s north of the north pole?” In reality what they might be trying to get at is what’s outside the sphere of the earth? What’s out there in the stars? Because they lack the understanding of the geometry of the earth as a constrained 2-dimensional surface of a spheroid, the only way they can describe their question is using the lexicon of the compass they hold in their hand, which has steadily guided them across land and sea. Can you really criticize such a person for asking a question like this?

We similarly stand with our inadequate tools in hand, watches, clocks, atomic and otherwise, grasping at straws to understand what exists beyond the boundaries of our description and perception. We ask “what happened before the big bang, before the creation of the universe?” Perhaps some day we will be able to understand the correct question to ask. Perhaps some day we will understand whether or not time is a projection from some higher dimension onto the screen we now perceive as reality. Perhaps some day we will understand that time is a constrained 1-dimensional form of a higher dimensional space in which beings of immense power and agency live and create, from whom this reality came into existence.

Until then, I’m not super bugged by the question, “What happened before the big bang?”, even though I’m a trained physicist, because I understand the spirit of the question. Arguing semantics is perhaps a way to obscure our complete lack of certainty scientifically in answering questions about the mysteries of time and the origin of the universe. That inability to answer the question marks an interesting and fruitful field of inquiry for the young aspiring physicists of the world.