4.  The Gods of Modern Physics
==============================
From the point of view of the physicist, a theory of matter 
is a policy rather than a creed; its object is to connect or 
coordinate apparently diverse phenomena, and above all to suggest, 
stimulate and direct experiment.
  -- J.J.  Thomson, _The Corpuscular Theory of Matter,_ 1907

Physics is on its way to a Theory of Everything.  Maybe.  Along the 
way, though, many Gods claim support from modern physics.  There is 
the Designer who set all the physical constants just right for us, and 
the Creator who made our universe begin.  And, of course, the Cosmic 
Mind we are all a part of, maybe even the mathematical genius revealed 
in the harmonies of natural law.  Reality is not as spiritually 
uplifting as these hopes.  Modern physics describes an impersonal 
world, without divine direction.  Deep down, ours is an accidental 
world.

1.  Physics in the New Age
--------------------------
Physics is supposed to be the fundamental science, probing the nature 
of space, time, matter, and motion.  Cosmologists and high energy 
physicists study the most basic subatomic particles and forces, and 
the early history of our universe.  They talk about the very beginning 
of time, when the basic forces were unified, and the cosmos was in a 
state of sublime symmetry captured by just a few equations.  To be 
sure, there was plenty of complexity hiding in this simplicity.  At 
low energies, the fundamental symmetries were broken.  With many 
particles, simple interactions combined to produce maddening 
complexities and surprising collective behaviors like 
superconductivity.  But these are secondary manifestations of an 
underlying simplicity.  The truly fundamental facts about the world 
are those particle physicists and cosmologists play with.

Of course, this is mostly the sort of exaggerated reductionism which
gives reduction a bad name.  Still, many of us imagine theoretical
physicists, personified by a rumpled image of Einstein, to be a modern
priesthood making arcane pronouncements on the true nature of
reality.[1]  In that case, perhaps religion lurks beneath the surface
of physics.  God should be fundamental to existence, and so should be
apparent in the deepest aspects of reality.  We chased God out of
biology, but maybe a deity should not be meddling with such secondary
aspects of creation in the first place.  We may discover a designing
Mind, not in the accidental world of mundane reality but in the
equations of fundamental physics.

Historically, our ideas of God and our conceptions of fundamental
material reality have always been related.[2]  For example, ancient
physics and cosmologies were quite congenial to a deity.  Matter was
like an inert lump of substance, which meant motion had to be an
independent, irreducible principle.  Since motion was not the natural
state of matter, a Prime Mover had to begin, and perhaps sustain, a
changing world.  Objects moved towards their natural purposes or final
causes.  The cosmos was earth-centered, underlining the importance of
our world in a grand Design which was a moral as well as physical
order.

The scientific revolution brought us mechanical explanation, changing
our picture of material reality and our ideas of God along with it.  A
universe infused by spirit and purpose at every level was replaced by
bodies in motion described by unbending laws of nature.  This was
troublesome for old-time religion; however, the machine meant
opportunity as well as difficulty.[3]  Institutionalized monotheism
always has individualist, occult rivals, and a _limited_ mechanical
philosophy is a wonderful stick to beat occultists with.  If the world
is mainly a machine, it is not a web of deep meanings and occult
correspondences one consults an astrologer to disentangle.  In such a
world, the mundane does not gradually shade into the supernatural;
only procedures authorized by the church put us in touch with
divinity.  Of course, there are still ghosts in the machine.
Mechanist philosopher Descartes declared animals were mere automatons;
but human consciousness, it seemed, required a non-material soul.
After mechanical philosophy, and particularly after the triumph of
Newtonian physics, the supernatural came into its own.  Human
personality was not an extension of an animistic physics where
everything was permeated by spirit; our free will, moral capacity, and
rational soul put us wholly beyond physics.  A miracle was now not
just a wondrous demonstration of power, but a violation of Natural
Law, strong evidence for intervention by something beyond Nature.

Unfortunately, the "mechanick theists" were not able to limit the
demon they let loose.  Modern science went on a rampage, applying
materialist, reductionist explanations to everything in sight.  This
was so wildly successful, it became difficult to find gaps to hide God
behind.  Instead of achieving security in a domain protected from
occult exploitation, the supernatural began to fade away altogether.
After Newton, the laws of nature took center stage; explanations
referred to laws, experiments sought lawlike regularities.  God became
redundant.

Many intellectuals responded to Newtonian physics by becoming deists.
God created the world, set its laws, and then disappeared from the
scene.  However, with the advancement of science, the classical
metaphysical reasoning in support of this sort of God---that the
universe requires a First Cause, that laws require a lawgiver---began
to look rather sterile.  An absentee God unconcerned with the world
was religiously useless anyway.  Taking a different approach, devout
scientists claimed that the laws of nature they found pointed to a
Creator.  Physicists, like today's creationists, argued that the
second law of thermodynamics meant the universe was being wound down,
becoming more disorderly; some outside force was needed to wind the
universe up at the beginning.[4]  Newton himself thought there were
instabilities in planetary orbits which required divine interference
to correct.  But such signs of God had a habit of evaporating as we
learned more about how the world works.  Even before Darwin, physical
science had prepared the ground for God becoming an unnecessary
hypothesis.

Modern physics goes further in discovering a universe far from the
traditional religious imagination, indeed, far from common sense.
Newtonian physics was at least decent enough to keep space and time,
matter and energy separate; its particles were solid, its waves knew
their proper place.  Worse, while religion denies that deep down
anything is an accident, quantum physics inflicts randomness on us.
The microscopic world is a state of seething, mindless dynamism; a
realm where everything in our common-sense physics, from the solidity
of objects to events requiring causes, has a habit of breaking down.

So how is a religion supposed to cope?  Some beliefs, like young-earth
creationism, are so dependent on archaic cosmologies that their
defenders have little choice but to reject today's physics.[5]  Since
theories like relativity and quantum mechanics offend common sense, it
is easy to achieve a half-informed distrust of physics.  Another way
is to manufacture compatibilities between physics and religious
doctrines.  For example, physicist Gerald L. Schroeder harmonizes
astronomical time scales with traditional Judaism through relativity.
Time intervals depend on the observer, so perhaps the six days of
Genesis are billions of years long in our frame of reference, but
normal days for God.[6]  Clocks slow down in a strong gravitational
field, but imagining Yahweh trapped in a gravity well is not much help
for religion.

Of course, few serious religious thinkers today defend an
unadulterated conservative religion.  Philosophical theists are much
more likely to claim modern physics is in harmony with the classical
arguments for God.  They say modern cosmology shows us a universe
fine-tuned to produce intelligence, thus reviving the argument from
Design.  Physicists believe our universe started out with a Big
Bang---this must be an event of supernatural Creation from nothing.
Where science reaches its limits, theology comes to the rescue with a
reassuring smile and a more complete explanation.

Some make an even more ambitious argument.  Naturalism, the story 
goes, depended on a Newtonian clockwork universe in which we could 
explain everything by mechanical processes.  Now, however, the spooky 
world of quantum mechanics is supposed to banish the machine and 
return consciousness to the center of the universe.  Physics was but a 
small part of Newton's intellectual life, which was largely devoted to 
studying Biblical prophecy and the occult science of alchemy.  
Post-Newtonian physics, many now believe, opens the door to a 
mystical, consciousness-infused universe which is more in line with 
the fuller vision of Newton.

This enthusiasm about modern physics is most common in our alternative
religious tradition---the "New Age" or modern occult---and many
glimpse the signs of a personal God beneath it all as well.[7] Popular
New Age books tell us physicists, the super-nerds, have at long last
come upon the same mystic truths as gurus and hermits and so redeemed
themselves:

    Theorists speculate that once upon a time the superforce created
    space, created matter, nudged the forces we see today into being,
    and thereby shaped our universe.  (Sounds suspiciously like God,
    doesn't it?) . . . this all seems as though science has come full
    circle and is now willing to admit that there is a unifying force
    in the universe, an overriding presence that can explain the
    workings of the cosmos for the simple reason that He/She/It
    created the cosmos. . .

    Increasingly, mathematicians talk like mystics, and scientific
    journals read like holy writ.  Physics is becoming
    indistinguishable from metaphysics.  Scientists trained in the
    rigorous scientific methods, graduates of the school of
    naturalism, have pushed that naturalism to its furthest
    extreme---to the extent that the most unlikely people have become
    _super_naturalists.  New Age travelers should be aware of this
    quiet revolution so that they do not become unduly confused when
    accosted by physicists wearing clerical robes, chanting formulaic
    mantras.[8]

It is easy to ignore New Age beliefs about the kinship of mysticism
and modern physics, since they are based on the most superficial of
parallels.[9]  In the world of popular culture, physics is all too
easily misused as an authority to back up ideas we are already
predisposed to favor.  However, superficial newagery is only part of
the story.  Some physicists and philosophers have made serious claims
to undermine naturalism, based on modern physics.  After all, any God
worthy of the name must in some way be responsible for the universe
and its basic physical order.  We would expect some signs of God in
physics, whether this deity is a Designer, Creator, or Cosmic Mind.
Newtonian physics allowed us to think the world is only natural,
nothing more.  We must now see what today's physics has to say.

2.  Egocentric Cosmology
------------------------
A century ago, cosmology was not a science.  We had more metaphysical 
prejudices than theoretical tools, and little observational evidence.  
Physicists could speculate, but the best that could be said for their 
efforts was that they were an improvement over legends of gods 
making the world.

After Einstein's theory of general relativity, physicists began to
talk about all of spacetime as one geometrical entity, and ask what
its shape might be.  Then astronomers discovered that galaxies were
moving away from one another, hence the universe was expanding.  In
that case, by general relativity, a "singularity" had to lurk back in
time---starting out the universe with a huge explosion from a single
point.  We then observed the background radiation which was the cooled
off remnant of the Big Bang.  Cosmology had become a science, with
real theories connected to sophisticated observational tests.  Not a
science as solid as the physics behind transistor radios, but
respectable nonetheless.

God usually does not fare well when origin questions become the 
province of science rather than mythology.  However, a serious 
cosmology also gives religious theories a chance to acquire some real 
teeth.  The Design argument, for example, may get a new lease on 
life.

A physical theory has roughly three elements we can play with: 
dynamical laws, parameters, and boundary conditions.  General 
relativity tells us how energy curves space, quantum mechanics how 
elementary particle states evolve in time; such broad theories are the 
laws.  Parameters are physical constants like the speed of light.  
Boundary conditions are constraints like the initial state of a 
system.  A falling rock is described by the laws of gravity, 
parameters like the strength of gravity on the planet where we drop 
the rock, and boundary conditions like the initial height we drop it 
from.

Figuring out what kind of world we would get if we had different
dynamical laws is difficult.  Varying parameters and boundary
conditions, however, is fairly straightforward, and physicists do this
all the time.  We do not see quantum effects in everyday life, because
Planck's constant h is very small in our universe.  An apple does not
vanish and reappear outside of a shopping bag, though electrons can
tunnel through energy barriers.  But we can imagine a world with a
much larger h, in which carrying fruit home from the market would be a
very peculiar task indeed.

When we fiddle with the parameters and initial conditions of
cosmological theories, we seem to get many "anthropic
coincidences"---very tight restrictions on what the parameters must be
if the universe is to support human life.  For example, our universe
is very large and flat.  To the inhabitant of a small planet, say one
mile in diameter, it would be obvious she lived on a curved surface,
while for us in everyday life, the earth might as well be flat.  As
far as astronomers can tell---to distances up to 10^26 meters and
more---our universe is very nearly flat.  But from general relativity,
the universe could very naturally be extremely curved, wrapped up into
a four-dimensional spacetime ball with a radius of about 10^-35
meters.  It seems the Big Bang spewed forth lots of matter, at an
expansion rate ensuring a large and nearly flat universe.  If this
initial expansion rate had been less by one part in 10^10, the
universe would collapse back on itself long before life had any chance
to form.  If it were larger by the same miniscule fraction, the matter
in the universe would quickly be dispersed far and wide, leaving a
lifeless, mostly empty space.[10]

Manipulating physical parameters in tiny ways often land us in
possible worlds inhospitable to any interesting organization of
matter.  This has led physicists like Freeman Dyson to suspect "the
universe in some sense must have known we were coming."[11]---the
fundamental physics of the universe seems fine-tuned in order to
produce us.  Some even propose an "anthropic cosmological principle,"
suggesting that the existence of humans explains how the universe
is.[12]  Perhaps we _are_ the center of the universe.

With cosmologists glorifying the human ego, theologians cannot be far
behind.  The fine-tuning observation is a classic prelude to a Design
argument.  In past centuries, physicists could see God in the
improbable order and stability of planetary orbits, now it is in the
improbably fine-tuned expansion rate.  As an added bonus, this version
of Design involves the grand vistas of cosmology.  Theists with a
mystical or metaphysical bent find anthropic cosmology quite
attractive.[13]  A cosmic Designer is nicely removed from the sordid
affairs of the world, not like a God who has to go around specially
creating cockroaches and cabbages.

Not all physicists are impressed, however.  Our experience with past
improbability arguments show that Design is a fragile explanation,
never accounting for much.  It is too easy to convince ourselves the
cosmos is centered on the human ego.  Anthropic principles produce
very little real knowledge or experimental tests; they look like, as
Heinz Pagels put it, "needless clutter in the conceptual repertoire of
science."[14] The fine tuning is, of course, an interesting problem to
solve, but to most physicists it suggests there are deeper physical
principles yet to be discovered.

Cosmology today is full of ideas---if anything, too many 
mathematically sexy ideas with too little observational evidence to 
decide between them.  A quick survey of some of these will show how 
physics can deal with anthropic coincidences.

The first thing to look for when confronted by an apparent
improbability is whether it is a sign of an underlying physical
constraint.  Fine-tuning comes about when we have a lot of arbitrary
physical parameters we can tweak as we like.  But if we find a deeper
theory which reduces the number of free parameters, the fine-tuning
usually disappears.  Consider, for example, mass.  Inertial mass is a
measure of how resistant an object is to acceleration.  There is also
gravitational mass, determining how strongly gravity acts on an
object.  In Newtonian physics these two masses could well be
different, since they are two different things.  But we _always_
observe inertial and gravitational masses to be the same.  This is
incredible fine-tuning, though since it does not involve the human
ego, it does not excite the theologians.  General relativity explains
the exact fine-tuning of masses by tying gravity to the curvature of
spacetime.  The two kinds of mass have to be the same.

More unified theories of fundamental physics will reduce the number of 
free parameters anthropic arguments rely on.  Perhaps the universe is 
so large because it is constrained to be large, and the fact that a 
large universe is necessary for life is purely incidental.

An example of narrowing the possibilities for fine-tuning is the
"no-boundary" proposal by James Hartle and Stephen Hawking.[15]
General relativity causes trouble because of its arbitrary boundary
conditions.  Anything can come out of the initial singularity, so
naturally universes like ours look unlikely.  Hartle and Hawking's
quantum cosmology solves the problem by getting rid of the boundary.
This constraint alone does not produce our universe; we need to add
the quantum fields corresponding to matter.  If we include a rather
simple form of matter called a massive scalar field, the early
universe quickly enters a phase of almost exponential expansion.  On
coming out of this phase, we find a very large universe still
expanding at almost the critical rate.  No Design, no special role for
humans.

This rapid expansion of the early universe has an even more central
role in "inflationary" cosmologies.  A small universe is curved very
tightly, which means it contains a large amount of gravitational
energy, even without matter.  With many theories of particle physics,
this leads to an exponential stretching of spacetime after the
universe starts out very small.  The presence of scalar fields makes
some parts of the universe expand, and however proportionally small
these parts may have started out, they inflate to make up almost all
the volume of our universe.

Inflationary theories do more than give us a large, flat, and smooth
universe.  They also hint that whole universes can inflate into being
starting from nothing but a quantum fluctuation.[16]  We do not even
need energy to inflate a universe; indeed, present estimates of the
total energy of the universe---all the energy of matter and radiation
plus the negative potential energy due to gravitation---are consistent
with zero.

Inflation also naturally leads to the idea of multiple universes.  If
inflation is correct, our universe is like a bubble in a "false
vacuum"---there will be other bubbles.  Moreover, those regions of the
universe which inflate sprout new inflationary bubbles.  Cosmologist
Andrei Linde describes just such a "self-reproducing inflationary
universe."[17] In each universe-bubble, the low-energy, post-inflation
physics will be slightly different in random ways.  And if we have
reason to believe there are many different universes with varying
physics, fine-tuning arguments lose their force.  If the cosmos is
continually generating different arrangements, something like our
bubble is likely to come about at some point.

Multiple universes lead to another speculative but interesting idea.
What happens if the physics in a new "baby universe" derives from its
parent, but could be slightly different?  This would be like passing
information from generation to generation, with some chance for this
information to mutate.  The stage is set for Darwinian evolution.

The idea that something like evolution is at work is not that bizarre.
Life is a peculiar sort of order---not like the regimentation of a
crystal lattice, not like the boiling chaos of a gas, but something in
between.  Complex, self-organizing systems drive themselves to a
narrow critical region between order and chaos.  This looks like
fine-tuning of parameters to critical values, which is one of the
reasons biology has been the traditional inspiration for the Design
argument.  We now see life as the product of accidents and physical
constraints; apparent design in the universe may well have a similar
explanation.

Lee Smolin has recently proposed a Darwinian cosmology.[18]  Smolin
takes black holes, singularities in spacetime from which not even
light can escape, to be birthplaces of baby universes.  We compress
some matter, and inflate a new spacetime totally separate from ours.
Our physics appears in slightly mutated form in the baby universe.  In
this case, universes creating the most black holes will reproduce at
higher rates, and so dominate among all possible universes.  Most
universes will be large and near-flat because these are efficient
black-hole producers.


Of course, all of the above proposals are uncertain.  It is hard to 
say which, if any, will survive in another decade or two.  To make 
matters worse, it is hard to find experimental evidence for such 
cosmological theories.  With possible other universes, and ever-more 
extreme conditions and energies, gathering even indirect evidence 
becomes very difficult.  However, ideas like multiple universes, 
inflation, or a boundary-free universe arise naturally from our 
current physics.  They generate interesting questions and stimulate 
real research.  Anthropic reasoning, in contrast, is the same old 
mystery-mongering our egocentric species confuses with explanation.  
Cosmology does nothing to unsettle the Darwinian picture; our world 
still looks full of accidents and blind physical constraints, not 
purpose.  As with biology, we have gaps in our knowledge, not gaps we 
need a God to bridge.

Still, the Design argument refuses to die.  For if the latest
improbability argument is dispelled, one can always step back and try
again.  Physicist Paul Davies is impressed by anthropic cosmology, and
is unconcerned if a theory like Smolin's succeeds in linking black
holes to the existence of life.  If so, "we can still wonder why the
laws of nature are such that this linkage occurs.  How fortunate that
the requirements of life match those of the baby universes so
well."[19]

Once again, the human ego at work.  There is something perverse about
Davies's confidence that we cannot be an accident.  _No_ theory can so
completely explain the world and our presence in it that no more
questions are possible.  At some point, explanation must come to an
end---until we find a better theory.  To the best of our present
knowledge, humans are accidents, not central figures in a cosmic
drama.  Davies's remark is important, but not because it supports
Design.

Stephen Hawking criticizes inflationary cosmology because it still
leaves the initial conditions at the Big Bang free---there is no
guarantee that our sort of universe will emerge.[20] But if that is a
defect for a theory, then Hawking's scalar fields, or even his
physical laws, are just as arbitrary.  Laws are as much part of the
information that goes into a theory as are parameters and boundary
conditions; just as to a computer, a program and its input are both
strings of bits, and both together make up the information determining
its output.  A boundary-free universe is an attractive physical idea,
but it has no deep conceptual advantage over a theory which takes
certain initial conditions as given.  Someone like Davies can always
ask Hawking why his laws happen to be such that humans might exist.
The best reply is that those laws seem to fit the world we observe,
and if Davies or anyone else can find a deeper pattern in what we see,
then we will adopt their theory.  All anthropic reasoning does is tell
us what we already know: we are here.  If there is no real
alternative, Hawking's laws can stand as given, with no deeper
explanation and no apologies.

In fact, varying everything, including laws, illustrates just how bad
an explanation Design is.  If humans are central to the world, there
is _no need_ for such a vast universe, or so many billions of years
passing before life emerges.  With our kind of physics, these are in
fact necessary for life to form.  But if we can consider everything,
we also begin to wonder why a kind of physics friendlier to God is not
true.  Why, for example, do we not have an earth-centered cosmos, in
which physical bodies move to fulfill intrinsic purposes?  Or take the
worlds described in the great poems of Dante or Milton.  Their
fictional universes are designed as a setting for a cosmic religious
drama, and are an integral part of their stories.  We can easily
imagine all sorts of worlds in which we would not need tortured
after-the-fact interpretations to find religious significance in
nature.  Then why _our_ cosmos, among the infinity of possibilities
which allow intelligent life?

Clearly the cosmic Design hypothesis has a massive improbability
problem of its own.  There is too much "unwarranted design" in our
world---too many features which are unnecessary, about which Design
provides no clue whatsoever.[21]  Ideally, the rationality and
benevolence of God should explain why the divine creation is as it is,
and not like something Dante could have imagined.  But theologians are
too busy trying to excuse the obviously nasty, inefficient, and
purposeless aspects of our world to try and explain anything.  At this
point, some theists may be satisfied to say God's ways are
incomprehensible to our finite minds.  However, asking physicists to
be impressed by that as a cosmological hypothesis is a bit much.

Restating Design as an explanation for cosmic order seems, at first, 
to be promising.  Solid naturalistic theories like evolution are the 
bane of Design, so we move to the limits of our current knowledge, 
where theories are much more uncertain.  But curiously, cosmic Design 
is a weaker proposal than special creation.  While anthropic reasoning 
brings up the usual sort of improbability arguments, it does not 
produce even a half-baked theory to explain the world.  The egocentric 
universe began to die once we adopted mechanistic explanations, and 
discovered we inhabited an insignificant corner of a large universe.  
Today, it is sustained only by our still insecure egos, and the 
impossible demand for complete explanations.  The heavens declare no 
gods; religious theories must look elsewhere to find substance.

3.  The Big Banger
------------------
The anthropic universe is a mirage.  But many theists believe modern 
cosmology makes a strong case for God even without hints of explicit 
Design.  The Big Bang, after all, indicates time had a beginning.  The 
galaxies we observe now were hurled apart from a primeval state, where 
under extreme physical conditions everything was stripped of 
organization, all the forces were unified, and spacetime itself was 
crumpled up into a singularity.  Before the Big Bang there was 
nothing.  All this sounds very much like an event of creation, when 
the Abrahamic God called the world into being from nothing.  The Big 
Bang needs a Big Banger.  The Designer is dead, long live the Creator.

Historically, infidels have usually thought the universe must be
eternal.  But theists in Abrahamic traditions have insisted time has a
beginning.  Their God was the source of everything, and so the
material world could not be eternal alongside God.  Naturalism does
not lead us to expect a beginning to time; perhaps it was no accident
that the physicist who came up with the "primeval atom" theory, a
precursor of the Big Bang, was also a Catholic priest.[22] Perhaps we
must conclude, with astronomer Robert Jastrow, that

    [The scientist] has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about
    to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final
    rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting
    there for centuries.[23]

Of course, Jastrow's comment is exaggerated at best; theologians
hardly predicted the Big Bang.  If our universe turns out to be
closed, hence with an end, this does not mean apocalyptic visions of
the end of the world were on target.  And even if a beginning for the
universe is a successful prediction of one version of theism, this is
still not that impressive.  After all, even a stopped clock is right
twice a day.  The Big Bang becomes strong support for God only with an
argument showing that such a beginning requires a Creator.  Christian
philosopher William Lane Craig's "kalam cosmological argument" claims
to accomplish exactly this task.  In outline, he argues:

    (1) Everything that _begins to exist_ has a cause of its
        existence.
    (2) The universe _began to exist._
    (3) Therefore the Universe has a cause of its existence.[24]

Craig then says this cause must be the God of classical theism.

This is obviously a close relative of the argument that everything 
must have a cause, and the universe is caused by God.  But the 
familiar cosmological argument runs into trouble because, among other 
reasons, philosophers have to arbitrarily exempt God from needing a 
cause.  Craig's version gets around that difficulty by demanding only 
that beginnings have a cause.  An eternal God needs no cause, and 
perhaps an eternal universe might have been uncaused as well.  But 
cosmology says our spacetime did, in fact, have a beginning.  Hence 
there is a creating cause behind it all, which might as well be some 
sort of God.

Craig is not content with mere fallible science, and so claims an
eternal universe is _impossible._ In fact, any "actual infinity" is
supposed to be impossible, not just an infinite past time.  There is,
as usual, a special exemption for godly infinities.  The reason behind
this impossibility is that Craig cannot imagine how infinities could
exist.  In a library with an infinite number of books, for example,
all integers would be used up in labeling the books, making it absurd
to think of adding a new book.[25]

Now, there is nothing formally wrong with infinities, though
transfinite mathematics is strange compared to garden variety
arithmetic.  The librarian in an infinite library adds a new book by
labeling it "1," and renumbering each old book n as n+1.  Though
strange, infinities are not physically impossible;[26] if they appear
in a physical model, a metaphysician has no business telling
physicists they are mistaken.  Many have been uncomfortable with
relativity because of the supposed absurdity of curved spacetime, or
have thought quantum mechanics defective because it included
randomness or did not fit their requirements for reality.  Physicists
usually manage to accept the strangeness, and eventually discover the
sky is not falling after all.

Still, where metaphysics fails, it seems physics does the job.  The
Big Bang looks like a point where the universe started, before which
there was literally nothing.  And though large scale structures in the
universe and the need to assume large quantities of "dark matter"
strains standard cosmologies, the Big Bang does not have any serious
alternative.[27]

In the popular imagination, the Big Bang is a great explosion; at one
time there was nothing, then matter erupted into previously empty
space.  However, the Big Bang is the beginning of spacetime itself,
not an event in time.  Since we are not very good at picturing curved
four-dimensional geometries, imagine a universe where space is
one-dimensional.  It is also finite, but has no boundaries; in other
words, a circle.  The inhabitants of this space can only travel back
and forth along the circle, getting back where they started if they go
far enough.  As in our universe, let us say space is expanding; so the
radius of the circle starts from zero and increases over time.  To
keep life simple, let us also assume space eventually contracts.  Now
we can picture all of spacetime: it looks like the surface of a
sphere.  The time dimension is an axis of the sphere, while space is a
cross-section of the sphere perpendicular to that axis.

At first glance, it seems like this spacetime has a moment of 
creation.  As we go back in time, the radius of space gets smaller and 
smaller, and finally collapses onto a point.  Before that, nothing at 
all.  Unfortunately, this is an illusion.  On a sphere, there is 
nothing special about any point, including the point where the radius 
of space becomes zero.  We can choose a different axis for the sphere, 
and cross-sections along that axis will vanish at a different point.  
It does not help to say the time axis is special, since relativity 
theory is all about performing rotations which mix time and space.  
Asking about a time before the beginning of our spherical spacetime is 
like asking what lies north of the North Pole.  There is no such 
thing.  For a true beginning, we need a real feature of the geometry, 
not an arbitrary point singled out by our choice of coordinates.

General relativity gives us exactly what we need.  The initial
singularity from which everything emerges is a point beyond which
spacetime cannot be extended.  It is a _boundary_.[28] And a boundary
is a very special point.  The time before the Big Bang is still like a
place north of the North Pole, but at least our pole is no longer
arbitrary.  Matter does, in fact, begin at the singularity.  While we
cannot speak of a cause which precedes the universe in time, there may
be a cause which is geometrically prior to the universe.  Perhaps a
God, a Great Programmer who acts from outside of program-time?

Unfortunately, the state arising from such a singularity is
fundamentally random[29]---_nothing_ can be inferred from it.  At the
singularity, there is no physical law, no causation; the singularity
itself stands uncaused.  This breakdown of physics is not like in the
creationist argument, where extrapolating backwards in time led us to
an Edenic state which could not be explained naturally.  Anything can
come out of a singularity.  The Big Bang does not absolve a religious
theory of finding patterns explained by a God; and sheer
patternlessness is a bad place to look.  Perhaps the randomness is
only apparent; God chooses the outcome.[30]  But only a good Design
argument can establish this pattern, and that we do not have.

Attaching a Creator to the boundary is metaphysical skullduggery.  In
any case, even the existence of a boundary point is not a secure fact.
General relativity must only be an approximate theory, since it is
oblivious to quantum physics as it stands.  Though we do not have a
complete theory of quantum gravity yet, we expect quantum effects to
smear out the singularity, so that it is no longer a single
geometrical point where physics breaks down.  In fact, the theories we
discussed before in the context of anthropic arguments are all quantum
cosmologies, and in all of them, the Big Bang is no longer a special
boundary point.  In multiple universe theories, what seem to be
singularities in general relativity link different geometries to one
another.  In Andrei Linde's scenario, we may have an eternal
self-reproducing universe of connected bubbles.  With the
Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal, we have a single, finite
universe, but this is like the boundaryless sphere with no special
point to attach a creation event.  As Hawking remarks, "if the
universe [has] no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning
nor end: it would simply be.  What place, then, for a creator?"[31]

 
Cosmology does not provide the sort of beginning congenial to a God.  
But our world is not eternal in any common-sense way either.  It is 
still natural to think everything must have a cause, so even 
something as peculiar as a finite but beginningless spacetime might 
need a cause.  Though cosmological arguments do not really work, they 
still have an intuitive appeal.  For example, Darwin realized the 
traditional Designer-God was incompatible with an evolutionary world, 
but he seems to have remained undecided about whether the universe 
requires a First Cause.[32]

Does this mean there is a sound "metaphysical intuition" behind the
cosmological argument?  Craig tells us that the universe requires a
"creating cause" is "so intuitively obvious, especially when applied
to the universe, that probably no one in his right mind _really_
believes it to be false."[33] Perhaps.  But modern physics is no
respecter of intuition.  In fact, uncaused events are the rule in our
universe.

Deeply ingrained intuitions are useful as a rough guide to our 
everyday world, but no more.  Even Newtonian physics offends common 
sense; it is natural to think that throwing a ball imparts it some 
impulse, which is exhausted in flight, returning it to its natural 
state of motionlessness.  It was not easy to come up with the idea 
that bodies move, and keep moving, unless some force acts to stop 
them.  With relativity, we rotate space and time into one another; a 
very strange notion.  Quantum mechanics is so counter-intuitive, 
physicists have never been able to come up with a comfortable picture 
of how it works.

Quantum events have a way of just happening, without any cause, as 
when a radioactive atom decays at a random time.  Even the quantum 
vacuum is not an inert void, but is boiling with quantum fluctuations.  
In our macroscopic world, we are used to energy conservation, but in 
the quantum realm this holds only on average.  Energy fluctuations out 
of nothing create short-lived particle-antiparticle pairs, which is 
why the vacuum is not emptiness but a sea of transient particles.  An 
uncaused beginning, even out of nothing, for spacetime is no great 
leap of the imagination.[34]

Gravity is also a source of randomness.  The state coming out of the
classical Big Bang is random.  Black holes destroy all information
about the matter that falls in them.  They also create random states
by capturing particles out of the quantum vacuum, and giving their
partners the energy to exist independently.[35] The fundamental
theories of physics are full of randomness, however philosophically
offensive this may be.

Physics is not even friendly to the idea that every self-respecting 
cause precedes its effect.  We already know that thermodynamic 
irreversibility arises out of reversible microscopic physics.  This, 
together with pervasive randomness, leads physicist Victor J. Stenger 
to suggest causes preceding effects is not a principle of elementary 
physics.  Definite causes and effects emerge in our everyday world, 
though they do not appear in the equations of microscopic physics.  
Stenger observes that

    much of our difficulty in interpreting quantum phenomena comes
    from prejudicially assuming deep significance to familiar,
    common-sense concepts that are in fact nothing more than
    arbitrary conventions.  The notion of causal precedence may be
    such a concept.[36]

All this means we should take a skeptical look at traditional
philosophical arguments involving causality.  Metaphysicians have long
thought their intuitions about causes were fundamental requirements of
rational thought.  Modern physics undermines this confidence.  Even if
one day we adopt a physics which soothes our common-sense prejudices,
there is no going back to the old metaphysical style.  To talk
intelligibly about modern physics, we have to admit the possibility of
uncaused events.  Indeed, we must now see causality primarily as a
scientific concept, to be judged on scientific terms.[37]  After all,
scientists have done a lot more to help us understand cause and effect
than any army of metaphysicians.

When confronted with a demand that the universe have a cause, infidels
have usually pointed out that God was not much of an explanation.
This is true enough, but not really a positive argument.  After
mechanistic explanation became popular, infidels liked to restrict
causality to the chain of causes in an eternal material universe,
pointing out that no supernatural cause was then necessary.
Plausible, but still rather defensive.  Today's skeptic can do better.
In all likelihood, the universe is uncaused.  It is random.  _It just
is._

4.  The Quantum Spirit
----------------------
Modern physics undermines a metaphysical God who stands apart from the 
world, but what about the God of more mystical and magical traditions?  
Perhaps claims for a Creator or Designer fail because they are not 
radical enough.  For some religious thinkers, the demise of Newtonian 
physics is an opportunity to re-enchant a world which has for too 
long seemed merely material.  The quantum world might be a place where 
spirit is the fundamental reality.
 
According to "quantum mysticism," quantum physics reveals a universe
shaped by our consciousness.[38]  In today's new religions,
particularly those with a New Age flavor, the word "quantum" seems to
mean magic.  Quantum physics is supposed to grant us psychic powers,
show us we create our own realities, and open the door to a wonderful
world of healing and wholeness.[39]  The world is a network of occult
correspondences.  For example, to an astrologer, the microcosm of
human life corresponds to events in the macrocosm of the heavens.  The
connection is one of _meaning_---since we have associated Mars with
war, its psychological meaning must be aggression.  It does not matter
that we can find no sufficient physical interaction between humans and
planets; quantum consciousness is a deeper connection than mere
Newtonian forces.  Quantum physics, apparently, gives us a world in
which consciousness is central, meaning is a palpable reality, and
everything is an undivided occult whole.

In such a universe, God will be a Cosmic Mind rather than an external 
Creator and Judge.  And we will discover divinity by looking within.  
As New Age philosopher Ken Wilber puts it, consciousness is the 
highest level in a hierarchy of being extending from mere matter to 
the purest divine spirit:

    1. _Physical_---nonliving matter/energy
    2. _Biological_---living, pranic, sentient matter/energy
    3. _Mental_---ego, logic, thinking
    4. _Subtle_---archetypal, trans-individual, intuitive
    5. _Causal_---formless radiance, perfect transcendence
    6. _Ultimate_---consciousness as such, the source and nature of
        all other levels[40]

Though it seems based on new physics, quantum mysticism paints a very 
old picture of a world infused with spirit.  The driving force behind 
the quantum spirit is not physics, but deep-seated convictions about 
the nature of our minds.  Folk theories of physics have a tenacious 
hold on us, making even Newtonian physics difficult to learn.  Folk 
psychology has an even stronger grip, since dealing with humans is 
more important in everyday life than figuring out trajectories of 
falling objects.  It is very easy to be convinced our consciousness 
has a unity which resists analysis or that there is something 
irreducibly special about our inner mental life.  The spirit is 
common-sense psychology, as well as a persistent philosophical 
superstition.

Modern science, in contrast, is stubbornly reductionist.  The brain is
an extremely complex piece of biological circuitry, and mind is what
the brain does.  An irreducible consciousness seems about as useful
for psychology as an animal soul is for biology.  Sciences like
neurobiology and artificial intelligence are making progress, even
though the brain is too complicated to allow quick and easy solutions.
That our intelligence, consciousness and so on emerge from nothing but
a quite material brain offends common sense.  But from a reductionist
perspective, even our seemingly incorrigible self-knowledge is liable
to be explained as part of a deeply mistaken folk theory.[41]

For anti-reductionists, explaining physics in terms of our minds,
rather than the other way around, is an attractive alternative.  In
that case, our consciousness would be just one expression of the
spirit inherent in everything.  So quantum psychology flourishes, from
analogies between quantum wave functions and the unity of
consciousness, to harmonies between physics and the occult ideas of
Jungian psychoanalysis.[42]

Neuroscientists doubt physics has much to contribute, and point out
that we can successfully subject the supposed undifferentiated
wholeness of consciousness to a reductionist, piece-by-piece
examination.[43]  Still, some very prominent physicists have thought
there was a deep connection between consciousness and the quantum
world.  Eugene Wigner, for example, believed "it was not possible to
formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way
without reference to the consciousness;"[44] and went on to speculate
that a nonmaterial consciousness was the ultimate reality.  Perhaps we
even create our own reality by our observations.

Consider a system which can be in either of two states, like a light
switch on a wall.  In everyday life, and in classical Newtonian
physics, the switch is either up, U, or down, D.  A quantum state,
however, can be a mixture in which these states are superposed on one
another:

    |PSI> = a|U> + b|D>

The state |PSI> describes all we know about the switch, including the
fact that when we measure it we will find U or D, with a probability
determined by the coefficients a and b.  Say we get U.  Then the new
state will no longer be a mixture, but |PSI> = |U>.  Once we find U,
further measurements will confirm that knowledge.

This is, of course, very much against our common-sense prejudices.  We
can take any individual classical switch, and describe it as being in
a definite state U or D.  A quantum state is a very different animal.
Often we can do no better than write down a mixed state, and make do
with probabilities instead of definite predictions.[45] Still, nothing
so far suggests a role for consciousness; since the results are
random, there is no question of our _choosing_ what we observe.
 
Now comes the interesting part.  One thing in quantum mechanics stands
out as a definite, classical state: the result of the measurement.
Indeed, everything in everyday life behaves like classical objects; no
one observes light switches in a limbo, half up and half down.
We---macroscopic, classical beings---use macroscopic, classical
instruments to probe quantum systems, and get classical, definite
results.  Yet quantum mechanics is supposed to describe everything,
not abruptly stop when objects become large.  Our instruments and
ourselves must be described by some enormously complicated quantum
state.  So how does our world of definite measurements come about?

Let us say we have an instrument, a switchalyzer, which looks at
microscopic quantum switches.  It displays a U when it measures U, D
when D.  But since the switchalyzer is part of the quantum world, it
is reasonable to suppose it ends up in a mixed state like a|U> + b|D>.
If this is so, we are in trouble.  To measure the macroscopic mixed
state of the switchalyzer, we can build a switchalyzer-alyzer, but
that will have the same problem.  No chain of mere devices will give
us a definite measurement, until, that is, a conscious observer comes
on the scene.  _We_ never see mixed states.  Consciousness is a
mystery; how a definite classical world is picked out from among the
quantum mixtures is a mystery; why not suppose they are connected?

Before we accept magical shortcuts, however, we should look closer at
the measurement process.  Historically, quantum mechanics has been
defined by assuming a classical measurement procedure was available.
For most ordinary calculations, this works perfectly.  However, a side
effect of sweeping the quantum-classical crossover problem under the
rug is that in quantum mechanics, measurement looks like a
irreducible, elementary operation.  The mixed state |PSI> stands
isolated from the world, we stick in a classical switchalyzer, and out
pops a classical result U.  In real laboratories, measurement is a
complicated physical process, switchalyzers are not simple macroscopic
two-state systems, and everything interacts with a very complex
external environment.

We have seen how time-symmetric dynamical laws give rise to a world
where irreversibility is the rule.  Because of randomness or chaotic
dynamics, we could never keep track of how a system evolved.  The
information we had about the the system was quickly degraded.  An easy
way to lose information is to have the system interact with a complex
environment we cannot keep track of.  A similar thing happens with
quantum measurement.  The quantum switch interacts with the
environment and the switchalyzer, and since we have no prospect of
recovering anything useful from the environmental noise, we lose
information.  As a result of this "decoherence," the macroscopic world
once again behaves differently from what the microscopic equations
suggest.  The state of the whole system evolves towards a set of
states with classical properties.  Far before any conscious observer
glances at its readout, the switchalyzer will have converged onto a
state much like a classical U.

Decoherence, then, gives us a nearly classical world.  In that case,
as physicist Wojciech H. Zurek observes, there is no reason to suspect
consciousness has a role in creating the classical world:

    Relevant observables of individual neurons, including chemical
    concentrations and electrical potentials, are macroscopic.  They
    obey classical, dissipative equations of motion.  Thus any quantum
    superposition of the states of neurons will be destroyed far too
    quickly for us to become conscious of quantum goings-on:
    Decoherence applies to our own "state of mind."

    . . . Conscious observers have lost their monopoly on acquiring
    and storing information.  The environment can also monitor a
    system, and the only difference from a man-made apparatus is that
    the records maintained by the environment are nearly impossible to
    decipher.  Nevertheless, such monitoring causes decoherence, which
    allows the familiar approximation known as classical objective
    reality---a perception of a selected subset of all conceivable
    quantum states evolving in a largely predictable manner---to
    emerge from the quantum substrate.[46]

There still are open questions regarding decoherence, but many
physicists now think it is fundamentally important in preventing
macroscopic mixed states.[47] Quantum measurement used to be something
of a theoretical blind spot, inviting comment from philosophers as
well as physicists.  But though quantum measurement is still a
complicated technical problem, it is increasingly an experimentally
accessible matter, with significant practical applications.[48]  We no
longer need burden physics with speculations about consciousness in
measurement.


Consciousness does not seem to have a direct role in basic physics.
However, quantum mysticism may be able to do without a magical mind
which determines the observed world.  Classical physics pictures a
world of particles zooming around, affecting each other by various
forces.  These forces always weaken with distance; furthermore, if
relativity is correct, no information can travel faster than the speed
of light.  Now, what if at the deeper level described by quantum
physics, we find a connection between particles which is more like
occult correspondence than ordinary interaction?

Many physicists have been troubled by the way quantum mechanics does
not respect our classical prejudices.  Einstein, most notably, thought
there had to be a deeper, better-behaved theory, to which quantum
mechanics was only an approximation.  David Bohm, who had similar
concerns, came up with a solution.  He rewrote the equations of
quantum mechanics to look like Newtonian equations, except that there
was an additional force responsible for quantum effects.  Everything
now had a definite classical reality from the start.  The additional
force, however, was unusual.  It did not fall off with distance, and
it was not calculable from any sources analogous to charges or masses.
Particles could be described by definite classical variables, but some
of these variables were hidden---there was no possible way of learning
their values.  And the relationships between these hidden variables
were maintained by signals moving faster than light.  Bohm would later
make a virtue of these properties, and say reality is an unfolding of
an "implicate order" linking everything together in a grandiose
mystical unity.[49]  An omnipresent "force" responsible for
instantaneous effects could well lead to a universe of occult
correspondences.

Physicists tend not to be overly impressed with Bohm's ideas.  The
implicate order has no observable physical consequence; all
calculations end up identical to conventional quantum mechanics.
Undetectable signals flying around the universe faster than light is
not a helpful idea.  Even as a different perspective on quantum
physics, Bohm's view is misleading.  For example, it seems like Bohm's
universe would satisfy Einstein by restoring determinism.  This,
however, is an illusion.  Consider a casino where the dice are fair.
We can always say what the dice shows is determined by invisible
demons who look up the result of the next roll in a random number
table located in hyperspace.  So there is no such thing as chance, as
the dice are all pre-determined.  Perhaps.  But the dice rolls are
_still_ random, because they are patternless.  The demon theory
relocates the source of randomness in hyperspace, but still has to
take the contents of the random number table as given.  The story is
the same with hidden variables---quantum mechanics remains just as
random as before.  Bohm's implicate order is completely irrelevant to
our discussions involving quantum mechanics.

If quantum mechanics is to support any universal wholeness, we need 
some real, observable physical effects.  A demonstration that occult 
action at a distance is possible would be a good start.  Quantum 
mystics claim that influences of our conscious choices can, in fact, 
be transmitted arbitrarily far across the universe, without 
degradation with distance, faster than the speed of light.

A common illustration of this claim is the famous
Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) paradox.  Let us prepare a pair of our
quantum switches, making sure they are set in opposite directions; if
one is U, the other is D.  Our quantum state is then |PSI>=a|UD>+
b|DU>.  Now, let us separate the switches from one another, taking
care not to disturb how they were set.  At some point, we measure one
of the switches, and find U.  We then instantly know the other switch
is described by |D>, no matter how far away it is.

This is not as impressive as it first looks.  Say we had two classical
switches instead, set them to UD and sealed them in different boxes.
Then we send one of the boxes to Mars.  When we open the box here on
Earth, and see it is U, we instantly know the one in the Martian box
is D, without waiting out the minutes it would take for a radio signal
to travel back and forth.  But it is obvious that there is no
faster-than-light signal communicating to the Martian switch that it
must be D.  We gain no new information when we realize the Martian
switch is D; we just work it out from the way the switches were first
prepared.

Quantum switches are, of course, trickier.  In a classical switch,
"up" and "down" are fixed directions.  When we measure a switch, we
find it up or down according to how it was originally set---we do not
see it pointing East or West.  But for quantum switches, we choose the
direction we measure U and D along _at the time of our measurement,_
not when we prepare the switch.  When we observe a quantum switch---in
real life, the "spin" of a particle---on Earth, we find U along a
direction of our choice: upwards, towards the North Star, whatever.
The switch on Mars will be then described by |D> along the same
direction.  Whether the Martian switch ends up U or D is random; we
have no control over it.  But what direction its state is pointing
towards was determined by us on Earth, _independent_ of the
constraints built into our initial preparation of the switches.  At
first glance, it seems like our act of choosing a direction has an
instantaneous physical effect on Mars.

Before jumping to conclusions, however, we should remember that
quantum switches do not behave like their Newtonian counterparts.
Quantum strangeness is not news; the material question is whether
information about our choice of direction was instantly sent to Mars.
If so, we could realize a science-fiction writer's dream, and build a
faster-than-light communications device.  But this does not work.  The
colonists on Mars have to choose a direction to observe the switch,
but they do not know anything about the direction chosen on Earth.
They will measure an U or D along their chosen direction, but that
will tell them absolutely nothing about what Space Control on Earth
decided.  Transmitting information faster than light by exploiting
quantum mechanics is quite impossible.[50] No occult signal travels to
Mars.  As with the classical case, all the information we have comes
from our knowledge of how the switches were first prepared, and our
observation here on Earth.  There is nothing paranormal or mystical
about EPR, only a quantum world which does not behave according to our
classical intuitions.[51]

Proclamations of a quantum spiritual reality are likely to remain 
popular; if nothing else, the strangeness of quantum mechanics 
provides plenty of opportunity for obfuscation.  But though quantum 
and classical physics differ, the basic problem Newtonian physics 
presented for religion remains.  Ours seems to be a very material 
world.  It is a dynamic world; matter is not a lump of substance.  
Even the quantum vacuum seethes with activity.  But for all its 
energy, this is a godless, soulless, directionless world.  We, even 
with our overrated minds and confused purposes, seem all too much a 
part of this world.  Where, among the equations and laws and 
randomness, can a God fit in?

5.  Life, The Universe, and Everything
--------------------------------------
The world described by modern physics is thoroughly natural, in no
need of supernatural foundations.  It is quite material, providing no
basis for spiritual realms.  Yet there are always physicists ready to
interpret physics mystically.[52]  Historically, the task of physics
was to read the mind of God, and the culture of physics still reflects
its past.  For example, physicists use "God" as a metaphor more often
than other scientists---especially in popular writing, but in the
technical literature as well.[53]  Of course, this is just a metaphor
for order at the heart of confusion.  A rational or aesthetic pattern
underlying reality is far from a theistic God.  But the metaphor can
take on a life of its own.  Albert Einstein was puzzled at the
orderliness and mathematical beauty he saw in the universe, and
speculated that a superior intelligence was revealed in "the harmony
of natural law."[54]

The study of fundamental physics is supposed to reveal a deeper
reality beneath appearances.  We strip away the chaos of everyday
life, and find beautiful, harmonious principles.  It is natural to
think this deeper reality must have some great significance.  Hence
physics becomes a launching pad for metaphysical sermons; it can even
produce an almost religious reverence.  This sense of the overwhelming
importance of physics is even clearer at the fringes of physics.
Practically no one dreams up crank theories about the Secrets of
Reality And A Better Sex Life by mutilating botany.  But physics,
well, it is fundamental, so revolutionary changes solving all our
problems must be grounded in the "new paradigms" of physics.  Quantum
psychology will restore wholeness and meaning to life, dispelling our
alienation.[55] Nonlinear mechanics will integrate our vision, helping
us construct an environmentally sound approach to the world.  So
naturally, there is always someone who will stamp "God" on any
important physical idea.  Psychoanalyst Edmund D. Cohen tells us

    The major implication of relativity physics for depth psychology
    is that the unconscious part of the psyche exists outside space
    and time.  It touches the inanimate universe, other psyches, and
    perhaps even a creator supreme being in ways that we are, by
    nature, unable to observe directly, and can reach---if at
    all---only by inferences from indirect observations.[56]

Anyone with a passing acquaintance with relativity will recognize this 
as nonsense.  But such fringe ideas depart from a very mainstream 
sentiment: physics is central.  Physics is supposed to be the key to 
Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Is physics that important?  Perhaps, if we must have a cosmic
perspective to give direction to our lives.  But in that case, we are
out of luck.  Physics has endless intellectual fascination and
considerable technological use, but it has discovered no cosmic
purpose, indeed, precious little of direct human significance.  A good
novel will do a lot more to give us a perspective on life than any
number of books on black holes or superconductors.  Physicists like
Einstein may admire the harmony of physical laws, but it is an
_impersonal_ order which excites them.  Theorists like to explain as
much as possible with the least number of principles; their holy grail
is a set of fundamental equations which can fit on a t-shirt.  A deity
would only be conceptual clutter disturbing the harmony.

A set of symmetry principles encompassing all we observe would be a
remarkable achievement, of truly fundamental importance.  But there is
more to science than the quest for deep principles.  Indeed, emphasis
on the Most Basic Laws can hinder physics.  As with any science,
physics works best when theory and experiment correct each other.  Or,
in particle theorist T.D. Lee's words,

    * _First Law of Physicists:_ Without experimentalists,
      theorists tend to drift.
    * _Second Law of Physicists:_ Without theorists,
      experimentalists tend to falter.[57]

Without theory, science becomes stamp collecting; even separating
facts from mistakes depends on our theories.  And without experiment,
there is nothing to guide theorists but their prejudices.  Fundamental
physics often operates at the boundaries of our experimental
capabilities.  For example, we study elementary particles and forces
at extremely high energies.  Physicists do this with the aid of
particle accelerators, among the largest, most expensive, and most
complicated scientific instruments ever built.  They boost subatomic
particles to the brink of light-speed in vast underground tunnels tens
of miles in circumference, and slam them into one another.  But some
of the present generation of theories require accelerators the size of
solar systems to be tested.  What now?  Theorists will drift, dreaming
of Perfect Symmetry rather than explaining experiments.  If physics is
the quest for fundamental reality, we may be looking at the end of
physics.[58]

Reports of the imminent demise of physics are no doubt exaggerated.  
But they give us an opportunity to rethink what we mean by fundamental 
science.  Symmetry principles and putting our basic equations on a 
t-shirt are lovely ideas.  Theoretical physics has been very 
successful exploring the deep structure of our world, and some simple, 
elegant mathematical ideas have turned out to be very powerful.  We 
need not, however, treat fundamental theories as the True Reality 
behind the veil of appearances.  Instead, we should see them as a 
framework for accidents.

The idea of symmetry has been very fruitful in modern physics.  The
fundamental interactions are all derived from requiring our basic
equations be invariant under certain symmetry transformations.[59] And
symmetries are most obvious at high energies.  For example, consider a
collection of small, atomic-size magnets.  The equations describing
magnetism are rotationally symmetric; in other words, every direction
in space looks the same.  At high temperatures, our collection of
magnets will point in haphazard directions, and so the overall
magnetization of the collection will average out to zero.  Indeed, if
there were a total magnetization, this would indicate a preferred
direction in space, going against the symmetry of our equations.  When
things cool down, something interesting happens.  Our atomic magnets
interact with one another, preferring to line up in the same
direction.  Once we get below a certain temperature, the most stable
configuration of a collection of magnets will be when most of them can
line up with one another.  But this means an overall magnetization, in
an arbitrary direction in space, even though the underlying equations
are all rotationally symmetric.

Magnets are a simple example of symmetry breaking, in which the 
low-energy state of a physical system is less symmetric than the 
equations describing the system.  The direction a collection of atomic 
magnets ends up pointing towards is completely arbitrary---all 
directions are still equivalent.  The direction frozen out at low 
temperatures is entirely accidental.  We settle on a direction 
determined by environmental noise, or even something as mean as a 
quantum fluctuation.  

Much the same kind of symmetry breaking takes place within the more
sophisticated equations of elementary particle physics.  For example,
electromagnetism and the weak force responsible for nuclear decays are
unified at high energies.  As a result of symmetry breaking, they are
very different in our low-energy physics.  So we can look at highly
symmetric, elegant fundamental theories as a description of
_potentialities._ The equations on a t-shirt do not determine our
world; that is mainly the result of a series of accidents freezing out
the low-energy physics we live by.  The more compact and elegant the
fundamental theory, the more scope for accident.

If the simple, harmonious theories of fundamental physics describe 
potentialities, we need not treat them as the reality beneath 
appearances.  We can shift our focus to the particular accidents which 
form our world.  Physics forces accidents on us, from chaotic dynamics 
to quantum randomness to symmetry breaking.  And now, to understand 
the significance of accidents, we must bring in insights from sciences 
other than physics.  Darwinian evolution, for example, must count as a 
principle as fundamental as any physical law.  How accidental 
variation can be a driving force behind complex order is a very deep 
and general problem.

Once we look beyond the fundamental harmonies, there are plenty of
deep theories concerning an accidental world.  These tend to be
universal, in the sense that they are not very sensitive to details of
the underlying physics.  Natural selection works independently of the
physical sources of accidental variation; hence it is a widely
applicable principle.  Irreversibility in our macroscopic world arises
from accidents, whether they are quantum or classical, quite
independent of fundamental physics.[60]  The mathematical theory of
computation is mostly insensitive to the details of physical
computers.  Concepts like information, accidents, and complexity cut
across all sciences.  We can study them even if we never build the
accelerators which could explore quantum gravity.

To understand our world, we must come to grips with accidents.  They
are fundamental, whether they appear in the symmetry breaking which
froze our physical laws in place, or in the mutations which are the
raw material for evolution.  Accidents are not mere accretions on the
true reality of mathematical harmony.  Furthermore, an accidental
world is not a formless chaos to be shaped by the gods.  It is a
deeply _historical_ world.  The evolution of our world is constrained
by the frozen accidents of the past, but novelties also keep arising
from, again, accidents.  Ours is not a world to be summed up in a few
equations; so far, there always seems to be more to find out, new
patterns to be noticed, surprises within what we thought we already
knew.  A historical world is often inelegant, sometimes cruel, but it
is always interesting.  Whether the search for more fundamental
physical laws stagnates or not, the end of fundamentally important
science is nowhere yet in sight.[61]

Our world seems reducible to physics.  That is, elementary particles
and their interactions probably make up all we see.  However, this
does not, as is too often thought, imply that particle physics is
_the_ basic science, and everything else is working out its
implications.  Setting fundamental laws above all else is itself an
accident of our intellectual history.[62]  We have tended to believe
theology and philosophy addressed the really deep, fundamental
questions.  Physics was less pure, limited to describing the material
world.  Other sciences were even less dignified, requiring thinkers to
dirty their hands with the fallen world.  Today, we are more skeptical
about Deep Metaphysics, more impressed with the successes of natural
science.  We should not, however, dethrone theology merely to
substitute physics as the Queen of the Sciences.  The sciences are an
interdependent web, not a hierarchy.  To do justice to an accidental
world, physics must lose some of its aesthetic luster and its claims
to read the mind of God.  But then, coming down to earth from the
harmonies of pure thought never hurt any science.

6.  An Unnecessary Hypothesis
-----------------------------
In 1799, the great French mathematician Laplace published his
_Celestial Mechanics._ In this triumph of Newtonian physics, Laplace
also confirmed the long-term stability of the solar system, doing away
with the occasional divine adjustments Newton thought necessary.  The
story is that Napoleon asked Laplace what part God played in his
system, and Laplace answered "I have no need of that hypothesis."

Newtonian science started causing trouble by its very independence 
from theology.  A science where God was not built in from the 
foundations was not necessarily a problem; the idea of God would be 
strengthened by the abundant independent confirmation which would 
surely be forthcoming.  But classical physics continually shrank the 
space for a God active in the world.  Physical law began to stand on 
its own, rather than being the result of divine legislation.

Modern physics has led to radical changes in how we understand the 
basic physical structure of the universe.  But it has not changed the 
implications of Newtonian science where God is concerned.  In today's 
physics, God is even more obviously an unnecessary hypothesis.  More 
importantly, modern physics brings accidents to the forefront as well 
as physical law.  Even our firmest intuitions about causation apply 
only to a macroscopic world emerging from a substrate infected with 
randomness, where events just happen.  And even the most ambitious 
fundamental laws can be seen as frameworks for the kinds of accidents 
which make our world.

This spells disaster for religious theories.  We do not expect to be 
able to see the hand of God in everything.  If we cannot fathom the 
divine reasons behind why it rained last Sunday, or why the sky is 
blue, this is hardly a great challenge to religion.  But when God is 
chased out of physics, indeed, out of all natural science, it begins 
to look like there is no God after all.  If there were a cosmic mind, 
a creative power, a divine purpose behind everything, we should see 
traces of this God in our world.  We do not.

Perhaps God is a deeper truth than what mere science can hope to
touch.  Or, theists can at least hope God is still somehow responsible
for what we see in science, if we just look below surface appearances.
Physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne speaks of a God conceived
not as a causal agent, but a shadowy figure behind everything.  Not
only do gaps in our knowledge point to God, but God is generally a
"sustainer . . . of `gaps' and regularities alike."[63] Unfortunately,
this God makes as much sense as a Santa Claus who is useless in
explaining anything about Christmas, yet still is somehow the moving
spirit behind the holiday season.  The problem remains: we do not see
God in the creation of the heavens, in the beneficent design of
earthly creatures, in a consciousness which encompasses the universe.
And without some such pattern, God is unnecessary.  Even the God of
the Philosophers dies along with the God we once hoped to see in
science.  We might have given the classical arguments some substance
with the help of physics, but now they stand even more clearly as
metaphysical verbiage.

So is the argument about God over?  Not yet.  Natural science is not 
all there is to know.  Historian Michael J. Buckley observes that 
science has corroded faith ever since Newtonian physics became a 
source of truth independent of God.  Religious experience throughout 
history, though, may do the trick:

    In turning to some other discipline to give basic substance to its
    claims that God exists, religion. . . is admitting an inner
    cognitive emptiness.  If religion does not possess the principles
    and experiences within itself to disclose the existence of God, if
    there is nothing of cogency in the phenomenology of religious
    experience, the witness of the personal histories of holiness and
    religious commitment, . . . or the life and meaning of Jesus of
    Nazareth, then it is ultimately counterproductive to look outside
    the religious to another discipline or science or art to establish
    that there is a "friend behind the phenomena." . . .  To attempt
    something else either as a foundation or as a substitute, as did
    the _Newtonian Settlement,_ is to move into a progress of internal
    contradiction of which the ultimate resolution is atheism.[64]

This is too obviously a defensive retreat.  The idea of God has always 
included claims which sciences like physics or biology have something 
to say about.  Otherwise, God would only be a peculiar entity 
allegedly explaining religious experience, and not a unifying 
principle for all of reality.  Those scientists and theologians who 
looked to nature to find God had good reasons to do so.  It was always 
possible that natural science would confirm the glory of God.  It just 
did not happen.  There is no averting disaster by retroactively 
calling the whole enterprise a religious mistake.

Religious history and experience may rescue God.  If something like a
God discloses itself in the course of human history or the special
revelations granted to prophets and seers, we _might_ have to
reconsider if the accidents of natural science are only seeming
accidents.  This will, however, be a very difficult thing to do.
Natural science represents the best of our knowledge at hand,
producing solid results and powerful theories.  This knowledge is not
comforting to the human ego.  We seem to live in a strictly natural,
impersonal world, indifferent to our hopes and fears.  Some of us may
find this world liberating, some of us see it as an unbearable
emptiness.  In either case, the universe does not care.

Notes
-----
[1] On the public image of science, particularly as represented by
journalism, see Dorothy Nelkin, _Selling Science: How the Press Covers
Science and Technology_ (New York: Freeman, 1987).

[2] See Richard Sorabji, _Matter, Space and Motion: Theories in
Antiquity and Their Sequel_ (London: Duckworth, 1988).

[3] John Hedley Brooke, _Science and Religion,_ chap. 4.

[4] This was fairly common until recently.  See, for example, Arthur
Eddington, _The Nature of the Physical World_ (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1930), pp. 84-85.  Also see Paul Davies, _God and
the New Physics_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), pp. 10-11.

[5] R.M. Price, "Old-time Religion and the New Physics,"
_Creation/Evolution_ <9> (1982), p. 23.

[6] Gerald L. Schroeder, _Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of
Harmony Between Modern Science and the Bible_ (New York: Bantam,
1992), pp. 27-54.

[7] A classic statement of the "New Age" view is Fritjof Capra, _The
Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels Between Modern Physics
and Eastern Mysticism_ (New York: Bantam, 1977).  It does not always
mesh well with the Abrahamic God, however; see Charles P. Henderson,
Jr., _God and Science,_ chap. 7.

[8] Alice and Stephen Lawhead, _Pilgrim's Guide to the New Age_
(Tring: Lion, 1986), p. 9.

[9] See Jeremy Bernstein, "A Cosmic Flow," _American Scholar,_
Winter-Spring 1979; and "Eastern Mysticism and the Alleged Parallels
with Physics," _American Journal of Physics_ <57>:8 (1989) p. 687.

[10] Stephen W. Hawking, _A Brief History of Time_ (Toronto: Bantam,
1988), p. 121.

[11] Freeman Dyson, _Disturbing the Universe_ (New York: Harper & Row,
1979), p. 250.

[12] John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, _The Anthropic Cosmological
Principle_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).  For a more accessible
discussion, see John Gribbin & Martin Rees, _Cosmic Coincidences: Dark
Matter, Mankind, and Anthropic Cosmology_ (New York: Bantam, 1989).

[13] For example, John Leslie supports a modern Neoplatonist God
through anthropic reasoning; John Leslie, in C.N.  Matthews and R.A.
Varghese, eds., _Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends: Where Science and
Religion Meet_ (Chicago and La Salle: Open Court, 1995), pp. 337-353.
For a more orthodox theistic view, see Errol E.  Harris, _Cosmos and
Theos: Ethical and Theological Implications of the Anthropic
Cosmological Principle_ (London: Humanities Press, 1992), chap. 13.

[14] Heinz R. Pagels, _Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning
of Time_ (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 359.

[15] Stephen Hawking, in S. Hawking and R. Penrose, _The Nature of
Space and Time_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996),
chap. 5.

[16] Victor J. Stenger, _The Unconscious Quantum,_ pp. 218-223.

[17] A. Linde, D. Linde and A. Mezhlumian, "From the Big Bang Theory
to the Theory of a Stationary Universe," _Physical Review D_ <49>:4
(1994) p. 1783.  Andrei Linde, "The Self-Reproducing Inflationary
Universe," _Scientific American,_ <271>:5 (1994), pp. 48-55, is a
semipopular account.

[18] Lee Smolin, "Did The Universe Evolve?"  _Classical and Quantum
Gravity,_ <9> (1992) p. 173.  For a popular description see John
Gribbin, _In The Beginning: After COBE and Before the Big Bang_
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1993), even though he calls every
far-from-equilibrium self-organized system life.

[19] Paul Davies, _The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a
Rational World_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 222.

[20] Stephen Hawking, _The Nature of Space and Time,_ p. 90.

[21] Psychologist Nicholas Humphrey uses a similar argument he calls
an "Argument from Unwarranted Design" against claims of psychic
powers; _Leaps of Faith: Science, Miracles, and the Search for
Supernatural Consolation_ (New York: BasicBooks, 1996), chap. 12.

[22] Georges Lemaitre, _The Primeval Atom: An Essay on Cosmology_
(transl. B.H. and S.A. Korff, New York: D.  Van Nostrand, 1950).

[23] Robert Jastrow, _God and the Astronomers_ (New York: Warner,
1980), p. 125.

[24] William Lane Craig, in W.L. Craig & Q. Smith, _Theism, Atheism,
and Big Bang Cosmology_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 4.
Emphasis mine.

[25] _Ibid,_ chap. 1.  For classical Islamic versions of the argument,
see Majid Fakhry, _A History of Islamic Philosophy,_ pp. 74-77, 224.

[26] Quentin Smith, _Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology,_
chap. 2.  See also Michael Martin, _Atheism,_ pp.  105-106.

[27] The "plasma cosmology" alternative to the conventional Big Bang,
backed by Nobel laureate Hannes Alfven, has found a recent (and
strident) popular defense in Eric Lerner, _The Big Bang Never
Happened_ (New York: Random House, 1991).  Few working cosmologists
take it seriously.

[28] Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John Archibald Wheeler,
_Gravitation_ (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman, 1973) p. 934.

[29] S.W. Hawking, "Breakdown of Predictability in Gravitational
Collapse," _Physical Review D_ <14> (1976), p. 2460.  A more
accessible account is in _Scientific American,_ <236> (1977), p. 34.
For philosophical implications, see Quentin Smith, _Theism, Atheism
and Big Bang Cosmology,_ pp. 195ff.

[30] For example, to circumvent randomness, Craig relies on the
classical Islamic notion that the outcome of an indeterminate
situation is to be explained as a choice made by a personal agent, in
this case a personal God.  William Lane Craig, _The Kalam Cosmological
Argument_ (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1979), pp.  149-152.  This is a
clear misunderstanding of randomness, as well as archaic psychology.

[31] See Stephen W. Hawking, _A Brief History of Time,_ pp. 133-141.
A somewhat forced interpretation of a no-boundary universe as divine
creation from nothing is possible; e.g. Chris J. Isham, in Robert J.
Russell, William R. Stoeger, S.J., and George V. Coyne, S.J., eds.,
_Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding_
(Vatican; Vatican Observatory: Notre Dame; distributed by University
of Notre Dame, 1988), pp. 397-402.  However, this derives its
substance from the classical cosmological argument, not physics.

[32] James Rachels, _Created From Animals,_ pp. 107-110.

[33] William Lane Craig, in _Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology,_
pp. 147, 57.

[34] Quentin Smith, in _Theism, Atheism and Big Bang Cosmology,_ makes
this analogy; W.L. Craig objects (pp. 143-144) by pointing out that
the quantum vacuum is a dynamical state, hardly nothing.  However, the
very complexity of the vacuum is a result of virtual particle creation
processes.  Creation out of absolute nothing is a metaphysical
quagmire for theists anyway, since nothing must at least have the
potentiality for becoming something (Peter A.  Angeles, _The Problem
of God,_ pp. 59-60).  Since theists are stuck with potentiality, it
might as well be something like a quantum vacuum.

[35] Stephen Hawking, in _The Nature of Space and Time,_ chap. 1, 3.
Hawking also explains how black holes are also white holes---creating
information---due to their thermal radiation (pp. 124-127).  I believe
Hawking's argument can be generalized beyond his illustration there.
Black holes destroy both macroscopic information and microscopic state
information.  Thermal radiation creates new microscopic state
information unconnected to previous states, however, this contains
practically no macroscopic information.  In other words, black holes
are a gravitational agent of thermodynamic irreversibility, even
though the physics remains CPT-invariant.  This fits quite naturally
with the purely statistical explanation of irreversibility.

[36] Victor J. Stenger, _The Unconscious Quantum,_ p. 143.  Stenger
also uses time-symmetry to give an attractive explanation of
contextuality in quantum mechanics---the fact that the entire
experiment, in future and past, must be taken into account in making
predictions (pp. 204-206).

[37] Philosophers are not entirely reluctant to use physics to clarify
traditionally philosophical problems involving causality.  See, for
example, Wesley C. Salmon, "Statistical Explanation and Causality," in
Joseph C. Pitt, ed., _Theories of Explanation_ (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1988).  The classical metaphysical tradition is more
recalcitrant.

[38] For an introduction to Quantum Mysticism, see the collection of
articles in Patrick Grim, ed., _Philosophy of Science and the Occult_
(2nd Edition, Albany: SUNY Press, 1990).

[39] See Catherine L. Albanese, "The Magical Staff: Quantum Healing in
the New Age," in James R. Lewis & J. Gordon Melton, eds.,
_Perspectives on the New Age_ (Albany: SUNY Press, 1992).  For a very
popular example of magical healing claims packaged in a "quantum
worldview," see Deepak Chopra, _Ageless Body, Timeless Mind: The
Quantum Alternative to Growing Old_ (New York: Harmony, 1993), p. 7.
Chopra also uses Paul Davies's progressive Design ideas to intimate
entropy and aging can be defeated (p. 115).  For a critique of quantum
medicine, see Douglas Stalker and Clark Glymour, in D. Stalker & C.
Glymour, eds., _Examining Holistic Medicine_ (Buffalo: Prometheus,
1989), pp. 107-125.

[40] Ken Wilber, in K. Wilber, ed., _The Holographic Paradigm and
Other Paradoxes: Exploring the Leading Edge of Science_ (Boulder:
Shambhala, 1982), p. 159.

[41] On folk psychology, see Paul M. Churchland, _Matter and
Consciousness: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind_
(Revised Edition, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1988), pp. 44-45, 58-59.

[42] For the unity-argument, see David Hodgson, _The Mind Matters:
Consciousness and Choice in a Quantum World_ (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1991), pp. 383-387; and Danah Zohar, _The Quantum Self: Human Nature
and Consciousness Defined by the New Physics_ (with I.N.  Marshall,
New York: William Morrow, 1990), p. 69.  For physics allegedly serving
Jungian mystagoguery, see John Hitchcock, _The Web of the Universe:
Jung, the "New Physics," and Human Spirituality_ (New York: Paulist
Press, 1991).

[43] Gerald M. Edelman, _Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of
the Mind_ (New York: BasicBooks, 1992), pp.  212-218.  Daniel C.
Dennett, _Consciousness Explained_ (Boston: Little, Brown, 1991),
particularly chap. 6, 9.

[44] Eugene P. Wigner, _Symmetries and Reflections: Scientific Essays
of Eugene P.  Wigner_ (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1967),
p. 172.

[45] The quantum state |PSI> is not analogous to a classical
single-system state; treating it as if it were a classical physical
quantity is misleading.  See Victor J. Stenger, _The Unconscious
Quantum,_ pp. 86-91, 165-170.  |PSI> changes, or "collapses" after a
measurement; Werner Heisenberg suggested this blurred the Cartesian
boundary between knower and known (_Physics and Philosophy: The
Revolution in Modern Science_ (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958),
pp. 78-83).  This seems more profound an observation than it really
is, because we tend to think of the "collapse" like a change in a
classical physical entity.

[46] Wojciech H. Zurek, "Decoherence and the Transition from Quantum
to Classical," _Physics Today_ <44> (1991), pp. 36-44.  See also G.R.
Mulhauser, "Materialism and the `Problem' of Quantum Measurement,"
_Minds and Machines_ <5> (1995), pp. 207-217.

[47] Roland Omnes, _The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics_
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), chap. 7.  A
nontechnical exposition is Murray Gell-Mann, _The Quark and the
Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and Complex_ (New York: Freeman &
Co., 1994), chap. 11.  For an objection to decoherence, see Roger
Penrose, in _The Nature of Space and Time,_ pp. 69-72.  I find
Penrose's argument quite unconvincing (as does S. Hawking, p.  120),
but obviously the debate is not fully settled yet.

[48] See, for example, V.B. Braginskii and F.Y.  Khalili, _Quantum
Measurement_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

[49] See David Bohm, _Wholeness and the Implicate Order_ (London: Ark,
1983); and Victor J. Stenger, _The Unconscious Quantum,_ chap. 4, 5.

[50] David N. Mermin, "Is the Moon There When Nobody Looks?  Reality
and the Quantum Theory," _Physics Today_ <38> (1985), p. 38.  The
result from EPR can be generalized: no superluminal communication is
possible under quantum mechanics (Philippe H. Eberhard and Ronald R.
Ross, _Foundations of Physics Letters_ <2> (1989), p. 127).

[51] For a demystification of EPR and consciousness ideas in the
context of decoherence, see Murray Gell-Mann and James B. Hartle,
"Quantum Mechanics in the Light of Quantum Cosmology," in W.H. Zurek,
ed., _Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information_ (Santa Fe
Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, vol. VIII, Redwood
City: Addison-Wesley, 1990).  See also Victor J. Stenger, _The
Unconscious Quantum,_ chap. 5.

[52] See Ken Wilber, ed., _Quantum Questions: Mystical Writings of the
World's Great Physicists_ (Boulder: Shambhala, 1984).  Note that even
here, no _direct_ support by physics is claimed.  Also see
contributions by religious physicists in H. Margenau & R.A.  Varghese,
eds., _Cosmos, Bios, Theos._

[53] An interesting example is in Detleff Durr, Sheldon Goldstein, and
Nino Zanghi, _Journal of Statistical Physics,_ <67> (1992), p. 843.
The authors argue for a Bohmian pseudo-deterministic interpretation of
quantum mechanics, and support this by a God's-eye appeal to rational
design.

[54] Albert Einstein, _Ideas and Opinions_ (New York: Crown, 1954),
p. 40.

[55] Danah Zohar, _The Quantum Self,_ pp. 17-20, 219-220.

[56] Edmund D. Cohen, _The Mind of the Bible-Believer_ (Buffalo:
Prometheus, 1988), p. 104.  Cohen criticizes fundamentalist belief
from a depth psychology perspective; a case of the pot calling the
kettle black if there ever was one.
 
[57] T.D. Lee, _Symmetries, Asymmetries, and the World of Particles_
(Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988), p. 41.  The
importance of experiment in particular is sometimes clearer with
failed physical ideas; see Allan Franklin, _The Rise and Fall of The
Fifth Force: Discovery, Pursuit, and Justification in Modern Physics_
(New York: American Institute of Physics, 1993).

[58] See David Lindley, _The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified
Theory_ (New York: BasicBooks, 1993).

[59] Local or gauge symmetries are the most conspicuous example of
building fundamental physics on symmetry; Ta-Pei Cheng and Ling-Fong
Li, _Gauge Theory of Elementary Particle Physics_ (Oxford: Clarendon,
1984), chap. 8.

[60] Some physicists, notably Roger Penrose, think otherwise:
irreversibility is such a profound fact of our world that it must have
a more "fundamental" explanation; see his contributions in _The Nature
of Space and Time,_ and _The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers,
Minds, and the Laws of Physics_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1989), pp. 302-347.  However, as I noted in the previous chapter,
statistical physicists see no need to build irreversibility into our
fundamental theories.  This is not to say that, for example, gravity
cannot contribute to the 2nd Law as we see it.  Indeed, it must, since
black holes create and destroy information.  However, even this is
best seen in the context of a statistical explanation; accidents
connected with gravity are still accidents.

[61] Even within physics, what is "fundamental" is subject to debate;
the elementary particle physicists' is not the only perspective.  See
Silvan S. Schweber, _Physics Today,_ Nov.  1993, p. 34; Philip
W. Anderson, "More is Different,"_Science_ <177> (1972), p. 393.

[62] This may be more obvious to non-physicists; for example,
biologist Peter Medawar, _The Limits of Science,_ (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1984), pp. 7-9.

[63] John Polkinghorne, _Science and Providence: God's Interaction
with the World_ (Boston: Shambhala, 1989), p. 34.

[64] Michael J. Buckley, in R.J. Russell et.al., ed., _Physics,
Philosophy, and Theology,_ p. 99.

