The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [173]
In any case, in this conception of the mystery we are limited by language and cognition: because our brains are finite and limited we cannot really grasp what “infinity” or “nothing” or “eternity” really mean, and such thought experiments result in paradoxes that dissolve into tautologies, along the lines of defining gravity as the tendency of objects to attract one another, and then explaining that objects attract one another because of gravity.24 It is paradoxical to think of the universe as giving birth to time and space and then asking what there was before the universe. It is tautological to define God as the creator of the universe, and then explain the universe as a creation of God. These language and cognition conundrums cannot lead us to a satisfactory answer to the question. This limerick by the physicist George Gamow well captures the paradox:
There was a young fellow from Trinity
Who took [the square root of infinity]
But the number of digits
Gave him the fidgets;
he dropped Math and took up Divinity.
The second configuration of the mystery gives scientists something to work with: Why is our universe so finely tuned to enable stars, planets, life, and intelligence to arise? This is known as the fine-tuning problem, and in my opinion it is the best argument that theists have for the existence of God. Even nonreligious scientists are stunned by the odd configuration of numbers that had to be just so or else life could not exist. Sir Martin Rees, Britain’s astronomer royal, in his book Just Six Numbers outlined the problem, noting that, “our emergence from a simple Big Bang was sensitive to six ‘cosmic numbers’” that are “well tuned” for the emergence of matter and life.25 Here are the six numbers:
1. Ω (omega) = 1, the amount of matter in the universe: if Ω was greater than 1 it would have collapsed long ago and if Ω was less than 1 no galaxies would have formed.
2. ε (epsilon) = .007, how firmly atomic nuclei bind together: if epsilon were .006 or .008, matter as we know it could not exist as it does.
3. D = 3, the number of dimensions in which we live: if D were 2 or 4, life could not exist.
4. N = 1039, the ratio of the strength of electromagnetism to that of gravity: if it had just a few less zeros the universe would be too young and too small for life to evolve.
5. Q = 1/100,000, the fabric of the universe: if Q were smaller the universe would be featureless and if Q were larger the universe would be dominated by giant black holes.
6. λ (lambda) = 0.7, the cosmological constant, or “antigravity” force that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate: if λ were larger it would have prevented stars and galaxies from forming.
The fine-tuning of these six numbers (there are more, but these are the big ones) that make life possible is sometimes explained by the “anthropic principle,” most prominently stated by physicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler in their 1986 book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle: “It is not only man that is adapted to the universe. The universe is adapted to man. Imagine a universe in which one or another of the fundamental dimensionless constants of physics is altered by a few percent one way or the other? Man could never come into being in such a universe. That is the central point of the anthropic principle. According to the principle, a life-giving factor lies at the center of the whole machinery and design of the world.”26 The anthropic principle troubles scientists because of its antithesis, known as the “Copernican principle,” which states that we are not special. Intelligent design theorists, creationists, and theologians hold that this fine-tuning is evidence for intelligent design by a deity, and the anthropic principle is their hypothesis. I suggest that there are at least six