THE BEST OF ALL POSSIBLE WORLDS?

 Sir Fred Hoyle (1915-2001), the British astronomer who gave the Big Bang its name, was a maverick among his contemporaries. He denied that the Universe started with a Big Bang, and he said that the likelihood of life arising on Earth through the accidental combination of amino acids (the theory of abiogenesis) was similar to the likelihood of a tornado roaring through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747. Hoyle was aware that he had many detractors, but he said, “I don’t care what they think. It is better to be interesting and wrong than boring and right.”

Something else that Hoyle said was, “I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.” One scientist who fits Hoyle’s aphorism is Paul Davies (b. 1946), who has written many books discussing God and physics (e.g. God and the New Physics, The Mind of God, and The Goldilocks Enigma). In his books Davies wrestles with the questions of how the Universe came to be and why it is so conducive to the spawning of living things, including sentient living things such as ourselves.

He examines and rejects many explanations, including the explanation that God made the Universe.  In The Mind of God Davies asks the question, “In what sense might God be said to be responsible for the laws of physics?” He then summarizes the thoughts of Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) on the subject. Leibniz first posited that God must be rational. Otherwise, how could we live in a rational Universe? The next attribute of God must be that He is omnipotent. He made everything. How could He not be omnipotent? A rational, omnipotent God must also be perfect. This concept is probably beholden to St. Anselm’s (1033-1109) Proslogion, where he argues that God is someone “than whom there is nothing greater.” What else can we say about a rational, omnipotent, perfect God? He must be omniscient. Leibniz held that God must have these characteristics. Then Leibniz asked the question, what kind of a Universe would be made by a rational, omnipotent, omniscient, perfect God? The best of all possible Universes.

Leibniz’s theory that we live in the best of all possible worlds was savagely ridiculed by Voltaire (1694-1778) in his work Candide, where he made a learned nitwit by the name of Professor Pangloss the butt of his jokes. Of course, Voltaire made the problem of evil his argument against this being the best of all possible worlds.

Of course, we, with our limited knowledge, doubt that this is the best of all possible worlds. But what’s best for us may not be best for the Universe as a whole. To those who would criticize God for making a less-than-perfect Universe, Rev. J. Vernon McGee (1904-1968) said, “This is God’s Universe, and God does things His way. You may have a better way, but you don’t have a Universe.”

Davies, of course, doesn’t believe God created the Universe, but he seems to think that our Universe is the best of all possible Universes. He bases this opinion on the twin facts that mathematics so perfectly describes everything in the Universe and that the Universe is perfect for the spawning of sentient life. In his book The Goldilocks Enigma, he considers several explanations for this, including the theory that God made the Universe. I forget which explanation he said that he  preferred, but I do recall that when I read all the possibilities he put forward, I decided that God is the simplest, best explanation for the Universe being the way it is.

CONTEMPORARY POLITICS

Germanic Tribesmen Celebrating a Political Victory

When I was in college back in 19[mumbledy-mumble] I read a description of a form of democracy practiced by wild Germanic tribes living outside the Roman Empire. Whenever there was an important decision to be made, the tribe would gather together with the tribesmen favoring one solution on one side and the tribesmen favoring the other solution on the other. They would then begin yelling. The issue was decided by whichever group yelled the loudest. All you had to do was recruit enough allies with loud voices, get them to yelling, and you could carry any issue. I remember thinking “What a stupid way to decide important issues. I’m glad we here in American have a much more enlightened form of democracy.” Which goes to show how naïve I was.

Twenty-first century America is ruled by whoever can yell the loudest, and the news media (especially video and radio) has a profound effect on who can yell the loudest. You can scream at the top of your voice and nobody will hear you if the media ignores you. But if you are shouting something that coheres with the agenda of a particular media outlet, your voice can be magnified above the sonic boom level.

Something I have noticed over the years, is that when I am shouting, I’m not doing my best thinking. I don’t think I’m unique in that respect; I think it is true of all of us. The louder we shout, the less we think. Emotion is the enemy of reason, and emotion has almost completely driven reason from the marketplace of ideas here in America. The moment a thinker voices an idea, others begin to shout the idea down. Much as Socrates was shouted down when he suggested that people should think for themselves, as Galileo was shouted down when he suggested that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and as Reverend Monsignor Georges Lemaître was shouted down when he suggested the Big Bang,* anyone who voices an unpopular idea today is shouted down by those with access to the loudest megaphones.

As Aristotle said over 2,000 years ago: 

It is not right to pervert the judge by moving him to anger or envy or pity-one might as well warp a carpenter's rule before using it. (Rhetoric, Book 1, Part 1)

Unless we get control of our emotions, modulate our shouting, and start addressing our problems with good sense rather than bad sophistry, we might as well go back to wearing animal skins and horned helmets.

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* In case you're wondering why Rev. Lemaitre's proposal got shouted down, it was because it sounded too much like "Let there be light." (Genesis 1:3). Lemaitre was accused of trying to sneak religion into science through the back door. The distinguished astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle labeled Lemaitre's theory the "Big Bang Theory" as a term of ridicule. How, indeed, could such a well-ordered Universe have come from an explosion?