When considering the vastness of our universe, or the possibility of more than our universe, or the number of dimensions there are and what they may be like, some people glorify God who is just so much more than what we can comprehend, while others glory in the awesomeness of the material which somehow just “is.” In The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking tries to argue that God was not necessary for creation of the material, but since M-Theory and its multi-verses is not proven, then this is philosophizing. Additionally, saying that a universe could make itself still does not disprove God; God is outside of the material so materialistic arguments will never disprove God.
In Trevor Persaud’s article out today (“Christ of the Klingons,” Christianity Today), he quotes Gerald Cleaver, a physics professor specializing in Superstring Theory, “To me [M-Theory] offers a Christian God whose creative ability is much larger than we ever could imagine before.” Cleaver, as a researcher in M-Theory, of course does not deny its possibilities (it could lead to a hoped-for “theory of everything”), but sees it as perhaps explaining our universe’s existence in the realm of a much larger reality. He says that an argument like Hawking’s “puts God . . . in a very small box. It portrays God as someone who can only fill in the gaps that science can’t explain. As theists, we need to perceive God as the primary source, the fundamental laws of physics as the secondary.”
M-Theory is indeed very theoretical, dealing with only elegantly argued possibilities. Persaud elaborates, “A large number of scientists doubt that M-Theory is anything more than a collection of fascinating but fictional equations. And even if M-Theory is correct, that doesn’t guarantee a multiverse.” Interestingly, beauty is seen as a strong determining factor in the truthfulness, or possible truthfulness, by scientists of an equation. Pernaud also interviewed Robin Collins, a philosopher who focuses on science issues. He provided an explanation of this by the “famously nonreligious” physicist Paul Dirac, “It is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit [an] experiment. . . . If one is working from the point of view of getting beauty in one’s equations, and if one has really a sound insight, one is on a sure line of progress” (1963).
One may justly ask, however, “Who determines beauty?” or “Who decides what is beautiful?” Could our evolved brains, slanted on/from survival, really point to outside or ultimate truth based on the perception of “beauty”?
About: Gerald Cleaver (Baylor University) has published a number of string theory related articles in academic journals, and is a contributing author of String Theory Research Progress (Nova Pub.s, 2008). Robin Collins (Messiah College) wrote "Divine Action in Evolution," in the forth-coming Oxford Handbook on Philosophical Theology, "The Fine-tuning Argument" in Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (2009), and numerous other articles. Image source/citation: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1708
