ID?

Shane Morris. 

Breakpoint

Why is there something instead of nothing? This is a question that 

has long haunted scientists, beyond the what to the why. For a long 

time, the widely accepted answer from astrophysicists, astronomers,

 and others was that the universe always existed. 

This so-called “steady-state theory” was a favorite of materialists

 because it sidestepped any need for a Creator. However, in the 20th

 century, the collective evidence became overwhelming, forcing

 scientists to accept that space, matter, energy, and even time had

 a beginning. Ergo, the cosmos is not eternal. 

The “Big Bang” theory, which replaced the steady-state theory, wasn’t

 as much an explanation for how the universe came to be as it was a

 description of the immediate aftermath of its beginning. The initial 

first cause, i.e. whatever it was that set off the Big Bang and provided

 the fine-tuning necessary to produce a life-friendly universe, remained a mystery. At least, it was a mystery for those unwilling to accept God as the 

first cause.

That’s not to say there were no suggestions. For example, among the

 attempts to explain the Big Bang and account for our shockingly

 life-friendly cosmos were complicated ideas with fancy names such

 as vacuum fluctuation, cyclic contraction and expansion, the anthropic

 principle, string theory, and the multiverse. However, as philosopher of

 science Stephen Meyer argues, each of these explanations comes with 

significant baggage. In his book, The Return of the God Hypothesis, 

 Meyer shows how these theories either require prior mathematical 

fine-tuning, or involve serious category errors, or else undermine the 

reliability of science. In other words, these “solutions” tend to complicate the initial problem they attempt to address.

Perhaps this is why, in lieu of these choices, some are now offering 

another explanation. Writing in Scientific American this month, former 

Harvard astronomy chair Avi Loeb proposed that our universe may have been created by an intelligent designer… just not God. 

What if, as the Harvard scientist (not a late-night radio host) suggests,

 our universe was “created in a laboratory of an advanced technological civilization… Since our universe has a flat geometry with a zero net 

energy, an advanced civilization could have developed a technology that created a baby universe out of nothing through quantum tunneling.” Such an idea, he concludes, “unifies the religious notion of a creator with the secular 

notion of quantum gravity.”

Loeb doesn’t speculate on the identity of our universe’s engineer(s), 

or the location of the “laboratory” where it came to be. But if his

 proposal sounds familiar, it’s because it is. Specifically, he’s 

proposing a form of intelligent design, only one with an infinite number

 of extra steps. 

A question children and atheists often ask is, “If God made the universe, who made God?” The answer, given by classical theists, is “nobody.” God is, by 

definition, self-existent and eternal, the very Ground of being. He who 

caused the universe to exist requires no cause. He is, as Thomas 

Aquinas put it, the “unmoved Mover.” The very existence of something 

implies the existence of an unmoved Mover, an uncaused first cause. 

Because, as Fraulein Maria sang in The Sound of Music: “Nothing 

comes from nothing. Nothing ever could.”

Loeb’s version of intelligent design fails to offer an answer to this 

fundamental question. If the universe were cooked up through quantum

 tunneling in a cosmic laboratory by alien scientists, who made the alien scientists who created the universe?

Loeb certainly tries to answer that question by suggesting that there

 may be countless baby universes, all engineered by “advanced 

civilizations,” which in turn create more life-sustaining universes, 

but which are not self-existing or eternal. The process, he writes, 

may proceed along Darwinian lines, ensuring a selection advantage 

for life-sustaining universes since they can, in a manner of speaking,

 “reproduce.”

He’s envisioning an infinite regress of universes and designers, creating one another back into eternity. It’s like the old story about the tribe that

 believed the Earth rested on the back of a giant turtle. When asked 

what the turtle rested on, the tribesmen replied, “It’s turtles all the way 

down.” According to this Scientific American article, it’s alien designers

 all the way down. 

This is Ockham’s Razor on a cosmic scale. As Meyer concludes in his

 book, the “God hypothesis” is still the most scientifically reasonable 

explanation for the universe, one that does not “unnecessarily multiply

 explanatory entities.” While it’s an improvement that some modern 

astronomers and physicists are willing to consider intelligent design,

 given a choice between a transcendent God and an infinite number 

of immanent alien designers (or turtles?), the answer is obvious.