Friday 9 June 2017

Hard Pressed and In Pain

Embarrassing and Awkward

One of the delicious ironies swirling around cosmology and the study of matter is that the possible options are few and far between.  What makes the universe a law-complying realm?  Or alternatively, "What is it that makes the electrons continue to follow the laws?"

The possible answers to that question are only three.  One solution is to presuppose the eternal, all controlling, all commanding, all conditioning Conditioner.  But this answer is disturbing and offensive to fallen man, the one asking the question.  The reason is that man to consider God as the One who makes the universe follow laws with any degree of objectivity.  Why?  Because man cannot be neutral on the subject.  Man has form in denying this as the solution to the problem because of a fundamental and abiding conflict of interest.  To acknowledge the existence of such a Being is necessarily to require worship, adoration and service to Him.  No other consequent would make any sense.  But since fallen man hates God and His threat to human autonomy, man cannot be neutral or objective in dismissing this solution to the problem of "why?" the cosmos acts in the law-abiding way it does.  It is the answer that is the least palatable and the last to which he will give consent.

The second answer offered is that electrons follow natural laws because the laws of nature are necessary--they just are.
 It is logical that the electron should follow natural laws--it is just so.  This solution or answer is a non-answer.  It takes refuge in the agnostic position.  It is the state in which the scientist is saying, "I have no idea--but I need more time to answer, please".  This preserves the autonomy of man, while removing the discomfort of the question.

A third answer is to propose an endless (infinite) number of possible universes.  In some of these universes, electrons follow laws; in others they do not.  This solution or answer is a non-sequitur.  It destroys the very meaning of the question.  It produces the most radical version of agnosticism and amorality yet put forward.  So radical, that the possibility of knowing anything for sure and certain is an impossibility from the outset.  Nothing at all is necessary; anything and everything is possible.

So, in answer to the question, What makes the electron follow the laws of nature? there are only three possibilities: God, agnostic logic, or nothing.  For the secular cosmologists the bottom of the barrel has been well and truly scraped.

The third alternative is far too self-serving to grant it any credence whatsoever.  It prefers many (infinite) worlds to One God.  The "infinite number of worlds" solution serves simply as a warranting concept to escape the obvious, but inadmissible, doctrine of, "I believe in God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth."  It is inadmissible, because inconvenient--personally, deeply inconvenient.  Rather inchoate irrationality than that.

So physicists and cosmologists will go believing (in blind faith) that there must be naturalistic answers to why the universe is the way it is--that is, a law abiding universe.  This is more convenient since it preserves the appearance of man's self-referent-autonomy.  Leonard Suskind, however, understands that materialism searching for materialists solutions is a quasi-religion; it is faith based.
. . . I am pretty sure that physicists will go on searching for natural explanations of the world.  But I have to say that is that happens, as things stand now we will be in a very awkward position  Without any explanation of nature's fine-tunings we will be hard pressed to answer the ID [intelligent design] critics.  One might argue that the hope that a mathematically unique solution will emerge is as faith-based as ID.  [Quoted by David Berlinski, The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009), p. 135.]
Underneath it all--the cosmologists and the physicists are now grasping at straws, any straws, to avoid even having to think about God.  For them, it's too painful even to admit the possibility, let alone contemplate.

No comments: