The Fabric of the Cosmos and God
I am about 2/3 the way through Brian Greene book, “The Fabric of the Cosmos.” I highly recommend it. While I find it a fascinating description of modern physics, from my perspective (evangelical Christian) I also find the book very enlightening in a way I am sure the author did not intent.
What is really striking to me is how much of the criticism of the Bible is grounded in a 19th century Newtonian view of the universe. This is not too surprising for that was the world view during the time when the major criticism arose. But many of these criticisms simply do not hold up given the new views of reality that emerged during the 20th century.
The situation is similar to the issue of the authorship of the first 5 books of the Bible. In the 19th century, a new theory arose that questioned the authorship of Moses. The theory took hold for a number reasons, but one of the most persuasive was the belief that writing was unknown during the time of Moses. Since there was no writing at that time, how could Moses have written those books. Later, after the authorship of Moses had been rejected and the new JPED theory had been firmly established, it was discovered that not only had there been writing during that time, but that in fact it was so common even some slaves knew how to write.
In terms of atheism and agnosticism, probably the two most important beliefs were 1) the views of those like Kant that we can only know that which we can perceive, and 2) that miracles were impossible for they would violate the laws of nature. Since the supernatural and God are beyond our perception, we cannot know anything about them. Since Miracles would violate natural laws, they could not have happened. Thus the German scholar Frank wrote “The representation of a course of history is a priori to be regarded as untrue and unhistorical if supernatural factors interpose in it. Everything must be naturalized and likened to the course of natural history.”
As with writing and the authorship of Moses, now it is clear that the Newtonian view of reality upon which such criticisms are based is incomplete at best. Reality is far stranger than anything Newton ever conceived. It is a very complex mixture of waves, fields, energies. It is not based on fix motions that can be calculated but on probabilities. For example, you can know the position or velocity of a particle but below a certain level of accuracy, you cannot know both. More importantly, it seems that the particle does not even “know” but remains in an indeterminate state until forced to make a choice.
In a Newtonian world it is very difficult to see how Jesus could have walked on water, or fed the 5000 without breaking the laws of nature. Now in the past Christians have defended this by says that God is God, and is not bound by the laws of nature. But given the new view of reality this would not even be a problem. One only as to postulate that God, as the Creator and maintainer of the universe, can control the energies, and probabilities so as to get the out come that he desires.
Now to be clear, I am not claiming that this is evidence for God. It is not, and this would be a completely different line of argument. I am only pointing out that some of the more important arguments that have historically been used to question the existence of God and the reliability of the Bible are grounding in what has turned out to be an inaccurate view of reality.
Another interesting section was where Greene discussed the origin of the universe and was arguing that the universe may have simply popped into existence 20 minute ago, such that any memory that we have that is older than twenty minutes is simply an illusion. More importantly he argued that a 20 minute old universe is actually more likely than the universe popping into existence 14 billion years ago, because the universe twenty 20 minutes ago had a higher entropy than 14 billion years ago and the lower the entropy, the less likely it would be to have just popped into existence.
What struck me about this is that this is was a physicist making a scientific argument that many creationist have made, with the exception that instead of a time of 20 minutes ago, they argued it was about 10,000 years ago. Now he ultimately question the idea for reasons very similar to those that I have used to questioned the young earth creationists who have made the argument, but the point is that for Greene this was a serious scientific argument and consideration. It was rejected, not because of hard evidence, but because it lead to conclusion that were uncomfortable (i.e. that we could not trust our memories, and thus the laws of physics.) As such, it showed how the lines of argument have converged, and thus the older views of reality that saw God, the supernatural, and miracles, as things to be a-priori rejected or at least beyond our ability to know, and thus not to be taken seriously, are based on a view of reality and knowledge that can no longer be maintained.
