Continuing to the 2nd article as promised...(#111)
This article is like the prior one where we must
believe that physics will someday get past the Planck unit of time restriction and go all the way to t=0.
“
...there's good reason to think science will ultimately arrive at a complete understanding of the universe that leaves no grounds for God whatsoever.”
So, this comes across as "we might get there someday. Trust us".
But notice how the article later sneaks in the following statement:
“(The theory already works without God.)”
Well, looks like "someday" is here already. That was fast.
So which quantum gravity theory is the one that “already works”?
The method used to help draw this supposition is not an unreasonable one, but typical:
' "As we learn more about the universe, there's less and less need to look outside it for help...". He thinks the sphere of supernatural influence will eventually shrink to nil.'
The superstitions that were fabricated in the past that had overlap with science were exposed to its scrutiny. So, yes, clearly science has continued to diminish many religious beliefs. But the tenets are barely scratched for some religions.
"Cosmologists can model what happened from 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang until now, but the split-second before that remains murky."
So much for a
working theory. And good luck testing one that starts from absolute nothing including space when any test made within our universe would be one made in space, no doubt.
Some theologians have tried to equate the moment of the Big Bang with the description of the creation of the world found in the Bible.
This isn’t really that true today, as far as I know. This was true, however, when the priest, Georges Lemaitre, first introduced the world to his theory (now BBT). When the Pope began to announce Lematire's discovery as the answer to “In the beginning”, Lemaitre felt compelled to write a letter to the Pope to point out how the early moments didn’t match the Genesis account. That stopped those ideas, at least for mainstream religion.
"…physics theories, though still under development and awaiting future experimental testing, are turning out to be capable of explaining why Big Bangs occur, without the need for a supernatural jumpstart."
How is this not metaphysics? I'm not saying it won't ever happen but is it real science? There is a big difference between supposition and hypothesis. He presents no actual theory as an example case of hard science, though he favors something will come along from quantum gravity theories... still under development.
Then there is the counterargument to science having all the answers– fine tuning:
'Alter one of these constants by a hair, and the universe becomes unrecognizable. "For example, if the mass of the neutron were a bit larger (in comparison to the mass of the proton) than its actual value, hydrogen would not fuse into deuterium and conventional stars would be impossible,"Carroll said. And thus, so would life as we know it.'
His solution, of course, is to have an infinite number of universes. Not one, however, as ever been found, nor a way to find one.
Judged by the standards of any other scientific theory, the "God hypothesis" does not do very well, Carroll argues.
These are "nothing" arguments:
If one believes in the “God hypothesis”, then, in the eyes of science, there is
nothing there to go by.
If, however, one believes in a scientific explanation,
nothing is the material thing from which all arose,
and it may require an infinite number of other nothing universes to get this one.
The problem with all of this is that science and religion (& philosophy) have great regions within themselves that have no overlapping magesteria, as Gould called them. There's nothing wrong with a scientist arguing philosophy but labels need to be applied properly, including ones that need the label "
scientism".
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