Big Bang

The bowler beats the bat and the ball hits the batsman’s pad. There is a loud appeal and the umpire calls for ‘hawkeye’ to predict where the ball was going. Hawkeye is a system that tracks the flight of the ball and predicts, using the laws of physics, where the ball would have gone if the batsman’s pad had not got in the way. The batsman’s innings depends on the prediction.Those same laws of physics and tracked trajectory of the ball can be run in reverse, to predict where the ball came from. The prediction will be completely accurate back until the point when the ball left the bowler’s hand. The prediction will extrapolate back a series of parabolas, to infinity.

It’s common sense. Hawkeye makes valid predictions where the assumptions included in the model are correct. But where the assumptions break down, the prediction will be wrong. So it is with all science. Where assumptions break down then science will be wrong. We test our assumptions where we have data – back as far almost as the beginning of the universe, but we cannot test beyond there. And so although science can make predictions of what was before the beginning of the universe, it would be wrong to believe them. We have to accept that we don’t know, and can never know whether there was a ‘bowler’ or whether the ball came bouncing from infinity…

The headline of the following and similar articles are therefore completely misleading

Stephen Hawking Claims To Know What Happened Before The Big Bang

although the text is more accurate: “Hawking had previously said in one of his lectures that the events that occurred before the Big Bang have no consequences that can be observed, therefore they are not defined because there is no way to measure what happened……. Even the amount of matter in the universe can be different to what it was before the Big Bang, as the Law of Conservation of Matter, will break down at the Big Bang.” Hawking recognised that the laws of physics ‘change’ …. allowing the existence of the ‘bowler’.

Yesterday evening I watched the first in a new Brian Cox series on the wonders of life. I was left with an uncomfortable feeling about the way the content was presented. In essence, the program shows very little science but a lot of metaphysical opinion. In essence it it propaganda. As best as I can, I’ve transcribed phrases from the program in blue (thanks to iPlayer), to show what I mean.

“no matter how unscientific it sounds this, this idea that there is some kind of soul or spirit or animating force that makes us what we are that exists after our death is common.…. it ‘feels right’, it is hard to accept that you are … just something that emerges from an inanimate bag of stuff”. This is filmed against the backdrop of smoky fires and gravestones where people are gathering to ‘connect with their dead relatives’.

This section clearly communicates that spirituality is a magical force that is outside of science and is necessary to explain life – ‘spirit of the gaps’ – but that such an idea is wrong. Although we might not like it we are just a bag of stuff (no explanation, but trust me, I’m a professor celebrity).

So this has set up the straw-man god that is not part of the natural world, but is outside of it, tinkering occasionally to start life through magical means. No mention of a God who created and sustains the laws of physics themselves.

Feelings, and indeed we are ‘just something that emerges’ i.e. they have no meaning or purpose. This is a metaphysical view that is essential if the idea of a purposeful God who set the universe in motion is abhorrent – yet the filming and presentation are designed to manipulate those same feelings. This is not science, it is carefully crafted propaganda.

“if we are to say that science can explain everything about us then it is incumbent on science to answer the question what is it that animates living things what is it the difference between a piece of rock carved into a gravestone and me? …. For millennia, some form of spirituality has been evoked to explain what it means to be alive and how life began. It is only recently that science has begun to answer these deepest of questions” ,

Although the words don’t strictly say it, the message is clearly that science can explain life; no other explanation is necessary. Again, the alternative is some magical force outside nature. The false dichotomy presented again (science OR spirituality) allows no space for a god who is consistent with scientific discovery, where scientific discovery allows us to learn more about God. So science is getting busy and is providing the answers, which are:

Energy transforms from one form to another, and that caused and explains life – that is the reason we are here. All life continues to be powered by the same process of transforming energy from one form to another.
We all have DNA, which is the “blueprint for life” and continues the organisation of the chemical processes from generation to generation, and shows that we have common ancestry with every other living things

“life is … a collection of chemical processes that harness flow of energy to create local islands of order…. Far from being some chance event ignited by some mystical spark the emergence of life on earth might have been the inevitable consequence of the laws of physics …. A living cosmos might be the only way our cosmos can be”

Mystical spark or science – the false dichotomy perpetuated.

The program focuses on a god of mysticism and magic, and appears not to know of the Christian God.

The God of Christianity is believed to be the creator of the universe, the cause of the Big Bang, the author of the laws of physics, the inventor and sustainer of a cosmos that has the inevitable consequence of producing life. A God who cannot be seen – yet can be seen everywhere. A God whose power has gifted us with the ability to feel and understand, and who gives meaning to each of us. A God who is love; the love we feel is part of God rather than ‘just some emerging thing’.

It is frustrating when scientific programmes such as these don’t present a balanced view of the metaphysics.