A simple explanation for the origins of the universe — and us too
Some people maintain that, in the age of the internet and Google, public lectures are an outmoded way of acquiring knowledge. I don’t agree. They demand effort to get to, fighting London’s horrid traffic, crowded tubes, parking problems etc., and that is a prolegomenon to concentration. They also force one to follow an argument with no skipping. An uncomfortable setting is a further stimulus to thought. The Royal Institute of Philosophy’s annual lecture series this winter on religion, organised by Professor Anthony O’Hear, is in a room at University College, a new one since it seems to be made of plywood and cardboard. The seats are linked in groups of four on the Eton boating song principle of swing, swing together, since if a neighbour shifts his arse you feel it too. When I attended, the heating system, UCL being short of money, was turned right up, and since the room was packed, with people sitting on the floor, we were in the black hole of Calcutta. As if to compensate, the extremely complicated microphone system did not work at all. Happily, the speaker, Richard Swinburne, has a vigorous and clear voice, so we heard it all.
This successful resort to simple speech, as opposed to advanced electronic gimmickry which may not function, was a paradigm of the talk, entitled ‘God as the Simplest Explanation of the Universe’. Swinburne was, from 1985 to his retirement, Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at Oxford and has published a dozen books on the probability of God’s existence, and related topics. His preference for simplicity in dealing with apparently difficult matters such as the origins of the universe was epitomised by his thesis, which was audaciously uncomplex and direct. It is a preference I share, as a historian, for I find that most events have simple, even obvious, causes. Complicated explanations always involve a frenzied search for evidence, and its unwarranted manipulation, when found. The same principle applies, as a rule, to the way the world is run. If Britain is entering the current depression with the weakest of the major economies, as seems to be the case, that is due to the obvious and simple reason that it has had, for 11 years, an inexpert and spendthrift Labour government. When, aged 16, I first read Karl Popper, I took instantly to his view that a hypothesis ought to be simple, limited in scope and easily verifiable.
Swinburne argues that explanatory hypotheses are of two kinds: inanimate (or scientific) in terms of causes and laws of nature, or per sonal in terms of powers and beliefs. A personal hypothesis is inherently simpler because a person can be motivated by a simple belief or desire, and all he needs is the power to carry it out. An inanimate explanation depends on substances which are not motivated by desire or beliefs or indeed at all, but act in accordance with laws, which may be imperfectly understood by us, and are numerous, and in conjunction may be very complicated indeed. A year or two ago I attended a lecture given by the great Oxford mathematician-cosmologist, Sir Roger Penrose, on the nature of the Big Bang which set the universe in motion or, in his submission, because of entropy, the endless series of big bangs which set universes in motion before each runs down into nothing. I was struck by the extraordinary complexity of it all, which had to be demonstrated by mathematics (that is to say, abstract argument in figure-symbols) since there was no possibility of empirical or observational proof at most stages in the argument, or perhaps at any.
By contrast a personal explanation of the universe, that it was created by God, for good purposes in order eventually to produce humans, themselves capable of pursuing good, is quite simple. God is simple. He is one. All His essential characteristics (including perfect goodness) follow from four properties: he is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient and perfectly free. The simplest physical cause of the general feature of the universe would be exactly like God: eternal, unlimited and unique. This same cause would have the power to bring about a good universe. It would have the liability to exercise that power, and also since, being physical, would have a location, and the liability to produce effects there which it would not produce elsewhere, thus ensuring uniqueness. The other God-like property of perfect freedom would be the absence of a feature, and especially the absence of a feature in having no rival creative substance or person (which follows from God’s omnipotence). So in sum God is simpler than the simplest possible inanimate explanation.
In fact, inanimate explanations are never simple, and they grow more complicated. One of the merits of the personal explanation of the universe is its permanence. Since primitive human beings, liking simplicity as Professor Swinburne and I do, first decided the universe was created by gods, later simplifying still further to posit the creation as the work of a sole God, this explanation has not varied in essentials at all. Pope Gregory XVI, presiding at the Vatican, believes in the same explanation of how the universe came into existence as the ancient Egyptians after they embraced monotheism, or the ancient Hebrews from the time of Moses. Now this is a very powerful argument in favour of its truth: its ability to survive the ages, and the endless expansion of human knowledge.
The trouble with inanimate explanations of universal origins is that they are in constant osmosis. They lack stability and permanence. There is no general theory of an inanimatecaused universe, and it is unlikely there ever will be. Bits seem perfect (usually only for a time), but they don’t join together. Granted a First Cause, which of course begs the whole question, Newton’s explanation seemed faultless. But in the end it had to be modified by Einstein’s General Theory. And Einstein, looking to an overall explanation, gave up almost in despair. So we entered a period of fashion-cosmology, as changeable as women’s fashions in clothes — string theory and so on. A professor pops up with a new set of mathematical equations, and is cock of the cosmic walk for a time. Then the fashion changes. Worse: giant telescopes and other devices, crackers and so forth, produce new evidence, which is variously interpreted.
I was taught, by Popper, that if new evidence turns up, it is quite wrong to modify the hypothesis to accommodate it. The hypothesis should be scrapped and a new one formulated. Popper instanced Marx’s theory of political economics as an example of a bad hypothesis made worse by being allowed to accommodate new historical facts as they occurred. And he gave Freud’s theories as an even worse example of this fundamental weakness. Those who stick to an inanimate explanation of the universe are equally guilty of breaking Popper’s Law. All they have produced so far, and they have been at it for a century now, is constant change and fiddling, and the present state of the theory or theories is immensely complicated, almost impossible to understand, and impermanent.
By contrast, the view that God created the universe is simple, easily understood by a child, and absolutely unchanging. Swinburne’s paper, to which my summary does not do justice, came like a clear stream of cold water into a fevered mental muddle, not to speak of an overheated lecture-room. These lectures continue in January and February. They are given at 5.45 p.m. in the Chadwick Lecture Theatre, off the main UCL campus in Gower Street, on Fridays. They are free, open to the public and without reservations. If they are all as sharp as Professor Swinburne’s, they will be vaut le voyage.
Previous page
