Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Stephen M. Barr

Description

A considerable amount of public debate and media print has been devoted to the “war between science and religion.” In his accessible and eminently readable new book, Stephen M. Barr demonstrates that what is really at war with religion is not science itself, but a philosophy called scientific materialism. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith argues that the great discoveries of modern physics are more compatible with the central teachings of Christianity and Judaism about God, the cosmos, and the human soul than with the atheistic viewpoint of scientific materialism. Scientific materialism grew out of scientific discoveries made from the time of Copernicus up to the beginning of the twentieth century. These discoveries led many thoughtful people to the conclusion that the universe has no cause or purpose, that the human race is an accidental by-product of blind material forces, and that the ultimate reality is matter itself. Barr contends that the revolutionary discoveries of the twentieth century run counter to this line of thought. He uses five of these discoveries—the Big Bang theory, unified field theories, anthropic coincidences, Gödel’s Theorem in mathematics, and quantum theory—to cast serious doubt on the materialist’s view of the world and to give greater credence to Judeo-Christian claims about God and the universe. Written in clear language, Barr’s rigorous and fair text explains modern physics to general readers without oversimplification. Using the insights of modern physics, he reveals that modern scientific discoveries and religious faith are deeply consonant. Anyone with an interest in science and religion will find Modern Physics and Ancient Faith invaluable.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie de la religion
• Philosophie et théologie
• Philosophy
• Nicolaus Copernicus
• Gödel's incompleteness theorems
• Judaism
• Christianity
• Religion
• History
• Copernicus
• Science

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 28 février 2003
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268158057
• Langue: English

Extrait

Modern Physics and Ancient Faith

Stephen M. Barr
University of Notre Dame Press
Notre Dame, Indiana
Copyright © 2003 by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
eISBN 978-0-268-07592-7
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]
Contents
Acknowledgments
Part I. The Conflict between Religion and Materialism
1. The Materialist Creed
2. Materialism as an Anti-Religious Mythology
3. Scientific Materialism and Nature
The Scientific Materialist’s View of Nature
Five Plot Twists
A New Story and a New Moral
Part II. In the Beginning
4. The Expectations
5. How Things Looked One Hundred Years Ago
6. The Big Bang
The Discovery of the Big Bang
Attempts to Avoid the Big Bang
The Big Bang Confirmed
7. Was the Big Bang Really the Beginning?
The Universe in the Standard Big Bang Model
The Bouncing Universe Scenario
The Baby Universes Scenario
The Eternal Inflation Scenario
8. What If the Big Bang Was Not the Beginning?
Part III. Is the Universe Designed?
9. The Argument from Design
The Cosmic Design
Two Kinds of Design
10. The Attack on the Argument from Design
Pure Chance
The Laws of Nature
Natural Selection
11. The Design Argument and the Laws of Nature
Two Ways to Think about Laws of Nature
In Science, Order Comes from Order
In Science, Order Comes from Greater Order
An Example Taken from Nature: The Growth of Crystals
The Order in the Heavens
12. Symmetry and Beauty in the Laws of Nature
13. “What Immortal Hand or Eye?”
The Issue
Can Chance Explain It?
Is Natural Selection Enough?
Does Darwin Give “Design without Design”?
Part IV. Man’s Place in the Cosmos
14. The Expectations
15. The Anthropic Coincidences
16. Objections to the Idea of Anthropic Coincidences
The Objections
Answers to the Objections
17. Alternative Explanations of the Anthropic Coincidences
The Weak Anthropic Principle: Many Domains
The Weak Anthropic Principle: Many Universes
The Weakness of the Weak Anthropic Principle
The Problem with Too Many Universes
18. Why Is the Universe So Big?
How Old Must a Universe Be?
How Big Must a Universe Be?
Are We Really So Small?
Part V. What Is Man?
19. The Issue
The Religious View
The Materialist View
Clearing Up Some Confusions
20. Determinism and Free Will
The Overthrow of Determinism
Quantum Theory and Free Will
Is Free Will Real?
21. Can Matter “Understand”?
Abstract Understanding
What are Abstract Ideas?
Truth
If Not the Brain, Then What and How?
22. Is the Human Mind Just a Computer?
What a Computer Does
What Gödel Showed
The Arguments of Lucas and Penrose
Avenues of Escape
23. What Does the Human Mind Have That Computers Lack?
Can One Have a Simple Idea?
Is the Materialist View of the Mind Scientific?
24. Quantum Theory and the Mind
The London-Bauer Argument in Brief
Going into More Detail
Is the Traditional Interpretation Absurd?
25. Alternatives to Traditional Quantum Theory
Modifying Quantum Theory
Reinterpreting Quantum Theory: The “Many-Worlds” Idea
26. Is a Pattern Emerging?
Appendices
A. God, Time, and Creation
B. Attempts to Explain the Beginning Scientifically
C. Gödel’s Theorem
Notes
Acknowledgments
Before all I thank my parents, Mary Ahern Barr and Donald Barr, to whom, humanly speaking, I owe everything. I thank my patient wife, Kathleen Whitney Barr, and our children, Thomas, Gregory, Victoria, Elizabeth, and Lucy, from whom I stole the time to write this book. My three brothers all played critical roles. William goaded and pressured me into actually writing the book. Hilary inspired me by his own literary endeavors. Christopher disagreed with me about a lot of things and forced me to sharpen or rethink my arguments.
I thank the Fellowship of Catholic Scholars. The opportunity to speak at their 1987 convention gave me the occasion to put some of my thoughts in order. I am greatly indebted to the journal First Things, and all the people connected with it, especially Fr. Richard John Neuhaus. Writing for First Things has been invaluable in many ways. Reviewing books for it gave me needed experience in writing and forced me to read numerous works that have been of use in preparing this book. I thank Professor Peter van Inwagen of the Philosophy Department of the University of Notre Dame for taking an interest in this project (despite disagreeing with some of my philosophical views) and helping to get the interest of the University of Notre Dame Press. I appreciate the efforts of the people at that press, in particular Jeff Gainey, Julie Beckwith, Ann Bromley, Christina Catanzarite, Rebecca DeBoer, John de Roo, Margaret Gloster, and Wendy McMillen, and of those who acted as readers for the press. My special thanks to Mark DePalma for help on the figures.
Finally, I wish to thank all those who have been willing to discuss with me questions concerning science and religion over the years.
PART I
The Conflict between Religion and Materialism
1
The Materialist Creed
In recent years there have been a great number of books written on science and religion. Some of these books claim that science has discredited religion, others that science has vindicated religion. Who is right? Are science and religion now friends or foes?
Perhaps they are neither. A frequently heard view is that science and religion have nothing to do with each other. They cannot contradict each other, it is said, because they “move on different tracks” and “talk about different realities.” There is something to be said for this point of view. After all, there have been very few if any cases where scientifically provable facts have clashed with actual doctrines of Christianity or Judaism. Few believers any longer interpret the Book of Genesis in a narrowly literalistic way, and religious authorities no longer trespass on turf that belongs properly to scientists, as they did in the Galileo case. It is therefore perfectly true to say that science and religion are not in collision.
But while it is true, this viewpoint is too facile. The fact of the matter is that there is a bitter intellectual battle going on, and it is about real issues. However, the conflict is not between religion and science, it is between religion and materialism. Materialism is a philosophical opinion that is closely connected with science. It grew up alongside of science, and many people have a hard time distinguishing it from science. But it is not science. It is merely a philosophical opinion. And not all scientists share it by any means. In fact, there seem to be more scientists who are religious than who are materialists. Nevertheless, there are many, including very many scientists, who think that materialism is the scientific philosophy. The basic tenet of so-called “scientific materialism” is that nothing exists except matter, and that everything in the world must therefore be the result of the strict mathematical laws of physics and blind chance.
The debate between religion and materialism has been going on for a long time—for centuries, in fact. Why, then, the recent increase in interest in the subject? Is there really anything new to say about it? I think that there is.
What is new is that discoveries made in the last century in various fields have changed our picture of the world in fundamental ways. As a result, the balance has shifted in the debate between scientific materialism and religion. Many people sense this, but not everyone is exactly clear what these discoveries are or what they really imply. In this book I am going to give my own view of the matter, as someone who adheres to a traditional religion and who has also worked in some of the subfields of modern physics that are relevant to the materialism/religion debate.
Much of scientific materialism is based on certain trends in scientific discovery from the time of Galileo up to the early part of the twentieth century. It is easy to see why these trends led many thoughtful people to embrace a materialist philosophy. However, a number of discoveries in the twentieth century have led in surprising directions. Paradoxically, these discoveries, coming from the study of the material world itself, have given fresh reasons to disbelieve that matter is the only ultimate reality.
None of this is a matter of proofs. The discoveries of the earlier period did not prove materialism, and one should not look to more recent discoveries to prove religion. Even if religious tenets could be directly proven by science, the real grounds for religious belief are not to be found in telescopes or test tubes. Faith does not need to wait upon the latest laboratory research. What the debate is all about, as I shall explain later, is not proof but credibility.
I have said that the basic tenet of scientific materialism is that only matter exists. At that level, it is a very simple thing. On another level, however, scientific materialism is, like religion, a rather complex phenomenon. One can identify at least three highly interwoven strands in the materialist creed. In its crudest form it is a prejudice which looks upon all religion as a matter of primitive superstition, at best a source of some charming tales, like those of the gods of Olympus or Jonah and the whale, but at worst a dangerous form of obscurantism which breeds fanaticism and intolerance. Some religious beliefs, according to this view, may be more sophisticated than others, but none of them has any serious intellectual content.
Scientific materialism also comes in more refined philosophical forms. Here its critique of religion is essentially epistemological. It is acknowledged that there are religious ideas which have a certain intellectual appeal and in